The doors to The Nighthold opened 2 weeks ago and I found myself awed at some of the design. I haven’t been this impressed with a raid’s design since my first entrance into Ulduar. Take a moment and really look at the work the Blizzard team has put into the environment, beyond the boss encounters. During our raid night a few of us really took the time to wander around and enjoy the Nightfallen architecture.
Not only is the environment beautifully detailed, the encounters themselves are marvelous. With dynamic trash fights and bosses wielding spells that are pretty enough to make you forget they will absolutely kill you (I’m looking at you Trilliax). If you find yourself mesmerized like I was a time or two it may be best for you to turn some graphics settings down so it isn’t quite so eye catching (but really … don’t do that.)
Nighthold brings all of my favorite elements into a raid. I haven’t yet had the pleasure of fully clearing it but I enjoy each boss fight so far, from the simpler to the more complex they are all great. Nighthold also brings Tier loot to us for the first time in Legion. Set bonuses may not present quite the bonuses we have seen in the past but most classes can expect 8-12% better performance once they master how the set bonuses will change their play style.
Let’s talk a little bit of shop about the bosses now. The first boss you will run into in the raid is
Skorpyron
Yep…that’s a big arachnid, and not the spider kind Maexna! Who would have known that the Guardian of Nighthold’s back door would be a giant Scorpion? Well … he is. This is an add heavy fight, even if executed correctly. If the fight is managed poorly the amount of adds increases drastically.
Things you need to look out for
- Focused Blast – This is a LINE of damage (NOT A CONE, I promise absolutely nothing cone like here). Good ol’ skorpy is gonna face a random direction. While facing this way he’s gonna be whipping up some mumbo jumbo spell about as wide as the distance between them big pincers he’s got. Graphically there is an animation to look out for, a bit harder to see than most. What happens if you don’t manage to move out of the way ? well you’re going to take a pretty massive hit and get stunned, and by massive i mean 80-90% of your health, on normal difficulty. I would imagine in heroic …you might just become suddenly sleepy and lay down.
- Crystalline shard – This, this right here is the thing that’s going to save you and make this fight work. They kind of spawn wherever they want, the trick here is to put this lil pillar in between you and the boss. you can cast thru this pillar and it does not block line of sight for healers either, my advice here is just get behind one as soon as you can, the only reasons not to be in position behind one is 1.) Baby scorpion likes how you taste a bit too much (for sure wanna get by a tank if that’s the situation.) 2.) Focused Blast is going out and hes looking at you, and I promise, he can see right thru that pillar as easily as you. Your going to want to get out of the way.
- Shockwave – The big one, this is the ability that you hide behind
those Crystalline shards for. Its pretty simple,
medium cast time, does moderate damage and if you don’t have a Crystalline Shard between you and the boss you are going to get knocked back into the wall and out of the inner ring. I should mention here that the outer ring is warming with.. well the largest scorpion….hive? you will ever run into. After that brief bit of air time (flying before 7.2 or just falling with style, you choose) you are going to land and get the attention of a good number of scorpids, once this happens your really gonna want to get to a tank ASAP because he or she will be the only thing that can save you. The alternative theory to this is get all them scorpids together and really pad your damage meters with excessive and avoidable cleave.
Make sure your melee dont stand with the tanks, this bosses pincers really have some heft and your going to get to pretend to be a tank but only for a moment before your poor positioning ensures that for the rest of the fight you will be responsible for tanking the floor.
Skorpyron is a fantastic entry fight after just a little bit of trash, the encounter is made well and something I truly enjoyed. After defeating Skorpyron you will continue into the Nighthold. The mobs between Skorpyron and the Chronomatic Anamoly were quite a surprise the first time I went in. Easy to manage but equipped with abilities that
will really make you wonder how many Blizzard devs also happen to be fans of Dragonball Z. Now you will enter the chamber of the …
Chronomatic Anomaly
Patrolling a Giant chamber inside the Nighthold is the Anomaly, a manifested embodiment of the Eye of Aman’thul for our lore heads. In my opinion this guy, well he looks a lot like an Archon from Starcraft. He even casts a spell called Power Overwhelming, so I am pretty sure I picked up what Blizzard put down on this one.
This is a Time fight. The anomaly has the ability to speed up and slow down time. During the encounter you will go from normal time, slow time and sped up time. Your spell cast times and abilities will be thusly affected. What worked best for me here was using blood lust during slow time to return our cast times to as close to normal speed as possible.
