Malachai, The Nightmare

Malachai, The Nightmare is the final boss of Act 4, located in the Harvest's Black Core's final area: The Black Heart. Defeating him allows the player access to Act 5.

Lore
Malachai was Chitus's thaumaturgist in Wraeclast and the creator of Gemlings, humans augmented with powerful virtue gems. He courted Lady Dialla and turned her into the Gemling Queen. After the Purity Rebellion Malachai's life was spared, and he built the Rapture Device to "purge Wraeclast of its otherworldly vices".

Abilities
Malachai has two stages with small changes in the spells he uses.

Stage 1
In this stage, Malachai is initially protected by a red shield that prevents all damage. Piety helps the player by disabling Malachai's shield with a lightning beam. Standing in the lightning beam shocks the player.

When Malachai's health first drops to 75% and 50%, he transforms Piety into an abomination and regains his shield (and invulnerability). Piety will become an enemy that uses Vaal Ball Lightning and Melee Attacks. You must attack Piety in order to transform her back into an ally. Doing so will let her disable Malachai's shield again. When you "save" Piety the second time, Malachai will permanently kill Piety and moves to his second phase.


 * Melee: If you stand adjacent to Malachai, he attacks you with moderately strong melee strikes.
 * VollSlam: Malachai lifts his weapon and smashes in front of him dealing large amounts of damage. This attack is similar to Vaal Oversoul's smash, but is faster and more powerful.
 * Summon Blood Worms: Small blood worms pour into the arena at regular intervals. They deal moderate damage, but have low life. Their corpses explode after a short delay, dealing moderate damage.
 * Teleport: Malachai teleports to another location. Deals no damage.
 * Teleport Slam: Malachai slowly sinks into the ground and emerges in another location. When he finishes emerging, a large explosion occurs that deals massive damage. This is similar to Dominus' Touch of God attack, but slower, easier to predict, and much larger and more powerful. He aims this attack on players, so as long as keep moving, you will be safe.
 * Tentacle Portal: Malachai channels for 2 seconds, dealing many weaker hits and chilling in a large cone in front of him. It is possible to walk or teleport out of the cone, and getting behind Malachai during this attack is a good way to get in safe damage while he channels.
 * Monster Mortar: Malachai throws balls of blood that create damaging patches on the ground. The balls deal moderate damage if they hit you, and the ground AoE deals heavy damage over time if you stand in it.
 * Fire Trap: Malachai creates 1 to 3 blood-colored circles on the ground. Stepping on one causes it to explode for a large amount of damage. The traps last 9 seconds before expiring.
 * TriBomb: Malachai conjures three energy orbs in an equilateral triangle. After a short delay, the orbs explode into three smaller orbs that shoot through the arena. The orbs do not seek you, and their trajectories appear to be random. Moderate damage.

Stage 2
In this stage, Malachai is surrounded by three Hearts of the Beast. The Hearts are protected by Malachai's red shield. At 75%, 50% and 25% hp, Malachai teleports to one of these hearts and opens it, allowing you to damage and kill it. Until the Heart is killed, Malachai is protected by his shield and is immune to all damage.

Malachai retains most of his attacks from the first stage, with a few exceptions noted below. He starts using more AoEs and teleporting more often as his health gets lower.
 * Smash: Malachai no longer uses the Smash attack.
 * Summon: Instead of blood worms, Malachai summons Primordial Creations. They have more health and damage than the blood worms, but are still not very threatening individually.
 * Ring of Fire: At 25% HP, Malachai creates a persistent circle of fire that slowly moves around the arena, dealing moderate fire damage over time to anyone inside it. The circle seeks out players.

Strategy


Most of Malachai's attacks are well-telegraphed. Watch him and learn what the animations for each attack look like, and you should be able to avoid most of his damage. Learning what the attacks look like and how to avoid them is the key to victory in this fight.

In general, fight cautiously - avoid his attacks and only damage him when you can do so relatively safely. Malachai has no energy shield or health regen, so all of your damage will add up.

Malachai's tentacle portal provides the best opportunity to damage him, assuming you can avoid the other AoEs he throws out. He is stationary for the entire time he channels, and maneuvering just to one side of the portal will let you attack him without taking any damage.

For the entire fight, but especially the end of the second phase, pay very close attention to the ground in the arena. Malachai's rune traps, blood pools, and the ring of fire are all very dangerous in the chaos of the fight.

The explosive teleport is easily recognized and gives you plenty of time to react, but don't mess around with it. The explosion can easily one-shot you. Get far away from Malachai and go back in after the explosion has gone off.

His Smash in stage 1 is quite quick, so if you are melee and are using slow melee attacks like two handed ice crash or any skill with multistrike, you might not have time to dodge. This attack deals a large amount of damage, so melee characters should play especially defensively during the first phase.

Transformed Piety is extraordinarily dangerous, and will require lots of dodging. She does not have the chaos beam attack from her boss version, but the chaos spheres she throws deal very high damage. An Amethyst Flask or some other source of chaos resistance will help immensely.

Map variants
Stronger versions of Malachai, The Nightmare serve as map bosses:

Dialogue
Malachai is voiced by New Zealand actor John Leigh.

Version history

 * Fixed a rare bug where Malachai in The Harvest and could sometimes fail to transition to his second arena.


 * Fixed a rare bug that prevented various bosses from using skills or transitioning correctly after being Frozen or Stunned.


 * Introduced to the game.
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