Zul’aman boss three, Halazzi the Lynx Lord is dead!
Posted by bigbearbutt in Druiding, Raiding
And it was a guild first!
Happily, I was there as one of the two feral druid tanks that took him down.
Okay, I’m back, let me break down some of the tips on tanking this fight.
The dude hits like a freight train, so you need some hellacious health. Drop your normal food and pots in favor of high stamina, high health. Warlocks? Get that Imp out there for Blood Pact. Anything to top up your max health.
First, there are two tanking roles here. Hallazi does a Cleave thing that will pound you into the paement if you are flying solo, and is split/shared amongst two tanks. The drawback? Poisitioning is a key to this fight. The two tanks have to be very precisely shoulder to shoulder in front of him, in a narrow area, solidly in range, and not overlapping each other, or the Cleave doesn’t get shared, and blast full-force on one poor lonely tank. Usually ends in utter wipe.
Second, at three points in the fight, namely when Halazzi reaches 75% health, 50% health and 25% health, the Spirit of the Lynx Lord splits off from him and goes on a rampage.
During these points in the fight, Halazzi ceases to take damage until the Spirit is destroyed.
This sucks, big time. Because the fight is so damage-intensive, the healers are forced to overheal the tanks constantly. Constantly. So as soon as, and I mean the split-freaking-second after the Spirit of the Lynx Lord appears, it is generally running towards your healers, away from the tanks.
It is the job of one of the tanks, namely whichever one is there to soak up Cleaves/offtank, to grab that Spirit and pound some massive Threat into him, because everybody has to burn it down fast, and they can’t damage it until you give them a Threat window to operate under.
So you have to grab the Spirit of the Lynx Lord fast. DAMN fast. And you can’t be running all over hell’s back acre to do it, because if you do you are wasting healer mana, you are opening up the main tank to solo Cleave, and you are letting chaos run free to bust up your precious clothies.
So what you do is you create a macro to [/target Spirit], and you use a damn good bossmods addon like Bigwigs that will warn you that the Spirit is coming, and you prepare to nail that /target macro and fire your highest threat generating abilities as fast as you can so you can minimize the damage a miss will do to you. Remember, the Spirit will appear in melee range first, before dashing towards the back, so be poised and prepared. Growl, Mangle, and Lacerate fiercely.
Finally, there will be totems. Many, many, many totems. You will not be worrying about them, except to watch as they keelz you.
But the raid needs to be prepared to [/target Corrupted] so that as soon as a totem appears, everyone shifts axis of fire away from Halazzi/Spirit, and onto totem for instant downage before shifting back.
Remember, concentrated, focused fire on your objective brings it down faster.
I personally would go with up to three macros, depending on your role in the fight, a /target Halazzi, /target Spirit and /target Corrupted, just to be able to shift the focus of your attacks smoothly and instantly without clicking the mess of a screen.
Oh yeah… and if you do ahve to move out of position to grab the Spirit, remember to get yuor ass BACK in position next to the main tank as soon as possible.
That Cleave crap is no joke.
Congratulations!
Congratulations! Nice job laying out the tanking tips too.
You can also just “kill” the boss (instead of the spirit lynx) and the same thing happens — he goes back to 75% (or 50%, or 25%) health and you continue. Sometimes that is easier, since everyone is already DPSing him. I’m not sure which I prefer, really, since I’ve only ever tanked or healed this fight.
Grats on the first kill.
One thing that you didn’t mention that my old guild found really helpful when learning this fight was to have a hunter use tranq shot when he does his mini-enrage thing. It really helps ease some of the stress on the healers. A paladin off-tank really helps too because he/she can lay down a consecrate just before the split, ensuring that the lynx will jump right onto him/her.
Plus getting ahold of a pally off-tank will make Jan’Alai seem like a joke. If your healers can keep you up for Halaazi, then they can keep you and a pally with an entire side of hatchlings alive, no problem.
Have fun!
Gratz dude. That is a tough fight. Here’s a tip for you. If you have a pally tank as the 2nd tank, they can bubble during the cleave phase and it will still split the damage. That will help healers save on mana. Also, I believe a pally can “Blessing of Protection” one of the two tanks during the cleave as well.
And yes… he does hit like a freight train loaded with dynomite and nitro glicerin! LOL
No phat l00tz for bear boy?
Grats. Juggernauts-Kael’thas got our first kill on him a few weeks ago….as the MT for that fight I agree, his damage spiking is just crazy. You have to have a well geared raid to take that fight down, I think it’s a real accomplishment in terms of progression.
This is the macro our Warlock uses for targeting during the whole fight:
/tar Halazzi
/tar Spirit
/tar Corrupted
/cast Shadowbolt()
Works nicely because you only need the one macro.
