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Freya (25 Man) Strategy Guide |
| by RaidinBill |
| This is the main guide for this boss. We will attempt to keep it up to date, so feedback is appreciated. This is copyright material. Please respect the work of the author and ourselves and do not copy it. |
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 Gear Requirements
No special gear is required for this encounter. A raid simply geared in nearly full sets of the previous tier's gear is going to be required to meet the DPS/healing/tanking requirements, however. For 25 man Freya, full Naxx25 gear is a minimum requirement.
Raid Composition
You need 7-8 healers, especially if doing hard mode. 2-3 tanks should be brought, and a good mix of ranged and melee DPS (enough to split between the various mobs in the elementals wave, and, most importantly, enough ranged to handle Eonar's Gift spawns in remote locations). DPS split half and half would be ideal: 6-8 melee and 6-8 ranged.
Buffs and Consumables
Fire, frost, and nature resistance totems/aura/aspects are highly useful on this fight, due to there being lots of elemental damage sources in all of those schools thoughout all of the phases of the fight. A shaman, paladin, or hunter should make sure the raid has all of those resistance buffs at all times. Healthstones and Healing Potions are more useful than DPS consumables on this fight, due to the spontaneous and unpredictable damage the raid will receive at times.
The Fight
The Pull
Freya has a position she stands at for an extended length of time, near the river/beach area, which players will see her at most often. This is the ideal place to engage her. The raid will run up with the tank generating threat on Freya, while the rest of the raid can "prime" themselves for the actual combat (the first wave of adds spawning). This may mean building combo points, getting themselves ready with combat buffs (trinket stacks, etc), dropping totems, getting in whatever positioning is being used, and so forth. No DPS is needed on Freya during this time since she will heal through it with impunity.
Freya
Freya starts the encounter with a 150 stack of "Attuned to Nature", a buff that causes her to receive more healing (4%/stack). She also permanently has a heal over time effect on herself. These are undispellable, and together, a high stack of Attuned to Nature with the HoT will make Freya virtually unkillable by normal means. The heal over time is called "Touch of Eonar" and the base heal is for 24,000/second. 150 stacks of Attuned to Nature causes it to heal for 144,000/second...!.
Freya goes Berserk after 10 minutes of combat, starting from the moment you engage her. Her berserk causes her to hit for astronomically large numbers, quickly killing your tank and everyone else.
Freya summons adds to assist her every 60 seconds, and killing these adds lowers her Attuned to Nature stack, which eventually allows you to defeat her.
Freya herself has low health, only about 4 million. She hits moderately hard, about 15k on a tank class. She uses various abilities: Lifebinder's Gift and Sunbeam.
Lifebinder's Gift (65,000 HP) - Freya uses this approximately every 45 seconds. It causes her to throw a "tree" onto a random point within 40 yards of her own location. The tree hits the ground and immediately begins growing. The tree is a mob, but is rooted (it's a tree!), and has no abilities at all, besides growing larger. When the tree reaches full size (which takes about 15-20 seconds), it instantly heals everything in the area (all enemies hostile to you, that is, not your raid!), for 60% of their health, and then it dies. These are thus to be treated as extremely high threats, and must be killed immediately, or all of the adds/spawns the raid is dealing with will be significantly healed.
Lifebinder's Gifts are actually called "Eonar's Gift" (65,000 HP) as their mob name (the tree you target and kill). They are attackable immediately upon their graphic appearing. They also have a passive aura around themselves (8 yard range) called Pheromones, which will prevent the silence effect of the Ancient Conservators, an add in the encounter (see their section below for a better understanding of the Pheromones buff).
Sunbeams - Freya targets a player and casts a Sunbeam on them, dealing around 8k fire damage to the target and everyone within 8 yards of it. This is only avoidable by moderately spreading out, but Freya uses it about every 20-30 seconds, and the damage of it isn't too threatening. This will always hit the targetted player no matter what; only the "splash" damage can be avoided by the raid being spread out. This is only cast on one player at a time.
Freya spawns 3 kinds of add waves, twice. There are thus 6 waves in total, but they can't spawn back to back; you get 3 waves of adds, and then 3 waves of adds again, so you can potentially get "Detonating Lashers/Conservator/elementals and then Conservator/Detonating Lashers/Elementals", as an example. You cannot have two of the same type of add back to back, even if one was the last in the first set, and the first in the second set. Thus, you cannot have Detonating Lashers/elementals/Conservator, and then conservator again immediately after. There are 60 seconds between each wave of add spawns. However, a wave can spawn sooner if you killed the previous wave early. The next wave will spawn either: 5-10 seconds after the previous wave is defeated, or when the 60 seconds is up, whichever is sooner.
