Named for Perah'Celsis' Abominable Laboratory

Ernax Heridion is the first boss in Parah’Celsis Abominable Laboratory which can only be accessed by level 90 players.

The first puzzle to figure out is how to clear the trash in his room without pulling the named. If you look carefully at the ceiling you will see heroic non-aggro mobs called ‘a tortured essence’, pulling one of these will bring a corresponding ‘twisted vindicator’. Rinse and repeat this process until only Ernax remains.

Along the right hand wall there is a passageway that leads further into the zone; there are trash mobs here which can path quite close so this is not a good area to tank him or park the raid, anywhere else will do. To prepare for this encounter, beef up your arcane resists (recommend 10k minimum) to minimise the AoE damage.

Ernax Heridion will do the following:

Hit you with arcane based AoEs, these come at regular intervals in the same pattern -

Tempest of Torment 1st tick followed 5s later by
Tempest of Torment 2nd tick followed 5s later by
Flash from Beyond

this combination will re-occur every 40s for the whole encounter and cannot be swiped. They hit moderately hard at point blank range but they can be healed through without the need to joust.

Cast Ectoplasmic Burst, every 60 seconds which also cannot be swiped. This is a hard hitting magic AoE that will one-shot some people if they are standing too close. Fortunately you will not have to create a timer because there is a big red message that appears on the screen when he is about to cast it.

Strategy

Pull Ernax to a good spot, debuff him and start banging away at his health. Heal through the AoE combo and joust out when the red message appears announcing Ectoplasmic Burst. Do all these things and your loot officer will be distributing boots with red adornment slots…

Ernax Heridion has 30,000,000 hitpoints.

Vernox the Insatiable Strategy

This is the second boss in Parah’Celsis Abominable Laboratory. He is a bit tougher than Ernax but still quite straightforward.

After beating the first boss you will need to clear the trash mobs leading up to Vernox’s room. There are two mobs in the room, Vernox the Insatiable and ‘a rage imbued raptor’, and it is possible to split them. They basically will aggro anyone who is in line-of-sight so it is advisable to keep any ‘explorers’ on a leash.

In the room is a huge specimen jar with the two mobs patrolling around it and the plan is for the tank to let the ‘rage imbued raptor’ see him when Vernox is out of sight. The raptor then needs to be pulled back and dealt with in a location where Vernox will not see any member of the raid. Once the raptor is down, setup the raid to pull the named, you will need to increase Noxious resists to about 10K.

Vernox the Insatiable will do the following:

Hit the raid with a 6 tick AoE combo, every 40 seconds:

Steely Talons (Slashing) 1st tick followed 6s later by,
Steely Talons 2nd tick followed 2s later by,
Septic Breath (Poison) 1st tick followed 6s later by,
Septic Breath 2nd tick followed 2s later by,
Whirling Fury (Disease) 1st tick followed 6s later by
Whirling Fury 2nd tick

The damage is proximity based, and increases the closer you are to the mob. In our experience the first round is the worst as the mob is not always fully debuffed. Once the debuffs are in it becomes easier but it is still a full time job for the healers to manage the damage spikes for the remainder of the fight.

To give people a very rough idea – Steely Talons 1&2 = 15K, Septic Breath 1&2 = 11K, Whirling Fury 1&2 = 9K so most players will need 20-25K of heals/reactives/wards over the 22 seconds.

Strategy

Providing that you can split the ‘rage imbued raptor’ you should be able to focus entirely on Vernox. The key to this fight is healing through the AoE damage spikes, other than that he is tank and spank.

Vernox the Insatiable has 40,000,000 hitpoints.

Sara Greenheart
After Vernox the Insatiable, work your way towards the next room. There is another mob that uses the line-of-sight aggro mechanic so be wary of fighting in open doorways.

Your raid will come to a circular shaped room with an exit to the right and 4 smaller rooms, even distributed around the larger one. There is a roaming droag in the corridor to the right which you should pull and dispatch. After the droag is dead the corridor should remain strictly off limits to everybody, this is because wandering too far in will trigger the script for The Scavanator.

