The Preying Mantis Guide to Defeating The Watcher

Disclaimer: This guide is as accurate and complete as we can possibly make it, but as with any encounter, there are certainly other ways to approach killing The Watcher, some of which we may not have tried. We have used this strategy to defeat The Watcher with 100% success since our first kill, so it definitely works. If anyone reading this notes any inaccuracies or errors, or has suggestions on ways this strategy can be improved, please send a private message to Eomin on either the LOTRO forums or on the Preying Mantis forums (http://www.preyingmantis.org). We hope you will all find this strategy helpful!

Preparing your Raid Interface

Show dispellable effects only

You should always be using this on raids, in my opinion. Bring up your Options menu, go to Social Options, and put a check mark next to "Show Dispellable Effect Only". You'll no longer be able to see buffs on the members of your fellowship/raid, but you'll be able to easily see debuffs that can be dispelled, which is the whole point.

Show Health of Target's Target

I always keep this up all the time (in fellowships too), as it provides an easy way to tell who has aggro, and how much morale and power they have. With this display showing, it's very easy to tell if your target has changed targets so you can react accordingly.

Raid Assist Window

You do have this up already, right? If not, bring up your Social panel, go to the raid tab, and hit the button that says Raid Assist Window. Your raid leader has already specified who is the main assist, right? The raid assist window is your best friend, so use it.

Post Processing Effects

Have your raid go into their advanced graphics options. Obtainable by simply doing the following:

1. Hit ESC
2. Options
3. Adv. Graphics
4. Scroll Down to the Post Processing Tab
5. Deselect Post Processing Effects
6. Click Accept

The reason I’m telling you to do this is quite simply, disabling Post Processing Effects allows you to see through the water much easier which will help tremendously during Phase 3.

Show Vitals

On the same Raid tab of the Social panel, you have the option to select whose vitals you want to see on your screen during the raid. I usually keep everyone up, so I can instantly see if anyone in the raid has died, needs a heal, or needs to use a potion. You can also use their vitals display to target them just by clicking on it, so they can be quickly rebuffed, healed, etc.

Ok, so now you're all ready to roll! You've got your potions and all your consumables on your hot bar, and you've got your interface all set up just how you like it, right? Okay, sometimes the default locations of those windows aren’t right where you want them, so use Ctrl + \ to move them around to your liking (this undocks the windows so you can move them around). I would also suggest that when you do this, move your OWN status bar (the one that's usually up in the upper left part of the screen) down next to your hot bar somewhere. So put your status bar someplace where you can easily see it while you're fighting; You can always move it back later if you don't like it there all the time.

Getting ready to Fight

You're almost ready to go! Just a few more things to do! Get everyone in position just inside the archway, but don’t run up too far or risk starting off the encounter early. Now is the time to use your Scrolls of Battle Lore and Warding Lore, Food, your first Hope token. Have Captains and Minstrels refresh everyone’s buffs. Lore-Masters summon your Eagle at this time, and keep it on passive for now.

Traits

Traits can play a vital role for this encounter, especially your virtues. Extra Morale and Armor Value can greatly improve your chances to survive. So with that, I strongly urge you to slot the following:

1. Valour (+240 Morale)
2. Justice (+150 Morale)
3. Empathy (+450 Armor Value)
4. Innocence (-5% Incoming Melee Damage)
5. Players Choice

I would recommend for Hunters to slot Compassion, as they will still take a fair amount of Ranged Damage. Other classes have their options from Loyalty or Honesty.

I would also recommend maxing these all out at 10. It's easy to do, and more importantly it's easy to do solo with all the new Eregion and Moria traits. This is a challenging encounter, with little room for sloppiness. So stop being lazy and go kill some stuff!

Weapon Damage Type

For The Watcher use an Ancient Evil damage weapon. These are easily obtained from IA instances, so stock up!

Hope Turn In

Make no mistake, these +10 Hope buffs help tremendously and if you have one at your disposal, it’s highly recommended that you use it. The rule of thumb for most bosses in this game is the more Hope you have, the better. The two current turn in's are: Broken Chain-Link and Mirdanant, obtained from either The Balrog (Rift) or Thorog (Helegrod).

