Skolex Mythic Boss Guide

When the entire raid group stack together on one point - the boss will burrow under the ground and pop up on top of the raid group, knocking them back in a direction depending on how they position in the circle.

When this occurs, the boss will gain a stack of Insatiable, and will cleanse the raid members of all of their Ephemera Dust stacks as long as they stand in the knock-back.

The boss will leave a large pool of blue goo (Volatile Residue) on the ground where it was previously positioned after it burrows

This mechanic is used to reset stacks of Ephemera Dust primarily, in some cases where mistakes have been made it could also be used to move the boss away from an area that has been covered in blue goo on the ground by melee.

Consistent raid damage occurring every 20-25s, applies a stack of Ephemera Dust to the entire raid each time it does damage.

3 step combo-attack used by the boss on the tanks, the combo will be 3 casts in a row of Riftmaw or Rend, the combination of casts is random.

Riftmaw deals 170K shadow damage in a cone and increases damage taken by Riftmaw by 500% for 6 sec.

Rend deals 225k Physical and leaves a bleed that ticks for 34K Physical every 1.5s for 45s.

Make sure no tank takes Riftmaw twice in a row through taunt-swapping during the combo.

During the aforementioned tank combo, the boss will also launch 3 projectiles outward at the 3 players standing furthest away from it. This happens for each cast during the combo, so will result in 3 sets of 3 Dust Blast being thrown out during each combo. The players who are hit by these will gain a stack of Ephemera Dust each time they are hit, putting their stacks above everyone else in the raid and making them take extra damage until their stacks are reset.

The safe way to handle this is to have 3 groups of 3 ranged players, and rotate them standing behind the group, however if you have tanky ranged classes in your raid such as Warlocks, Elemental Shamans, even Boomkins - they can take 2 combos in a row fairly easily. We usually have a group of tanky ranged taking the first 2 sets of Dust Blasts, with a new group moving out before the third, and we reset after the 3rd with Ravening Burrow and restart the rotation.

The boss will focus on a ranged player and start a 6.5s cast in a wide cone area, which everyone needs to move out of. The area will be covered in pools of Volatile Residue afterwards, not rendering it entirely unplayable but making it a slightly more congested play-space for the rest of the fight.

Players who are hit will take 30K damage, and 8.2K damage every 1.5s for 12s. They will also be randomly teleported around until the debuff expires.

The key here is to make sure your Dust Blast baiters are always standing on the ranged camp before the boss casts Retch, or it could be baited in the direction you were wanting to move to.

Once cast - use Stampeding Roars, Wind Rush Totems, Demonic Gateways etc to run out of it, all in the same direction (left if you follow our plan).

This is the blue goo that the boss throws at the melee during the encounter so they have something to do. If hit you will take 26k damage and get a non-dispellable debuff reducing your haste by 33% for 18s.

On mythic when hit you also leave behind a pool of Volatile Residue.

These pools ramp up in how often they happen as the boss’ hp is reduced.

Recommended plan is to have your melee stack up and all run away when the blue gunk is being thrown, and then re-stack afterwards. If people keep getting hit this strategy may not be doable, and you might want to explore having the melee a bit more spread out.

If you stand closest to the active tank you will get whacked by the boss - make sure you tanks are always together, and are the last to leave when dunking the boss for Ravening Burrow so that melee DPS don’t get randomly melee’d when one tank leaves.