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Midgardsormr

MrHappy's video guide for Midgardsormr is featured in the top-right of this page. It should provide a quick walkthrough of the fight. A short summary of mechanics is provided as a reference on this page.

The intent of this page is not to provide a guide on the fight (there are plenty of those around), but to provide a quick refresher of mechanics, to communicate everyones positions and highlight strategies we might do different from video guides.

Positions

H1 Tymo D1 Know R3 Gust

H2 Marielle D2 Shiroe R4 Snuggleton

X with Thunder + with Thunder

N R3 S D2 NW R3 SE D2

E R4 W D1 NE R4 SW D1

The Thunder positions are the DPS Earthshaker positions for + and clockwise for x.

The party references everybody, except for the MT and the Bulwark player.

Mechanic Summary

Cooldown Plan and Timeline

Akh Morn quadruple stack on a healer.
Tail End physical Tank Buster.
Earth Shaker goes together with spins. To the right are assigned positions.
Thunderstorm AoEs on 4 DPS. Can go together with cross or plus, see positions above.
Time Immemorial Landborne (orange) and Airborne (blue) debuffs on tanks. Add and Grounded Middy must be tanked by blue tank. Airborne Middy is must be tanked by orange tank. With each cast, the debuff may switch or stay the same. Tank swap during the cast if necessary, based on the color of your aura, which indicates which debuff you will get.
Northern Cross the floor is ice. Usually you want to take up Earthshaker positions when this happens.
Dry Ice ice AoEs on 2 players. Slide these to different corners (whichever is near you and your assigned position).
Akh Rhai Multiple hitting AoEs on two players. Spread out slightly when this is being cast and move out immediately after the blast spawns.
Horrid Roar AoE markers that spawn under players. Party baits them at the butt of the boss, just inside the hitbox typically, unless specified otherwise in the phase breakdown.
Protostar triple raidwide damage.

First and Last phase: Flip patterns

Phases

The fight consists of 4 phases. Each phase is summarised separately below.

The 2nd phase is the add phase. In the 1st and last phase, Middy is Airborne. In the 3rd phase, he is Grounded. When Middy is Airborne he can do flips to indicate Aoes that will happen, similar to normal mode. See the diagram on the right for all possible patterns.

After Middy moves to the middle to do his first flip, MT tries to have him stay there and facing north for the rest of the fight.

Airborne Phase

First set of spins is always X, go to sides.
In between the second set of spins: Akh Morn, which is taken at the butt. Move out immediately after.
In between the next set of spins is Earthshaker. Be just inside his hitbox according to the Earthshaker positions mentioned above on the right. Then, go in or out based on the second spin.
The next set of spins is a + or x pattern, together with Thunderstorm. DPS go to assigned positions, as mentioned above.
First Time Immemorial. Tanks look at their auro and swap during the cast, if needed. Orange is MT in this phase.
For the next set of spins, take up Earthshaker positions again. Stay inside or slide out if needed.
Healers slide their Ice AoEs to different corners. Rest be careful with Akh Rhai.
Before the next set of spin, party stacks on the butt, just inside his hitbox. AoEs will spawn under players, and the spins will be either In or Out.

Add Phase

Blue Tank Provokes the Add immediately and takes him to a corner, facing it outward.
Tank should be careful to keep aggro on the add, since it will not take damage. The tank can otherwise just damage a nearby key with one tether.
Ice Breath hits quite hard and cleaves.
Everyone should kill the Keys that only have 1 tether, until there are none left, at which point the Add can take damage.
There will be raid damage throughout this phase. Especially Rime Wraith can hurt quite a bit on non-tanks.
When the add dies, the tank picks up the Bulwark and everyone makes sure not to accidentally touch the Bulwark tank.
Stack center with Bulwark slightly away. Midgardsormr will use Protostar, needing shielding from both tanks and healers. Since it hits 3 times, AoE heals in between hits can be useful.
After AoEs spawn under the party, spread out to a safe area with the Thunder AoEs, depending on Middy's divebombs. The Bulwark tank should just stay away from the center and not be hit be anything.
After divebomb and thunders, party moves back to the center and repeats.

