Vault of the Incarnates - Heroic Raid Study Guide

Hello there, my name is Ragnon and I'm the raid leader for the Clear Comms team of Miss Guild on Illidan. This is a quick overview of Vault of the Incarnates and I'm going over all the fights using mythictrap.com. This is kind of a summary, all-in-one packaged resource. The plan is to use this for my team, but I'm sharing it and if you find it helpful feel free to share it with somebody else.

So let's get started. I have also typed this all up in a big study guide, if you prefer reading. Each different fight does have a TLDR so just a quick summary that you can have on a second monitor or something before you start a fight just to hit all the key points.

So let's start off with the first boss, Eranog.

So for Eranogg, the TL;DR summary is:

Mechanics:

Phase two:

Let's move on to the second one, which I'm nicknaming Skollex 2.0. It's very similar to Skollex, so there's an online fight phase. TL;DR: We're going to stand in the center as much as possible to bait the big puddles (the big circles that he'll cast).

There's two different other mechanics:

So the first right here is the soak that I was talking about. That'll be run off to the right. Anyone who's not marked with the spikes needs to run off to the right and help soak the second mechanic.

These small circles happen simultaneously with the soak circle, so you'll run this off to the left and drop them in a line as much as possible. The tanks get marked with a laundress beam, very similar to the laundress beam cast out from the boss. The tank will use that to detonate the spikes.

The spikes that are still active will radiate damage to the whole raid, so we want to be able to pop as many as possible. It is important that they're dropped in a straight line - that's what the bmo's talking about.

This is what I was talking about:

We'll stand centrally and try to bait the chattering impact. He targets a general area where most of the raid is and then we move out. On heroic, it leaves a puddle that you can't go in again that deals damage.

So the room is going to fill up with stuff similar to Skollex at 100 energy. He consumes a section of the room very similar to Denathrious pizza sauce. The enrage mechanic is when you run out of room, so there's four pie slices that he'll cast. We'll bait it off to the counterclockwise direction, as that feels more intuitive. The random swirlies that get marked on players drop pools, so we want to be standing as stacked as possible to bait the swirly, which is very similar to Xymox traps. We're just trying to have the ranged and the melee stand as grouped as possible to bait stuff.

So here's the big thing that can kill you in this fight:

Let's move on to Sennarth, the spider boss. I'm really looking forward to this one. It looks like a lot of fun.

TL;DR:

Adds are always the priority when the big spider ad appears on the last platform. It doesn't pull, it pushes, so it's the opposite: you want to be on the inside of the webs, or as close to the boss as possible, so you don't get blown off the top platform.

When the big spider ad targets players, they get marked with webs. It will be called out on DBM or Bigwigs, and you'll just drop stacks of webs. Try to avoid standing in webs as much as possible because if you get 10 Stacks, you get stunned for 30 seconds. The only way to clear you is to either wait out the 30 seconds or to kill a spiderling on top of you - they will explode, dropping a green swirly that clears webs or cocoons players. Awesome reverse!

This is the big mechanic:

Chilling Blast

Let's see here, a Web Blast is the taunt swap so you swap every about eight or nine Stacks or when the debuff falls off phase two. So, this is when you get upon to the top platform. At the very top, it's slippery the whole platform is slippery the whole time and the circles now have an extra component.

Now, instead of just being a basic spread, they'll also leave a swirly right after that the plume and so that just adds an extra mechanic to that. You can see it leaves a little plume, a little moat thing on the ground that you'll have to watch out for webs.

It's very similar to phase one, but now when you're marked with the webs you will then be cocooned so you need to be careful. You can see right here, these webbed players as soon as the cast finishes they get knocked back and then cocooned. So, you need to make sure that you are prepared to be knocked back the long ways of the platform if you get knocked like this player. If he was a little further over to the left, he would have got knocked back and cocooned off the edge, so be very careful on your position.

If you're webbed on the last platform, try to not get knocked into the plumes, as you will take extra damage. Instead of sucking you in, the webs will knock you back. To stay safe, position yourself either very close to the boss, or on the inside of a web puddle. The spiderlings on the top will break the Cocoon, so kill those on stunned players. That is the gist of it.

Really the most difficult part of this fight is not just paying attention to your positioning so that you don't get either sucked or blown off of the edges - that's Sennarth.

Let's move on to Primal Council:

The TL;DR for this is:

There’s frontal cones you have to watch out for and then you want to kill them evenly kind of like Pantheon prototype Pantheon. So let's go over the boss fight here, there's only one phase, it's just all the stuff at the same time.

