Tempest Keep: The Eye - A'lar

[Shadowwolf]

http://www.wowwiki.com/Al%27ar
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=266

Videos:

[youtube=500,425]c0MlAdf-_Wo[/youtube]

Abilities:

Phase 1 and 2

• Flame Buffet - Stackable debuff incurred every 1.5s that causes 2000 fire damage and increases fire damage taken by 10% per debuff. Cannot be avoided by line of sight. This is only cast if no player is within melee range. Sometimes Al'ar will cast Flame Buffet even if there is a tank in melee range. If this happens, your tank should move forward and quickly back into position to fix the bug.

Al'ar is immune to fire damage.

Phase 1

• Flame Quills - Occasionally, Al'ar will fly to the center of the room instead of switching platforms. Al'ar then launches quills that hit anyone on the platforms or the outer part of the ramps. Deals ~8k Fire damage per second, for several seconds. Unknown cooldown
• Ember Blast - Explodes upon 'death', knocking back any player in range (~15 yards). Deals ~10k fire damage, and an additional ~1000 fall damage. Used just before transitioning to Phase 2.

Phase 2

• Rebirth - ~5000 fire damage to anyone in melee range, with a knockback across the room. This occurs a few seconds after a Dive Bomb, in the same location where the Dive Bomb hit. Al'ar also uses this ability at the start of Phase 2, when resurrecting in the center of the room.
• Dive Bomb - Al'ar flies up, and targets the ground beneath a random player. Al'ar then crashes into the ground at that location. This deals ~5000 fire damage, and spawns two Ember of Al'ar adds. Al'ar then uses Rebirth at that location. 30 second cooldown.
• Flame Patch - Spawns under a randomly targeted player, and deals ~3000 fire damage per tick.
• Melt Armor - Target's armor is reduced by 80% for 60 seconds, tanks must taunt immediately when this happens. 60s cooldown.
• Enrage - Al'ar enrages 10 minutes after the start of phase 2, wiping the raid very quickly.

Ember of Al'ar

• ~70,000 health.
• Hit for ~1500 damage.
• One is spawned after each position change in Phase 1, and two are spawned after each Dive Bomb in Phase 2.
• Each time one is destroyed, Al'ar's health is drained by 3% of max health.
• Ember Blast: Explodes upon death, knocking back any player in range (~15 yards). Deals ~7000 fire damage, and an additional ~1000 fall damage.
• Can be stunned. Immune to all other forms of Crowd Control.

Suggested Strategy:

Positioning

Phase 1
This is a heavy mobility fight. Contrary to popular belief, no amount of fire resistance is generally needed for the fight. It may help certain individuals (eg. the tank that handles the Embers) but you should avoid sacrificing more important statistics. Fire protection potions are helpful if their use is timed properly.

Al'ar will always fly to the left ramp when pulled. A tank needs to wait there to avoid Flame Buffet.

During this phase it is impossible to draw aggro at range; like Ragnaros, Al'ar will not aggro on people outside melee range. Melee can draw aggro from tanks, however. Al'ar spends around 30 seconds on each platform, then moves on to the next, flying clockwise (W, NW, NE, E, repeat). Tanks should stay on the edge of their platform to maintain line of sight with the healers. Two tanks is enough for this simple rotation, but three makes it easier to react to Flame Quill.

[attachimg=1]

Adds

Al'ar will summon an add every time it switches position. This add spawns at the very position it just left. The adds need to be off-tanked away from the rest of the raid and DPS'd down as soon as possible to keep the total number of spawned adds to a minimum. The adds do not deal much damage but explode on death for a significant amount of fire damage (healers should be prepared to respond as the adds approach death). They are immune to crowd control.

The adds will generally fly to the healers, particularly if a paladin keeps Righteous Fury up; have an off-tank waiting downstairs to pick them up. It is usually a good idea to have the melee DPS take care of these adds, since they can't move fast enough to keep steady DPS on the boss herself, but be very careful with the explosions. Note that these adds can be stunned, and a useful technique is for a rogue to save up 5 combo points, wait for the add to get low on health (around 4%), stun the add while everyone else moves away, and then use Cloak of Shadows and finish off the add.

