Megaera (15 replies to this topic)

This thread is for comments about our Megaera encounter guide.

You may want to check but if I am correct the only time that two heads appear at the back is if you kill a head while it is not in wild state. There should be two states that the heads can be in and if you kill a head while it is in Wild state then no head will spawn when you kill it. If you kill it when the head is in the other state I think its called focus then two of the same heads will spawn after killing it.

Deathsreaper, on 01 March 2013 - 03:42 PM, said:

I don't see any mention of this in the dungeon journal, and we do not recall experiencing such a thing on the PTR. Better wait and see how it will be on live.

I think tanks switching during phase 2 (when 2 haeds are up) isnt good idea. For a while heads will be faced to the raid and might damage non tank players with cone attack. Also when tank leaves his current head that head will eather attack and probably one shot melee player or heads will enrage if noone is in melee range. I think tanks can survive stacking debuff because heads die fast. Tanks will get rid of stacking debuff as soon as 1st phase start again (when 3 heads are up)

Deathsreaper, on 01 March 2013 - 03:42 PM, said:

Well, I initially tried going with the way in which the fight is presented by the One Body, Many Heads ability, but I found that to be not only extremely confusing, but not really how the fight worked. So, instead, I explained the fight exactly as we experienced it on the Beta. If it turns out that that was not the intended behaviour (or that I misunderstood something), we'll of course update the guide as soon as we know more. I won't go into too many details, but, for example, this sentence was not happening on the PTR: "After twenty seconds all heads stop being Focused and start being Wild."

Mico, on 05 March 2013 - 05:11 AM, said:

That's a good point. It's quite possible that that will turn out to be quite viable indeed. I'll update when we know more.

Ok, not sure if the guide says that, just putting what I see here...

Starts with 2 heads.  Nature and Frost.  When we burn Nature, the heads all disappear then reappear with all 3 targettable doing Rampage for a set amount of time.  Stack for Rampage.  When Rampage ends, spread out, burn Fire.  When Fire goes down, they all despawn and start using Rampage again...rinse and repeat by going Nature -> Fire -> Frost -> Nature, etc.  Very easy.

Zagam, on 07 March 2013 - 04:10 AM, said:

The guide was written based off the PTR and what went live is a bit different apparently... I'm seeing what you're seeing Zag.

Can anyone suggest when to breath swap? Every breath? Every 2? Once a head dies?

Kel, on 07 March 2013 - 10:10 PM, said:

Vlad is updating the guide as we speak.

Thank you! Clearly, this has changed quite a bit! Updating the guide now, changes should go live in the morning:)

Thank you Zagam!

our kill: http://www.worldoflo.../?s=2651&e=3199

Our tanks didn't swap at all...just waited til a head died.  They died on the 7th head.  Also can confirm you have to kill 7 heads to win.  We went Green, Blue, Red, Green, Blue, Red, Green.  Shit gets intense on the 7th head.

Zagam, that's pretty much the order we did, but frost for the 7th,though the last one does not really matter

Kel, on 07 March 2013 - 10:10 PM, said:

My updates should be going up soon, but to answer your question, you should switch every 2 breaths. Depending on your raid's DPS, this should mean that you are switching when the head your raid is focusing is at about 20% health. You could, with solid tank healing and defensive cooldowns, survive without a tank switch until a head dies, and just switch then. But doing at 2 breaths is the safer bet.

Yeah, I keep forgetting that I'm not in a mediocre 10 man group now and am in a top 200 world 25 man and gear/skill is a little higher than normal.  I can attest that it is at least possible to only switch after a head is killed, but probably won't work as well in heroic mode.  Question: why do you recommend the Ice head first?  We saw it this way:

Poison = easy to avoid by all
Fire = one person takes lots of damage and has to move out of raid and get a dispel
Ice = one person guides an ice beam away from group

The reason we went Poison first is Poison is easiest to avoid so we were going to kill this twice earliest (1st & 4th).
We wanted Fire before Ice because Fire is easier to place and we'd be getting fire debuff less often.
Felt that directing the Ice Beam into fire pools required less effort and less damage taken than running over ice with the fire debuff.

Surely it won't matter a great deal in normals, but do you think for a hard mode, we could look deeper into that issue?

Well this is because

Poison damages everyone ~ the more you kill poison head the more frequent you will be getting bombs. Also with more heads up the damage of the heads increases on top of the damage you need to heal through for like Rampages in between transitions.

Ice beam  is easy. Only affects on person, normally a ranged and if ranged stand like at max distance and then kite it out of range you dont even need to use fire to clear it.

Fire is probably easier to handle too and if it affects ranged it is even better. they can drop it at max range.

Megaera

Differences from normal mode:
-higher HP, more damage
-Arcane Head = wyrm adds

It is highly suggested that you form a kill order that does not involve the Green head.  This is because of the limited amount of room you have to work with.  Adding Poison Bombs to the Ice Beams, Cinders, and Arcane adds just doesn't lead to a good time.  Therefore, my suggested kill order is: Blue -> Red -> Purple -> Blue -> Red -> Purple -> Blue.

In Heroic mode, the mechanics are unforgiving.  Not properly kiting the Ice Beam or placing Cinders in the right area will result in a wipe due to choking the raid off of suitable places to stand.  Warlock Gateways are extremely useful in that you can have players run in a round-about way to the back of the room where one portal is and instantly teleport back to the front of the room causing the Ice Beam to overlap itself thus cutting its effective area of effect by half.  Ice must be kited properly so that you don't squeeze your raid group into too tight of an area.

Rampage damage will be absolutely unforgivable.  All classes will need to utilize their personal defensive CDs to go along with raid defensive CDs appropriately.  This will need to be set up in a pattern that covers all of the Rampages.  They will increase in intensity as the fight goes on.

The most crucial part of Heroic mode is proper handling of the Nether Wyrms spawned by the Arcane Head with an ability called Nether Tear.  On Heads 1 and 2, you will only deal with 1 head spawning the Nether Wyrms, so they can quickly be CC'd while you finish off your current target head.  After you kill the Arcane head once, you will deal with multiple sets of Nether Wyrms.  Let loose, these adds can stun random players for 15 seconds.  While this is dispellable, dealing with it at all is quite troublesome.  The way we dealt with these adds was to use Ring of Frost, Solar Beam, Shadowfury, and Psychic Scream to render the adds useless while we finished off our current kill target.  In the small lapse of time between killing a head and the beginning of the next Rampage, we massively AoE bursted these adds down quickly and efficiently.  This will be the most difficult part of the change from normal to heroic, but once this is taken care of correctly, the fight largely remains similar to normal mode mechanically.

Healer Concerns: Ice Beam shouldn't be hurting anyone.  If it is, they're not moving fast enough.  Cinders will need to be dispelled immediately after about the 3rd head.  It's the afflicted person's job to be in an appropriate place for a dispel.  Your greatest concern will be Rampage.  If you are assigned to setting up CD rotations, don't forget to incorporate personal defensive CDs with weaker raid CDs such as Rallying Cry.  Try to combine throughput CDs with personal CDs and mitigation CDs with Healthstones and personal healing CDs.

DPS Concerns: DPSing the heads down ASAP should be of the highest priority.  The absolute breaking point of groups will be letting tanks eat a 4th breath.  This cannot happen.  Aside from this, the DPS on the heads should be high enough to handle the spawning of the adds.  If the adds are overwhelming you, then your DPS needs to be higher or your CC chain needs to be more consistent.