Il’gynoth regularly puts a debuff on several players, denoted by a targeting circle
Circle will grow and shrink
When any circle expands to its maximum size, it’ll explode for moderate damage to the affected player
When this debuff is removed, it explodes and deals damage based on its size when removed. The larger the circle was, the higher the explosion’s damage
Clotted Corruption add now spawns in Phase 2 while the raid fights the Organs
It’ll periodically charge forward, dealing moderate damage to anyone hit and absorbing Blood of Ny’alotha adds
Absorbing a Blood of Ny’alotha add causes the Clotted Corruption to grow in size and increase damage dealt
This add must be tanked
A note on strategies here
While we don’t necessarily like this strategy, we strongly recommend you use the “no dispel” strategy pioneered and popularized by Alpha. It makes the fight significantly easier, removes a mechanic, and will allow you to get much further into the fight much more quickly. Unless Blizzard does something to alter this strategy’s effectiveness, it’ll remain the recommended strategy. We’ll list both strategies here, but for the time being, your guild will likely find the “no dispel” strategy to be easier.
UPDATE 4/25/2020 – Blizzard has made several tuning changes to this fight over the last couple of months. The most recent one reduces the maximum size of the Cursed Blood circles, but does not change the speed at which they grow. If effect, this change actually increases your raid’s damage taken in the no-dispel strategy. With that, plus the changes to the damage from the Curse being dispelled, the “proper” strategy may actually prove simpler for your guild if you’re just beginning the fight.
No-Dispel Strategy
General Info
This strategy is exactly what it sounds like, you just never dispel Cursed Blood for the entire fight
This effectively removes about 30% of the total raid damage output of the fight
Additionally, the Touch of the Corruptor (Mind Control) cannot be applied to people with Cursed Blood
Therefore, rather early into the fight, you’ll stop having to deal with the Mind Control mechanic as well
We recommend 2-3 tanks, 3-4 healers, and 14-15 DPS
If you run 3 tanks, at LEAST one should be a BDK, with heavy Echoing Void or Twilight Devastation
That player’s only purpose is to help grip the Blood adds, and deal as much damage as possible
If you run the “No Dispel” strat, use 3 healers
If you use the “Proper Dispel” strat, use 4 healers
Cursed Blood is cast at 0:20, then every 45 seconds
8 players are afflicted with the debuff per cast
If using this no-dispel strat, your entire raid will have Cursed Blood by 1:50 into the fight
Cursed Pulse
This is the damage a player takes when their circle reaches full size
Deals about 175k damage
Reaches full size about every 20 seconds
Managing the circles
Remember, the Cursed Blood circles only deal damage at full size, you have a full 20 seconds between pulses
It’s safe to stand near people when circles are small, or shrinking
Just make sure players move away from each other when a circle is growing and getting close to full size again
“House of Cards”
I personally like this term in describing this strategy
You’re removing some mechanics and a lot of damage from the fight, but there’s a major downside
In essence, this is a High Risk – High Reward strategy
The risk is that after 1:50, when the whole raid has Cursed Blood, a single player dying will likely result in a nearly instant raid wipe
When a player dies, their Cursed Blood circle immediately explodes, and if the circle is at half-size or larger you’re kinda screwed
As soon as 1 player dies and their circle explodes, it’ll lead to a chain-reaction of other people dying, circles exploding, and the entire raid falling over within seconds
The reward, though, is that all it takes is one good pull where nobody messes up and the boss dies. For many guilds, this strategy can nearly halve the total number of progression pulls before a kill
As such, it’s vitally important that every player in the raid does everything they can to keep themselves alive
This includes using personal defensives, Healthstones, Health Potions, and even going as far as to make sure they’re sub-40 corruption. A single Thing from Beyond spawning at a bad time and killing that one player can instantly wipe the entire raid
Phase 1 – Fighting Il’gynoth
Phase 1 (whenever you’re fighting Il’gynoth) is very similar on Mythic to Heroic
Tanks should swap after soaking 2 Eye of N’zoth giant lazers
Managing positioning is more vital, and dropping the Corruptor’s Gaze (eyebeam lazer) puddles in the correct spot is important
You’ll want to keep the puddles as consolidated as possible, giving you more room to move around
You can essentially use up old areas near previously-killed Organs in subsequent Phase 1s
On the pull, everyone should be stacked in melee range of the boss, on the opposite side of him to where the first Organ you’ll fight is
