Xavius Abilities

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Contents
  • 2. Lore
  • 3. Outline
  • 4. TL;DR
    • 4.1. Tanks
    • 4.2. Healers
    • 4.3. DPS
    • 4.4. Everyone
  • 5. Changelog
• ×Abilities
  • 1. Overview
  • 2. Corruption
    • 2.1. Corruption Thresholds
      • 2.1.1. 33 Corruption: Dread Abomination
      • 2.1.2. 66 Corruption: Unfathomable Reality
      • 2.1.3. 100 Corruption: Descent into Madness
    • 2.2. The Dream and Resetting Corruption
  • 3. Phase One
    • 3.1. Darkening Soul
    • 3.2. Nightmare Blades
    • 3.3. Manifest Corruption
    • 3.4. Lurking Eruption
  • 4. Phase Two
    • 4.1. Blackening Soul
    • 4.2. Corruption Meteor
    • 4.3. Bonds of Terror
    • 4.4. Nightmare Infusion
    • 4.5. Call of Nightmares
  • 5. Phase Three
  • 6. Changelog
• +Normal/Heroic Strategy/Tactics
  • 1. Overview
  • 2. Managing Corruption
  • 3. Positioning
  • 4. Tanks
  • 5. Healers
  • 6. DPS
  • 7. Everyone
  • 8. Phase Three Burn
  • 9. Changelog
• +Mythic Strategy
  • 1. Mythic Mode Abilities
  • 2. Strategy
  • 3. Changelog
• +Loot
  • 1. Illusion
  • 2. Relics
  • 3. Amulets, Rings, and Trinkets
  • 4. Armor

General Information

On this page, we list all the abilities from the Xavius encounter in The Emerald Nightmare. The idea is to give you a solid understanding of the encounter before you read the strategy.

If you are already familiar with the encounter, then you can skip to the strategy and tactics page or access any other page of the guide by using the table of contents on the right.

About our Reviewer

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Pottm from Serenity.

The encounter with Xavius is a 3-phase fight, during which you face the boss and, at times, adds. Xavius has similar abilities during Phase One and Phase Two and he retains abilities from both Phases in Phase Three. The switch to Phase Two occurs at 65% health and the switch to Phase Three at 30% health.

The encounter has a core mechanics called Corruption, which each player is receiving when they are damaged by specific abilities. Corruption never decays and reaching maximum Corruption causes the player to be mind-controlled and killed by the raid. As we will see, each player has the possibility to remove Corruption once during the encounter.

Each player has a Corruption bar that appears in their UI, as part of the encounter, and that shows their current amount of Corruption. When the encounter starts, players have 0 Corruption and it can go up to 100.

At certain levels of Corruption, events trigger, culminating with the removal of the player from the raid once they reach 100 Corruption. As pointed out previously, there is a way for each player to reset their Corruption, once per encounter.

We detail all the events and the way to reset Corruption in the next section.

At 33, 66, and 100 Corruption, something happens to the player.

• With 33 or more Corruption, players can be damaged by Corruption: Crushing Shadows and need to avoid it.
• With 66 or more Corruption, players can be damaged by Corruption: Unfathomable Reality and need to avoid it.
• At 100 Corruption, Corruption: Descent into Madness is triggered.

Every 10 seconds, a very large void zone appears on the floor. After 4 seconds, a Dread Abomination materialises and deals Corruption: Crushing Shadows damage to anyone still standing in the void zone, before disappearing. This deals a lot of Physical damage (but applies no Corruption), and the damage is reduced the further players are from the center of the void zone (and is 0 outside of it, obviously).

Only players at 33 Corruption or above can see the void zone and be damaged by Corruption: Crushing Shadows.

Small void zones keep spawning on the ground. After 2 seconds, they erupt, dealing Corruption: Unfathomable Reality damage to anyone still standing in it. This deals moderate Fire damage and adds 5 Corruption.

Only players at 66 Corruption of above can see the void zone and be damaged by Corruption: Unfathomable Reality.

At 100 Corruption, players receive a debuff called Corruption: Descent into Madness. It increases their healing and damage done by 150% for 20 seconds. When the 20 seconds are up, they are mind-controlled by Xavius and need to be killed.

When Xavius reaches 95% health, half of the raid is put to sleep in the Dream of Ysera. When he reaches 60% health, the other half of the group is put to sleep. The explanation of the Dungeon Journal is a bit convoluted. What it means is that these players get debuffed with Dream Simulacrum, which lasts for 3 minutes. When the debuff is removed from a player, Corruption resets.

The debuff can only be removed in one of two ways, by letting it run its 3-minute course or by dying. When a player dies with the debuff, they simply awaken from their dream and continue the fight normally. Note that this cheat death protects players from deaths brought about by Corruption: Descent into Madness.

