Wind Lord Mel'jarak Detailed Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included)

Table of Contents

• +1. General Information
  • 1.1. Health Values
  • 1.2. Enrage Timer
  • 1.3. Raid Composition
• +2. Loot
  • 2.1. Armor
  • 2.2. Amulets, Cloaks, and Rings
• +3. Overview of the Fight
  • 3.1. Video by Inner Sanctum
• +4. Mobs and Abilities
  • 4.1. Mel'jarak
  • 4.2. Adds
    • 4.2.1. Crowd Control
    • 4.2.2. Sra-thik Amber-Trappers
    • 4.2.3. Zar'thik Battle-Menders
    • 4.2.4. Kor'thik Elite Blademasters
• +5. Strategy
  • 5.1. Crowd-Controlling the Adds
    • 5.1.1. Amber-Trappers
    • 5.1.2. Battle-Menders
    • 5.1.3. Elite Blademasters
    • 5.1.4. General Advice
    • 5.1.5. Viable 10-man Crowd-Control Strategy
  • 5.2. Target DPS Priority
  • 5.3. Tanking the Mobs
  • 5.4. Positioning
  • 5.5. Dealing with Add Abilities
    • 5.5.1. Amber-Trappers
    • 5.5.2. Battle-Menders
    • 5.5.3. Elite Blademasters
  • 5.6. Healing Concerns
• 6. When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp
• 7. Learning the Fight
• +8. Heroic Mode
  • 8.1. Differences from Normal Mode
  • 8.2. Strategy
    • 8.2.1. Dealing with Wind Bomb
    • 8.2.2. Dealing with Battle-Menders
    • 8.2.3. Dealing with Blademasters
    • 8.2.4. Timing DPS Cooldowns
• 9. Achievement: Less Than Three
• 10. Concluding Remarks

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Wind Lord Mel'jarak in Heart of Fear. It is targeted at anyone who desires to understand the fight mechanics.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

Wind Lord Mel'jarak is the fourth boss in the Heart of Fear raid instance. This is an encounter in which your raid will have to deal with a large variety of adds. Healers, tanks, and DPS will all have to perform excellently in order to defeat the boss.

The encounter against Wind Lord Mel'jarak (henceforth referred to simply as Mel'jarak) is a single-phase fight. During the fight, you will have to fight Mel'jarak, as well as 9 adds: 3 Sra-thik Amber-Trappers, 3 Kor'thic Elite Blademasters, and 3 Zar'thik Battle-Menders. The adds will all become active as soon as you engage the boss.

Handling and killing the adds plays a central part in the encounter. They have a number of mechanics associated to them, which will decide your raid strategy.

• Adds of the same kind share a health pool and have the same abilities.
• Killing 3 adds of the same kind grants Mel'jarak a stack of a buff that increases his damage done and his damage taken.
• Adds can be crowd-controlled:
  • when 9 adds are alive, you can crowd-control 4 adds;
  • when 6 adds are alive, you can crowd-control 2 adds;
  • when 3 adds are alive, you can crowd-control 0 adds.

As we will explain in this guide, the fight can be done in a number of ways, depending the order in which you kill the adds, which adds you crowd-control, whether you decide to finish off 2 kinds of adds at the same time (to reduce the amount of time that you have to fight non crowd-controlled adds), etc.

Mel'jarak has a few spells that he will use throughout the fight. In addition to this, he melees with a relatively high frequency and for a high amount of damage.

• Whirling Blade is an ability that Mel'jarak casts every 60 seconds. He throws his weapon at the location of a random raid member. Upon reaching that location, the blade returns to Mel'jarak. The blade deals damage to all players in it path, both on the way to the location, and on the way back to Mel'jarak.
• Rain of Blades is a raid-wide damaging ability that Mel'jarak casts every 60 seconds. It deals Physical damage to all raid members every 0.50 seconds, for 6 seconds.
• Wind Bomb is an ability that Mel'jarak casts regularly after he reaches 75% health. He throws a bomb at the location of a raid member, which deals a high amount of Nature damage to anyone within 5 yards of the location. 3 seconds after landing, the bomb arms itself and explodes if any raid members come within 6 yards of it, dealing a very high amount of raid-wide Nature damage. The bombs that Mel'jarak casts do not despawn, and remain present in the room until the end of the fight, progressively limiting the space that players have to move around.

