Wind Lord Mel'jarak

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Wind Lord Mel'jarak encounter guide.

[Guest Torm]

Actually if Im not wrong, than if you leave 3 trappers unchecked, than you will never run out of players who can break the trap. After 115 sec first 3 players are able to "untrap" again, the next 3 is 35 sec later and so on. So in worst case you will have ~12 players with the debuff (if you break traps asap, if not, the number can rise slowly, but should never go over 18)

[Vlad 411]

Actually if Im not wrong, than if you leave 3 trappers unchecked, than you will never run out of players who can break the trap. After 115 sec first 3 players are able to "untrap" again, the next 3 is 35 sec later and so on. So in worst case you will have ~12 players with the debuff (if you break traps asap, if not, the number can rise slowly, but should never go over 18)

Sorry, missed this comment. Will look into it.

I'd like to mention a few things regarding 10-man, that might be helpful to any guilds attempting this/wiping on it. I'll update the guide to include most or all of them tomorrow.

Firstly, it's entirely possible to AoE tank the non-crowd-controlled adds, even on a single tank (though the damage might be a bit high). This gives the tank a ridiculous amount of Vengeance/DPS/HPS, which helps a lot. It also allows you to get several types off adds low on health at once, which is another added bonus.

In 10-man, 1 interrupter per Mender is enough to prevent them from ever healing.

One combination that I can confirm as working is to crowd-control 1 Blademaster, 2 Menders, 1 Trapper, kill the Menders, crowd-control 1 Blademaster and 1 Trapper, kill the Blademasters and then kill the Trappers.

[Guest Aloha]

For 10-man, you pretty much have to crowd control at least one add of each type, and then whether you crowd control a second mender or trapper depends on how many interrupters you have and if dps is an issue. Trappers will cause a lot of lost dps with Resin and Amber, but if even one heal gets through it's usually a wipe and you might need two mass dispels to handle two menders effectively.

I would also strongly recommend taking down all 9 adds at the same time. This avoids the confusion regarding recrowdcontrolling when it breaks, and also let's you go straight from 6 AoE targets to single target double damage.

[Vlad 411]

For 10-man, you pretty much have to crowd control at least one add of each type, and then whether you crowd control a second mender or trapper depends on how many interrupters you have and if dps is an issue. Trappers will cause a lot of lost dps with Resin and Amber, but if even one heal gets through it's usually a wipe and you might need two mass dispels to handle two menders effectively.

I would also strongly recommend taking down all 9 adds at the same time. This avoids the confusion regarding recrowdcontrolling when it breaks, and also let's you go straight from 6 AoE targets to single target double damage.

Thanks for your post! Hopefully it will serve as useful for when other people are attempting the fight, and I'll see what of it I can incorporate into the guide :)

[Guest Hunnya]

I'd like to note that for 10 man, unless your dps are all pulling 150k+, you're most likely going to have to use only one tank in order to kill the boss before he hits enrage.

[Vlad 411]

I'd like to note that for 10 man, unless your dps are all pulling 150k+, you're most likely going to have to use only one tank in order to kill the boss before he hits enrage.

What exactly is the enrage timer? Thanks :)

[Morgh 0]

We wiped to enrage twice today - 8:11 and 8:18 - he starts to cast a greatly buffed Rain of Blades

[Guest Iaredemon]

Running down the stairs will reset the fight, which is quite nice if something bad happens (The distance from the entrance to this boss is quite large). We had a little trouble with the melees getting hit by the "boomerang" ability, since the hit radius is much larger than you would think. We got him to 10% after around 8 minutes, and got killed by the enraged Rain of Blades.

[Guest Bel]

Note this is for 25man:

We found it advantageous to cc 1blademaster, 1 trapper and 2 menders. Then tank the rest of the adds and boss on top of each other while popping heroism, I think our tanks were doing ~300k dps. We also *think* that the engineering Frag Belt (or Frag Bomb) counts as a cc, and as such breaks the other 4 adds out as well if used. The enrage is rather tight if you're not fast about getting players out of traps or letting the menders heal. Healing is quite intense during Rain of Blades in the last phase as well, but proper cd usage smooths it out.

