Priest Thekal

[Zarathustra]

Hit a brick wall tonight in a Zul'Gurub run. We've got the aspects of the spider, snake, raptor, and bat down easiliy. Those priests aren't that bad for us, and we one-shot them. But tonight we spent three hours wiping on Thekal.

The first phase is going without a hitch. Three tanks, burn Zath to around 35%, burn Thekal to about 20%, and by that time Lor'khan only needs a few seconds of dps to bring him in line with the others. Pull them all together for AoE and we're good to go. We'll finish this phase of the fight with everyone alive and healthy, albeit with some of our healers a bit depleted.

This is where things all go to hell. We collapse into the narrow area in front of his hut to minimize the distance on knockbacks, but Thekal is doing some major damage in his tiger form, and double-jumping so we're hit with two knockbacks in a row, each doing over 1k damage to everyone in the raid. Additionally, his summoned tigers are taking a lot of damage to pull off the cloth. I'd say 75% of my deaths during this fight were to the tiger adds.

Just asking if anyone here has experience in this fight, and if so, how you handle his second phase. We tried shifting all dps to the tigers whenever they spawned, but that left him taking damage at a terribly slow rate. We tried sheeping the tigers, but at regular intervals he'd summon two more. We can only sheep/sleep so many before we run out of mages and druids. We tried having hunters at a range to pull the tigers away from the fight to kill in the open, but they're hard to yank off the healers and the knockbacks were throwing hunters out of healing range. The last attempt, we put warlocks on fear duty with the tigers, sending them running and using DoTs. But before long we had 6 tigers running around.

Our best effort was taking him down to 6%, so I know it's within our grasp. But I can't help but think there's some trick to this that we're missing.

[oldmandennis]

I havent done it personally, but I hear they are vulnerable to the green whelp armor.

[Tuftears]

Several tips that helped us: mana-drain Thekal during phase 1 and keep him down on mana in phase 2, so as to slow down his summoning of tigers, and we started doing a fear rotation from the priests (though I have no idea if they're really doing it or just humoring me when I talk about it) to get the tigers off of us when they spawn. Then they can be sheeped or slept away from the raid.

There can only ever be six tigers out at a time, so generally you shouldn't have too hard a time getting them under control.

Also, having two tanks on Thekal at a time, one between him and the raid, should help for keeping him under control.

[Bolty]

I've never been to that encounter (Avarice ZG runs start too late for me), but it sounds like you just need your Priests to chain their Psychic Screams (up to 5 mobs go running) and the tigers are handled. And the Priests can also mana burn a boss down - how much mana does he have?

Wow, an encounter that actually uses some of the Priests' more valuable utility spells! I want in! :)

-Bolty

[lfd]

Hit a brick wall tonight in a Zul'Gurub run.  We've got the aspects of the spider, snake, raptor, and bat down easiliy.

Small note - Bloodlord Mandokir is not an aspect, so is not a necessary kill. But he has nice loot ;-)

But tonight we spent three hours wiping on Thekal.

Yes, that sounds familiar.

Our strategy here is to go all out on the boss. Don't bother killing the adds, just cc them in some way (sleep, sheep, fear, kite, whatever - just don't waste time killing them as you'll just get more spawned). Thekal doesn't have that many hitpoints in his reincarnated form, so max dps should take him down pretty quickly.

People should be able to bandage themselves if they get knocked back; we tank him with our MT's back to a wall such that he doesn't get knocked back far enough to make regaining aggro a problem if necessary.

Our best effort was taking him down to 6%, so I know it's within our grasp.  But I can't help but think there's some trick to this that we're missing.
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Sounds like you've been mostly unlucky so far, or you just haven't found quite the right combination of cc/dps to deal with the fight. I don't know the typical make-up of your raid (or even whether you're horde/alliance, although I guess alliance since you didn't mention use of Earthbind), but we don't have a problem having three mages and three druids in a ZG raid which gives you all the CC you need for this fight. Even missing one of those, you can fall back on fear.

[Quark]

Our group fights in the small area, minimizing knockback effects. We kill the first two tigers, but CC/Fear the rest and just keep DPS going until he dies.

There are other ways to do this fight. On the test server, we did it out in the open with all ranged spread out. Knockbacks were a problem, but there was less damage to deal with. You also then have room to get completely away from him if you need to bandage or such. I believe we killed spawns ... but am not certain.

More important than picking one of these strategies is to make sure everyone sticks to it :)

[Arethor]

There are other ways to do this fight.  On the test server, we did it out in the open with all ranged spread out.  Knockbacks were a problem, but there was less damage to deal with.  You also then have room to get completely away from him if you need to bandage or such.  I believe we killed spawns ... but am not certain.
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This is a similar strategy for how we approach it.

Hope this might help a little bit.

[Skandranon]

There are other ways to do this fight.  On the test server, we did it out in the open with all ranged spread out.  Knockbacks were a problem, but there was less damage to deal with.  You also then have room to get completely away from him if you need to bandage or such.  I believe we killed spawns ... but am not certain.
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We did kill spawns, they're pretty weak.

