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Mogu'shan Vaults

 

The Spirit Kings

 

 

The Spirit Kings comprise the fourth encounter in the Mogu'shan Vaults raid instance. The encounter rather complex, and its difficult increases as time goes on, leading up to an intense final act.

While the fight puts a strain on all roles in your raid, its most challenging aspect comes from the large amount of movement that you must do. Indeed, adjusting your positions and switching from a stacked to a spread-out formation are the key difficulties you will face.

 

Overview of the Fight

The Spirit Kings encounter is a council-type fight, in which you will face 4 bosses, one at a time, in a pre-determined order. This order is different, however, each time you engage the boss (or perhaps, on a per-lockout basis; we have yet to determine this). Each new boss becomes active when the previous one has been defeated (i.e., killed). Each of the bosses has his own health pool and his own set of abilities.

Each boss has one ability which he retains after being defeated, and which he will continue to use against the raid for the remainder of the fight (while you are fighting the other bosses). This means that the fight becomes harder as you near the end, reaching its difficulty peak when you are fighting the final boss.

Because it is unknown in which order the bosses will activate, you must always be prepared to deal with any combination of the boss' retained abilities.

The fight involves a lot of movement, and proper positioning is an important requirement for success, throughout the course of the fight.

Qiang the Merciless

Abilities

Qiang the Merciless makes use of 3 abilities. We describe them below, starting with the ability that he retains after being defeated.

• Flanking Orders summons a row of Mogu warriors. They walk forward independently of any raid actions, and are unattackable. The wave spawns at a random edge of the arena and slowly moves across it in a predictable fashion. The row is not very long, meaning that players can easily avoid it by moving to either side of it. The warriors constantly deal a massive amount of Physical damage to all enemies in front of them, essentially one-shotting any careless raid members who do not move out of their path. The boss uses this ability every 40 seconds while he is alive, and every 75 seconds after he is defeated.
• Massive Attacks is a frontal cone attack that deals a massive amount of damage, split between all affected players. The boss uses this ability every 5 seconds.
• Annihilate is an AoE attack that deals a very large amount of damage in an area on the ground. The spell has a 3-second visual effect on the ground, before it deals its damage, making it easy to get out of its way. The boss uses this ability every 40 seconds.

Strategy

The strategy for defeating Qiang the Merciless can be summarised thus:

• Have your tanks tank the boss in the center of the room.
• Have your entire raid stacked up in front of the boss, so as to minimise the damage taken from Massive Attacks.
• Make sure that everyone promptly moves to avoid both Annihilate and Flanking Orders.

Your raid will essentially treat this boss as a tank and spank fight. The only difficulties will arise from avoiding Flanking Orders and Annihilate, both of which we detail in the sections below.

Flanking Orders

Being in the center of the room allows your tanks to choose an efficient path to avoid the Flanking Order wall. The rest of the raid must move accordingly, otherwise the Massive Attacks can kill those still left in front of the boss.

Once the Flanking Orders have passed, the boss should simply be moved back to the center.

Annihilate

Whenever the boss casts Annihilate, the ground in front of him begins to rumble in an unmistakable fashion. All raid members (including tanks) should move out of the affected area. Ideally, everyone should move in the same direction (either all to the right or all to the left of the boss), because this makes it much easier to stack in front of the boss again after Annihilate is cast.

Zian of the Endless Shadow

Abilities

Zian of the Endless Shadow makes use of 3 abilities. We describe them below, starting with the ability that he retains after being defeated.

• Undying Shadows selects the location of of a random raid member, and a few seconds later summons an attackable add there. The add fixates on the nearest raid member, and follows that player around, dealing damage to all players within 10 yards of it. When the add is killed, it forms a large void zone. Over the course of 30 seconds, the void zone shrinks in size, until it finally transforms back into the original add. This add then fixates on the nearest target once more, and the process repeats itself. After the void zone shrinks for the second time, it disappears entirely, and no add spawns. Zian casts this ability every 40 seconds while he is alive, and every 85 seconds after he is defeated.
• Shadow Blast is an interruptible spell that Zian often casts at the location of a random raid member. Shadow Blast deals a large amount of Shadow damage to everyone within 8 yards of the target's location. Zian casts Shadow Blast every 4-5 seconds.
• Charged Shadows is a spell that deals a high amount of Shadow damage to a player, and then jumps to any targets within 8 yards of that player, damaging them as well.

Strategy

Charged Shadows simply requires that your raid spreads out, and Shadow Blast must always be interrupted. There is no complexity in dealing with these abilities.

Undying Shadows

The best way of dealing with Undying Shadows can be summarised thus. Have the person that the Undying Shadows fixate on kite them to the edge of the room, and then kill the Undying Shadows immediately.

Doing this will result in the void zones generated by Undying Shadows being out of the way of your raid, and not hampering your movement when avoiding other abilities.