Earth and Pillar: These swirlies will be cast on players and it will do a big knock-up and they deal ticking damage just like Taros. While they're up, they're ticking damage on the entire raid.

Conductive Mark: This is the blue circles so when you get marked with these blue circles don't touch another player if you can avoid it because it will refresh the duration on both of you and it'll spread to any player that doesn't have it. So you can see right here he just ran up to a pillar hugged it for a little bit and it went away so that's how you clear that.

Meteor Axes: This is the fire Circle that I was talking about so you run these and position them so that they break as many of the Earthen spikes as possible and the rest of the raid needs to get in one of the circles to help share the damage. Do not stand in both circles otherwise you will die.

So no overlap Primal blizzard, the Ice Dude will cast a stacking debuff on you. If you reach 10 Stacks you'll get Frozen and stunned. However, if you step into a fire pool during this, it will clear them off and you'll be fine. You can see right here the players that are frozen and they'll have to get broken out by other players damaging them.

Just step in to clear your Stacks during blizzard. There's a frontal by Slashing Blaze right here. He had 100 energy and does a frontal cone towards the active tank. So be watching out for that.

The big thing that can kill you here is just not paying attention to your positioning and accidentally standing in two of the fire circles at the same time. If you're standing in that overlap, you will die.

This is the TLDR for this fight:

So I'll show you the blue circles first. These are the Pain Smith chains and they need to be moved away from. Just wait until they fall off. These players will take big damage, so healers need to watch out for them and stay away from the Crosswinds.

The Crosswinds are the tornadoes, and they knock you up and deal damage. You can see them move and an area will be marked to show where they're going to move with arrows pointing in the direction they're going. Just like the last boss in Mechagon Workshop, there is a Cyclone. This is the big suck Iwase was talking about and if you get sucked in, you will be knocked up and take a lot of damage.

Zephyr Slam

So this is the Taunt Swap for the tank: the active tank will get blown back almost off the edge of the platform, and at that point the other tank needs to take over and swap it three stacks. I initially thought it was one, so swap it three stacks.

Coalescing storm so as soon as the boss reaches 100 energy he'll spawn a big ad:

You kick the kick the dude uh kick the ads so the big thing that'll kill you in this is getting blown off. When the big ad dies, every player will get knocked. If you're not paying attention, you'll be like this guy here and you'll get blown into Oblivion - that's dathea.

Let's take a look at Kurog:

So Phase One is where you're tanking the boss at each Altar. You'll pick two Altars for each Phase One.

Real Quick, this is the swap the tank mechanic: He'll Target the active tank with a big old smoky white cone. The active tank needs to stand still because it follows you and can't sidestep out of it. So you'll just take the knockback and then the other tank will go ahead and take over at that point - and that's after each cast of Molten Rupture.

So while he lets go over the altar of flame first, the TLDR of the flame altar is: it's just lots of stuff to dodge.

Lots of fire, lots of swirlies, and lots of pools. He will cast out these plus sign patterns from him, and he will also trigger damage on the player.

You can see here they're baiting in the corner, and it will leave a fire pool. Range needs to stay on the edge for magma burst to try to bait these swirlies as much as possible.

He will also debuff some players and they'll progressively leave swirlies as they move, kind of like Stone Legion Generals - when you have the spike swirlies that follow you as you run - it's similar to that only it leaves permanent puddles. Fire puddles come from Magma Burst, so there's lots of stuff to dodge on the fire.

Frost

Absolute zero soak:

Stone altar:

Seismic Rupture:

Players need to pair up with another player who is debuffed (indicated by an arrow over their head or by being lightning shiny). Big circles need to be run away from and small circles need to be soaked.

This boss has many mechanics, so it may be necessary to re-watch it several times to pick up all of them. Even then, there may be some that need to be sight read on the first raid day.

So Lightning Crash is going to target several different players and deal damage to the closest ally. If you don't have a debuff, stand next to them to help share that damage. If you share with somebody, you will get a stacking 30 nature damage vulnerability debuff, which affects other mechanics throughout the fight. For example, if you have the nature debuff and soak the big purple circles, it's very easy for you to die without defensive. Lastly, be aware of Shocking Burst, which are big circles; treat these like the big purple circles and just run it out.

Then there's these soaks. So, there's little circles with kind of a unique icon, very pretty looking. You want to soak these, so everybody stands in one, and otherwise the group takes raid damage. You want to kind of treat these like Lady Anirva philes, so come otherwise you take big damage.

Phase Two:

So the fire ad is mostly just dodging the pools and kicking and killing the ad. You can see right here he targets a player with a swirly and it leaves a permanent pool and spawns an ad. You want to kick and kill the ad as fast as possible.