Things you need to look out for
- Waning time particle – ADD
- Warp Nightwell – The add that spawns will cast this spell. It does stacking raid wide damage. You should interrupt this. Not a challenge to interrupt in normal time, even easier in slow time, this spell can be difficult to snipe when you are sped up and I would recommend an interrupt order to help or that stacking damage can become overwhelming.
When this add dies it spawns 4 Fragmented time particles that need to also be burned down as fast as possible. They each cast a less powerful version of Warp Nightwell and should be AOE stunned and cleaved down ASAP.
When the waning time particle dies you will want to activate the rift under the Time particle and get your Temporal Charge, having this ability is the only thing that can stop the Anomaly from finishing his cast of Power Overwhelming, a stacking raid wide damage spell. I should note this rift mechanic is for the tanks. - Temporal Orbs – Perhaps a bit of a GPU nightmare, every so often The Nightwell in the middle of the room will release arcane orbs, and not just a few of them. It is important here that you are a good avatar pilot, move and position yourself to fit through the gaps that form in between the orbs. The speed of these orbs is directly effected by the current time state of the encounter. It can take a good bit of awareness to get through these when everything is sped up.
- Warp Nightwell – The add that spawns will cast this spell. It does stacking raid wide damage. You should interrupt this. Not a challenge to interrupt in normal time, even easier in slow time, this spell can be difficult to snipe when you are sped up and I would recommend an interrupt order to help or that stacking damage can become overwhelming.
Follow the steps, use the size of the room to your advantage and this fight can easily go down, it is mostly a single target fight with very small windows of 2 and 4 target situations. If you can focus and execute the mechanics of this fight without tunneling in on the pretty encounter abilities you will have a good chance to see what kind of loot this boss has to offer. After defeating this boss you will delve deeper into The Nighthold and you will quickly come face to face with …
Trilliax
Yep, Nighthold keeps it’s rave in the basement. Equipped with a laser light show loving arcane centaur construct. Here’s Trilliax and his house keeping service. Remember when I mentioned cake earlier? This is the guy!
Things to Look out for …
Personality Transference – One of Trilliax’s 3 personalities takes over, each with its own mechanics to follow
- The Cleaner – THIS PLACE IS A MESS and Trilliax and co. are gonna clean it up
- Toxic Slice – Trilliax throws under cooked cake down and you gotta eat it up and soak the DoT it puts on you.
- Sterilize – Targets random raiders with an AoE spell that will hurt allies. It is also a way to speed up the floor scrubbers to get the room clean faster
- Cleansing Rage – Remember that rotten cake? Well, it’s apparently explosive. Trilliax cast’s arcane missiles that will fly out and hit every slice of cake left on the ground. Each slice dealing significant raid wide damage.
- The Maniac
- Mana Rupture – Random targeted small arcane damage every second
- Arcing Bonds – 2 Players have bonds connect them, dealing damage as long as they are not together.
Trilliax casting Annihilation - Annihilation – Trilliax drops the bass! Whipping out a huge laser that spins around the room. DPS becomes secondary here. don’t get caught in that laser!! It deals it’s damage at a rate increment of .25 seconds … It’s a laser folks.
- The Caretaker
- Tidy Up – Scrubbers come out to clean up the rave mess. Scrubbers will clean but they sure have a sweet tooth. If you have any Toxic Slice’s down they will rush it and overload with
- Cleansing Destruction – A channeled spell counting down how long until a scrubber explodes. It needs to be clicked and detonated by the raid.
- Succulent Feast – I’m not saying he ordered take out, but this foods a lot better for you. It gives you a huge damage shield. If your raid decides that you are the one to eat this then you gotta run around clicking scrubbers and soaking that damage so the raid doesn’t. At least you wont be hungry anymore.
- Tidy Up – Scrubbers come out to clean up the rave mess. Scrubbers will clean but they sure have a sweet tooth. If you have any Toxic Slice’s down they will rush it and overload with
- Don’t stand in front of the boss if you aren’t the tank!
In my next article I will continue bringing my take on the bosses and what advice I can give to you about the fights. If you are new to the raid scene you can check out my other articles for raid preparation here
Legion Raiding: Maximizing Your Potential Pt 3 – Tanks! Your welcome.
Legion Raiding: Maximizing your potential pt 4 – Leading the Raid
Any questions or ideas for a topic for a future article feel free to find me on
Twitter@WoWMojoTips
Mathew Zent is an Avid fan of video games. Guild leader and Raid leader of a small semi-casual style guild.
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