[Vlad 411]

Thank you :)

[Jimmble 0]

I'd like to note that for 10 man, unless your dps are all pulling 150k+, you're most likely going to have to use only one tank in order to kill the boss before he hits enrage.

We killed him yesterday with 120k avg dps.

http://www.worldoflo.../?s=6806&e=7270

Solo-tanking however might still be the better option.

I can confirm that the enrage timer is 8 minutes.

Edited November 6, 2012 by Jimble

[Vlad 411]

We killed him yesterday with 120k avg dps.

http://www.worldoflo.../?s=6806&e=7270

Solo-tanking however might still be the better option.

I can confirm that the enrage timer is 8 minutes.

Thank you very much, sir.

[Krazyito 521]

Just started this boss. My Guild leader has us trying (CC targets) 1 Heal 1 Blade 2 Amber -> Kill Blade -> 2 Amber -> Kill Heals.

IMO unless the healers and blade masters die at pretty much the same time, its not very advantageous to have 3 healers running around. We are a 25 man, so we have plenty of melee interrupts, but I don't see the benefit of killing the Healers first.

How do people so it with CCing 2 Healers and killing the healers first? I would think you would lose out on a lot of AoE DPS because you are trying to single target the Healer more then AoEing the rest of the mobs (including the boss)

[Guest Manoj]

Dont you think health values in the guide are lower than what actually on live ? ..

[Vlad 411]

Dont you think health values in the guide are lower than what actually on live ? ..

You are right! We're updating them now, should be up shortly :)

[Guest Aloha]

As per http://us.battle.net...en/blog/7207170, the 10-man version has had its HP lowered to make the enrage timer more forgiving. Even so, it's probably preferable to 1-tank it since tank damage isn't that high.

[MichaelTheys 10]

I have been doing this fight and i can confirm that for a mage ice block does remove the amber prison aswell as blink does. So due this i think it should work if paladins use the bubble aswell

[Fel 42]

Hey folks,

Figured I'd chime in with some tidbits.

We started trying 2-tank 2 heal with the tanks doing a combined ~ 260kdps on phase 1, but due to issues with rain of blades on P2 (we dont have a lot of good raid CDs with our comp) we changed to 3-heal 1 tank. The solo tank ended up doing ~220k dps himself on p1, and the healers were able to make up the difference in DPS amongst themselves since phase 1 is comparatively very easy with 3 healers (we found).

Bottom line, the 3-heal 1 tank strat seems VERY doable and greatly reduced the RNG of Rain of Blades deaths for us on phase 2, which really seemed to be the only hard part of the fight.

Aside from that we CC'd 1 mender, 1 Blademaster and 2 Amber Trappers, stacked all active mobs on the tank and killed the healers and warriors at the same time, mopping up the 3 trappers after.

Regarding Amber Prism breaking:

Warlock - Unbound Will (talent)

Mage - IB, Blink

Humans - Racial

Paladins - Divine Shield, Hand of Protection

That's all I've confirmed so far.

Gluck out there!

Edited November 12, 2012 by Auracle

[Guest Rafikiooha]

Life-grip will allow you to break players out without gaining the debuff. If you already have the debuff, life-grip won't work. This is really nice if you have a healing priest/druid combo because the druid and priest can both get 2 breakouts each before recieving the debuff.

[Vlad 411]

Life-grip will allow you to break players out without gaining the debuff. If you already have the debuff, life-grip won't work. This is really nice if you have a healing priest/druid combo because the druid and priest can both get 2 breakouts each before recieving the debuff.

That's so cool! Thanks.

[Cress 2]

Hey folks,

Figured I'd chime in with some tidbits.

We started trying 2-tank 2 heal with the tanks doing a combined ~ 260kdps on phase 1, but due to issues with rain of blades on P2 (we dont have a lot of good raid CDs with our comp) we changed to 3-heal 1 tank. The solo tank ended up doing ~220k dps himself on p1, and the healers were able to make up the difference in DPS amongst themselves since phase 1 is comparatively very easy with 3 healers (we found).

