The Eye of Eternity Guide

MALYGOS Video

Well, here's the big blue beardy bastard. The formalities: EoE is above the portal into the Oculus, just fly straight up. One of you will require the Key to the Focusing Iris (dropped by Sapphiron) in order to summon Mally. Since we haven't downed him yet, and he's a serious challenge, only people with numerous pieces of Naxx gear will be invited to EoE runs (unless we're short). It should be noted that this fight requires only one tank, and is quite hard on the healers since there's an astonishing amount of damage flying around, and DPS need to do a massive damage output to beat his berserk timer. All raid members need to have as much health as possible to survive the raid damage in Phases 1 and 2, so bring health buffs/food/flasks if you can.

Phase One- (Sparks)
Mally flies down when you activate the Iris. Main tank should pick him up; Malygos should always be pointed away from the raid since he does an Arcane Breath move for huge damage in front of him. He is a dragon, but he does not tail swipe, so feel free to stand behind him. DPSers should stand in the centre of the platform, right in the middle, and stay there. Power Sparks will spawn from the dancing blue lights in the sky and head slowly for Malygos. If they hit him, it's an almost certain wipe, so Death Knights should target the Sparks, Death Grip them into the middle of all the DPSers, and then Chains of Ice them. This will slow the Spark enough for the rest of the raid to kill it. (Note- Sparks are vulnerable to all stuns, slows etc. so hunters and rogues and others should be aware they can help slow it.)

When the Power Spark dies, it flashes wildly and places a fizzling, glowing aura on the ground. These auras increase damage done by 50% for anyone standing in them, and they stack with each other. The only way to do enough damage to Malygos in the short time you have, is to ensure these auras are placed all in roughly the same place, and to have every DPS standing in them. This is a challenge for the tank- if melee DPS are going to be able to hit Malygos from a fixed position, the tank has to make sure Malygos is close enough to it yet not facing the raid.
The TankSpot video I posted next to his name up there says they managed to eventually down Malygos with several fresh 80s, plus an offtank in the raid who was unnecessary, and had a minute to spare. (Smug bastards....) The berserk timer is 100% about mastering these sparks.

Malygos has two other moves. A spray of Arcane missiles at random raid members that takes them to roughly half health, and a Vortex. It is suggested that long-cast healers deal with the missile barrage damage, since that allows instant-cast healers to focus on the Vortex. In the Vortex, the entire raid is thrown up into the air and fixed in place while huge damage is done to them (around 18k). Only instant casts are permitted in the Vortex, so I tend to Wild Growth just before we fly up, and Wild Growth again as we hit the floor. The mana drain of constantly healing all these sources of damage is unsustainable, so healers should co-ordinate to ensure they all know what they're doing. DPS should blow their cooldowns when they hit the floor after a Vortex, so they have plenty of time to use them.

Tank, note that when the raid falls from the Vortex, Malygos and you will be in random positions, facing random directions. Picking him back up and getting him in the right place quickly and safely is damned hard.

Phase Two- (Discs, Shields and Breath)
At 50% HP, Malygos will fly off and become untargetable. Don't bother trying to attack him. A swarm of adds will spawn on flying discs and attack the raid. Nexus Lords will engage the raid in melee, and need to be tanked since they will easily kill any nontank. Killing Lords makes them drop their flying disc so melee DPS can (right click it on to) fly up and engage Scions of Eternity who spam Arcane Barrage, the mage spell, on the raid. Ranged DPS can just shoot the Scions down from ground level. The damage these folks do is immense, quickly overwhelming the healers if they aren't killed. To reduce the damage they do by half, you can hide in the bubble shields that Malygos is helpfully dropping around the place, but beware, they shrink, so you'll have to dance around to stay shielded.

Every so often Malygos will "take a deep breath" and then annihilate anyone who isn't either in a shield or on a disc. (Confirmed- while on a disc you are completely invincible) This means it is ideal for as many people to be on discs as possible, minimising the amount of healing that needs to be done.

This phase is utter chaos. It takes practice to get accustomed to the combination of moving, killing and mounting up on these discs, as well as being a challenge for the tank to hold all the Lords.

Phase Three- (Dragons and Flame Shields) [For training in this phase, the quest "Aces High!" in Coldarra is perfect practice; you mount an identical drake and fight Scalesworn Elites with identical moves to Malygos. Go do it, get comfortable with it.]

