Oracle of Darkness (WIP)
Details may be missing, or subject to change until I have better first-hand experience.
The Oracle of Darkness starts south, and immediately opens with Hell’s Judgment, which sets everyone to 1HP.
Note: If, for some reason you have a buff that increases your max HP (Protraction, Thrill of Battle, or Great Nebula, or just food buffs expiring), that wears off between the snapshot and application, this will kill you.
She will then teleport to the middle of the arena and prepare her first major mechanic with a heavy raid-wide.
Ultimate Relativity
When Ultimate Relativity resolves, there will be a lot of debuffs that go out. However, you only need to check a limited set of debuffs.
Six of the eight sets of debuffs have fixed assignments:
- Two DPS will get 10s Fire debuffs (the “short Fires”).
- One tank/healer and one DPS will get 20s Fire debuffs (the “mid Fires”).
- The tank/healer have a 42s Dark Eruption debuff.
- The DPS will also have a 42s Dark Water III debuff.
- Two tanks/healers will get 30s Fire debuffs (the “long Fires”).
This leaves the last tank/healer and the last DPS. One of them will get a Dark Blizzard III debuff, and the other will get a Dark Fire III debuff.
- If the Blizzard is on a DPS: This will be a “slow Blizzard”. The tank/ healer will get a 10s Fire debuff and join the “short Fire” group.
- If the Blizzard is on a tank/healer: This will be a “fast Blizzard”. The DPS will get a 30s Fire debuff and join the “long Fire group.
The first step is to assign hourglasses to players. The basic rules are:
- Short fires go to empty spots.
- Mid fires go to the purple tethered spots.
- Long fires go to the yellow tethered spots.
After that, it’s just a matter of how to assign players to hourglasses.
Ultimate Relativity - Awk
This is my preferred method, and is a map-relative assignment.
| 1. Face the map's North, and find the first hourglass for your group:
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Ultimate Relativity - Y Runytivity
This is a tethers-relative assigment, with a slightly modified priority to better match the datacenter’s conventions.
| 1. The yellow tethers make a "Y-shape". Find the "Y" and orient to it. Take up assigned clock positions based on your Fire group:
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Once everyone has their assigned hourglass, we can resolve the debuffs.
The good news is that once you have your assigned hourglass, you can basically read off where you’re supposed to go next from your debuffs. Every 5 seconds, something happens.
- If it’s your turn to resolve Dark Fire III, do so outside.
- If your hourglass starts spinning, go bait the laser beam.
- If it’s your turn to record, do so just a little off from the center, unless you are one of the short Fires or the mid Fire tank/healer, in which case record just behind your hourglass.
Essentially, each player only needs to move in a straight line from the center of the arena, through their assigned hourglass to the edge to resolve their debuffs.
| 2. First set of Dark Fire III and Unholy Darkness resolve.
(This example illustrates the "slow Blizzard" case where a DPS has Dark Blizzard III.) |  |
| 3. First set of records and laser baits.
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| 4. Second set of Dark Fire III and Unholy Darkness resolve. The Dark Blizzard III also resolves here.
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| 5. Second set of records and laser baits.
Record your position in your assigned clock spot position, a little away from the center. |  |
| 6. Third set of Dark Fire III and Unholy Darkness resolve.
(This example illustrates the "fast Blizzard" case where a T/H has Dark Blizzard III.) |  |
| 7. Third set of laser baits (there are no recordings).
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| 8. The Rewind will trigger just before the 42s debuffs resolve. Note that your characters positions were recorded earlier, but not your orientation. Your character's orientation just before the Rewind will be locked throughout the Rewind. As a result, face your character towards the outside of the arena just before the Rewind resolves. (i.e: if you are at the NW position, face your character north-west.) |  |
| 9. The Rewinds resolve, taking back your characters to their recorded positions, which should be along their assigned clock positions.
Done correctly, the Dark Eruptions should not hit anyone else, the Shadoweye players share the Dark Water III stack, and all players are facing outside to not get gazed by the Shadoweye attack. |  |
After you gain control of your characters, stack up in the middle to share a Shell Crusher AoE. The hourglasses will disappear, and the boss casts a raid-wide Shockwave Pulsar. The boss will then target the first player in aggro with Black Halo, a two-player tankbuster cleave.
Apocalypse - Static spreads
The boss will be targetable for the duration of this mechanic.
Before the cast, the Oracle of Darkness first casts Spell-in-Waiting Refrain which puts three pairs of Dark Water III on six different players to be resolved during Apocalypse.
This effectively creates four pairs of players (including the two players who did not get any Water III).