Resists for Sara Greenheart are noxious and arcane. We use three fighters for this strategy, although there are alternatives.

Sara Greenheart will do the following:

Spawn adds, throughout the whole fight. These adds have the ubiquitous ‘cabbage on legs’ appearance and spawn in several different locations around the main room and in the side rooms, including the room where Sara Greenheart is located. These heroic adds are pretty weak and easy to kill, the downside is that left unchecked they can merge into a giant epicx4 ‘cabbage on legs’ complete with improved damage and a troublesome arcane AoE. There are two acknowledged tactics, kill the adds to prevent the x4 from forming, or let the x4 spawn and tank it in a far-away corner. For TDS the x4 has always caused us problems so we elect to prevent it from popping. We allocate one group to spend the whole encounter just patrolling the main room and alcoves for these adds. They spawn constantly and need to be engaged in combat to prevent them merging into the x4. The baby cabbage that spawns in the same room as Sara Greenheart is usually burned down by the three groups in the room.

Force a tank swap. Every minute Sara Greenheart will emote and everybody in the raid will see a red message. At this point you will need to switch the MT to a different archetype to prevent the current MT from being one shotted. We have used Guardian/Paladin, Guardian/Monk and Monk/Paladin with no problem (all these tanks have 60%+ Critical Mitigation). There are reports that tanking the encounter with a rogue will remove the tank swap requirement although I cannot confirm this. When the red message appears we request the DPS to back off until the new tank calls them back in.

Takes ages to die. Sara Greenheart has a whopping 60,000,000 health so settle in for a decent length encounter, especially considering that one group will be taking care of the cabbages.

Hit the raid with the following AoE combo:

Mists of Lethargy (Poison) 1st tick, 4s wait
Mists of Lethargy 2nd tick, 4s wait
Arcane Shatterstorm (Arcane) 1st tick, 8s wait
Arcane Shatterstorm 2nd tick and Cloud of Confusion (Arcane) 1st tick, 2s wait
Cloud of Confusion 2nd tick

These only hit for moderate damage and can be healed through without much problem. The first tick of Arcane Shatterstorm does have a knock-back so make sure that your MT is in a corner.

Strategy
The add group stays in the main room. The MT charges Sara Greenheart and tanks her in the corner behind where she starts with the second tank standing next to them. When the red message appears the second tank rescues Sara Greenheart and calls the DPS back in when they have established good aggro.

The add group usually splits up, with each member responsible for a known spawn point. When an add pops they snag it and run back to an agreed location where the fighter will grab it and the group burns it down, rinse & repeat.

Things learned the hard way
If you are fighting Sara Greenheart where she stands and one of the tanks does go down, the person rezzing them should move over to the left hand wall to prevent the tank being rezzed in the middle of the table and unable to move. Although this may stimulate gales of laughter, it does make it tricky for them to position the mob.

Haraakat the Seer

Haraakat the Seer is the next mob we face after The Scavanator has eaten his fill…

To clear the droags at the top of the room we usually get one fighter to pull them, wait for the incurable noxious stun and then the MT rescues the mob.

Haraakat is an interesting fight, you will need lots and lots of arcane resists – we did not win this fight until everybody in the raid was north of 15K in arcane resists.

After several attempts trying to tank him in various locations, we finally had success keeping him between the two book columns on the right-hand side of the room if your viewpoint is the bottom of the ramp.

Haraakat will do the following:

Bring friends. Every 60 seconds a heroic book called a ‘tome of forbidden lore’ will spawn and attack your raid. Have your OT ready to taunt this and get your DPS to burn it down fast. There are reports of the tome being able to stun players but we usually hit it with lots of interrupts and stifles just in case. The tome has about 500,000 health.

