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NiM Bestia

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Nightmare (or master) Mode Bestia is the first boss in the Dread Palace Operation. This guide largely assumes you have completed the fight in hard mode and are familiar with the hard mode mechanics and general strategy. The information here largely discusses the changes from hard mode and provides additional strategy to adapt to these "enhancements".

Fight Nomenclature and Composition

The Bestia encounter takes place in a relatively small space. The throne in the middle of the room can make it somewhat troublesome for healers as the group moves around. Caution needs to be taken to ensure they do not get LOS'd.

This guide largely assumes that the team has completed the fight many times on hard mode and is familiar with the hard mode mechanics.

In phase 1, one tank will be responsible for being the anvil (and getting pounded on), the other will be the chaser. I recommend putting your best "tank" on anvil duty and your more raid aware tank on the chase duty.

One healer is responsible for healing the "Anvil" tank, with the other more focused on the group. The "Anvil" tank is going to be reacting to extreme periods of burst healing, and will need occasional assistance by their co-healer.

Dread Tentacles will pop up in one of the four quadrants of the room. It's important for the group to call where they pop up at to assist the chase tank in positioning it. Tanks can have a hard time seeing and moving about the small room. The room's ceiling and many ornate features will often interfere with the character camera. We designate the entrance as the front of the room. The center throne faces the entrance and can be an easy point of reference for the raid.

Standard Comp

Tank (Chase) - Vanguard
Tank (Anvil) - VG or Guardian
DPS w/Taunt - Guardian
DPS w/DoT Spread
DPS w/DoT Spread
DPS - Burst Spec
Heal (burst) - Sage
Heal (group) - Commando

For our clears, we use:

1 - Guardian Tank (Anvil)
1 - VG tank - Chaser
1 - Vigilance Guardian
1 - Watchman Sentinel
2 - Engineering Snipers
1 - Combat Medic
1 - Sage Seer

Phase 1 - Monsters!

As soon as the fight starts, tanks will notice a massive difference right away that changes the flow of the fight from hard mode drastically. Three Monsters Spawn instead of 2. It has been my experience that 2 monsters always spawn from the right side of the battlefield.

Healers should position themselves around the throne in the center of the room. The group healer should be ready to flex around the throne to ensure that they do not get LOS'd and unable to heal the group. The group healer needs to keep aware of which quadrant the Chase tank is heading,to adjust in tandem. Melee DPS need to stay behind the Monster that the Chase Tank is tanking. Monsters' cleave, dps taking extra damage here will cause heal strain and can lead to the Anvil tank going down (which is often a wipe).

Ranged DPS are encouraged to stack in the group, but may elect to stack with the group healer to minimize the potential of cleave damage.

Any Player (EXCEPT THE ANVIL TANK and BURST HEALER) need to take any lavra that aggro to them into the group for the chase tank to collect with their AoE's. Tanks have a million things to taunt here, a new tank to this fight will struggle to collect stray larva. Bring them into the group. It is better for a Larva to aggro to a Melee doing dot spread to do, vs a healer. If a larva aggroes to the Anvil tank, it must be a priority to remove it. The added damage taken to the Anvil tank will cause massive heal stress and may lead to the Anvil Tank dying.

Tanking 2 Monsters (The Anvil)

The Anvil tank will want to position themselves to begin the fight on the right side and be ready to grab both monsters when they spawn. 2 can spawn from the same quadrant, and this can be very difficult to detect. DO NOT AOE taunt to collect them. The anvil tank will need to collect the spawns with standard attacks. As a guardian, I use saber throw to grab the first one, then my taunt to grab the second.

As seen above, the "Crush" animation.

