Archimonde nutshell guide
#1
Okay, I've got several posts on Archimonde below:

(1) The Line of Sight two-minute video guide.  Please watch this!  It provides a simple, visual guide to the fight.

(2) A one-page visual, diagrammed summary.

(3) A summary of Archimonde's phases and abilities, based on Icy Veins' summary.  Useful if you want more detail on Archimonde's abilities.
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#2
Here is the Line of Sight two-minute video on Archimonde.  Please watch!  Here is the strategy:

We will designate a square of four stack points using raid markers on the ground — two of these markers are for melee, and two are for ranged.  The raid will bounce between these two points for the first two phases of the fight.

We’ll engage Archimonde and bring him to the left melee raid marker, facing the sludge pools.  He’ll summon a BALL OF FIRE in the direction he’s facing.  This orb (called a “Doomfire Spirit”) will target someone and summon a LINE OF FIRE that will grow toward that person until the orb is killed.  The fixated person should leave the stack and stand near the POOLS to guide the line of fire away from the raid.  The orb will fixate someone new every 10 seconds.  The raid will kill the orb ASAP.

Archimond will cast Death Brand on his current tank -- the tank should use cooldowns to survive.  This will spawn a Hellfire Deathcaller add, which will fixate the tank and apply a stacking debuff to the tank and random raid members that increases shadow damage taken.  The Deathcaller is our second priority after the orb.  Tanks should swap after Death Brand (the new tank takes the boss, the old one keeps the Deathcaller), OR swap at 3 stacks.

Allure of Flames will RELOCATE all the fire to the location of raid members (green swirls will show where the fire is going to land).  The raid must stack tightly when this happens to bait the fire to the stack points.  Once the green swirls appear the raid should move to the second set of raid markers.  As you run, spread out a bit to handle the next ability, called Shadowfel Burst.

Shadowfel Burst knocks ONE ranged player AND anyone within 8 yards up in the air, leaving a purple puddle on the ground.  The ranged group should stack on the purple puddle to split the impact damage when the person falls back down.  Or the people knocked into the air can use an immunity. Once they’re back on the ground, stack up on the ranged marker.

From this new position, continue the same strategy:  tank the boss on the melee raid marker, face him toward the sludge pool to the right.  When the orb spawns the targeted ranged member must kite the fire toward the right-hand sludge pools.  Everyone kill the orb and the Deathcaller.

When the next Allure is cast, run back to the original markers, remembering to spread out a bit as you run for Shadowfel Burst, then collect on the purple puddle, then continue on to stack up on the ranged marker.

At 85%, Archimonde will summon pillars that do continuous damage.  An NPC will kill these, spawning several orbs.  When contacted, the orb will grant an IMMUNITY to shadow damage and a speed boost for 25 seconds.  Take advantage of these orbs (e.g. tanks move into range then move away).  All the pillars will be destroyed when Archimonde reaches 70% health and Phase Two begins.

When Phase Two begins, at 70%, everyone should stack in melee range.  He’ll continue to cast Death Brand (the anti-tank attack) and Allure of Flames (which relocates the flames under players) and the fire patch will be REALLY big now, so we’ll need to move as a group when these spawn under us.  We'll move around the room.

Shackled Torment will link three players to their shadows.  These chains can be broken by running far enough away, but when they break they do a LOT of raid-wide damage, so we’ll break these one at a time.

A player will receive a debuff called WROUGHT CHAOS which will fire a beam toward a second player with a debuff called FOCUSED CHAOS.  An arrow at the first player’s feet will show where the beam is headed.  Both these players should run out of the group so nobody gets caught in the crossfire.  After it shoots, the Wrought Chaos debuff will jump to the Focused Chaos player, and the Focused Chaos debuff will jump to a new player.  So, the player who was aimed at in the first round will now be the one aiming at another player.  That new person will need to run out of the group. This will continue for four rounds.

At 55% Archimonde will begin summoning Felborne Overfiends (x1) and Dreadstalkers (x3).  The Overfiends are the priority and must be interrupted and killed.  Keep the raid stacked up.  This will keep the dogs (the Dreadstalkers) stacked up as they teleport to players’ locations.  Move just out of the small purple circles before they finish casting, as they'll teleport to those circles, where they will inflict damage and a silence.

