This fight is the first boss in Sanctum Ophidia and can be a massive challenge for new trials groups if they do not understand the mechanics and/or work together as a team. One wrong move can potentially cause a domino effect wipe!

The tank should of course taunt the boss and maintain a taunt at all times (see overtaunt below) and face the boss AWAY from the group.

The group should create a semi circle behind the boss so that everyone has their own space. NOT overlapping, NOT stacking (popcorn explained below for the purpose of this formation). You must have plenty of room. In the mean time, at least 2 dps and/or healers (can get away with more) need to play ranged and stay well back loosely stacked together. This is for kiting the shards (also explained below).

So in a nutshell, ranged dps together at the back, and everyone else semi circle spread out behind the boss while the tank holds it still. Simple!

Overtaunt!! – That’s right! This boss can be OVERTAUNTED! Do NOT spam taunt. Make sure you apply it and keep the uptime on it passively of course but if you apply taunts too often (more than once every 7-10 seconds, you WILL make her completely lose the plot. The Mantikora if overtaunted will rampage around the room killing whoever she feels like killing until she has calmed down again. Do NOT spam that button!

Heavy Attack – Very simple, the boss will fire off a heavy attack. The tank MUST have the boss facing away from the group and the tank MUST block this attack or take HUGE damage. Failure to block is almost certain death and if not will knock you over. Pay attention to this attack!

Cleave – This is also a very simple mechanic. The boss will cleave in frontal aoe. If any player is within it’s reach it will cause massive damage (dps/healers will die to a one shot) do NOT stand in front or close to the front of the boss unless you are a tank.

Popcorn – This is where random players will see a fast growing aoe under their feet which will POP and explode throwing the player into the air (hence the name popcorn). However this doesn’t just happen ONCE but 3 times! So if you get caught by one and it does not kill you, the next one will pop pretty much as you hit the ground and you WILL die. Do not get caught by this and do NOT run around like a headless chicken into your group.

Your formation should be covered to accommodate for this mechanic. When you see it coming, run BACKWARDS (not side to side, not forwards, BACKWARDS!) in order to pull it away from the group. Once the 3rd pop has gone off you can come back in again and carry on as normal.

TIP: If you dodge roll INSIDE of it, it will not harm you but try not to show off doing that too much because players with lesser skill and/or spacial awareness will actually run into others doing so. Use this as a tip to get back in quickly if you must however.

Basically run backwards for 2x pops, and then dodgeroll THROUGH the last one back towards the boss.

If you cannot manage this, just go backwards till they are all gone.

Stomp – Usually after two popcorn phases the boss will do a large STOMP mechanic. This stomp is easily seen by a massive aoe that pretty much fills the entire room (everyone can see it, no excuses). When this happens everyone needs to BLOCK or they will die. Once blocked everyone will receive a bleed which does a HUGE amount of damage. The healers need to really be on point here to either heal people through it’s duration OR heal them to full health. If any player hits full 100% hp during the dot, it will basically be cleansed. This does happen a lot throughout the fight so people must pay attention to this.

Portal – When you hear The Serpent’s voice the Mantikora will be in a stunned state and a portal will randomly appear on the ground in the room. As soon as you hear that sound you MUST spread out! Doing this will present you with enough time to spot the portal and not have everyone fall in it at once!

Once you can see it, be sure that you assign 1 tank and one dps to go into it. It can hold 4x people but depending on your group capability you can get away with less. There is a reflection of the serpent down there. The tank should hold it still while the dps player/s kill it. It has relatively low health but has similar mechanics to the last boss (heavy attack and cleave). The tank must NOT spin the target because it will one shot a dps. Also if the tank fails to block the heavy attack, 9 times out of 10 the tank would generally be killed.

The most important thing to note about this phase is TIMING! When the portal is up, the boss will NOT cast ANY popcorn at all! This is your window to burn the boss. You will get shards and stomps but you will get no popcorn while the shade downstairs (in the portal) is alive.

So, what you can do is you can have JUST a tank downstairs and make everyone else nuke the boss IF you have extremely high dps. You can burn the shade quickly just so you can come back up and carry on the fight as normal…OR You can play tactically. The shade must be killed within 1 minute and 45 seconds. Have someone with a stopwatch as soon as that portal opens up.