Group Make Up

A Balanced group is going to make this raid much easier, than stacking classes will. My suggestion is to have 2 Minstrels along with 2 Captains, or a Captain, Rune Keeper Combination. Off healing plays a large role in this fight, so make sure you have enough of it, while maintaining enough DPS to take care of the Shaking Tentacles in a timely manner.

Phase One

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

Step 1 – 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 don’t 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 “snuggle up”, 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 “tank” runs to the right. Once the first Vile Scream has finished, you will see two Wriggling Tentacles spawn. You’re 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 you’ve avoided the second Vile Scream, return to the right wriggling tentacle and kill it as quickly as possible. Once it’s dead, you won’t 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 “shallow water”, and one that only spawns in the “deep water”. 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. It’s 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.

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 – Moving Out Into Deep Water

Once you have everyone healed up, you should notice two massive tentacles that have spawned out in deep water. You’re 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 tentacles 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 – 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 left Massive Tentacle and the main tank to the right 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 4. Planning here is very important!

Step 4 – 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. It’s 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 isn’t 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. You’re 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 – 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 Harm’s 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 ~35 seconds from the time the Massive Tentacle dies.

Step 2 – 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 you’ve killed all the crushing or not, he will spawn along with his 2 Shaking Tentacles, which can cause major problems if you’re 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 won’t 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. You’re 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 that’s already going on, its absolutely positively important that you start hitting the watcher with all the debuffs you can muster. You’re Lore Master should be throwing everything it his or her arsenal at The Watcher, and your 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 it’s 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.

Phase Three - The Watcher

Step One - The Shaking Tentacles

At this point, reverting back to the Phase Two to Three transition, you should now have Ranged aggro on the shaking tentacles, corruption removals in place, The Watcher debuffed, and everyone snuggled up. At this time, you can start to take down the Shaking Tentacles to around 8k a piece. Once you have both of your Shaking Tentacles down to 8k, stop DPS get healed up, then commence your Shaking Tentacle cycle. This cycle has NOT changed from Watcher 1.0.

As said above, go ahead and kill a Shaking Tentacle, and get a champion to clobber, and only clobber the second Shaking Tentacle to stop the healing, at this time you can start to DPS The Watcher. Continue this until the new Shaking Tentacle spawns, and have your corresponding Hunter begin range tanking it to keep it from AoEing the group. Kill the lowest moraled tentacle, and move to the new one, and start taking that one down to 8k, and stop DPS. Once you get to the point where DPS is stopped, you are free to start throwing some additional DPS into The Watcher, however soon as the next Shaking Tentacle spawns, you need to make sure you finish off your 8k Shaking Tentacles, and get going on the freshly spawned one to keep the cycle going.

This process needs to occur for the next 15-30 minutes or so until you have a dead squid. As typical for a raid, things don't always go as planned, so I have a few tips for dealing with these Shaking Tentacles.

1. Keep Marks Stacked (Telling, Reveal Weakness, Counter Defense)
2. If you start to fall behind, toss an Oathbreakers Shame on the Tentacle.

Positioning

Gray Rectangle = Fallen Bridge
Large Red Oval = Raid's location
Smaller Red Ovals = Hunters location
Pink X = Tank
Large Green Oval = Watcher
Smaller Green Ovals = Shaking Tentacles

As you can see above, once again we're emphasizing the importance of snuggling up as best as we can. This is roughly how the raid should look upon the transition from Phase 2 into 3. The Hunters should be cross tanking the tentacles as shown above, while remaining close to the main raid in case one should be hung up by a strangling tentacle at any point.

The Watcher's Attacks

Crushing Devastation

Crushing Devastation is a 360 degree AoE attack The Watcher will throw out at random, at least as far as I can tell thus far. There is no induction, it is not clobberable, it simply is something that you need to deal with. The attack itself is honestly nothing special, it only really starts to do some serious damage if you let corruptions stack up on The Watcher, and have no debuffs on him. The basic animation for the attack is that The Watcher appears to leap up, and thrash left and right.