During every wave, Freya is always off-tanked. She still remains a moderate threat due to her abilities, but the raid cannot interact with her in any way (there is nothing to interrupt and nothing to avoid due to positioning), so she is simply off-tanked by a dedicated tank who is healed by dedicated healers. However, it is advised to keep at least Demoralizing Shout/Curse of Weakness/Thunder Clap type effects on Freya, to reduce the damage she will deal to your tank. Your Freya tank will want to move Freya around as the raid moves, to stay in range of players, and to accommodate individual wave strategies.
Wave Type: Detonating Lashers
Description
Detonating Lashers are small red plant mobs that have about 230k health, and melee for pure fire damage, around 3k/hit. They also have an ability called Flame Lash; a basic strike attack that does 150% of their regular swing damage: a minor form of burst damage they will randomly use on whoever they are attacking.
10 Detonating Lashers spawn in a circle around Freya, about 30 yards in diameter. These randomly "Fixate" on a new target about every 8 seconds or so. What this means is that Detonating Lashers don't follow typical threat rules and will simply attack a random player, and then change to someone else completely random a few seconds later. Detonating Lashers can be stunned, snared, and rooted. They individually Fixate on random people, which means all 10 Detonating Lashers can be on a different player, or multiple can potentially (rarely) be on the same player. While they do change their Fixate target every few seconds, they will still obey a Taunt for the duration, and they won't Fixate for the duration of the Taunt. This means they will be on the tank who Taunted them for a minimum of 6 seconds (but often not much longer).
When a Detonating Lasher dies, it explodes for rather significant fire AOE damage, about 7k, with a range of 15 yards of the Detonating Lasher's position. This means that, if multiple Detonating Lashers die in the same area at the same time, massive AOE damage will likely cause nearby players to die.
Strategy
There are two potential strategies for Detonating Lashers:
1) The raid groups up together on Freya, and AoE's their own area. The Detonating Lashers will lose health fairly evenly because all of the raid is close together, so even when they Fixate on new targets, all Detonating Lashers still get hit by AOE. When the Detonating Lashers are low health (20% or lower), a Warrior or Druid tank will use an AOE Taunt, and pull all of the Detonating Lashers away from the raid, while the raid moves back as well.
Then, a warrior tank can use Shockwave to stun all Detonating Lashers for 3 seconds, or a warlock can use Shadowfury, and a Frost mage can use their water elemental and frost talents to use a Blizzard and snare all of the Detonating Lashers while the raid casts AoE damage spells on them from afar. The tanks in the area that brought them to this "AoE spot" will then run away while the Detonating Lashers are killed in place with roots and stuns, far from all other players.
2) The raid again groups up together on Freya and AoE's, and stops when the mobs are low on health (20% or lower). Then, the raid fans out, and players simply focus down a few Detonating Lashers at a time, killing them in different areas to spread the damage and not cause too much AoE burst damage at one time. This isn't as quick as the first strategy, but it requires significantly less finesse and isn't as class/spec specific.
Lifebinder's Gifts are spawned throughout the Detonating Lashers wave. This may cause people to have to move away from the "clump" of AoE to kill the Lifebinder's Gift. This can thus cause these people to be Fixated on by the Detonating Lashers while they're further away. This is still very easily healable. However, it can cause those stray Detonating Lashers to have higher health than the rest due to being out of the AoE for a while. The raid will simply have to watch the health of the Detonating Lashers closely and make sure none of them die early. If a few Detonating Lashers remain alive longer, they can be targetted with DPS and have their HP taken down at the end of the AoE to even their health with the other Detonating Lashers. Generally, ranged DPS are preferred to handle the Lifebinder's Gifts on a Detonating Lashers wave; that way melee don't have to run off and "lure" Detonating Lashers away as often, as often a ranged DPS player can reach it without moving. 2-3 ranged DPS are sufficient to handle one tree.
The Freya tank during the Detonating Lashers wave will likely have the raid collapsed on him/her at some point. If using an AoE Taunt strategy, your Freya tank will want to immediately Taunt Freya back, because she will be afflicted by the AoE Taunt too, so be aware of this.
Wave Type: 3 Elementals
Another add wave type is the 3 Elementals. Somewhere within about 15 yards of Freya, 3 Elementals will spawn. A Snaplasher, Ancient Water Spirit, and Storm Lasher.
