Imperial Vizier Zor'lok Detailed Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included)

Table of Contents

• 1. General Information
• +2. Loot
  • 2.1. Armor
  • 2.2. Amulets, Cloaks, and Rings
• +3. Overview of the Fight
  • 3.1. Video by Inner Sanctum
• +4. Core Abilities (used throughout the fight)
  • 4.1. Inhale and Exhale
    • 4.1.1. How Inhale Stacks
    • 4.1.2. How Exhale Works
  • 4.2. Song of the Empress
  • 4.3. Dealing with the Core Abilities
• +5. Phase One
  • 5.1. Platform: Force and Verve
    • 5.1.1. Force and Verve
    • 5.1.2. Strategy
  • 5.2. Platform: Attenuation
    • 5.2.1. Attenuation
    • 5.2.2. Strategy
  • 5.3. Platform: Convert
    • 5.3.1. Convert
    • 5.3.2. Strategy
• +6. Phase Two
  • 6.1. Abilities
  • 6.2. Strategy
• 7. When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp
• 8. Learning the Fight
• +9. Heroic Mode
  • 9.1. Differences from Normal Mode
    • 9.1.1. Changed Mechanics
    • 9.1.2. New Mechanics
  • 9.2. Phase One Strategy
    • 9.2.1. Force and Verve Platform Strategy
    • 9.2.2. Dealing with Echo of Force and Verve
    • 9.2.3. Attenuation Platform Strategy
    • 9.2.4. Dealing with Echo of Attenuation
  • 9.3. Phase Two Strategy
• 10. Concluding Remarks

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Imperial Vizier Zor'lok 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.

Imperial Vizier Zor'lok is the first boss encounter in the Heart of Fear. This is a two-phase fight, which will mainly serve to test your raid members' ability to perform movement-based tasks. The second phase of the encounter is of greater complexity than the first, and this is where the main difficulties will arise.

The encounter against Imperial Vizier Zor'lok (henceforth referred to simply as Zor'lok) is a two-phase fight.

• During Phase One, the raid will have to fight Zor'lok on the three elevated platforms around the room. He will always go to all three platforms (flying to a new platform every time you remove 20% of his life), and it appears that the order of the platforms is fixed (even though it was random when the raid instance was first released). Zor'lok will first visit the south-western platform, then the north-eastern platform, and finally the south-eastern platform. On each platform, Zor'lok will use an extra ability specific to that platform. Also, at ground level, the room will be filled with Pheromones of Zeal, a damaging/silencing gas that the raid will have to traverse when following Zor'lok to a new platform.
• When Zor'lok's health reaches 40%, he enters Phase Two. He will fly to the center of the room, absorb all the gas to buff his damage, and pull everyone to his location. Throughout this phase, Zor'lok will keep using all of the abilities that were previously granted to him only when he was standing on a specific platform.

Zor'lok has a few abilities that he uses throughout the fight, regardless of the phase.

Exhale and Inhale are two complementary abilities that Zor'lok often uses. Exhale is a damaging ability and Inhale is a self-buff that Zor'lok stacks on himself to increase the damage of Exhale.

Inhale is cast one or twice between every cast of Exhale. Each time Inhale is cast, it increases the damage of Exhale by 50%. The cast of Inhale lasts 2 seconds and cannot be interrupted. Whenever Exhale is cast when there are 3 or more stacks of Inhale on Zor'lok, the stacks of Inhale are removed.

As you can see, you have no control on the number of stacks of Inhale that Zor'lok will have. You simply need to be aware of the fact that some casts of Exhale (those at 3 or 4 stacks of Inhale) will deal more damage than others (those at 1 or 2 stacks of Inhale).

Exhale is a channeled spell with which Zor'lok targets a random raid member. It fires a beam towards the target, dealing damage to them every 0.5 seconds, and stunning them. If a player intercepts the beam (i.e., moves between Zor'lok and the targeted raid member), then Exhale no longer affects its target, and instead deals reduced damage to the intercepting player.

Song of the Empress is an ability that Zor'lok uses to damage the raid if no players are performing melee attacks against him. This ability forces your raid to engage Zor'lok on which ever platform he is on.

Exhale can be easily dealt with by having the tank intercept the beam. The damage dealt by this ability is relatively low, and Zor'lok does not melee during this time.

The only concern is for melee players, who should make sure to be slightly away from the boss so that, if targeted, the tank can properly get between them and Zor'lok's hitbox.