Even though it is tempting to DPS the Undying Shadows as soon as they appear, doing this can cause them to leave their void zone in entirely undesirable locations, which should be avoided.

Ranged DPS players are best suited for DPSing the Undying Shadows.

Meng the Demented

Abilities

Meng the Demented is a bit different from the other Spirit Kings, in the sense that he has an insanity bar that increases slowly over time. When the insanity bar reaches maximum capacity, it resets, and the boss' insanity begins to grow once more. Meng has two passive abilities, only one of which is active at one time. The two passive abilities alternate, changing each time Meng's insanity reaches maximum capacity.

• Crazed increases Meng's physical damage by 200% of his current insanity.
• Cowardice causes Meng to reflect damage back to the raid, equal to 50% of his current insanity. So, if Meng has 60 Insanity, he will reflect 30% of the raid's damage.

Meng also has 2 active abilities that he uses regularly. We describe them below, starting with the ability that he retains after being defeated.

• Maddening Shout is a spell which turns all raid members hostile to one another, allowing them to attack each other. Moreover, it causes all raid members to suffer Shadow damage every 3 seconds. The effect ends when each player has sustained 40,000 damage from another player (20,000 in LFR). Meng casts Maddening Shout every 50 seconds while he is alive, and every 85 seconds after he is defeated.
• Crazy Thought is an interruptible spell that increases Meng's insanity by 10. He casts this ability roughly every 15 seconds.

Strategy

The strategy for defeating Meng revolves around Maddening Shout. It is also important to understand how to properly react to his current insanity state.

Maddening Shout

The strategy for dealing with Maddening Shout is simple. Your entire raid should stack up next to the boss. When Maddening Shout is cast, you should assign certain players to cast AoE spells that deal the minimum amount of damage needed to break the effect.

It is important to note that Maddening Shout is not a mind control, and it does not cause loss of control of your character in any way. It simply makes all raid members hostile to you.

It is also very important that no one uses any abilities that have secondary effects such as stuns, fears, or other debuffs.

Meng's Insanity

As we mentioned above, Meng's insanity increases steadily over time. Additionally, it can increase faster if he completes casts of Crazy Thought. With this in mind, you must be prepared that Meng will have very high insanity several times while he is alive.

When Meng is Crazed, the more insanity he has, the higher the damage done to the tank will be. When Meng is under the effects of Cowardice, the more insanity he has, the more damage will be reflected back to your raid.

The key to handling these aspects correctly is the way in which you interrupt the Crazy Thought casts that the boss regularly performs.

The idea is to always interrupt the casts when the boss has low insanity, and to allow him to cast the spell when he has high insanity. The exact amount of insanity where you should stop interrupting depends on many factors, but we recommend 60.

Doing this will cause Meng to spend more time at low insanity, and less time at high insanity. In other words, you are intentionally increasing his insanity generation, when he is already high on insanity, in order to get him to maximum insanity (when it is reset to zero) faster.

There are two things you should be aware of regarding Meng's high-insanity phases.

• When the boss is Crazed, the tank will require a large amount of healing.
• When the boss has Cowardice, the raid should stop DPSing in order to avoid taking excessive damage.

Subetai the Swift

Abilities

Subetai the Swift makes use of 3 abilities. We describe them below, starting with the one which he retains after being defeated.

• Pillage causes Subetai to charge a random raid member and debuff all players within 8 yards with Pillaged. This debuff, which lasts 15 seconds, reduces damage and healing done by 50%, and increases Physical damage taken by 50%. The boss casts this ability every 40 seconds.
• Volley is a 3-step frontal cone attack. First, Subetai fires a volley of arrows in a wide cone in front of him, dealing a moderate amount of Physical damage. A second later, he fires again, but this time the cone is less wide and the damage is higher. A second after that, Subetai fires a final volley, in a narrow cone, dealing massive damage.
• Rain of Arrows targets a random raid member, and fires a volley of arrows at that location. All players in an 8-yard radius of this location are stunned by Pinning Arrows, which deal Physical damage to the players every second. The Arrows are attackable and killable, something that is required in order to free the players.

Strategy

As you can see, the abilities of Subetai require your raid to be spread out, which makes them rather trivial to deal with. However, depending on which defeated bosses you are facing at this stage of the fight, this may not always be easy.

Pillage

It is not possible to predict who will be Pillaged, so you must simply make sure that the raid is spread out as much as possible, so that as few players as possible are within 8 yards of one another. The players who are unfortunate enough to be pillaged do not have any way of getting rid of the debuff and its negative effects, so they must simply endure them.

There are two things that players who have been Pillaged must pay special attention to.

• Do not use any cooldowns (such as DPS or healing cooldowns), since their effect will be greatly diminished.
• Be extra careful not to be hit by Volley, since its damage is Physical and you are taking increased Physical damage.

