Will of the Emperor

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Mogu'shan Vaults

 

Will of the Emperor

 

Boss Icon - Will of the Emperor

 

The Will of the Emperor is the 6th and final boss encounter in the Mogu'shan Vaults raid instance. The challenges present in the encounter will test all the various skills your raid has had to employ when killing the first 5 bosses.

While the encounter is quite simple to understand, it will prove to be very chaotic, as there are many different adds present throughout the fight.

 

Overview of the Fight

The Will of the Emperor encounter is a two-phase fight that needs to be activated by interacting with the control panel located next to the fighting area. After the activation, you have to wait for 25 seconds before the fight really starts.

Phase One lasts for the first 90 seconds of the fight. During this time, your raid will have to handle three different types of adds.

Phase Two begins after 90 seconds, when the two bosses of the encounter, Jan-xi and Qin-xi, become active. The adds from Phase One will continue to spawn until the end of the fight.

Jan-xi and Qin-xi have a shared health pool, and the fight ends with their death.

As you will see below, the main difficulties are dealing with the adds, and successfully avoiding Jan-xi and Qin-xi's abilities.

The Environment

The encounter takes place in the Forge of the Endless, within the Mogu'shan Vaults raid instance. The room itself is a large semi-circular arena.

All the adds, including the bosses, will spawn from alcoves in the large wall that forms the rounded part of the arena. Each type of add always spawns from the same alcove, and each alcove lights up red for the 5 seconds before an add spawns from it.

Phase One

During Phase One, your raid will have to handle three different types of adds, for 90 seconds. A new wave of adds spawns every 15 seconds.

After 90 seconds, the phase ends, and the two main bosses become available. Keep in mind that Phase Two is merely an extension of Phase One, and the adds from Phase One will continue to spawn, in the same way, until the end of the fight.

Adds and Abilities

  • Emperor's Rage spawn from the central alcoves. Their only ability is Focused Assault Icon Focused Assault, which causes them to fixate on a random raid member, and do nothing except walk towards that target. Upon reaching their target, they perform mildly damaging attacks against them.
    • Emperor's Rage adds can be killed, slowed, stunned, and they are generally susceptible to all forms of crowd control. Each spawn consists of 4 Emperor's Rage in 25-man, and 2 Emperor's Rage in 10-man and LFR.
  • Emperor's Courage spawn from alcoves located at the sides of the arena (they jump from alcoves located above ground level, so to see them lighting red you need to look up). Their only ability is Focused Defense Icon Focused Defense, which causes them to fixate on one of your raid's tanks, and do nothing except walk towards that target. Upon reaching their target, they hit them with Impeding Thrust Icon Impeding Thrust.
    • Impeding Thrust Icon Impeding Thrust is a damaging attack which stacks a debuff on the target, slowing their movement speed by 25% for 10 seconds, per stack. At 4 stacks, the target is unable to move.
    • Emperor's Courage adds can be killed, but they can only be damaged when attacked from behind (their front is shielded thanks to Half Plate Icon Half Plate). They can be slowed, but other forms of crowd control do not work against them. Each spawn consists of 2 Emperor's Courage in 25-man, and 1 Emperor's Courage in 10-man and LFR.
  • Emperor's Strength spawn from alcoves located half-way between the center and the sides of the arena (they jump from alcoves located above ground level, so to see them lighting red you need to look up). They have normal threat tables and melee their main aggro target. They also regularly cast Energizing Smash Icon Energizing Smash.
    • Energizing Smash Icon Energizing Smash causes the add to hit the ground in front of them, dealing a high amount of Physical damage in 10-yard radius around the impact location, and stunning all affected targets. With each Energizing Smash, the 10-yard radius increases by 1 yard. Energizing Smash is cast about once every 7 seconds.
    • Emperor's Strength adds can be killed, but they are immune to all forms of crowd control. Each spawn consists of 2 Emperor's Strength in 25-man, and 1 Emperor's Strength in 10-man and LFR.

Strategy

As you can clearly guess, your raid will have to contend with all of the adds that spawn during this phase. Your goal is to have as many of the adds as possible killed (ideally all) by the time the phase ends.

In the sections that follow, we will explain how to deal with each type of add. For now, it is important to note that the priority for killing the adds should be:

  1. Emperor's Courage;
  2. Emperor's Strength;
  3. Emperor's Rage.

Emperor's Courage

These adds are the top priority at all times. They must be killed before they reach the tank that they have fixated on. The tanks will also have to move away from these adds if they get too close.

