Magmaw Random People Hit Help

[Phrayze]

We stepped into raiding a few weeks ago and are getting progressively better. Magmaw's healing requirements stunned us for a while but eventually we got comfortable with it after we downed Omnitron no problem. We were getting him down to 30-40% each try and failing due to simple slip-ups like standing on Pillars, not moving out of Ignition, and so on. The strategy we used that day was having tank on one side of Magmaw and melee on the other side. Ranged were out and would alternate between two points and move back and forth taking care of adds.

The next day i join a PuG who were all very skilled players. We used the strategy where we all stack on melee except for the hunter who would stay out and control where the pillar lands, lay a trap, and ranged would turn and burn adds. The strategy was working perfect. We kept running into one problem though. Either right before or right after Magmaw gets chained down he would turn over to our rogue and just 1-shot him. Every single time. We tried everything. Soulstoning him, Guardian Spirit, and pally bubbles. We had the idea to have him run away during the impaled phase. That made us lose dps and Magmaw ended up 1 shotting a druid instead. Eventually we gave up.

Last night I tried with a guild run. We used the hunter standing out strategy. We ran into the same problem again. This time I was 1-shotted and I was the healer. From 100% to 0. Then our rogue was being hit just like with the PuG. I dont know if it was just the strategy or was wondering if other people had this problem. Is there something more i should know about the fight? Any help would be appreciated.

[Littlebruddy]

I'm fairly certain during the chain phase, magmaw picks up your tank and starts nomming on him. Maybe there's a slight window there that's allowing him to drop threat on the tank and hammer second threat? If that's the case, I would suggest making sure someone at range is second threat (we never run into this problem in my guild, but our ranged are very potent). Don't know what to tell you aside from that :/

[Pyronius]

Hey Phraze,

I know exactly the problem you're having as it happened to us as well.

Magmaws melee range is actually very small, and if your tank moved away from Magmaw to DPS the head, he probably isnt in melee range for when Magmaw returns to normal and the rogue is getting one shot.

The tank must ALWAYS stay near the edge of the cliff. If he moves more than a few yards out from it, magmaw is going to turn to the highest threat dps and gib them.

If your tank wants to DPS the head while magmaw is chained down, tell him to do it from inside Magmaws body, facing towards the back of the head (So he should be between the head and the cliff where the body is) and to never stray away from the cliff at all.

[Gnomity]

I'm fairly certain during the chain phase, magmaw picks up your tank and starts nomming on him. Maybe there's a slight window there that's allowing him to drop threat on the tank and hammer second threat? If that's the case, I would suggest making sure someone at range is second threat (we never run into this problem in my guild, but our ranged are very potent). Don't know what to tell you aside from that :/

I think this is probably the best bet - when chain phase first starts, make sure no one is in melee range OR make sure a range is 2nd threat below tank. We only had 3 melee (2 on the boss chaining, and one was our frost DK add-kiter, so usually at range).

[Kifimbo]

had this happen last night too. easily fixed by having our paladin tank stick near the ledge with 3 HP so he can WoG himself after the hit.the problem before that though, he was gibbing me, a balance durid. aslo 2 hunters + mage = dead adds real fast between traps and flamestrike.

[Deleted]

Hey Phraze,

I know exactly the problem you're having as it happened to us as well.

Magmaws melee range is actually very small, and if your tank moved away from Magmaw to DPS the head, he probably isnt in melee range for when Magmaw returns to normal and the rogue is getting one shot.

The tank must ALWAYS stay near the edge of the cliff. If he moves more than a few yards out from it, magmaw is going to turn to the highest threat dps and gib them.

If your tank wants to DPS the head while magmaw is chained down, tell him to do it from inside Magmaws body, facing towards the back of the head (So he should be between the head and the cliff where the body is) and to never stray away from the cliff at all.

This is how my guild fixed it as well.. just make sure the tanks stays near the body at all times, and the melee dps is further from the body than the tank.

[kittycuddler]

That weird... he doesn't one shot any of the people in our raid, and we're not spectacularly geared or anything. It certainly takes us down to under 15ish percent health, but it's never one shot someone. But yeah, as long as people don't run back in too early it's not a problem. That also goes for everyone at the start of the fight, be sure the tank is in melee range even before rogues tricks the tank, because the rogue will still get shit on lol.

[Rhodianni]

Hey Phraze,

I know exactly the problem you're having as it happened to us as well.

