Lotro Watcher Guide 1

Phase Two

So you have successfully defeated the first two Wriggling Tentacles, and are ready to begin Phase Two. It will begin with a bit of a splash, quite literally. The Watcher is going to reach up, and pull down the bridge that is above you, hitting everyone in the raid for ~1,000 points of damage. So make sure that you have everyone healed up!

Step 1 â Moving Out Into Deep Water
Once you have everyone healed up, you should notice two massive tentacles that have spawned out in deep water. Youâre going to want to swim out to them, and take them down. I would suggest the same basic strategy from Stage one, where you send your raid to the left one, and have your tank grab the right one.

Step 2 - Avoid The Sharks
As you're moving out to the deep water, you'll notice that a tentacle will spawn in the deep water, about mid-way between the edge of the shallow water and the fallen bridge. We refer to this type of tentacle as a "shark". Sharks follow a circular path in the deep water, and are perfectly harmless, provided you avoid running into them. If for any reason you get caught in the path of a shark, you will most likely die, as two hits from a shark is enough to kill anyone. Avoiding the sharks is a must!

Step 3 â The Left Massive Tentacle
The Massive Tentacles are really nothing special. The basic idea is to have a champion, guardian or warden (Heavy-ish Armor) grab aggro on them and spin them around. The reason for doing this is because they have a frontal AoE attack, and you don't want everyone in the raid getting hit. They have no special attacks. Send 11 to the right Massive Tentacle and the main tank to the left Massive tentacle. Once you've killed the left Massive Tentacle, everyone can move over the the right Massive Tentacle, but be careful! As soon as you kill the right Massive Tentacle, you will begin Phase 3. Planning here is very important!

Step 4 â The Right Massive Tentacle
You can start on this tentacle the exact same way you started the left one. Your tank should already have established aggro so the remaining 11 members should snuggle up and commence the beat down. However, you are going to want to stop DPS on this one at ~8k morale. Just let it sit there for a bit while you set yourselves up for Phase 3. At this time you want to regen power, and wait for a strangling tentacle (see below) to spawn.

Strangling Tentacles
These tentacles are much like the Crushing and Squeezing in the sense that they too are on a one minute global timer. Once a minute, the watcher will summon one of these to hang a member of you raid upside down. Itâs imperative that you all get that member of your raid freed as soon as possible, or you risk them being killed. The one member of the raid who has the worst time with these more than likely will be your tank who will be off swimming on his own (explained below). If your tank gets hung up, ranged dps only should be freeing him. Melee risks swimming into the AoE cone of the watcher, and the extra damage isnât worth the risk.

Phase Two to Three Transition

This is where the Fight really begins to come into its own. At this point, you should have one massive tentacle remaining at around 8k morale. Youâre still waiting for the Strangling Tentacle to spawn to activate the global timer on that, and really just enjoying the calm before the storm.

Positioning

Green Oval = Massive Tentacle
Red Circle = Raid
Pink X = Tank
Gray Rectangle = Bridge

The above picture will be the reference point for this Phase Transition. The actual transition occurring here, happens the moment you kill the Massive Tentacle, represented by the green oval. As you can see, once the tentacle dies, you want your raid (except champions), to shuffle to the left, in order to move out of AoE range where the Crushing Tentacles will spawn. The Tank is going to slide over into position where he or she will tank The Watcher.

Step 1 â 12 Crushing Tentacles
Once the strangling tentacle spawns, blow it up, and immediately turn your attention back to the massive tentacle and kill it. Upon its death, 12 crushing tentacles are going to spawn, one for every member of your raid (assuming you have 12 people in there). At this time you want your Captain to blow In Harmâs Way and Last Stand. Everyone except your Champions is to move away from the cluster of Crushing Tentacles, so they take no damage. Assuming your Champions are Deathstorm traited, this should be no problem whatsoever for 2 Champions to handle. Meanwhile, your Tank at this point should move and get into position to tank the Watcher when he pops up roughly 15 seconds from the time the Massive Tentacle dies.

Step 2 â The Watcher and Shaking Tentacles
As stated above, The Watcher is on a roughly 15 second timer from the moment you kill the second Massive Tentacle, so regardless if youâve killed all the crushing or not, he will spawn along with his 2 Shaking Tentacles, which can cause major problems if youâre not ready to handle them. The basic idea with this Phase transition is to always be one step ahead. At this time, all of your raid members should be located in the center of the fallen bridge, and be in position for The Watcher. You need to assign your hunters a tentacle to tank, have one grab the left, and other the right so they wonât be melee AoEing your raid on top of Crushing Devastation. Grabbing aggro only takes about 3-5 seconds, so once you have aggro grabbed on your Shaking Tentacle, feel free to kill any remaining Crushing Tentacles that may be up, if any at all. Also, during all of this, The Watcher is going to pop up, your tank needs to immediately grab aggro on him. A simply Fray the Edge from your Guardian (assuming you brought one), is more then enough to get his attention, then commence your aggro building. Youâre going to want to start corruption removal immediately, so the classes that assigned to manage these should start acting on their duties now. If you have questions about which classes should be on corruption duty, please read our recommendations below. Also, on top of everything thatâs already going on, its absolutely positively important that you start hitting the watcher with all the debuffs you can muster. Youâre Lore Master should be throwing everything it his or her arsenal at The Watcher, and you Burglar should be using a Traited Disable. These debuffs, along with a good rhythm of corruption removals, should result in Crushing Devastation (see below), hitting for 500-1000 points of damage only.

Recap of the Phase Transition
At this time, you should have successfully completed the following things: Established ranged aggro on the 2 Shaking Tentacles, established aggro on The Watcher himself, and have him spun away from the main group. You should have started a corruption removal cycle that is going to be in place for the remainder of the raid. The Watcher should be fully debuffed, and once again that needs to happen for the remainder of the raid. At this time The Fight has reached itâs final stage, where you will need to do exactly what was done in Watcher 1.0, a cycle killing of Shaking Tentacles, and the eventual death of a giant squid.

Continue reading Phase Three
Watcher Drops Gallery

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