Blood Pact: Warlocks in Blackwing Descent, part 1, page 2
Omnitron Defense System
Why on earth anyone would think that it's a grand idea to put a defense system to the side of their main gate where people could easily just walk past it and not even care that one exists is beyond me. Why players simply don't bring a battering ram or goblin bombs and blast open the front doors, I'll also never understand. I guess it's for the loots.
The basics The 'Tron Defense System consists of four different golems, each with their own set of abilities. In the essence of space, I won't list each of their abilities here, because it's frankly quite a few; instead, you can check up on all of them here. There should only ever be two golems active at any one time (technically three, as one is active for just a few seconds when the next one comes back online -- but that's whatever). A final note: They can be reset by running out of the room, so avoid that if things are going well, or use it if things go bad.
Each golem will become active upon reaching 100 energy. It will put up a nasty shield that protects it from all damage and does bad things if you attack it at 50 energy. Finally, it will deactivate once it reaches 0 energy. There is technically a small window of opportunity between the shield at 50 energy and the golem going down when you can re-apply DoTs; however, it's rather risky to do, so I would avoid it unless you are very comfortable with your timing skills.
The shields do proc off of DoT effects, so you want to make sure that none of these are up once the golem reaches 50 energy. Because of this, avoid recasting your DoTs around 65 or so energy in order to give them enough time to clear off naturally. Affliction warlocks can use Soul Swap in order to transfer their DoTs instead, which is a huge plus. Similarly, do not use Bane of Havoc on a boss, as it will trigger the shield as well. In fact, just avoid any ability which might accidentally hit a shielded golem.
Electron Spread out! Oh my, what a simplistic concept. Spread out to avoid Chain Lightning, and spread out from the player with Lightning Conductor (which is a non-issue anyway). Electron is the most simplistic of all the golems, because his abilities aren't new nor exciting. Just don't stand near people when he is active.
Toxitron The primary concern as a DPSer is to kill the Poison Bombs that spawn while also making sure that any that happen to be targeting you never touch you. Do not AoE the bombs down, as tempting as it may be to do so. They still deal damage upon being killed, and you don't want to accidentally gib someone who happens to be near one. You also don't want to accidentally hit one of the shielded bosses.
Avoid standing in the poison cloud, and go nuts on the golem that happens to be standing in it. Getting both a poison cloud and a damage-increasing zone is the perfect time to pop your cooldowns.
Magmatron There is nothing you can do to prevent the damage from his standard AoE ability. Using health stones, sparing points towards Nether Protection, or even using Drain Life if you happen to find yourself low can assist your healers in keeping you alive. You really shouldn't have to break your standard rotation in order to deal with this damage, but it can happen that you find yourself in a troubling spot, so just be prepared should you get unlucky.
If you happen to be picked by the targeting beam, then move out of the group as best you can. This can be difficult depending which other golems are currently active, but your raid should have a spot assigned for these players to go. Have your Demonic Teleport set there and be ready to use it at a moment's notice.
Arcanotron If you happen to already be using your Felhunter, then using it to interrupt Arcane Annihilator when you can is a pretty pro move. If you are running in 10s and lack other forms of interrupts, then you may have to switch to your Felhunter regardless of whether or not it is your primary pet. It happens to the best of us sometimes -- but as the saying goes, dead DPS is 0 DPS.
Depending on which other golems are active, you want to try and get into the swirly pools of awesome that are dropped down whenever you can. However, always give priority to your healers, especially late in the encounter. Even though the damage increase is amazing, the pool also restores a large amount of mana. For an undergeared group, having your healers be able to last longer is going to be the difference between a kill or a wipe, far more than the additional damage will.
Chimaeron
Always start with the hardest encounter first, ya? It makes the world that much better of a place. Of the three remaining encounters before Nefarion himself, Chimaeron is certainly the hardest. He's a tank skill check, a healing check, and a DPS check all rolled into one scaly ball of eat-your-face.
Phase 1 Pre-planning is everything for Chimaeron. Before the fight even begins, the entire raid should spread out into the groups that they are assigned, and each player should pick a specific spot. This is your spot! After phase 2, you will return to this spot and no other spot. Keeping players properly spread out is vitally important during this encounter, and everything is far easier to manage when everyone knows where exactly to go. Standard issue dropping of Demonic Teleport on your phase 1 spot is a requirement.
Your health will be low all throughout this encounter, but just as long as you remain above 10,000 health, you are never in any risk of actually dying. Always make sure that you are topped off, and be especially careful about using Life Tap. Health is everything on this encounter, and you never, ever want to drop below 10,000 or you will die. You simply cannot always rely upon your healers on this encounter to keep you alive; you are going to have to look after yourself some of the time.
Standard rotation applies, but take note of one caveat. You will occasionally be hit by a poison bolt that will leave a 4-second debuff that lowers your hit chance by 75%. Watch out for this debuff, and avoid using any of your cooldown-based abilities while it is active. Hold off on Haunt, Chaos Bolt, Conflag, etc., until it wears off. Waiting to use them is far less DPS wasted than having them miss.
Phase 2 When the heads start Feuding with each other, that is your cue to stack on top of the tanks as quickly as you can. During this phase, you need to have as much health as you possibly can. Anything that you can do to help yourself survive during this phase is essential to your survival.
You can continue with your standard rotation during this phase, but a vast majority of it is going to be wasted. The poison bolts still go out and you will be hit by them, meaning you won't reliably be able to hit with anything at that point. Given that you'll be missing most of the time anyway and the bigger issue is staying alive, it's far more practical to just spam Drain Life, especially if your group is struggling during this phase.
Once you have some gear and have downed the fight a few times, you might be able to get away with using a normal rotation instead, but keep in mind not to waste your "special" abilities when the debuff is up (which is for the majority of this phase anyway.)
After the heads stop biting at each other, get back to your spot ASAP.
Phase 3 Once the boss hits 20%, a debuff will go out that reduces healing by 99%. From this point on, the fight simply becomes a matter of racing against the clock to kill him before your entire raid is wiped out. As soon as this phase begins, there are a couple of things that you want to do.
Do not Soulshatter right away! You will at some point get high on threat, but pulling at this point isn't the end of the world; in fact, it will probably happen at some point in time. Once you do get aggro, let the boss walk toward you a little bit, and then use Soulshatter. If you can wait until he hits you once, even better. One hit won't kill you, due to the robot buff; it always takes two hits.
Run away from the spot where you were previously standing. Once Chimaeron does target you, you want to play the game of cat-and-mouse as long as you possibly can. Let him start walking toward you, then teleport away once he gets close. If you can spare a Soulburn for it so that you can continue to kite the boss around for a little while, even better, but don't bother with saving them specifically for that.
The boss does absolutely nothing but melee people in phase 3, so your only priority is to kill it as quickly as you possibly can. Use every single tool that you have to increase your damage output and to stay away from the boss as long as possible. You may not deal great damage while running away from the boss, but you aren't dead, and neither are your other raid members, so buying as much time as you possibly can will help.
Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DoTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll steer you toward tip-top trinkets and Soulburning your way through Cataclysm.
