Alphascape V2 (Savage) – A comprehensive text guide
by Fennek F’ox 🦊
Welcome back to another text guide on the Alphascape savage raids. This time we’ll be going through Alphascape V2 (Savage) and the fight against Midgardsormr. Sadly this one does not contain a lot of visualisation, since most mechanics are pretty straight forward. The fight up until the enrage takes about 11 minutes. Strap yourself in and good luck. o/
Thanks to everyone that helped with creating and optimizing this:
Ashe Iceblood qivis The Brian Sucks
Introduction:
Midgardsormr’s signature move is his Coil/Flip mechanic where he draws power from the aether to unleash one of four skills onto the arena. The ability will come shortly after his second coil/flip and depends on the pattern he displayed. if he uses…
| first | second | he casts | which does | which we call |
| Coil | Coil | Azure Wings | an AoE under him, extends to about max melee range | Out |
| Coil | Flip | Stygian Maw | a donut AoE around him, stand in his hitbox. | In |
| Flip | Coil | Crimson Wings | two line AoE’s in an X formation (rotates with boss) | X (“Cross”) |
| Flip | Flip | Crimson Wings | two line AoE’s in a + formation (rotates with boss) | + (“Plus”) |
For his guide i’ll refer to these ability’s as In/Out and X/+ as usually either one or the other of these is used. Getting hit by any of these abilities will deal a lot of damage to the player and apply Vulnerability Up.
Phase 1 (First Flying Phase):
The fight always starts out with the Flip->Coil-> X mechanic, followed by an Akh Morn cast which will apply four consecutive stack AoE’s on the party. This is followed by the Coil->Coil->Out mechanic.
Next Midgardsormr will cast Tail End, a heavy hitting tank buster that deals about 130k unmitigated physical damage. It hurts a bunch and you are going to see this a lot, so mitigate and shield these casts properly.
Following the tank buster, the boss will coil up, indication an In/Out in the future. He’ll start casting Earth Shakers on the entire party, hitting each player with a conal AoE. Preassign positions for this.
When the markers are displayed Midgardsormr will Coil/Flip again, showing if it is going to be In or Out. Stay at your assigned position relative to where the boss is facing, but move inside his hitbox or out of max melee range accordingly. (We liked to assign ranged dps, that don’t care about positionals, to NW and E, and the melee dps to SE and SW. The positionals were used as orientation later mechanics as well).
Midgardsormr will flip, indicating another upcoming X/+, followed by Tail End. After a couple of seconds the DPs will be marked with Thunderstorm AoE’s around them. those need to be spread. At the same time the boss will either coil or flip, determining whether X or + is upcoming. The party needs to spread according to this mechanic.
If it is X, a maximum of two dps will fit in the corners of one safe spot. Getting hit by two lightnings is lethal, so best assign Earth Shakers positions smartly to make this easier.
If it is + there will be a slightly larger safe zone, however try avoiding 2 Thunderstorms in one zone.
After this he will cast Time immemorial. This skill targets the two tanks, granting them one of two debuffs.
Death from above – this debuff will cause the player to receive Doom (10s) when hit by an auto attack from an flying unit.
Death from below – this debuff will cause the player to receive Doom (10s) when hit by an auto attack from an ground unit.
During the cast lines can be seen around the two targeted players. The player with blue lines will receive Death from above, and the player with purple lines Death from below.
Since the boss is flying in the first phase, the tanks may need to swap here. The tank that has Death from below needs to keep the bosses aggro until the 2nd Phase, so if the main tank has blue lines – swap.
Next up, another coil, into Tail End, into Northern Cross. This ability renders the whole arena slippery, causing players that move to slide about half the length of a side of the arena. After this the Boss will flip or coil to cast In/Out. I recommend standing slightly inside his hitbox before this. this way you won’t have to move if it is In, and if not you’re able to leave max melee range fast. Be careful not to slide through him, since you might not make it out in time.
After another coil, Midgardsormr casts Akh Rhai. The healers will be marked with blizzard markers that drop an ice zone that expands in intervals, causing any player inside to freeze and become incapacitated. Those players should place the blizzards away from the boss, preferably in the far edges of the arena.
At the end of the cast two pulsing light pillars will hit random players. Be spread out as to not stack these death flares and move out of them after they hit.
Following this, he will place AoE areas below four random players and finish his In/Out mechanic. Place the AoE’s stacked in the edge of his hitbox to maximize the safe area and reduce the way to it, then move according to the In/Out mechanic.
After two more auto attacks the boss will fly away and the 2nd Phase begins. He will spawn a grounded add and transfer enmity to it. The tank with Death from above will need to take over, after that 2nd auto attack he has about 1gcd of time to provoke the boss. If not, he will need to swiftly voke and receive a shirk on the add to prevent the other tank from acquiring Doom.
