Rift Mob:High Priestess Hydriss  

Strategy

High Priestess Hydriss is a 3-phase encounter with a gauntlet. You will first encounter two packs of mobs. Each should be AoE'd down individually and quickly, as Hydriss becomes active on a timer.

During the first phase, she will be on the ground. In this encounter, we chose to have her tanked just above the bottom of the stairs. She has an AoE frontal cone ability which does moderate-to-severe damage. It should be noted that during this encounter, the frontal cone varied widely, so we had all healers and DPS directly behind her to avoid this mechanic.

During the ground phase, she will periodically summon a Seaspawn to assist her. This should be focused down by DPS. Once the Seaspawn is dead, it summons a protective bubble which mitigates the damage from her frontal cone. The tank should definitely be standing inside of this.

She will also occasionally go into an air phase. She will channel Water Burst, which places AoE geisers onto the ground. These always do severe damage to anyone standing inside (or walking through) them, so they should be avoided at all costs. Two Seaclaw Hives will spawn, and those will in turn release Rampant Seaclaw. DPS should focus down the hives before the tank becomes overrun. Also, if any hives remain when Hydriss is finished channeling Water Burst, she will cast raidwide damage which will wipe the entire raid. This forms the DPS soft enrage to this encounter. So DPS should consider the Rampant Seaclaw second-priority, even DPS'ing them with Hydriss if raid DPS is on the low end.

Once Hydriss reaches 20%, she will stop going into her air phase, but will continue to spawn Seaspawn. She gains a new mechanic, Hydrostatic Shock which will do raidwide damage and spawn Abyssal Dousers, as well as another protective bubble. Raiders should get inside this bubble as it both mitigates damage as well as provides a damage buff. The dousers are easily snared, and should be kept away from the bubble and/or DPS'ed as they will break the bubble if they reach it. This phase did not occur for us in this encounter, but has been noted in previous encounters.

There have been a few bugs which have been noted, such as hives falling on a raid member without warning (and killing them) and melee DPS experiencing a terrain collide with the hives, causing them to become stuck. Until these are addressed, raids should be ready with plenty of battle rez's and expect the unexpected.