Routing

At first glance Nokhud Offensive seems like an open dungeon with a lot of routing options, in reality most groups will always follow the same route and do everything in the same specific order. This is mainly to avoid travel time and skip most of the very annoying trash mobs near the final boss. This is very good as a healer because it means once you get familiar with the route and how your cds come up as you go throught it that will apply to every run you do

Once the first three bosses are dead, everyone will fly to the last boss over the river near the left edge of the map, in order to land on a specific platform near 186151 and walk towards him without pulling more trash. All mobs in this area are really strong and have several annoying mechanics which means most routes involve getting up to 94% trash done before flying towards him, and then finishing up killing the two minibosses, 193462 and 193457, in front of him

All of this combined means every run will pretty much look the same, and if you happen to have troubles dragonriding it could be a good idea to practice quickly going from one of the areas to the next as quickly as possible because you don't want to lose valuable time lost flying in circles while the rest of your group waits for you

186616

The first area of the dungeon you will do is around the boss Granyth. The boss itself is incredibly easy and not dangerous at all but the trash can get out of hand really quickly if the tank pulls too big of mobs aren't controller properly. Before the boss becomes active you need to kill three 192800

The trash you will find in this area is just different combinations of these four mobs:

  • The 192800 itself which you need to kill to unlock the boss. These cast 384365 which must be interrupted every time.
  • 192789 which will stand in place and target random people with 373392. It is important to keep an eye on people targeted by it so you don't get surprise oneshots. They will also cast 384476 which can be interrupted or simply dodged by moving from the swirlies on the floor
  • 192791. These mobs cast 381683 on the target that is furthest away, this means that you can bait it and most importantly you can clear it with caut. This effect stacks so on pulls with multiple 192791s you want to wait until all of the 381683s have gone through on the same target before clearing them
  • Finally 192796 that will cast 383823, which is another ability that much be interrupted everytime

The boss fight itself, as i mentioned before, is really simple and repetitive, not dangerous at all.

First, the boss will spawn a 195821 that will walk from one side of the room, across the boss and towards a 386530. You have to stop and kill this mob, while you are doing this the boss will cast 388817 which is the only instance of unavoidable damage he does. You dont have to rush on healing your group back up as there is nothing else happening that could kill them for a long time

A little bit after the 388817, 186616 will cast 385916 which is an aoe around him that you can easily step out off. A couple of seconds after this the 386530 that the 195821 was walking towards will become active, and you can click it in order to deal damage to the boss, stun him and avoid the 388283 cast.

Once the stun wears off, all this mechanics will repeat from the 195821 spawn. As you can see the only thing that you need to do during the fight is make sure the group is at full hp before every 388817 and click on the 386530. As the healer you are the ideal player to click on them because you are the one who does the least dps in the group and there is no healing preassure at all during the encounter

186615

The trash in the area around the Raging Tempest consists of four packs each with a Stormcaller (like 194317) and a combination of 194898, 194894 and 194896

The Stormcallers and the 194894s will cast 386012 on random members of the group, this can be interrupted and you need to keep track of the current targets to avoid someone getting oneshot by getting hit by several of them at the same time

Stormcallers will also periodically use 387145 on the nearby 194897 doing unavoidable group wide damage. While the 194894s will try to cast 386024 which should be interrupted inmediately every time. If it is not interrupted you need to be ready to do heavy aoe healing, throw cooldowns at it if necessary

The 194898 are mainly tank damage via 387135, but this also cleaves to one nearby target withing 6 yard doing reduced damage so you should keep an eye out for the melee dps. The 194896 are also mostly tank damage but in the case the shield from 386225 doesn't get broken in time they will do group wide damage

Finally, there is a single 195696 patroling around the center of the area, he will cast 387127 of which the group can greatly reduce the damage by being more than 10yds apart when it goes off, and 386028 which is a normal 8yd aoe around it.

The hardest of all these packs is the one on top of the waterfall. By having two 194898 and a 194894 along with 194316 you can easily lose people by having someone get hit by a 386012 and cleaved by 387135 at the same time, which is why melee dps need to be very mindfull of their defensives here, as losing an interrupt means even more casts go through which mean even more changes of everything going to hell. To add on to this the two 194896s near the area are very likely to get pulled too either by accident or intentionally, which adds even more potential damage to the pull. This is a decent place to lust in a fortified week.

The 186615 boss itself is considered the healing check boss of the dungeon, it is not the most mechanically complicated but it does pack a good amount of damage in a 15 second window while also having some annoying overlaps to deal with and the most stressfull part for an evoker: range issues

Going through it part by part, the first annoying thing is 384316, which will mark all players with a huge circle around them that does damage, forcing everyone to spread around. This will happen 10 seconds into the pull, and then three times between every 384620, with 20 seconds between them. This can easily put people outside of your range, specially if ranged players start on the oposite side of the room and spread backwards. The ideal positioning to aleviate range issues here is to have ranged players at your sides, and melee on the oposite side, that way when everyone spreads ranged will walk backwards along side you and melee will spread around the boss on the oposite side

Our best tools to heal people when range issues are likely are simply echo and lb. Pre-spreading echoes before the circles so you can pop them once the damage comes will heal your group even if they are out of range out you. But if you can get good positioning one of the ideal tools to cover the damage from 384316 is actually leaping.