First off, you are going to get crushed. Do not panic and blow through all of your defensive abilities. They will need to be cycled, or you will burn out your healers and you will die.
The main source of burst damage here is the Monster's Crush/Smash/Pound. This comes in the form of a sound (really sounds like crushing bones...ouch) and a visual (shown to the side) of a brown rubble pile under you. This attack come out about every 12-15" from both monsters. It seems to stagger a bit, with one monster crushing, then the other about a second later.
- TIME your defensives around this, you will take very little damage outside this attack, and it is the only thing they will do to you.
When 2 monsters are close together, they will turn red.
You should keep the same 2 monsters, the entirety of phase 1. The chase tank or DwT should not pull a monster off of you until no more are spawning.
The monsters seem to always favor positioning themselves, with one with its back to the wall and the other with its back to the entrance.
Position yourself (and the monsters) between 2 quadrants, as shown on the phase 1 diagram. I position myself so that the monster with its back to the wall is almost touching the wall and the throne is between it and myself.
Mark your monsters with target markers and focus target to keep both targets in your sights. I routinely swap between my focus targets to ensure I keep threat. I use my main rotational abilities against my primary target, swap targets and taunt the monster I am not fighting. Having a monster peel off of you is going to be a problem. This can be super important in the early moments of the fight to build threat.
I communicate with my team which monster is lower and have my cotank attempt to grab it first when transitioning to phase 2.
NEVER AOE TAUNT. AoE taunting will pull larvas, or the 3rd monster, to you. Either way, this almost always leads to a wipe. If you get a larva on you, communicate it to your team and have them peel if off of you. Do not try moving around to bring it to the group. Our job here is to stand still and take the punishment. If we try to move, we will LOS a healer and DIE.

Tanking as the "Chaser"

Our job here is to juggle everything else in the room and be sure we keep away from the Anvil Tank. We do not want our monster getting buffed by the other 2. If we end up on the right side of the room and get too close, we should adjust, not the Anvil Tank.

Main things to note:

1 Monster by itself will use "Fling" periodically along with their cleave attack. You always want to position your monster so that its back is to a wall, so that when you get "flung" you hit the wall behind it and are only a few steps away from getting back into position. Having your back to a wall will get you "flung" across the map and get the monster chasing you to where you landed, messing up positioning quite a bit.
If you have to adjust a monster (IE move it to a new tentacle spawn), use your "hold the line/Hydraulics" to prevent getting "flung" as you move.
ALWAYS stack your monsters on Dread Tentacles.
If the Anvil Tank is too close to a tentacle, tell them to scoot back toward back or toward front to adjust. They should be paying attention to this as well and making a couple meter adjustment to help as needed.
Be sure to have the threat of the Dread Tentacles as they pop up. If you or a melee DPS do not have threat, they will channel, if that channel finishes it will one shot players.

DPSing Phase 1

As a DPS, your job in phase one is relatively simple. Focus whatever monster the Chase tank has and make it dead. The DPS check in phase 1 is tight and is pretty much being able to have 1 monster dead before the next spawns. If your group consistently has 4 monsters up at a time, re-evaluate your group composition, more burst may be needed. NEVER switch off of the monster onto other spawns, except for one DPS that will handle the interrupts of the Dread Tentacles.

When a tentacle spawns, it will begin casting, this needs to be interrupted before it finishes, or it will kill a large portion of the raid group. Once interrupted and so long as the group has stacked on it, and the tentacle is targeting a player in melee range, it will not do this death channel again. Once it is initially interrupted, get back on the monster and rely on DoT spread to kill it. Stay focused on the monsters.

Healing Phase 1

There is nothing special to cleanse in phase 1. Those pesky yellow puddles do not start until phase 2, just like Hard mode. The Burst healer healing the Anvil tank will need occasional help from the group healer to keep up with the demand at times. The group healer will need to keep everyone else up. If DPS are taking too much damage from cleaves, let them die. It is either the tank, or Dps's fault. Let them sort it out and improve, rather than you trying to make your fingers bleed for them.

Main thing for you to be aware of are those evil larvae. Run them to the chase tank if you get one stuck on you. They will be busy, just run it in, let the tank or DPS cleave it and run back out. Problem solved.

Phase Transition

This is where phase 1 starts to ease up a bit on the tanks and healers. Once the last monster spawns and it is now down to low HP, the Chase tank should pull a monster off of the Anvil Tank. (Anvil Tank keep in mind, your monster will now switch to using Fling, keep your monster's back to the wall). We like to pull a monster off when the "chase" monster is getting low (10-15%). The chance tank will stack the 2 together for a moment (allowing for DoT Spread/Cleaves to happen). The chase monster will go down, and now we are left with 2 monsters to handle.

When Bestia activates (2 minutes into the fight), the chase tank should immediately pick her up and take her to the entrance for tanking. The DwT should taunt the "pulled" anvil Monster if it is still left alive. The DPS team will finish killing this monster w/o the aide of a tank.

Next, the DPS team will jump over to the Monster being tanked by the "Anvil" Tank and kill it. Once that monster is down, everyone focus's on Bestia.