We need to sort out the party into two groups of four, such that each group has one of each debuff (nothing, 10s, 29s, 38s).
This may necessitate one or two pairs swap around (depending on the number of duplicates). Players who swap will need to do so a total of three times during this mechanic.
| 10. Group up with tanks/healers on the West, and DPS on the East. When Water III debuffs come out, look within your group for duplicates (nothing, 10s, 29s, 38s).
(In this example, H1 + H2 have the 10s Water, and D1 + D2 have no debuff, so H1 and D1 will be swapping sides.) This is the first swap (of three). |  |
| 11. The Oracle of Darkness will cast Apocalypse, which changes the arena slightly. Three points on the arena; one center and two opposite cardinal/ intercardinals will pulse white. This is a telegraph for where the later AoEs will appear. A white streak also originates from each point and follows the line around the arena clockwise or anti-clockwise. Each group references the two starting points in their half of the arena:
Also note which direction the streaks are going. The first pair of Dark Water III stacks also resolve. (In this example, the reference points are North and South, and the streaks are travelling anti-clockwise.) |  |
| 12. While the water stacks were resolving, the boss also readies Spirit Taker- the boss will jump on a random target with an AoE attack that knocks anyone else hit out of the arena. After the water stacks resolve, quickly spread out for Spirit Taker.
Players who swapped earlier can use this time to swap back to their original groups. This is the second swap (of three). |  |
| 13. The boss's Spirit Taker resolves. Players who need to swap back can now rejoin their original groups. |  |
| 14. The boss will return to the center. The trails will continue for a total of six pulses (indicating six upcoming sets of AoEs) and end up in this formation relative to the first set of pulses. All party members will get a spread marker. Players who needed to swap back should have returned to their original groups by this point. |  |
| 15. The AoEs now resolve for real. The AoEs will appear at the points that pulsed earlier for a total of six waves. |  |
| 16. The second set of AoEs resolve together with the party's spread markers. |  |
| 17. Quickly move to the center while avoiding the third set of AoEs. Note that the players on the outside have a narrow safe path that leads in to the middle. Players who need to swap do so again. This is the third (and last) swap. |  |
| 18. Fourth set of AoEs. Use this time to gauge how far you can be from the center and still avoid getting hit. |  |
| 19. The second set of Dark Water III stacks resolve together with the fifth set of AoEs. The player with aggro moves out 90 degrees from where the first set of lights pulsed. |  |
| 20. The boss then uses Darkest Dance, which targets the furthest player (which should be the tank with aggro) with an AoE tankbuster. |  |
| 21. The MT rejoins their group. Everyone positions to prepare from a knockback from the boss. |  |
| 22. The boss does a knockback. |  |
| 23. The third set of Dark Water III stacks resolve. Resolve these near the boss- melee can use their gap closers, but will need to back out a little bit to meet up with the healers and ranged. |  |
The boss ends this sequence with another Shockwave Pulsar before casting Memory’s End for the enrage. Like the previous phase, the Oracle of Darkness must be brought down to under 20.0% HP to advance.
Frequently Asked Questions
[Debuffs] What is the difference between Dark Water III and Unholy Darkness? Aren't they both stacks?
| Dark Water III and Unholy Darkness are both stacks with one crucial difference:
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[Ultimate Relativity (Awk)] Why do the priorities go backwards from North?
| The boss is facing North throughout Ultimate Relativity. With that in mind, having the priority "backwards" gives:
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[Apocalypse] Are these cases where more than one pair needs to swap?
| Yes. It's rare (3/35 chance), but certainly possible. Consider the following example:
The T/H and DPS groups each have two duplicate debuffs, so we will have four players swapping groups (MT, H1, D1, D2). Most of the time, one pair will need to swap (24/35 chance). The probability that nobody has to swap is 8/35. |
[Apocalypse] Why do we have to swap three times?
| Because the Water III debuffs are randomly distributed, we need a way to ensure that there are four players in each stack every time they resolve. You could do a one-time adjustment at the very start, and use those groups throughout- however, the problem is that it's now not clear how each group should spread for Spirit Taker, or for Dark Eruption. Permanently swapping this way means that not only do you need to determine whether you are swapping, but also who you are swapping with so you can take their spot when it comes time to spread out. Even then, there are awkward scenarios to consider:
Arguably just as important, keeping to static positions for Dark Eruption also means that every player's dodge for the Apocalypse AoEs stays consistent from run to run. As a result, we swap once to resolve the first Water, swap back to spread out, then swap again to resolve the second Water. There are no more spread mechanics after the second Water, so we can keep the groups as they are to resolve the third Water. |