At 40% Phase 3 begins.  Adds will stop spawning, but we'll retain the Shackles and Wrought/Focused Chaos.  Ranged will need to spread out 6 yards due to a new ability, called Demonic Feedback, which does raid-wide damage + splash damage on anyone within 6 yards of anyone else.  Note that the Chaos Beam (between a person with Wrought Chaos and Focused Chaos) will still be firing — don’t get caught in the crossfire.  There will be a lot of raid damage going on as well, so be careful when you break the shackles.

A green circle will appear around the tank, and after 8 seconds will banish the tank, and anyone within the circle, into the Twisting Nether.  We will assign two teams consisting of a healer and a few DPS.  Teams will alternate going into the Twisting Nether.  When banished, a void zone / portal will be left behind so the raid will need to move out of it.  Living Shadows will periodically spawn out of this void zone. They will fixate on players and if they reach their target, they will explode and inflict a reduced-healing debuff (Devour Life).  They don’t have much health so we can assign a ranged member to be in charge of each new portal.

Inside the Twisting Nether, the tank will need to pick up the Netherwalker.  Void Stars will appear randomly and fixate on a player.  Kill these FAST, before they reach their target to avoid being blasted off the platform.  When the Netherwalker dies, a rift will open up, teleporting you back out.

At 25% health Rain of Chaos will descend, summoning large infernals.  Avoid the large swirls as best you can (you'll take less damage the further you are).  The infernals will heal if they’re near each other so we’ll need to split them up.  The ranged DPS can kite one — everyone can focus it down as it’s pulled out of the group.
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#3
And here is a visual guide:
[Image: qb21QrB.jpg]
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#4
Here's the nutshell guide of the Archimonde fight, based on Icy Veins.

Overview:  Archimonde is the LAST boss in Hellfire Citadel.  Archimonde is a three-phase encounter during which we will fafe Archimonde and a number of different adds.  Each phase has two separate parts, so that the fight could actually be described as having SIX phases, but the difference between the two sub-phases in each of the larger phases are pretty small, so it makes sense to lump them together.

Phase One:  starts when we pull Archimonde, and ends when he reaches 70%.  At 85% Archimonde will gain an additional ability which he’ll use for the rest of Phase One.
Phase Two:  Starts at 70% health, lasts until 40%.  At 55% he gains an additional ability that he’ll use for the rest of Phase Two.
Phase Three:  Starts at 40% health, lasts until he dies.  At 25% health, he gains an additional ability that he’ll use for the rest of the fight.

Phase One: The Defiler

Through all of Phase One, Archimonde will use several abilities against the raid:

(1) Doomfire Spirit:  Add that spawns fire lines.  Every 45 seconds or so Archimonde causes one of these to spawn near him.  It can’t be tanked.  It fixates on a random raid member for 10 seconds, using Doomfire Fixate to continuously create LINES OF FIRE that begin from itself and grow toward that player.  Every 10 seconds it chooses a new target to fixate on.  The fire lines persist until the end of the fight, and standing in them applies a DoT called Doomfire.

—> When this thing spawns, it must be killed as quickly as possible.  All DPS on this.

(2a) Death Brand:  anti-tank attack + add.  It has a 3-second cast, at the end of which it inflicts massive damage on the tank and spawns a Hellfire Deathcaller add.  (2b) The Hellfire Deathcaller fixates on the tank that was hit by Death Brand and uses a single ability called Shadow Blast.  (2c)  Shadow Blast deals heavy damage to the tank + several random raid members, and applies a stacking debuff that increases shadow damage taken.

—> Tanks must use active mitigation for Death Brand, and must swap after Death Brand.
—> Healers may need to use defensive cooldowns to deal with Shadow Blast on random raid members.

(3) Allure of Flames:  fire-relocation effect.  Every 45 seconds it RELOCATES all the Doomfire present on the ground to the locations of random raid members, indicated by green ground effects.

—> Move away from the ground effects that indicate where the fire will land.

(4)  Shadowfel Burst:  knock-up-in-the-air + shared damage effect.  Every minute he targets a single raid member and knocks that person, and anyone in an 8-yard radius, high into the air.  At the same time, a green ground effect marks an area underneath the targeted player.  A few seconds later, players who were knocked up into the air fall back to the ground and take LETHAL fall damage split between all players located in the green ground effect.