Dealing with Song of the Empress merely involves having your raid move to Zor'lok's new platform as soon as possible, and begin attacking him. This will require you to move through the center of the room, where you will take damage from Pheromones of Zeal.

Abilities such as Stampeding Roar and Demonic Gateway are useful for this task. This is not a major concern, since it is entirely possible for your raid to reach Zor'lok's new location before he even begins channeling Song of the Empress. When channeled, however, you will only have a few seconds before the damage wipes your raid.

As we explained in the overview, Phase One lasts until Zor'lok reaches 40% health. During this phase, Zor'lok will go to each of the three platforms in the room, switching platform whenever you remove 20% of his life (so at 80% and 60%). On each platform, Zor'lok uses a specific ability that your raid will have to deal with, as we explain in the sections that follow.

When moving to a new platform, you will have to pass through Pheromones of Zeal, the damaging/silencing gas that the floor of the room is covered with. This is simply a source of occasional damage and silences that the raid needs to be aware of, but it should not pose any problem.

When on the south-western platform (located on the right side of the room where you fight Zor'lok), you will have to deal with Force and Verve, which Zor'lok uses in addition to his core abilities.

Every 45 seconds, Zor'lok will channel Force and Verve for 10 seconds. This deals a large amount of raid-wide Physical damage every second.

Fortunately, immediately before casting Force and Verve, Zor'lok will create 3 shields on the ground near him, that your raid can use for protection. Being under one of these shields will reduce the damage taken from Force and Verve by 40%.

Zor'lok always creates the three shields in the same specific way.

1. The first shield is spawned right next to him (in melee range).
2. The second shield is spawned slightly further away from him.
3. The third shield is spawned around 20 yards away from him.

Each shield can only protect a limited number of players: 4 in 10-man, and 9 in 25-man. Any additional players who move under the shield will simply not benefit from its protection. There is no limitation in LFR.

Whenever Zor'lok creates the protective shields, you will have a few seconds to move under them before the channel of Force and Verve begins. Failure to do so will result in very high damage.

While the shields do spawn in random locations, it is easy to assign players to shields based on their spawning order and distance from the boss. We recommend splitting your raid into three groups. One group should contain the tank and melee DPS, while the healers and ranged DPS should be split between the other two groups. Then, simply assign each group to one of the three shields.

Since Force and Verve is a channeled spell, Zor'lok does not melee or cast Exhale during this time. Even so, the damage from Force and Verve is quite high, even to shielded players, so healers will have to be prepared for this.

You should keep in mind that the damage from Force and Verve is Physical, so cooldowns like Anti-Magic Zone and Devotion Aura will not work. Instead, we recommend using Rallying Cry, Tranquility, or Power Word: Barrier, and other cooldowns of this kind.

In LFR, as we mentioned, there is no limit to how many players can benefit from a single shield, so this aspect of the fight is trivialized. Additionally, the damage of Force and Verve overall is considerably lower in LFR, making it easy to heal. Even players who are not protected by a shield can be kept alive relatively easily.

When on the north-eastern platform (located on the left side of the room where you fight Zor'lok), you will have to deal with Attenuation, which Zor'lok uses in addition to his core abilities.

Attenuation is a channeled spell that Zor'lok uses roughly every 45 seconds. For 9 seconds, Zor'lok sends many disks away from himself, in random directions. The disks move at a moderate speed across the floor, dealing a large amount of Physical damage to anyone who comes in contact with them.

The disks bounce off the edges of the room, after which they begin traveling back towards Zor'lok, despawning long before they reach him. The disks also sometimes split in two, with the two new disks traveling in slightly different directions. Both of these factors make them more difficult to avoid.

The strategy for this phase is extremely simple. Whenever Attenuation is cast, your raid members must move to avoid being hit by any of the disks sent forth by Zor'lok.

Even though the disks deal high damage, a player can survive damage from several disks without the need for healing.

Since both Attenuation and Exhale are channeled spells, you will never have to deal with both of them at the same time, greatly reducing any potential difficulty of the phase.

For avoiding the disks we recommend standing at a moderate distance from Zor'lok. You should not be too close, because this makes it difficult to react in time to the newly spawned disks. Standing too far away from Zor'lok is also problematic because you have to handle both disks that bounce back from the edges of the room, as well as disks that split in two.

