Chimaeron Encounter Guide: Strategy, Abilities, Loot
Chimaeron, a grotesque experiment of Nefarians, assaults players with an onslaught of deadly abilities and unrelenting damage, testing healers' abilities to keep the raid just out of deaths reach.
Role-Specific Tips for Chimaeron
DPS Tips
- Spread out completely to reduce the chance of getting the -75% hit chance debuff from Caustic Slime.
- Use personal defensive cooldowns during Systems Failure while you are stacked.
- Save major DPS cooldowns for the 20% phase two DPS race.
- Be aware of when Chimaeron will target you during phase two and kite him as long as you can to buy more time for your raid.
Healer Tips
- Get accustomed to only healing players, besides the off-tank, to 10,000 health. Anything over that is a waste of mana and time outside of Systems Failures.
- Coordinate a raid-wide and healer cooldown rotation to survive each Systems Failure while you do not have Finkle's Mixer Upper.
- Healers should DPS Chimaeron during phase two as you can not heal the raid due to Mortality. Absorbs still work however, such as Power Word: Shield.
Tank Tips
- The tank assigned to soaking Break can be a DPS class with a taunt, such as Retribution, Frost, or Fury since you will only ever be tanking while you have the Finkle's Mixer Upper, preventing you from dying.
- If you are not the current tank during Systems Failure, make sure to stack with the raid and move out whenever you taunt.
- Always have a defensive cooldown activate during the Systems Failure on heroic difficulty as the Feud will be stopped by Lord Victor Nefarius.
- Survive as long as you can in phase two to buy your raid as much time as possible.
Chimaeron Abilities
- Phase One
- Break
- Caustic Slime
- Double Attack
- Feud
- Massacre
- Phase Two
- Double Attack
- Mortality
- Mortality
Strategy for Chimaeron
Start the fight by speaking with Pip Quickwit in the cage at the back of the room. Pip Quickwit will then activate his Bile-O-Tron 800 robot, which sounds an alarm that will wake up the sleeping Chimaeron. While the Bile-O-Tron 800 is activate it will buff the entire raid with Pip's Mixture, which prevents you from dying as long as your health is above 10,000. This buff is required for the fight as Chimaeron has multiple abilities that would otherwise instantly kill you.
This fight is recommended to use two tanks, with one prioritizing soaking Break debuffs, and the other prioritizing taking the Double Attack swings. Chimaeron has a very slow auto attack speed, only attacking once every 4 seconds, or 4.8 seconds with debuffs. This allows you to keep your tank alive by simply keeping them healed above 10,000 health to keep the Pip's Mixture buff working. Chimaeron applies Break on his current target every 20 seconds, increasing their physical damage taken by 25% per stack, up to 4 stacks total. Every 10 seconds Chimaeron will use Double Attack, attacking his target twice instantly. Since you won't have time to heal the tank between these two hits, you will want a second tank to taunt before the Double Attack goes off to soak both of these attacks. After the second tank takes both attacks, have the tank that is soaking Break taunt back. While the tank that is soaking Break only needs to be healed above 10,000 health, the tank that is taunting for Double Attack needs to be healed to full. This tanking rotation will continue until Chimaeron reaches 20% health and phase two begins.
An alternative strategy is to simply use three tanks with one tank assigned to soaking Break, one tank assigned to taunting before each Double Attack, and the third tank will tank exclusively during the Systems Failures (except for Double Attack). If you do this method, it is recommended that the tank assigned to soaking Break is a DPS spec. This works as they will only ever be tanking while they have the Finkle's Mixer Upper buff, meaning the damage they take does not matter as long as they are above 10,000 health.
Start off by having the raid spread out as Chimaeron will attack two players every 5 seconds, four players on heroic difficulty, with Caustic Slime dealing 270,000 Nature damage split between all nearby players and reducing their chance to hit by 75% for 2 seconds. Since the whole raid will have the Pip's Mixture buff, this won't kill anyone as long as they are above 10,000 health. Every 30 seconds Chimaeron will cast Massacre, killing everyone in the raid that is not above 10,000 health. Both Caustic Slime and Massacre will happen frequently throughout the fight, requiring that you keep everyone in the raid above 10,000 health; healing anyone besides the off-tank above 10,000 health is a waste of time and resources as the next damaging attack will simply reduce them back down to 1 health.
Periodcally throughout the fight, Bile-O-Tron 800 will suffer a Systems Failure when Chimaeron uses Massacre. This will cause Bile-O-Tron 800 to shutdown for 26 seconds, only reactivating right before the next Massacre. During this 26 second window, the raid will no longer have the Pip's Mixture buff, meaning you will now need to actually keep the raid alive by healing through the Caustic Slime.