This helps because you can deliberately make sure the dps player/s downstairs KILL the shade SLOWLY to give your team more time upstairs with the boss burning it with no popcorn mechanics present.

ONCE the shade is dead, all people in the portal will come back up and the fight will resume as normal. Unless the boss is of course dead.

Shards/spears – This is the reason for having people together at range. The shards are thrown at the furthest players throughout the fight after the portal phase and these land with an initial stun and do HIGH poison damage. The trick to this is to make sure the ranged stay together to deliberately place them where they want them. When the shard is on the way the players targeted should BLOCK. Once it lands, get out of the aoe quickly ready to recieve the next one. Basically you are being dummies at the back for these to be placed in a semi circle so they stay AWAY from the front of the fight.

If you do not systematically place these shards at the back(ranged locations) the will land in melee positions and then of course the boss will need to be moved a lot more than you want to in order to get the group out of danger.

Enrage – At low health the boss will flash red and enrage doing more and more damage the longer it is alive. This is your window for basically “KILL IT!!”. Hold it still and make it dead, do not panic 

This fight is actually pretty straight forward if you have ever encountered trolls before out in the wild, and especially if you have been to blessed crucible. Pretty much the same mechanics for the troll king. BUT there are a couple of extras AND he hits a LOT harder. This troll is protecting his bridge and he tries REALLY hard to do so.

The tank should taunt the boss while maintaining a taunt of course and turn it AWAY from the group. It helps a LOT if people can help the group with damage shields (bone shield, igneous shields etc) if available within your group. If not, some damage mitigation bonuses (circle of protect etc) can also come in handy. People will take a LOT of damage here if they are not careful and sometimes even if they ARE careful.

The group should be positioned in a circle around the boss, but NOT in front of the boss! Only the tank belongs there.

Two adds (archer and war priest ) will come with the boss to start with. These should be positioned with the boss and generally should die passively during the fight with aoe damage, BUT i would advise you to focus them to make them less of a bother so you can concentrate on the boss mechanics properly.

Ground Slam – The boss will slam the ground with a HUGE very noticeable AOE. When this happens, the group inside of the circle should BLOCK to mitigate the damage.

Ground Pound – The boss will repeatedly punch the floor 3 times and there will be 3 straight lines of damage aiming at the tank. This needs to be blocked, BUT, sometimes these actually go behind the boss too! So whenever he is smashing the floor, everyone should BLOCK or else can be subjected to a ONE SHOT! Do not let this mechanic kill you.

Poison ball – This boss like all other trolls in Sanctum Ophida will throw a ball of poison at a random player. When this happens, if the player sees it coming, they can dodge roll and avoid it. If not they will suffer a poison damage over time aoe attached to them! They should stand aside and let it pass. If they touch other players, each person touched by it will ALSO receive it. It spreads, DON’T run around giving everyone your germs! 

Enrage – At low health (20% or so) the boss will glow red and be enraged! He will deal MUCH higher damage and the mechanics need to be followed even stricter than before. If you do NOT block his ground slam, while he is enraged, you WILL die. Be careful.

Overchargers #NoCheese – Throughout the fight the boss will spawn overchargers which must be killed. There will be a shaman in the room who controls them, so if you kill him and/or his totem it is a lot easier for the tank to maintain agro. If the sham is alive they will run where ever the totem is and it can be a pain. So do make sure he dies.

The boss will spawn 1 overcharger at 75%, 2x at 50% and 3x at 25%. So yes you guessed it, if you DON’T kill the overchargers as they spawn, you can end up with 6x of them. Make sure they die!

Remember of course as explained in the Trash Fights section, these can put nasty lightning aoes on the players so positioning and not panicking is key!

This fight is every PUG’s worst nightmare. Luckily for those of you whom have never seen this, a long time ago it was altered to decrease the difficulty, BUT it can still be a pretty big challenge for new groups. She has low health but there is a LOT going on.

Positioning wise the tank should hold Ozara by the door way (closed door) on the right of the room as you come in. DO NOT stand too close to the door because she can heavy attack you through it and you can get stuck but loosely stay in that vicinity. This is to be sure that the damage is in the right location for when the adds come in.