Teleport your raid around the room. Every 60 seconds Haraakat will teleport himself to the centre of the pedestal in the middle of the room and teleport every member of the raid to various locations. There are two ground floor locations under the ramp, two locations at points on the ramp and two locations on the top balcony (one of which is behind a column). You have 10 seconds to get from the port location onto the steps of the pedestal or you will be hit by a huge AoE called Ritual of Forbidden Lore. For some people this will mean jumping off the balcony so you will need to ensure that you can fall safely from that height. In order to beat this encounter regularly the majority of your raid must be able to negotiate this port every time – this means learning the locations and knowing the fastest way back. You can run / jump through the railings on the ramp and balcony but not the posts.

Hit your raid with the following AoE combo:
Bellowing Winds (Arcane), followed 10s later by,
Mindblast (Arcane), followed 10s later by,
Demoralizing Gale (Arcane)

These are on a 50s timer and cannot be extended. They all have a DoT component that must be cured to lower the damage and prevent a subsequent curse. Bellowing Winds will hit 10s after the pull and has a knock-back component on the first tick. For this reason we require that people use a potion for this AoE in case they are knocked away from their group. Mindblast & Demoralizing Gale both hit much, much harder in a 180 degree arc in front of the mob (high Arcane resist and good Crit Mitigation are highly recommended for the MT).
The odd thing with these AoE’s is that they will not proc during the teleport and ritual – although they will happily smash you immediately before and after. There are three things to consider.

If you get hit with the AoE and then immediately ported you will have time to pop a potion if you are fast.
When the MT gets back onto the pedestal after being ported he needs to quickly get the mob facing away from the majority of the raid and into the tank spot.
The fact that some AoE’s go AWOL during the ritual makes keeping ACT timers interesting. We work on the basis that Bellowing Winds – 10s – Mindblast – 10s – Demoralizing Gale is a constant recurring pattern; so as long as we have a timer for one AoE we will know when the other two are going to hit. Therefore, if only Demoralizing Gale appears in my timer window I know that when the timer gets to 20s, Bellowing Winds is going to land…
Strategy
Haraakat the Seer does not hit the MT that hard, the most important attribute for your MT is to be oozing arcane resistance as they will be standing in front of Mindblast and Demoralizing Gale. The first time we killed him we used a Monk (albeit a Monk with 80% Critical Mitigation) as MT because they had 24K arcane resistance.

Curing the 3 arcane DoTs is essential.

Learn all the locations that you can be ported to and how to get back quickly to the pedestal, reaching the steps is sufficient to be safe from the Ritual. The most common causes of death for this part of the fight are:

Still having an AoE DoT when you are ported – Solution = Potion
Getting disoriented or stuck when trying to run back – Solution = Learn the port locations and practice running back. (If you are the person who kept plunging to their doom whilst jumping onto the rock for the Digg fight in WoE; I would stay at home for this encounter).
Falling damage – Solution = There is various gear and consumables that will increase your chances of surviving a fall, make sure you are suitably equipped.
We plant an arcane resistance standard in between the two bookcases where we tank the mob. This serves two purposes, firstly the obvious benefit of +2000 arcane resistance and secondly it acts as a landmark that enables people to quickly gain their bearings and get back into position. I am sure that after 4-5 wins it can be dispensed with, but it sure helps to get started.

The tank grabs the named; we wait for the knock-back and then pile in to DPS, making sure that we stay out of the 180 degree frontal arc.
For the teleport, get back to the middle and then into position as soon as Ritual of Forbidden Lore has gone off.
Kill the ‘tome of forbidden lore’ every time it spawns.
Find a safe spot for Bellowing Winds and be ready to use a potion to cure the DoT.
Healers need to cure the DoTs on Mindblast and Demoralizing Gale, preferably before they tick.

The three keys to this fight are high arcane resists, curing all three DoTs and repositioning after the teleport – nail these and you are well on the way to winning.

Haraakat the Seer has about 52,000,000 health.