—> Lots of raid members should stack on the ground effect to split the damage.

(5) At 85% health, Archimonde gains a new ability:  Desecrate.  This ability creates a pillar.  He’ll use this every 30 seconds or so.  It marks a large area on the ground near the boss, and after a few seconds, a large, back pillar spawns from it and deals massive physical damage to players standing in the ground effect.  After it has spawned, the entire raid takes moderate shadow damage every 3 seconds as long as the pillar is alive, through an ability called Desecration.  The damage done by subsequent pillars’ Desecration increases by 25% for each pillar spawned.

These pillars cannot be attacked or killed by the raid.  However, shortly after each pillar spawns, a friendly NPC Yrel destroys it.  This spawns a number of light, glowing orbs around the site of the pillar, which persist for up to 30 seconds.  If a player comes into contact with an orb, the orb is consumed, and everyone within 15 yards of it receives the Light of the Nauru buff, which provides IMMUNITY to shadow damaged increases movement speed by 40% for 25 seconds.

—> Move away from the pillar spawn point.
—> Raid moves toward the orbs, and one member pops an orb to apply the buff as widely as possible.  It’s important for the tank to get buffed too.

Phase Two:  Hand of the Legion

This phase starts at 70% health and lasts until 40%.  He STOPS summoning Doomfire Spirits (the orbs that cast the fire trails), and stops using Shadowfel Burst (the" knock into the air" + shared damage effect) and Desecrate (the pillars).  Any remaining pillars will be destroyed by Yrel when this phase starts.

Archimonde continues to use:

(1) Allure of Flames (relocates the Doomfire) and

(2) Death Brand (the anti-tank attack which spawns an add that does tank and random raid damage).  He gains several new abilities in Phase Two:

(3) Shackled Torment:  Tether ability.  He cases this every 30 seconds.  It tethers three raid members to their own Shackled Soul that spawn nearby.  While tethered, raid members take increasing shadow damage.  Raid members must run 30 yards from their Shackled Soul to break the chain.  When the tether debut is removed, it triggers Unleashed Torment, which does raid-wide shadow damage.

—> Players must break their tether in a staggered fashion, not all at once (which would likely wipe the raid).  The raid should be healed to full between each shackle break.  The raid leader or a healer should call the the order of tether breaking.

(4) Wrought Chaos.  Targets a random raid member and applies 4 stacks of a Wrought Chaos debuff, and another random raid member and applies a Focused Chaos debuff. After 5 seconds, the raid member with Wrought Chaos fires a beam at the raid member with Focused Chaos, dealing massive damage to anyone in its path.  A green arrow at the feet of the Wrought Chaos player shows where the beam will go.  When the beam is fired, it uses up a stack of Wrought Chaos, and the reduced stack of debuffs jumps to the raid member previously affected with Focused Chaos, while Focused Chaos jumps to a new raid member.  This repeats until all 4 Wrought Chaos stacks have been expended.

—> Debuffed players should move out of the raid to ensure nobody gets struck by the beam.  Once the beam has gone off, the player who had the Wrought Chaos debuff can move back into the raid, while the player who had Focused Chaos (and now has the reduced shack of Wrought Chaos) should remain out.  The player with the new Focused Chaos debuff should move out.  And so on.

(5) At 55% health, Archimonde begins to spawn adds.  He spawns one Helbourne Overfiend and three Dreadstalkers every 30 seconds:

Dreadstalkers can’t be tanked.  They have one ability, called Consume Magic, that they use constantly.  It’s an uninterruptible 3-second cast that teleports them to the location of a random raid member, indicated by a purple ground effect.  When the cast finishes, the Dreadstalker deals heavy damage in an 8-yard radius around the ground effect, and interrupts the casting of any affected players.

—> Move out of the ground effect before the 3-second cast timer is up.

Felborne Overfiend can be tanked.  It has one ability, called Flames of Argus, which can be interrupted.  It’s cast every time the Overfiend’s health is reduced by 25%.  Deals heavy raid-wide Fire damage.