Volley

Volley is easily dealt with. All it requires is that players move away from the front of the boss when this ability is cast. Getting hit by the first wave of arrows will not always be easy to avoid, but this is hardly problematic, and it should not kill anyone.

Rain of Arrows

Rain of Arrows is generally neutralized by the fact that your raid is spread out. Players who are pinned down by the arrows must be freed immediately by killing the arrows.

Retained Ability Strategy

In the following sections, we will take a look at the retained abilities, and how they interact with each other.

Flanking Orders after Qiang's Death

Dealing with Flanking Orders as a retained ability is quite simple. Regardless of which boss you are currently fighting, you should always attempt to tank him in the center. This will allow you to maneuver and avoid the Flanking Orders with ease.

Since Flanking Orders does not require that your raid be either stacked or spread, it will not pose many problems. It will merely be an added thing to worry about.

One possible problem will be if the path you wanted to take in order to avoid the Flanking Orders is blocked by a void zone from Undying Shadows. In this case, the best thing you can do is calculate a new path, avoiding Flanking Orders on the other side. If this is not possible, then you should simply run through the Undying Shadows, as their damage is considerably lower than that of Flanking Orders.

Undying Shadows After Zian's Death

Undying Shadows should be dealt with in the same way as described above, regardless of which boss you are currently fighting.

The biggest problems will arise when your raid is stacked up (such as when you are fighting Qiang). When this happens, DPS players will have to resist the temptation of quickly killing the Undying Shadows, and the player on whom it has fixated must move the Shadows out of the raid.

Even though we do not advise you being careless, it should be noted that even if the Undying Shadows are killed right under your raid, the void zone will not be very problematic. This is because the damage from the Undying Shadows void zone is quite low (even in heroic mode, it is only 60,000 per second; in normal mode, it is much lower than that). The position of the boss will simply have to be re-adjusted.

Maddening Shout After Meng's Death

Maddening Shout is almost impossible to deal with it if your raid is not stacked when it is cast. For this reason, we must assume that each time Maddening Shout is cast, your raid is stacked close together.

• When fighting Qiang, stacking for Maddening Shout is not a problem (you should always be stacked here anyway). Two things are worth noting.
  • If Maddening Shout coincides with Flanking Orders, your raid must all move in the same direction and remain stacked, when avoiding the Flanking Orders.
  • When Maddening Shout is about to be cast, healers must use healing and defensive cooldowns, since the damage from Maddening Shout, when coupled with the damage from Massive Attacks, can be very dangerous.
• When fighting against Zian and Subetai, your raid should stay spread out to avoid the AoE abilities of these bosses. Then, just as Maddening Shout is about to be cast, the raid should stack, break the effect of the Shout, and spread out again.

Pillage After Subetai's Death

Pillage is the least problematic of the retained abilities. It simply requires that your raid members be spread out at least 8 yards apart. Even when more than one raid member is Pillaged, this is not very serious for your raid.

Pillage is a problem when you have to deal with abilities that require your whole raid to stack tightly, such as Maddening Shout or Massive Attacks. In both of these cases, you will have to respect the stacking constraint, since failing to do so is much more punishing than failing to spread for Pillage.

When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp

The choice of the optimal timing for Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp is not very straightforward.

On the one hand, using it early allows your raid to stand still and DPS (since there are fewer abilities to avoid), taking greater advantage of the cooldown. On the other hand, using it late in the fight means that you get a boost of DPS during the most difficult part of the encounter, allowing you to get through it faster.

The choice is yours, and if one strategy turns out to be better than the other we will update the guide to reflect this.

Learning the Fight

As with many other fights, the most important thing to emphasize is that your raid members all learn to properly handle each mechanic on its own. This is especially true for the retained abilities of the bosses. Once this is accomplished, your raid should have no problem overcoming the other challenges of the encounter.

Achievement: Getting Hot In Here

The Getting Hot In Here achievement is part of the Glory of the Pandaria Raider meta achievement. It simply requires that all your raid members use a /dance emote on Subetai the Swift after getting hit by his Pillage ability.

You should use a macro for this purpose.

The obvious difficulty is that getting the entire raid hit by Pillage can cause many problems. Fortunately, since the achievement does not appear to require that you defeat the encounter in the same attempt, you can simply complete the achievement, wipe, and re-start.

However, this should not be needed, especially if Subetai is the first or second active boss. Having your entire raid Pillaged will reduce DPS for a short while, which is not a problem. The greater problem is the increased damage that the tank will be taking from Subetai, and the reduced healing that the healers will be doing. We believe that this can be countered with healing and defensive cooldowns. In the worst case scenario, if the tank dies, they can be resurrected later.

 

 

_{(information from Icy Veins)}

 

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