A Warlock should set up a Gateway directly through the boss, towards the side with the first Organ that’ll be killed
As soon as the first Corruptor’s Gaze swirlies come out, everyone in the raid clicks the Gateway and gets flown to the other side of the boss
By doing this, you’ll drop all of the puddles from this first Gaze inside the boss’s frame, essentially removing it from needing to be worried about
As in Heroic, have the tanks positioned in set locations for each of the 4 Phase 1’s you’ll enter. Have the rest of the raid spread around, based on which Organ was last killed
Make sure to not be standing in someone else’s circle when it’s about to reach full size
In all subsequent Phase 1’s after killing the first organ, managing the Blood adds is important
DPS should be swapping to these and killing them
If you have a Blood DK, they should be using Grip on CD to bring Bloods under the boss for easy cleave
Players being fixated by Blood adds need to run away
If you’re being hit by a Blood and get several stacks of the DoT, plus your circle reaches full size, it’s likely you’ll die
Do absolutely anything you can to prevent these guys from reaching people
Keep in mind, when Blood adds die they explode and deal about 75k damage to the raid
If you enter a Phase 1 with a Clotted Corruption add still alive, cleave it down. We don’t recommend hard-swapping to the Clotted add over killing Il’gynoth, just keep it tanked near the boss and cleave it
As a note, the damage from this add’s Charge can be mitigated by BoP, so utilize this as much as possible
Nobody else except the target should get hit by the charge, as it deals about 250k Physical damage to anyone hit
We recommend using Bloodlust immediately upon killing the 3rd Organ and entering the 4th and final Phase 1
As in Heroic, this is an all-out burn, kill the boss before anyone in your raid dies
Raid should be primarily focused on pure boss damage here, as you won’t be able to fully kill off all the Bloods as they spawn
Phase 2 – Fighting Organs
Again as in Heroic, have a set order for killing Organs
See graphic below, we recommend killing Skull first, X second, Star third
Because the raid will all have Corrupted Blood circles, positioning here gets sketchy and much more difficult
Healers will likely want to use CDs during this phase, as people likely will end up getting hit by circles overlapping
Everyone in the raid needs to do the best they can of spreading out and not being in someone else’s circle explosion
This is most difficult for Melee, as there’s a limited amount of room available
Ranged should make sure they aren’t too close to the Organ you’re killing. Do not take away a melee player’s spot
Your DPS should focus on killing the Organ, but also get the Clotted Corruption add as low as possible
When the Clotted add is sub-20% HP, it’s useful to let it charge over Blood adds, absorb them, then kill the Clotted off
When the Blood adds are absorbed, they don’t explode like they do when they’re killed
Nobody else except the target should get hit by the charge, as it deals about 250k Physical damage to anyone hit
Assign Ranged players to interrupt the Organs that are active, but not being killed yet
You do not want to let any casts go through, as any extra Blood adds spawning is always a bad thing
Warlocks are amazing for this, as they can just set their Felhunter pets to the far Organs and interrupt with minimal DPS loss
After an Organ dies, the raid should shift and reposition for the next area where Corruptor’s Gaze puddles will be dropped
Rinse, repeat, kill the 3 Organs, lust and burn the 4th and final Il’gynoth
By doing this “No Dispel” strategy, you’ll likely start getting to the 3rd Il’gynoth or even 3rd Organ relatively quickly. It’s at that point the fight becomes much more dangerous
Between a large number of Blood adds chasing people, the Bloods dying and exploding, and the entire raid having Corrupted Blood circles exploding on them at various times, it’s very easy to die
As we’d said earlier, especially later in the fight, if a single person dies it’ll likely lead to a near immediate raid wipe
“Proper” Strategy – Dispelling Cursed Blood
General Info
This is the strategy Complexity Limit used for the WF Il’gynoth kill, and are continuing to use
It requires more overall coordination from the raid, but there’s less individual pressure on most of the raid (except the raid leader)
If you’re using this strategy, every single player in the raid needs this Weakaura:
This Weakaura will put an Icon with a 9 second countdown on raid frames, indicating the size of someone’s circle
Dispels should happen when the circles are at their smallest, so when this countdown is at 2 or lower
4/25/2020 NOTE ABOUT THIS WEAKAURA – IT IS NOT PERFECT. IF YOU TAKE DAMAGE FROM ANYBODY ELSE’S CIRCLE, THE WEAKAURA BREAKS. THERE IS NO WEAKAURA THAT FUNCTIONS PERFECTLY FOR THIS FIGHT.
