Rift Gameplay Journal

Swarmlord Khargroth is the second boss in Primeval Feast and he is the master of all crawling things. If you hate spiders this won’t be your favorite boss.

He doesn’t have to many mechanics but he is quite difficult. It’s not a boss where you want to bring your undergeared alt to. But for those mages that miss playing Stormcaller, this boss will be a great opportunity to undust the good old Stormcaller specc.

Also this boss is easier if you have a Cleric and a Rogue tank combo at your disposal. But we will cover this later on. Until then admire his evil look.

He looks quite evil. Also his shoulders drop under the form of a costume item !

Raid Setup

This boss requires:

2 tanks: The best combination is 1 Cleric 1 Rogue tank. If you don’t have this combo available you can also use 1 Cleric 1 Warrior. If you don’t have a cleric tank this fight becomes 10 times harder. If you have 2 warrior tanks this fight becomes 100 times harder.

2 healers: 1 Cleric as sent/warden or senticar and 1 tank healing Chloromancer (51 Chloro). If you go for more then this you might not have enough DPS.

6 dps: out of these 8 dpsers you need 2 AOErs. Best combination is to have 1 Stormcaller and 1 Saboteur. The rest can be anything, this boss doesn’t favor melee or ranged.

Swarmlord Khargroth Tactics

Swarmlord Khargroth has 3.1 million HP and he will enrage after 5 minutes and 30 seconds. He has a submerge phase, something like Grugonim has, so you won’t be DPSing him for the entire duration of the fight.

Let’s take a look at his abilities. He was 5 of them:

• Acid Cloud – every 50 seconds or so (depending on the submerge phase) he will emote: “Swarmlord Khargroth sends a swirling cloud of acid at [target] ! A bot of poison will fly from the boss to his selected target. That person will receive an 8 seconds debuff. While the debuff is active pools of poison will spawn under that person. To survive this mechanic the person with the debuff needs to keep moving until the debuff runs out. It’s best to run on the edge of the encounter room so you don’t place the trail of poison in the middle of the room and risk having people step in it by accident. If you step in the poison you will take around 4000 damage/second.
• Poison Spray – every 15 seconds he will cast this ability. It has a 4 seconds cast and can’t be interrupted. This ability deal raid wide damage, about 4.300 damage to each raid member.
• Pestilent Claw – every 30 seconds he will place a dot on the tank that lasts for 10 seconds and ticks 3000 damage each second.
• Tank Swap Mechanic – couldn’t find the name of this ability. Swarmaster will apply a 1 minute debuff on the tank that increases the damage taken by 5% and decreases the healing taken by the tank by 5%. A tank can take a maximum of 4 stacks before it becomes hard to heal. Depending on which tank setup you are using you might have to tank swap for a bit to reset the debuff. If you are using a rogue to tank him, the rogue can just blink around to reset his debuff. If you are using a warrior as main tank, then after the second submerge, the warrior will have to aoe taunt all the adds off the cleric tank so the cleric can pick up the boss and tank him until the stacks drop off the warrior. Then the cleric AoE taunts the adds off the warrior and the warrior takes the boss back.
• Submerge – he will periodically submerge and 9 Swarming Ironsting will spawn, each with 55.983 HP. They will role play around the room for a bit then bunch up in the middle. Since the boss submerges you have 35 seconds to dps down all the Swarming Ironstings or the boss will heal. Start dpsing them as soon as they spawn, you can target them while they roleplay. Save your aoe nuking for when they bunch up in the middle. You have 35 seconds to dps down approximately 503k HP. Swarmaster will do his 1st submerge when he reaches 85% HP, then every minute after that.

Except for Swarmaster himself you will also have to deal with adds spawning from around the room.

The adds will come from 4 positions, marked with blue in the image above. There are 4 type of adds: Bloated Lurker, Munchable Ironsting, Muchable Lurker and Munchable Crawler. All these adds have 55.893 HP and if they reach the boss they will buff him. Each add gives the boss a particular stacking buff. This buffs will either heal him, increases his damage done or decrease the damage he takes, so just keep him away from the bugs. This is the part where the second tank come in handy.

The main tank picks up the boss and tanks him along the wall. This will ensure there isn’t anyway way the adds can get to him without being spotted by the off tank. The off tank’s duty is to pick up the adds that spawn and tank them in the middle. He also needs to taunt back any adds that start making their way to the boss. This is why a cleric tank is great at this job, he can aggro the adds with his DoLs and use his taunts to pick up the rest of the adds. Also a cleric tank doesn’t have to run around as much as a warrior for example, thus minimizing the risks of dragging the adds to the boss or having lose adds aggro on the raid. The Stormcaller should constantly aoe the adds, while the rest of the raid focuses on killing the boss, otherwise to many adds will stack up on the off tank. When the boss submerges, all the raid starts to aoe the adds. Don’t forget to save your big aoe spells for when the adds are in the middle.

After every second submerge phase the tanks should swap in order for the healing debuff stacks to drop. Either swap for a few seconds (if the main take is a warrior) or kite the boss around for a few seconds (if the main tank is a warrior).

The raid’s duty is to ensure that they dispose of the Acid Cloud properly on the outside of the encounter space and dps down the boss, then the adds. The healer’s job will be to instantly top the raid after the Poison Spray and heal the tank.

Repeat this until the boss reaches 30%. At that point a huge spider will spawn. The spawn location is marked in the image above with light brown. It is called a Crawler Juggernaut and he has 5.3 million HP. It moves very slow and can’t be tanked. Every 15 seconds it will emote: “Crawler Juggernaut chases [target] and for 15 seconds it will follow that person, then emote again and change target. You have to kite it around. If it will reach you, it will one shot you. It’s not hard to kite him around because he moves really slow and it doesn’t cleave so you can kite it through the raid.

Good luck !