In addition to these abilities, each time adds of the same kind are killed, Mel'jarak gains a stack of Recklessness, which increases his damage done by 50%, and his damage taken by 33%.

As we mentioned earlier, there are 9 adds present in the room where you fight Mel'jarak. They all engage together, when Mel'jarak is pulled.

The 9 adds are 3 Sra-thik Amber-Trappers, 3 Kor'thic Elite Blademasters, and 3 Zar'thik Battle-Menders. Adds of the same kind share a health pool, meaning that damaging one add also damages the other two. Therefore, when one add of a kind is killed, the two other adds of the same kind die as well.

The key mechanic of the encounter is the ability to crowd-control these adds. Most crowd-control spells, such as Polymorph or Freezing Trap, can be used. The encounter also provides you with an easy way to crowd-control, regardless of your raid composition. Around the edges of the room, there are 4 weapon racks. Interacting with these racks will grant players (1 per rack) a special ability called Impaling Spear.

Impaling Spear is a form of crowd control. It effectively stuns the targeted add for 50 seconds. The stun is broken by direct damage done to the add, but not by damage that the add takes due to other adds of the same kind being attacked. The same applies to all other forms of crowd-control, namely that indirect damage dealt to that mob (through its shared health pool) does not break the crowd-control.

There is a limit on how many adds you can have crowd-controlled at one time.

• If all adds are alive, you can crowd-control a maximum of 4 adds.
• If 6 adds are alive, you can crowd-control a maximum of 2 adds.
• If 3 adds are alive, you cannot crowd-control any adds.

If you exceed these limits, Mel'jarak will dispel the crowd-control from all adds.

Note that crowd-controlling adds at the start of the fight does not pull the boss, so you have ample time to set-up your assignments.

Sra-thik Amber-Trappers cast two abilities.

• Amber Prison traps the targeted player and any other players within 2 yards of them, encasing them in amber. Players who are trapped are stunned and unable to move. Other players can free them simply by interacting with the amber (right-clicking it). The Amber-Trappers cast Amber Prison roughly every 35 seconds. Players who free others from Amber Prisons are debuffed with Residue, which prevents them from freeing other players for 115 seconds.
• Corrosive Resin is a debuff that the Amber-Trappers place on a random raid member. This debuff has 5 stacks, and deals a moderate amount of Nature damage to that player, every second, for each stack present. When the affected player moves, the stacks are progressively consumed, and each stack that is consumed leaves behind a void zone, called Corrosive Resin Pool. Corrosive Resin is cast every 35 seconds.

Zar'thik Battle-Menders cast two abilities.

• Mending is an interruptible heal that the Battle-Menders cast on a random add, which heals them for 25% of their maximum health.
• Quickening is a dispellable buff that the Battle-Menders place on all of the adds, which increases their damage done and melee attack speed by 25% for 15 seconds. This buff stacks.

Kor'thic Elite Blademasters have a single ability.

Kor'thik Strike deals a high amount of Physical damage to a random raid member. All 3 Blademasters target the same random raid member, and attack simultaneously. This ability is cast every 40 seconds.

First, we will summarise the strategy for the encounter. Afterwards, we will go into detail about the various important aspects of the fight.

