User:Serillian/Pholcidread

Pholcidread is the sixth encounter within the Palace of the Risen Emperor. She has made her home within Lei Shen's Palace catacombs, spinning multiple webs throughout her lair to capture her victims. Her lair reaches high into the catacombs and allows her to spring traps from anywhere.

Background
With the Catacombs all but unable to be reclaimed, Lei Shen has order for a blockade to be built in order to fend off any wandering horrors that may venture into the Warbound Halls. In a recent attempt to retake a portion of the catacombs, Lei Shen's men has fall prey one by one to a massive spider who has made her lair near the very entrance to the halls of the Warbound. Capable of creating a series of thick webs as her home, Pholcidread the Misery of Mogu, has practically been at war with the Stormbound and Tian Lo mogu, luring in and consuming her enemies the moment they leave the safety of their military quarters. Instead of combating the beats himself, the Thunder King looks to make an example out of her by forcing his soldiers to battle with such ferocity. The enormous spider dangles brazenly near the ground level of her webbed lair in eyesight of her mogu enemies, effectively taunting them and their King. This ferocious creature is capable of holding her own against the Thunder King's own men, the chances of intruders standing up to her appears slim to none.

Encounter Abilities
Pholcidread's Lair contains 4 elevation levels: Ground Level, Web Level 1, Web Level 2, and Web Summit. Before combat begins, Pholcidread dangles from above the ground on the Ground Level and flees to the Web Summit when engaged. On each level, Pholcidread has laid a Doom Egg that causes her to seek out her enemies and defend the egg fiercely when it is attacked. Pholcidread will also continuously harass her enemies with her brood whom she calls out to on a constant basis. Pholcidread goes berserk after 12 minutes on non-Heroic difficulties. This timer becomes 10 minutes for Heroic mode.

Stage One: The Broodmother's Gambit
Pholcidread does not always engage her enemies in combat during this part of the encounter. She instead sends her brood to attack her enemies to drive them out of her lair and from damaging her Doom Eggs. If Pholcidread reaches the level of the Doom Egg that is currently being attacked, she engages the raid for a short time before fleeing again. She will wait 40 seconds after each Venom Spew before returning to defend the Doom Egg.





Pholcidread's Lair
Throughout her lair, Pholcidread nurses many eggs which contain her numerous children and her slain foes. The eggs that are most important to her are the Doom Eggs which will cause the Broodmother to focus on her attackers directly. There is a Doom Egg on each elevation level of her lair which must be destroyed before Pholcidread forcefully hatches the egg herself.





Doomweb Guardian
If Pholcidread attacks players who are fighting the same Doom Egg for a third time, she will hatch the Doom Egg which in turn reveals a Doomweb Guardian.







Toxicfang Broodguard
These powerful children of Pholcidread arrive at the behest of the broodmother, ready to protect her Doom Eggs from intruders and send their corpse dangling from above. Pholcidread calls forth her children to attack every 40 (: 30) seconds.









Egg Warden
When Pholcidread calls for her children to defend the Doom Egg, a pair of Egg Wardens will arrive alongside the Toxicfang Broodguards. These wardens carry a sack of spider eggs on their backs and will drop it upon death, revealing many spiderlings.







Egg Hatchling
Upon death, the Egg Wardens will drop the sack of eggs they carry on their backs. These eggs reveal many spider hatchlings that will attack players at random. They only possess melee attacks. ''5 hatchlings will spawn per warden on 10-player difficulties. 8 will spawn per warden on Raid Finder difficulty and 10 will spawn per warden on 25-player difficulties.''

Stage Two: Mother's Mayhem
If all 4 Doom Eggs are destroyed, Pholcidread fixates on her enemies directly instead of resorting to hit-and-run tactics. She adopts a new arsenal of abilities to help tear her foes apart. : Pholcidread will screech for the assistance of her more grown children throughout this stage of the battle.









Toxic Crawler
When Pholcidread begins to directly attack her enemies on Heroic difficulty, she starts calling for her mature children constantly to assist her. Every 45 seconds, a Toxic Crawler will rush in to protect its mother. The time between crawlers is reduced by 5 seconds, down to a minimum of 5 seconds.





