Manaya Core (Hard)

First Boss: Hrathgol

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Key Mechanics

Hrathgol now has a 6 minute enrage timer; in other words, if you don’t kill him within 6 minutes he’ll flip his feces and one-shot you all.

When Hrathgol’s health reaches 80%, 60%, 40%, and 20%, the boss mechanic will come into play.

Debuffs - A message will appear in the center of your screen that saying

• Hrathgol will then turn towards whoever has aggro, crouch down and give the three people nearest it a debuff (Cellular Decay).

• Every player should be watching boss health throughout the fight. When you are about to pass one of the above percentages (5% away or so), call it out and make sure everyone is ready.

Basic attacks

Smash - Usually right after a normal sword swipe, Hrathgol will raise both fists above it and begin charging up an attack. Shortly afterwards it will bring them down and smash the ground, letting off an AOE that hits in a wide area that includes behind the boss.

• Blockable.
• This AOE will give a bleed debuff to party members if they are hit (cleansable).
• The boss may sometimes follow this up with a pounce that creates an AOE which reaches far behind the tank.

Sword Spam - Hrathgol may decide to rapid fire a few (sometimes a lot of) orange circle AOEs on the tank.

• Blockable. Some of these will reach behind the boss, so block/dodge accordingly.
• Each of these AOEs will also have a chance to stun you for a short period of time if you get hit (cleansable).

Big Circle - If you see the boss walk backwards a few steps, he’ll usually prepare to fire a large AOE in front of him.

• Blockable. Ideally you’ll want to get out of the way as soon as you see this, but invulnerability frame through it if you don’t have time/can’t block.
• Getting hit by this AOE will also give you a movement speed debuff (cleansable).

Hrathgol also has two secondary aggro attacks (watch for who has the purple circle):

Circle Pounce - A random person will get purple aggro, usually one that was staying too far away from the boss (don’t do that). Hrathgol will quickly target a small circle AOE on you, then leap towards you with another attack. If you get hit by the small circle, you’ll be SILENCED and usually get knocked down

• Hrathgol will almost always follow this attack with a Big Circle.

Special attacks

Jelly - A random person will get purple aggro, and Hrathgol will turn towards him/her and kind of growl/flex its muscles in that general direction.Jelly will spawn and fly over to whoever had secondary aggro and activate on top of them.

• Drop them somewhere away from the boss, they hurt and you cannot ressurect if you die inside puddle they create.

Second Boss: Melkatran

Melkatran is probably the easiest boss in the dungeon.
Before you go in to attack this boss, make sure your jump and chained skill keys are different. If not, rebind one of them.
You need to make sure that you can press your jump key at any time during this boss fight.

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Key Mechanics

The boss now has a 6 minute enrage timer like the first boss. Don’t get stunned; healers should be ready to immediately cleanse party members that do.

Debuff (JUMP) - Throughout the boss fight, you may see a message appear on the center of your screen that says

You will receive a debuff accompanied by red veins creeping over the edge of your screen. To get rid of the parasites debuff, simply jump once.

Color Adds - This is boss main mechanic. Failing this will result in unpreventable wipe.

• The boss mechanic here will come into play at just 70% and 20% health. Melkatran will run to the center of the room. It will turn either red or blue.
  • Melkatran will get a 10-stack buff (a blue shield icon) under its health bar. From this point on, waves of adds will spawn on the edge of the room and run into the boss.

• If a mob of the same color gets to center or a mob of the opposite color doesn’t make it to center, Melkatran buff will decrease by one.
• If this buff disappears (you mess up 10 mobs), the boss will pull everyone into the center of the room and one-shot you.

Basic attacks

Stomp - Melkatran will sometimes raise his front legs up in the air. They’ll come down a few seconds later and hit in a huge range around it, including behind it if you’re close enough.

• Blockable.
• Getting hit by the stomp will give you a Bleed debuff (cleansable).

Stun - On occasion, you’ll see Melkatran raise his shield into the air.