In the mean time the group should be in a semi circle around the back of the boss and all have their own space. You do not want to stack and/or overlap. The off tank (if you have one) can do one of two things.

1) hold the adds (troll, archer and war priest) close by to receive heals and help throw buffs etc at the group.

2) Take all the addsto the corner of the room, hold them there and survive. DO NOT touch the overcharger, leave that with the group.

Heavy Attack – This is pretty simple stuff. The boss will heavy attack whoever has agro (should be the tank) if she heavy attacks, be sure to block it. It doesn’t hurt much but it will knock you down if you fail to block it and it makes positioning her a difficult task. Even a dps/healer can block this.

Overcharger – The door in which i have stated you need to fight in front of it where the overcharger comes from. It will spawn at the beginning of the fight and then continue to spawn every few seconds each time one dies. You MUST focus this target.

If you have a low dps group, make sure all single target is on the Overcharger and aoe down the boss each time one of these spawns. If you have a very HIGH dps group, you can get away with focusing the boss and killing the overcharger with aoe. It must die however so each spawn is really when you should be utilizing your ultimate abilities for the burn!

Shaman’s Totem – There are many adds in the room and each one that dies will respawn! So you will have an endless flood of adds to deal with during the fight (small ones). However the Shaman is one you do NOT want to kill.

His totem controls the overcharger. If the totem is active he will NOT stay near the door so you can kill him, instead it will run to the totem and things get messy really fast (no control).

So you must KILL the totem (assign one dps to kill it at the beginning). If you kill the totem, the overcharger will never run away and be easy to deal with. The totem will NEVER respawn.

BUT if you kill the shaman by accident (or even on purpose) he will respawn and make a NEW totem. DON’T kill the shaman, kill the TOTEM!

Pins – The boss will cast a spell with both of her hands in the air and PIN members of your group. This is the most important mechanic in the fight. People who are pinned cannot get out by themselves, they must be set free by the team/group by running over to them and activating a synergy.

You must free the player, and then get BACK into your formation. Do not panic, do not run around aimlessly. If you can reach someone close by, unpin them asap.

This can get a little messy because of everyone screaming “I’m pinned”. This is very easy to fix. Simply don’t do this! Anyone pinned to the ground should simply put out an emote, perhaps “hello” or something, which will let the group know of their position. Tanks and Healers however should speak up because they are priority!

As the fight goes on the boss will place more and more pins on the group to a maximum of 4x people, so be quick on releasing these victims of the mechanic.

This boss is both simple and hell depending on the group and their ability to co-ordinate. The non hard mode is basically a stack and burn so long as the tank holds the boss still. But hard mode really tests people to see if they are paying attention or not and to see how much they understand about not panicking!

The main tank should turn the boss away from the group and hold it still at ALL times!
The group should stack on the circular pad BEHIND the boss and NEVER go in front of it.

World Shaper! (hard mode only) – This is the simplest and most difficult mechanic of the fight. It is extremely easy to execute but collectively it can sometimes be a nightmare to get people to work as a team.

Basically the whole fight you want to be as close to the boss as possible (bit of a stack and burn) but this mechanic it is SO important that you stay close.

The boss will raise his hand and a growing green ball can be seen above him. This is where he is deciding which player randomly is going to get it! NO ONE moves! You do not yet know who the target is so stay still.

Once the boss’s hand moves, he will throw the ball into the air and his chosen target will have it aimed at their head and will land on the ground with a HUGE AOE.

The way to work with this mechanic is simple. If you are the target and you run too soon, that mechanic will be going with you, and potentially will land where ever you are, including on other people’s heads who ALSO tried to get away. Don’t run early. Once it leaves the bosses hand it’s location IS already decided…

Stay close to the boss, and as soon as the boss throws it, everybody RUN! It MUST physically leave the boss’s hand BEFORE you start running!

Once it lands, everyone come back in again. Plain and simple. Run too early, people die, run too late, people die. Focus!

Sprinting by the way is much more efficient on both resources and maneuverability in this mechanic.

Again, in a nutshell…Stay close, stack up, his hand moves, you run, it lands you come back in. Rinse repeat.

