Beth'tilac

Beth'tilac is a fire spider boss of the Firelands raid instance.

World first heroic kill on 25-man achieved 5.7.2011 by Blood Legion - US-Illidan.

Background

 * "Her fiery webs reach far overhead, daring her adversaries to simultaneously face their fears of both spiders and heights. Only by taking hold of her webs and climbing into her domain yourself will you find a way to thwart her evil designs. 

Adventure Guide
''Matriarch of the Cinderweb brood, Beth'tilac and her merciless offspring sate their appetites by sucking the magma and fire from the corpses of elementals. To provide her broodlings with added sustenance, Beth'tilac has woven a network of incendiary webs throughout her web to trap unsuspecting prey.''

Stage One: The Cinderweb
Beth'tilac retreats to the top of her web at the beginning of the encounter.

Stage Two: The Frenzy!
After she has performed Smoldering Devastation three times, Beth'tilac enters a frenzy. She lowers herself from the safety of the top of her Cinderweb and no longer calls for aid from her brood.

Trash
The trash leading up to Beth'tilac often has the theme of "spiders attacking other trash". Of these trash packs the final pack is the most challenging for inexperienced teams.

It consists of small, medium, and large spiders attacking a Flamewalker Cauterizer and a pair of Pathfinders. Start the fight by charging the Cauterizer. A second tank should pick up the spiders. Classes with AoE can destroy the smallest spiders but the Cauterizer should be killed as quickly as possible. Interrupt the Cauterizer's signature healing move (Cauterize). The Pathfinders can not be tanked and will be attacking healers and DPS indiscriminately. The pathfinders should be killed second. After all the flamewalkers are dead, polish off the spiders.

If you wipe, the entire trash pack will respawn and you have to start over.

Strategy
During phase 1 Beth'tilac will hang out on the upper web and periodically cast Smoldering Devastation. After the third Smoldering Devastation, she will descend to the floor. Phase 2 has a soft enrage where her Frenzy will stack to the point that healers can no longer keep the tanks alive. The more damage you inflict on her during phase 1 and the less healing she gets from Consume, the shorter phase 2 will last and the better your chances of victory are.

If you don't leave enough DPS on the ground for phase 1, the adds will overwhelm the ground team or Beth'tilac will eat some ground adds and heal at the beginning of phase 2.

Assign a tank, a healer, and some DPS (melee preferred) for the upper web. In 25m raids, it is possible to send 2 healers up.

The rest (a tank, remaining healers, and remaining DPS) will stay on the ground. If spinners are hard to control, it may be helpful leaving players with taunts (paladins, death knights) on the ground as well.

Phase 1
At the beginning of the fight she ascends the web and starts splashing the party with Venom Rain. As soon as possible pull down the Cinderweb Spinners to create climbable threads, one for each player who wishes to reach the top of the web.

The quickest way to gain access to a Cinderweb Spinner's thread is for a player to taunt the spider. Tank taunts are usually used, but Unleash Earth and Distracting Shot also work. Killing a spinner also grants access to the thread. Cinderweb Spinners do more damage while hanging from their thread than they do on the ground, so the ground team should continue taunting spinners as fast as cooldowns and the situation permit.

Top
The assigned tank, healer, and DPS should use the spinners web to climp to the top and attack the boss. The tank should go first and be quickly followed by the healer. DPS can wait for more threads to be activated.

Avoid the meteors and the holes they make in the web. When Beth'tilac runs low on energy (which indicates an impending Smoldering Devastation) use the center hole directly under her to be safely lowered to the ground. Being struck by a meteor or walking into a meteor hole causes you to fall through the web and take falling damage. If this happens to the tank or healer, it can often result in a wipe.

After she casts Smoldering Devastation you will get a new wave of spinners, taunt them down and go back up ASAP to end the Venom Rain.

Ground
The team on the ground will have a kill order of spiderlings, then spinners, then drones. Alternatively, DPS assigned to ground duty may be divided into teams, with an AoE group handling Spiderlings, and the other group handling spinners and drones.

Spiderlings will emerge randomly around the room in a group from one location at a time. They need to be slowed, knocked back, and AoE'd down before they can reach the drone.

The ground tank will mostly be managing the Drone. The drone should be pointed away from the raid so Boiling Splatter does not affect healers and DPS. The tank should also keep an eye out for spiderlings. If the drone gets close enough to spiderlings it will consume one, heal, and gain a damage/speed bonus. If the DPS is not able to kill spiderlings quickly enough, the tank must kite the drone away.

If the drone's energy bar reaches zero, it will climb to the top of the web and drain energy from Beth'tilac. This is undesirable as it shortens the time before the next Smoldering Devastation. It is possible for a second drone to spawn before the first drone runs out of energy. If this happens, it implies that you don't have enough DPS on the ground team.

During this phase, the ground team should continue taunting spinners off their threads as quickly as possible. Paladins (with Reckoning) and Death Knights (with Dark Command and Death Grip) are especially helpful here.

After Beth'tilac casts her third Smoldering Devastation the fight transitions to phase 2.

Phase 2
Beth'tilac joins you on the ground. Immediately make sure all adds are killed before she's lands, because if any Spiderlings reach her, she will Consume them and heal.

Position the raid in a triangle, with all of the healers and dps on one point, a tank on each of the other points, and Beth'tilac in the center. Periodically Beth'tilac will cast The Widow's Kiss on the current tank. The other tank should taunt as quickly as possible. The kissed tank will just have to stand clear of other players and wait for the stacks to count up to 10 at which point the debuff will disappear.

The stacking Frenzy is a soft enrage. The raid must burn through the boss's remaining health before Frenzy outstrips the healer's ability to keep the tanks and raid alive.

Heroic Mode
A new type of add (Engorged Broodling) will spawn on the ground. This is a "kamikaze" spider that will cast Volatile Burst upon colliding with a target, killing itself and dealing a large amount of damage to nearby targets, and leaving a patch of Volatile Poison on the ground, which will damage and slow players standing in it. Assign 1-2 DPS (3-6 on 25m) to "soak" the explosions from the broodlings far away from the main raid, to avoid dropping patches of Volatile Poison in the raid.

Cinderweb Drones will periodically fixate on a random raid member for 10 seconds. The player must make sure not to kite the drone into any spiderlings, and should move closer to the tank to allow him to pick the drone up after its fixate ends.

Cinderweb Spinners that are left hanging will periodically channel Fiery Web Spin on raid members left on the ground, stunning them for the duration of the channel. This can be devastating if cast on healers given the high tank and raid damage on the ground. This makes quickly taunting down and killing spinners even more important on heroic mode.

Phase 2 is unchanged, however, Beth'tilac's higher base health and damage leads to a greater DPS/healing check in the final phase.

Solo strategy
Start the encounter by winding up a big attack on Beth'tilac, but don't pop cooldowns just yet. After she goes up top, kill a handful of hanging Cinderweb Spinners before going up, not just the one required. On top, pop CDs and blow her up, in an attempt to kill her before she casts Smoldering Devastation three times. Don't stand in fires. The damage she puts out is trivial, but she will leave the web after the third cast.

Should she get off the third Smoldering Devastation cast and head back down, follow her down and quickly kill as many spinners as possible before they cast Fiery Web Spin (in Heroic mode only). If the channel goes off, the player will be stunned for 25 seconds, likely resulting in death. Pet classes as always can direct their pets to attack the spinners to kill them, stopping the channel. Also, kill any Cinderweb Spiderlings that get near her, as she will still heal for 10% of max health for each one she consumes.

Achievements

 * Firelands (achievement)
 * Firelands Guild Run
 * Heroic: Beth'tilac
 * Death from Above