• Dodge the hell out. NOT BLOCKABLE
• Either one or two things will happen after stun - either a red circle AoE will appear immidiately after the first one only slightly larger.
• If you wont see the red AoE right after stun, boss will do outer donut AoE instead, so move closer to him.

Phase 1

MOB KITING

• Both mystics and priests have support skills they can use to pull healing aggro on the mobs that will spawn in over the course of this phase. Since killing them is both a bad idea and would take forever, you need to keep their attention off of the rest of your party while they break the cocoon.
• Tanks can also kite the mobs if preferred as healers might have issue keeping the aggro on them.

Throughout the fight, at 80%, 50%, and 30%, you will see a message appear on-screen that says

One phase of teleportal activations will start and one of the teleportals around the platform will begin to spawn mobs. The first group of mobs will always spawn from the southern-most pylon.

After a few sets of mobs spawn in, there will be another message that appears on-screen that says

Five seconds after this message appears, a ring of fanged gullets will spawn on the border between the Inner Circle and the Outer Ring.

• Each gullet will aggro onto someone in the room, run over to them, and drop a green poison circle on the floor that lasts around 10 seconds.
• In addition to the actual ticks from just standing in the circles, absolutely anything that walks through this poison circle will get a debuff that ticks for 7% of their health every second.
  • These fanged gullets are the pretty much the only chance you have to kill the mobs that you are kiting.

As with the teleportal message, gain some distance from the mobs you are currently kiting and dismount a bit before the five seconds are up. Keep running and have your camera pointed into the center of the platform with one finger on your support skill.
As soon as you see the gullets spawn, cast a support skill and pull their aggro. Once you’ve grabbed some (hopefully all of them), remount and continue kiting. These gullets are faster than your mount speed, and will eventually catch up. This is a good thing however, since they will stop and drop a poison circle once they do.

Cocoon Moveset

• DD and Tank, your job during this entire phase will be to kill the cocoon. Ignore all mobs and BAMs that spawn and avoid hitting them with skills.

  • If they run through center, stop attacking and wait for them to pass by before resuming.
  • If you do happen to pull some, stop attacking, head to the Outer Ring, and kite them around until the healer can pull them off of you.

• When fanged gullets are about to spawn in, do your best not to hit them.

• It is important remember that if the healer is busy kiting mobs. EXPECT NO HEALING. AT ALL.

• Many of the cocoon attacks are now one-shot material, so having a healer at cocoon is useless.

Shandra has two lock-on attacks, one of which will absolutely destroy parties if they cannot deal with it.

Poison Circle - Shandra will target a player and an orange ring will show up around him/her.

• This circle will follow you around as you move, and after around five seconds, it will drop a pink circle that lasts a realllllllllly long time (few minutes).

Walking through this circle will not only tick you hard, but also give you a bleed debuff (Programmed Bleeding) that halves your movement speed and deals constant damage over time for 15 seconds.

For MELEE, as soon as you see an orange circle on yourself, cancel your attacks and get the hell out of the Inner Circle.
For RANGED, if the poison circle is targeted on you, reposition yourself so that the poison circles are grouped in clusters off to the side.

Poison AOE - Shandra’s other lock-on attack is an identical circle, except this circle will not follow you around as you move.

• Blockable.
• If you don’t have a block, just move out of it until it’s fired, then resume attacking.
• Getting hit by this will also give you the Programmed Bleeding debuff.

Talons - The four talons floating around the cocoon will occasionally stab downwards and hit predefined areas inside the Inner Circle.

• There will be a very distinctive audio cue preceding every talon attack (like grating metal, you can’t miss it.
  • Blockable.
• Sometimes the talons will decide to fire off multiple times in succession, so be careful not to go back in too soon.
• There are two narrow safe zones right in front of and behind the cocoon.

Arrows - Shandra will target someone and four light-blue arrows will appear on the floor surrounding the cocoon.

• Two will appear first directed towards and away from the player, and a second pair will appear on both sides of the cocoon.
  • When you hear/see the talons about to come down, two sets of long arrows will soon follow, the second set pointing 90 degrees from the first.
  • All arrow blasts are blockable.