Snaplasher - Description
977k HP
The Snaplasher is the simplest of the adds in this wave. It deals moderate physical damage, but every single direct damage source it takes causes it to gain a stack of Hardened Bark. One stack of Hardened Bark increases damage by 10%, and it stacks to 99, meaning 99 direct damage attacks to the Snaplasher will make it deal 990% more damage, one-shot-killing anyone it hits. Hardened Bark fades after 4 seconds of no instigating (no more DD attacks), so it is possible to let it wear off if needed.
Snaplasher - Strategy
The tactic for handling the Snaplasher in the wave is to assign some ranged DPS player (death knight, frost mage, etc) to keep a snare (movement speed reduction) effect on the Snaplasher the entire time, while ranged classes DPS it down, running away from it since it will move much slower than the players. Warlocks and mages make fairly good candidates to kite the Snaplasher, as they can generate high threat, quick-cast spells to keep the Snaplasher following them while they deal damage to it. The death knight or frost mage can then repeatedly cast their snare on it (Chains of Ice/Frostbolt) to make the Snaplasher kite-able.
Damage over time effects (bleeds, warlock DoTs, Ignite, etc) do not cause the Snaplasher to gain Hardend Bark stacks.
Ancient Water Spirit - Description
520k HP
The Ancient Water Spirit hits for moderate (6k~) frost damage, and every few seconds casts Tidal Wave. Tidal Wave is a 2 second cast with a very elaborate wave chanelling animation. Tidal Wave can only be interrupted by stunning the Water Spirit, it cannot be Kicked/Bashed/Counterspelled/etc. Tidal Wave does rather high damage (10k+ frost) and knocks players back very far, which lends to reduced damage and healing output from the players due to them soaring through the air. Tidal Wave also causes the Water Spirit itself to shoot extremely far away from its original location, further reducing damage to it, since it will be out of range until it comes back to the raid.
Tidal Wave is cast on the current aggro target (so whichever direction it's facing, pretty much), and surges through the target, about 60 yards on, hitting everyone in its path (about 10 yards wide, and the whole 60+ yards in distance). It is, for most intents and purposes, a very potent tidal wave.
However, the Ancient Water Spirit will go immune to stun effects (due to diminishing returns), and eventually will likely cast Tidal Wave, and you won't have a way to stun it. There is a way around this. Not all stuns are on the same Diminishing Returns timer. Major stuns like Hammer of Justice, Concussion Blow, Kidney Shot, Cheap Shot are all on the same timer. Then there's "minor" stuns: Felguard Intercept stun, Warrior Charge/Intercept stun, Warrior Improved Revenge proc, etc. These stuns can be used on the Water Spirit when you know it's immune to major stuns, to interrupt the Tidal Wave cast.
Ancient Water Spirit - Strategy
So then, to handle the Water Spirits the raid should have a tank hold aggro on it, and a stun rotation is used. When the 3 "major" stuns have been used to interrupt Tidal Wave casts, it should then have the "minor" stun rotation come in to play. A protection warrior using Warbringer (or an arms warrior with Juggernaut) can use Charge / Intercept to stun it, a Demonology warlock can use the Doomguard stun. Once this has been done to interrupt about two Tidal Waves, the regular stun diminishing return should be expired, so you can resume using Hammer of Justice/Kidney Shot/Concussion Blow, and so on.
If all Tidal Waves are cancelled via stuns, the Water Spirit is a simple, weak mob that will do very trivial damage to your tank.
Storm Lasher - Description
780k HP
The last mob in the elemental pack is the Storm Lasher. The Storm Lasher melees for nature damage, moderately hard (7k~). The Storm Lasher has an instant cast ability called Lightning Lash that it will use randomly every 5-10 seconds. This will jump between 5 players in total, and it increases in damage every time it jumps. All of the jumps occur instantaneously, so the easiest way to explain it is that Lightning Lash hits 5 players, for varying damage. The first jump will hit for about 6,000 nature damage, and the final jump about 12,000 nature damage. It cannot be interrupted, since it has no cast bar and is instant, but you can stun the Storm Lasher to prevent some of the casts.
The Storm Lasher also uses Stormbolt, a single target damage spell that will hit for about 9-10k nature damage. This has a 1.5 second cast time, and it is advisable to interrupt all of them. It casts this roughly every 5 seconds.
