Hakkar Changes

[Zarathustra]

Just some theorycraft while I'm checking the forums in between classes. What do the changes mean for Hakkar strategies?

* Hakkar:
Melee damage reduced.
Cause Insanity should now correctly target Hakkar's current target,
rather than closest.
Cause Insanity will no longer remove all threat gained.
Reduced the damage dealt by Poisonous Blood Siphon.
Increased cooldown on Blood Siphon.
Gained an Enrage ability after 10 minutes in combat.
No longer has the Slow ability.
Corrupted Blood now deals direct damage with a following damage
over time effect and no longer spreads to others in the raid.
Fixed a bug that was causing Corrupted Blood to target the current
target rather than the intended random target.
* Increased duration of Poisonous Cloud emitted by Sons of Hakkar.

The days of using a barefisted rogue to soak up the mind control are gone, replaced by a need to have two tanks on Hakkar fighting for aggro during the fight. This also means there's no reason to keep him at a range, so melee dps will be free to start laying into him. It looks like you'll have to directly dps him now to try and down him before the Enrage kicks in.

Corrupted Blood will now rightly be random to the raid, which does a lot to keep people on their toes. Priests are going to have to be quick to cure this, while Paladins will be out of the cleansing game since they risk wiping off the poison as well. Luckily, the disease doesn't spread like it used to. That could be a nasty way to wipe.

Hunters are going to have an easier time running back and forth grabbing Sons to kill since they can't be slowed.

It looks like they're shifting this fight away from being a flat-out endurance battle. Direct dps on Hakkar is going to be far more important than it was before (depending on the strength of his Enrage).

The only thing I'm wondering is whether he has a cleave that would make things sticky for everyone in melee range. If not, I don't see anything wrong with bringing him right up to the raid to play, rather than stalling him where he stands.

[Lissa]

The days of using a barefisted rogue to soak up the mind control are gone, replaced by a need to have two tanks on Hakkar fighting for aggro during the fight.
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You never needed to do that. Just make sure everyone stood on the wooden platform and there was never a need to worry about insanity till now. We've been doing Hakkar for a couple months where only the tank is on the top of the stone part of the pyramid with Hakkar, everyone else stood on the wooden platform waiting for the Hunters to bring the next son without fear of insanity.

[oldmandennis]

Not directly on topic, but I think its good they are nerfing the panther boss, especially if/when they nerf the green whelp armor (has that happened yet). That encounter seemed tough even for MC geared groups, even with the whelp armor.

[MongoJerry]

Not directly on topic, but I think its good they are nerfing the panther boss, especially if/when they nerf the green whelp armor (has that happened yet).  That encounter seemed tough even for MC geared groups, even with the whelp armor.

Actually, it was (and I assume still is) insanely easy. Just have warriors with sword-and-board tank the panthers by spamming shouts. Even without the bugged Shield Block, even a dozen panthers don't do much damage to a warrior. If you're on Horde, you can even add a stone skin totem, but I often get told "that's not really necessary." I wonder how much threat Curse of Weakness causes. Maybe a warlock could be assigned to make sure each of the panthers has CoW on it?

[MongoJerry]

After reading the patch notes a little more thoroughly, here are my comments:

Zul'Gurub
* A small number of spawns have been removed from Zul'Gurub to allow
for a slightly faster clearing time.
- Zandalar Tribe reputation rewards for killing mobs in Zul’Gurub have
been increased.

Thank God!

* Increased cooldown on Poison Bolt Volley of High Priestess Mar'li.
* Slightly reduced the melee damage of High Priestess Mar'li.

Looks like a nerf.

* The vengance effect gained by the death of the raptor Ohgan during
the Bloodlord Mandokir fight has been increased in power.

Looks like a boost to his power. Tigole had said that they were going to make the Bloodlord harder, since he's considered an "optional" boss -- that is one who isn't necessary to kill in order to kill Hakkar.

* Reduced the overall damage of High Priest Thekal.
* Slowed the rate at which the panthers spawn during the High
Priestess Arlokk fight.

All nerfs. Sounds like all the priests are going to be snoozetastic from now on.

