How to Beat Rik Reverb in WoW: The War Within

Rik Reverb is one of the first cohort of bosses you can fight in the new Liberation of Undermine Raid, but you’ll need to stay mobile to avoid his various sound-based Areas-of-Effect. So to help you and your raid group progress, here’s how to beat Rik Reverb in World of Warcraft: The War Within.

How to Beat Rik Reverb on Normal mode in WoW: The War Within

To start with, Tanks will need to face Rik away from the raid to avoid the cleave from his melee attacks. These attacks also apply a stacking debuff called Tinnitus that increases sonic damage taken, so Tanks will need to periodically swap to allow it to fall off.

With that sorted the next thing to worry about is Rik’s Amplification ability, during which he will highlight the area under him and an area nearby before slamming down on both and leaving amplifiers there. These amplifiers deal passive raid-wide damage that increases as more are placed, while also charging up to do even more damage at max energy. The tank will need to move the boss away so that he doesn’t boost their charge further, but don’t space them out too much as you’ll need to be able to reach them all for other mechanics. Players can interact with the amplifiers to reduce the charge so assign several mobile DPS to keep on top of these, but mind out as draining the amplifiers also deals damage to whoever is draining them.

While this is going on Rik Reverb will also occasionally fire a frontal laser, and when he casts Echoing Chant there will be lots of small AoE’s emitted from the amplifiers to avoid. Faulty Zap will also debuff a number of players dealing a good chunk of damage-over-time to them and anyone around them, so be ready to step out of the group if you are targeted.

Finally, when Rik himself reaches maximum energy he will enter his second phase, making himself nigh-invulnerable and highlighting one of the placed amplifiers. After a delay, he will slam down and send a wave of energy pulsing out that deals huge damage to players hit. Your entire raid will need to stand within the effect radius of the highlighted pylon in order to be launched over the wave, similar to Ansurek’s Venom Nova ability from Nerub-ar Palace. Repeat this with all of the amplifiers until the phase ends, and then it’s back to phase 1 again. You’ll ideally want to kill the boss before he gets to phase 2 a 3rd time, as he will continue to cast his damaging waves with even more boosted damage until the raid is wiped. You will be able to damage him during this time, so hopefully he will be low enough to burst down before he kills you.

While on their own the mechanics aren’t too challenging, this is a very healing-intensive fight so you’ll want to dodge as many AoE’s as you can to help out your healers. Manage that and your group should be able to defeat Rik Reverb in WoW: The War Within without too much trouble.

How to Beat Rik Reverb on Heroic mode in WoW: The War Within

On Heroic difficulty, there aren’t too many new mechanics but the healing intensity ratchets up a good amount. Players draining amplifiers will gain a stacking DoT effect requiring you to rotate who is doing the draining so it has time to drop off. Additionally, Rik will have Pyrotechnics dropped into the arena which deal damage on impact and then launch even more AoE’s to dodge afterwards. After they fall, players will need to nuke them down as soon as they can to prevent them exploding in 15 seconds. Attacking them will also grant a small stacking movement speed and haste buff to players, so consider that a further incentive to hit them.

And that’s all there is to beating Rik Reverb in WoW‘s Liberation of Undermine Raid. If you enjoyed this guide or found it useful, feel free to check out some of Siliconera’s other guides on How to get the Going Goblin Mode Achievement or How to Beat the Cauldron of Carnage encounter.

World of Warcraft and The War Within expansion are available on PC and Mac.