Terror of the Deep

This attack is also a 360 degree AoE, however you can avoid this one! During Phase 3, the white text appears again, however this time it doesn't signal The Vile Scream, instead its the trigger for, Terror of the Deep. As said above Terror of the Deep is a 360 degree AoE, that affects anyone that's swimming inside the ring, sunken structure, ruins, bridge, etc. So in order to avoid this attack everyone must move onto the ruins (which can be seen a few feet below the surface of the water) which surround the watcher. Humans and elves can stand on them, dwarves and hobbits will be swimming, but as long as they are over the ruins they will be fine. The attack hits for roughly 2,500 morale (To a heavy armor class). It needs to be avoided at all costs. Also of note, this attack has a chance to knock back anyone hit by it back to the shore where you will then be hit with a Crushing and Squeezing Tentacle.

Corruption Removal

Above are pictures of the 2 types of buffs The Watcher will be stacking on himself. The beginning of the Corruption Phase begins with white text across the screen that says, "The Watcher Becomes Enraged". From that moment onward, you must have a corruption removal system in place, or you will get die to Crushing Devastation. The only buff that can be removed is the red one, named Vile Fury. These must absolutely be a priority for your raid, I would suggest having a Primary corruption removal for the entirety of the raid.

The Preying Mantis way is that we PREFER a Warden, but one is NOT manditory. Wardens are the best corruption removal class in the game, so if you have one, make them your spam corruption removals. If you do not I would recommend a Champion spamming Feral Strikes, that should be enough to keep up, with occasionally falling behind where additional assistance is needed. Along with your Primary corruption removal, you're going to need what I will refer to as, burst removals. These classes typically in our raids are Lore-Masters, Rune Keepers, and Burglars. Your first line of defense in these burst situations should be Lore-Masters and Rune Keepers as they can use their corruption removal skills from range, and have no need to run up to The Watcher like the Burglar has to. Make sure you can call these out, and keep the raid in an orderly fashion so there is no confusion as to who is up on Burst Removal next.

Debuffing

It's also very important to keep The Watcher debuffed, as I've said many times thusfar throughout the guide. Lore-Masters need to be Ancient Master traited, and Burglars should be Mischief Maker traited. Debuff's cannot be over looked, and should be on The Watcher during the entire raid.

Fire lore
Wind lore
Gust of Wind
Sop: Command
Sop: See all ends
Ancient craft
Traited Disable

Class Roles *Coming Soon*

Minstrels

Just keep healing.....

Captains

Virtues:

Innocence Valour Justice Loyalty Empathy

Class traits:

5 traits from Hands of Healing Necessary: Captain’s Hope, Now for Wrath, Strength from Within Recommended: Fear no Darkness, Strong Voice, or Relentless Optimism

2 traits from Leader of Men: Necessary: Defiance Recommended: Captain of War

Main functions:

IHW and LS for Phase 2-3 transition, DPS, Instant mark switch, Backup healing, Buffing, Shield brother healing and damage, Rezzes

THE FIGHT

Phase 1:

Follow the main group. Put Telling Mark on the tentacles, DPS, and use Valiant Strike every time it’s up. Backup healing as necessary.

Phase 2:

Follow the main group. Mark the first massive tentacle with Telling Mark, DPS, and use melee healing skills. When the group moves to the second tentacle, use Telling Mark and DPS until 10k. You will then assist on the strangling tentacle that spawns. Resume DPS on the massive tentacle. STOP all attacks/healing by 2k-3k health, so you won’t be caught in any inductions. When it dies, hit IHW and LS, then run out to group a few meters away on bridge. Hit War Cry buff to aid the champions on the 12 tentacles. Aid the minstrels on backup healing for the champions and anyone else taking damage.

Phase 3:

Until the Watcher pops up, help the minstrels back up heal to top off everyone’s health. The first two tentacles will spawn, and the hunters will begin cross-tanking them.

For the first two tentacles that spawn: Take the tentacle the champion is not on, use Telling Mark, and help the hunter DPS it down to 8k. When it is at 8k run to the other tentacle, reapply Telling Mark, kill it, and then DPS on the Watcher. When the text for more tentacles comes across the screen, go back to the 8k tentacle, reapply Telling Mark and kill it.