—> The felborne Overfiend must be tanked.  Otherwise, the boss and the Deathcaller add are tanked as in Phase One.
—> Interrupt the Flames of Argus casts as much as possible.  Ideally, none should go off.

Phase Three:  The Twisting Nether

This lasts from 40% to the end.

Archimonde stops using Allure of Flames (the fire-relocation ability) and Death Brand (the anti-tank attack that spawned an add).  He no longer spawns any of the adds from the previous phases.  Adds that are still alive press, though.  Archimonde continues to use:

(1) Shackled Torment (tether ability) and

(2) Wrought Chaos (the beams debuffs).  He gains several new abilities:

(3) Nether Banish:  anti-tank ability.  Places a large green rune on the floor at the feet of the tank once per minute.  After 7 seconds, all raid members within this rune are teleported to the Twisting Nether, a unique room (see below).

—>  Tanks must swap after Nether Banish.
—> We will have TWO Twisting Nether groups.  Each will have one healer, one melee, and ranged DPS with powerful single-target DPS.

(4a) Nether Tear:  void zone at the location of the Nether-Banished tank.  Persists for the rest of the right.  Nether Tears regularly spawn Living Shadow adds.  (4b)  Living Shadows can’t be tanked and have low health.  They fixate on random raid members.  If they reach their target, the target is affected by Devour Life, reducing healing received by 40% for 45 seconds, and the add dies instantly.

—> Stand far from the Void zone to give the Living Shadow adds further travel distance.
—> Ranged DPS focus and kill the Living Shadows before they reach their targets.

(5) Demonic Feedback:  Passive ability that does raid-wide shadow damage to the whole raid every 20 seconds, AND causes players to inflict the same amount of damage on anyone within 6 yards of them.

—> Spread 6 yards apart to avoid splash damage from Demonic Feedback.

(6a) At 25% health, Archimonde gains the Rain of Chaos ability, a meteor shower attack.  The shower lasts for 10 seconds.  The sites of impending meteor impacts are indicated by ground effects.  Landing meters cause heavy fire damage to all raid members, with somewhat less damage if raid members stand out of the impact points.    After several meteors land, (6b) three Infernal Doombringers will spawn, about 5 seconds apart from each other.  They can be tanked and have two abilities:  Eternal Flame and Hellfire.  Eternal Flame causes them to HEAL other Infernal Doombringers within 15 yards (8% every second), while Hellfire does raid-wide damage.  It is cast once the Doombringers’ energy bar reaches 100 and is cast continuously until it dies.

—> Raid-wide movement speed increases to get away from falling meteors.
—>  The second tank should pick up the Doombringers.  Raid members will taunt these out one at a time and kill them.  If only one tank is available (e.g. if the other is in the Twisting Nether), a single tank will have to handle all the infernal.  It may also be possible for melee DPS to each tank an infernal.

The Twisting Nether

This is an alternative realm where raid members who stood in the Nether Banish go.  It’s a medium-sized platform within which players must face adds and handle some abilities:

(1) Nether Corruption:  applied to all raid members in the Twisting Nether as soon as they enter it.  Deals Shadow damage every 5 seconds, increasing with each tick.  Lasts for 1 minute.
—> Heal through this.

(2) Nether Storm:  green void zones.
—> Don’t stand in these.

(3)  Shadowed Netherwalker:  tankable add that continuously casts Touch of Shadows, an interruptible ability that does damage to everyone in the Twisting Nether.  When this add dies raid members can click on a portal on its corpse to be teleported back to the general encounter area.  

—> The goal is to kill these as quickly as possible to open the portal to get back.
—> Tank the Netherwalker
—> Stack on the Tank
—> Interrupt Touch of Shadows

(4) Void Star:  second, untankable add.  It fixates on the nearest raid member and gains in speed by 50% every 5 seconds.  If the Void Star reaches its target all raid members within 8 yards are knocked far back, off the platform, to their deaths.

—> Kite and kill these as quickly as possible.  If one gets through to its target, players must attempt to remain on the platform using special abilities like Disengage, Blink, and Displacer Beast.
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#5
Seeing the visual guide and another guide, it's interesting to note the vastly different positioning strategies. I want to say that what I've been seeing and we were attempting is the LFR and PUG method for simplification. However, for several reasons I do like the methods presented which involve keeping him near the edge and moving him around the room. If we do this right, it will help to keep healers in range of tanks, an issue we were experiencing on Tuesday.

