Magtheridon and Magtheridon's Lair.

*UPDATE*

Magtheridon has been significantly nerfed in patch 2.4 making him significantly easier, updates on this boss can be found Here

Magtheridon is a boss in Hellfire Peninsula. He is often judged as a good gear AND skill check for the SSC and TK instances. This is quite simply because this instance requires perfect raid co-ordination, anything less and it will be a wipe. (Pre patch 2.4, Magtheridon is being made significantly easier after this patch)

Magtheridon's Lair itself is surprisingly small, with only four packs of trash mobs (All of which must be killed prior to fighting Maggy.) Trash can be cleared to boss level in 10 minutes by a group that knows what they are doing, after this is complete you have one hour until they respawn.

Clearing the trash in Magtheridon's lair can be a pain for groups that don't know what they are doing, the key however is distance.

The trash mobs do a devastating shadow bolt volley and rain of fire, therefore the key to these is separation. Due to the lack of space most raid groups separate the raid into two areas. a 'holding pen' where two tanks and two healers keep two of the mobs and a 'bull pen' where the rest of your raid will fight the mobs one at a time. Be careful because these guys can fear with a horror type effect, keeping them in location can be hard!

The holding pen needs to be a good distance from the bullpen, fighting these guys too close together can result in simply too much AoE damage for your healers to keep up with.

Magtheridon

When you reach Magtheridon himself you can walk into the room without pulling any agro, this allows you to position your team. Team setup on this boss is very important, more so than most other boss fights. The fight will begin on the first offensive move.

Firstly you want two groups of designated clickers for the Manticron cubes (I will explain later) and each and every raid member must know what to do here incase a clicker goes down. These will preferably be ranged DPS and it may help to make a macro that shouts out the names of the people.

When the fight starts you need a tank on each of the channelers, don't worry about Magtheridon just yet, he will stay banished for two minutes. The Hellfire channelers have some divesting abilities, here is a quick rundown.

• Health: 240,000
• Shadow Volley: 1 sec interruptible cast, 30 yard AoE, up to 2k damage on cloth
• Fear: Single target fear, 40 yard range
• Dark Mending: 2 sec interruptible cast, heals themselves or another Hellfire Channeler within 60 yards for around 32k.
• Summon Abyssal: Summon Infernal (despawn after one minute)
• Vulnerable to Mind-numbing Poison and Curse of Tongues
• Soul Transfer: When one Channeler dies, all surviving Channelers gain this stacking buff, increasing size by 20% and damage and casting speed by 30% (with four buffs, the last Channeler has 220% cast speed)

Due to the Hellfire Channelers specific abilities tanking order is important, preferably you will work around the circle killing them in turn. However since every time you kill one all others increase their damage output by 30% (Stacking) making sure each tank is upto the job is vital.

Your main tank should be on the first mob, while he is the easiest it is important he is ready to gain agro from Magtheridon as soon as he removes banish. Keep your best healer on the main tank, and make sure a second healer is ready to help as soon as Magtheridon removes banish.

From then on it should be in order of weakest to strongest tank around the circle, along with weakest to best healer beside him. After each mob is downed the healer should do some temporary raid healing then move on to the last or second to last mob and help keep that tank up, since they start to hit incredibly hard after the third one is taken down.

It is unlikely you will take down all the Hellfire Channelers before Magtheridon removes his banish, so make sure the main tank and a minimum of two healers are ready to pull him into a corner out of the way while the raid finishes off the adds.

DPS should waste cooldowns on getting these guys down as fast as possible, and anyone who can interrupt should keep an eye out for the healers casting a heal on themselves, this spell named Dark Mending heals themselves, or another channeler for around 32k health, a severe set back.

Your raid should have at least two warlocks for the Hellfire Channelers Summon Abyssal spell, these elementals can be banished, feared icetrapped and so on. DPS should not attack these, instead they should be kept chain feared/trapped Priests help out in fearing these if you think you can drop agro afterwards. They will despawn one minute after being summoned.

Around Magtheridon's Lair there are five objects called Manticron Cubes (This will become 3 cubes after patch 2.4). These are absolutely essential to the fight because of a single spell cast by Magtheridon, namely Blast Nova. A spell so powerful every mage, warlock and gnome in the game instantly wants it, a raid wide effect that hits for 2.5k damage every second for ten seconds.

