The Vile Maw

The Vile Maw
Level:	58
Size:	12-person Raid
Cluster:	Mines of Moria
Region:	Moria
Area:	The Water-works
Location:	[17.6S, 116.9W]

"Whither did the Watcher in the Water flee when it was driven from its lake? The Vile Maw would be my guess. Beneath the waters of the dark floos are ways which lead into the black depths of Moria..."

Description

The Vile Maw is a level 58 12-person raid instance accessible through the Instance Finder. The raid is colloquially referred to as the "Watcher" raid. It consists of a single boss fight with multiple phases and several additional mobs. The actual entrance is at Harâzgund in the Water-works ^{[17.6S, 116.9W]}.

Raid Locks

This raid has a raid lock which resets daily at 6:00 a.m. server time.

Deeds

Click ► to expand a list of deeds found within the instance.

The Vile Maw Deeds

The Vile Maw Slayer Deeds

Lost to the Deeps

The Watcher of Moria

Quests

• [60] A Final Foray
• [105] Year 7 Trifles: This Time with Feeling II

Mobs

Click ► to expand a list of mobs found within the instance.

The Vile Maw Mobs

Crushing Tentacle

Massive Tentacle

Shaking Tentacle

The Watcher in the Water

Wriggling Tentacle

Bosses

Level	Name	Difficulty	Species	Dread	Morale
63	The Watcher in the Water	Arch-nemesis	Ancient Evil	0	8,880,000

General Raid Preparation

• Most of the damage in this fight is Acid which is Tactical Damage. Therefore characters should focus on increasing their Tactical Mitigation as much as possible (preferably at maximum), which can be accomplished with gear, Virtues such as Fidelity, Tolerance, and Honour, and with Scrolls of Supreme Warding Lore.
• Cooked Food, Fortifying Food, and Trail Food all provide beneficial buffs to in-Combat Morale/Power Regen, Resistance Rating, and other stats.
• Because of the high amount of raid-wide damage in this fight, all characters should bring a variety of Morale potions.
• Because most of this fight takes place in a flooded room, it is helpful to turn off Post Processing Effects under Options | Adv Graphics | Post Processing. This will enable players to see better under the water for proper positioning.