When the Bile-O-Tron 800 shuts down, have the raid quickly stack up behind the boss. Your healers now need to top the raid up as quickly as possible as Chimaeron will begin using Caustic Slime after 15 seconds. After knocking Bile-O-Tron 800 offline, Chimaerons two heads will begin to Feud with each other, preventing it from auto-attacking for 30 seconds. On heroic difficulty, Lord Victor Nefarius will use Shadow Whip on Chimaeron, interrupting the Feud and forcing him to start auto-attacking again. While the off-tank will need to continue their job of taunting each Double Attack, the main-tank assigned to soaking Break will need to have their stacks reset with either Hand of Protection or Divine Protection. You can also simply use a battle res on them after they die here if you do not have at least three Paladins in your raid.
You will need to rotate multiple raid-wide defensive and healer cooldowns while Bile-O-Tron 800 is suffering from a Systems Failure to survive for the 10 seconds of Caustic Slime until Chimaeron begins to cast Massacre. Then the Bile-O-Tron 800 will restart and Pip's Mixture will be reapplied to the raid again. After this Massacre goes off, quickly spread back out as you were at the start of the fight. You will then repeat this stacking and spreading throughout the fight whenever a Systems Failure occurs until Chimaeron reaches 20% health and phase two begins.
The most important part of phase two is getting a good transition. Stop DPSing Chimaeron once he reaches around 22%, waiting for the next Massacre to go off. After this Massacre goes off, use Bloodlust to allow the healers to quickly heal the raid up as much as possible. Once the raid is healed up a good amount, push Chimaeron to 20% to start phase two; right before he reaches 20% health, have the off-tank taunt the boss. In phase two, Chimaeron no longer uses Caustic Slime, Break, and Massacre, but gains the Mortality buff which makes him immune to taunt and take 10% increased damage. He will also debuff the raid with Mortality, reducing all healing received by 99%, absorbs however will still work. On heroic difficulty, Lord Victor Nefarius will cast Mocking Shadows on the raid, dealing 2,000 damage a second to all players. This sets a time limit in phase two as the raid can not be healed due to the Mortality debuff.
Have the tank that is not currently tanking run to the opposite side of the room to force Chimaeron to run around as much as possible. Reset the tanks Break debuffs with Divine Protection or Hand of Protection if possible to allow them to live as long as possible. Whichever tank is currently tanking should use all of their defensive cooldowns to survive as long as they can, buying time for the raid. Have your DPS and healers spread out as much as possible for the same reason. As you can not heal in this phase, non-Priest healers should DPS as much as possible, while Priests use Power Word: Shield on the entire raid. As you will have Finkle's Mixer Upper in this phase, everyone can take at least two auto-attacks from Chimaeron. Classes such as Rogue getting aggro is desirable since they can use Evasion and then Vanish at the end of it; or a Hunter with Deterrence into Feign Death. Watch your threat meter to see who Chimaeron will go for next and have them run as far away from the boss as possible to buy more time until the boss is defeated.
Chimaeron Loot
Below you will find all of the loot available for this boss encounter. Use the different buttons to view the different loot between both Normal and Heroic difficulties.
Normal Difficulty Loot
Item | Type/Slot |
---|---|
Brackish Gloves | Cloth Hands |
Einhorn's Galoshes | Cloth Feet |
Manacles of the Sleeping Beast | Leather Wrist |
Double Attack Handguards | Leather Hands |
Chaos Beast Bracers | Mail Wrist |
Chimaeron Armguards | Mail Wrist |
Burden of Mortality | Plate Shoulder |
Plated Fists of Provocation | Plate Hands |
Massacre Treads | Plate Feet |
Bile-O-Tron Nut | Finger |
Heart of Rage | Trinket |
Finkle's Mixer Upper | Wand |
Below you will find all of the loot available for this boss encounter. Use the different buttons to view the different loot between both Normal and Heroic difficulties.
Heroic Difficulty Loot
Item | Type/Slot |
---|---|
Brackish Gloves | Cloth Hands |
Einhorn's Galoshes | Cloth Feet |
Manacles of the Sleeping Beast | Leather Wrist |
Double Attack Handguards | Leather Hands |
Chaos Beast Bracers | Mail Wrist |
Chimaeron Armguards | Mail Wrist |
Burden of Mortality | Plate Shoulder |
Plated Fists of Provocation | Plate Hands |
Massacre Treads | Plate Feet |
Bile-O-Tron Nut | Finger |
Heart of Rage | Trinket |
Finkle's Mixer Upper | Wand |
Chimaeron Achievements
Achievement | Description |
---|---|
Full of Sound and Fury | Defeat Chimaeron in Blackwing Descent with no more than 2 raid member deaths. |
Heroic: Chimaeron | Defeat Chimaeron in Blackwing Descent on Heroic Difficulty. |
Further Reading
Chimaeron is just one of the six encounters present in the Blackwing Descent raid of Cataclysm. If you would like to learn more about the others, please see our other pages for the raid below.
Changelog
- 30 Jul. 2024: Page reviewed for phase two.
- 30 May 2024: Added page.
This guide has been written by Abide, TBC veteran for nearly a decade. Abide is a Warrior tank and multi-class expert currently playing on Faerlina as Horde. You can find him in the the Icy Veins Discord. You can also see him live on Twitch.
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