If this spell is not interrupted your raid WILL wipe. To interrupt the spell all you have to do is have 5 members of your team each click a cube as soon as Magtheridon begins to cast his blast nova spell (there will be a raid warning saying "Magtheridon Begins to Cast Blast Nova" you have 2 seconds from this point for the clickers to press the cubes. It is suggested you get an addon such as Deadly Boss Mods to countdown to when this will occur so your clickers can get in place on time. Your clickers should not stay on the cubes all the time as Magtheridon casts Conflagration, a small AoE effect that while not important will prevent you from channelling the cube!

It may help if your raid leader makes a macro saying in raid warning Click Cubes Now and another for Release Cubes Now. Uncoordinated groups are the only reason raids wipe in this instance.

You should also make two groups of people with each person in each group assigned a location. Your clickers should know exactly where to go and you should have some back up clickers which know each location and who was on each one in each group incase they need to take over. You need two groups since clicking the box gives a debuff that prevents futher clicking for over a minute.

When interrupt is channelled Blast Nova will be cancelled and your raid members will receive a one minute debuff, preventing them from clicking the cube again. For this reason you need a second team to rotate the clicking.

When Magtheridon is channelled he will take 300% damage, so priests use your Shadowfiend. However for the duration of the channelling the people clicking the cube will take 800hp damage per tick (Every 2 seconds) so without healing the channelling cannot be sustained for very long. To avoid people jumping off out of sync a clicker should shout out on Ventrilo or Teamspeak when they move from the cube. This is desirable because it prevents team members from taking damage from channelling when there are not enough people doing it to give Magtheridon his 300% increased damage taken debuff..

Choosing whether to simply use the cubes to interrupt the blast nova or to increase Magtheridon's damage taken is purely a personal choice, which should be made by the raid leader before starting the fight. Either way it does not make an insane amount of difference in the long run.

But now onto Magtheridon himself,

Magtheridon has relatively few spells himself,

• Health: 4,750,000 (May be reduced in patch 2.4)
• Cleave: 8k - 11.5k on tanks, deals damage in a frontal arc
• Conflagration: small fire AoE on random floor patches
• Quake: 50 sec CD, first cast after 40 sec. A knockback that hits every player every second for 7 seconds, interrupts spells
• Blast Nova: 60 sec CD, about 2,500 damage every 2 seconds for 10 seconds to every player in the lair
• Enrage: 22 minutes after the start of the fight, Magtheridon enrages and wipes the raid

While Magtheridon hits for quite a lot it is nothing that 2 or 3 healers cannot handle, infact apart from blast nova the only thing that causes trouble is his quake effect, this can interrupt heals, keep raid members off the cubes and send melee DPS infront of Magtheridon, leaving them vulnerable to his cleave.

Magtheridon has three stages

The Channeler sage I have already described, the Second stage is tank and spank while avoiding the blast novas and then there is the Third Stage

Magtheridon's Third stage is at 30%. as soon as he reaches this he will shatter the walls of the room causing the roof to cave in, causing around 6k damage to every raid member and stuns everyone for 2 seconds, for this reason you need to time your DPS.

Firstly keep an eye out on the blast nova, you do not want the collapsing roof to coincide with the blast nova effect. If the blast nova is imminent take your DPS off Magtheridon at around 32-33% wait for the blast nova to be mitigated with the manticron cube interrupt and then continue.

Secondly at around 38% the raid leader should shout for all healing classes to top up the entire raid. Yes that includes you wiley DPS Paladins and Druids, not to mention any DPS with bandages handy.

As soon as the damage is taken and the stun fades all raid members should bandage, healthstone or health pot to get their health up, no exception.

After the roof has caved in there will be random small (8 Yard) AoE Cave-ins, similar to those in Gruuls Lair, however after a couple of seconds they will do a 75k crushing blow. Needless to say as soon as you see the cave in animation move your arse, it will kill anyone in it, no exception.

After you have learnt to navigate these issues you will be able to take down Magtheridon without any trouble, his health (While high) goes down incredibly fast. Nearly all wipes in this raid instance are down to either the Channelers at the start taking down their assigned tank or from Magtheridon's Blast Nova, Blast Nova being the killer 99% of the time!