Chimaeron Tank Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included)

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Chimaeron in Blackwing Descent. It is mostly targeted to tanks who desire to have a short but detailed overview of what is expected of them during that fight.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

This encounter requires good coordination between the main tank and the off-tank. At regular intervals, the off-tank needs to taunt the boss and handle two successive strikes from Chimaeron. Then the main tank taunts the boss back and that cycle continues. The important role here is that of the off-tank who has the crucial role to taunt at the right time. Any mistake is extremely likely to cause a wipe or the death of the main tank.

The fight consists of two alternating phases (Spread Phase and Stack Phase) followed by a third phase (Nuke Phase).

During the Spread Phase, the two tanks must be at least 6 yards from each other and the off-tank periodically has to taunt the boss off the main tank to deal with a specific abilities that deals two strikes in very quick succession. The main tank cannot survive this because of a debuff that gets applied on him.

During the stack phase, the boss does no melee attack and the tanks only need to stack with the rest of the raid and attack the boss. The main tank needs to make sure he has aggro on the boss when the stack phase finishes.

During the Nuke Phase, Chimaeron becomes taunt immune, so the tanks need to attack him, like everyone else in the raid.

This is the only phase of the fight that requires attention from the tanks. It is important that you understand the boss abilities in order to properly deal with them.

Finkle Einhorn needs to be talked to prior to starting the fight so as to enable the Bile-O-Tron 800. This mechanical unit, or bot, provides a buff called Finkle's Mixture. It prevents raid members from dying when they are over 10,000 health and take a hit that would kill them. Instead, their health is reduced to 1.

Chimaeron has a melee attack named Swing that deals about 135k damage to the current tank. He does it every 4 to 5 seconds.

Break is a stacking debuff applied on the main tank. It cannot be dispelled. It increases physical damage taken by 25%, reduces healing done (this is different than healing taken) by 15% (mostly so that Death Knights tanks would not be overpowered in this fight). It gets applied on the main tank every four swings (from the second swing of the fight), so about every 15 to 20 seconds. It wears off after a minute (so it will not wear off during the fight) and stacks four times maximum.

Double Attack is a buff that causes Chimaeron to strike the main aggro target twice on his next attack. The two strikes happen in a time window of 0.2 to 0.4 seconds. It is triggered by the swing that applies Break and applies to the next swing. This means that the tanks see it coming 4 or 5 seconds in advance (even if they are not counting the swings).

Massacre is an attack that would kill everyone if it were not for Finkle's Mixture. Thanks to that protection, this attack only leaves everyone (include you, the tanks) at 1 health. It has a 4 second cast and a 30 second cooldown. If a melee attack is scheduled to take place during Massacre cast, it will not happen, and if Double Attack is up at such a time, it can be safely ignored.

Caustic Slime deals AoE Nature damage to everyone within six yards of the randomly targeted raid member. This ability cannot target the main tank but it can target the off-tank, leaving him at 1 health, thanks to Finkle's Mixture.

In order to clarify how these abilities are mixed together, the following figure shows you a possible scenario (taken from the data of a real fight).

Here, we chose to display on two different rows the melee attacks (and their related debuffs) and the spells (Massacre and Caustic Slime).

Throughout the phase, Chimaeron does melee attacks at regular intervals. Every 3 attacks (4 exceptionally), a new stack of his Break debuff is applied on his current target and he prepares to strike twice next. In addition, every 30 seconds he will cast Massacre. He will always start casting Massacre after he did 2 volleys of Caustic Slime. Usually after the second or third Massacre, the Stack Phase will start.

Before you pull the boss, make sure to talk to Finkle Einhorn who is imprisoned in a cage behind Chimaeron, otherwise you will wipe. He will activate the Bile-O-Tron 800 which will protect you with Finkle's Mixture during the Spread Phase. Once the Bile-O-Tron 800 is activated, you can either pull the boss by attacking him or you can wait for about 30 seconds for the boss to wake up.

The main tank keeps aggro on the boss most of the time and survives to the best of his abilities. Thanks to Finkle's Mixture, it is not very hard. The role of the off-tank is limited to taunting the boss in the 4 to 5 seconds that precede a Double Attack and surviving the two successive strikes. Then the main tank taunts the boss back and the cycle repeats.

