Moam is the first of 3 'optional' bosses in AQ20. He appears as a large version of an Obsidian Destroyer. The fight is fairly simple as long as we have adequate mana drainers along for the ride. If we do not have adequate mana draining, then heavy DPS will be key. Also, 90 seconds into the fight, he will summon 3 Mana Fiends (giant versions of arcane elementals like those found in DM West). They will need to be crowd controlled while Moam is dealt with.


Mob Abilities

Mana Fiend

• Arcane Explosion - AoE that does 900-1100 arcane damage.
• Counterspell - Interrupts spellcasting and blocks that school of magic for 12 seconds.

Moam

• Trample - AoE melee attack. 900 -1200 damage to a tank.
• Drain Mana - Drains 500 mana from a fixed number of people. Unlimited range. Gives 1000 mana to Moam per person. Druids in Cat/Bear form not affected.
• Arcane Explosion - When Moam's mana reaches 100% he emotes "Moam bristles with energy" and unleashes an AoE for 3000 arcane damage plus fall damage as people are thrown into the air.
• Summon Mana Fiend - 90 seconds into the battle, Moam summons 3 Mana Fiends which are banishable (preferred method) and rootable.
• Turn to Stone - Also at 90 seconds, after summoning the mana fiends, Moam will turn to stone. In this state he cannot attack and does not drain mana (but does regenerate some). This is prime time for any and all DPS (except mana drainers). After 90 seconds, or if his mana reaches 100%, he comes out of stone.

Our Strategy
After all patrolling trash mobs are cleared from the area, the MT will charge Moam. Priests and Warlocks will immediately begin mana draining Moam and hunters need to insure Viper Sting is always on him (while maintaining DPS). Druids can start the fight in animal form, switching only when their healing is needed. They can assist with DPS although its safer if they wait until the stone form phase. Shamans will be responsible for initial heals.

update: Now that all druids have innervate, they will need to innervate priests during this fight as they will burn through all of their mana trying to mana drain Moam.

At 90 seconds, the warlocks will banish their assigned Mana Fiend and resume mana drains. If the raid does not have 3 warlocks, one Fiend will be pulled away from the group and chain rooted by a Druid.

If we have enough warlocks and priests, Moam should never have 100% mana and we will not need to worry about his AoE. If we're short of the needed warlocks and priests, he will AoE once. It will be called out in Vent for everyone but the MT and a healer to move away from him when he's close to 100% mana. We'll try to have Greater Arcane Protection Pots available for these brave souls.

In either case once he hits stone form (after the Fiends are summoned), all possible DPS must be on Moam (priest and locks can use an occasional DOT if his mana is under control). We want him dead before he can break stone form.

Additional links

WoWWiki Moam Page

List of his abilities gleaned from this page.

When I was doing MB on Stimor I had no mana issues, I got an innervate. He also gets 15% regen while casting.

Other note. +healing gear is worthless for Moam as a priest, go for +dmg gear.

After testing, +damage gear does jack shit for mana burn. GG Hunding.

The only way you can improve Mana Burn is by taking the talent to make the cast time faster. =P

I'm pretty sure one of the times he drained me to nothing, I got just enough to heal and he drained me once again so...maybe it was just random chance or maybe he sticks to those 10 people.

I'm going to do a little reading over the various tweaks to the fight and see which ones may apply to our group. Also I intend to have one more DPS character next week ... so probably just 7 healing types unless we can get a third druid (and one of them is feral spec and geared). Just need to burn him down faster.

Unless we get 3 druids to show for innervate , we can count on our priests to be hurting for mana by phase 2 all the time (which means our mana drain capacity goes to hell so a long endurance fight against Moam will be a bad idea).

Some people seem to think that positioning makes a difference on how he selects people for his mana drain. Also trying to figure out how to counter the mana fiends counterspell (not conclusive if totems worked but we will try that again).

So ... tweaks to try:
- split mana users into two equal groups and make them bunch up at opposite ends of moam. If positioning matters it will cap his drain to half our mana users.
- Curious if Felhunters (with their devour magic and counterspell set to autocast) would be better bets against mana fiends. Even if they dont stop him from casting it, autocast of their spells may move them up to be top target for a counterspell and their higher resist (especially with Felheart set bonus) should keep them around longer.
- Make sure shamans stay by the lock in their group to keep totem next to him. Locks have to be mobile due to mana fiend's speed.

Also mail Vagrant a stick of RAM. kk thx

Int wrote: The few PUGs I've gone to AQ20 with usually have Moam down before the first banish wears off. I think this must be essential to getting him down.

Next week I'm going to start keeping a shadow word pain on him at all times. 3 priests doing this adds up to 18,000 extra damage before he goes stoneform. If we assume he's got around 300k HP, that's 6% going into stoneform and should be enough to make it easy to take him before the first banish breaks.

That plus 3 locks maintaining corruption (and if they have nightfall an occasional insta SB) should add a decent amount of dps.

Will have to see how Thursday goes but I think we're on the right track with locking down Moam now. If we did not have that last minute mana surge he would have went down first attempt last night and second attempt almost exactly the same (slightly less dps but no BOOM).

Once we have that bum on one shot status, its all about Ossirian.