Magmaws melee range is actually very small, and if your tank moved away from Magmaw to DPS the head, he probably isnt in melee range for when Magmaw returns to normal and the rogue is getting one shot.

The tank must ALWAYS stay near the edge of the cliff. If he moves more than a few yards out from it, magmaw is going to turn to the highest threat dps and gib them.

If your tank wants to DPS the head while magmaw is chained down, tell him to do it from inside Magmaws body, facing towards the back of the head (So he should be between the head and the cliff where the body is) and to never stray away from the cliff at all.

Thank you for this information.

My group decided just to run out when Magmaw is about to get free, but if having a tank near the cliff helps, its perfect.

[dethkrik]

Not sure if its an aggro bug or a tank positioning issue as others have mentioned, but we ran into this as well when we were doing progression. The easy fix we found (or our Rogue found after getting gibbed on 2-3 pulls in a row) was for melee to back up and stand near the 'hole' in the room (place where the tile is missing) from there they can attack the head when it is impaled but Magmaw will be out of melee range of them when he comes up so the tank can pick him up and melee runs back in. Once we started doing this we never had an issue with people getting gibbed (unless they didn't move).

[Endlaw]

To the OP, i haven't read the responses because i have an answer for this. We use the same strat, stacking on the meelee, and exactly the same thing was happening every transition between the Exposed head -> Magmaw. The issue is that there is a microsecond of untaunted boss when he phases between the two states, and because the exposed head is a different threat table, Magmaw has a chance to hit a meelee/ranged if they are too close.

So to fix this, we had two points to stand the meelee just before the transition back to Magmaw after the burn phase. We had a marker that was about three fingers back along the wall to have them stack until there was a successful TAUNT on Magmaw. Then the meelee would resume standing on the precipice as usual. Once that taunt is up on magmaw he won't have a chance to one shot any dps, and your tanks threat table has had its time to resume as usual.

just my 2cp hope that helps.

[shadowkras]

The next day i join a PuG who were all very skilled players. We used the strategy where we all stack on melee except for the hunter who would stay out and control where the pillar lands, lay a trap, and ranged would turn and burn adds. The strategy was working perfect. We kept running into one problem though. Either right before or right after Magmaw gets chained down he would turn over to our rogue and just 1-shot him. Every single time. We tried everything. Soulstoning him, Guardian Spirit, and pally bubbles. We had the idea to have him run away during the impaled phase. That made us lose dps and Magmaw ended up 1 shotting a druid instead. Eventually we gave up.

You need 2 tanks for that now, or you risk magmaw killing whoever is highest on threat, be it the rogue or another melee, normally they reset all their threat when they jump, so the 4th person in the aggro table will be melee'd (tank is first, top 2 dps are second and third, if they jump on his head).
To avoid that, you keep a second tank out and he will taunt magmaw when the first tank is being eaten, that will remove any risks of him attacking a non-tank. The innactive tank can help controlling the parasites.
A warrior can shockwave them (99% safe), a dk can use death and decay and just kite them around snares (frost trap, earthbind, etc), a druid can go caster form and help AoEing, and no clue what a paladin can do, help healing maybe, but i wouldnt get so close to them in order to drop consecration.
And using 2 tanks you also take away the need to heal a tank with -50% armor after being eaten.

As a side note, i tried the 1 ranged out strategy the other day and the very first pillar was on top of melee dps, what exactly was wrong?

[Deleted]

It's an aggro issue. Have your rogues run out slightly before the weakened phase ends.

[Phrayze]

Thanks for the responses everyone. Ill try having everyone back up out of range so he cant gib anyone. If all else fails we'll just sacrifice some dps for a second tank to make heals easy and get rid of the chance of dps/getting wrecked.

Also on another note would it be a working idea to have the hunter use Distracting Shot to grab aggro, but stay out of Magmaw's melee range until the tank can taunt after being mangled?

[DarkenedPaladin]

He will swing at any melee in range if threat goes to someone out of his melee area. If no melee are present, he'll start shooting magma, increasing his fire damage by 100% per shot.

It is a confirmed threat issue. After the head drops, all threat is reset on Magmaw for the tank inside. You basically either need to have dps ready with a cooldown, or an extremely fast tank ready to taunt the body. Not the head. Hopefully this will be fixed soon, but if not the work arounds mentioned above should all work.

[tawney]

One question I had was regarding the 1dps at range strategy. This week we tried this and always got the explosion in melee. I'm assuming they fixed it so that strat doesn't work anymore? We just had 4 at range to fix that.