Bottom line, the 3-heal 1 tank strat seems VERY doable and greatly reduced the RNG of Rain of Blades deaths for us on phase 2, which really seemed to be the only hard part of the fight.

Aside from that we CC'd 1 mender, 1 Blademaster and 2 Amber Trappers, stacked all active mobs on the tank and killed the healers and warriors at the same time, mopping up the 3 trappers after.

Regarding Amber Prism breaking:

Warlock - Unbound Will (talent)

Mage - IB, Blink

Humans - Racial

Paladins - Divine Shield, Hand of Protection

That's all I've confirmed so far.

Gluck out there!

Desecrated Grounds for DK works also

[Guest Rorick]

Rain of Blades is cast every 45 secondes and not 60

http://www.worldoflo.../?s=9459&e=9948 > Buff gained = 11 Rain of Blades in 489 sec of fight = 45 secondes.

[Fel 42]

Rain of Blades is cast every 45 secondes and not 60

http://www.worldoflo.../?s=9459&e=9948 > Buff gained = 11 Rain of Blades in 489 sec of fight = 45 secondes.

The guide is accurate in stating that it occurs every 60 seconds or so. I've been clearing it for weeks, and am able to put down my Light's Hammer (1 min CD) for every single one without issue. I believe I read somewhere that the timer is variable between 45 and 64 seconds (might have been here), but in practice I've seldom see it occur <1 min. You must have just had some terrible luck there :P

[Fel 42]

Downed this on heroic this past weekend, some observations:

Comp

1 tank

3 heals

6 DPS

Of note: 2 priests, 1 shaman for dispels/purges.

Strat

As commonly found about the web, we CC'd the 3 amber trappers, stacked the rest and nuked away.

Of the two packs (menders and blademasters), we killed the menders first, then the blademasters.

Kor'thik strikes - easily handled via use of a personal CD by the targeted player, or an external. We made aggressive use of Hand of Protection and Life Coccoon.

Our Spriest was mass dispelling more or less on CD (15 secs) to stay ahead of the Quickening buff applied by the Menders. Holy Priest was backing up now and again.

Enhance Shaman was put on Mel'jarak directly and instructed to purge him whenever the buff popped up.

With the above, we found that the RNG globals on our tank disappeared and we could complete the 'first phase' of 7 mobs active consistently.

The trickiest part of the fight (once we nailed down the way to handle the quickening buff) was managing the fresh wave of Menders. Each mender needs an interrupter assigned to it, and consequently needs to be marked when it comes flying in. I think this is fairly simple, but in the comparative chaos of learning the entire fight, this part was the scariest and caused a couple of wipes while we learned.

Healer note: Once you move beyond the initial group of 6 mobs + boss, the inc tank damage goes from sketchy to managable. If you are finding lots of RNG tank deaths, look to the quickening buff as the most likely culprit. During that first phase, dont be shy burning mana and personal CDs to keep the tank up. Raid healing is very low throughout the fight and you should easily be able to save raid CDs for any Rain of Blades that occurs during his Recklessness phase. I think this fight is quite 2-healable, but it's worth noting that you shouldn't face any difficulties with the enrage timer and thus if you're having trouble, a 3rd healer is an easily afforded safety net.

DPS note: As you learn the fight, you'll want to tweak your DPS assignments so that you kill the Menders (or whichever group of mobs u pick to kill first) around 30 - 40% ahead of the Blademasters (or whichever 2nd). In practice this should work out to you having almost two back to back Recklessness phases unimpeded by many mobs.

General: I think our maiden kill was quite slow at 6:25, as I see a great many logs well under 6 mins, and some well under 5. Whatever your kill time though, it looks as though at worst you will need to kill 4 packs of mobs, while an average AoE-style DPS comp in 490+ gear should be able to kill him after downing only 3 packs of mobs.

This was a fair bit easier for us than Garalon was, and I think it's a good contender for easiest heroic in HoF.

Good luck!