Rest of fight:

After this, the fight is pretty much just getting in the groove of the routine:

Move to the newly spawned tentacle, use Telling Mark, DPS with champ and hunter down to 8k, assist DPS on watcher. When new tentacles spawn, kill the tentacle with 8k health and start DPS on the tentacle with full health. Rinse and repeat

Notes:

• During Phase 2 and 3 when you are DPSing the tentacles, when any member is strung up by a strangling tentacle, stop DPS on your target and assist. Mark strangling tentacle with Telling Mark. Afterwards, resume fighting your original target. Don’t forget to reapply Telling Mark!

• Make sure to use Rallying Cry every time it’s up!

• If DPS falls behind, use Oathbreakers on the tentacles.

• Melee heals! Keep an eye on the shield brother’s health. Use valiant strike every time it’s up for group melee heals, anticipate huge hits on the shield brother and use Strength From Within and Inspire to help the minstrels. For Stage 3, your main role is DPS, so outside of Rallying Cry, use melee heals to the most possible extent to not sacrifice your role in DPSing the tentacles.

Hunters

Champions

Champions have a number of possible roles in the watcher fight. First and foremost I recommend you get your virtues up to 10.

Virtues:

• Empathy
• Justice
• Loyalty
• Valour
• Innocence

Before you go into the watcher fight as a champion (or any melee class) your morale total should be above 5,500 at least, and preferably above 6,000. Additionally, you will want to make sure you have the -% incoming melee damage on your rune, and probably +% healing on your weapon and rune (that comes from settings, gems, etc). You can go in with +10% incoming healing and a large -% incoming melee damage. This helps your healers significantly.

Your class traits and legendary traits will be determined by what role you are playing in the raid, so you should talk to your raid leader and decide which of these roles you are doing.

Roles:

At the start of the fight all the roles perform the same - active controlled burn, and use the defeat responses of the first tentacles to get flurry up, exchange of blows up, block blades up, and red haze up. This should all be accomplished before the phase 2-3 transition.

Phase 2-3 Transition handler:

Doing this means you're going to be speccing for full blown AoE.

Class Traits:

• Controlled Fury
• Deadly Strikes
• Winds of the Storm
• Eye of the Storm
• Fervent Rage
• Improved Rend
• Stalwart Blade

Legendary Traits:

• Explosion of Blades
• Controlled Burn
• Deathstorm

The Strategy: The general idea is that you are focusing entirely on AoE, for the purposes of the 2-3 transition. If your raid already has two champions doing this role you don't have to slot for this, as it shouldn't take more than two Deathstorm spec'ed champions to deal with this.

When the massive tentacle is down to 8,000 life in phase 2 and the strangling has spawned, build your fervour to 5 by just wild attacking, swift striking, and blade-walling. Follow this skill chain.

• Hit the massive tentacle with fighting dirty before it dies.
• Use Adamant
• Massive Tentacle dies and the 12 crushings spawn
• Captain IHW + LS on the champions in the raid

Your whole raid moves, leaving just the champions in melee range of the 12 crushings

• Raging Blades
• Battle Frenzy
• Deathstorm
• Raging Blades
• Rend
• Bladestorm
• Sound the Attack
• Raging Blades
• continue AoEing until they are all dead

Once the 12 crushings are all dead you can proceed to move on and perform your other role, which will either be Corruption Removal, or Shaking Tentacle DPS (As outlined below)

Ancilliary Gear:

The Ring of Caras Galadhon (http://lorebook.lotro.com/index.php/Item:Ring_of_Caras_Galadhon), and the matching earring, can be used in this fight to great effect. It provides a 20% melee damage increase for 30 seconds. It should be clicked just before adamant, it will last the whole transition. Once you click it, you can switch back to your morale ring and earring.

Corruption Remover

Class Traits: Same as for the Deathstorm Spec above, you will not need to be doing much single target damage so it is ok to be speced for AoE here, even though you do not end up using much AoE.

