Fire Trial; Plethon and Ifrit

Sword of Ashes (5%)

Ifrit's Sealed Heart (5%)

The volcanic lands of the Fire Nation are a mystery to most creatures of the world. Mortals tell tales of a land covered in thick cloud of smog, where no creature would dare to set foot, demons think it is the place where all of the most powerful demons ascend to upon their deaths. In truth it is the home to many creatures that are adept at controlling fire. It is ruled over by Plethon, who lacks any interest in foreign lands or conquest. Having gone through an absurd amount of bloodshed in his time, he now wishes to remain with his nation of fire till the end of his days. But a particular pest keeps him from leading a peaceful life. The daughter that he had abandoned so many decades ago because of her weakness has finally resurfaced and is requesting a meeting once again. Unwilling to face her once more, he called forth the first fire spirit Ifrit for advice. And as all creatures of the Fire Nation, Ifrit suggests to give up on the idea of a peaceful life, as that will only cause Plethon more grief. And with a newly found sense of determination, Plethon decided that he would finally see his daughter once more and afterwards bring glory to the once great Fire Nation.

## Location

After acquiring Tier 4 you can enter the shortcut portal to the Forbidden Depths of Hell. The shortcut is located in the top left corner of the fountain area in Hell. After taking the shortcut, head to the right to see all of the T4 boss portals. Have your 2 players of choice enter the ground labelled as -Fire Empire's Highest Point-. After a short delay you will be transported to the arena in the top right corner of the map, where you will face this pair.

## The Fight (Ifrit)

Before the fight begins, you will have 5 seconds to take your positions. The Fire Trial is highly dependant on your team composition (which I will go over later on). Ifrit deals far less damage than Plethon and she also has far less HP, however what makes her difficult to kill is her high resistance to magic and her healing ability, that also absorbs incoming magic damage. She also has far more health regen than Plethon.

   After the voice line "The ancient evil survives." Ifrit will cast a heal on herself or Plethon. Depending on how you want the fight to go, you can bait her into using the shield onto the target you want to leave for last by focusing on them for a brief moment and then swapping back to the primary target. After the heal, the one who got healed will also receive a barrier that absorbs incoming magic damage, so don't go throwing your spells at it. The shield lasts for 5 seconds and the spell itself has a 10 second cooldown. The spell can be interrupted entirely if you stun her when her hands are up in the air.

"Plethon's Torment" is a buff that Ifrit can cast only on Plethon. It will grant him a large increase in attack speed, which combined with Plethon's Critical Strike will become a great cause for concern. In general you don't want to have to tank this skill, so use your available stuns to stop him from attacking until the buff runs out. The buff lasts for 5 seconds and has a cooldown of 22 seconds.

"Embrace the end!" will be cast when Ifrit reaches around 50% of her health. After a short channel, she will summon 5 flame dragons that have 3M attack damage, 1000 armour and extremely high health regeneration. Most of the time the dragons aren't a real threat unless Plethon is alive when they're summoned. As you may figure, you don't want to trigger the dragons if you're going for Ifrit first, since they are a big enough nuisance by blocking your pathing, making Plethon's spells far more deadly. The dragons last for about 30 seconds and the cooldown for the spell is around 60 seconds.The spell can be interrupted entirely if you stun her when her hands are up in the air.

"Heart of Ifrit" triggers if Ifrit dies while Plethon is still alive. This will cause a % timer to begin over the place where Ifrit died. Once it reaches 100% (after about 28 seconds) Ifrit will revive with full HP. However if Plethon dies while the timer hasn't reached 100%, Ifrit will NOT respawn and the fight will be complete. This ability has no cooldown and will trigger every time if Ifrit dies before Plethon. In general you want to go for Ifrit first only if you have good burst physical damage that will avoid her casting Plethon's Torment.

## The Fight (Plethon)

Plethon is highly resistant to physical damage but not so much to magic. He is still beatable with only physical damage but it would be recommended to bring a mix of both physical and magical damage to speed up the fight. As a counterpart to Ifrit, Plethon specialises in dishing out heavy loads of damage from both auto attacks and his AoE spells. Plethon also has a high damage critical strike ability that can be very deadly if combined with a "Plethon's Torment" buff.

"They shall burn!" is a long channel time AoE spell that deals a modest amount of magic damage and stuns all targets around him for 4 seconds. You can stun Plethon during any of his channels, causing him to channel the spells from scratch. In general it is better to save your spell block abilities for "Armageddon", since it can cause a player to get 1 shot if they get hit by the meteors head on. "They shall burn!" has a 35 second cooldown.

"I'll incinerate them!" (AKA Armageddon) is a channeled spell that upon completion will cause meteors to come down from the skies in random patterns all around Plethon's current position. The meteors do a heavy amount of magic damage if they hit a player head on and afterwards they will suffer a DOT (damage over time) effect for a brief period. You can move away from Plethon while he channels Armageddon, since the meteors will only fall around the position he was in when he casted the spell. Armageddon has a 25 second cooldown.

## Team Compositions and Tactics

Here are some heroes that will excel in this fight due to their individual abilities:

* Cloud (Cloud does heavy magic damage that is very effective against Plethon. On top of that he can constantly cast E, which is a mini-stun that will interrupt Plethon's channeled spells, granting you far more time to do damage without having to constantly run around.)
* Slaughter (Due to his high physical damage burst, he can effectively one shot Ifrit, removing all of the healing and frenzy buffs.)
* Nightmare (Nightmare has a good damage mix, no matter which variant you go for.)
* Thirst (AGI Thirst has high physical damage burst, you can cast up to 4 W at the start of battle to kill Ifrit. Thirst is able to stun Plethon with D and W many times and casting Q will slow Plethon's attack speed. The combination of stuns, slows and Thirst's lifesteal makes him able to tank Plethon at low STR, provided the other person is a magic damage dealer to help kill Plethon quick enough or a Blessing.
* Revenge (Revenge can dish out some good damage while still being able to heal himself and tank the fight.)
* Satan (Satan has a good damage mix and because of his main stat being STR, he can do a bit of extra tanking. On top of which he can provide a couple of stuns to prevent any channeled spells from going through.)

### **Ifrit>Plethon**

If you have a high physical burst damage from a Slaughter or Nightmare you can go ahead and kill Ifrit first and remove all of their healing and once she comes back with Heart of Ifrit just kill her again. While she's dead focus all your damage on Plethon but be careful to not over commit and realise that you ran out of spells once Ifrit is up again. In general you would want a tank to help you out-damage Plethon, since it will take a while to kill him with just physical damage.

### **Plethon>Ifrit**

If you wish to go for Plethon first, you would require a good magic damage dealer and a beefy tank to survive all of Plethon's crits during "Plethon's Torment". Make sure you can actually sustain yourselves well enough to go for this approach, since it can be dangerous with how criticals are random chance based. Use any stuns you have to interrupt channels to grant you more time to DPS and to save you some HP.

Once both Plethon and Ifrit are dead, a chest will drop from the one that died last. Once you gather your rewards, type -suicide to get out of the area (your respawn time will be reduced to 5 seconds).