Phase One lasts from 100% health to 65% health. During this phase, Xavius uses 4 abilities: Darkening Soul (tank debuff), Nightmare Blades (AoE damage in a line between 2 players), Manifest Corruption (add spawn), and Lurking Eruption (add spawn).

Every 8 to 10 seconds, Xavius applies a stack of Darkening Soul to his tank. This lasts until dispelled and deals a low amount of Shadow per second per stack.

Dispelling Darkening Soul causes high damage to all players within 15 yards of the tank. The player who dispelled gains 25 Corruption and takes a moderate amount of Shadow damage through Darkened Tainting.

Every 16 seconds, Xavius debuffs 2 players with Nightmare Blades. 5 seconds later, Nightmare Blades hit players on the same line as the debuffed players. Note that this is a line with a fixed length, so having the debuffed players close to each other does not reduce the area of effect.

1 minute into the fight and every 1 minute and 20 seconds after that, Xavius casts Manifest Corruption. This deals high Shadow damage to the entire raid and spawns a Corruption Horror, which needs to be picked by the tank. In addition to its melee attack, it has 2 abilities: Corrupting Nova and Tormenting Swipe.

• Corrupting Nova is cast every 20 seconds and deals high Shadow damage to all raid member/, giving them 5 Corruption. This has a cast time, but does not seem to be interruptible.
• Tormenting Swipe is cast every 10 seconds and deals very high Shadow damage to everyone in front of the caster, giving hit players 10 Corruption.

Every 20 seconds, Xavius makes the ground erupt at the location of a random raid member, dealing moderate Shadow damage to all raid members within 6 yards. This does not seem to be avoidable, unless the raid member is already on the move.

The eruption spawns a Lurking Terror, which cannot be killed by conventional means and has 2 abilities: Tormenting Fixation and Tormenting Infection.

• Tormenting Fixation causes the Lurking Terror to select a random player to fixate on.
• Tormenting Infection deals high Shadow damage to the first player the Lurking Terror touches and gives them 20 Corruption (30 in Heroic mode). This also kills the Lurking Terror.

Phase Two lasts from 65% health to 30% health. During this phase, Xavius uses 5 abilities: Blackening Soul (tank debuff), Corruption Meteor (massive AoE split damage), Bonds of Terror (link damage), Nightmare Infusion (tank Corruption), and Call of Nightmares (add spawn).

Blackening Soul works exactly the same as Darkening Soul, with the tank now being debuffed with Blackened for 30 seconds after the dispel. This causes them to take 150% increased damage from Physical damage.

Every 30 seconds, Xavius marks a player. They then show a very large circle around them. 5 seconds later, a Meteor falls down on the player, dealing extremely high damage and 40 Corruption to all players within the circle. The damage and the amount of Corruption gained is split between all affected players.

Every 15 seconds, Xavius debuffs 2 random players with Bonds of Terror. This inflicts low Shadow damage to both players every second until they manage to move within 3 yards of each other, at which point the debuff disappears.

This ability was present in Normal mode on the beta, but has since been removed from the Dungeon Journal.

Every minute, Xavius buffs himself with Nightmare Infusion. This causes his melee attacks (which he performs every 1.5 seconds) to apply 5 Corruption to the target. The buff drops after 30 seconds or after Xavius has applied Corruption to his target 6 times.

Call of Nightmares causes Inconceivable Horrors to regularly spawn from the edge of the room and walk slowly towards Xavius. Upon reaching him, they start channeling Dark Ruination at him (after a 2-second cast time). The channel lasts 5 seconds and every second, it causes Xavius to deal low raid-wide Shadow damage and to give 1 Corruption to every raid member.

Killing an Inconceivable Horror spawns pool of corruption at its location called Tainted Discharge (and cancels its channel of Dark Ruination, if it was channeling it). It deals low Shadow damage to players standing in it every second, applying 2 Corruption (3 in Heroic mode) to them at the same time. The pool of corruption dissipates after dealing its damage a few times (5 times is our estimate). If the pool of corruption has not dissipated after 15 seconds, it reforms into an Inconceivable Horror.

Phase Three lasts from 30% health to 0% health. Xavius uses a mix of Phase One and Phase Two abilities, plus a new ability called Writhing Deep.

• Phase One abilities: Nightmare Blades;
• Phase Two abilities: Blackening Soul, Nightmare Infusion, and Corruption Meteor.

Writhing Deep causes a Nightmare Tentacle to spawn every 4 to 5 seconds approximately. These adds can be killed and have several million health points. Every 5 seconds, they cast Nightmare Bolt, dealing low Shadow damage to a random raid member and giving them 3 Corruption (5 in Heroic mode).

• 22 Sep. 2016: Added a few mentions, following pottm's review.

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