When the last add goes down, Malygos will do a monologue and fly back into view. Everyone should come back to the platform and dismount from their discs. At this point, Malygos will destroy the platform and hurl us all into space. (Why didn't he just do that to start with?) We fall onto dragons that Alexstrasza has helpfully provided, but who were cowering honourably under the platform while we fought..?

Anyway, these dragons fight like rogues. You have a direct damage attack that adds combo points, Flame Spike; a stacking (!!) DoT that is more powerful with more combo points, Engulf in Flames; a stacking HoT that awards combo points, Revivify; and an AoE raid heal + healing buff that uses combo points, Life Burst. You also have Flame Shield that protects you from incoming damage, using combo points; and Blazing Speed, which makes you fly faster.

Please note that tactics for this phase vary wildly between sources and guilds, so feel free if you find a better one to propose it.
The maximum damage output rotation is Flame Spike x3, Engulf, Flame Spike x3, Engulf, etc. Stacking Engulf on Malygos does much more damage than spamming Flame Spike up to 5.
Healers should note that Life Burst is a 60-yard AoE, with themselves as the starting point.

During this phase, Malygos will target a random raid member for a Surge of Power. This will slaughter you unless you have Flame Shield up. This is the main challenge of Phase 3, since the shield requires 25 energy and combo points to use. Every single raid member must always be in a position to very rapidly acquire 25 energy and a couple of combo points. The more combo points you have when you hit the button, the longer the shield lasts (does not affect the absorption, only the duration) so if you feel lucky, punk, you could go with one combo point. Surge of Power has a three second cast time, and does damage for three full seconds after that, so you need to really get comfortable with this shielding business.

Well...so. Once you master these three wildly different phases, do enough DPS, get the positioning correct, assign healers appropriately, figure out the dragon mechanic and get good with the discs you should kill Malygos!

Malygos' Surge of Power Epic tactic post hits you for 12,000 damage every half second for three seconds. You die.

*deleted post*

Nuna's rotation is more useful and accurate.

Just thought i would add something i remember reading somewhere and didnt see in your post, although it was literally a wall of text so forgive me if i missed it..

When everyone comes down off vortex you pointed out that everyone is in random places and that the ensuing chaos can result in mass cleave related deaths (I believe Blench was one such victim). An interesting tactic to avoid this is that when everyone lands, the tank immeadiately runs north on the map and dps immeadiately run south, hopefully avoiding any attacks.

Hope this helps :p

That's a coincidence, I was actually working on a strategy guide for Malygos myself. There is an alternative strategy for Phase 1 that I found on the Internet and the more I think about it, this might actually be much easier to pull off. Unless I'm missing something obvious here, but I'll let you decide then

Since images say more than a thousand words, I took the liberty to create some drawings as to how positioning should be dealt with. Please note that positioning could also be like Erai mentioned (maybe even easier): Tank north, raid south.

Initial aggro

Malygos seems to be a little tricky on initial aggro, so it seems wise to let the tank have a couple of seconds to build up aggro. However, he becomes targetable quite quickly and for time considerations it may even be smarter to start burning him down as soon as you can. The tank could taunt him off should he go to another player.

As you can see here, the tank places Malygos in the center of the platform, and facing him away from the raid. Since he is a blue dragon, you don't have to worry about any tail swipes, because he doesn't have one. The MT will stand on the opposite side of where the raid is standing, so any Arcane Breaths are faced away from the raid.



First incoming spark

If a vortex precedes the spawning of the spark, it is imperative that everyone moves back to their initial positions. Nova can mark the raid position with her totems: just run back to them and the tank will now how to position Malygos accordingly.



In this case, I will assume a Death Knight will be on spark duty. It is their responsibility to call out from which direction the spark is approaching. This will always be NW, NE, SE or SW. That way the raid will now from where the spark is coming in. Using a macro, the Death Knight can target the spark and Death Grip it and then root it in place by using Chains of Ice. Since this gradually wears off, it is important that any other class with stunning, rooting or slowing abilities stops the spark in place. Then burn it down ASAP.



Once killed, the area will light up with sparks and you will gain a massive damage buff, which is absolutely required in order to beat his enrage timer. Multiple spark kills do stack, so try to position the sparks in such a way that they can be killed in the same spot every time.