Heavy Attack – The boss will heavy attack the tank and this MUST be blocked. If not blocked it WILL hit incredibly hard and possibly kill the tank outright.

Cleave – This cleave is HUGE in aoe and can wipe out the entire group in one hit. It has an incredibly wide arc so NO ONE but the tank should be in front of the boss and any time. This should also be blocked by the tank. 

​Poison phase – The boss will teleport to the very center of the circle pad on the ground no matter where he currently is in the room and crouch down. The entire room will be filled with a high damage ticking poison dot. This is where stacking is important because the healers need to really spam out those heals here to keep people alive. Once the poison phase is over (about 10 seconds) you can carry on as normal.

NOTE: if the off tank is too far from the heals, they can put on damage shields to help mitigate the damage.

Also note. There are 5x poison phases BEFORE the bubble/orbs phase (explained later) 

Lamias – At the beginning of the fight before the first poison phase there will be 2 lamias spawning from the left corner of the room. These must be grabed and move away from the group by the off tank. If these get killed they will explode and one shot anyone caught inside of the explosion.

Be sure that your off tank grabs these asap and they don’t get stuck in the group. The off tank should keep these occupied to one side the WHOLE fight. They will scream (interrupt them) and they will also heavy attack (block). Above all be sure to maintain your resources while holding on to these but be careful while heavy attacking them if you need to because they sometimes block. Hitting a blocking target with a heavy attack will knock you off balance and you will have to break free.

Mantikora – There are 2 methods here. During the fight you will hear a flushing sound and from one of the blood pools will spawn a Mantikora. Overtime you can end up with 2x of these. How you deal with them is up to you. The first Mantikora will spawn after the 2nd poison phase. The second Mantikora will spawn after the 4th poison phase.

Method 1) The off tank takes the Mantikora/s to one side and holds them still with the Lamias at the back of the room away from the group. Until the bubbles phase.

Method 2) The main tank taunts the Mantikora/s IN to the group and the group kills it.

Be aware the Mantikoras do heavy attack, which needs to be blocked by the tank and they DO have a MASSIVE stomp ability much like the first boss of the trial. Anyone who fails to block this…will die!

IF your group is NOT capable of this simple mechanic. Make sure you apply method 1 and keep the Manti so far back that the stomp won’t reach (bottom left corner up the stairs).

Magicka Bomb – The Blue totems that spawn during the fight will randomly put a magicka bomb on a player. When this happens the player will glow blue and a growing sound will erupt from them until it explodes!

If you dump your magicka and spend as much as possible (basically empty your bar to 0-10%ish) the bomb will explode, you will survive and you will be given some magicka back to carry on in the fight.
However, if you fail to empty your bar, you will die when it blows up.

These blue magicka bomb totems CAN be destroyed however IF you wish to do so. If you destroy these then magicka bombs are GONE until you see a new one spawn. Sometimes you can move your hole group and shift your position to stack the boss on top of it in order to kill it. BUT that is a little advanced.

Pull totems – In the room not only do you have blue magicka bomb totems but you also have pulling totems. These will pull a random group member to them from wherever they are in the room. If you are pulled you need to dodge roll mid pull to break it. If you are quick enough it will put you back where you were. If not you will be snared heavily close to the totem and will have to dodge roll from where you are as far away from the totem as possible in order to break the snare and get back to the group.

Again, these totems CAN be killed if you choose to get rid of them.

Poison Totems – Poison totems look very similar to pull totems (green) and they physically connect with beams to the boss. This will buff his poison damage during the phases.

Orbs/bubbles – After every 5th poison phase (and at execute) the boss will fire out several pink shards across the floor. Every player must run to a shard each and this will coat the player in an orb/bubble. There is always one where the main tank is standing, so do NOT steal this, the tank needs it. And for the rest of the group you should assign at the beginning who goes left and who goes right. There is ONE for each player. Do NOT race each other for the same one, all get one each.

If you do not pick one up fast enough you will not get a bubble and the boss will cause an explosion and you will die. No bubble = dead.

Go get your bubble, get back in the middle and carry on as normal.

Once the explosion actually happens all Lamias, Mantikoras and totems will also be killed. The fight basically starts again from scratch until the next orb/bubble phase.