Manaya's Core Shandra Manaya Dungeon Guide

As a guild leader of my very own guild teaching my guild members is a normal daily thing when someone wants to go. And because I'm always explaining the fight to people I figured it would be a great idea to share a guide with all the bloggers that are nice enough to come and help out with some of my other posts and such.  For this guide I'm going to just focus on the queen since she has quite a few different abilities and two different stages.

I usually take guildies through the normal mode to help them learn because it can still be a rough fight for someone that hasn't done it. For healers they usually get taught duel healing with DPS that have done the queen before so it's not a whole bunch of people at once. Its hard to carry multiple people that don't know the fight. And with teaching DPS we usually don't take more than one because of the sense of frustration which can happen where people get upset with each other we always bring the people that aren't going to get angry while teaching someone new or aren't going to rage quit.
The queen fight has different roles depending on your own personal class. The first I'll go over is one of the biggest roles of the healer throughout the first phase. Healers during phase 1 need to be kiting the adds around the room in a circle while everyone else is on the queen. The kiting could be done by another class like a sorcerer but one way or the other a healer should learn how to do it so all of the DPS can focus on burning down the queen who's in the center in egg form. As a healer you need a certain crystal setup for the first phase. You will be using:

In weapon:
1x Swift Crux
3x Threatening Crux

In Armor:
1x Fine Fleetfoot Crux
3x Stalwart Crux

And when you get out of the first phase you want to switch to your normal crystal set up. Don't worry you have a few seconds before the queen comes down to quickly switch your crystal setup. The crystal setup is the same for mystic or a priest so it doesn't matter too much. The kitting phase as a priest consists of using self heal to pick up the hate. As a mystic it consists of dropping motes. The first phase is easiest with a mystic since the DPS if they need heals can go to the edge of the map and pick up the healing motes. As a priest you give them the buffs and try to drive by heal without getting killed it puts more stress on a priest which can make them mess up. So priests require a team which doesn't need to be healed constantly and can avoid most of the queens center attacks.

During the kiting for a healer at a certain point which is dependent on how fast the DPS are killing her you will get a message that says the gullets have spawned and a few moments later you will hear something that sounds like a door opening before they come out as a healer the trick is to dismount and heal yourself so you pick up all of the gullets and then let them drop in a long line which makes a trail of poison then you keep kitting the adds in the poison until they are all dead. Once that happens the whole thing starts again keep in mind if your duel healing to teach someone the other priest needs to stand and watch they can't be healing or it picks up threat even without threat crystals. And if DPS is really fast there isn't much time in between for a priest or healer to kill the add's with the poison before another set will pop on top of a healer. But if the DPS are good they can usually burn it down to end the phase quickly instead of making it a long and agonizing fight.

At the start of phase 2 as a healer you buff everyone before she comes and then are mostly worrying about keeping everyone alive. The only other phases which a healer might need to know is the debuff phase which I'll cover after I go over DPS role since usually you don't make your healer focus on debuffs unless someone dies. The other important thing is when she starts to do her power buffing a healer needs to wait until she hits two stacks and remove it quickly or she gets a empowered version which will make her normal attacks a one shot. If you mess up this cleanse you will want everyone just kitting the boss until she loses it.

 

If you look at the queens hp box at the top right the debuff that has 2 stacks is her buff that normally would have to be removed just as it hits two or else like this screenshot most or all of your party could be dead because she hits very hard. It takes time to get used to the timing on it especially since your worrying about keeping the party alive as well as removing the buff. For priests it's a ranged skill and mystic it's a aoe skill they have to use while being on top of her so you always want to make sure that your close enough you can use it when her health is to the point that she will start doing it.
Let's talk about the DPS's role in the phase 1 of the queen. For a DPS you will want to add a Swift Crux into your weapon to help with the movement speed while in combat and you will want to use Anarchic Crux in your armor.

 If you're a ranged DPS sorcerer you will not be using fireblast unless your healer wants to time your fire blasts with their healing just cancel casting fireblast will rip threat from a healer and get you killed. However if your healer gets stuck and dies you as a sorcerer can pick up threat while the rest of your team revives the priest. As a ranged you will be on the edge of the ring around the egg DPSing and placing the pink puddles in area's that the healer won't want to kick you in the face. You want to avoid placing them on the edge where the healer is running because they will dismount and kill your healer. You also don't want to put them in the middle on top of DPS cause they won't be able to DPS.

For melee DPS and our fearless tank DPS its possible the queen will drop puddles on you too usually its whoever has the top threat so backing out and placing it on the outer ring where the ranged won't get stuck in it and not too far out that the healer will have problems is what you will want to do.
I didn't think to take screenshots of the queens egg abilities but in the future when I teach someone I'll get some screenshots instead of just a written explanation of her skills. The queen doesn't always do them in order either she can troll like a boss. But usually she will do a close range aoe stun then a center aoe which you don't want to be standing in its pink color and lasts a few seconds then after she usually does a donut which you want to be either completely outside or in the center at the egg or it will nearly one shot you in normal.

Hard mode everything is faster and is a one shot so you have to do it perfectly. She will do like white waves from different corners and usually you get arrow tells which tell you where they are coming from. She throws in some all corners low range ones as well. As a DPS you just avoid them standing on her corner near her back you can avoid the claws from above and most of her wave line attacks without having to move that much. And when she's around 6% everyone moves to her back side which is indicated by a line of shadow and burns her.

