Lotro Watcher Guide

by oogabooga227

Preparations

So you're ready to kill The Watcher? Before we go any further, make you have obtained the 6 pieces of gear from the following instance: Grand Stairs, Fil Gashan, The Forges, Skumfil, Dark Delvings, and The Sixteenth Hall. This gear is mandatory, and you cannot run the raid with out it. Assuming youâve done all that, please feel free to read on! This guide will not go through the strategies on how to run these instances, as such guides exist elsewhere!

Before you start there are a few preparations that need to be done, and the first and perhaps most important is your voice interface. Personally we recommend using Ventrilo, but in-game voice chat does work. Make sure that everyone can listen in, even if they donât talk (better actually if only a few selected people are talking during a raid), and that the people who will be communicating instructions can be easily heard. If necessary, turn down or turn off the in-game sounds so you can clearly hear the raid instructions, and make sure you set your microphone on "push to talk" so you don't spam the voice channel when your wife/husband/whatever decides to yell at you for playing that dumb game again!

Phase One

As soon as you have all stepped into The Watcherâs Lair, you can begin the fight at any time by simply sending one person forward to activate him.

Step 1 â The Vile Scream
As soon as you activate the script you will be faced with the Watcher's first attack, called Vile Scream. Vile Screams are absolutely deadly (one-shot kill), and must be avoided. Dying to these screams is not an option, so donât die to them! There is a script that cues the scream; "The Watcher Shakes with Anger" will appear in bold white text on your screen. At this point, The Watcher will face a member of the raid at random, and you have 3 seconds or so to get out of the way of where he will scream. Failure to do so will end up with you being one-shotted.

The easiest method to control these screams is to âsnuggle upâ, basically make sure your raid members are grouped together tightly, so that you can guarantee the direction of each scream. The screams come in 40 second intervals, so having someone with a timer or stopwatch can be a slight help during your first runs.

Step 2 - Wriggling Tentacles
To start the fight, have the entire raid all run up at the same time to kick off the encounter. As soon as you reach the edge of the deep water, you will get the first Vile Scream script. At this time, 11 of the raid members need to run to the left, while your guardian/champion âtankâ runs to the right. Once the first Vile Scream has finished, you will see two Wriggling Tentacles spawn. Youâre going to want to run up to the left one with your raid and quickly begin to burn it down. You should be able to kill it in roughly 30 seconds without a problem. At this time, if you feel that another Vile Scream is about to occur, it's best to have the raid wait at that exact spot (where you just killed the first Wriggling Tentacle) and then run left (raid) and right (tank) to avoid the second Vile Scream before proceeding to kill the second Wriggling Tentacle. If there is ANY doubt, remember that it's always best to wait. Nobody should ever die to Vile Scream. Period. With some practice, your raid should be able to kill the left Wriggling Tentacle and move on to the right Wriggling Tentacle before the second Vile Scream. To avoid the Vile Screams when you're grouped up at the right tentacle, simply have everyone run to the right. So, assuming youâve avoided the second Vile Scream, return to the right wriggling tentacle and kill it as quickly as possible. Once itâs dead, you wonât have to deal with another Vile Scream for the remainder of the raid.


Crushing and Squeezing Tentacles
Throughout the entire fight the watcher will spawn various different smaller tentacles. These tentacles come in three different forms, two of which only spawn in the âshallow waterâ, and one that only spawns in the âdeep waterâ. The two that spawn in shallow water are called Crushing Tentacles and Squeezing Tentacles. Squeezing Tentacles root you in place until they are killed, while Crushing tentacles have a melee AoE which does a fair amount of damage as well as a ranged attack. Itâs best to try to take care of these as quickly as possible. These tentacles spawn once a minute, if and only if you are in shallow water. They will not spawn in deep water.

Continue reading Phase Two
Continue reading Phase Three

Watcher Drops Gallery