Fence - Shandra will start sticking fencepost-like things in a small circle around cocoon (not damaging).

• After the circle has formed, anything inside it will get hit by an AOE that stuns the player.
  • Blockable.
• If you get hit by the Fence’s stun, you’ll usually get killed by the attack that follows it, so make it a point to avoid getting hit.

Tick - Shandra will target a small circle near the cocoon and plop down an AOE that lasts a few seconds and constantly ticks you for damage.

• Blockable; if you don’t have a block you should just be staying outside of the circle until all the ticks have finished.

Donut - Shandra will target the entire Inner Circle except for a small circle inside near the cocoon and unleash a damaging AOE donut attack.

• Blockable, but it hits hard.
  • If you are a melee class and you are close enough, you should be going in close to the cocoon inside the safe zone to avoid the donut and keep up the damage. If you are ranged, you should be backstepping outside of the Inner Circle.

When you first start off the fight, there will be many many many poison circle lock-ons. Focus on positioning these safely. They will decrease in number as cocoon health gets lower and lower.

Below 30% health, Shandra’s attacking frequency will decrease dramatically. If there are party members who are dead or without charms, stop attacking the cocoon BEFORE you hit 5% health (8-10% is a good stopping point).

As soon as you hit 5%, the platform will soon spawn a huge horde of mobs and BAMs that will attack everyone. Burn the cocoon down before they get to your party.

Last Boss: Shandra Manaya

Depending on how/what you do during cocoon phase, you generally won’t have much time to prepare for anything.

Key Mechanics

Shandra has a 15 minute enrage timer. Debuff phases now occur every 45 seconds and the debuffs player receive from them last 90 seconds.

Debuff (Stand-up mech)

• This is the debuff mechanic you probably keep hearing about in Manaya’s Core. It starts when Shandra reaches 90% health, and will reoccur every 90 seconds for the rest of the boss fight but she can do it whenever she wants to.
• Shandra will immediately turn towards whoever has aggro and go into a “stand-up” state where all damage she takes is reduced by half. She will then perform three consecutive AOEs centered on herself.
• I will be labelling these AOEs 1, 2, and 3 in the order that they hit.

The above is an animated GIF that shows how the three debuff AOEs hit during the Shandra Manaya debuff/stand-up phase boss mechanic. When an AOE hits, the ground in that AOE area briefly flashes white.

AOE number 1 will come first.

• It will hit in a 5m radius circle directly underneath Shandra.
  • It will give you the “Greedy Thought” debuff and also hit you for 20,000 of your health.
  • The area outside of the circle is the safe zone for this AOE.
• If you have the “Desperate Thought” debuff, it will be removed upon receiving “Greedy Thought”.

AOE number 2 follows a few seconds after 1.

• It will hit as a 5m inner 10m outer radius donut directly outside of AOE number 1.
  • It will give you the “Hateful Thought” debuff and also hit you for 20,000 of your health.
  • The area inside the donut where AOE 1 hit before is a safe zone, as is the area outside the donut.
• If you have the “Greedy Thought” debuff, it will be removed upon receiving “Hateful Thought”.

AOE number 3 follows a few seconds after 2.

• It will hit THE ENTIRE MAP directly outside of AOE number 2 (anything 10m away from Shandra).
  • It will give you the “Desperate Thought” debuff and also hit you for 20,000 of your health.
  • The areas where AOEs 1 and 2 hit before are both safe zones (aka the 10m radius circle inside 3).
• If you have the “Hateful Thought” debuff, it will be removed upon receiving “Desperate Thought”.

Following these three AOEs, Shandra will immediately check to see that each of those three debuffs is on at least one person in the party. If any of these three debuffs from the AOEs are missing. Shandra will say a message:

Curl. That will hit the normal range and also automatically give everyone in the party the System Seizure debuff.
This is essentially a wipe (to have even a chance of surviving, get the hell away from her and attempt to heal through the subsequent ticks with your consumables).

