User:Serillian/Grand Empress Qri'vexx

Grand Empress Qri'vexx is the eighth and final boss encounter of Temple of Qri'vexx on Normal and LFR. She is the penultimate boss when fought on Heroic mode. She rules the mantid from deep within the temple, her mind being fed on by the fearful energies of the Sha that resides within inaccessible caverns.

Background
Following the fall of Grand Empress Shek'zeer, the mantid became leaderless for a time, unable to appoint a worthy leader to rule them all. However, before the Klaxxi could reclaim their former lands, the calm but deadly Qri'vexxi Elders infused the mystical Qri'vexx with the energies of Amber. Under her newfound power, she quickly ascended to the rank of Empress by force, believing she was destined to take up the role over any other competitors. She quickly eliminated potential rivals in a vicious attempt to have no equals or replacements. However, the respectful Gri'mak who once served the Empress, saw through her viciousness and quickly sensed a darkness lurking in her heart and mind. Leaving the Qri'thik, Gri'mak concluded that such darkness came from the work of the dreaded Sha. Qri'vexx, wanting to make sure no one knew of the dark presence, quickly aimed to spread her corrosive powers to the remainder of the mantid. Fueled by the dreadful powers of the corrosive Sha, the Qri'thik make it their goal to protect the Empress with their life. Now, Qri'vexx's plan is now pointed towards the rebellious Klaxxi and their new allies. She will not stop until they are extinguished from the face of Pandaria.

Encounter Abilities
The Empress encounter contains a 12 minute berserk timer. This is increased to 15 minutes for LFR. Battleguard Gri'mak and his entourage of Fanatics and Blade Reavers bring assistance throughout the battle. On Heroic mode, Qri'vexx has a hard enrage timer of 18 minutes.

Phase One: Bow Before Your Empress!
Empress Qri'vexx is surrounded by 3 Chrysalis Eggs each guarded by a pair of Qri'vexxi Terrormancers. She uses her normal set of abilities during this Phase. Later phases has her using abilities gained from draining the power of her eggs.









Interlude Phase One: Horrific Chaos
When damaged to 70% remaining health, Empress Qri'vexx calls to her Terrormancers and powers all of her Chrysalis Eggs. The Terrormancers must be defeated before the carapace on the eggs fade. Qri'vexx calls to her Qri'thik Royal Guards to flank and decimate the players only to be intercepted by Battleguard Gri'mak and his entourage of guards.







Chrysalis Eggs have the same health each. '': Each destroyed Chrysalis increases the health of all other Chrysalises by an additional 20%. 25-man: All Chrysalis Eggs gain 40% additional health for each one destroyed.''

Qri'vexxi Terrormancer
When Empress Qri'vexx begins to drain power from the eggs, she calls to her Terrormancers to protect the eggs from harm.







Phase Two: Fear Your Queen!
When a pair of Qri'vexxi Terrormancers and an egg their preserving are destroyed, Empress Qri'vexx rejoins the battle and gains the power of the destroyed egg. The Royal Guards reinforce and battles Gri'mak's guardians once again. Her abilities change depending on the chrysalis destroyed.



Horror Chrysalis
Draining the destroyed Horror Chrysalis of its power causes Empress Qri'vexx to surge with horrifying power.









Dread Chrysalis
Draining the destroyed Dread Chrysalis of its power causes Empress Qri'vexx to surge with dreadful power.







Fear Chrysalis
Draining the destroyed Fear Chrysalis of its power causes Empress Qri'vexx to surge with fearful power.









Interlude Phase Two: Dreaded Chaos
When damaged to 40% remaining health, Empress Qri'vexx calls to her Terrormancers once again and powers her remaining Chrysalis Eggs. The Terrormancers must be defeated before the carapace on the eggs fade. Qri'vexx calls to her Qri'thik Royal Guards to assault and destroy the players only to be intercepted by Battleguard Gri'mak and his entourage of guards.







Chrysalis Eggs have the same health each. '': Each destroyed Chrysalis increases the health of all other Chrysalises by an additional 20%. 25-man: All Chrysalis Eggs gain 40% additional health for each one destroyed.''

Qri'vexxi Terrormancer
When Empress Qri'vexx begins to drain power from the eggs, she calls to her Terrormancers to protect the eggs from harm.







