Aion 3.0 Chronicles: Muada's Trencher

Last night Void decided to take on the other 12-man instance, Muada's Trencher. We didn't know what to expect going in and thought it was an actual instance, however, it turned out to be a single legendary-grade boss. We gave it a few tries to see how the boss worked and if we could handle doing it "legit" or not, we ran into some...issues.

Strategy: The first thing you need to do if you're going to follow this guide is drop a kisk outside of the entrance to the instance. Kisk res'ing during this fight is essential since the healers will already be bombarded with adds and will likely be too busy to res you. This boss also likes to enrage if you don't kill it fast enough, but fear not, there is a way to recover from the enrage.

IMPORTANT NOTE!: Enrage was a problem we ran into frequently, possibly due to our low numbers, and we have a solution for getting enrage off of Muada. We did something similar to the ol' Lannok trick where we had someone sit the first part of the fight out until Muada went nuts and killed everyone. Once everyone dies the buff runs off. Before Muada resets we had the person sitting out grab her to make sure she didn't reset before the rest of the group kisk reses and runs back in. This may not be a problem for full groups of 60's with good gear but we didn't even have a Sorceror with us so this was a necessary part in the fight for us.

Phase One: 100-75%
This is the easiest phase, Muada does a 360 degree AoE (Ray Thorn) that hits everything outside of 20 meters or so of her. To avoid being hit by this ALL party members must be standing close to Muada and the tank will be positioning the boss away from the rest of the group. Muada does some other minor attacks during this phase like projectile vomit but it's nothing terribly dangerous outside of Ray Thorn but be ready to run when phase two begins.

Phase Two: 75-50%
At this point Muada will use a skill called Rage and stun your party briefly, following this stun Muada will spawn a couple elite adds and add spawners. Now, we tried this several different ways and, possibly due to our less-than-average sized group, we were unsuccessful when we tried to burn the adds faster than they were spawning. One or two from each set would be left over and eventually overwhelm us.

To remedy this we decided to have all DPS stick to the boss as the Templar kited it around the circular room. When you do this it causes all of the adds to zerg around after various members of your group so it's important to kite when you've got a large number of adds on you. Moving in a circle prevents both the boss and adds from ever catching you since they are all pretty sluggish (<--Ohohoho so clever). After slowly but surely kiting and DPSing Muada out of this phase you enter phase three.

Side Note: If you feel you can DPS the adds down before more spawn then make sure to prioritize the spawners and be sure to utilize CC's (Unconfirmed, seemed most everything works on them though) and blinds (Confirmed) as both of them work on all of the adds. Also, when the adds die they melt into a puddle of acid and do significant damage to anyone that steps in it so be mindful of your environment.

Phase Three: 50-25%
Before you dig into Muada's health again it is important to kite off the remaining adds, they despawn after a while and no more adds should spawn. Once the adds are down have your tank settle Muada back into the same position as Phase one. The only difference between this phase and the first one is the additional AoE to complement Ray Thorn, Swiping Blow. This AoE hits in a 360 degree zone 15 meters around the boss, this needs to be outranged as it does heavy damage and knocks people down.

Every 20 seconds Muada will alternate between Ray Thorn and Swiping blow. To make sure nobody gets hit you run out of Swiping Blow and immediately back in after it ends to avoid Ray Thorn, repeat until the phase ends. Pretty simple.

Phase Four: 25-0%
Muada will use Rage, same as all new phases, and then burrow underground. Shortly after using this skill the text "Muada has created a giant sand hell, run!" pops up on your screen. Following the disembodied words' instructions quickly run out of the central area and onto the sides. I assume if you fail to do this you die horribly. But it's not hard to get out of so no big deal.

Once you're back on the boss he gets a new skill called Neurotoxin which he will randomly cast on party members. It does a medium amount of damage and puts a status effect on the target that cuts its attack and does damage over time. This is curable so clerics make sure you're dispelling the targets of Neurotoxin.

Muada will stop doing Ray Thorn this phase and will switch back to Projectile Vomit (Frontal Cone) and will continue doing Swiping Blow and Neurotoxin. Make sure to keep out-ranging swiping blow whenever Muada uses it and keep burning him down.

This should finish off the fight! Congratulations on defeating Empress Muada!

For those of you curious about the loot she can drop, there are two eternal necklaces (Caster/Melee) that Muada drops that aren't too shabby for PvE and she drops a fabled hat and shields. We got the fabled cleric shield to drop :3.

Thanks for reading!

-Fest
(Tiamat/Assassin/60)