• Have one tank pick up the boss and one or two of the adds, while the other tank(s) pick(s) up the remaining adds.
• Spread out in a circle around the boss, to minimise damage from Whirling Blade, and to avoid having more than one person caught in Amber Prison.
• Make sure that players move from the landing location of Wind Bombs, and that no one triggers the Wind Bombs after they arm.
• Crowd-control as many of the adds as the limit allows (which of the adds you crowd-control depends on your strategy, see below).
• Handle the various add abilities
  • Interrupt Mending.
  • Dispel Quickening.
  • Have players affected by Corrosive Resin move, and place the void zones in such a way that it does not inconvenience the raid.
  • Free players from Amber Prison.

By far the most important decision you will have to make is which of the adds you will crowd control. We will begin by saying that the fight is killable with more or less any combination of adds you choose to crowd-control. It is ultimately up to you to decide which combination works best for your raid group, based on your strengths and weaknesses.

In order to make an informed choice, we will quickly go over the problems that each type of adds presents for your raid, but we will refrain from suggesting crowd-controlling combinations. If one combination proves to be very easy to handle, we will write about it.

Sra-thik Amber-Trappers will regularly encase players in Amber Prisons. While this deals no damage, it is a great inconvenience. This spell is cast every 35 seconds, so if all 3 adds are left free for a long time, the Residue debuff will eventually overwhelm your raid, and you will be unable to free all the trapped players.

The void zones left behind due to the Corrosive Resin debuff are not problematic in and of themselves, but they will limit your raid's movement space, and can cause problems after a while.

Overall, this is the least problematic type of adds, and the one that you can leave up and relatively unattended for the longest time.

Zar'thik Battle-Menders, if left unchecked, will heal the other mobs for very high amounts, as well as buffing their damage greatly. The heals can be interrupted, and the damage buff can be dispelled, but it will require the concentration of your raid for as long as these adds are alive and not crowd-controlled.

Failing to interrupt their heals is quite a set-back, as they heal all 3 adds of a random kind for 25% of their maximum health.

Since tank damage is quite intense in this encounter, the Quickening buff can quickly lead to a burst of damage that can kill a tank.

While these adds can theoretically be negated almost entirely through interrupts and dispels, in practice this will prove quite difficult for any sustained period of time. We recommend always crowd-controlling at least one of these adds.

In 10-man, a single reliable interrupter is sufficient to prevent a Battle-Mender from successfully casting any heals.

Kor'thic Elite Blademasters, if left unchecked, will deal extreme amounts of damage to random players. By casting their Kor'thik Strike ability in unison on the same target, the 3 Blademasters can easily one-shot players.

It is not possible to tell who will be hit by Kor'thik Strike, as they do not change target from the tank, nor do they announce their victim.

While it is possible to overcome this through having everyone topped off whenever a Kor'thik Strike is about to happen, as well as covering it with a raid cooldown such as Rallying Cry, leaving all 3 of these mobs free is not exactly feasible. Given the rather long interval between the casts of Kor'thik Strike, it may be possible to simply burn these adds down with DPS cooldowns.

We recommend always having at least one Blademaster crowd-controlled.

As we mentioned earlier, it would not serve much purpose for us to tell you which adds to crowd-control when. There are a few things that may prove helpful, however.

• If your raid has many classes that can interrupt and dispel reliably, you are better off not crowd-controlling all the Battle-Menders, and letting them live for longer, instead. In this case, you should take advantage of your situation and kill the Blademasters first.
• If your raid is able to survive the damage from all three Blademasters (either through good use of cooldowns, or because the damage of these abilities ends up not one-shotting players on live servers), you should take advantage of the situation and crowd-control other mobs instead.

While there are many crowd-control strategies that work, we can attest to the following one being relatively easy to pull off.

1. Crowd-control 1 Amber-Trapper, 2 Battle-Menders, and 1 Blademaster.
2. Kill the Battle-Mender first. Tank all the mobs together for additional AoE damage from cleaves.
3. When the Battle-Menders are dead, crowd-control 1 Amber-Trapper and 1 Blademaster.
4. Kill the Blademasters.
5. Kill the Amber-Trappers.