Phase Three: Feel Your Quaking Terror!
When a pair of Qri'vexxi Terrormancers and an egg their preserving are destroyed, Empress Qri'vexx rejoins the battle and gains the power of the destroyed egg. The Royal Guards reinforce and battles Gri'mak's guardians once again. Her abilities change depending on the chrysalis destroyed.



Horror Chrysalis
Draining the destroyed Horror Chrysalis of its power causes Empress Qri'vexx to surge with horrifying power.









Dread Chrysalis
Draining the destroyed Dread Chrysalis of its power causes Empress Qri'vexx to surge with dreadful power.







Fear Chrysalis
Draining the destroyed Fear Chrysalis of its power causes Empress Qri'vexx to surge with fearful power.









Interlude Phase Three: Fearful Chaos
When damaged to 10% remaining health, Empress Qri'vexx calls to her final pair of Terrormancers and powers her final Chrysalis Egg. The Terrormancers must be defeated before the carapace on the eggs fade. Qri'vexx calls to her Qri'thik Royal Guards to assault and destroy the players only to be intercepted by Battleguard Gri'mak and his entourage of guards. Depending on the Chrysalis that remains, Qri'vexx will gain abilities associated with that egg.







Chrysalis Eggs have the same health each. '': Each destroyed Chrysalis increases the health of all other Chrysalises by an additional 15%. 25-man: All Chrysalis Eggs gain 25% additional health for each one destroyed.''

Qri'vexxi Terrormancer
When Empress Qri'vexx begins to drain power from the eggs, she calls to her Terrormancers to protect the eggs from harm.







Phase Four: Meet Your End!
When a pair of Qri'vexxi Terrormancers and an egg their preserving are destroyed, Empress Qri'vexx rejoins the battle and gains the power of the destroyed egg. The Royal Guards reinforce and battles Gri'mak's guardians once again. Her abilities change depending on the chrysalis destroyed.



Horror Chrysalis
Draining the destroyed Horror Chrysalis of its power causes Empress Qri'vexx to surge with horrifying power.









Dread Chrysalis
Draining the destroyed Dread Chrysalis of its power causes Empress Qri'vexx to surge with dreadful power.







Fear Chrysalis
Draining the destroyed Fear Chrysalis of its power causes Empress Qri'vexx to surge with fearful power.









Phase Five: Witness Your Demise!
When Grand Empress Qri'vexx is damaged to 1% health on Heroic difficulty, she unleashes the full power of her ruined eggs and the dreaded Sha that corrodes her body applies its powers throughout her body. Battleguard Gri'mak, having defeated the Royal Guards, brings his assistance to defeat the corrupted Empress. During this Phase, Qri'vexx loses her Strength of Qri'vexx buff and takes on different form, becoming a new and unstoppable creature.















Battleguard Gri'mak
Gri'mak brings his assistance to players against the final battle with Empress Qri'vexx.







Strategy
This is quite a long encounter. It also possesses several tough abilities that can kill a player. Her 12 minute enrage timer is quite forgive when going in with high DPS. She is a four-phase encounter.

Phase One: 100% - 70%
During the first Phase, she has only three abilities to attack the raid with for the time being. Furious Assault deals an increasing amount of damage to the tank over time. If allowed to go all the way through on the same person, that player will eventually die. To counter this threat, another tank can simply taunt the Empress to cause her to focus the remaining strikes on the new player. Fortunately the damage resets when she switches targets so all is well so long as both tanks are responding to each other.

The Empress will also throw out a raid damage ability in the form of Tormented Screams, which inflicts a great amount of damage to all players in the raid with the damage reduced greatly against those more than 20 yards away (ranged will take very little and thus, survivable damage). One must be on the lookout for the timer on this ability in order to give melee enough time to escape the "killzone" radius of the attack. If anyone close enough to her is hit, they will also be feared for a short duration.

Other than the above abilities, the only attack to worry about during this Phase is her Amber Bomb which is thrown out into the raid at increasing numbers equivalent to the longevity of this Phase. Players only have 5 seconds to run into an Amber Bomb otherwise the whole raid will take a high amount of AoE damage. However, if someone steps into the bomb before it goes off, only they will suffer a burst in damage (30% of their health to be exact). The Empress should be leaving this Phase after a few rounds of Amber bombs are thrown out in order to prevent an uncontrollable number of bombs littering the floor waiting to go off.