Walkthrough

Spoiler Alert

Preparation Only a single tank is needed for this raid. Because the Watcher has a large amount of Morale, the raid should include a lot of DPS as well as support classes to increase the raid's outgoing damage and the Watcher's incoming damage. At least two healers are recommended since there will be a fair amount of raid-wide damage as well. Upon entering the instance, players will notice that the main room where the fight takes place is flooded with water, with some areas being shallow enough to stand while others are deeper and will cause characters to swim. In certain portions of the fight it's important to make sure characters are standing in a shallow area and not swimming (hence the note under General Raid Preparation above about turning off Post Processing Effects. While in the main room. all raid members will be affected by one of the following effects:  Shallow Water (uncurable tiny Acid DOT while at outside edges of the room)  Deep Water (uncurable small Acid DOT while in the center of the room) Once the fight starts, the gate to the main room will close and the fight cannot be reset without all raid members being defeated. Standing next to the closed gate actives the following effect on characters:  Disintegration (uncurable large Acid DOT) Standing in the Disintegration effect is a handy way for the raid to self-defeat and reset the instance. Phase 1: Vile Scream and Wriggling Tentacles Example starting location at northeast outcropping Before the fight, the entire raid should group up on one side of the room towards the north end. The rocky outcroppings in the northwest or northeast sides are easy landmarks for this (see image at right). To begin the fight, the tank should run forward towards the center of the room. As soon as they get close to the deeper area, the encounter will start and everyone will be in combat. At this point the entire raid should run together across the room east-west (or vice versa). The reason for this is that, immediately upon spawning, the Watcher will activate his first big attack: Vile Scream. "The Watcher Shakes with Anger" Vile Scream targets a random raid-member with a narrow conal AOE Acid damage attack that hits very hard about five seconds after he shakes with anger. By running laterally across the room, everyone should get out of the way of that attack and avoid the damage entirely. The Watcher will continue to activate Vile Scream every 30 seconds while in phase one. The Watcher will also periodically activate Thrown Stun on a random raid member which is a ranged Acid damage attack with a very short duration stun, mainly annoying in that it could stun someone while they are trying to avoid Vile Scream. Wriggling Tentacle After the first Vile Scream, two Wriggling Tentacles will spawn near the edge of the shallow water. DPS these down quickly while staying grouped up. The Wriggling Tentacles have an AOE knockback and do primarily Acid damage. It's likely that the raid will only be able to defeat one Wriggling Tentacle before the next Vile Scream, at which point the raid should run laterally again to avoid the Scream, then come back, group up, and finish off the second tentacle. As soon as both Wriggling Tentacles are defeated, the Watcher will stop doing Vile Scream and reach up above and pull down a bridge from the ceiling triggering Bridge Collapse, a strong Common damage attack affecting the whole raid. The raid should make note of where the fallen bridge lands as that will be where they group up starting in the next phase. Phase 2: Massive Tentacles The Watcher will then disappear beneath the water and in his place two Massive Tentacles will spawn. The raid will should swim across the deep water and group up by the right Massive Tentacle (they will also periodically pull a random raid member into melee range). Swimming Tentacles Also beinning in this phase, unnamed, untargetable swimming tentacles (also known as "sharks") will appear in the deep water surrounding the Watcher's location and will move counter-clockwise around the room. If a character gets close to one of these swimming tentacles they'll be hit by Whirpool which is a huge Acid damage attack that can easily defeat a character if they're hit multiple times. These should be carefully avoided when swimming in the deep water. Positioning for right Massive Tentacle While the raid is grouping up at the right Massive Tentacle, the tank should aggro both of them and then turn the right one around facing away from the raid since they have frontal AOE melee damage. The raid should burn down the right Massive Tentacle and then group up on the left, with the tank making sure it is also facing away from the raid. Once the left Massive Tentacle gets down to about 20% Morale, stop DPS and wait for the raid leader to call out the final burn which leads directly into phase three. Other tentacles will also randomly spawn during this and subsequent phases if a character is standing in Shallow Water (at the edge of the room): Crushing Tentacles - does ranged and AOE melee attacks Squeezing Tentacles - roots character until tentacle is defeated These can be avoided entirely if the raid stays grouped up in the deep water. Phase 3: Shaking Tentacles and The Watcher As soon as the second Massive Tentacle in phase two is defeated, one Crushing Tentacle will spawn next to every member of the raid. Because Crushing Tentacles do AOE melee damage, this will likely cause huge damage to the entire raid. If the raid has a lot of AOE DPS, they can stay grouped up and immediately spam AOE until all the Crushing Tentacles are defeated. However, if the raid lacks sufficient AOE damage, the raid should instead spread out before the Crushing Tentacles spawn so that they are not all hitting the entire raid. Positioning for the Shaking Tentacles and The Watcher Thirty seconds after the second Massive Tentacle was defeated in the last phase, two Shaking Tentacles will spawn where the Massive previously were. At this point the raid should group up in the middle of the bridge platform and the tank should swim south to get in position to aggro the Watcher when he appears and face him away from the raid. Two ranged DPS should be designated to tank the Shaking Tentacles (they don't hit very hard at range). These ranged DPS should stand with the raid but at the opposite side from the Shaking Tentacle that they are tanking. This is to prevent the Shaking Tentacles from hitting the raid with melee AOE. The raid should begin to DPS the Shaking Tentacles immediately, but do not defeat them. Take both of them down to 20% Morale and then DPS out and wait for the Watcher to appear. Another 30 seconds after the Shaking Tentacles spawn, the Watcher will rise from the depths quickly, then sink back down, and finally rise up slowly again. He does not attack while doing this so that's a good time for the tank to quickly build aggro on him. The tank must keep the Watcher faced away from the raid at all times as he does strong frontal AOE damage. DPS should be careful to not accidentally pull aggro from the tank. While the Shaking Tentacles are up, periodically they will apply this heal to the Watcher:  Tentacle Regeneration While healing the Watcher with Tentacle Regentation, Shaking Tentacles will also apply this stacking debuff to the raid:  Suffocating Fumes A Shaking Tentacle healing the Watcher While they are healing the Shaking Tentacle will face the Watcher and spew green gunk at him. This heal can be stopped with any interrupt skill (even though they do not have an induction bar). After the heal is interrupted the Shaking Tentacle will go back to facing the ranged DPS that is tanking it. As soon as the Watcher appears, the DPS should defeat the right Shaking Tentacle and interrupt (but not defeat) the left Shaking Tentacle. This will stop the heals on the Watcher. The raid can then begin DPS on the Watcher, slowly at first until the tank has plenty of aggro. Every 60 seconds new Shaking Tentacles spawn to replace any that were defeated. Only one Shaking Tentacle should be up at any given time (to minimize the chances of a double-heal on the Watcher and to minimize damage to the raid). As soon as this happens, the following should occur: Opposite side ranged DPS gets aggro on the new Shaking Tentacle Raid defeats the previous Shaking Tentacle (with 20% Morale) Raid burns the new Shaking Tentacle down to 20% Morale Ranged DPS who is tanking the remaing Shaking Tentacle should watch for the heal and interrupt it Then the raid can resume DPS on the Watcher until a new Shaking Tentacle appears, at which point keep repeating that process for the rest of the fight. Depending on how much DPS is required for the Shaking Tentacles the raid leader may choose to have some DPS full time on the Watcher and some DPS just focused on dealing with the Shaking Tentacles. Shortly after the Watcher spawns he will being building the following corruptions, some of which are removable via corruption removal skills.  Vile Fury (stacks every 10 seconds, removable)  Vile Reach (stacks every 35 seconds, not removable) The tank and some of the DPS should focus on removing the Vile Fury corruption every time it's up since it greatly increases the damage to the tank (some tanks can handle this by themselves if their corruption removal skill has a short cooldown). Although the Vile Reach corruption can't be removed, it should be ineffective as long as the tank stays within melee range of the Watcher (i.e. tanks should never get out of melee range, especially late in the fight once Vile Reach is stacked up). Every 35 seconds the Watcher will say: "The Watcher Shakes with Anger" This will signal that his big 360 AOE attack, The Terror of the Deep, is coming. In order to avoid most of the damage from this attack, players must be standing on the ruins or the bridge platform, not swimming in deep water. Short races such as Hobbits and Dwarves will still appear to be swimming even if they are over the ruins/platform, but they will avoid the damage nonetheless. It's essential that all raid members get into this position before the attack as it does massive damage to anyone in deep water, as well as potentially knocking them back into deep water or into a swimming tentacle. As long as the raid is able to successfully keep the Vile Fury corruptions off, efficiently handle the respawning Shaking Tentacles, and avoid excess damage from Terror of the Deep, they should be able to DPS down and defeat the Watcher.

Drops

Gallery

External Links

• Another walk-through on Lotro Life