WoW Insider's Guide to Chimaeron
by Michael Gray 
Jan 4th 2011 at 8:00PM
Chimaeron is the fifth and penultimate boss in Blackwing Descent. Chimaeron will be a challenging fight for your healers, as it's a test of their skill. There are many attacks in this encounter that could instantly kill raid members. But don't worry, there's a trick.
You start the fight by talking to Finkle in his cage, starting up the Bile-O-Tron. As long as the Bile-O-Tron is active, no one in the raid whose hit points are above 10,000 will die. Any killing blows on a raid member with at least 10k hit points will merely take them down to 1 hit point. At that point, a healer can quickly get them back above 10k hit points. At no point should healers be struggling to get raid members above 10k, except for tanks. This is a test of reaction speed, not raw healing power.
You start the fight by talking to Finkle in his cage, starting up the Bile-O-Tron. As long as the Bile-O-Tron is active, no one in the raid whose hit points are above 10,000 will die. Any killing blows on a raid member with at least 10k hit points will merely take them down to 1 hit point. At that point, a healer can quickly get them back above 10k hit points. At no point should healers be struggling to get raid members above 10k, except for tanks. This is a test of reaction speed, not raw healing power.
General strategy
Phase 1 Your raid should stay split up and scattered, due to Caustic Slime. This ability hits four players at a time and does damage to anyone within 6 yards of the player; additionally, the player will have a hit debuff for a brief time. Because you're protected by the Bile-O-Tron, you will not die when hit with this. You only want one player to get hit (thus, you spread out) so that the healers only have to heal one person for each slime.
You'll need two boss tanks for this encounter, both to swap the boss after the use of Break in phase 1 and because there is no healing in phase 2. Chimaeron will hit the current tank hard with Double Attack. This is two hits in quick succession. That means even if your tank is over 10k HP -- and thus reduced to 1HP on the first hit -- he will not have that protection on the second attack. Chimaeron also hits the tanks with Break, which stacks a healing debuff. This means you need your tanks to trade off and swap Chimaeron after a few Breaks so that it doesn't become unmanageable. Tanks will want to manage cooldowns carefully to help survive this damage during the second Break.
Massacre instantly deals millions of unmitigated points of damage to the entire raid. Everyone above 10k hit points will instantly drop to 1 HP, and anyone under 10k HP will die. This includes the tanks, so healers should be ready to top them off immediately. When Massacre hits, the Bile-O-Tron will briefly go offline, starting phase 2.
Chimaeron will follow up with another Mortality to take you back into phase 1.
Phase 3 At 20%, Chimaeron enters phase 3. Chimaeron hits the entire raid with Mortality, making healing nigh useless. He also becomes untauntable. On the bright side, he takes an additional 10% damage in phase 3.
At this point, burn every offensive cooldown you have and get him down as quickly as possible. Kite him, bubble, trap, and snare with everything you have. This is simply where your DPS must shine.
Other resources
- Tankspot's guide to Chimaeron
- Wowpedia's page on the boss
- Wowhead loot list and information
- Yogscast guide to Chimaeron
Ready Check shares all the strategies and inside information you need to take your raiding to the next level. You might also be interested in our strategy guides to Cataclysm's 5-man instances, and for more healer-centric raiding advice, visit Raid Rx.Filed under: Ready Check (Raiding)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Zinnin Jan 4th 2011 8:59PM
Chimaeron will follow up with another Mortality to take you back into phase 1
Massacre not Mortality =P
Diatenium Jan 4th 2011 11:43PM
Our guild's a little confused about the mechanics surrounding break.
Instead we've been exploiting his 4-5 second swing timer to have an offtank who's at full health and has no break debuffs taunt him whenever double attack pops up and let the main tank take full break--healing him to full seems moot because my beacon keeps him above 10k for each regular swing.
But we haven't fully tested out this ability and I'd like verification regarding if this is worth the investment or if the above tactic is more manageable--it just seems that after one or two breaks the tank would just get one-shot by the double attack--barring any avoidance--even at full.
Diatenium Jan 4th 2011 11:45PM
Hate not being able to edit. Some clarity:
"Healing him to full seems moot" this refers to the main tank.
"The above tactic is more manageable" The tactic laid out in the article, not the one I just mentioned.
