Zelvraak the Unbreathing

This boss in its first week was responsible for 67,000+ WIPES!  Not necessarily because of its difficulty, but because of ONE BASIC and very PUNISHING mechanic!  In this fight formation is key! You can apply whatever strategies you like but I personally think this one adds much more AWARENESS for the whole group about the ONE thing that will screw people up.

SO I suggest that you place yourselves around the center of the room in a square formation. The tank should stay as close to their spot as possible (for reasons) throughout the fight and the group should be in their own spots the majority of the time. Be sure to revisit that formation whenever it has to be broken by a side mechanic and that said mechanic is OVER. The formation is key!

This is for a very simple reason. You are looking over everyone else’s shoulders from your perspective so each person can see more. You cannot all keep turning around in one direction, or all only see ONE direction combined, you all need to be responsible for spotting what is behind someone else. So communication (whatever form you use for emotes, chat, voice, or text) is KEY!

BUBBLES!!!! – The most IMPORTANT mechanic in the ENTIRE encounter! During the fight, there are 4 major areas that have a hole in the ceiling (excluding the center). THIS is the reason for the formation. The more you can see from your perspective, the more likely you are to spot one of them from BEHIND another player that cannot see it.

Anyway, these holes on random rotation will let lose a slow-falling bubble. It takes roughly 10 seconds to go from ceiling to floor and if it ALMOST hits the floor about the same amount of time to go back up. Unless you hit it early of course.  However, after 40% they will get much faster! And sometimes get almost two at a time!

What’s the trick? Simple. If you see one, HIT IT! It doesn’t matter HOW much damage you do, a light attack a heavy attack whatever. HIT IT and send it back to where it came from.  Literally the easiest too APPLY mechanic in the fight, but the MOST failed one across the entire community.

Why? Because if you miss it, the entire room 100% wipes. No passing go, no collecting jawbones off the floor.  DEAD! Hit the orbs, or die. Above all other mechanics, THIS one will kill you and is the HIGHEST priority.  Don’t be lazy. You will die.

Heavy Attack Cone! – The boss Has a very nasty heavy attack, Alongside a regular heavy attack telegraph is a HUGE cone attack in the direction he is facing!  This gets progressively worse and underlines why I stated above that the tank needs to focus on its formation spot a LOT!

SPLIT! – During the fight the boss will split Leaving a ghost version of itself behind. This is why the tank does not want to run around the room too much. Each split ghost will park itself where it spawns and for the rest of the fight, every single time the boss does its cone attack, it TOO will do one in the direction the boss is facing. If you can control the boss well and not run around too much, you can almost stack these and have them all facing the same way as and when it happens. But if you go full-on cockroach and run around too much, they will be scattered all over the room and each phase will be harder to gauge where the cones are coming from until it is inevitably too late.  Focus, Control, DON’T RUN!

FEAR!!! – This fear is very different from any regular fear in the game. Usually, you can CC break but here you 100% cannot!  Instead what you cannot see doesn’t scare you! So, when you see the boss channeling, there will be a skull and black smoke emitting from him. You need to physically turn your character AWAY from him! Not your camera, YOU. If you turn away, and it goes boom, you will NOT be feared. However, if you fail, you will be feared for 3 seconds and you CANNOT break it.

If you are the tank you are pretty much dead as this normally is followed by his cone heavy attack! Getting hit by that when you are feared basically puts you in a grave!

Reflections – The boss will at around 75 (depending on phases at the time, you can overburn the health mid mechanics. And again at 25 (then periodically afterward), the boss will spawn 4x reflections of itself. These will fire projectiles at the group which CAN be dodged but also can be interrupted. The simplest way is to get one player on each corner and keep on the interrupts while the dps kill them one by one until they are gone. But failing that essentially, they have to die and you have to live. So just be aware, if you do not pay attention to interrupts and/or kill them, they will all hit you at once and it will make short work of the group.

Ice! – In the second phase of the fight the boss will start to cast ICE aoes on the ground to force you to move a lot. These are easy to avoid simply watch your feet and be sure to keep on top of your formation!

OH NO, MY SOUL!! – As weird as it sounds, the boss will push your soul out of your body! And your soul will run around like a headless chicken in random directions away from you! During this time you have damage over time hitting you while you rapidly die and cannot be healed! The only way to live is to run after your soul and collect it! Be fast!

The Realm of ‘No Idea What It’s Called’ – At around halfway through the fight (50% health) the boss will put EVERY player into their own instance. You all SOLO have to survive in your own room! No heals function so don’t even bother trying to heal.  In this room, there are white ghosts and black ghosts. The white ones will walk around slowly and you must one around and collect these to keep up heal over time on yourself.

The black ghosts will be flying in from the sides to get to the middle and you must kill as many as possible.  Don’t worry about how much dps you have because that actually makes no difference, they will die to ONE damage!  The more ghosts you kill the better until the phase is over!

Atronach – After the above mechanic, a HUGE Flesh abomination will spawn. Much like the one you encounter before starting the fight initially. This hits incredibly hard, has nasty aoe cleave-type attacks, and has a decent chunk of health. He is a priority. Help your tank out and get rid of this thing quickly!

If you cannot kill it fast, at least make sure it is still your main focus and keep the tank alive! You may have to be chunkier if you have less dps. It’s not a dps race at all, but the sooner the pressure is off the tank the better.

NOTE:  IF your group is very successful in the above phase, and MOST ghosts are killed, the Flesh Abomination will be a Flesh Atronach instead, which is MUCH smaller with MUCH less health and MUCH less of a threat!

HARDMODE!!! 

Minic – The Soul stealing mechanic is MUCH more aggressive on hardmode. Firstly, it actually applies to TWO people rather than just ONE. And secondly, whatever CLASS you are, the boss will MIMIC your major aesthetic! So if you are a Dragonknight he does fire, if you are a Sorcerer he does lightning, Warden he does ice, etc, etc.  Be ready for the healer to be on their toes for the new incoming damage which will alter depending on the players affected.

NOTE:  The reflections ALSO carry the Mimic benefit if they happened recently.

Resurrection or Horde?X – The downside to being dead is more than being dead. You are fighting a physical LICH! And he makes sure you don’t forget it. If someone DIES, they leave a Tombstone on the ground. And while they are dead and staying dead, it will rapidly spit out skeleton adds that you need to kill. They don’t have a lot of health but there is ENOUGH going on already without this headache!

Inferno – During the fight the boss lights the fires above his head with literal FIRE! Not the regular bluish color they are, but actual yellow/orangey fire. When this happens he will constantly spit fire at all members of the group, so healers, be on point with your hots to counter it!

NOTES: – In a nutshell, keep the boss as still as possible, hit him in the back of the face, and ALWAYS stay in formation as much as you can so you can see more of the room each and can spot what is happening behind each other.  When he fears, turn away. When the bubbles come (they have a  sound also) be sure to hit them, and when the adds come, interrupt and kill them.

After the portal phase, once the Atronach is down, no NEW game-breaking mechanics are seen, so basically if you can get TO the portal, you have done everything you need to do once and just has to repeat it.

There is NO DPS CHECK for the boss, so the last phase (40% and under) you can take as long as you like, just be sure to repeat the mechanics until it is dead, and DON’T PANIC!  If you miss ONE bubble…you are all dead. The rest is not so bad.

This is renowned for being “one of the most difficult bosses” but in actual fact, it is the easiest mechanic that people generally get wrong.  Focus, you can do it!

GOOD LUCK!!!