Legendary Traits: Same as Deathstorm Spec

The Strategy: After you deal with the phase 2-3 transition tentacles you (as a corruption remover) move to the middle of the fallen ruins and wait for the watcher to pop up. About 30 seconds after he pops up it will say on your screen in big, white letters "The Watcher becomes Enraged" At this point you need to start removing corruptions with feral strikes. This means you MUST have two weapons equipped. Every time you see a corruption that is removable on his bar, use feral strikes. There will most likely be another champion or a warden assisting you in this - so try to fall into a rythm with them, such that there is always a feral strikes going off (if two champs) or your feral strikes is going off as the warden is queing up their next gambit. Getting a good rythm will ensure that you keep corruptions off. If you miss, or fail to remove a significant number of times and the corruptions build up to two or three, make sure you have someone designated to call for corruption help. When this call is made it falls to your backup removers (RK's, LM's, Hunters, Burgs) to deal with it.

Key: Do not let corruptions build up. Do not get hit by Terror of the Deep - if you see "The Watcher Shakes with Anger" in large white text on your screen. If feral strikes is up and usable get one more off and turn and run while the animation is going. If its on cooldown just get out. Whatever you do, do not get hit with Terror of the Deep.

Shaking Tentacle DPS Helper

Class Traits:

• Vicious Strikes
• Deadly Strikes
• Deep Strikes
• Single Target trait of your choice
• Controlled Fury
• Fervent Rage
• Stalwart Blade
• Winds of the Storm

Legendary Traits:

• Controlled Burn
• Explosion of Blades
• Ferocious Strikes

The Strategy: If you went in with this spec, you probably have two other champions in the raid who are already deathstorm specced, and so you are just extra AoE DPS on the 2-3 transition and then you will be focusing on freeing people who get dangled, and DPSing the Shaking tentacles in a cycle once the transition is over.

Key: Do not pull aggro from the hunters, whatever you do. If you do pull aggro from the hunters, back out of melee range of the shaking tentacle so that it is using its ranged attack on you, and then ebbing ire to a hunter to drop aggro. Focus your DPS on the watcher (using feral strikes copiously to help with the corruptions) when you have free time.

Burglars

Lore-masters

Recommended Class Traits

Study of Fire-Lore
Study of Wind-Lore
Improved Sign of Power: Command
Deep Lore
Power and Wisdom
Healer
Light of Hope

Note there is nothing to crowd-control, no curable wounds/diseases and no need to stun protect anyone in this fight.

Recommended Legendary Traits

Sword and Staff
Force of Will
Eagle-Friend

It is difficult to keep your pet alive to the end of this fight, but the Eagle can provide some additional power regeneration as long as it stays up.

Overview

Your duties in this fight, in approximate order of importance, are:

Debuffing
Power Management
Burst Corruption Removal
Spot Healing
Freeing Strangled Fellows
Damage

Debuffing

The key moments are the Phase II-III transition and on into Phase III, but you should be debuffing everything you can from start to finish. You should have Sign of Power: Command and Gust of Wind (both spammable) on anything your group is fighting at all times.

During Phases I and II, use Fire-Lore, Ancient Craft and Sign of Power: See All Ends on targets that are being meleed, and Wind-Lore on anything away from the main group.

You must plan ahead for the II-III transition so that Fire-Lore and Ancient Craft are not on cooldown when the 12 Crushing Tentacles spawn. You should use them (in that order) immediately and then get out of the way (to the center of the bridge). Be prepared to use Wisdom of the Council and a green pot if you are taking too much damage.

You need all your debuffs off cooldown by the time the Watcher appears; use Call to the Valar to reset them if necessary. As soon as you can target the Watcher, hit him with Fire-Lore, Sign of Power: See All Ends, Sign of Power: Command, Wind-Lore, Gust of Wind and Ancient Craft. With Ancient Master traiting, all of these can (and should!) be maintained on the Watcher for the remainder of the fight. The AoE debuffs will hit Shaking Tentacles too if targeted on the Watcher. You will want to keep the Watcher targeted for most of the fight, but make sure you keep Sign of Power: Command on the Shaking Tentacles.

Note that changes to boss CC immunity in Book 7 have made Sticky Tar useless in this fight. Don't waste time and power on it.

Power Management

Power Management can be easy or hard in this fight, depending on whether the group (including the LM!) have geared and traited themselves for ICPR and choose their skills wisely. People should understand that if they are constantly running out of power, they are making it harder for the group as a whole to succeed. They should also be prepared to use power pots, and understand that you are their last (not first) recourse for power. Well-timed Pure of Heart conjunctions can help doubly, first by taking some burden off the healers (so they use less power) and second by giving everyone power directly.