DPS should line up, recharm and get buffs before she comes up as well as the healer should revive any dead hopefully there won't be any if you've successfully avoided all of her abilities. With phase 2 started you'll end up with all of her various annoying skills that either hurt or kill. And everything in hard mode will kill which is why if your learning it don't do hard mode. The hardest skill for DPS especially berserkers to avoid is the death ball she curls into a ball and then releases a poison which stacks in normal if you get more than one tick you will die but in hard mode your dead if you get hit at all. This is the biggest killer during the fight for berserkers you want to always have your running speed up and use your leaping strike to get yourself out of range. I play a berserker so I feel your pain other classes have dash and other abilities making it easy for them but for us we are limited to our slow running speed which you can slightly fix by making your boots enchanted all with running speed.

This is the tell just before she spreads poison letting you know to get out of the way cause she's going to release in an aoe. It is possible for her to do it at any point and I've had some bad ones that she did it after every single ability which gets really stupid fast.

When she releases it looks like this like a dust cloud covering a wide area and you don't want to get hit when she releases or it will hurt. Best advice for a berserker is attack like she's going to do it every time you attack so.. Charge thunderstrike run in hit her and get out and keep doing that so you never get caught at ground zero of the queen when she does it because there's no way out if your too close.
She does some ranged attacks that she will throw a bomb never stand in her red circles cause they will kill a cloth armor player and hurt another DPS and to make it easier on your healer try to stay together as much as possible so your healer can heal everyone without having to chase you to the edge of the other side. Berserkers and tanks can block most of her attacks using there shields but the death ball you always need to get out of because it can't be blocked.

One of the other annoying moves she does is she will pick someone and then fly and try to crush the person she chases for a little bit then does a hulk smash so just use a backstep or run out if she targets you and for our fearless berzerker you can just block it like the picture below.

 

Besides the death ball another major killer of people is the donut she does this consists of the same kind of donut from first phase only this time its red color and its get near the middle of her first or if your max range just stay out and then the second part is move out of center to avoid getting hit. I have pictures to show you. First picture middle safe red donut bad:

 



And the next which happens after it which is get out of the center:

Arrows pointing out tell you not to be in the center.
At a certain point in the fight she will start doing a shield phase that needs to be broken. If you fail to break the shield she will go crazy and do a map wide aoe of the death ball in normal it is possible to heal though it but its better if you have the DPS alive and burn the shield then let her do her aoe death ball which is pretty close to killing everyone if you're not bunched up and getting heals. Energy stars or mystic power buff can help your DPS burn the shield faster and DPS want to hit from behind of course.

When she's not in one of her phases like this DPS are better off attacking from her back side instead of standing behind her because she has a tail whip and split which does really nasty damage and can put a poison debuff on you.

 

 

She will also do a laser attack which is a frontal from her in 3 beams in normal it hurts but it's not fatal depending on how your hit by it. Healers can be killed regardless by it if they are caught in it. But it's pretty easy to avoid just move out of the way.

 

 



Another ability that she does will root a person to the floor if they get hit by it the skill looks like a circle with a fence tanks and berserkers can block it but everyone else needs to get out fast.

The only other ability I didn't manage to get a screenshot of because I'm usually trying to get out of it really fast. But she will start by going under ground and moving to a certain person she picks at random this does not do anything so don't be afraide to let her come to you and save your escapes. When she pops up she will do either the jump skill which is explained above or she will put a red circle under your feet which follows you. Wait until the circle stops following and then when you see her put a orange/ green poison circle under you then use backstep or escape. The ability hits for a good amount and puts a poison debuff on you. She tries to trick most classes into backsteping when she goes under ground so don't be fooled by her  and make sure you save your escape abilities. As a berserker you could use the leaping strike glyph to reset it then just leaping strike out of it to avoid taking most of the damage just as she puts it down. I'll make sure next time I go I'll get a screenshot to put here for that skill.

The biggest part of the queen will be the debuff phase at different phases during the fight she will do a ring which everyone will have to take a debuff or she goes crazy with the aoe death ball for the whole room if you mess it up.

Usually when you're in a group you will be given a number 1, 2, or 3 and depending on the number that will be the ring you stand in. The center is 1 the outer ring is 2 and anywhere outside of the queen is 3. While taking 3 you just stay out completely and don't move in at any time during the fight.

During the debuff's someone might be told to skip what this means is you don't want to take any debuff and how you accomplish that is you wait for 1 and 2 to go off leaving a white area in the center then everyone but the person whose taking 3 moves into the center and then she will aoe the 3rd debuff on the outside of the map. If she does two debuff phases one right after the other you can do one then skip the other because in normal mode your taking 20k damage every time you do the debuff so there's no need to take extra damage if she decides to do this buff back to back. When she goes to do the debuff the next time if you had 1 then you take 2 if you had 2 then you're going to take 3 and if you had 3 you will take 1. That cycle will keep repeating until she's dead if someone dies another person will have to step up and take the debuff cause everyone has to have the proper colors or she will freak out.

It is possible for a healer to take debuff 2 and 3 in extreme cases. They would wait till 2 goes off then back step into 3 but it's better to just have everyone learn how to do it in preparation for hard mode.
Near the last 10% of the queens fight she starts what is known as the walk where she starts walking to the edge of the map and then gets an empowered buff which makes her attacks faster and she hits like a truck you want to DPS her and burn her at the last few percents so she doesn't get to the edge of the map.

The only other advice I can give is you want to keep the queen in the center as much as possible if you get caught behind her on a side and she death balls you won't be able to get out and you will die it's better to give your team more freedom to move around and position themselves.
You can always check out video's on the fight and if you'd like to see some of the ones from our guild Dragonfury-MT server you can catch them on twitch.tv/shizen579  which our streamer does as mystic point of view and also sorcerer point of view.