Grounded Phase

Starts with Time Immemorial. Blue tank is MT.
Orange tank takes the Bulwark to D.
Fire Cleaves
Player with Fire Marker goes to the Bulwark player on D.
When the Bulwark has been passed: Fire goes to 2, the other player goes away (to the party or otherwise out of the cleave).
After the Fire Breath: Bulwark player goes to D.
Repeat this 4 times.
The "Nidhogg" mechanic, see the video and animation to the right for reference. Keep in mind that the Fire in the corners can be in any two opposite corners, but that does not change the strat at all. Just always use the SW and SE positions.
The party stacks on C.
The Bulwark player carefully takes the tether, without accidentally passing Bulwark.
The Bulwark+Tether player goes to D.
After the AoEs have spawned, everyone moves diagonally out.
After the center exploded, everyone goes back in (Bulwark+Tether to D, rest to C).
After both outside bombs have gone off, the party on C moves diagonally out again (if it's safe, it is sometimes already possible to move south or east after the second bombs, if the third bombs are not directly behind C).
The Bulwark player stays on D to bait Hot Wings.
After this, Middy flies away and will do divebombs while Exaflares and AoEs are going off.

Final Phase

Orange tank is MT.
After the buster, stack for Akh Morn, stay stacked to bait AoEs and spread for Lightning.
Mechanics are mostly repeated now. For Akh Morn + Exaflares, stack where the first Exaflare was. Follow the designated player. The Dry Ice should go far from the first Exaflare and out of the middle of the arena.
For Northern Cross (Ice floor) + Thunder, DPS should assume their sidesex positions and stay or slide to their corner, depending on whether it's CornersPlus or SidesX, respectively.

Role Specific Tips

Tanks

Positioning the boss can be tricky. Midgardsormr’s hitbox is huge and he will turn around often to cast mechanics. Before every spin or flip, he will move to the middle, which allows you to reset positioning rather easily.
Use Reprisal for Akh Morns and Tail Ends. Use tank shields on anything your party deems threatening, including Akh Morns or later randomized mechanics.
The tank with Skyborne should provoke the Ancient Dragon when it spawns.
Be confident with the picking up and first passing of the Arcane Bulwark, as well as the positioning and movement during the Fireballs, Tethers, and Hot Tail phase.
During Akh Morns during Exaflare, quickly move the boss into position so that melee can get uptime while soaking the hits.

Healers

There is relatively little AoE damage in this fight, but players messing up mechanics will greatly increase the healing burden due to vulnerability stacks. Be prepared to spot heal as necessary, especially during the flips and spins.
Mitigate and heal through Akh Morn with good usage of oGCDs, like Deployment Tactics, Earthly Star, Indomitability, Asylum, etc.
Pre-position to drop off your Dry Ice.
Stand in the middle of the arena during add phase to ensure heals hit everyone, especially since they are all spread out trying to kill the keys.
Try to time a heal between Protostar to lighten the load for Thunderstorms.
There may be periods of the fight where one healer is cut off from healing the MT, so coordinate how tank healing will be done.
Be quick when taking the Arcane Bulwark during Crimson Breaths.

DPS

Be familiar with all mechanics to get maximum uptime. Do them properly to not burden your healers.
The fight has a rather strict DPS requirement for a second boss.
Getting positionals on Midgardsormr is very difficult, as his hitbox is large. Try to request SW/SE protean spots as melee so you have access to both the flank and rear at a moment’s notice. He also turns around a lot for casts like Akh Morn and Crimson Breath, so be aware.
Thunderstorm is always on DPS, so the two melee can stay closer to the boss and the two ranged can go further if they need to dodge out. Be sure not to clip each other or anyone caught in the middle.
Decent DPS is required to kill the Immortal Keys and Ancient Dragon on time. Multi-dot and use extra cooldowns as necessary.
Be quick when taking the Arcane Bulwark during Crimson Breaths.
Apart from mechanics that require momentary disengaging from the boss like Azure Wings or Dry Ice in Phase 4, uptime can be maintained completely.
Melee: alternate Feints on Tail End.
Ranged: Palisade Tail End as necessary. It may be preferable to save it for when a tank gets multiple Tail Ends in a row due to Time Immemorial.

Timeline

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to The Balance for their guide which is the basis for the page.

MrHappy for many of the positions.

u/Chariflame and u/simply-butts for the spin diagram.

Unknown for the Spyro/Nidhogg animation.

Rexkinghon for his Bulwark PoV.

Role Specific Tips from The Balance guide.

u/Suldris for their Timeline graphic.

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