With that said, you must be prepared to share power with primary healers and the main tank *before* they run out and are unable to function. Secondary healers and ranged-tankers are also important.

If power will be an issue, you should be downing a critted power pot every time the cooldown is up. If your power bar is full, dish some out, then use the pot.

Pots and conjunctions may not be enough to keep everyone powered up, so using Power of Knowledge (power drain) is sometimes necessary in this fight, but can be tricky if you don't plan ahead, since it needs to fit in with your debuff cycle, your spot heals AND your burst corruption removal duties (more on those below). Good times to drain power are:

1) Right after refreshing your 30/60-second debuffs.
2) Right after performing burst corruption removal (while Dispel Corruption is on cooldown)
3) Right after spot-healing (while Beacon of Hope is on cooldown)

You should share as much power as you can to anyone who needs it *before* draining, and communicate to your group that you are momentarily unavailable for corruption removal when starting the drain.

Burst Corruption Removal

With the changes to Watcher 3.0, corruptions stack much more slowly, but must still be watched carefully and dealt with. Three or more Red (melee) corruptions are extremely dangerous. Since you will have the Watcher targeted more than anyone else besides the main tank, you need to monitor corruptions and use Dispel Corruption immediately whenever there are three or more. If Dispel Corruption is on cooldown, you need to call on someone else (RK or Burglar, typically) to remove them. If for some reason you are not targeting the Watcher, and the main tank calls out for corruption removal, you need to respond immediately (if possible) or call on your back-up.

Spot Healing

With the recommended traiting, you have a powerful single target heal available every 20 seconds. This adds up to a huge amount of healing over the course of the fight, and saves your primary healers power. It should be used whenever available on 1) a primary healer, 2) the main tank, 3) anyone else who is not close to full morale. It is better to prevent somebody from getting close to death than to save this for when they are (and it might be too late).

Assisting Strangled Fellows

The strangling tentacles are more of an annoyance, but the faster they are dealt with, the less danger of falling behind on your group's primary DPS cycle against the Shaking Tentacles and the Watcher. Since you have ranged (tactical) damage skills, it is usually easier for you to assist to free a strangled fellow than it is for a melee class, so be ready to respond quickly someone calls out a strangler.

Damage

Recognize that your melee and ranged classes are far better suited for this. Generally you should only spend your power and time attacking one of the Shaking Tentacles or the Watcher if there is *nothing* else you can be doing (debuffing, spot healing, sharing/draining power, removing corruptions), and at the very end of the fight in the final flurry of damage on the Watcher (with Oathbreakers, etc).

Wardens

With the decreased rate of stacking in Watcher 3.0, Wardens are freed from corruption-bot duty, and are definitely able to main-tank this fight!

Recommended Class Traits

For tanking, shield traiting is recommended, for maximum survivability. Fist traiting is also possible, but the extra threat is unnecessary, and the Way of the Shield buff to Conviction is far superior to the buff on Desolation from Way of the Fist.

Master of the Shield
Perseverance
Never Say Die
Efficient Shieldwork
Ward of Justice
Master of the Spear
Master of the Fist

Recommended Legendary Traits

Way of the Shield
Defiant Challenge
Way of the Warden

Gear, Virtues and Other Preparations

Trait and gear yourself for maximum -Melee Vulnerability, Mitigation and Morale

Innocence
Zeal (or Justice)
Empathy
Loyalty
Honesty (or Valour)

is a good combination, assuming you have high ranks of the Virtues in question.

Equip yourself with a Stalwart Guardian of the Shield carving and a pocket item with -3% melee vulnerability. -Melee Vulnerability runes and +Incoming Healing gems in both your melee weapon and javelin are also recommended. The Lothlorien Warden's Shield is perfect for this fight too (-1.5% Melee Vulnerability, lots of Morale).

For maximum control over your gambit timing, unchecking the switch "Skills Enable Default Attack" in Combat Options will turn off auto-attacks. Once you have solid aggro and are well into Phase III, you can toggle auto-attacks back on through the UI.

A club is the best weapon for tanking this fight, but any weapon should do. Faster weapons, in general, are better. A Beleriand damage title on your melee weapon is recommended. Apply Beleriand Shield Spikes to your shield and Light Oil to your javelin before starting the fight.