The thing about spreading way the hell out across the entire area is both that you have room to back away and bandage and that if you space correctly, on double punches, his first punch will knock you out of range of the second. That way, only the warriors and possibly rogues will be eating double punches. As long as at least one healer is in position to drop heals on the tank after a knockback, where everyone else is relative to each other doesn't matter.

[Ashkael]

My guild used to have a lot of trouble with this guy, but now we've got him nailed down to the point where we don't wipe anymore on him. He's deffinitively one of the toughest bosses to master in the instance.

Phase 1 is deffinitively easy. It's not neccesary to AoE the guys though, it's a waste of mana IMO. I find it rather easy to just DPS down each one of the 3 guys to 10%, then kill the right add (forgot the name, it's the one that heals). As soon as she is down, you got about 15 seconds to DPS down the other two rather fast (this should be easy, since they should be around 5% from just the damage they are taking from their tanks). Another tip: have a rogue kidney shot the left add whenever he gouges/blinds the warrior tanking. Once DPS is complete on this guy, have the warrior tank him facing the opposite direction so he cannot be blinded.

Phase 2 is hell. You got a few seconds to position your raid before he turns into a tiger. What we do (and what you guys seem to be doing) is to use the narrow stretch just in front of the tiger cage. We position all ranged DPS and healers against the right wall, and the MT is on the left side. This phase is pretty chaotic. It seems that whoever doesn't get hit by his knockback attack draws aggro almost instantly, so we use the narrow space to have everyone get knocked away (keeping your back against the right, step wall makes you land almost instantly after the knockback). As soon as the MT manages to taunt the boss, we just DPS the #$%& out of him. When tigers spawn, ALL DPS immediately switches to the tigers. If you don't do this, the tigers will stick to your healers like leeches. If you cc the tigers early on, you will have too many to handle later on (they cap at 6, but that's a lot). If the MT gets his taunt resisted, he announces it on vent so a second warrior can try to taunt him away from the group. In short, as soon as the MT regains aggro and brings him against the left wall, we just DPS him down. We only ever cc the tigers at the 20% mark.

What makes or breaks Phase 2 is basically how good your MT is at getting the boss back from the raid group, how quick your DPS group is at taking out the tigers, and how good your healers are at keeping everyone alive. Also, bandaging in between knockbacks (as well as people such as mages/warlocks/rogues taking a few seconds to bandage the healers) are key to this fight.

Hope this helps.

[mm262]

Ok, that is, what we are doing:

Phase I is pretty simple. Just tank all 3 guys.

Thekal hits hard with mortal strikes, so just tank him and dps with ranged, death zone for all melee.
Zath (left) is rogue-like, he can blind an stun the tank and has something like blade flurry. Just tank him with a warrior to be able to taunt him back after a stun/blind. A pala as off-tank is a good idea - he can throw in some stuns and take the aggro when the tank is stunned/blinded. Usually we take another rogue to chain-stun Zath with kidney-shot (dont let more than one rogue do this because of diminishing returns).
Lor'khan (right) has a dispellable lightning shield and is able to heal himself. You will have time enough to counter this when the animation starts but watch out anyway.

We start the fight with killing the tigers and letting the tanks build up some aggro and pull their targets to their positions. We tank Thekal in the opening because we do Phase II with our raidgroup all with their backs on the wall and the tanks between Thekal and the Healers/Ranged. After killing the tigers main target for all ranged is Thekal, while the hunterpets and rogues stick with Zath. Usually we switch the targets at about 20% to Lor'Khan and bring him down first, than the other two. That means end of Phase I and the start of Phase II.

Phase II is a little nasty, because the group has to become used to the situation. In this Phase Thekal transforms into a big Tiger and has two different aoe-knockbacks. Both can be dodged/resisted. He also summons 2 tiger-adds from time to time. The key to Phase II is aggro management and crowdcontrol. There are multiple choices you can make to handle the adds. We usually kill them right after they spawn. Just fear them away (priest, warlock or flashbombs) and kill them with hunterpets and ranged-dps. It's vital for the entire group that everyone heals themselves with bandages and whipper-root/heal pots. The only chars that are healed are the tanks. Everytime Thekal does a knockback he will kind of reset the aggro. Thats the key to success, because all the ranged dps classes will have to learn when to stop and when to restart the fire on Thekal. If you look closely, you will see that Thekal does an animation like jumping in the air before doing the knockback wave. That's the moment for your tank to taunt him. If the tank does this correctly everything will be fine, because he will never lose the aggro. The rest of the fight is pure damage and Thekal will go down fast. He does not have much hit points while in tigerform.

It's essential that everyone knows exactly what to do - if everyone sticks to the plan, this fight will become trivial.

My English isnt that great - so, to give you an idea of this setup i have posted a link below of a kill last week. Its not even a good try but one that went horribly wrong due to various lags. That way we lost a lot of damage at the beginning of phase II, but anyway its just to show our basic setup for this fight. Without lags we usually do this fight with max. 2 dead hunters ^^

Anyway the video may kind a funny, cause its a last pala standing style... you'll see :P

http://files.filefront.com/tigeravi/;444...einfo.html

maybe i will post an update in a couple of days... with a better fight (just to keep our honor :blush: )