First of all, DPSing Mel'jarak is not a priority until the adds have been killed. Of course, any damage that you are able to deal to him through cleaving or DoTs is welcome, and will make the fight easier, especially if the enrage timer proves to be strict.

Secondly, it is important to note that when adds are killed, the remaining adds are not healed. This means that it is possible to bring all adds of two kinds (or even 3) to low health before finally killing them. This is something we strongly recommend, as it makes it much easier to control the mobs, especially the Blademasters (because you keep the ability to crowd-control 4 adds).

It is possible, however, that the complications resulting from keeping all adds alive for a long time may overwhelm your raid. In this case, you can focus down one type of adds.

Since the enrage timer of the encounter is somewhat strict, you should try to do as much as damage to Mel'jarak while killing the adds as possible. This mostly means keeping up DoTs on him, spreading diseases, and so on.

Mel'jarak will be active for the entire duration of the fight. Even though his abilities are not at the forefront, they will still have to be dealt with. As we mentioned before, Mel'jarak also melees for a large amount of damage, something that is increased each time adds are killed.

10-man raids will want to use two tanks for this fight, but it is possible to one-tank the fight with a properly geared tank. In this case, this tank will benefit from a very large amount of Attack Power from Vengeance, greatly boosting their DPS and self-healing. If using two tanks, one tank will have to pick up Mel'jarak, and one or two of the remaining 5 non-crowd-controlled adds. The other tank will have to tank the rest of the adds.

25-man raids have the option of using three tanks. This makes the tank healing considerably easier. One tank should take Mel'jarak and one add, while the remaining adds should be split between the other two tanks.

All the adds that are not crowd-controlled should be tanked in the same place, together with the boss. This allows for easy cleaving and AoE damage, which will help lower the health of multiple types of adds simultaneously.

There is no point in the fight when your raid can safely stack together. The ideal positioning is to be spread out in a wide circle around the boss. Melee DPS are unable to spread out too much, but they should still be able to stand at least 2 yards apart from one another so that Amber Prison does not affect more than one player (assuming it can even be cast on melee players).

As an exception to this, your raid may find it necessary to stack up during Rain of Blades to make healing possible, especially after all the adds have been killed and Mel'jarak's damage is increased. In this case, be extremely wary of the fact that Mel'jarak will often cast Whirling Blade immediately before or after Rain of Blades, so everyone must move in to stack at the last possible moment, and must be very quick to move out again once Rain of Blades is over.

It is important that players do not line up in relation to Mel'jarak's position, because Whirling Blade damages all players in the path of the target.

Players will have to also move out of the void zones left behind by the players affected by Corrosive Resin.

Finally, certain areas will become inaccessible, as they will be taken up by Mel'jarak's Wind Bombs. While Wind Bombs do not normally target melee players, if everyone is stacking together to help healing during Rain of Blades, the boss will cast a Wind Bomb in melee range, so everyone must be very quick to move away.

Whenever a player is trapped by an Amber Prison, someone should free them. There is no need for assignments, as whoever is nearest to the trapped player can perform the task.

Players should, however, communicate when they are unable to release others due to the Residue debuff. Ideally, everyone should have a way of displaying players' Residue debuff on their raid frames, so that they know automatically when they need to free someone. Otherwise, if the players who are next to the trapped player have Residue, they should call out for someone else to free that player.

Players who are affected by the Corrosive Resin should move immediately in order to get rid of the stacks of the debuff. They should be careful where they run to, however, so that they do not fill the central area of the room with the void zones. Ideally, they should run straight to one of the edges of the room, and then run along the edge.

Any Battle-Menders who are not crowd-controlled must be interrupted any time they cast Mending. Indeed, if even a single cast goes through, it will severely set back your raid.

Whenever they cast Quickening, it should be dispelled from all the targets. Mass Dispel is excellent for this, but other, single-target dispels can also be used.