Storm Lasher - Strategy
The Storm Lasher is best be handled by rogues, since they can combine Kick to interrupt Storm Bolts with their Kidney Shots / Cheap Shots to keep it stunned fairly frequently, to minimize the damage it does. One tank will need to hold aggro on the Storm Lasher; this can easily be the same tank as is on the Water Spirit, due to how weakly these mobs hit.
Elementals Wave - Overall Points
Finally, all of the elementals in the elemental pack must die within 10 seconds of one another, or they will resurrect each other. There is an emote for this: when an elemental dies it "withers" in to the ground, and you can visibly see it thrashing about, not quite dead. If another elemental is still alive 10 seconds later, the "withered" elemental will be resurrected. Thus, the raid will need to split DPS to bring them down at about equal levels, and then, perhaps, AOE them all down together, or call for hard DPS swaps to kill them at the same time.
The suggested way to split your DPS is:
Ranged DPS should kill the Snaplasher, due to the very powerful melee swings it will have due to its Hardened Bark. There is no tank on it, only the snares and ranged DPS running away when they have aggro and the mob is close to them.
Ancient Water Spirit is best handled by a protection warrior with stunning classes (rogues/paladins), so that way Tidal Waves can be interrupted with stuns like Kidney Shot, and then when those go on diminishing returns, a protection warrior can interrupt the Tidal Waves by using a Charge/Intercept stun.
Storm Lasher is a mob you would like both interrupted and stunned, so interrupting classes are needed, plus stuns if possible. Rogues are again useful here as they can do both. A dedicated tank will be useful for the Storm Lasher.
Your tank on Freya can likely pick up one of these elementals and still be in no major threat of dying. It is suggested to have your protection warrior not tank the Ancient Water Spirit, that way they can more easily do the Charges/Intercepts needed to interrupt its Tidal Waves (Charge and Intercept require a dead zone between the warrior and the target of at least 8 yards, so if the warrior is tanking the same mob he wants to Intercept or Charge, the mob would be troublesome to get distance from). Thus, your Ancient Water Spirit may be Taunted by your Freya tank if this allows your stun rotation to work.
Lifebinder's Gifts will still be spawned in this wave, so some individuals will need to be assigned to kill them, ranged DPS is preferable because they need less movement. 2-3 ranged DPS players is sufficient. If the tree spawns near melee, melee DPS can break off for a moment to kill it, and then resume their previous role.
Ancient Conservator - Description
(2.2 million HP)
The Ancient Conservator is a single, large tree mob, like the Corrupted Servitor trash mobs you see in the area around Freya. It hits fairly hard; about 15k on a tank. Shortly after the Conservator spawns (somewhere within 10 yards of Freya), "Healthy Spore" mushrooms will begin spawning all over an area about 100 yards in diameter around Freya. This is a very large possible area, so you can't realistically predict where Health Spores will spawn. Ancient Conservators put a raid-wide "Pacify" effect on the raid, called Conservator's Grip, as soon as they spawn. This is like a silence, but it prevents you from using any abilities at all. To prevent this effect, players must run near the Healthy Spores. Conservator's Grip is cast by the Consevator and will persist until it is killed. As soon as the Conservator dies, the grip is removed.
Healthy Spores have an aura around them that prevent the raid from being Pacified, called Potent Pheromones. Potent Pheromones also increases damage dealt by 25%. Healthy Spores start off small, and grow larger, before they finally shrink and die after around 25 seconds. More Healthy Spores are constantly spawning around the area. Players must be very close to the Healthy Spore (within about 5 yards) to receive this buff, and thus remove the Pacify.
The Ancient Conservators also cast a spell called Nature's Fury every 5 seconds on a random player in the raid, except the current tank on the Conservator. Nature's Fury inflicts 6,000 nature damage to that player, and anyone within 5 yards of them, every 2 seconds. The debuff persists for 10 seconds. Due to the 5 second recast time on Nature's Fury, with the 10 second duration, 2 players will have Nature's Fury at any time.
Players afflicted by Nature's Fury want to get away from the rest of the raid, so they aren't damaging them with the Nature's Fury. Healers will need to focus heals on these players, especially if they stray farther away to prevent damaging people. The players with Nature's Fury may be afflicted by the Pacify debuff, Conservator's Grip, if they run away from players and there is no Healthy Spore nearby. This is okay, as long as the player can still receive heals in their location.
Whenever possible, players with Nature's Fury should attempt to move to a Healthy Spore that isn't near other players, and also will allow them to still attack or heal without being Pacified.