It is also quite beneficial to make it a habit of running in a circle around Zor'lok during Attenuation. This is because he does not spawn the disks at the same time in all directions around him, but rather in a spiraling pattern. Therefore, by running at the same rate as the disk spawning rate, you will find that you have to actually avoid very few. To get a feeling for this, simply try it out in practice. The direction of the spiraling pattern can be either clockwise or counter-clockwise, and your boss mod should alert you quickly which it is. You must run in the appropriate direction, as this allows you always be a step ahead of the disks, making it easy to avoid them.

Zor'lok has a massively large hitbox, so melee players are able to attack him from quite far away.

When on the south-eastern platform (located at the back of the room where you fight Zor'lok), you will have to deal with Convert, which Zor'lok uses in addition to his core abilities.

Convert is a mind control that Zor'lok casts on a number of random raid members roughly every 60 seconds. Convert affects 2 players in 10-man, 5 players in 25-man, and 3 players in LFR.

In order for the mind control to be broken, the mind-controlled player(s) must be damaged to 50% of their maximum health. Each attack made on the player(s), however, has a chance to instantly break the mind control. This chance increases the closer the player's health is to 50%.

The strategy for this phase simply involves freeing the mind controlled player(s) quickly. There is absolutely no complexity involved.

Your healers should be quick to dispel any debuffs that the mind-controlled player may apply to the raid, or that raid members inadvertently apply to the mind-controlled player when attacking them.

At 40% health, Zor'lok will fly above the center of the room, and absorb all the Pheromones of Zeal. This grants him a buff that increases his damage done by 10%, and haste by 20%, until the end of the fight.

Shortly after this, he will pull the entire raid to his location.

During this phase, Zor'lok will use all of the abilities from Phase One. Fortunately for your raid, you will never have to deal with Attenuation and Force and Verve at the same time, as they are both channeled. Also, Zor'lok makes much more frequent use of Attenuation and Force and Verve than he does of Convert, during this phase.

The strategy for this phase is simply to execute the tasks that you have been practicing in the previous phase.

The center of the room is much more spacious than the platforms, so your raid can spread out more to avoid the disks from Attenuation. You must be careful, however, not to have any raid members so far away from the group that they cannot reach the protective shields in time.

We recommend using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp during Phase Two, since this is by far the most intense and complex phase of the encounter.

If your raid needs more practice on a specific platform, then it is possible, during an attempt, to stop attacking the boss once the platform is reached. Learning how to deal with boss abilities is a lot easier when players are not distracted by performing their role. DPS will make less mistakes and take less damage, making it easier for the healers to heal, giving them more focus on the boss abilities.

Phase Two is a combination of all the scenarios from Phase One. Even if raid members already know how to deal with all the abilities separately, chances are that having to deal with them at the same time (although Attenuation and Force and Verve cannot happen simultaneously) is going to be somewhat confusing. Here, the raid can also stop attacking the boss and have players focus on avoiding boss abilities instead, until they no longer make mistakes.

Remember that learning something by steps is always easier than trying to learn it entirely at once.

The Heroic mode of the fight against Zor'lok is extremely difficult, and it will prove a tough challenge for most raids. The fight only presents one additional mechanic, compared to Normal mode, but several changes make the fight much harder.

The differences from Normal Mode can be categorized as changed mechanics and new mechanics.

To begin with, Zor'lok has more health, and all his abilities deal more damage, something which is a common trait of all Heroic modes.

Each protective shield created during the Force and Verve casts can only protect 3 players in 10-man, and 7 players in 25-man. There, are however, 4 shields created each time, instead of 3.

When Zor'lok is casting Attenuation, in addition to the disks that exist on Normal mode, several Sonic Pulses also leave his body and travel outwards. These Sonic Pulses must also be avoided, and they travel in simple, straight directions. They deal very high amounts of damage.

During the fight, Zor'lok will create three copies of himself, each at a given time. He will create one copy called Echo of Force and Verve, and two called Echo of Attenuation.

• The fist copy, Echo of Force and Verve, is created when Zor'lok reaches 80% health and leaves the Force and Verve platform. The copy will stay behind on the Force and Verve platform.
• The second copy, Echo of Attenuation, is created when Zor'lok reaches 60% health and leaves the Attenuation platform. This copy will stay behind on the Attenuation platform.
• The third and final copy is also an Echo of Attenuation. It is created a short while after Zor'lok enters Phase Two.

There is no Echo of Convert, and when Zor'lok reaches 40%, he simply enters Phase Two in the same way that he does in Normal mode.