So, why exactly do the tanks need to proceed that way? The idea is that the Break debuff that stacks on the main tank prevents him from handling the Double Attack mechanics. Indeed, the first attack would do enough damage to kill the main tank and his health would only be knocked down to 1 thanks to Finkle's Mixture. Then, the second attack would kill him.

Since the off-tank does not have stacks of the Break debuff, he should be able to survive the first attack and remain over 10,000 health which would then enable him to get saved by Finkle's Mixture when the second attack strikes. The off-tank will never get stacks of Break as the melee hits from Double Attack do not trigger that debuff.

Sometimes, Massacre will trigger the Stack Phase. During that phase, Chimaeron does no melee attacks so the tanks should just stack with the other players and DPS the boss to soak heavy AoE damage from Caustic Slime, the only ability Chimaeron will cast during this phase.

This phase lasts 30 seconds and ends with a Massacre. The main tank needs to make sure he has aggro before the phase ends so that he is ready to tank the boss when the Spread Phase resumes.

When Chimaeron's health reaches between 22% and 20%, he will go into rage and become taunt immune. Healing is reduced by 99%. Chimaeron will start killing raid members in decreasing aggro order. At tank, you will either be the first or second highest aggro target. Normally, thanks to Finkle's Mixture, Chimaeron should need to strike you twice in order to kill you.

You role in this phase is to use whatever ability you have available to try and survive the killing blow from Chimaeron. This will give your fellow raid members valuable seconds in the DPS race that will ensue. Here are a few tips:

• Spread around the room so that Chimaeron runs as much as possible.
• Druid tanks can use Frenzied Regeneration to survive one of Chimaeron's attacks.
• Warrior tanks can use Last Stand to survive one of Chimaeron's attacks and Intervene to sacrifice themselves and save a DPS player.
• If you are a Protection Paladin and are the first of the two tanks to be attacked by Chimaeron, you can use Divine Shield. It will make the boss waste a few seconds going to kill the other tank while Divine Shield wears off.

The only change that tanks need to worry about is that during the Stack Phase, Nefarian removes Feud from Chimaeron, enabling him to resume his Melee/ Break/ Double Attack cycle while the Bile-O-Tron 800 is offline.

To deal with that change, the fight now requires two tanks (the double-attack tank and the stack-phase tank), and one DPS with the ability to taunt the boss and keep aggro. The latter tank will be referred to as the main tank. Below, we detail the various tanking assignments.

• The main tank will be tanking Chimaeron during the Spread Phase and will be afflicted with stacks of the Break debuff. Because of Finkle's Mixture, the healers only need to keep that tank above 10k. That is the reason why you do not need an actual tank here, as there is no need for defensive cooldowns or damage reduction abilities. The damage increase you get by having a DPS as a main tank is crucial for beating the enrage timer.
• The double-attack tank has the hardest task because they need to taunt the boss before each Double Attack and survive it, even during the Stack Phase, when the Bile-O-Tron 800 is offline. There will only be one such attack per Stack Phase so tanking and healing cooldowns should be used.
• The stack-phase tank is required during the Stack Phase because the stacks of Break on the main tank prevent them from surviving the melee attacks from Chimaeron when the Bile-O-Tron 800 is offline. In that phase, the stack-phase tank will take Chimaeron and will use their abilities to survive. As the phase goes on, it will be increasingly harder to survive, due to stacks of Break building up. Fortunately, the stacks will drop during the Spread Phase.

In order to alleviate the damage on the main tank, your raid can make use of several DPS players (they need to be able to taunt and keep aggro) as main tanks and have them rotate so that they spread their stacks of Break.

Players afflicted by stacks of Break will not be targeted by Caustic Slime. During the Stack Phase, your raid leader can decide to keep the stack-phase tank out of the stacking position to make healing them easier. If your raid is using a single main tank, then it is also advised to have them stay out of the stacking position because 4 stacks of Break are going to make them take increased damage that will be difficult to heal.