Once the Empress reaches 70%, she becomes immune and runs to the center of her chamber (which she should be kept at to prevent unwanted movement). At this point, Battleguard Gri'mak and his entourage joins the battle, but the Empress calls for her Royal Guard to deal with them for the entirety of the fight.

For the entirety of this Phase Transition, Qri'vexx is completely immune to all damage due to her Sha Barrier. However, that's not all its capable of. Once 3 minutes have passed and all of her Chrysalis Eggs are still intact, the Empress returns to Phase One and is healed back to full.

The moment this Phase starts, players have the choice of targeting and destroy one of three Chrysalis eggs. Whenever an Egg is destroyed, the Empress siphons its powers and gains new abilities and begins using that set of skills until the next Phase Transition (which occurs at 40%).

When this Phase begins, and when players choose an Egg to destroy, they must first defeat the pair of Qri'vexxi Terrormancers that are protecting it from harm. A single tank should pick them up to prevent both tanks from gaining the debuff stacks the Terrormancers will apply.

Induce Terror is the stacking debuff placed on the tank by the Terrormancers. With both Terrormancers on a single tank, this effect stacks up quickly and every few stacks causes the tank to cower in fear for 3 seconds. At this moment, the offtank can pickup the adds off the first tank and continue to tank them until a "fear swap" occurs again. The debuff itself can be healed through but too many stacks can quickly cause a problem due to the Terrormancer's other ability, the Dread Burst. This inflicts increased damage based on the amount of Induce Terror stacks currently affecting the player. On the bright side, this effect can be interrupted and reflected, so extensive use of such abilities should be used. The Terrormancers can be stunned but are immune to silence effects, so to soften up the damage on tanks, these mantid should be stunned mercilessly (for as long as diminishing return allows).

Once the Terrormancers are dead, DPS on the adjacent Chrysalis can begin. If DPS is high on the Terrormancers, then the following egg will be destroyed in no time, out of risk of the Empress healing back to full health. Depending on the Egg destroyed, the Empress will use the abilities gained from that egg in the next Phase.

Phase Two: 70% - 40%
Starting from this Phase, Empress Qri'vexx will gain a strong buff known as Strength of Qri'vexx, which amplifies her overall damage each time she siphons the power of a destroyed egg. On Normal, her damage increases by 10% per egg, leaving her with a 30% damage increase during the last Phase of the encounter and depending on the last egg destroyed, those abilities can overwhelm healers.

Horror Chrysalis
If players destroy the Horror Chrysalis egg during the previous transition phase, Empress Qri'vexx gains the powers of that chrysalis to use and all abilities will deal 10% extra damage.

Horror Prison requires a certain number of players to move during the casting of this ability otherwise they will get trapped in a prison and suffer more than half of their health in damage. Combined with other abilities, players will more than like get killed. Simple movement will nullify any threat this ability poses to a player.

Terror Blast requires an interrupt or a tank cooldown to survive as it deals an extreme amount of damage and causes further Terror Blasts to deal even more damage. With no cooldown, Qri'vexx will cast this nonstop and enables her to quickly kill her targets. Therefore, an interrupt rotation should be used to prevent a blast from going off.

Horrifying Scream is another raid-wide attack that sends players running in horror and deals 50% of players' health to them in Shadow damage. This ability also hits hard and if anyone is caught in a Horror Prison when this attack goes off, death is certain for those unfortunate enough to be caught. This ability must be healed through as well.

Sha Corrosion is another raid-wide ability that applies an ever-increasing DoT debuff that can only be removed once players are healed (on Normal) above 75% health. This shouldn't be too hard to reach provided that other abilities granted by the Horror Chrysalis requires high healing.

Dread Chrysalis
If players destroy the Dread Chrysalis egg during the previous transition Phase, Empress Qri'vexx gains the powers of that chrysalis to use and all abilities will deal 10% extra damage.

Dread Nova calls for moving out of the way of the resulting dread bolts that will hurt any it touches. Players need to take care to stay out of the corrupted area after the bolt has exploded (either with a player or something else.)

