Heroic: Chimaeron

10-man heroic information/advice (I am a prot pally):

Changes from normal:

- Chimaeron has 36.2 million health, up from 25.9 million.
- Nefarian dispels/ends the feud anywhere from 2-5 seconds after the start of the phase. Bile-O-Tron remains down until the next massacre after Feud starts.
- During phase 2 (last 20%) Nefarian will do a raid wide aura that deals 2000 unresistable shadow damage per second.

General strat information:

Set up: 2 tanks, 3 healers, 5 dps. One of the dps should be a plate dps with a tank aura/stance up (i.e. dps DK in blood presence, ret pally with RF, etc.)

- The fight is virtually identical for all DPS except the one soaking the Break stacks.
- We have our dps DK go into blood presence and tank the boss for all of the non-Feud phases (whenever Bile-O-Tron is up). The two tanks (me and a prot warrior) alternate eating the double strikes, based on which tank does not currently have Break stacks from Feud.
- The number of Massacres Chimaeron does between Feuds has a random element. At the start he can do 2 or 3 massacres before the first Feud, and for every Feud after that he can do 1 or 2. It appears to be completely random how many he does - you can hit the 4th Feud (the one we aim to push him sub-20% on) in as few as 4 massacres (not counting the ones at the end of Feud) or in as many as 7.

- Before 20%, the primary difference is that Chimaeron will need to be tanked during the Feud phases without the Bile-O-Tron up. He will apply Break stacks during this time, so the 2 tanks will need to alternate tanking Chimaeron during the Feud phases. The break debuff lasts 1 minute, and the time from one Feud to the next can never be less than 1 minute, so one tank should always be clear of Feud stacks.
- Feud can be dispelled very quickly, so healers have to be ready to get the tank healed up quickly after the massacre leading into Feud.
- Tanks should work out a CD rotation to handle tanking Chimaeron without the Bile-O-Tron up ahead of time. You will need CDs to survive the double attack and his regular melee attacks once you have Break stacks.
- The tank should NOT stack up with the rest of the raid during the Feud phases - the poison bolt volley damage combined with Chimaeron's hard-hitting melee can instantly gib a tank, even through CDs. 9 people stacked up is still more than enough to split the poison bolt volley damage and survive.

- Before pushing Chimaeron to 20%, the entire raid should be topped off as much as possible to maximize survival from Nefarian's raid-wide AOE. We find that getting everyone above 75% should be sufficient with good DPS.
- Bile-O-Tron is fairly useless during the last 20% since you will die a second later from Nefarian's AOE after being reduced to 1 HP, so it is fine (and even recommended) to push Chimaeron while the Bile-O-Tron is not up. We find the best strat is to push to 21%, wait for a Feud, top everyone off after the Massacre, then push him before the poison bolt volleys start going out.
- I am not 100% sure about this, so confirmation would be nice, but from our experience Chimaeron's threat table is not the standard "highest aggro" one sub-20%. He seems to go for the highest aggro in melee range, so the best strat is to stack your healers, melee DPS, and tanks all on Chimaeron and have the range stay out. That way your healers die before the ranged DPS. Whenever I tried standing on the other side of the room so he'd have to waste time chasing me (then bubble so he'd waste time running to 2nd threat, cancelaura so he'd run back to me, etc.), he would gib our melee DPS and any healers in melee range before coming to me (despite me being highest on threat), which is why I believe this is the case.
- If your healers can taunt, it is a good idea to have them do so at some point before pushing Chimaeron sub-20%. That way they will die before the DPS (even the melee) during the burn phase. Holy paladins can heal with RF up for added threat.
- Save cooldowns such as battle res/soulstone, ankh, etc. for the burn phase.

Prot paladin specific advice:
- The big issue I kept having with CD management was that the two big prot paladin CDs (Ardent Defender and GoAK) are 3 minute CDs. Since the time from one Feud to the next can be 1 minute (one massacre) or 1.5 minutes (two massacres) and we aim to push him sub-20% on the 4th Feud (which means I have to tank him twice), the only way those two CDs will be up the second time if I use them the first time I tank him is if he does 2 massacres on both the 3rd and 4th feuds, which will more likely than not fail to occur.
- To counter this, I worked out a different set of CDs for the first time I tank Chimaeron:

1. Pop the on use on [item=59515] at the start of Feud - this puts me over the 102.4% cap for most of the Feud, which means healers only have to keep me above ~70k (somewhat more with break stacks)
2. Self BoP + taunt + cancelaura on the Double Strike (this has the added bonus of clearing any Break stacks on you)
3. DP + Holy Paladin HoSac after the double strike, when you will be taking additional damage due to Break.

This allows me to have both GoAK and AD up for the 4th one, when we push him sub-20%. This makes a big difference during the burn phase, as I can survive at least 2 more swings from Chimaeron with those CDs up (I use 4-piece tier bonus, so the 50% shield wall lasts through 3 attacks instead of two. Since every 3rd attack is a double attack, this makes a big difference!) The extra 10+ seconds you buy for your DPS can be the difference between a sub-2% wipe and a kill.

- I always HoSac the prot warrior tank on the double strikes whenever he is tanking Chimaeron without the Bile-O-Tron up. Smooths out the damage and serves as an extra safety net.

Hope this helps, and good luck.

There are 2 major differences on this fight on heroic. The most notable is that Nefarian cancels feud, causing Chimaeron to melee during feuds. In addition, there is a raid wide shadow ae that ticks for 2k every second once you reach p2, making dps quite tight at the end.