Make sure you have post-processing effects turned off, as you will need to see the Watcher while he's underwater!

Points of Emphasis

The main guide covers the basic strategy for tanking, and this is unchanged for Wardens. The Watcher is actually one of the easier bosses to tank, because you will have ample time to build threat before your group begins attacking the boss.

The essential point is that you must get aggro on the Watcher before he begins his attacks. During the pause while the second Massive Tentacle (in Phase II, before the Crushing Tentacles spawn) is at 8K, you should build the Defiant Challenge gambit in your gambit panel, but not fire it off. You will remain in combat, so the gambit will stay queued up for you to use in Phase III. As soon as the second Massive Tentacle dies and the 12 Crushing Tentacles spawn, you should move to your tanking location shown on the diagram in the guide. In Watcher 3.0, you will have a fair amount of time to wait there. This is a good time to toggle on Way of the Warden (you can use it earlier, but then it will be on cooldown if you don't make it to Phase III...).

The Watcher will pop up momentarily and then disappear below the water for a few seconds. As soon as you can select him, do so. If your main group has dispatched the Crushing Tentacles, your Minstrel can use the Call to Greatness skill on you at this point to give you a free "Shield Up" buff and increase your threat generation. The Watcher will have his back to you while he is underwater, so use Wages of Fear while he is still underwater to get his attention. Unless you are unlucky and Wages of Fear misses or is evaded, this attack alone should be sufficient to get him to turn and face you. It can be difficult to see the floating "Evaded" or "Missed", while the target is underwater, but if the Watcher doesn't turn around, you can assume something went wrong. In any case, fire off your remaining javelin skills after Wages of Fear. As soon as the Watcher starts to rise to the surface, it is time to use the Defiant Challenge (force attack) gambit you built up back in Phase II. The force attack only lasts 5 seconds, so don't fire it off prematurely; on the other hand, the force attack effect only begins after the fairly long animation, so don't wait until he is already surfaced, either. It is imperative that nobody else is attacking the Watcher yet.

Unless you have been extremely unlucky, the Watcher should be facing and targeting you when he comes to the surface for the second (and final) time. Your first gambit while he on the surface should be Precise Blow - this is a fast threat-generator. Follow-up with Conviction and Dance of War to give yourself more threat, some heals, and an evade bonus. You should still only have healing threat to compete with at this point. Now you can go into a rotation mixing direct threat (Precise Blow, Spear of Virtue), threat leech (Dance of War, Conviction) and defensive (Shield Mastery, Wall of Steel) gambits. These 6 gambits should be cycled repeatedly through the fight. Use your mastery skills to build gambits quickly and at reduced power cost. Use Shield Piercer whenever it is up. Be prepared to use morale healing potions and (in a real emergency) racial skills (Strength of Morale, Eldar's Grace...Hobbit Silence is not recommended...) if your morale drops suddenly. Use power pots whenever they are off cooldown.

Once you have a solid threat lead, you can also stack healing gambits on yourself for extra insurance (not really needed, but they may help the healers keep others out of danger), and toss in Reversal to remove a corruption now and then, although as main tank you should expect help with corruption removal. If at any time there are three or more red corruptions on the Watcher, you need to call for burst removal (LM, RK or Burglar) immediately. The most important thing is to keep your defenses up and maintain an insurmountable threat lead, however.

It is also important to react quickly to the message "The Watcher Shakes With Anger" and back up to the inner edge of the structure surrounding the Watcher. In this way you avoid his big AoE attack, Terror of the Deep. Once your character is standing (on an invisible ledge that is inside the actual structure graphic) instead of swimming, you have gone far enough. As soon as the animation for the attack begins, you can start swimming back into melee range - you don't need to (and shouldn't) wait for the animation to finish.

Guardians

If you've made it this far you're now ready to give The Watcher a try. Remember, he is considered by many to be the hardest boss in the game currently, so if you wipe don't get discouraged! I hope this guide will help you, and we wish you the best of luck!

Best Regards,

Eomin
Leader of Preying Mantis
Elendilmir
[Jewelled Bell] goes *Jingle Jangle*