Xilaxis the Explorer Strategy

After defeating Haraakat, you will be able to teleport into the room of Xilaxis the Explorer. From the point we zone in we turn east and head to the corner to dispense with the roamers. Do not approach any of the non-attackable yha-lei until the room has been cleared. The resists you will need for this fight are noxious & arcane. We estimate that Xilaxis’ critical multiplier is about 1.6, so Critical Mitigation of 60% is required to cover yourself.

There is a small corridor with a nice corner where we choose to do this encounter, although the only real requirement is that there is protection from a knockback and somewhere to joust to.

The Xilaxis the Explorer fight is a four round ring event initiated by approaching one of the yha-lei in the main room, get close enough and one will activate and come for your raid.

Round 1,2 & 3
These are all identical fights with a single mob called “a yha-lei conqueror” and as far as we can tell they are basically fishy re-skins of the annoying squid-heads in MPS with that nasty memwipe mechanic. They each have about 13,000,000 hitpoints.

Round 4
Xilaxis the Explorer will attack the raid on his own, we usually ask the raid to stack and turn on Tortoise Shell / AoE blocks to avoid taking too much pain as he runs past into the corner.

Xilaxis the Explorer will do the following:

Dispell all your debuffs. Xilaxis will make an obvious emote and remove all the debuffs on himself.

Hit the raid with the following AoE combo:

Toxic Tornado (Poison) 1st tick, wait 5 secs
Toxic Tornado 2nd tick, wait 5 secs
Winds of Conquest (Magic) 1st tick, wait 5 secs
Winds of Conquest 2nd tick, wait 5 secs
Torrent of Slime (Poison) 1st tick, wait 5 secs
Torrent of Slime 2nd tick

This repeatable cycle happens every 40 seconds and cannot be extended. The first tick of Winds of Conquest has a knockback so we usually get everyone to find a wall for that one to keep them in healer range.

Blow up and curse the entire raid. Every 60 seconds a red message will appear on everybody’s screen “Xilaxis seems rooted to the ground, he seems to be channeling energy from the surrounding ocean…“, this is the cue for everybody including the MT to move away from the mob until the big AoE has gone off, anybody too close will be hit with a nasty curse that will kill most players in 2-3 fast ticks. As with Azara the Seer, the boss will stay focused on the MT so we get the MT so joust to a different spot than the rest of the raid.

Call upon Arkthanthis the Destroyer. This is the challenge mode version of the encounter and is a very difficult fight. The ritual that triggers the change will start when Xilaxis’ health reaches 80%. It appears as a red message on the screen so it is important to be paying attention and distinguish correctly between the ritual and the big AoE. When you see the red message about the ritual you can right-click Xilaxis to disable challenge mode. If you would like to see a strategy for Arkthanthis the Destroyer, you will need to find the blog of a less wimpy dirge…

Strategy
Find a spot you are happy with and trigger the ring event. After the first 3 rounds are down make sure that you are in position for Xilaxis. Heal through the AoE, watching out for the knockback on Winds of Conquest.

Remember to re-apply debuffs and joust out whenever to see the message where he is rooted. Challenge mode will initiate at 80%, so have someone ready to disable it if you don’t want Arkthanthis the Destroyer.

We found Xilaxis to be an easier mob than Haraakat. Xilaxis the Explorer has about 56,000,000 hitpoints.

Perah’Celsis
This is the standard mode boss of Perah’Celsis’ Abominable Labs and an encounter that has it’s fair share of challenges. On the plus side there is only one mob to deal with (there is potential to get more but this invariably means a wipe). We would estimate that the critical multiplier for Perah’celsis is about 1.9, meaning that 90% Critical Mitigation would be required to offset all crit damage.

Perah’Celsis will do the following:

Attempt to set his pet dragon onto you:
After about 20 seconds Perah’Celsis will attempt to flee and put you into an encounter with Waansu. This is challenge mode and can be disabled by r-clicking on Perah’Celsis and selecting Disrupt Ritual.