Basically in order to avoid this wipe, three members of your party need to purposefully get hit by one of the AOEs each.

• No dodging.
• No blocking.
• No invulnerability frames.
  • They need to stand still in the AOEs and get hit so that they take their respective debuffs. In order to avoid the debuff timing out, during the next stand-up each of those three players will need to cycle AOEs so that they can overwrite their old AOE debuff with their new one.
  • This cycle will repeat throughout the rest of the boss fight.

To organize debuff phases in a manner that is clear and not confusing, you’ll want to designate certain people in the party to take debuffs beforehand. They will usually be the three DPS classes in the party (the rest of this section will assume that is the case).

• Tanks and healers should still know how debuffs work however, and be prepared to take one of the AOEs in case a party member dies. Designate either the tank or healer as primary or secondary backup debuff taker for moments like these in case a DPS is dead.
• We’ll call these three debuff takers A, B, & C. A will start on AOE 1, B will start on AOE 2, and C will start on AOE 3. When Shandra does her stand up and you see that message, A will stand in AOE area 1 and get hit by it to receive the debuff. B will wait in AOE area 2 to receive that debuff. And the same with C in area 3.
  
• Now A must take AOE 2 next, B must take 3 next, and C must take 1 next; this means that during the next debuff cycle, C will stand in AOE area 1 and get hit by it to cycle his/her debuff. A will stand in 2, and B will stand in 3.
  
• For the next stand-up, B will be on 1, C will be on 2, and A will be on 3.
  

• Each person will be cycling debuffs in this 123123123 order for the rest of the fight, just at different points in the order.

The above is an animated GIF that shows where the three debuff takers should go during the Shandra Manaya debuff/stand-up phase boss mechanic. Depending on what color debuff you have, you will go to the corresponding AOE. If you’re still puzzled, think of each individual box as a player and just follow that player through multiple debuff phases.

Shield - Shandra will do a shield mechanic every 70%, 50%, 30%, 20% of health. When a message appears :

Shandra will immediately turn to face whoever has aggro at the moment and shake herself a few times.Save your big hitting skills for this.

As soon as you see this icon, unleash hell on Shandra.

• If you succeed in burning the shield down quickly enough, the blue shield buff will disappear and you’ll get a few seconds of free damage dealing. If you weren’t fast enough, Shandra will curl up and wipe you guys.

Dispel buff - This is a mechanic for healers only. Once she does a message:

Shandra will immediately turn towards whoever has aggro and begin stacking a buff (Queen’s Shriek, watch her health bar) with each roar she does.

If she successfully stacks this buff three times, the stacks will be replaced by an undispellable 30-second buff (Queen’s Wrath) that triples the power of Shandra’s attacks and gives a 20% boost to her attack speed.

You don’t want that. And neither does your group.

• The key to nullifying this phase are the three initial stacks. If at least one of these stacks is nullified, Queen’s Wrath will not occur. You need to land your dispel on Shandra when she is at only one or two stacks of the buff.

Once you get Shandra past 8% health, if she does this phase again, the first roar will automatically give Shandra Queen’s Wrath FOR THE REST OF THE FIGHT.

• When you see her do her walk under 8%, she’ll also automatically gain Queen’s Wrath once she finishes the walk.

The “walk” is when after you push her below 8%, she’ll turn in the opposite direction she is facing and begin slowly lumbering across the room.

• Kill her immediately before she flips out, because she will be permanently flipping out all over the room.

Shandra also has a new buff. At 50%, 30%, and 20%, right after her forced Debuff and Shield phases, you’ll see a message flash on your screen that says :

And Shandra will receive an undispellable speed buff on her bar (Fevered Pitch).

• This buff will stack each time she does this, with each stack giving her a 10% boost in speed to all animations (even debuff phases).
• Donut becomes deadly at this point.

Basic attacks

Claw - Shandra will raise one of her front paws up and swipe downwards. It hits pretty far in front of her, so watch out.

• Blockable.

Tail - If you’re behind Shandra and you see her turn her head and look at you, dodge to the side.