Strategy
Pholcidread is not a terribly difficult encounter to master. Somewhat similar to Beth'tilac, Pholcidread is a two-phase encounter with the first one being the longest. When she is engaged, Pholcidread runs up from the bottom floor to the top of her web lair. Her lair has 4 different levels that can only be accessed by Loose Webs that is left behind by Pholcidread or any of her adds. Players start on the bottom floor but with the use of the Loose Webs, they are able to reach the higher points of the lair.

Phase One
The majority of this Phase is spent not focused on Pholcidread, but special adds that do not fight back. These adds are known as Doom Eggs. These eggs are the main focus of Phase One. There is one egg per level of Pholcidread's lair. Once all four eggs are destroyed, Pholcidread enters Phase Two where she becomes the main focus.

When engaged, Pholcidread should be ignored and all damage must be on the nearby Doom Egg in order to do as much damage to it before the boss calls forth adds. She will cast Venom Spew on the raid after she runs away to the top of her web lair. This damage must be healed through as it hits harder per use as Venom Veins is applied with each cast. As players progress from Egg to Egg, Pholcidread will cast it each time she leaves from engaged players. Pholcidread will also attack players (running back down to them) 40 seconds following a Venom Spew.

Focus all damage on the Egg until adds spawn at the 40 second mark. Afterwards, players should focus their attention on the three adds that will spawn. There is no danger in keeping the adds next to the Doom Egg so that should be done to allow for cleaving abilities to inflict damage to the egg as well.

Pholcidread's Children
Every 40 seconds, Pholcidread calls out to her children which attack in groups of three. Players have to contend with two Egg Wards and a single Toxicfang Broodguard. These add need to be killed quick to get some time on the egg before the next group comes out.

Egg Warden
Players should focus the egg wardens down to prevent their frequent use of Poison Charge which disrupts any attempt at stacking up as the charge will affect everyone in range of the charge target. The will also Web Nova those in melee range which, when combined with the attacks of the Broodguard, can deal serious damage to non-tanks. When each of these adds are killed, they will also release several small adds called Egg Hatchlings that just needs to be AoE'd down. Once both Wardens are dead, players can move in to attack the Broodguard.

Toxicfang Broodguard
These should be stunned as often as possible to avoid their stacking Acid Strikes from overwhelming tanks. The stuns will also help prevent their Wide Swipe ability from occurring quite as often. Upon reaching low health, they gain the Poison Frenzy that makes each of their melee attacks deal pure Nature damage and increases the attack speed of the Broodguard. This contributes to high tank damage going that calls for a defensive cooldown to shake off the damage during this point.

Doomweb Guardian
Players need to be quick in killing the adds while doing high damage to the Doom Egg on each level. If Pholcidread reaches the web level of the attacked Doom Egg for a third time, she will hatch the egg which in turn spawns the very deadly Doomweb Guardian. This occurs effectively two minutes after Pholcidread first reaches the level players are on. This add should never come into play during any attempt as it can and will wipe the raid. Upon spawning it will cast Poison Barrier which halves all damage taken while it lives. This makes any attempt at killing it pointless. The add will also fixate on random players for 30 seconds before fixating again. While affected by Doom Fixation, the Guardian will gain 100% increased movement and attack speed. This ensures the guardian kills each target it fixates upon. Lastly, this add will cast Toxic Volley with each melee attack that lands which when combined with the 100% attack speed from the fixate, the guardian will make quick work of the raid as the damage strikes the whole raid and is unavoidable. The only way to avoid this is to never have this add join the fight and thus quickly kill the Doom Egg before the boss makes a third trip to the same level.

Pholcidread
Each time the boss climbs down and reaches the same level players are on, she enters a Fierce Protector state that causes her to attack players for 30 seconds with a set of abilities.