They have low health, but they must be damaged from behind.

Ideally, all casters should move next to the alcove from where they will spawn, so that as soon as the add spawns, it is possible to attack it from behind.

They are susceptible to slows, and this is something you should aim to keep up on them.

Emperor's Strength

Emperor's Strength are next in order of priority. They must be picked up by the tanks. It is important to kill them before the radius of their Energizing Smash Icon Energizing Smash increases so much that it is impossible for the tank to avoid being hit by it.

They should simply be nuked down when no Emperor's Courage are up. Melee DPS must be careful to avoid being in the radius of Energizing Smash when it is being cast (it is clearly indicated by an electrical circle on the ground).

Emperor's Rage

These adds are the least harmful. Players on whom they fixate should be careful to move away from them until the adds are killed.

Since they are susceptible to all forms of crowd-control, your raid should make ample use of stuns and slows to keep them in check until they can be killed.

Phase Two

Phase Two starts 90 seconds after the start of the encounter. This is marked by the two bosses, Jan-xi and Qin-xi, entering the fight (from central alcoves). All the adds from Phase One will continue to spawn and behave exactly as described above.

The phase ends with the death of the two bosses, who share a health pool.

Abilities

The two bosses, Jan-xi and Qin-xi, share the same abilities. They each have an Energy bar, with a maximum capacity of 20. Their energy increases over time, at a rate of 1 Energy per second, completely independent of any player action. The two bosses' Energy bars are synchronized.

When the bosses reach maximum Energy, they each perform a Devastating Combo. A Devastating Combo is a series of 5 attacks, used over a period of 15 seconds, during which time the bosses no longer melee or move. Their attacks are a random combination of the following 2 abilities, although the first seems to be used much more than the second.

  • Devastating Arc Icon Devastating Arccauses the boss to swing his massive weapon and deal damage in a large area in front, to the left, or to the right of the boss. The area that will be affected can be determined beforehand by looking at the boss' animation.
    • When the boss swings his weapon back over his left shoulder, he will strike the area to his right.
    • When the boss swings his weapon back over his right shoulder, he will strike the area to his left.
    • When the boss holds the weapon pointing forward, he will strike the area in front of him.
    Getting hit by this attack, in addition to the damage it deals, also applies a stacking debuff that reduces the target's armor by 10% for 30 seconds, per stack.
  • Stomp Icon Stomp deals damage to players in a 12-yard radius around the boss, also stunning them for 2 seconds. It is easy to tell when a Stomp is about to happen from the boss' animation. He will lift the weapon up above his head.

While these two abilities are not especially damaging, avoiding them has a very important benefit. Whenever a player avoids taking damage from all abilities in a Devastating Combo, they gain the Opportunistic Strike Icon Opportunistic Strike ability, in the form of an extra action button. This ability can only be used once, and it deals a massive amount of damage to the target.

Each boss also applies a debuff to his main aggro target, called Magnetic Armor Icon Magnetic Armor. This debuff is harmless when the tank is within 15 yards of the boss. When the tank exceeds this distance, however, he will be instantly pulled back to the boss.

Finally, a few times during Phase Two, the room will fill up with Titan Gas Icon Titan Gas for 20 seconds. This has several effects.

  • It deals raid-wide Frost damage every second.
  • It increases the damage done of all players by 25%.
  • It increases the damage done of all enemies by 25%.
  • It stops all adds from spawning for the duration.

Strategy

The strategy for this phase revolves around several key aspects.

  • All adds must be kept under control and killed in a timely fashion. The same priority order applies as in Phase One.
    1. Emperor's Courage;
    2. Emperor's Strength;
    3. Emperor's Rage.
  • The tanks and melee DPS players must avoid as many of the Devastating Combos as possible.
  • Healers must be prepared for the very intense moments when the room is covered in Titan Gas Icon Titan Gas.

We will go into detail regarding each of these aspects below.

It is interesting to note that the phase does not get progressively more difficult in any way.

Positioning

As soon as the two bosses spawn, the two tanks should pick them up. The bosses should be tanked a fair distance apart from one another (roughly 60 yards), in order to avoid overlapping Devastating Arc Icon Devastating Arcs. The ranged DPS and healers should be in such a location that their position and the two boss tanking positions form a triangle. This will allow the healers and DPS to be in range of both bosses (and the tanks), without being in danger of being hit by Devastating Arc or Stomp Icon Stomp.