Phase 2 (Add Phase):
The 2nd phase commences with an add, which, like said prior, needs to be tanked by the tank with Death from above. Voke and shirk the enmity to him if you didn’t do that already.
Additionally there will be a number of big and small nails spawning around the arena. The big nails are invulnerable until the small nail tethered to them is destroyed, and the add is invulnerable until all nails are gone. Destroy the nails and kill the add before the Progress bar fills up.
The Add casts Rime Wreath and uses Frost Breath, a cleaving tank buster, in an alternating pattern. While Rime Wreath deals only little AoE damage, the tank buster hits like a truck and that repetitively, so healers be warned.
After the Add dies it will cast an AoE which deals heavy damage. Be prepared to move. After the AoE he will also drop a puddle, much like the primals in UwU. We let the tank with Death from above pick up this puddle.
The puddle grants the tank a buff called Arcane Bulwark, shielding the player for a massive amount of damage. Upon contact the buff is transferred to the other player and the former holder now has a debuff called Defenseless, rendering him unable to pick up the Bulwark again.
Hot Tail mechanic in the third phase. Mitigating incoming damage (which should only be the incoming heavy raid damage, the four fire orbs and and the hot tail) will preserve this shield and Hot tail won’t hit that hard. So use heavy mitigation, especially on the tank with the bulwark (like apo, adlo, tank stance, etc.).
After a certain amount of damage has been absorbed, the Arcane Bulwark turns into Crumbling Bulwark, indication that it is about to break. (Taking Hot Tail with the crumbling bulwark might actually deal some damage to the player.)
Let the tank carry the bulwark until the next phase and be careful not to touch him!
After the add dies Midgardsormr will cast Protostar, heavy AoE damage on all players in 3 fast intervals. Shield and heal through this as necessary.
After that he will use Cauterize twice, diving through the arena rendering half of it unsafe. At the same time, all players will drop an AoE below them and 4 random players will be marked with Thunderstorms.
Stack in the middle, look which side he is coming from, dodge the AoE’s and spread on the safe side, all while avoiding to touch the tank with the bulwark. After, stack back in the middle (NOT THAT TANK) , heal up and do it again for the 2nd Cauterize.
The phase ends with Midgardsormr dropping back into the arena and dealing a bit of raid wide damage with Touchdown.
Phase 3 (Ground Phase):
For the start of the 3rd phase we placed the bulwark tank at the bosses side on a marker, close to his center, while the party stays in the south and the maintank in the north. This positioning will make more sense shortly.
The boss is now landborne, meaning the same tank that tanked the add will have to tank the boss for now.
First off, Midgardsormr casts another Time Immemorial, eventually causing a tank swap. Keep in mind, that for this phase he is not flying and the tank with the blue lines will have to take the aggro.
If a swap needs to be done, the maintank moves towards the bulwark tank, picks up the bulwark and, after the other tank moves back north.
Next, four players will be marked with a red marker. After some time, Midgardsormr will cast Crimson Breath, a big conal fire AoE, on that player. If any player hit by this AoE does not have the Arcane Bulwark, they get dealt 200k damage and will most likely die.
To handle this mechanic we move the player with the marker onto the player with Bulwark. After the transfer the former bulwark player moves through the boss to dodge the conal AoE.
The Bulwark player remains on the marker until his Bulwark is taken again.
(Alternatively you can also have the bulwark and red marker walk through each other and just change positions, i found however that there was a lot of people “missing” each other…)
After the red markers, three groups of fire orbs will appear in the center of the platform, then in one corner, and then in the opposite corner (this is basically Nidhogg). These balls will erupt after some time, causing a linear AoE with the width of a little over ⅓ of the arena in both horizontal and vertical direction.
At the same time he will tether to a player. The tether can be passed from one player to another, and shortly after the last set of fireballs erupted it will cause Midgardsormr to execute Nidhogg’s Hot Tail ability in the direction of the tethered player. This will kill anyone hit by it, except for a player that has a Bulwark. It can also not be cheesed with invulnerabilities.
Just before the first set of fireballs erupts, AoE’s will appear below 4 random players.
Hot Tail will hit the arena diagonally in the direction the fireballs spawned.
(This is my modified version of the “Spyro strat”, so partial credit to whoever made that)
Keep in mind that, unless you stacked the party at some point, passing and getting the bulwark taken from certain players will still be possible.
The party starts out either north or south of the boss, depending on which side is close to the third set of fireballs. The player with the bulwark stands in the front, grabbing the tether from whomever gets it. As soon as the AoE indicators appear, the party moves into the third set, the bulwark player to the corner in the opposite direction.When the middle set explodes, all players move in, and after the second set exploded the party moves out (while the bulwark keeps the rotation as it is).
