Serpentshrine Cavern - Fathom-Lord Karathress

[Shadowwolf]

Links:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=109
http://www.wowwiki.com/Fathom-Lord_Karathress

Video:

No video? Get the DivX Web Player for Windows or Mac

Abilities:

Fathom-Lord Karathress

• Melee - rather low at first, increases to ~6,000 on plate after gaining "The Beast Within"
• Blessing of the Tides - If Karathress reaches 75% health while any of the three adds is still alive, he gains Blessing of the Tides, increasing both cast time and attack speed by 66% for each add still alive (triple damage output with 3 adds up)
• Cataclysm Bolt - Casts every ~10 seconds. Remove 50% of the total HP of the target and brief knockdown/stun. Shadow Damage and Resistible.
• Enrage - After 10 minutes of fights, Karathress will enrage and wipe your raid.

Additional abilities
After each one of the Fathom-Guard dies, Karathress will get one more ability as follows:
Tidalvess : Spitfire Totem - 25.000 health, 1 min duration, periodically attack up to 5 players within 45 yards for 2550-3450 Fire damage ignoring line of sight
Sharkkis : The Beast Within - Same as the hunter add's ability except permanent increasing his damage by 30%
Caribdis : Tidal Surge - 10-15 seconds, 10 yard AoE stun (players are frozen in an ice block) for 3 seconds. No agro reset, resistable

Fathom-Guard Sharkkis (Hunter)

• HP - 855,000
• Leeching Throw - similar to Viper Sting this randomly targeted attack burns mana and health at a rate of 525 per tick for 12 seconds
• Multi shot - ~2000-3000 damage on three players
• Summon pet - Sharkkis summons a non-CCable pet, either an elemental (Fathom Lurker) or a beast (Fathom Sporebat). The pet deals simliar amounts of melee damage as Sharkkis himself. The elemental pet explodes when killed, the beast doesn't.
• The Beast Within - from time to time, Sharkkis turns red for 18 sec. increasing his damage by 30% and the pet damage by 50%

Fathom-Guard Tidalvess (Shaman)

Note: The group with the Tidalvess (Shaman) tank should contain a shaman, who keeps Grounding Totem up at all times, to negate Tidalvess' Frost Shock.

• HP - 840,000
• Shaman shocks - Tidalvess has nearly all the damage spells that a player shaman has, including Windfury and a Frost Shock for 5400-6600 Frost damage.
• Totems
  
  
  
  • Spitfire Totem - 25.000 health, 1 min duration, periodically attack up to 5 players within 45 yards for 2550-3450 Fire damage ignoring line of sight
  • Poison Cleansing Totem - 4000 health, removes 1 poison effect from Tidalvess every 5 seconds
  • Earthbind Totem - lasts 45 sec., periodically reduce movement speed of nearby players to 50% of normal

Fathom-Guard Caribdis (Priest)

• HP - 885,000
• Healing Wave - Single target heal unrestricted by LoS or range, cast on any mob or herself, heals 20-30% of the target's total HP. Interruptible, 15s cooldown
• Tidal Surge - 10-15 seconds, 10 yard AoE stun (players are frozen in an ice block) for 3 seconds. No agro reset, resistable
• Water Bolt Volley - 45 Yards range AoE. 2775-3225 Damage. It will be very hard to heal it once you'll have the whole raid on her.
• Whirlwind - From time to time, a whirlwind spawns near Caribids, which moves all over the whole room. It deals no damage, but lifts players up in the air for about 3-6 seconds and gives a debuff which increases cast time (similar to the Whirlwind in the Wizard of Oz event in Kara)

Suggested Strategy:

Positioning:

First clear the entire room and the patrol in the next passageway. Then assign the tanks to their targets:

    * Karathress - best geared main tank
    * Tidalvess - 2nd best geared tank
    * Sharkkis - offtank
    * Sharkkis pet - offtank (a well geared paladin can take both, hunter and pet)
    * Caribdis - warrior offtank

The shaman and the priest both have a 45 yard AoE spell. After the shaman's dead, Karathress gains that ability from the shaman. Thus the best setup would be to have the boss, the shaman and the priest all 45 yards apart from everybody else. Unfortunately such a setup has not been found so far, so usually the priest add gets a small group in one corner, the boss is tanked near his initial position, while the hunter and the shaman are killed away from the other mobs.

On the pull, Misdirection is best used on the Shaman add, on all other mobs it's optional.

[attach=1]

Kill Order
Since Blessing of the Tides is a rather evil buff for the boss, it's reasonable to kill the adds first. The priest is the easiest add to control and should be killed last. Whether the shaman or hunter has to be killed first is a matter of choice. The hunter drains mana, the shaman deals the most damage - if the two main tanks both have good gear, it may be better to kill the hunter first. The following kill order minimises the damage taken by the raid:

   1. Fathom-Guard Tidalvess (Shaman)
   2. Fathom-Guard Sharkkis (Hunter)
   3. Fathom-Guard Caribdis (Priest)
   4. Fathom-Lord Karathress

Every time an add dies, Karathress gains a new ability. (See Above)

Spitfire Totem

During the whole fight, the spitfire totem is a major souce of raid damage. While adds are still up, it's absolutely necessary to bring it down ASAP when it spawns. All ranged damge dealers should have a macro to quickly target it i.e.

Code Select Expand

/target Spitfire Totem

. When only Karathress remains, it's possible to ignore the totem and simply heal through the damage.

Caribdis (Priest) Group

One warrior off-tank, a rogue and a shaman healer is the smallest group able to control Caribdis. Adding a warlock, a mage or an additional healer makes the job easier, but also slows down the killing of the other adds and/or makes raid survival more difficult.

The purpose of the priest add group is to interrupt all her heals. The rogue should use Mind-numbing Poison. When the two melee classes are frozen, the shaman healer must pay extra attention to be ready and use rank 1 Earth Shock when she starts a heal.

Adding more melee damage dealers to this group is pointless, it will only increase the load on the healer. It's a good idea to have a warlock keep Curse of Tongues active on her at all times, and to designate one healer who should pay extra attention to the priest group. The healer of this group has an easier job if this group can stay 45 yards away from all other mobs, so that the random damage spells from the other mobs don't interfere.

Tidalvess (Shaman) Group
The group with the Tidalvess (Shaman) tank should contain a shaman, who keeps Grounding Totem up at all times, to negate Tidalvess' Frost Shock.

[Shadowwolf]

This is a relatively straight forward fight that is heavy on healing. Its very similar to the High King Maulgar fight in Gruul's Lair except that the main boss gains an ability for each add that dies. During our week long push in SSC, this is definitely a boss we would like to try. He also drops T5 token for pants for each class, so it would be a good upgrade.

Also, for those looking for the song title in this video, its:

John Petrucci - Glasgow Kiss
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G3:_Live_in_Tokyo

[Lynette]

8 healers - we'll need to get all of our raid healers online for this fight.  Looks like a blast - I hope we can get up to him this week and try it out.

LOVE Petrucci, btw - becoming one of my favorite guitarists of this age.  May have to buy this!