The Elite Blademasters are the least complicated adds to deal with. For the most part, they will simply melee the tank. As we have seen, dealing with the Kor'thik Strike can be very difficult if all Blademasters are free, but it is otherwise simply an inconvenience, and something that the healers can just heal through.

Due to the fact that the damage dealt by Kor'thik Strike is Physical, even the highest theoretical hit (with 3 free Blademasters) of 450,000 is probably survivable by a random topped-off raid member, due to the damage reduction provided by their armor. If at least one Blademaster is always crowd-controlled, then this becomes much easier to manage.

As should be obvious by now, there are many different sources of damage in this encounter. The fight is quite strenuous on the healers overall.

The sources of damage are:

• generally high tank damage, and increasing damage on Mel'jarak's tank, as the fight goes on (with 3 stacks of Recklessness, healers can expect hits of up to 170,000 on the tank);
• regular raid-wide damage from Rain of Blades;
• single-target damage on random raid members, when they are targeted by Whirling Blade;
• single-target damage on random raid members, when they are affected by the Corrosive Resin debuff;
• bursts of single-target damage from the Blademasters' Kor'thik Strike, the size of which depends on the number of Blademasters currently crowd-controlled.

Healers can also expect to sometimes notice bursts in damage, if the mobs are buffed by Quickening.

Finally, there may be cases of Wind Bombs being accidentally detonated, which will probably cause a wipe.

The best timing for Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp will depend on what the most problematic moment of the encounter is for your raid.

For example, if you are trying to burn the Blademasters down before they are able to cast (another) Kor'thik Strike, then you should use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp then. Likewise if you are trying to quickly down another type of adds.

From a raid DPS perspective, the best time to use the cooldown is when all adds have been killed. This is because the boss is taking greatly increased damage at this time, and your raid will have fewer distractions since the adds will not be there to cast their abilities. This may prove to be a near-mandatory strategy, depending on your raid's DPS, as the boss' enrage timer is quite strict.

The Mel'jarak encounter is a difficult one, and each different stage of the fight will have challenges for your raid.

The first obstacle you will have to overcome is the initial chaos that occurs at the start of the fight. At this point, you will have to handle the boss (and all his abilities except for Wind Bomb) and 5 adds. You should not hesitate to make use of healing and defensive cooldowns at this stage, in order to survive longer and be able to practice this stage better.

We also do not recommend bringing Mel'jarak below 75% health until a first type of adds has been killed, so that you do not have the added challenge of Wind Bombs.

After the first 3 adds are dead, you will have to deal with one fewer type of adds. Since Mel'jarak will be taking 33% increased damage, you can use DoTs and cleaving to bring him to 75% at this point, and begin practicing how to best handle the Wind Bombs.

The amount of abilities and mobs that you will have to deal with up to this point is high, and this will undoubtedly cause problems for your raid at first. All you can do is try repeatedly, prioritising staying alive over killing the adds, so that everyone gets as much time as possible to get used to the abilities.

When 6 adds have been killed, you will have to deal with the last 3 adds without any crowd-control. Depending on the adds that you chose, this could prove to be an extremely stressful time (even more so since Mel'jarak's damage is greatly increased by this point). Most cooldowns should be available once again, and you can use them at this point.

Even though it is likely that this boss will have a rather strict enrage timer, you should focus first on finishing the fight with everyone alive, and actually reaching the enrage timer. Once you are able to do this more or less reliably, then you can start looking at ways to optimise your DPS (by DoTting and cleaving Mel'jarak, etc.).

The Heroic mode of the Mel'jarak encounter is quite similar to the Normal mode, although it presents a few interesting changes. Compared to the other Heroic modes in the Heart of Fear raid, this is one of the more accessible ones.

Wind Lord Mel'jarak has considerably more health than in Normal mode, and both him and his adds deal more damage. In addition to this, there are a few other changes.