Just like the Horror Chrysalis, Qri'vexx will use a Scream ability when empowered by the Dread Chrysalis. Her Dreadful Scream fears all players for 3.5 seconds and inflicts a hefty amount of Shadow damage over its duration. Because of this, any form of healing HoT and/or absorption effect must be in place beforehand to survive the damage (especially during the later Phases if the Dread Chrysalis is being destroyed second or last). Players will also take increased Shadow damage for the next 30 seconds so players must take care to avoiding the dread bolts from Dread Nova

Agony Lash is another one of her tank attacks that calls for someone else to help split the damage. However, the damage is still high enough that more than both tanks are required to soak the damage. The downside of doing so is that this ability's range increases for every player hit by the attack. With the debuff from Dreadful Scream, Agony Lash runs the risk of killing players who are not topped off (or it can kill someone who is, especially during the later Phases.)

Fear Chrysalis
If players destroy the Fear Chrysalis egg during the previous transition Phase, Empress Qri'vexx gains the powers of that chrysalis to use and all abilities will deal 10% extra damage.

Whisper of Fear is a debuff placed on several players occasionally. After a short amount of time, those players (and anyone else nearby) will be feared and suffer a hefty amount of Shadow damage. Because of the AoE effect it would apply, players with the debuff must run out of the raid. Players should have a predetermined spot to run to during the Fear Chrysalis buff in order to prevent more than one player running to the same area and thus end up getting feared twice.

Fearful Shockwave is directed at a random player, followed by a high damage attack that requires at least 1 (3 on 25-man) player to be struck by the blast. A tank would do for the soaking of this ability (both tanks and a high health DPS can take the damage from the Shockwave).

Fearbound Scream is an AoE attack used against the raid on cooldown and much more early if she fails to strike a required number of players with her Fearful Shockwave. Players will be sent running in Fear for 6 seconds while taking additional damage while feared. This can make getting rid of the Whisper debuff problematic (players end up being feared for much longer and taking even more damage from the DoT due to the scream's damage vulnerability effect.

Plague of Pestilence is a stacking DoT effect on the tank that calls for a tank switch. However, that alone doesn't stop the frequency of the ability, as each damaging tick on the victim reduces the cooldown of the DoT by 2 seconds. This makes the debuff stack up quite quick and make it tough to get rid of it.

All three sets of abilities have their own problems to give to the players but it is up to the raid (and more or less, the composition) to decide which Chrysalis has to be destroyed and in what order. But no matter what, the chrysalis that is destroyed last provides a more deadlier threat to the raid due to the abilities granted by it will inflict a high amount of damage (but the good side is that the final Phase where she has the +30% damage increase doesn't last that long).

As with the previous transition phase, players will have to decide which Chrysalis egg to go after next, and then defeat the protective Terrormancers and finally destroy the egg. Depending on the egg eliminated, Qri'vexx will once again gain its powers but this time her Strength of Qri'vexx buff boosts itself to 20% additional damage dealt. If any of the now two eggs remain after 3 minutes has passed during this Phase, Qri'vexx returns to Phase two and is healed to 70% health.

Phase Three: 40% - 10%
During this Phase, the abilities gained by the Chrysalis egg will now start dealing 20% more damage, putting an even greater stress on the raid. The abilities gained by the Horror Chrysalis contain two easily avoidable abilities, which cuts the number of effective abilities she has in two. Her scream attack hits even harder (despite it being 50% of all players' total health, the damage indeed increases) and her raid-wide DoT hurts a lot more. But being healed past 75% negates the hazardous side effects of Sha Corrosion.

The Dread Chrysalis and its Dread Nova is easily avoidable if players are fast enough. The Dreadful Scream and the Agony Lash are the only deadly attacks players should worry about. The 20% extra damage will make Agony Lash require even more players which in turn increases the distance of the cleave attack even further.

The Fear Chrysalis has an easy-to-disepl Fear/DoT debuff, a powerful cone attack which calls for extra healing/absorbs and the Scream which will go out requires quick reaction for healers to counter with shields and HoTS until the fear wears off. Lastly, the tank DoT just requires more tank switching and extra healing. Once more unto the breach, players must defeat the last pair of Terrormancers and wipe out the last Chrysalis Egg, and depending on the type of chrysalis, they can make or break the raid (especially with the 30% damage increase of Strength of Qri'vexx.

