Zul'Aman - Akil'zon (Eagle)

[Shadowwolf]

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Abilities:

• Summon Amani Eagle - an ability to call forth Soaring Eagles which have Eagle Swoop
• Static Disruption (Nature) - deals 3500 damage to target and those within a close range of the target. After the damage is dealt it will leave a debuff that causes nature damage taken to be increased by 25% that lasts 20 seconds, but does not cause further damage to surrounding members.
• Call Lightning (Nature) - deals 3800 - 4200 damage.
• Gust of Wind - throws target up in the air. Upon target falling, deals half target's full health in damage.
• Electrical Storm - channeled spell that raises a target into the air and places a cloud over them. The cloud then strikes everyone not under it approximately each second. Each strike hits harder - first strike for 800 - 1200 nature damage, second for 1600 - 2400, third for 2400 - 3600, fourth for 3200 - 4800, etc. Lasts approximately 7-8 seconds. (Occurs every 45-60 seconds)
• Enrage Timer - After approximately 8 minutes he will enrage, increasing his damage dealt by 500%. He must be downed before the enrage.

Strategy:

This fight is about spreading out as needed and then collapsing back in upon one person, rinse and repeat. Akil'zon will hit the main tank for an average of 2500. He will also cast Call Lightning on the main tank. At the start of the fight, the raid should be spread out a little in order to avoid Static Disruption hitting too many people at once. The raid should be positioned where it is easy to collapse back in on one person however. It is recommended to have the raid on one side of the boss with healers closer to the tanks. Players should be kept topped off on health to compensate for Gust of Wind and Static Disruption.

If the tank has an uncrittable, max nature resist Hydross set, the melee damage will be higher however almost no nature damage will come in. This makes the damage far more constant and easier for the healers to handle but is not required. With just a hunter nature resist buff, the ratio of physical to nature damage is 60 physical for every 40 nature. With a full nature set it is closer to 90 to 10.

Storm

Akil'zon will create an Electrical Storm every 45 to 60 seconds. This is foreshadowed by rain that will suddenly start up in the instance. This can help give your raid an indication that it is time to collapse onto one spot (Collapsing onto the tank just prior to the creation of the storm allows dps to continue during the storm). In your chat log it will state "An electrical storm appears!". Another visual sign is that Akil'zon will seem to have an electrical charge about him, then will shoot a vibrant purple warlock life drain looking graphic towards one person. That person will be lifted in the air and stunned as the center of the cloud. Another indication of the location will be a dark spot on the ground. Everyone in the raid, including the main tank, must get into or close to that dark spot on the ground. Failure to accomplish this quick enough will result in a dead raid group.

This is a channelled spell, so if you can position your raid and therefore the cloud center close enough for melee to continue hitting Akil'zon, great. If not, then you still won't have to worry about Akil'zon running rampant while you scramble to get under the cloud. Mana burning Akil'zon has proven to be fruitless, as he continues to use all of his abilities even after he runs out of mana.

Once the Electrical Storm is over, the raid should again spread out a little bit to about where they started the fight.

Boss timers

Using a timer such as DBM or BigWigs, 5 seconds before the storm occurs the entire raid stacks up close to Akil'zon but behind him. The tank will be close enough that the Electrical Storm will not affect them.

Alternatively, pay attention to Akil'zon's health. Depending on your dps, the Electrical Storm will possibly come about 10% into Akil'zon's health. If this is the case for your raid, then you can better gauge when next storm will hit. For other raids with high dps, the storm may hit on average around every 15% health.

Eagles

After the first Electrical Storm, Akil'zon will call forth his "bruddahs" which will bring some Soaring Eagles into the fight. They are different from the birds you met during the gauntlet run to the boss. They fly in the air and dive-attack random party members. That means melee dps and off-tanking is useless against them. These eagles have Eagle Swoop which hits for around 1500. After the first wave(?) they may begin tossing players into the air for high but non-fatal fall damage. Warlocks can seed, hunters can shoot down, mages can fireball, and shaman can chain lightning. They move very quickly across the boss area and some players may find it difficult to finish casting a spell before they are behind the player or out of range. The recommended strategy is to have a shaman chain lightning and finish them off with instant ranged attacks. The birds do not despawn and must be killed or they may eventually wipe the raid.

Eagles will only spawn to replace the ones that are killed. Therefore ignoring them and healing through their damage is a possible alternative. The damage they do can be overcome by a shaman using chain heal and a paladin with concentration aura to ease up the casting. A shaman healer can also very effectively utilize Water Shield in this fight he/she remembers to keep it up, since the birds hit you for a low amount of damage every 3-4 seconds. However, late in the fight these eagles will begin throwing players into the air. If players are not topped off, the fall will kill those incapable of slow fall by means of a spell or item.

The most effective way of dealing with the adds using this strategy is to have an affliction Warlock with decent +dmg (800+) put Seed of Corruption and Curse of Agony on each bird as the curse is instant cast.

Rinse and repeat the spreading out and collapsing through the Electrical Storm while managing the birds and you win.

[Nasanna]

Another strategy I read mentioned that a lock can put seed of corruption on the boss and it will hit the birds when it goes off. It also said that using attacks that hit multiple targets like cleave, whirlwind, or sweeping strikes on the boss would hit the birds too. Chain lighting would be useful on them but we don't have any elemental shamans at the moment. It also has a 6 second cooldown and costs a lot of mana.

**Confirmed by Gren and Trismus- the birds have about 4k HP and attacking the boss with multiple target attacks will hit them too. This is a lot easier than having someone try to target each individual bird as it flies in and out of range or even behind the player.

I agree with the positioning- have everyone on one side of the platform with the tank and the boss in the middle- this way, no one is out of range for healing.

[Arcdelad]

Hey guys...everyone attending tonight's ZA should definitely read through this...shadow and nas have put some great info here...thanks!

[Melonni]

Knowing we still have a little trouble working out the kinks for this fight, here is a bit of info which should prove useful for handling the storms / required movement:

2. Re: avoiding Akil'zon's storm  |  01/19/2008 09:08:44 AM PST

Don't rely on mods, they are pretty un reliable.

What we do is have 1 person call out when the storm is coming, if you turn all your sound of, except Ambient you can hear the storm coming.

So when he hears it coming, he calls out for us all to move in.

Once you get this down, it's pretty reliable.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4028097424&postId=40083592024&sid=1#2

Also, our Bigwigs addon merely displays the storm ability's *cooldown* - not necessarily when he'll decide to pop it on us.

[Shadowwolf]

Yea theres no actually timer on when he uses it, just how long on its cooldown. Seems constant tho after the first one where he pops it as soon as the CD is up. The first one is always the pain.

[Vengeance]

Thought Id post it here although its an old thread.
I recently saw a way to get right through the Gauntlet leading up to this boss the easy way...
First you SS/get ankh ready, or have DI ready too
Take off all your gear but the MT, mount up, and ride through it all, with the MT leading the charge. Get till the Tempest then make a left to exit off on a platform, then everyone die.
Rezzer gets up and rezzes the raid!
From here you tackle the tempest and then the rest of the mobs except it goes by like normal trash mobs instead of a steady flow of mobs coming to you (IE your clearing the gauntlet backwards). It also prevents birds from spawning at all...
Dunno if you guys do this trick but on my one and only run we just did the gauntlet...but i didnt see any threads about it so i figured Id post it just in case