Your raid leader should call out all dispels, based on when a player’s circle is at its smallest
You don’t want too many dispels going out at a single time, or the combined damage can wipe the raid
We recommend never doing more than 3 within a 5 second window
The biggest danger isn’t necessarily the raid dying to too many dispel explosions, but the other people still with Cursed Blood
If 3 dispels go off, and someone’s circle reaches full size at the same time, that person is likely to die
When that person dies, their circle will explode for raid damage and likely wipe the raid
It’s hard to know if this strategy will increase or decrease the time you spend on initial progression
Once you learn it, the fight becomes very consistent to deal with in the future
Phase 1
Largely the same overall idea as above. Positioning and dropping of the Gaze puddles remains the same, as does prioritizing annihilating Blood adds in the 2nd and 3rd Phase 1
Your healers should dispel Cursed Bloods as they’re called out by your raid leader. Make sure you don’t dispel more than 3 within a 5 second window, or it’s likely someone may die
The real difficulty here in Phase 1 with this strategy is just properly managing dispels
It’ll take your guild a while to understand the flow of dispels, when it’s okay to pop 3 Cursed Bloods off back to back, when they need to be more spread out, etc
There really isn’t a hard and fast rule for this, other than dispel when the circle is as small as possible
In later Phase 1s, when you have Blood adds running around, your raid leader needs to keep an eye on when they’re dying. A Blood add dying does about half the damage as a Cursed Blood dispel, so if 2-3 Bloods all die in close succession, it’ll chunk the raid down pretty hard
Watch the timer for the MC closely. Right before it goes out, make sure to spread out as much as possible, then CC and focus down the MC’d targets
Absolutely do not let them get to you
This is especially dangerous if a player with Cursed Blood gets MC’d by a previously MC’d player. You lose control over managing that circle for a time, and it’s extremely dangerous
Phase 2
Using the Dispel strat, P2 is actually a bit easier
There’s no longer a major worry about positioning, since there won’t be nearly as many circles
Everyone (except assigned interrupters on other Organs) should stack near melee range soon after the Organs become attackable
As Circles start to shrink in size, drop a major raid CD, like a Barrier or Devo Aura, then dispel circles as they reach their smallest
Here, you can dispel up to 4 within a 5 second window. A major raid CD plus everyone being stacked for heavier healing should be enough for everyone to survive
As in the “No Dispel” strat, get the Clotted Corruption as low as possible, and try to have it absorb as many Blood adds as you can when it’s at low health
We still recommend using Bloodlust during your 4th and final Phase 1 with this strategy. Again, this is a hard burn, you need to kill the boss before the Blood adds overwhelm you
And that’s really all there is to say about this strategy. Learning how many dispels you can do at a time, or in close succession, is the primary difficulty of this strategy. Most of your wipes will be along the lines of dispel AoE damage killed someone who’s circle just reached full size, causing that person’s circle to explode on the raid and wipe everyone. There’s no easy way to explain figuring that out except just keep working on it.
