Maw of Lorkhaj Trial Guide

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Adds before Zhaj’hassa

Zhaj’hassa the Forgotten

Zhaj’hassa is the first boss of the trial and offers a very straightforward positioning check that forces most groups to maintain a loose stack:

Dark Monolith. Boss hits the ground with his weapon, and a pillar spawns on the position of the furthest away player. The best practice is to let the first ever pillar spawn right behind the boss, that’s why the group can stack as one until the first pillar spawns, and then spread to the correct positions.

Grip of Lorkhaj (Curses). Roughly, after a pillar spawns or after the Void Explosion, 3 players will get a curse that will charge under a player over 0.5 seconds.

STAY IN YOUR POSITIONS to avoid spreading the curse!
Start moving only after the AoE has finished charging. Everything that is stacked with the player by the end of the charge, will also get a curse.

Confucius

The curse will slow the player down and after 30 seconds kill them if not removed. Cursed players need to run towards one of the cleansing pads around the edges of the arena and walk over it. After you use the pad, the seal on it will disappear and reappear after 25 seconds. Dodge-rolling speed isn’t affected by the curse, so if you struggle to get there in time, dodge towards the pad. When you’re cleansed come back to the position.

Notice that pads in the picture are assigned to certain roles. There are multiple ways of handling this allocation and you can reassign the pads as you want. But if nobody is running around spreading curses, with this approach you should never run out of the pads to cleanse on.

If your raid lead understands that you will be able to finish the boss within the next 30 seconds (before the curses one-shot you), they may call out to ignore curses and just ask the group to parse the boss. In that case, do exactly this.

Void Explosion. After 5 pillars spawn, the boss channels an attack that will explode in 5 seconds and one-shot everyone who isn’t hidden behind a pillar. Make sure you look at the boss through the pillar.

The next time this mechanic will reappear after 4 pillars. Then 3, then 2, then 1, and if by then the boss isn’t dead, it’s a guaranteed wipe.

Ghostly Sar-m’Athra (Panthers). Untauntable adds that apply direct and bleed damage. Need to be chained in by the free tank and immobilised. If DDs or healers have a panther on them, block cast until the panthers are chained away or cleaved down.
1 panther spawns at 80%,
2 at 60%,
3 at 40%,
4 at 20%.
Need to die to the cleave on the main boss.

Shadow Burst. At 71-70% health the boss spawns a 1.9M shield that also deals an AoE splash damage to the group that increases each tick. At 31-30% health the boss casts the shield again, but it’s 2.8M now. It is a DPS+Heal+Position check, throw ults and burst it down.
Damage from this mechanic stacks if the group isn’t spread out, so it’s very important to hold the formation throughout the mechanic, while destroying the ward.

Adds before Twins

In addition to the previously introduced adds, the group will now encounter 3 different types of Ogres.

Vashai and S’kinrai (Twins)

The raid splits in 2 groups, 1 tank, 1 heal, 4 dds each.
Supports slot purges, tanks slot chains. One group stands on entrance side of the candle line, the other – at the exit side of it (exit side is where a weird-looking portal is).

Both groups remain in a very tight stack, this will be very important for the core mechanic of the fight.

Vashai (Lunar/Blue boss)

• Vashai throws negates on the furthest person in front of him. Avoid them or dodge out.
• After each prayer phase Vashai summons adds (Will of Vashai). That need to be chained in and taunted.
• They channel an attack on a random player creating a succession of AoE rolling towards that player on the ground. The larger the distance between the add and the player is, the more damage the mechanic will do 4.

S’kinrai

• S’kinrai stunlocks a random player and kills them if not interrupted
• Similar to Vashai, this boss spawns adds, that have the same stunlock mechanic. Can be just taunted, will run towards the tank themselves.
• Adds cast Lunar Flare attack that applies a fire dot that needs to be purged by supports 5, and also beam a random player, which makes interrupting them very important

Flow of the fight

Players have no aspects -> They get assigned

Lunar and Solar Aspects. Each boss has an aura over his head (solar [yellow] or lunar [dark]).

Once the fight begins Entrance tank taunts the LIGHT boss, Exit tank taunts the DARK BOSS, positioning their bosses near the group.

After around 5 seconds, all players will have a similar glow around their heads. 6 people standing the closest to the LIGHT boss will get the LIGHT glow, the rest will get the DARK glow.

Starting from this moment two things will happen:
– You deal full damage to the boss of the opposite colour, and only 10% of the damage to the boss of the same colour.
– If you come close to a player of the opposite aspect, you both explode and die, this is why we split in two groups and stay in close stacks.

Tanks cross-taunt bosses and bring the opposite colour bosses to their groups. Shortly after the aspects are assigned, the adds spawn. Each cycle there will be one more additional add. It’s crucial to chain them in as soon as possible so that the group doesn’t get overwhelmed.

In the animation above, note how each group remains on the same side of the arena during this initial phase of the fight. The only thing that really changes is the bosses that are forced to switch sides.

Aspect conversions

Throughout the fight, bosses will channel conversions, and 3 people without a taunt out of every group will CHANGE their aspects. To avoid bombing the group, they need to get out of their current group and run towards the opposite side. To avoid killing 3 people doing the same from the opposite side, we change groups CLOCKWISE around the arena.

Prayer phase -> Aspects get removed

Shadow Tempest/Lunar Flare aka Jump. After the conversion, the bosses will jump in the air and then randomly land one near exit, and another near entrance and start praying.

After around 5-7 seconds both bosses cause an explosion on their sides, killing every player with the same aspect as them or without it.