Hit your raid with a six tick AOE combo;

Arcane Vexing (Magic) 1st tick, wait 5s
Arcane Vexing 2nd tick, wait 5s
Catabatic Heatwave (Heat) 1st tick, wait 5s
Catabatic Heatwave 2nd tick, wait 5s
Icy Torpor (Cold) 1st tick, wait 5s
Icy Torpor 2nd tick

All these are on a 40 sec timer and cannot be swiped. Each one does much more damage within 9m of the mob and approximately double damage in a 180 degree frontal arc. The first tick of Catabatic Heatwave has a knockback component. We have a adopted (for now) a fairly rigid jousting policy which is based on everybody moving out after the first tick of Arcane Vexing and back in again after the first tick of Icy Torpor (our healers can easily handle the two closer range damage ticks).

Perform the CATAS manouveure:
CATAS is short for Curse & Turn & Splat. Which is a pretty adept description of what happens. Every 60 seconds, Perah’Celsis will drop a curse on a random player in the raid and a red message will appear informing everybody. By the time you finish reading the message he has mem-blured from the MT and redecorated the floor with his new target. The way that we deal with this is to setup a custom timer based on the phrase “No more distractions”. That 5-10 second warning will more often than not give the tanks some opportunity to snap him back, we currently lose a raider about 25% of the time when this mechanic occurs.

Charm players in the raid:
At any moment during the encounter Perah’Celsis has the chance of charming players in your raid, including his current target. There will never be more than two players charmed at the same time but he sure knows how to pick his targets – his favorite combinations seem to be MT & OT, or two MT healers, or a solo group healer. The only way to properly mitigate this is to build redundancy into the raid (we have three tanks and the healers usually do a fine job of stepping in for eachother). The charm itself will be incurable for about 15 seconds after which it becomes a curable arcane. To save confusion we request only that tanks and healers speak in voice when they are initially charmed, everybody else needs to wait until it becomes curable. Due to this mechanic we also refrain from using any blue or green AoEs during the encounter because they will hit charmed players.

Teleport the raid and attempt to summon adds:
Every 60 seconds, the entire raid will be teleported onto the stage behind the spot that Perah’Celsis starts the fight. After the teleport you have 10 seconds to get a player onto, or in front of, each of the four pedestals in the main room where four different inactive mobs stand. If you don’t reach a pedestal inside the required time the mob standing on it will activate and attack your raid, which pretty much results in a wipe. Perah’Celsis will be rooted during this 10 second window, when he starts moving again it is safe to return to the tanking spot. He will also suspend firing his AoEs during the teleport but the overall sequence remains unchanged. We use a custom timer based on the emote “Enough of this” to keep track of the next teleport.
After mastering all the required moves of this fight the teleport is the one mechanic that will potentially cause you problems…because it doesn’t always work…
Sometimes, often in fact, we have had players standing on the feet of the inactive mobs when they wake up and attack you. It has been surmised that this is due to a combination of the client-server changes implemented about June 2010 and / or excessive lag due to many versions of the raid instance being run at the same time. Whatever the reason, it is a variable in the encounter that you will have to contend with and this is now responsible for most of the wipes we experience.

Strategy
We usually employ an elemental standard to help mitigate the AoEs and tank the mob at the front left pedestal (yha-lei mob) with the bulk of the raid standing at the front right pedestal (ghostly yellow rock elemental) which also serves as the joust point for melee. We call the melee in and out at the appropriate stages and give 5 second warnings on the knockback, curse and teleport. No AoEs are allowed and the jousting requirement is quite firmly adhered to to prevent too many unnecessary fatalities, especially after Perah’Celsis passes thr0ugh 45%.

This is a fight that requires everybody to stay on their toes but once you have mastered each of the seperate hurdles it is mainly a matter of repeating the steps until he is dead. Accept that you will occasionally be wiped even when you reach the pedestals in time.

Perah’Celsis has approximately 75,000,000 health.