Ancient Conservator - Strategy
Have a tank generate threat on the Ancient Conservator, and move it amongst the Healthy Spores, so that the melee DPS classes can attack it. The tank will need to be aware of when the Healthy Spore is fading, and plan their next movement to a new Healthy Spore, lest the Healthy Spore fade and the entire melee cluster be Pacified while they flee to a new Healthy Spore.
Casters will want to spread out around the Conservator on as many Healthy Spores as possible, and also plan their movements. It is much better to move to a new Healthy Spore before your current one completely dissipates than to be caught unexpectedly when it fades and end up Pacified for an extended period.
The raid will continue this methodical, individual planning-where-to-move-next while they collectively try to stay in healing and DPS range, all the while moving away from each other when one player is afflicted with Nature's Fury.
Your Freya tank will want to ensure they are under a Healthy Spore whenever possible, so they can use their own damage mitigation abilities to survive (Holy Shield, Shield Block, Demoralizing Roar/Shout, Shield Wall, Icebound Fortitude, etc etc..), otherwise they can be damaged to a point where they'd want to use a cooldown, but would be unable to if they weren't near a Healthy Spore! The Freya tank healers should move with the tank to ensure they stay in range at all times.
Lifebinder's Gifts will spawn as usual in this wave, so people will need to swap to kill them before they grow to full eight and cast their heal. Conveniently, the tree also puts out the "Pheromones" aura that prevents the Pacify effect, however, unlike the Healthy Spores' aura, this does not also increase damage. This is in place to allow people to venture off to wherever Freya may have placed the tree, and kill it without being subjected to the Pacify. 2-3 ranged DPS players are strongly preferred for dealing with the trees on the Conservator wave, due to the way the Pacify effect works (people travelling to and from a Lifebinder's Gift may be Pacified in the interim).
 Overall Strategy
Now that all 3 types of spawns the raid will encounter have been covered, a general strategy can be discussed.
The raid will have to adjust their positioning and strategy with each wave. Knowing that they have 60 seconds to deal with a wave before the next spawns, they can also plan out the next potential wave and what they will need to do.
For example, if the raid receives elementals first and vanquishes them, they know the next 2 waves can only be Detonating Lashers or a Conservator. If it's Detonating Lashers, the raid will want to then immediately clump up on Freya when they see them spawn. If it's the Conservator, the raid will want to spread out and seek Healthy Spores for safety. If the raid has gone through both an elemental wave and a Conservator wave and hasn't yet seen their Detonating Lashers spawn, they will be able to then immediately deduce that the next wave will be Detonating Lashers. Knowing this, the raid can position themselves in advance of the wave spawning (if time allows), and be ready to handle the wave.
This principle applies in any combination, and can assist the raid in speeding their kill.
New waves will spawn every 60 seconds, even if the last wave hasn't been killed yet. Convsersely, the next wave will also spawn if the raid finishes the previous wave early. Detonating Lasher waves can be efficiently handled in a very quick time with an experienced raid, so you may be able to defeat them in 30 seconds, half of the allotted time. This will cause the next wave to spawn a few seconds after the last mob dies, possibly 30 seconds sooner than expected. While this may not give the raid a "breather" to catch up and heal up, this does actually significantly help.
Each time the raid finishes more quickly, the more time the raid gets on Freya's final phase. 60 seconds after all 6 of Freya's waves have been summoned to aid her, she should be the focus of all your attacks. Assuming the final wave has been defeated, her "Attuned to Nature" stack should be removed now, so her Heal over Time effect on herself is much weaker. The raid then needs to switch their efforts to defeating her.
The raid can be a little slow on killing a wave, but not much. However, it also depends on which wave the raid gets next. If the raid gets elementals, and then the following wave is Detonating Lashers, and they're slow, this can be handled. Detonating Lashers aren't that much of a threat at all due to their low individual damage. The raid can clean up the elementals, and then easily adjust and handle the Detonating Lasher wave with plenty of time to spare.
However, if the raid gets elementals, and they're running late, and a Conservator wave spawns next, the Pacify effect that will then come into effect can easily spell a wipe, as the raid may not be finished with the Elementals, and will then have to deal with adjusting positions immediately while still trying to finish off all three of the elementals within 10 seconds of each other!
Freya herself is simplistic in the easiest mode of the fight (with all 3 of the Elders killed prior to engage), and she is mostly a tank and DPS encounter, with the exception of her trees. The tank will hold aggro, the raid will DPS her until she's at low health, where she becomes friendly. She will still cast Sunbeam on the raid, and still spawn Lifebinder's Gifts. These will need to be attacked and healed through respectively.
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