• A maximum of 3 adds may be crowd-controlled at one time before Mel'jarak dispels all of the adds, down from 4 in Normal mode.
• The adds now respawn. 45 seconds after a group of adds is killed, a new group (identical to the first one) will enter the fight.
• The Recklessness debuff that Mel'jarak gains when a group of adds dies is changed. The buff is no longer permanent, and it no longer stacks. Instead, it lasts for 30 seconds, and it increases the damage that Mel'jarak takes by 600% (up from 33%). The increase in damage dealt by Mel'jarak remains unchanged (50%).

You will choose 3 adds to keep crowd-controlled for the entire duration of the fight (we recommend keeping all three Sra-thik Amber-Trappers crowd-controlled). You will then be left with the remaining two groups of adds, and the boss. Given the huge health pool of the boss, and the equally huge increase in damage taken when a group of adds is killed, you should pretty much ignore Mel'jarak at this point, and focus on killing one of the two groups of adds. When the adds die, you should switch to Mel'jarak and burn him hard, using DPS cooldowns, for the 30 seconds during which he takes increased damage. When his debuff expires, you should switch to the remaining group of adds, and DPS it. Remember that 45 seconds after the first group of adds is killed, it will essentially respawn (3 identical adds will join the fight).

From here on out you will simply employ a rotation of killing the lowest-health group of adds, then switching to Mel'jarak while he is taking increased damage, then DPSing the next group of adds and so on.

There are several other specific concerns that you will encounter while performing this strategy, and we talk a bit about them below.

Note that, since you are DPSing Mel'jarak while there are adds alive, he will begin casting Wind Bomb while there are adds active. This should not be a problem, unless you have Sra-thik Amber-Trappers that are not crowd-controlled. This can cause players to be trapped in amber while inside a Wind Bomb, which basically ensures a wipe (no one can go in to free them without triggering the bomb, and they will trigger the bomb themselves eventually).

Since we strongly advise crowd-controlling the Amber-Trappers, dealing with Wind Bombs will simply be a choice of individual awareness and positioning.

Since you are leaving the Zar'thik Battle-Menders free, you will need to have several dedicated interrupters (3 in 10-man and 6 in 25-man). There should be no need for back-up interrupters, since no designated interrupters are at risk of being trapped in amber.

Additionally, of course, you will have to dispel Quickening as you usually would.

You will have to contend with the coordinated attacks of all three Blademasters (we are, of course, referring to their Kor'thik Strike ability). Given that the damage done by this is Physical (and, therefore, reduced by armor), no topped-off player will get one-shot by it. However, if said raid member has recently taken damage from Rain of Blades or Whirling Blade, the Kor'thik Strike can easily kill them. This will require the healers to be very prompt in topping off players whenever a Kor'thik strike is coming up.

Even though killing each set of adds quickly is always beneficial, everyone should save their DPS cooldowns for when a group of adds has just been killed, because these cooldowns are much more efficient when Mel'jarak is taking increased damage.

Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp should be cast during one of the periods when Mel'jarak is taking increased damage. The 8-minute enrage timer of the fight should generally not be a problem, provided that your raid is executing the strategy correctly.

The Less Than Three achievement is part of the Glory of the Pandaria Raider meta achievement. The achievement requires that you kill Mel'jarak without having more than 2 adds crowd-controlled at the same time.

As you can probably tell, this is straightforward, but it will make the encounter considerably harder. It means that, until the first pack of adds is killed, you only crowd-control 2 adds, instead of 4. We advise crowd-controlling 1 Zar'thik Battle-Mender and 1 Kor'thic Elite Blademaster, and using all DPS cooldowns to kill the Zar'thik Battle-Menders, while interrupting them.

Once the Menders are dead, you can choose to kill either the Blademasters or the Amber Trappers next, depending on what is easier for your raid, and how you execute your regular kills, although we advise killing the Blademasters.

This concludes our raid guide for Wind Lord Mel'jarak. We hope you have found our guide helpful, and we remind you that we always award great consideration to your feedback, both on our forums or by e-mail.