Frost add is going to cast this freezing Tempest and it's cold so you want to give them a hug. You huddle inside to avoid dying, so it's similar to the nine. It is kind of you want to get in and hug him so that you don't freeze to death when he casts that Earth. There's going to be big brown circles, pretty simple you just move them away and leave them there.

Storm

Storm is going to teleport to a random player and fixate this channel on them. It will deal damage in a surrounding area to them, so make sure that if you are the player that is fixated and teleported to, you move away so that you're not pulsing damage on the rest of the raid.

The ads will spawn based on the Alters that you're standing at in phase one and phase three. The order of the phases is: phase one, phase two, then phase one again when you do the last two Alters. When it does phase two again after you kill the ads from the last two Alters, phase three starts.

Phase Three is pretty simple; it's just everything at the same time. So, he gets all of the abilities from all the alters and you must kill him with all that.

However, one thing to keep in mind is to never tank Kurog in the middle of the room. If you do, he will get a big buff and he will wipe the raid very quickly. Always make sure that he is clearly at an altar.

The debuff that was mentioned when pairing with players is when a player gets marked with a soak circle and is on top of a player marked with the partner mechanic. If they had stayed there, they would have killed the poor druid. To avoid this, they must jump off to the side.

If they have the debuff, they can soak, but they must use a defensive cooldown.

We're on to our last boss, Razageth. We don't have any strategy for it yet, so that will come later.

Diurna is lots and lots of ads and eggs.

TL;DR: You're going to move the boss around to different eggs and she's going to cast something to make the eggs attackable. You want to kill them ideally before they spawn anything, because the more ads that spawn, the worse things get. So, you want to kill the eggs as fast as possible, and then kill the ads as fast as possible.

There's gonna be an extra action button on DPS and Healers that you need to pay attention to. You'll use that to break the eggs. Depending on how difficult this fight is, there are two options. You can either try to stack the ads and stuff like that on top of the boss and hard Focus the ads, or if it's too difficult because there's a mechanic, you can have the off tank move it away from the boss.

So, there's an aura that:

If they're near her, they're hard to kill. If you move them outside of 50 yards range of her, then the buff from her goes away onto the ads.

Let's take a look at this:

She casts Rapid Incubation which targets two nearby eggs. These eggs have a ticking timer, similar to the Halondrus Bombs, so they need to be killed as fast as possible.

To break the eggs, when she uses a staff ability, it will mark two (or more) players. These players will have an extra action button, and if they stand in between the boss and an egg, they can use the extra action button to channel a beam, breaking the egg.

For example, you can see here that this player has an extra action button. They move to the outside of an egg and press it, channeling a beam through the egg, breaking it.

Now when you break an egg it triggers a big burst of damage and also increases the damage of the next egg that breaks within 10 seconds. So, it is important to stagger the egg breaks to avoid taking huge raid damage.

There will be red circles that need to be spread out, and on heroic difficulty they need to spread earlier as waiting until the red circles appear can cause more dots.

Additionally, players will get marked with a purple arrow periodically and they will need to move away from the group to pulse AOE damage around them.

Lastly, each of the ads does something different and will be explained in more detail.

There's one more thing: these fire beams are very similar to rotating Diablo-style beams, so they add extra stress to the fight. Just don't touch them.

Each of the ads does something different. The Frost Proto-Dragons will periodically deal damage to everybody, so they need to be killed quickly so that the raid stops taking damage and you'll need to heal through that raid-wide damage.

The Legionnaire, the Earth Reaver, and the Storm Bringer are all very dangerous to the tank. The Legionnaire does a big hit on the tank, the Earth Reaver has an armor-reducing debuff that stacks dangerously with the Legionnaire.

Finally, the Stormbringer casts an ability at the tank that must be kicked, otherwise they get stunned. A stun on the tank is dangerous because they can't block, mitigate, or dodge and will take much more damage from these ads. The Mage and the Stormbringer are the big kick ones, and the Flame Bender (on heroic only) casts something that can be purged by Shamans, Priests, Demon Hunters, etc. The Frost Proto-dragon is one of the least dangerous, dealing raid damage and a massive tank hit with a stacking bleed. This could be a big tank damage fight.

Okay, phase two:

That is Vault of the incarnates. I hope this was helpful for you. Again, there is a study guide here that I will link in the description of this video. It's open to anybody who would like it and feel free to share it and this video if you find it helpful.

I'm personally going to have this on my second monitor for our first raid day and just use these tldrs as a quick reminder going into each fight. Just to get my brain working on what each fight does.

Thank you so much for watching. Good luck in Vault of the incarnates!