Magtheridon's Lair: Tactics

Strategy

Phase 1
Initially, five Hellfire Channelers are distributed around the room, each next to a Manticron Cube. All mobs in the room have no aggro range, the fight is started by any harmful action. The raid should be able to kill at least three Channelers before Magtheridon becomes active after two minutes.

It's best to have one tank for each Channeller so that they can be tanked in their places and their shadow volleys do not overlap. All Channeler casting should be interrupted as much as possible, the most dangerous being Dark Mending. Each tank should have a personal healer assigned, remaining healers should be put on raid healing (and help out on tanks if needed). After the first adds are dead, free healers should concentrate on the later tanks because they take more damage.

The Infernals should be banished and/or kited. Warlocks and Hunters should do this job - early on they're free to DPS, but when Infernals start to appear they must immediately concentrate on them.

Position the damage dealers at the entrance. The killorder is: 1 > 5 > 2 > 3 > 4. Have the tanks at cube 5 and 2 move their channeler to the entrance when it's time to kill their respective target. When the time has come to kill the channelers at cube 3 and 4 it's safer to move the raid to them.

Phase 2
When Magtheridon breaks his banish, he starts to build threat only when he actually targets someone. Use aggro building moves or misdirection, but not too early - let him target someone first.

Besides killing any remaining Channeler(s), the raid has to avoid Blast Nova by clicking on the cubes (see below). This is complicated by Quake, and in Phase 3 by Collapse.

Phase 3
At 30% Magtheridon shatters the walls of his lair, causing the roof to crash down. This deals 5250-6750 physical damage plus a 2 sec stun to every raid member. It's very bad if the start of phase 3 coincides with a Blast Nova - the damage dealers should slow down if this might happen. For the remainder of the fight, the ceiling randomly caves in on players, this is called Collapse. Collapses kill everybody in an 8 yard radius of the spot of impact. There is a cave-in animation shortly preceding it so players are able to safely move out of the way.

The Manticron Cubes
Every 60 seconds Magtheridon starts to cast Blast Nova. About all wipes at Magtheridon happen because of an uninterrupted Blast Nova. In order to stop it, all five Manticron cubes must simultaneously be clicked (channeled) by players. Because the Mind Exhaustion debuff lasts only 30 seconds, each cube needs only one clicker, but at least one backup if the primary clicker is disabled.

During both Phases 2 and 3, Quake makes clicking the cubes more difficult. Since the cooldowns of Quake and Blast Nova are slightly different (50 and 60 sec), after three or four cycles, they happen at the same time (fortunately Blast Wave cancels any active Quake), and then move out of sync again. It is important to know that each cube has a "safe spot". Standing up against the wall, directly behind the cube when facing into the middle of the room grants immunity to the knock-back from Earthquake. People standing there simply bounce in place.

It's very desirable to keep channeling the cubes as long as possible. Unfortunately, players doing so take 800 damage per tick, which forces them to release sooner or later. Synchronize the release so that nobody takes unnecessary damage.



Advanced Strategies
When the raid healers have mana and cast time left over, it's a very good idea to heal the people who channel the cubes, so that Magtheridon takes triple damage for as long as possible.

If the raid has a very high damage output (over 10k DPS sustained in total), it's possible to set up one group at each channeler and kill them nearly at the same time. This speeds things up and avoids all issues with melee damage dealers running around, but actually increases the amount of damage taken from the channelers.

One thing our guild found that worked very well is to use the tanks from phase one for cube click later in the fight. There are more tanks than needed after the channelers are down and (especially if you use pally tanks) they are not your highest DPS. By having them handle the cubes, your biggest DPS can continue to attack during high damage time and the tanks have enough health to click on them a bit longer.