• Shandra will slam her tail down and then taser you with it.
  • The hitbox for the taser reaches wide, but if you’re at her side when it starts you won’t get touched by it.
  • Both the initial slam and the taser’s multiple hits are blockable.

Lunge - Shandra will back up onto her hind legs and make a huge leap across the room targeted at someone.

• Dodge or just walk towards her or to the side rather than away from her, its distance is much longer than you think it is.
  • Blockable.

Comb - Shandra will bring in her paw and swipe in someone’s direction, launching a wave of energy (that looks like three combs in a row) at him/her.

• Has a narrow hitbox but hits hard and far, so watch out.
  • Blockable.

Donut - Shandra will start hovering in the air and immediately launch two AOE attacks centered on herself.

• The first will be a donut. The second AOE will be the small circle inside the donut, directly underneath Shandra.
  • Both AOEs are NOT BLOCKABLE and must be dodged/avoided as they are oneshots.

Special attacks

Curl - Also known as the bomb or the explosion. Other than boss mechanics, this is usually the attack that wipes learning groups.

• Shandra will let out a distinctive audio cue and curl her wings up around her.
• This is your cue to get the hell out of there.
  • Immediately turn around and get at least 19m away from her. She’ll let out huge waves of energy in a giant circle around her (18m radius) for a few seconds.
  • The Curl is NOT BLOCKABLE.
• When the sparks on the edge of the blasts disappear, it is safe to head back in even if there is still a red aura remaining from the Curl.

Fence - Shandra will start building a circular fence in front of her around whoever is targeted (does not inflict damage).

• When it is finished forming, Shandra will land an AOE that hits anything inside the fence and immobilizes them (cleansable).
  • Blockable.

Pool - Shandra will lock-on to a player with a moderately-sized circle. After a bit, she will throw down a pool of acid that will tick away at your health fairly quickly as long as you are inside it.

• The acid pool doesn’t move after it has been thrown down. If you get targeted by a Pool, reposition yourself with just running,AFTER the acid has dropped onto you, get out of it, NOT BEFORE.

Trample - Shandra will just start walking towards you.

• Stand still and block.
• If you don’t have a block, stand still anyway. DO NOT DODGE. Save your dodge for what comes after. You will lose less health just standing still than you will trying to get away.

Shandra also has a variety of secondary aggro attacks. If someone in your party gets that secondary purple aggro circle, one of the following attacks will occur targeted at him/her:

1. Grenade - Shandra will target a small circle on whoever got secondary aggro and hit that circle with an AOE. Blockable, but rather easy to avoid entirely if your monitor’s not off.
2. Laser - She will turn to face someone and her wings will come off her back and start to spin. This will be followed by a three-pronged laser that fires forward and has a huge range. Essentially a oneshot.

Bird - Also known as just flying. Shandra will jump into the air and start flapping her wings. A large circle will appear under her as she flies towards whoever she targeted.

• She will then proceed to land, and anything inside the circle will get hit hard.
  • Blockable.

Dive - Shandra will dive underground and pop up next to whoever she locked-on to.

• This move DOES NO DAMAGE, so don’t waste your dodge.
• This attack will always be followed by either a Pool or one to three Lunges targeted at the same person. You should save your dodges for those attacks.
• Do note that if all party members are within a certain range of her (around 15m), she will not even cast this attack at all.

Not getting hit by all of these attacks has a nice perk, other than not dying. There is an uncurable, green poison debuff called Argonic Metastasis that you get when you are hit by Claw, Lunge, Comb, Bird, Grenade, the initial downward slam of Tail, both hits of Donut, or any and all of Curl’s ticks.

If this debuff stacks 5 times (i.e. if you get hit by any of the previous attacks 5 times) before it times out, it will be replaced by another debuff called System Seizure (also uncurable) which will tick you for large amounts of health, killing you in mere seconds.

Just don’t get hit by Shandra’s attacks. If you see you have 3 or 4 stacks built up, play it safe for a while until the stacks disappear.