Put in motion this looks a little something like this:
Alternatively you can determine one tank to always take the tether. No matter which tank then has the aggro before or after Time Immemorial, the other tank will pick up Bulwark and always be on the marker. After the fourth fireball the tank grabs Bulwark and the tether from the group.
This is more consistent in party finder groups, and only one player needs to know how to handle the tether, however the auto attacks the tank may receive reduce the damage the Bulwark absorbs. Thus, at Hot Tail, the tank will receive little or heavy damage depending on how much got absorbed by the Bulwark already.
Phase 4 (Second Flying Phase):
Congratulations! Most of the work is done and the biggest mess is over.
Before you reach the 4th phase you will have to dodge some AoE’s. there will be Exaflares making their way through the arena from one side to the other. All the while Midgardsormr will Cauterize twice and two sets of Horrid Roar AoE’s will hit as well.
After the air has cleared, the boss will land again in the middle of the platform. He will be flying again, meaning the tanks need to swap aggro.
Midgardsormr starts off the last phase with a Tail End, followed my an Akh Morn and immediately after he will drop Horrid Road under random players and mark everyone with a Thunderstorm marker. These mechanics should not pose too much of a thread.
After this another Tail End, followed by Time Immemorial. Swap if needed.
Depending on whether he coiled or flipped prior to the tank buster, the boss will then use either the Thunderstorm with X/+, or Earth Shakers + In/Out combinations that are known from the first phase of the fight.
Now comes the difficult part of this phase:
Exaflares will cross from one side of the arena to the other, and two random players will be marked with blizzard markers. shortly after Midgardsormr casts Akh Morn forcing a the party to stack and move coordinately as a stack.
Place the blizzards on the opposite side of where the Exaflares are coming from. Then stack up as a party next to one of the Exaflares that is about to hit for the first time, and move into that position after it hit.
The boss will flip/coil, indicating an incoming In/Out or X/+. After he will cast Northern Cross, rendering the ground slippery, and Earth Shakers + In/Out , or Thunderstorm + X/+ after.
Preposition inside his hitbox at the assigned positions and move outwards if needed / slide to safety if he does Thunderstorm.
This is followed by Horrid Roar (STILL IN NORTHERN CROSS), placing AoE’s under random players, Akh Rhai, Tail End, Flip or Coil (indicating X/+ or In/Out) and another Tail End. After that another Thunderstorm + X/+ or Earth shakers + In/Out combination.
Time Immemorial might force a tank swap before another Exaflare + blizzards into Akh Morn combo. After another flip and an Akh Morn. This one will deal WAY MORE damage than the prior ones. Save ALL mitigations for this if you want to survive, but usually Midgardsormr should be dead by now. After this he will cast his enrage.
Finally:
Congratulations, you’ve gotten through this rather long guide. Below you will find the macros I used to communicate with my party. The fight sounds a lot harder than it actually is. The hardest part in my opinion is staying awake and focussed all the way up until phase 3. Exaflare-Blizzard-Akh Morn can be a pain as well, but nothing too big.
If you found this or any of my other guides helpful, I’d greatly appreciate if you’d upvote the corresponding reddit post. If you found it to be complete and utter garbage please downvote it, and give me feedback what you’d like me to improve The more people see these posts, the more feedback i become and the more the guide evolves and becomes better and better.
Good luck and have fun clearing this. 😉
See y’all in party finder. o/
(Random people, 20.09.2018)
(Reportedly macros copied when viewing in chrome are bugged. use firefox)
Macros:
Macro 1
/p Earth Shaker:
/p . MT
/p . R1 OT
/p .H1 X R2
/p . M1 M2
/p . H2
/p ==========================
/p Thunderstorm:
/p xx R1 xx | R1 X R2
/p xxxx xxxx | X
/p xxx xxx | X
/p M1xxxxx R2 | XXXXXXXXX
/p xxx xxx | M1X M2
/p xxxx xxx | X
/p xx M2 xx | X
Macro 2
/p Bullwark: Player with bulwark waits on 1 for the red marker to take over, then moves through the boss.
/p Tether: B = Buwark, P= Party
/p | | F2 | xxxxx | F2
/p | | | xxxxx |
/p —————————- ——————————-
/p | F1 | xxxx| xxxxx | xxxxx
/p | B | xxxx| xxxxx| xxxxx
/p —————————- ——————————
/p | P | P | xxxxx | B
/p F3 | | F3 | xxxxx |
/p .
/p .
/p xxxxx| xxxxx |xxxxx xxxxx| |
/p xxxxx| xxxxx |xxxxx xxxxx| |
/p —————————- ——————————-
Macro 3
/p xxxxx| | xxxxx| |
/p xxxxx|P B | xxxxx| P B|
/p —————————- ——————————-
/p xxxxx| | xxxxx| xxxxx |xxxxx
/p xxxxx| | xxxxx| xxxxx |xxxxx
/p .
/p
/p
/p
/p
/p
/p
/p
/p