On the spirit phase, keep in mind that when he’s split Halazzi doesn’t do the cleave (he does the Earth Shock and Flame Shock instead). The OT’s best bet for picking him up fast is to jump back to the healer/ranged about 1% before the split occurs. When the spirit pops it’s going to go straight back to your healers, so if the OT is standing between the healers and Halazzi when he pops it puts the OT in the best position to pick him up- the spirit runs right to you, which is way easier and less prone to mistakes than waiting for the spirit to spawn and having to chase it down.
DEFINITELY use Flask of Fortification on this one. The extra avoidance from the Major Agilities is superb for this fight, but giving your healers a huge health buffer is priority #1.
Swipe works wonders at 1% before spirit phase! ;-)
You could even use Challenging Roar and most likely not pull aggro on the boss provided he had 5 lacerats and a Mangle on his putty-tat @$$!
Hey BBB, did you see the screenshots I sent you? Just wondering what you though of my Cat stats and my new phat shoulders. :-)
I usually tank the zone with a Prot Paladin. We give him the Spirit duty because Paladin taunt allows him to remain stationary and pull it off whoever it runs to, that is, if his consecrate doesn’t pick it up. Anyway, everytime we’ve done it we just stay on the boss himself. It means the dps don’t have to slow at all, as threat isn’t an issue. It also means the heavy heals can stay on the same tank, because the OT’d spirit hits like a smart car.
I take it you’re on to Jana’lai next. If that’s the case, and especially if you don’t have a prot pally to pick up the adds, make sure a hunter is dropping a frost trap (the one that AoE slows) at the end of the bridge that you’re clearing adds on. It’ll give you the necessary time to swipe like crazy to get everything on you.
Anyway, good luck! Once you get Jana’lai down, you’re pretty much good to golden right up to Zul’jin!!
BBB, if you are going to face Jan’alai and you do not have a Prot Pally, I speak from experience when I say that tanking the Dragonhawks is going to be a tough task for a bear. But, I believe I have a solution to help (a bit)…
What if a Bear has consecrate? Well, you can have a 5 yard one. LOL
Oil of Immolation
Use: Does 50 fire damage to any enemies within a 5 yard radius around the caster every 3 seconds for 15 sec.
Its not much, but when you look at the narrow path the Dragonhawks must travel to get to the Boss’ arena, it may prove to be a big help on the initial pick-up. Then you can target cycle with swipes galore! :-)
Grat man!
Just got turned on to your blog. Thanks for the entertainment and info at work!
Two quick things that came to mind.
You want the MT and OT actually ON TOP of each other, not side to side. While it should work as you listed, it is much safer to actually have your other tank “ride” you the whole fight. We have not had the experience of one tank taking all the damage as long as one isn’t in front of the other tank.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise…. If you have a decent AOE group make-up going into Jan’alai you can most certainly deal with the hatchlings yourself.
Have a mage ice um up or have a frost trap actually on the bridge… stand between the birds and the main raid area and swipe your arse off and rely on your locks to seed up those buggers and get back to downing the boss.
Again, love the site and will continue to be a new, but loyal, reader.
Congrats! I was in there once (not as a tank) and all those ZA boss fights are … crazy. Fun.. but Crazy. :)
On an off topic, could you by chance tell me how you get your wowhead links to pop up the item? I can’t figure it out. And I love and admire you and your writing and your teeth (so shiny and white) so… please help?
Just an FYI, he doesn’t cleave when the spirit is out so you have a decent amount of time to get back to the stacked position, make sure the tank that is tanking the spirit keeps aggro above trying to rush back to position. We wiped once when offtank lost aggro on the spirit :(. Also, if you don’t have a pally offtank a holy pally has and can tank the birds if they are competent. That is the only way we’ve ever done it actually due to the lack of pally tanks on our server. GJ and good luck on your next endeavor in that wipefest that is ZA. haha
We got our first Lynx kill a week or so ago. It was my pal the Prot warrior MT and me (the bear tank) as OT, soaker. Biggest issue we saw (after learning that the tanks HAVE to stay together in the pull) was mana for healers. They were really strapped for mana as we got to the final 25%. After having them run out the first try we moved an enhance shammy over with a mana stream and that helped. When you go in have the healers in a heavy mana conservation group (usually shaman are the key, even an enhance can drop WoA and Mana Stream).
As noted you can stack the tanks no problem and Halazzi stops cleaving in split form (thank Elune!). Had the exact same problem with the lynx (it rushed off and needed a feral charge, growl and pull back). Damage in these phases is the corrupted lightning (we hates it!!) and flame shock. I didn’t really notice much of the flame shock since I’m getting heals all the time, but I’m told it needs to be treated like Maiden’s holy fire and cleansed ASAP.
As a tank I like this fight, you get the feeling of real danger from that cleave. But it’s not a tank fight really… more a test for DPS (quick swap to totems) and healers (not going OOM).