Poisoned Fang serves as a tank swap mechanic when several stacks of this ability are affecting the tank. With each stack that player deal additional Nature damage and takes extra Nature damage from abilities and melee attacks. This combined with the fast attack speed of Pholcidread and her adds can take down a tank quickly even with just a few stacks.

Player should also take notice of when Pholcidread faces away from her tank and begins casting Necrotic Venom, for this attack inflicts a high amount of damage (don't forget that Pholcidread gains an increasing number of Venom Veins stacks each time she flees from the raid, including when the encounter starts) and reduces healing taken by a good amount. Healers should keep an eye on those that do manage to get hit as Pholcidread will be constantly using Toxic Bolt during her Fierce Protector buff. Healers and players in general should take note that each time Pholcidread returns to attack the raid, she is going to be more stronger than before as each Venom Spew cast will add to another stack of Venom Veins. So while players are on the last Doom Egg and Pholcidread climbs up towards the raid, her attack will gain the power to one shot her targets, especially Poisoned Fang and Necrotic Venom. Healing will be hard at this point since her Toxic Bolt direct damage and the periodic damage will bring players close to death.

Phase Two
Once players have successfully ascended throughout her lair and destroyed each Doom Egg, Pholcidread herself will face the raid and no longer calls in adds (at least on Normal and below) and does not flee to the farthest part of her lair. She becomes an all out DPS race in an attempt to take out her remaining health before her highly stacked Venom Veins-empowered abilities make short work of the raid.

Web Blast may cause problems for healers trying to heal tanks that are low on health. This effect cannot be avoided it must simply be dealt with. Making sure everyone is full on health ensure no one dies from damage from Pholcidread. This ability can also be problematic for tanks as they must avoid facing Pholcidread when she casts Cone of Poison as it can and will one-shot those it hits. By facing away, tanks are able to live through the damage (even though the damage inflicted will still be high with the high number of Venom Veins stacks).

Other than Web Blast, healers and players in general must deal with Venom Spit carefully to prevent poison pools from littering the area. One such way is to have everyone stack behind the boss in melee range and everyone moves to the left or right when the channel is finished to make sure all pools land in the same area and thus only one spot is affected and then having the boss moved once there is nowhere else to stack. Using this tactic ensure players are almost always out of the area of effect. However, with Web Blast, this can be problematic as being unable to move can kill a player, even from full health.

Lastly, once she hits 20% health, Pholcidread gains Frenzy which doubles her attack speed and increases her melee damage by 30% and causes her to use her abilities twice as often. This is the moment where Bloodlust/Heroism should be used along with cooldowns to survive the increased intensity that occurs at this point. With Web Blast going off almost constantly and Cone of Poison being used quite often on tanks along with players having to move from Venom Spit pools, Pholcidread at this state can be treated as a separate phase in itself as the encounter can quickly end in defeat if things are done incorrectly.

Heroic Changes

 * While in Fierce Protector, Pholcidread attacks 10% quicker every 5 seconds while she attacks players.


 * Players will need to constantly click the Loose Webs they are on to successfully ascend to the next web level lest they lose their grip and fall back down to the previous level.


 * While alive, Toxicfang Broodguards will cast Venom Shield on the Doom Egg their defending that prevents it from taking damage from players.


 * Toxicfang Broodguards gain the Fury Aura ability that amplifies its attack speed and that of its allies and causes them to use their abilities twice as often. This forces the Broodguard to have priority over the Egg Wardens.


 * Egg Wardens gain the Vital Venom attack which deals a high amount of damage to their targets that must be healed through.


 * During the second Phase of the encounter, Pholcidread periodically calls out to Toxic Crawlers with increasing frequency that possess abilities that can disrupt a raid's attempt to safely deal with Pholcidread's abilities.

Quotes

 * Intro
 * yell


 * Aggro
 * yell


 * Fierce Protector
 * bossemote


 * Call Children
 * bossemote


 * Hatch Doom Egg
 * bossemote


 * Phase Two
 * bossemote


 * Player killed
 * emote


 * Frenzy
 * bossemote


 * Berserk
 * bossemote


 * Death
 * emote
 * yell

Achievements