Following sparks incoming

When the second spark comes in, the tank should hold his ground and keep Malygos stationary. Since Malygos is positioned pretty much in the center of the platform, the spark will move towards him and eventually be in range of the Death Knight's Death Grip. With its 30 yard range it should easily be possible to grab it before it reaches Malygos. This is depicted in the images below:







Important

Do not, under any circumstance, ever over-aggro the tank. This is extremely dangerous because he will then face the raid. If he decides to use his Arcane Breath on the raid, it will very quickly mean a wipe. If you do not have it already installed, go download Omen here: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/omen-threat-meter.aspx

Always try to stay under 100% threat of the tank. This is because after a vortex you drop down and you may land in melee range of Malygos, which could mean he aggro's you instead of the tank.

Don't forget that DPS will be standing in sparks and the tank will not, therefore making it harder for the tank to built up sufficient threat on Malygos. The tank will also have a hard time to keep up with the threat during a vortex.

Phase 2

In order to beat the enrage timer, keep your DPS up at all times, but be smart about it (see previous point). During vortex, use your (near) instant abilities to keep DPSing Malygos. When he goes into Phase 2, he will lift up in the air, but he'll be holding a short speech before the Lords and Scions spawn. Try to stay in a spark and keep nuking him until he becomes immune.

There is a trade-off here between doing max DPS and minimizing raid damage. The raid could continue to stay in the sparks as long as possible, ignoring the shields for a while, but this may put too much strain on the healers.

In order to maximize raid DPS here, ranged DPS should focus only on the Scions, and more specifically, only on Scions that are actually flying above the raid, within range. The tank and melee DPS will focus on the Lords that come towards the raid.

Important: The Lords do a considerable amount of damage and will quickly kill a non-tank. Give the tank some time to build up solid threat before going all out.

Once the first Lords are down, the top melee DPS should grab a disc and go up in the air to kill the Scions. Remember that you are safe from Malygos' Deep Breath while you're up in the air. The Scions also don't have an aggro table, their attacks are directed at random raid members.

There are 4 Lords and 8 Scions that spawn during the fight. So if the number of melees is less than 4, a ranged DPS can also grab a disc and kill the remaining Scions.

Phase 3

I believe this has been covered in detail by Histi already

There is one thing that I'd like to note here. There seems to be a bug in patch 3.0.8 where the dragon's shield doesn't properly work if you don't re-target Malygos once you're sitting on the dragon. So just to be on the safe side, for DPS: Re-target Malygos once you've landed on the dragon.

Some additional info about strategies can be found here:

http://www.stratfu.com/strats/Malygos

http://www.wowwiki.com/Malygos_(tactics)

There is an addon that will allow you to see the number of combo points you have on Malygos during Phase 3. I'd recommend everyone to download and install this addon:

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info10665-MutilatePoints.html

So I've been doing that Aces High quest now and got some practice on the dragon skills. Histi has done it a couple of times too and I think we've come up with a rotation that actually works really well. I believe this should also work during Malygos Phase 3.

(Note: It helps to enable "Auto Self Cast" under Options -> Interface -> Combat. By doing this, Revivify will automatically be cast on your dragon, even though you have Malygos targetted.)

For DPS
- Get 5 stacks of Revivify on your dragon before the encounter actually starts. This will greatly help with the incoming damage and aid the healers here.

Keep using the following rotation on Malygos
1-1-2-3---{wait}---1-1-2-3---{wait}---1-1-2-3---{repeat}

Except if Arcane Surge is being cast on you, then: 5

You have to react quickly with Flame Shield here. Remember to skip to 3 to get a combo point if you just used 2, in order to be able to cast the shield.

Note the {wait}'s between it. This is important because you don't want to get starved on energy in case you're the target of an Arcane Surge or when you need to refresh Engulf in Flames or Revivify. It's extremely important to never let the Engulf in Flames debuff fall off, because that will mean a serious loss of DPS.

For healers
- Get 5 stacks of Revivify on your dragon

Then keep using the following rotation:
3-4---{wait}---3-4---{wait}---3-4---{repeat}

Note that a single Revivify is enough here to refresh the stack of five. If you're the target of an Arcane Surge, replace 4 with 5. Be sure to get another Revivify up after that, to prevent the stack from falling of.

Remember to select your own dragon before you can use Life Burst!

Using this strategy, it might be possible to just heal through the Arcane Surges, because every DPS is keeping up his own five-stack of Revivify and healers are casting Life Burst very often. This way the raid can just focus on DPS and healing. There is a video from Tankspot where they go for the 6 minutes Malygos achievement where they use the same tactic.