Zul'Aman Guide to the First 2.5 Bosses

After killing Nalorakk on Sunday, and Akil’Zon last night, we thought we’d head on over to Jan’Alai, the Dragonhawk boss in ZA.  I waved at Jan’Alai, and looked menacingly at him, but that was about as close as we got.  For those that haven’t gotten here yet, let me give a few updates on some of these bosses in ZA.

Nalorakk
He’s known as the Bear Avatar.  Getting to him, isn’t too tough.  You have to have two well geared tanks, but the pulls are pretty basic.  There will be groups of up to 4, so you’ll need to have some CC in there as well.  Some of the mobs will get off their bear mounts when the mount is almost dead, and the tank will have to pick up those as well.

The boss himself hits very, very hard.  You need two tanks for this fight.  One tank will take him in the troll form, and the other in the bear form.  Essentially, the bear form has a bleeding ability that’s pretty rough, but the troll form has an ability that increases bleed effects by 100%.  You also need to have both tanks on top of each other to divide the damage of Brutal Swipe between the two tanks.  Then, they just taunt them off each other at the appropriate time.  He’ll also randomly charge people, but that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.  Finally, there’s a silencing effect, which shouldn’t be too bad either.

Basically, if you have a group that can take on Prince Malchezaar, you’re probably okay.  If both tanks could tank the Prince, it’ll probably make Nalorakk very feasible.

Akil’zon
This is the Eagle Avatar.  Getting to this boss, is probably half the battle.  There’s a gauntlet type event that only ends once you kill the Amani’shi Tempest.  Along the way, you have to kill 4 sets of Amani’shi Wind Walkers and Amani’shi Protectors.  (1 of each per set.)  Meanwhile, you get a steady spawn of 2 elites and a bunch of non-elite birds.  We found that one tank would pick up the Wind Walker and Protector while the other would pick up the two that spawn in the back.  We’d also have a paly (any spec) consecrate to pick up the birds.  Kill, the Wind Walker and Protector and then one of the spawned elites, and then pull the next set of Wind Walkers/Protectors.  The biggest thing to remember, is to stop the Wind Walker from healing.  If you can do that, it’ll probably be an easy fight.

Akil’zon is a little more difficult.  The less melee you have the better though.  It’s a 1-tank encounter, so best to have a second tank that is a hybrid so be able to maximize DPS (druid) or healing (paladin).  The more people are spread out, the less damage they’ll take from the Static Disruption.  He has a few other abilities and even summons eagles (which you can basically ignore), but nothing you really have to worry about much, except for the Electrical Storm.  Everyone has to collapse in to the person that is lifted in the air by the Electrical Storm (you can see a shadow on the ground), but you can’t stand on top of each other or the Static Disruption will get everyone.  So, you have to continually expand and contract.  The other tricky thing is that the Electrical Storm is every 45 seconds to a minute, so if you contract right at 45 seconds, you may get hit with a few Static Disruptions before he decides to use the Electrical Storm.  The first few hits of the Electrical Storm don’t hit too hard, so you don’t have to immediately be in the protection, but you do need to get there quick, or else you’ll start taking a lot of damage.  It’s a long fight, but not too difficult once you get the movement down.

Jan’alai
The Dragonhawk Avatar.  I’d love to be able to tell you first-hand knowledge of this one, but since it was another gauntlet type encounter, we didn’t get to the boss yet.  There are these patrolling Scouts that respawn fairly quickly.  They’re non-elite, so you can kill them pretty quick, but they also run fast.  And they run straight for these drums.  If they hit the drums, they pull in a lot of reinforcements.  We got through the first few groups, but we’re still learning placement and whatnot.  We didn’t spend a lot of time there on this one.  So… even though we didn’t quite get through all the trash, we’ll call this our 0.5 part of this guide.