M8S - Millennial Decay
Millennial Decay
With the tutorial out of the way, the Howling Blade jumps to the middle of the arena in order to prepare his first major mechanic, which is Millennial Decay. Mitigate this attack if you can, because this cast does considerable damage on its own. As MT, if you applied your reprisal after your first gcd in the opener, then it should be back up again here for this raidwide.
This mechanic is split into two parts: The first part has you dodging line AOEs from the green dragon heads, which forces you to rotate around the arena. The second part has you deal with four tethers and four towers that your party needs to resolve, which is then followed by a multi-hit stack marker and a raidwide.
Millennial Decay Part 1
At the start, one green wolf head will randomly spawn either north or south of the arena. Once the first one has spawned, more heads will spawn sequentially next to the first head, up to 5 dragon heads in total, which will fire a line AoE in the order they spawn in. Getting hit is obviously a bad idea, so to avoid those attacks, you will have to either spin clockwise or counterclockwise with your party. In order to figure out which way you have to spin, you will have to look at where the 2nd head has spawned.
| Clockwise | |
|---|---|
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| Counterclockwise | |
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This mechanic would be really easy if all you had to do was spin around, so to spice things up, the Howling Blade will cast two sets of AoEs and a knockback to attack your party with. Each AoE set will target a role group and your goal as a party is to let the AoE resolve without accidentally clipping anyone or getting hit by the line AoE shot from the wolf heads.
IQ6000 strategy
Dubbed the IQ6000 strategy, the JP came up with a strategy that fixes the spots which the players can use to resolve their AoEs. Although designed with the intention to be more friendly towards casters, this strategy also creates structure in how the players can resolve this mechanic.
| 1. | Preposition near your own quadrant and determine first whether you have the AoE or not. If you do, then preposition yourself in a way that allows you to resolve the AoE near the intercardinal walls. If you're not, then go to west/east of the boss, safely away from the players who has an AoE. The first AoE will resolve immediately after the boss knocks you back, so using anti-knockback like Arm's Length and Surecast is recommended. For reference, you can use your anti-knockback as early as when the first head has appeared! Keep in mind that the positions are true north, regardless of whether the first wolf head spawns north or south. |  | > |  | |||||||||
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| 2. | After the first set of AoE is resolved, the melee player with the 2nd set AoE should charge ahead in the direction the line AoEs are spinning. The ranged with the 2nd set AoE can camp around the walls at north/south. The players who had the first set of AoE can go to the inner side of north/south, slowly nudging around the boss in order to dodge the line AoEs. As melee, this will give you easy uptime as well. |  | > |  | |||||||||
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There is a body check in the next part, so try not to die here. Below are some examples you can use for reference to survive this merry go round.
| Example 1 Counterclockwise, 2nd AoE group  | Example 2 Counterclockwise, 1st AoE group  |
|---|---|
| Example 3 Counterclockwise, 2nd AoE group  | Example 4 Clockwise, 1st AoE group  |
Millennial Decay Part 2
Now here's the easier part of Millennial Decay: Four wolf heads will spawn on either cardinals or intercardinals, and tether to a role group. The wolf head will then fire a cone AoE at the tethered player, killing the player if the tether was not stretched. In order to make the attack non-fatal, you will have to stretch the tether by going to the opposite side of where the head. You will know its properly stretched when the tether turns purple.
At the same time, four towers will spawn cardinally or intercardinally, depending on which spot the wolf heads hasn't claimed. The tethered players are busy dealing with the wolf heads, so the other role group has the task to soak those towers in order to prevent them from exploding. The towers are color coded, so finding your tower should be easy by checking your two waymark colors. Be careful though if you're either ST or D2, because your C waymark is missing.
The boss will use another knockback here, so if you haven't used your anti-knockback yet, then here's another opportunity for you to use it if you wish. Otherwise, this mechanic isn't hard as long as you do due diligence in identifying whether you have a tether or not. Visibility can be poor, so try to wiggle around if you're unsure whether you have the tether or not.
| Example 1 Tower | Example 2 Tether  | Example 3 Tower |
|---|---|---|
Now, chances are, there will be deaths during part 1, which would mean that towers will explode. Each tower missing will deal massive damage by itself, but will also inflict a strong bleed that will kill your party unless your healers are quick to react. You can salvage the situation with bruteforce healing if there's only 1 tower exploding, but 2 or 3 and you will have to resort to using tank LB just to not die instantly.
After having dealt with the wolf heads and towers, get to the center quickly as the boss will use Tracking Tremors, which is a multi-hit stack marker that your party needs to soak together. If you have used your 90s mitigation early at the opener, then it should be back up for this mechanic. Try to time your 15s mitigations to the last second, because after the stack marker, the boss will use Extraplanar Pursuit as a finishing touch. If your mitigations are timed well, then your 15s will cover all the stack hits and the raidwide after.
After a brief pause, the Howling Blade will cast Great Divide, which is a line tankbuster that is meant to be soaked by two tanks, on the player with the highest aggro. Although you can do this the intentional way, the most popular method by far is to just cheese it with an invuln, so have your MT do right that.