Phase Four: 10% - 0%
During the final Phase, Strength of Qri'vexx will amplify the Empress's damage by 30%, including her melee attacks. The melee swings should be the least of the raid's worry. The Horror Chrysalis has an avoiding Horror Prison attack (no one should be hit by it), the Terror Blast should be kept on lockdown by a interrupt-rotating team, the scream can and needs to be healed through along with the Sha Corrosion requiring fast reaction times from the healers to top everyone off (stacking up can help deal with any previous problems presented.

The Dread Chrysalis and its Dread Nova will now need to be avoided otherwise players will die quick. The Dreadful Scream needs to be healed through much faster and nearly the entire raid should stack up for Agony Lash to prevent a potential "deathless" attempt.

With the Fear Chrysalis, Qri'vexx will threaten to quickly kill those who are not dispelled by Whisper of Fear. Another survival cooldown (especially from another player) will be needed to outlast the Fearful Shockwave attack and the Fearbound Scream as well. The Plague of Pestilence needs to simply be healed through with the occasional absorb from healers.

Heroic Changes

 * If the player who taunts Qri'vexx for her Furious Assault is too far away (basically out of her melee range), she will instead continue attacking her current player, effectively killing them in the process.


 * The Corrosive Sha of Terror corrupts the Empress with Sha-Touched, increasing her attack speed and granting each of her melee attacks to deal bursts of Shadow damage.


 * During each Phase Transition, Empress Qri'vexx will pelt the raid with Sha Volley every 10 seconds, adding a form of raid damage during those parts of the encoutner.


 * For each Chrysalis Egg destroyed, the remaining eggs will gain 15% (25-man: 25%) additional health per egg destroyed. This demands extra DPS during each Transition Phase with the final transition requiring the most.


 * Instead of casting Horror Prisons under a select number of players, Qri'vexx unleashes the prisons under all players. The damage will also be fatal during the 4 seconds of being stunned.


 * Terror Blast inflicts Shadow damage equal to the tank's total health, which basically requires a little extra absorbs to be applied.


 * The ever-increasing Sha Corrosion debuff will fade once the player is healed to full health, requiring a little extra healing.


 * The number of players needed to take damage from Fearful Shockwave has increased, effectively requiring more players to take bursts of damage from the Empress.


 * If Qri'vexx continues dealing melee damage to her target that is affected by Plague of Pestilence, the damage increases in proportion with the damage dealt by her melee swings. This basically requires a fast taunt from a second tank to prevent the first from getting overwhelmed by the debuff.


 * Instead of being defeated at the end of Phase Four, Empress Qri'vexx enters a new, fifth Phase separate from the others. This restores her health to 50% while she becomes more tougher fight that gets increasingly difficulty as the Phase nears the end.

Quotes

 * Intro
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * yell
 * yell


 * yell
 * yell


 * Aggro
 * yell


 * Sha-Touched
 * bossemote
 * yell


 * Tormented Screams
 * bossemote


 * Amber Bomb
 * yell


 * Phase Transition
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * yell


 * Next Phase (Horror Chrysalis)
 * yell


 * Next Phase (Dread Chrysalis)
 * yell


 * Next Phase (Fear Chrysalis)
 * yell


 * Heroic Phase
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * Contagious Terror (Heroic)
 * bossemote
 * yell


 * Chrysalis Bolt (Heroic)
 * yell


 * Sha Rejuvenation (Heroic)
 * yell


 * Player killed
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * Berserk
 * yell


 * Death (Normal)
 * yell
 * bossemote


 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * Death (Heroic)
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * emote


 * yell
 * bossemote


 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * yell
 * yell
 * yell

Achievements

 * Heroic: Grand Empress Qri'vexx - Put an end to Grand Empress Qri'vexx in the Temple of Qri'vexx on Heroic difficulty. Title reward: Emperor/Empress 


 * Dethroning the Empress - Defeat Grand Empress Qri'vexx on Normal or Heroic difficulty in 8 minutes.


 * A Quarrel with the Queen - Eliminate Grand Empress Qri'vexx in Temple of Qri'vexx on Normal or Heroic difficulty after destroying each of her Chrysalis Eggs first.
 * Destroy the Horror Chrysalis first
 * Destroy the Dread Chrysalis first
 * Destroy the Fear Chrysalis first