Warcraft Experience

We tried to continue our winning streak where we left off on Wednesday but a lot of the people that went the first time didn’t show, so we had to toss together a group led by Ryjaek of some of the original people from Wed and then others that were on.

Babba was loot master again, which seems to work rather well for us. He just does a /20 and happily drops stuff in people’s bags. If we get a coin we can’t use we can just trade it amongst ourselves later on. For the bijous and the primal hakkari items we had the appropriate groups roll. I think it saves time and keeps our mind on playing rather than watching the rolls.

We headed for the panther boss (High Priestess Arlokk) and spent several hours tryin to kick some butt. Unfortunately we could not seem to kill her. We tried several strategies but ultimately we just couldn’t do it.

I think a couple more tries and we’ll take her down without a problem. This was the strategy that we used:

Arlokk’s Abilities

Arlokk has several abilities that she uses in the fight. They are as follows:

Summon: While Arlokk is alive, mobs of Panthers will be summoned around the area you are fighting her in. These mobs will consist of high level elite and non-elite panthers.

Stealth: At 3 points during the battle Arlokk will stealth and vanish from the fight. This leaves the party time to deal with the Panthers.

Hunters Mark: When this mark is placed on a player all panthers will attack that person until it fades. It lasts approx. 2 minutes. While a pain to the marked player who will need healing, it actually makes it very easy for other players to find the panthers and groups them up nicely for AOE effects.

Strategy

Once the gong in the Temple which Arlokk resides in is hit, a rush of panthers will attack the raid as well as Arlokk. The ranged elements of the raid should be by the Gong while the Main Tank should be tanking in the middle of the room. For the first part of the fight, all DPS should be centered on Arlokk.

The healers need to watch out for Arlokk’s “mark” and be sure to spam heal anyone unfortunate enough to recieve the debuff. DPS should be centered on Arlokk until she stealths, and not attacking the panthers because this battle relies heavily on downing Arlokk quickly.

After the first stealth, the party should center on killing the panthers as quickly as possible. When Arlokk returns, the panthers will spawn at an even quicker rate and need to be kept under control (AoE’s, flash bombs, fear, etc, etc). All I can say here is that Frost Nova is your friend and should allow you some degree of crowd control with these mobs. Arlokk should stealth one more time before the final engagement with her.

One very simple way to deal with the adds in this encounteris to have 2 people assigned to tank them at either place where the panthers come out of. A warrior is best, but a paladin with consecration can do the job just fine too. Just have them there the whole encounter and heal them, they don’t take too much damage and you can forget about the panther adds.

On Arlokk’s third repop; the raid needs to down her as fast as possible, simply because of the speed at which the panthers will begin to spawn. At this point it is a race for DPS to down Arlokk, before getting overrun with all the adds that will be popping throughout the last part of the fight.

Some people have noted the use of “Green Whelp Armor” for this fight as it will put attacking mobs to sleep for 30 seconds. It may be a considerable investment for regular leather wearers of the raid to pick this item up. We have also heard of many groups that either get druids to tank in bear form with this armor, or warriors that use it for this fight. Either way it makes the battle, much easier.

Here is another strategy:

6th Boss of the encounter - Panther Boss

Hit the gong to summon her.

She Marks someone and Vanishes, tons of Panther adds appear and attack the marked person.
Now this is a difficult boss these panther adds if killed instantly respawn and most likely they are now elites.

Everyone know what a target Dummy is? In this fight, at least initially, your going to use a living target dummy. Send in whatever tanks you have and bang the gong. One of the tanks is going to get marked. Your not going to Keep him alive. Just keep him alive long enough that the panthers do not overwhelm all the casters before they can do there damage.

Everyone else attack the boss and no messing about. You want max damage as fast as you can get it.

Do not I repeat Do not kill the panthers while the Boss is Visible.

She will transform into a panther-lady-freak and then quickly stealth. When she goes into stealth is time to start dropping the panthers. And drop as many here as is possible.

The key to this fight is to do as much damage as you can in as short a time as possible.
If you have not killed her by the time she has stealthed 3 times your not going to kill her.
In this case bail and get more dps.

This is a Rez and loot Boss. By this I mean count on dying.

Thanks Assweasel1 for the great information!