Hey guys I’m Mezzy from WoW Weekly and welcome to this warlords of draenor raiding guide. Today we’ll be taking a look at the final boss heroic Imperator Mar’gok in Highmaul.
This is a 4 phase encounter with an intermission phase between the second and third and third and fourth phases.
The first phase will show all the abilities and each other phase will change those abilities in one way or another. In phase 1 the first ability you’ll have to deal with is Arcane Wrath. This deals a medium amount of damage when it expires and then jumps to the closest person within 200 yards. Whenever it jumps it’s damage will increase by 25% and it’s jump range will decrease by 50%, this means that after the 4th jump it can expire if noone stands near the person with the debuff in a 13 yard range. To deal with this we have 2 ranged dps take the debuff outside of the raid and on the 4th stack we have the person it’s still on stay out of the way to let the debuff expire. One thing to be clear on, whoever gets the debuff takes it to the assigned ranged players so they can further handle it, and this includes melee.
His next ability is Destructive Resonance. This is an arcane mine that if it’s triggered will deal a large amount of aoe damage to the entire raid and deal near fatal damage to the one who triggered it. Not only that but it will give them a debuff increasing their arcane damage taken by 45% and stunning them whenever they get hit by arcane energy. This means you do not want to trigger it at any cost.
Mar’gok can also summon Arcane Aberrations which need to be killed as they will pulse arcane damage every second to the entire raid. So always switch to these when they spawn as their aoe could mean the difference between a wipe and a kill.
Tanks have 2 debuffs to watch out for. The first being Mark of Chaos, when they get the mark, after 8 seconds they will explode dealing 270k damage to anyone within 35 yards. This means the tank has to run away as quickly as possible, with any speed buffs to not hit anyone else in the raid with the explosion.
The second buff rather, is Accelerated Assault. Each time Mar’gok hits the same target his attack speed will increase by 8%. You’ll deal with this automatically through dealing with Mark of Chaos. His final phase 1 ability is called Force Nova, which will deal damage to anyone standing in it. Only the outer ring of the spell does damage, so we run through it.
There’s a lot of abilities and changes per phase so I’ll try to recap it per phase.
For phase 1: Deal with Arcane Wrath by letting it bounch 3-4 times by the designated ranged and then make sure noone is near the debuffed player. Do not stand in the arcane mine, ever. Kill the adds that spawn. And have the tank move Mark of Chaos atleast 35 yards away from the raid.
At 85% of his health phase 2 will start and his abilities will gain bonuses.
Arcane wrath will not allow the player to move more than 10 yards away. This means to not let it spread too far, someone will have to move close to the player to prevent an increase of amount of jumps the debuff will need to make to dissapear. You still want to bring the debuff to the assigned ranged dps to handle it and due to the restriction on movement the rest might need to move away from those that are debuffed.
The arcane Resonance bomb will grow twice it’s size over 30 seconds, the Aberration add will also knock everyone back when it dies meaning you do not want to be infront of a mine or risk detonating it. The Mark of Chaos tank target will be teleported to a random location and the force nova will push people away.
You deal with phase 2 the same you did as phase 1, however the 10 yard radius for arcane wrath might cause trouble so be sure to communicate which side away from the raid you’re going to get rid of the debuff.
At 55% health he will go into the first intermission phase, which will last for 1 minute. During this phase you will have to deal with 2 things. Every 12 seconds the Anomalies will spawn from the rune which will need to be killed. And 2 Gorian Warmages will spawn which also need to be killed.
You will want to keep these separated from each other as they have an aura that will buff them if they get within 25 yards of each other. They will fixate on a target for 15 seconds and attack them before switching to another. They will also slow people reducing their casting and movement spead with 50%. Luckily this can be dispelled. The cast that the warmages do, can be interrupted so do that as much as possible to reduce damage on your raid. When the warmages cast their spell that does damage, it will do an aoe at the target. So whoever gets fixated will have to move away from the rest of the raid.
To deal with the Arcane Anomalies we assigned just one or two dps to switch to them after the first mage dies. The rest will have to make sure the second mage dies. Also do not kill all of the Arcane Anomalies at the same time as they do AoE damage when they die.
After the one minute, Mar’gok will become active again and instead of push back effects the basic abilities will have different additions.
The arcane wrath debuff will only decrease in distance by 25% per jump instead of 50%. This means you’ll want to try and get this debuff further away from the group to still reduce the amount of jumps it needs. In practise we found that we’d have to let it dissapear at the 7th stack of the debuff. Otherwise we risked it jumping to someone in the raid even though it felt like they were far away.
The resonance bomb will stay on the ground for 2 minutes, the Aberration adds are immune to effects like stuns and have 75% more health, Mark of Chaos will root the tank, meaning the entire raid will have to move atleast 35 yards away from the tank and force nova will trigger additional nova’s every 8 seconds.
For the Mark of Chaos root we moved the boss and entire raid to the opposite side of the room to give ourselves more space. Other than that the crux of this phase is to not let the add stay up for too long due to it’s aoe pulse, and Arcane Wrath now has to be dealt with all the way up to the 7th stack, meaning your assigned ranged will take heavy damage.
At 25% you will get another 1 minute intermission phase. In addition to the adds from the previous intermission
phase you will also get a Gorian Reaver to deal with. This will need to be tanked, facing away from the raid due to the conal attack from Devastating Shockwave. He will also place a stacking debuff on the tank increasing damage taken by 15% for 25 seconds and kick the tank in the face pushing them back and resetting aggro. It’s at the kicking point that you’ll want to switch tanks.
We found that this was the most intense phase due to all the damage coming out from the different adds, and as such we used heroism to alieviate some of the pressure. The Reaver deals an absolute ton of damage so we found it was best to kill 1 mage, then kill the reaver and then kill the other mage. If a ranged player has interrupts be sure to use them on the second mage when killing the reaver.
And then again, after 1 minute you’ll go into the final phase and the abilities will again have different bonuses.
The arcane wrath debuff will jump to a second person the first time it jumps, meaning you’ll have to deal with 2 arcane wraths. At this point you still want to get the debuff to the edge of the raid group, but due to the added complexity of the second debuff we made it everyone’s responsibility that if they got the 4th stack that they would have to run it out of the raid.
The resonance bombs will trigger 2 more to spawn when they detonate or expire which means you’ll have less and less space to move. The Aberration add will split into 7 fragments that need to be killed when it dies. These deal a lot of damage so any stuns that you have are quite useful. The Force Nova gives players a debuff dealing damage to anyone within 4 yards meaning that you’ll have to spread out when the ring is cast. And finally the Mark of Chaos will cause 8 chaos orbs to spawn which will fly out into the room. These need to be dodged as they deal a lot of damage if you get hit by it.
To recap for phase 4: Deal with Arcane Wraths as you would regularly, but have whoever get the initial debuff move out to your assigned ranged to have the debuff bounce among those at the edge of the raid. Then when they reach 4 stacks, make sure the two with the debuff are far away enough from everyone to have it fizzle out. Kill all the adds that spawn. Spread out when the force nova is cast, And do not get hit by the chaos orbs after the tank loses his mark of chaos..
This is a fight where many things happen, take it one phase at a time and you’ll get there, so good luck.
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