That means that when the prayer phase happens, both groups need to get CLOSE to the boss of the opposite colour (if you were hitting the light boss, it jumps away and lands near you, just stay near).

The raid lead calls out either “SWITCH SIDES/SWAP” (meaning the whole raid team needs to get clockwise to the opposite side of the candle line) or “STAY” (meaning you need to stay near the boss on your side).

Note that you don’t need to hug the boss to survive the explosion, you just need to be on the same side of the arena as the boss of the opposite colour. And you can check whether you are or not by using candles on the ground as your marker. It’s a good practice to continue damaging the boss, though, so most groups prefer getting into melee range and keep pushing.

Bosses don’t do any damage to the group during that phase, so just clean up, kill the adds if you still haven’t done that and keep pushing.

After the explosion, the aspects disappear for several seconds, and the fight basically restarts, so both groups stay near their bosses, and wait until they get their new aspects assigned.

Then, just like in the beginning of the fight, tanks cross-taunt the bosses, all DDs and healers stay in their places, adds spawn, etc. etc. It’s a good idea for both newly formed groups to move closer to the starting positions again to make sure that the tanks can chain-in the adds more easily. The remaining cycle repeats over and over:

• Aspects assigned: tanks cross-taunt, group stays
• Conversions: 3 people swap, the rest of the group stays
• Jumps: the whole raid either swaps or stays
• Boom! Aspects are erased: the whole raid stays and waits for the assignment

If one of the bosses dies, aspects are removed, and the remaining boss is now on a countdown. After 20 seconds, he will jump to the middle of the arena and wipe the group if not killed by then (because the group doesn’t have protection from the aspects anymore).

Here’s one full cycle of the fight in one continuous animation:

Adds after Twins (outdoors)

Adds before Rakkhat (indoors)

Rakkhat

Rakkhat is huge winged twilight and the last boss of the trial.

After watching the cutscene, note the large middle pad and 8 smaller pads around it. The only way to survive the boss for the MT is to stand on the pad glowing yellow. It grants you protection. The group stays away from the pad, because if someone steps on it, you get the protection for yourself and remove it from the MT.

Recurrent things:

– Block Threshing Wings (it will knock you back if you don’t)

– Before transitioning between pads, the boss will slam his booty on the ground. Can be lethal if overlaps with extra damage, so always block it.

– Never stay in front of the boss, it’s Dark Barrage mechanic will kill dds and healers instantly.

– When the backyard is up, block little projectiles flying through the middle if you are getting additional damage (meteors and such)

– If you touch a dark glowing pad or enter the backyard, you will get “breath of lorkhaj” effect on you, which will deal damage to everyone who stacks with you, until you cleanse on one of the 4 pads or die. If you enter the backyard or the dark glow again with the effect active, you will get one-shot

Execute phase: When the boss reaches 11%, he will teleport to the middle and start casting something angrily. MT (if not cursed), roll-dodges through the PAD 1, picking up a little orb in the middle of it OT picks up pad 2. Healers pick up pads 3 and 4. Each of those orbs reduce damage taken by the boss, so by removing them you make sure the damage is still there. We start with tanks, because you are the least affected by curses and 1-2 orbs are usually enough to kill the boss anyway. Throughout this phase everyone gets constant damage pressure on them, so stay stacked by the middle pad and BURN BURN BURN

Rakkhat hard mode

Void Avoided

Void Avoided is an achievement awarded for killing Rakkhat with 2 or less people affected by the Breath of Lorkhaj effect.

You can get that effect by:

• Going through the backyard entrance
• Stepping on the “cursed” pads that glow blue
• Getting knocked back to those pads by the Threshing Wings mechanic by the boss
• Running through the “cursed” pads on execute, removing the protection orbs

The easiest way to get this achievement is to skip the backyard altogether, and just burn the boss before the first backyard is over. Make sure to keep proper positioning, block Threshing Wings and if you get the curse by accident, call it so that the group could restart faster

Fang Focused

After Rakkhat completes the last platform of the cycle, all the platforms will start glowing yellow.

Damage Dealers

Each of you will have a platform assigned. They go clockwise starting with the first platform that boss jumps to (the one closest to the backyard). When you see your platform go yellow, you go inside and kill the add that stays on the platform with you. Supports will eventually ‘beam’ your add, and it will help you doing significantly more damage to it. If your add is down, check on your neighbours and help them kill their adds. Dodge heavy attacks from the add and burn.

Stay on your pad at all times. If you step off it, you will get one-shot

After Rakkhat throws the orb, and everyone is stunned, kill the remaining adds, ressurect others and the fight kind of starts from scratch, but starting from the 2nd pad, one archer will spawn each pad, OT takes it away, and we push and kill Rakhhat when there are 3 archers alive.

Backyard dds, please remember that we will need 1 more backyard after the lunar phase, since the 3rd archer spawns on platform 4.

Supports

Each of you has 2 platform assigned, once the phase begins, you go to the middle platform and use synergies on the adds located on platforms. Synergies have a cooldown, so we will press them in a specific order to make sure DDs can kill their targets and help their neighbours:

1st: MT – platform 1 + HL – platform 5 (Callout will be “1 and 5”) –everyone waits 2-3 seconds
2nd: OT – platform 2 + HR – platform 6 (Callout is “2 and 6”) –everyone waits 2-3 seconds
3rd: MT – platform 3 + HL – platform 7 (“3 and 7”) –another 2-3 seconds
4th: OT – platform 4 + HR – platform 8 (“4 and 8”)

Healers, remember that you still need to heal everyone, because DDs WILL take damage.