Flame Quills

Occasionally when leaving a platform, Al'ar will fly to the center of the room and begin spinning, which signals the upcoming Flame Quills. Every person in the raid needs to be aware and fall down from the upper platform, especially the tanks, since anyone left there will take 6-8k fire damage per second. People standing on the outside of the room on the floor (south near the entry door) are also susceptible). Unobservant tanks will be killed very quickly by this ability, most likely causing a wipe (if no soulstone was set). So whenever Al'ar is about to leave a platform, rotate the camera appropriately to keep an eye on the movement. Don't just run blindly to the next platform, wait a bit to see where exactly Al'ar goes next.

Once the Quill ends, Al'ar will land on platform 1 or 4. One tank needs to be positioned on each side, at the base of the ramp, ready to quickly reach their platform before Al'ar does more than two buffets. Intercept is useful. A third tank can be helpful here; if you have only two tanks, and both are on the same side of the room as Al'ar leaves a platform to start Flame Quills, they may have trouble crossing the room to reach the far platform. Priests can summon their shadow fiend up to Al'ar if the tank is having trouble getting to the platform in time to minimize buffets.

Between handling adds and avoiding the Flame Quills, heavy DPS needs to be put out on the boss. In an ideal scenario, Al'ar should die within 2-3 flight cycles.

Keeping the Adds

Alternatively, you can "save" the phase 1 adds for phase two (when the enrage timer becomes important). Have melee bring each add to 10% and have a warrior spam Demoralizing Shout and Thunderclap. The tank will have about 10 adds on him by the end. The damage is difficult to heal through, but not dangerous if the healers pay attention. Once Al'ar has respawned at the start of phase 2, use AoE to kill all the adds simultaneously, and it will lose about 20%~ of her hp instantly. The add tank will usually be knocked away by the first explosion and should not take damage from any of the others; however it is possible to be hit by several and killed. Therefore, it is sensible to Soulstone him. The add tank could also use a Major Fire Protection Potion before the first add explodes, to avoid high peak damage.

Phase 2

[attachimg=2]

Phase II begins right after Al'ar reaches 0%. At this point it will explode for 8-9k fire dmg with AoE knockback on everyone in a 15y radius and reappear roughly at the center of the room where it will cast a powerful AoE knockback with fire damage. After this, it must be immediately tanked or it will start casting its flame buffets once again. Phase II is not an aggro wipe and Al'ar should fly to the top threat person. But it may decide to stay put and cast flame buffet if not picked up immediately. In case there are still some adds up from phase I, raid should focus on getting them down as soon as possible, preferably before Al'ar casts the first Meteor. Other than that, phase II is all about survivability. Melee DPS should focus on the boss while ranged DPS focuses on the adds and then Al'ar if no adds exist.

While being on the ground, it will occasionally spawn flame patches on random people that work in a similar fashion to void zones. If desired they can be dispelled by warriors via Spell Reflection. People need to be aware and move away from the fire trails as soon as possible. Al'ar can charge people for 5000 damage leaving them momentarily stunned. It usually flies back to its previous target but can sometimes remain next to the charged target and cast flame buffet until taunted. It also has a "Melt Armor" debuff that it will put on the current MT every 60 seconds (which means that tank switching is essential once this happens). While most boss mods will announce when "Melt Armor" is cast and its cool down it will be beneficial to many to announce this over Vent or Teamspeak. Healers must be ready to change targets when needed.

Last but not least, while airborne, it will cast Meteor (now called Dive Bomb) on a seemingly random target. The Meteor does about ~5000 fire damage on a single target and should be survivable or avoided by running from the area. Using consumables/abilities that can mitigate this sort of damage (fire protection potions, ice barrier, mana shield, barkskin etc) is also recommended. People should be aware of the fact that Al'ar spawns with an AoE fire knockback where the meteor hits the ground as well as with two ember adds so your raid should move away from that spot as soon as possible. The adds spawn immediately when the meteor hits the ground whereas Al'ar spawns roughly 2 seconds afterwards, giving a small window to pull the adds out without accidentally hitting or taunting Al'ar. Failure to do so will result in them being knocked across the room taking both fire damage and potentially some falling damage.

