Now that Sinestra and Cho'gall is on farm status the powers that be decided it was about time to put all the free time we've been having to good use. They decided to best if we once and for all take down Al'Akir the most RNG fight you will ever encounter on this raiding tier.
The fight consists of 3 phases, the first being the easiest and yet the hardest. During phase 1 Al'Akir has 4 ability's which effect the platform he stands on.
The first is Squall Line, this summons a wall of tornadoes which rotate around the platform in either a clockwise or anticlockwise manor. There will be one tornado missing in each Squall Line, allowing you to let it pass by without dealing any damage to the raid. Tip: If you're at the edge of the platform and do not have enough time to avoid the Squall Line you can jump off the side of the platform and it will return you back to the fight.
The second is Wind Burst this ability knocks each raid member back. I'm unsure of the exact distance it knocks back in yards but it's just over half the radius of the platform. If knocked off the edge of the platform you're unable to cast or respectively be healed without a healer moving to the edge of the platform.
The third is Lightning Strike this ability is cone effect, it selects a random raid member and makes him the center of the effect. You do not want more than 3 people getting effected by Lightning Strike due to the more people effected the greater the damage, so you need to assign 1 person from each position to move from the group to another group at either side of the effect. This is why raid spacing is very important on phase 1. If you don't have good positioning raid members will die due to lack of healing or joining groups together. I would recommend the people assigned to movement are ones that have the ability to continue damaging Al'Akir while moving. (Hunters, Melee... etc)
The last of his AE ability's is Ice Storm this has the same look as Blizzard but leaves a trail of ice on the ground. This trail both slows and deals damage, it can be easily avoided by multiple ability's
[Blink, Rocket Jump, Hand of Freedom, Heroic Leap... etc]
Hand of Freedom cancels the slowing effect of Ice Storm but also cancels the damaging debuff as well.
I explain this to give you a slight insight into how annoying this fight can be on phase 1.
Thankfully however we overcame the RNG that was phase 1 within about 10 attempts, but soon realized that we need all 25 members alive when we hit phase 2. This is due to the fact that Al'Akir and the Stormlings need to be attacked simultaneously. With each Stormling that dies Al'Akir gains a debuff that increases damage taken by 10% (this stacks) but the debuff only lasts 20 seconds, therefore another needs to die before the 20 seconds run out else the debuff is lost. This was a very easy concept and very well played out by the raid, and after phase 1 this was a walk in the park.
Once you take Al'Akir down to 20% he breaks the platform you're standing on and you are granted the ability to fly. During this phase Al'Akir does not directly attack any raid members but instead creates storm clouds at the level where the raid member is flying. It is important to stand on the same level as each raider during this encounter else you will run out of space to fly away from the clouds. Each cloud that spawns will dissipate over time but to keep from running out of space keep the raid as close as possible to the cloud above or below.
When done with 0 flaws this fight isn't as difficult as it's made out to be. Although the pain of phase 1 is defiantly something to be afraid of. It took Enraged Revolution 15 attempts to get used to the RNG of phase 1, after that it only took 5 attempts to kill Al'Akir.
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| 04/11/11 |
Good Luck!