Pwekl Jan 6th 2011 8:23AM
I have to say, this article was terrible. Break should be eaten by one tank, while the other tank exists to eat double attack. Feud doesn't happen every Massacre. It's Caustic Slime, not poison bomb. Yeah, the same ability as phase 1. Poison bomb, interestingly enough, is from the Omnotron Defense Council. It's used by, gee whiz, a Poison Bomb. Chimaeron enters his berserk phase at 22%, not 20%. Yes, that's important. Seeing as you want BOTH tanks topped up for that phase, and knowing when you can't heal any more is pretty important to accomplishing that goal. Full of Sound and Fury depends entirely on topping both tanks off, their cooldowns, and half decent DPS. Another note is that Caustic slime reduces chance to hit by a pretty large number. 75% if I recall correctly. This means that if your tank has gotten hit by a caustic slime, he can miss a taunt. Most often, this is recoverable. Sometimes, though, it's not. Healing Stream totem and Circle of Healing really shine on this fight, though I can't speak about druid or paladin healers, as my raid doesn't have any.
Ghengie Jan 5th 2011 5:56AM
The tactic regarding Break is wrong, it is a debuff to self-healing, meant to nerf DK tanks that would otherwise have been overpowered with their strong self heals.
The tactic we use is more optimal than constant tank swapping: Keep the MT at 10k hp while topping off the OT. Every time the boss gains Break (buff on him), let the OT taunt and eat the double hit. Then the MT can taunt back to continue tanking.
As Break also stacks a physical dmg taken buff, you can do a tank switch if the debuff doesn't fall off during Feud.
Sypher Jan 5th 2011 12:11PM
Almost correct, the boss ability on which the OT has to taunt is called Double Hit (and so is the boss debuff), not Break.
gurgle Jan 5th 2011 2:45PM
Ugh, again with misinformation about Break. The healing debuff is healind *done*, and it's there to prevent the tank from being able to heal himself over 10k every hit. The increased damage that break stacks is actually to *prevent* the tank with break also eating double attack. Don't be afraid of break -- increased damage to the tank doesn't mean anything when bile-o-tron is active. As already suggested, the correct way to deal with this encounter is to have an offtank taunt when Chimaeron gets the Double Attack buff, and the main tank taunts back immediately after Chimaeron hits the OT. You only need to keep the OT healed to full.
Carson Jan 9th 2011 8:03PM
The "main tank eats Break, offtank eats Double Attack" approach is how we did it, and got our first kill on the weekend.
We also had earth shield and prayer of mending on the double attack tank: our theory being that even if he wasn't topped off, and the first double attack took him below 10k, hopefully the reactive healing would trigger before the second attack landed. Not 100% sure if that worked or not, but anyway, he didn't die.
Not a terribly difficult fight (we killed him in our first raid session of attempts, probably took about two hours) but imho ("in my HEALER opinion") not a very fun one either, a bit stupid and gimmicky. Phase 3 was fun, though!
yoake Mar 10th 2011 9:44AM
The hardest part of the encounter is surviving feud. In order to surive it you can do the following things (there is also a good guide on this at: http://25man.com/cata-guides/chimaeron). Basically you do the following:
- Feud last 30 seconds, so dont pop every cooldown in the first 10 seconds, take 30 seconds into account.
- Use light-well left and right of the middle: and let everyone click it when stacking up
Use the following cooldowns:
(Prot) Paladins – Divine Sacrifice (aka raidwall) and/or Divine Guardian
Resto Druids - Tranquility
Disc Priests - PW:Barrier
Resto Shamans – Healing rain, Shadow priests use hymn,
Holy Paladins - Divine Favor and Avenging Wrath (+Holy Radiance) and Guardian of Ancient Kings
Holy priests spamm PoH
- Especially PW: Barrier helps gigantically much. If you struggle let one priest spec disc and get PW: barrier.
- Also let DPS Shamans/paladins etc help with healing during feud (let them Stop DPS and help with healing).
- Having more than 7 healers shouldnt be needed (8 is a bit on the high side).
- If you still struggle it might be something with assignments or gear.
yoake Mar 10th 2011 9:45AM
Another New Strategy for phase 2 is to tank Cho'Gall close to the wall. This ensures that the tentacles spawn close together and on top of each other. There is a comprehensive guide out there that helps a lot for people that want to use this ((http://25man.com/cata-guides/chogall or 25man.com/chogall).
Basically you tank Cho'Gall close to a wall so you can anticipate the tentacles that spawn. Most guilds (especially on 10man) have the most trouble with the last phase. Healers simply can't keep up with the healing. Tanking Cho'Gall close to the wall makes the last phase considerable easier.