Note: Everyone should stay off the ramps and in the room completely, if Al'ar targets a person for Dive Bomb while they are on the ramps, Al'ar will evade glitch and go back to full health.

[khader]

After our experience last night, I'd like to suggest melee help with the adds and leave the tanks and ranged DPS on Al'ar for phase 1.

After the first engagement, the tanks don't have enough aggro to keep Al'ar from killing all of the melee on platform 2 or 3.  At each stop the new tank has zero aggro so if melee even blinks they'll pull aggo.  Getting back to the first tank will have same problem as melee has built up more aggro than the first tank.  Melee holding back hurts the overall raid dps in 2 ways - melee dps on Al'ar reduced significantly and ranged DPS reduced as some have to deal with adds.  Having melee on adds means they can dps as normal and ranged can unload on Al'ar as they can't pull aggro.

The video showed this to - only tanks on the platform and melee on the adds.  Losing melee so early in the fight means is a huge loss of DPS - fight will take longer inevitably straining healer mana later on.

[Telfurion]

is Al'ar tauntable?  Seems like you could stand halfway between the platforms, taunt once he starts moving, and make it back to your platform before he starts casting flame buffet.  And melee just has to make sure not to use Dots in phase 1.  Oh, and does anyone know why the rogue would use CLoS after stunning the add?

[Shadowwolf]

I believe hes tauntable only on phase 2 where he needs to be for the melt armor debuff

Oh, by the way, I checked on BigWigs, there is no alarms for A'lar on phase 1, its all on your own and watching for when he heads to the center for Quills. The alarms start on phase 2 where he becomes more of a pain in the butt.

[fiere redfern]

Oh, and does anyone know why the rogue would use CLoS after stunning the add?

From CloS' tooltip: "increases your chance to resist all spells by 90% for 5 sec."

The adds explode for pure fire damage, so it's the same as resisting a fire spell from a mage.

[Kothnok]

I like that strategy Khader.  I found that I rarely DPS the boss when trying to burn down the adds since by the time it died, another spawned and another melee dropped due to pulling aggro.  It's not so much that they are super tough insomuch as the travel time it takes for the add to get down the ramp into range (it's usually out of LoS while moving to the ramp).  Having the melee dps beat down the adds should help with the aggro pulling as well as increase our dps on the boss.

[Gutboy]

I'm with Khader. Any time I can pull aggro on a boss with lolprotdps as fast as I did last night, I'm gonna go fight something else, thank you... 

GB

[Arcdelad]

Its not a bad thing though for an add tank...those adds make a REALLY sharp turn as they come down the ramp...you have to be ready for a quick taunt...the window to land a taunt is pretty slim there...a couple of times I had to chase after the add to drag it back...

The first time I tried add tanking with about 180 FR on...after reading my logs, I noticed that the adds werent doing any fire damage - just physical...

[Shadowwolf]

The fire is when they explode i think, though im not positive.

[Darkstar]

What i am curious on, is how flame quills hit both me and key (me twice) when we were already off the platform and on the ground running towards the ramps.  ANy ideas???

[khader]

Maybe the quill  targeted you before you were all the way down to the ground?  I got hit by one as well while running to the ramp.  Figured I was slow to jump down.

[Telfurion]

Yeah, I will be definitely DPS'ing adds in future Al'ar runs, but for the 5 combo point/ kidney shot thing to work, everyone has to remember to run away as soon as he gets the stun, or else its rather pointless.  I wonder if that that explosion is binary or if you still get the knockback if its resisted.  Oh, and thanks for the CLoS tooltip Fi, I totally forgot that was a function of that skill, never once used it like that.

[Arcdelad]

I think that end damage came from a HUGE knockback shadow, not a fire explosion...I (or any other tank) needs to be firmly, ass on wall when an add dies...which makes picking up that add fast even more important...

[Shadowwolf]

Good work tonight all, 30% phase 2 twice, I think we have a lot of the kinks worked out now, going to try Kay's suggestion next time and have the pallys tank the adds on phase 2 since they can range taunt them off people and it should make for less chasing around and more aggro hold so they dont break lose on dps.