The Echo of Force and Verve only uses one ability, Force and Verve, which is identical to Zor'lok's Force and Verve. The Echos of Attenuation only use Attenuation which is, likewise, identical to Zor'lok's Attenuation. Additionally, all of the Echoes retain the Song of the Empress ability, meaning that if no player is attacking them in melee range, your raid will have to endure extreme amounts of damage.

The Echoes have their own threat tables, melee their main threat target, and can be killed. It is important to note that Force and Verve (cast by Zor'lok's copy) deals damage to players located anywhere in Zor'lok's room. Likewise, it is important to mention that when the Echo of Force and Verve casts Force and Verve, there will be two protective shields at the location of the boss, and two at the location of the Echo.

The Force and Verve platform strategy remains largely unchanged from Normal mode. Even though each protective shield only protects fewer raid members, there are now 4 shields, meaning that everyone in the raid can always be protected.

When Zor'lok reaches 80% and flies to the Attenuation platform, you should send one tank and one healer over to the Attenuation platform, and leave the rest of the raid on the Force and Verve platform, where they must burn down the Echo of Force and Verve. The reason for doing this is that you need to kill the Echo of Force and Verve as quickly as possible (before it has a chance to cast more than one Force and Verve). The players on the Attenuation platform will have to survive Force and Verve while also avoiding damage from Attenuation.

The players on the Attenuation platform have to survive:

• Zor'lok's melee attacks and Exhale;
• Zor'lok's Attenuation;
• The Echo of Force and Verve's Force and Verve.

Therefore, you will have to send a healer who can heal on the move, and has one or more defensive cooldowns available. If your raid burns the Echo of Force and Verve properly, there should only be one Force and Verve being cast by it. When the Echo is dead, your raid should all move to the Attenuation platform.

You will notice that not all raid members can be simultaneously protected by the shields when the Echo of Force and Verve casts Force and Verve. This is due to the modified maximum number of players that the shields can protect, combined with the fact that two shields will spawn on one platform, and two on another. As such, some players on the Force and Verve platform will have to take the unmitigated damage from Force and Verve, and survive. The only way to do this is through the use of extremely powerful damage reduction cooldowns, or invulnerabilities. In this case, certain designated raid members (Mages with Ice Block, Hunters with Deterrence, Paladins with Divine Shield, and so on) will simply stand outside the shields and survive the Force and Verve through their cooldowns. Healers should be prepared for the fact that, depending on the duration of these cooldowns, these players may take one or more Force and Verve ticks.

Alternatively, you can set up a rotation of players to move in and out of certain protective shields. In this case, you will have designated players stand outside the shields for the first few Force and Verve ticks, and then they will move into the shields, while other players who were inside (and presumably are not in danger of dying) will move out.

For Attenuation itself, there is not much to be said, and you will simply have to get used to the added challenge of avoiding the Sonic Pulses.

When Zor'lok reaches 60% health and leaves for the Convert platform, you should split your raid into two roughly even groups, and leave one on the Attenuation platform, to finish off the Echo of Attenuation, while the other travels to the Convert platform. The reason for this is that there must be enough players on the Convert platform to break out all the mind-controlled players relatively quickly. If there is no one on the Convert platform except for the mind-controlled players, then the boss will start casting Song of the Empress and wipe your raid. Zor'lok's Convert cannot reach players on other platforms (such as those still fighting the Echo of Attenuation).

Once the Echo of Attenuation is dead, your raid members who were on the Attenuation platform should move over to the Convert platform, and bring Zor'lok to 40% health.

A short while after Phase Two starts, Zor'lok will create an Echo of Attenuation at his location. While it is possible to DPS and kill this Echo (like the previous two Echos), it is a waste of DPS and it will most likely mean that your raid does not beat the enrage timer.

You should move this Echo away from the raid, as far as possible, in one of the corners of the room, and leave a tank and a healer there to deal with it. This will keep it far enough from the raid that the disks caused by its Attenuation will have spread out considerably by the time they reach the raid, making it easy to avoid.

When Zor'lok casts Force and Verve, the tank and healer assigned to the Echo will have to either make their way to a protective shield (moving the Echo with them in the process), or attempt to survive through the use of cooldowns.

Finally, sometimes, Zor'lok's and the Echo's casts of Attenuation will happen at the same time, which will increase the challenge of avoiding them considerably, but this is simply something you must learn to deal with.

This concludes our raid guide for Imperial Vizier Zor'lok. We hope you have found it helpful. Please do not hesitate to post any feedback you may have on our forums.