A lifespark leaping should be enough to recover your whole group from the damage of a 384316. If you can delay consuming the leaping to line it up with this then you can cover the mechanic without consuming any other resource that you might need later on or to deal with a different mechanic, the only issue with this is having ranged players out of range inmediately after the 384316

Then comes the 384620 which is a 15 seconds long cast that does damage to everyone periodically during its duration. This is a hard hitting ability and it's somewhat-long duration means it's likely that a single cooldown won't be long enough to cover all of it, as most of our stronger buttons are condensed into shorter 5 second periods.

This happens 30 seconds into pulling the boss, and then every 1:20 after that. If the fight lasts less than 3:10 then you will only have two of these storms and you would need to go up to 4:30 to have four of them, so planning for three is a good starting point. Because the first 384620 happens at 0:30 and the 3rd one at 3:10 you won't be able to use 3 minute cooldowns like rewind or ec twice in this fight unless your fight gets long enough to get a 4th 384620.

One option is to use shorter cooldowns like stasis, zephyr and tts for the first and third 384620s, and your 3 minute cooldowns for the 2nd one when all of these will be down

The final dangerous part of every 384620 is that, because of its 15 second duration and the fact that a 384316 comes 20 seconds after it, you will get a 384316 right as you come out of the 384620 and you need to be prepared to have people healthy for that and bring them back up after it.

The boss will also spawn orbs during the fight that start at the edge of its platform and slowly float towards it, soaking these orbs will buff players with 5% increased damaged and healing for 20 seconds stacking up to 10 times. With a full set of 10 orbs you will have 50% increased healing done, which is extremely helpful for healing the 384620. The long duration and frequent spawn rate means that it's not hard to keep up your full buff during the normal phase, but there is a longer delay during the 384620 itself that might mean you lose the buff right after it ends unless you run to pick one of the new orbs asap. The important thing to keep in mind with this mechanic is that as long as you are doing your job of helping the group soak some orbs so they don't reach the boss, you should have a good enough buff to get you through a 384620 without you having to do anything extra

The final mechanic of the fight is 384686, which is a buff the boss will cast on itself increasing the damage it does to the tank. This can be purged if you have a purge in the group but otherwise keep an extra eye out on the tank when it happens and it shouldn't be a big problem

195723 and 186338

To unlock the boss in this area you need to kill four Soulharvesters, like 195927. The mobs you will find around these area are:

  • The Soulharvesters, they will cast 387411 which needs to be interrupted every time and 395035 splitting your soul from your body and making you run towards it to pick it back up and remove the damage done reduction debuff
  • The 195876s that cast 387629 that also needs to be interrupted
  • The 195851s which spawn a small puddle around them via 387614 that you need to get out of
  • The 195855s apply 388801 to the tank
  • 195842s will use 387608 spawning orbs around them that you need to avoid and then cast 387613 on random members of the group
  • And the 195877 which will buff other nearby mobs with 387596

The two important sources of damage you need to keep in mind at all times are 387411 and 387629. In a less coordinated group it's very likely that some of these casts with go off meaning you have to do aoe healing to respond to them.

For the boss fight, the main damage mechanic is 386016. Everytime 195723 gets to 100 energy she will mark the whole group and then send the arrows which will deal heavy damage and spawn tornadoes around each player. The combination of the arrow damage plus any tornado is enough to kill someone so the best way to deal with this is stacking very tightly so all the tornadoes spawn together and radiate outwards making them easy to dodge. You might need to use damage reduction effects like zephyr or tg on squishier targets to survive the initial hit if you are doing a key high enough

Besides that, 195723 will periodically hit random people with 386411 and push people away with 386547 which you can help stop early by interrupting. The rest of the mechanics are for the tank to deal with besides basic dodging things on the ground

186151

The final area, with the normal skip route, consists of only 193462, 193457 and 186151. The two minibosses don't do anything complicated and do zero unavoidable damage. After that you're only missing the last boss which is fairly complex and has some difficult to heal parts

During the first phase, random players will be marked by 376660, doing a big single target hit to them followed by 376683. 375943 means players need to stay spread and can't stack together, and the tank will be hit with 375937 periodically which you can dispell with caut. As long as people stay spread and dodge the charges and frontals this phase isn't that difficult to get through and doesn't require much healing

When the boss hits 50% HP the intermission begins, he will stand in the middle of the room doing damage to the whole group with 376730 while four 190294 become active and start targeting random people with 376725. This hits will do heavy damage and can easily lead to someone dying if either two casts go off at the same time or someone is already low due to the 376730 damage. You need to throw as many healing cooldowns as it's required to keep the group healthy during the phase and hope your group can stack the adds together and keep them locked down while they kill them to avoid deaths. This is a good time to do a ec lb ramp as it will heal the aoe damage while also quickly toping people that get hit by 376725

Once the adds are dead you start phase two, in which 186151 uses the same spells as in phase one but empowered with lightning. 376866 will pull everyone into the targeted player and into the path of the 376683. You might need to use external defensives such as td or zephyr help the marked person survive the initial from 376866 as it does more damage than in phase one. On top of this instead of the bleed from phase one the tank will have 376827 applied to them which you need to dispell as soon as possible.

The 376894 will leave patches of storm in the group covering the room making you need to move around as the fight goes on, and 376737 will periodically land on the ground making everyone constantly dodge

Using your healing cooldowns like rewind and ec during the intermission and damage reductions or absorbs like td or tg during phase three is the best way to handle the fight.

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