Couple things:
- Allure of Flames gathers all fire produced by Doomfire Fixate. For this reason, we see larger pools of it with each cast, particularly if we don't kill the spirit quickly.
- Something I noticed in Normal PUG was the huge amount of tank damage. I expressed concern to Alyneste about this prior to our last raid. A common recommendation is for the tank about to receive Death Brand to use a mitigation cooldown. However, I can't help but wonder if it would be more beneficial to mitigate the enormous amount of dmg taken by both tanks AFTER Brand due to Shadow Blast debuff stacks and Death Brand. I think that is what caused us to lose tanks on Tuesday.
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#6
Regarding tank damage -- the main thing to remember is that Archimonde himself doesn't hit that hard, so the "real" tank is the one on the add. The initial Deathbrand hit is probably the single largest burst of damage, so that makes it ideal for a CD of some sort. As long as the Deathcaller dies reasonably quickly, the tank shouldn't be taking too much damage, and by the time they might, they should be able to have the Light of the Naaru debuff to reduce the Shadow damage.

On a different note -- with the changes to the later sections of the fight reducing the difficulty there, I feel the Doomfire is now the largest problem. Killing Doomfire Spirits quickly and getting out of P1 as quickly as possible so you stop getting more makes the remainder of the fight much easier. If you aren't already, try using Bloodlust right at the start to burn through P1 quickly and you'll reap the benefits for the remainder of the encounter with a lot less movement and healing needed.

Also if you're already spread out for Demonic Feedback in P3, don't worry too much about the Rain of Chaos swirls. They hurt a bit, but they shouldn't kill you. Pop a Healing CD to help tide through, don't break chains during the rain, and maintain focus.
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#7
It felt like both tanks were just losing health rapidly in tandem, and we couldn't keep up with heals. Granted, Oryx was the only person healing as MS, and we probably could have done with another healer.

We did try Lust on last attempt to see what difference it might make, but again, our overall issue didn't feel too much like it was related to our dmg output.

I guess we'll see tonight where miti CDs fit in best.
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#8
Yes, we were down two of our core healers on Tuesday.  Healing should go better tonight.

-Zlinka
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#9
I remembered to record Bloodbound's Archimonde-N kill this evening. I figured it'd be useful to show our positioning (well, at least whatever you can see from my PoV). Pardon any language! Wink Note that the actual combat starts at 6:15 in, the earlier part is talking about positioning and some other banter.
https://youtu.be/5--8VamnaHQ
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#10
"They can hear me?? ... Should I start singing?" Lol. Thanks for posting that for us Kretol!
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#11
Got normal Archimonde last night using ping pong. Felt well managed. Only thing that got us were two wipes to Burest hitting 8+ ppl. Amazing!
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#12
Yes, I've gotten him on normal as well using the Ping Pong strategy.  The raid got each orb down within 10 seconds, too (which is a question of DPS and focusing the orbs), which kept the quantity of fire pretty low, making the entire fight easier.

We'll get him yet!

-Zlinka
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#13
With infernals seeming our issue now, I think we should modify how we send in dmg for Nether Banish. The reason for this is that much of our dmg is in the nether while the rest are outside trying to down the infernals. I believe this is why infernals are dying too slowly, so we die.

Therfore, I propose we send all dmg into frdy two nethers. Yes, there is a debuff, but it lasts only 1 min. Nether Banish is cast every 65 secs. I think with all dmg in, we can burn quickly enough to not be overly burdened by an additional stack of the debuff.

The tanks continue to rotate, as normal. Rotate heals with good group healing cooldowns.

This should allow us to get out of banish quickly so we can burn infernals, thereby allowing for more time on archimonde.

This is the common strategy for pug normal. It is generally expected that you don't get more than 2 banishes, and if you do, you send 3 fodder while dmg finishes archimonde.
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#14
These forums and my phone do not agree. Above posthe should say, "... send all dmg into first two nethers."
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#15
Here's the debuff. http://www.wowhead.com/spell=190049/nether-corruption

That's low dmg, and an additional 800 dmg from one more stack shouldn't break us.
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