* Hakkar:
Melee damage reduced.
Cause Insanity should now correctly target Hakkar's current target,
rather than closest.
Cause Insanity will no longer remove all threat gained.
Reduced the damage dealt by Poisonous Blood Siphon.
Increased cooldown on Blood Siphon.
Gained an Enrage ability after 10 minutes in combat.
No longer has the Slow ability.
Corrupted Blood now deals direct damage with a following damage
over time effect and no longer spreads to others in the raid.
Fixed a bug that was causing Corrupted Blood to target the current
target rather than the intended random target.
* Increased duration of Poisonous Cloud emitted by Sons of Hakkar.

ANow these are major changes.

1. 
   
   
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2. First, since Cause Insanity targets Hakkar's current target, it sounds like we need to use two tanks on Hakkar.
   
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3. Second, the addition of the Enrage ability after 10 minutes plus the reduction in damage dealt by Poisonous Blood Siphon indicates to me that we are actually supposed to (gasp!) damage Hakkar directly.
   
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4. The increased duration of the Poisonous Cloud emitted by the Sons of Hakkar also indicate a desire on Blizzard's part that they want us attacking Hakkar more and the Sons of Hakkar less. If the poison duration has been boosted a lot, it might be possible for rogues and other melee to get the poison, run in and do some damage on Hakkar, and then run out to get repoisoned again. We'll have to see during the fight just how long the poison duration has been boosted.
   
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   [st]
   
   

   * Shades of Jin'do are now considered Undead.

   
   Parties should bring some paladins along for some shade stomping action.

[MongoJerry]

I just killed him tonight after two wipes, and my general review: Thumbs up! Most of the things I said above were right. The fight is much more about dealing damage yourself rather than having Hakkar kill himself. Here are some details:

• Definitely use two tanks who keep a high amount of aggro on Hakkar. When a tank gets mind controled, sheep the tank both to keep the tank from dealing damage and also as a cheap heal on the tank.<>
  
• The poison from the Sons of Hakkar now lasts a full two minutes. This might cause you to be tempted to kill sons and keep the poison on you all the time, but the poison now does 100 damage every 3 seconds, which will quickly sap your healers' mana bars. So, don't do this.<>
  
• Hakkar seems to life drain about every 1 1/2 minutes (One person claims that that it's exactly every 1:25). What you want to do is fight Hakkar, including melee attacks. Then, a hunter brings a Son of Hakkar over about 15 seconds before the life drain and everyone kills it and gets poisoned before the life drain. After the life drain, the poison should be automatically cured by Hakkar, but if anyone still has it on them, it should get cleansed.<>
  [st]
  All in all, it's a much more fun and engaging fight. We wiped the first time due to general cluelessness and stupidity. The second time, we died at 5% when he went berserk at the 10 minute mark. The third time, we were much more mechanical about everything and killed him without trouble.

[Skandranon]

I just killed him tonight after two wipes, and my general review:&nbsp; Thumbs up!&nbsp; Most of the things I said above were right.&nbsp; The fight is much more about dealing damage yourself rather than having Hakkar kill himself.&nbsp;
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I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment that the Hakkar changes were positive. The fight is fun again: tanks no longer go afk, alt-tab, or eat while tanking, and the entire battle is a lot more interactive. Not only that, they managed to do it without introducing other bizarre bugs such as the Berserker's previous Zone Crash ability and Hakkar's temporary Tractor Beam.

I think the most important part of grasping the new Hakkar strat for me was to throw out everything I knew about the old Hakkar. To those who haven't fought him in 1.9.3 yet: there is functionally no penalty to doing damage to him yourself, and the changes to siphon blood (its damage to Hakkar when you are poisoned has been reduced to 200/s from 500/s) means that you *have* to. Killing sons is no longer the primary method of DPS on Hakkar, just a way of making certain that his 90-second drains (twice as long a delay as before) don't fill him up too much.

As a further tip for others, I recommend spending some time discussing the impact of each of these changes among yourselves before trying the fight. Yes, it's theorycraft, but theorycraft can be useful. Upon reading this list of changes, I and a few of my guildmates went off on a few promising lines of speculation regarding strategy alterations, and our newly devised tactic plus a few on-the-fly alterations were enough to take him out on the first shot. He isn't really harder, just different, and once people adapt to the changes, he'll be back to vending epics soon enough.

[Arnulf]

[..]&nbsp; Maybe a warlock could be assigned to make sure each of the panthers has CoW on it?
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That poor, poor warlock! :D "Did I put it on that? Hey, I left one out! Oh there it is. Damn, missed again. Wait - I got it... huh?... Grmbl! I'll do this never again!"