There is often a tank swap before the final monster from phase 1 goes down. If the Bestia tank is calling for a swap, be careful not to get "Flung" as you try to move to Bestia to take her. It is best to take Bestia right after a "Fling" even if the other tank's stacks are low at this point.

**A monster should never be in range of Bestia (turn purple). A second or so is fine, but long bouts of purple monsters is really really bad

Phase 2 (Begins at the 2-Minute Mark)

The dust should be settling from the transition into phase 2 and things from here should fall into a rhythm. Phase 2 works much like Hard Mode with the following changes:

Bestia's stacks seem to come faster and force more tank swaps.
Monsters and adds do not stop coming up (In HM they do not start back up until 50% boss HP)
1. Keep in mind the other hard mode mechanics here.
  1. Tanks receive the Swelling Despair Debuff from Bestia and need to swap.
  2. Players get the red circles (Combusting Seed) and yellow circles (Dread Pool)
  3. Everything there stays in effect and hits harder.

Best Bets:

All dps should focus monsters when they come up. If monsters cannot be killed fast enough, burn time on Bestia will be lower leading to an enraged (All Adds spawn all at once and murder you). As Tanks, be sure to stack and help with interrupts of the dread tentacles. DPS need to burn monsters and tentacles fast to get back on the boss. Try to let larvae stack with Bestia.

Any dps classes with self heals can get dread pool (yellow puddle) dropped on them. Snipers (with the self heal) in particular need to be careful and shouldn't stack in melee range.

Tanks will need to track each other's stacks of Swelling despair. We generally taunt on dread strike, which seems to keep us at 4-5 stacks. There will be pulls where this rhythm fails and tank swaps will not line up with this channel. These stacks will flow from periods of slow application to rapid application. Stacks will accumulate faster than monsters can be killed. This will force tanks to swap under pressure. Be mindful of "Fling". The most challenging part here is getting flung away as you are trying to take Bestia off your cotank as they are stacking, swelling despair. Our general goal is to swap at 3–4 stacks of this debuff. On some of our greatest escapes, one tank has gone as high as 13 and survived the ordeal. I do not recommend pressing your luck here. Tanks need to communicate and save their taunts for these swaps, as they happen often. A DwT here to take the monster while the tanks are swapping is very helpful with keeping a monster positioned on an active tentacle, or just to prevent an unwanted fling during a swap.

If you get a red circle, keep it in the group and keep doing damage, take it out right before the debuff expires so that you are not standing around doing nothing for 10". It only deals damage when the debuff finishes. I recommend having all melee stack on one side of Bestia (right foot for an example), if a melee gets it, move to the left. This way that player can continue to dps with 100% uptime, and stack stacked in for AoE heals.

Debuffs to Watch for

Swelling Despair - Increased damage taken per stack (Cannot be Cleansed, forces tank swap)

Dread Pool - 100k / tick (cannot be cleansed, DoT will only appear if you are in a yellow puddle. It can kill you quite rapidly)

Combusting Seed - 150 k AoE damage - cannot be cleansed, should be taken out of the group before it expires to prevent the 150 k hit from hitting more than just the targeted player. Use a defensive ability if available to lessen the blow. Healers should use/refresh things such as, trauma probes, force armor, or slow release med packs on the player targeted by this to lessen the triage required.

Clear Videos Below

DPS

Healer

BESTIA

TYRANS

CALPHAYUS

RAPTUS

COUNCIL

Changes to this fight's strategy for 16 mode

Composition wise, 3 tanks makes this fight far more manageable on 16 mode. Two can still get the job done, and will likely depend on skill level and strategy.

The third tank is used to pick up the monsters that the DwT was getting. In 16 mode monsters seem to spawn faster than the DPS can kill. This may lead to 4 monsters being up at a time. Depending on how long that amount of time is, is really the factor in "do we want a third tank?".

During the active Bestia phase, we set an order for going in for Bestia tanking, I.E. Tank B relieves Tank A, Tank C relieves Tank B. The off tanks keep monsters positioned (basically anything you had a dwt doing here before). Monsters destroy DwTs in 16.

Player positioning is far more critical and requires higher discipline in 16. Players with reduced frame rates should not stack in the group. If they are on melee and struggling to get out with red circles, have them stay on add duty or swap. A red going off in the group is not pleasant in 16.

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