Naturally, these positions will be off-set somewhat when random players have to move in order to avoid being hit by adds that fixate on them.

Adds

All of the adds should be dealt with in the same way as during Phase One. Even though it may be tempting to DPS the bosses, maintaining proper control of the fight is crucial, so killing the adds remains the top priority.

It is especially important to kill the Emperor's Courage adds quickly, because if they manage to reach the tank and slow them, it will be impossible to avoid being hit by the Devastating Combos.

The Emperor's Strength must also be killed quickly, because as the radius of their Energizing Smash Icon Energizing Smash increases over time, it will be impossible for the tanks to avoid being stunned, and thus also being hit by the Devastating Combo.

The Emperor's Rage, while not very problematic, must also be killed so that too many of them do not accumulate.

Devastating Combo

Tanks and melee DPS will quickly learn the animations of the various ways in which Devastating Arc Icon Devastating Arc can be cast, and avoiding them should only be a matter of concentration.

For tanks, it is especially important to avoid these attacks. This is because the armor-reducing debuff that getting hit by Devastating Arc applies can prove quite dangerous, if the number of stacks is high. Note that the debuff will not have time to expire between Devastating Combos, so avoiding being hit by Devastating Arc is mandatory.

Tanks have an added challenge, here, that DPS players do not share. Because of Magnetic Armor Icon Magnetic Armor, tanks cannot simply out-range the attacks of the bosses. For the Devastating Arcs, the tanks can quite easily move to the side of the boss that will not be affected. However, in order to avoid the Stomp Icon Stomp, tanks will have to move away from the boss, between 13 and 15 yards, where they will not be hit by the Stomp, nor pulled back by Magnetic Armor. This will be tricky to do at first, but it should become easy with some practice.

Titan Gas

Titan Gas Icon Titan Gas seems to be cast very rarely, and it is not a great concern overall.

While Titan Gas is active, everyone must be prepared for the increased damage, from both sides.

On the one hand, DPS players should try to use their cooldowns during this time. Additionally, this is the ideal time for using Heroism Icon Heroism/Bloodlust Icon Bloodlust/Time Warp Icon Time Warp.

On the other hand, tanks and healers must be prepared to use cooldowns to counter the increased tank damage, as well as the raid damage.

Healing Concerns

If everyone in the raid plays perfectly during this phase, there should be no raid damage at all outside of Titan Gas Icon Titan Gas. However, healers should still be prepared to heal those raid members who are careless enough to be hit by the Emperor's Rage or by Devastating Combos.

The tank damage should be fairly moderate most of the time, unless the tank has stacks of the armor-reducing debuff applied by Devastating Arc Icon Devastating Arc.

An event of particular importance is when the room is filled with gas, due to Titan Gas. Healing and raid cooldowns should be used here in order to mitigate the damage. Because the mobs also do increased damage at this time, healers should coordinate with tanks for proper cooldown usage.

When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp

Heroism Icon Heroism/Bloodlust Icon Bloodlust/Time Warp Icon Time Warp is best used during Phase Two, when Titan Gas Icon Titan Gas has just been released into the room. This is because at this moment, the raid is benefiting from increased damage, and no new adds are spawning to distract players from attacking the bosses.

Learning the Fight

Success in this encounter is heavily reliant on two sets of skills that your raid must aquire:

  • dealing with the various types of adds;
  • avoiding all of the Devastating Combo attacks.

You should focus on these two aspects. Once your raid is comfortable with them, defeating the encounter should only be a matter of time.

Achievement: Show Me Your Moves!

The Show Me Your Moves! Icon Show Me Your Moves! achievement is part of the Glory of the Pandaria Raider Icon Glory of the Pandaria Raider meta-achievement, which rewards you with the Reins of the Heavenly Crimson Cloud Serpent Icon Reins of the Heavenly Crimson Cloud Serpent mount. The achievement is not difficult in itself, but it will require excellent awareness from every single raid member.

The requirement is that every raid member uses the Opportunistic Strike Icon Opportunistic Strike ability against the bosses, after avoiding all the attacks in the same Devastating Combo. This will obviously require a lot of concentration from your raid, and it will probably take many attempts to obtain.

 

 

(information from Icy Veins)

 

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