[MongoJerry]

That poor, poor warlock! :D "Did I put it on that? Hey, I left one out! Oh there it is. Damn, missed again. Wait - I got it... huh?...  Grmbl! I'll do this never again!"

Heh, it turned out not to be necessary. Our two warriors tanked the panthers just fine without this and even without stoneskin totems. They needed a little more healing without the bugged Shield Block, but otherwise, it was quite easy.

I should mention the other changes to the zone. Some mobs were removed but not too many. Just a few groups here and there. Meanwhile, the reputation gain has nearly doubled. Trash mobs are 3-4 rep each, bosses are 50-100 rep each, and Hakkar himself is worth 400 rep. We ended up doing the Maw of Madness and killing a few extra groups of trash mobs for reputation gain and got about 2700 rep for the whole trip. The other guild group was more direct with their trip and got 2300 rep. So, most groups should expect somewhere around 2500 rep for each trip through the zone.

Oh! And that doesn't count the bijous, which were raining down like mana from heaven. I'd suggest selling bijous on the AH quickly before people realize just how often they drop now. Seriously, there was at least a four-fold increase in the bijou drop rate.

[hiryuu1115]

For what it's worth, last night's Avarice run of ZG netted around 23 total Bijous over a period of 3 hours :P

Also, for the rep counters like me, Bloodlord Mandokir is worth 200 reputation now.

[Rinnhart]

&nbsp; The fight is fun again:
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Good. It was the worst fight in the game past that initial "oooh, blood god" kill.

[Lissa]

I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment that the Hakkar changes were positive.&nbsp; The fight is fun again: tanks no longer go afk, alt-tab, or eat while tanking, and the entire battle is a lot more interactive.&nbsp; Not only that, they managed to do it without introducing other bizarre bugs such as the Berserker's previous Zone Crash ability and Hakkar's temporary Tractor Beam.

I think the most important part of grasping the new Hakkar strat for me was to throw out everything I knew about the old Hakkar.&nbsp; To those who haven't fought him in 1.9.3 yet: there is functionally no penalty to doing damage to him yourself, and the changes to siphon blood (its damage to Hakkar when you are poisoned has been reduced to 200/s from 500/s) means that you *have* to.&nbsp; Killing sons is no longer the primary method of DPS on Hakkar, just a way of making certain that his 90-second drains (twice as long a delay as before) don't fill him up too much.

As a further tip for others, I recommend spending some time discussing the impact of each of these changes among yourselves before trying the fight.&nbsp; Yes, it's theorycraft, but theorycraft can be useful.&nbsp; Upon reading this list of changes, I and a few of my guildmates went off on a few promising lines of speculation regarding strategy alterations, and our newly devised tactic plus a few on-the-fly alterations were enough to take him out on the first shot.&nbsp; He isn't really harder, just different, and once people adapt to the changes, he'll be back to vending epics soon enough.
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Avarice ran through him last night, got him on the second try. Definitely more involvment for the raid and now the Hunters don't have to go running all over chasing Sons. What we did was station one Hunter at the north side of the stone platform towards the mid point and one on the south side of the stone platform towards the mid point. The hunters then alternated pulling up sons by just targetting firing, and then letting the raid know they were coming. This allowed the Hunters to keep DPS on Hakkar for most the fight and just get Sons as needed. When we took him down, we took him down around the 9 1/2 minute mark (maybe a little earlier). We can also confirm that it does indeed appear to be 1 minute 25 seconds on the drains (meaning there are 7 total drains before Hakkar goes nuts and the 7th should come just before he goes nuts).

[Legedi]

For the second run I put on all the shadow resist gear I have. With the shadow protection buff, and gift of arthas I had 208 SR. I noticed that I resisted at least 2/3 of the MCs, maybe more. I think that helps a lot with the healers not having to switch targets all the time.

[Mavfin]

For the second run I put on all the shadow resist gear I have. With the shadow protection buff, and gift of arthas I had 208 SR. I noticed that I resisted at least 2/3 of the MCs, maybe more. I think that helps a lot with the healers not having to switch targets all the time.
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I'll keep this in mind for next time. I can get 88 w/eq, and then buff/Gift of Arthas can help more.

[MongoJerry]

I'll keep this in mind for next time.&nbsp; I can get 88 w/eq, and then buff/Gift of Arthas can help more.

Yeah, that's a good idea. Our tanks were being Mind Controled left and right without doing this.