Huntsman Altimor Strategy Guide for Castle Nathria

Throughout the fight:

• Fan out around Altimor to reduce damage taken from Spreadshot.
• Do not get hit by another player's red arrow on the ground ( Sinseeker).

When Margore is active:

• The tanks should taunt swap on Margore at as low bleed stacks as possible ( Jagged Claws).
• Help soak the red circle that goes on a random player ( Vicious Lunge).

When Bargast is active:

• Move Bargast away from Altimor for the Rip Soul cast, and heal the soul to full before it gets to Altimor.
• Crowd control the Shades of Bargast for a while and then kill them quickly.

When Hecutis is active:

• When the raid is healthy, keep Hecutis moving near Altimor to drop his stacks of Crushing Stone.
• If you get a brown circle around you, run it out far away from the raid ( Petrifying Howl).

The Huntsman Altimor encounter is a three-phase fight where you deal with Altimor the entire time, but you will also have to deal with his three hounds, one for each phase of the fight. After you have killed one hound, the next one becomes active, and all three of them have totally different abilities. Altimor effectively shares health with the hounds too, so all damage is good damage ( Huntsman's Bond).

The fight starts out with Altimor and the first hound, Margore. You can use Bloodlust/ Heroism on pull, or you can save it for another phase that you find more challenging.

Phase One (Margore):

• On the pull, one tank should taunt Altimor while the other taunts Margore, and they should be kept stacked together for more cleave damage. Everyone else should fan out around the boss in a circle, in order to reduce the raid damage taken by Altimor's random unavoidable cone cast, Spreadshot. He casts this in every phase of the fight, so get used to staying fanned out.
• Altimor also occasionally marks three players with red arrows on the ground ( Sinseeker).
  • These players need to quickly move out of each other's arrow and then stop moving, while everyone else moves out of the arrows as well.
  • After a few seconds, Altimor shoots in each player's direction, hitting everyone standing along each arrow. This does a ton of instant damage and applies a heavy DoT that lasts 30 seconds, so it is very important that only the marked players get hit by this cast.
  • Altimor casts this in every phase of the fight, so always be on the lookout for these arrows.
• The tanks should taunt swap on Margore after the first cast of Jagged Claws and again every time the bleed debuff falls off of either tank.
• Occasionally, Margore marks a random player with a red circle and then leaps to them after a few seconds ( Vicious Lunge). A couple other players should move into this circle to help split the damage from the leap.
  • On Heroic, the leap will also put a short bleed on all of the players it hits, so you do not want too many people soaking it.
• When Margore dies, the next hound, Bargast, comes out.

Sinseeker

Vicious Lunge

Phase Two (Bargast):

• One of the tanks should move Altimor to the middle of the room, while the other tank initially keeps Bargast away from Altimor. Everyone else should reposition to continue to fan out around Altimor.
• The first ability Bargast casts is Rip Soul. It is a big magic hit on the tank that spawns a friendly soul that walks toward Altimor.
  • Your healers need to focus heal it to full health to despawn it before it gets to Altimor, or else you will likely wipe from the buff he gets from the soul, Devour Soul.
  • The soul spawns with the same health percentage as the tank after the magic hit. And on Heroic, the soul will pulse heavy raid-wide damage until it despawns ( Unstable Soul).
  • The best way to deal with this is by having a tank move Bargast away from Altimor before each cast and use a big defensive cooldown, and then have your healers spam heal the soul to full.
  • Bargast casts this every 30 seconds, so you should be able to stack Bargast with Altimor between the casts for some extra cleave damage.
• After every other Rip Soul cast (1st, 3rd, 5th, etc.), Bargast will immediately follow up with Shades of Bargast.
  • It spawns two adds that need to be immediately crowd-controlled with things like Polymorph, Freezing Trap, etc.
  • These adds spam cast Deathly Roar, which is very deadly and uninterruptible, and they have a ridiculous amount of health. However, while crowd-controlled, they slowly gain a stacking debuff that increases their damage taken ( Destabilize). So after a while you will be able to break them out of the crowd-control and kill them almost instantly.
  • We recommend waiting until after the next Rip Soul cast to kill them, but you definitely want to do it before the next Shades of Bargast cast, which happens about every 60 seconds. They become immune to crowd-control after a certain amount of time, so you cannot just crowd-control them forever.
  • Be careful not to break the crowd-controls early, and definitely do not let their cast get off. You can even use stuns and fears if you need to stop a cast.
• When Bargast dies, the last hound, Hecutis, comes out.

Rip Soul

Phase Three (Hecutis):

• Keep Altimor in the middle of the room, and have the other tank taunt Hecutis and bring him into cleave range of Altimor.
• Every time Hecutis melee swings, he gets a stack of a buff that increases his melee damage by 50% and reduces his movement speed ( Crushing Stone). He loses stacks whenever he is moving, but each stack removed triggers significant raid-wide damage. So the best way to deal with this is by constantly moving Hecutis around Altimor, steadily dropping his stacks, and only ever stopping if the raid is low on health. If you do ever have to stop, his melee damage will quickly get out of hand, so the tanks should have defensive cooldowns ready for this just in case.
• Hecutis will also occasionally cast Petrifying Howl, which puts brown circles around random players.
  • These players need to quickly run away from the group by the time their circle expires, because it leaves a permanent zone of rocks on the ground that hurts anyone standing in it ( Stone Shards).
  • Over time, these zones will fill up more and more of the room, so the further away you drop them, the more time you will have to kill the boss.
• Once Hecutis dies, you just need to finish off Altimor on his own, with whatever little health he has left. He also gains a debuff that doubles his damage taken, so it won't take too long ( Broken Bond).

Petrifying Howl

We have encounter journal pages for each of the four difficulties, which you can access by clicking the links below.

For each class, we provide advice on how to tackle the Huntsman Altimor encounter, complete with actual tips, but also recommendations for talents and Legendary Powers.