ZUL' AMAN TACTICS: second boss: Akil'zon

Abilities

Summon Amani Eagle - an ability to call forth Soaring Eagles which have Eagle Swoop.

Static Disruption (Nature) - deals 3500 damage to target and those within a close range of the target. After the damage is dealt it will leave a debuff that causes nature damage taken to be increased by 25% that lasts 20 seconds, but does not cause further damage to surrounding members.

Call Lightning (Nature) - deals 3800 - 4200 damage.

Gust of Wind - throws target up in the air. Upon target falling, deals half target's full health in damage.

Electrical Storm - channeled spell that raises a target into the air and places a cloud over them. The cloud then strikes everyone not under it approximately each second. Each strike hits harder - first strike for 800 - 1200 nature damage, second for 1600 - 2400, third for 2400 - 3600, fourth for 3200 - 4800, etc. Lasts approximately 7-8 seconds. (Occurs every 45-60 seconds)

Enrage Timer - After approximately 8 minutes he will enrage, increasing his damage dealt by 500%. He must be downed before the enrage.

Strategy

This fight focuses on player positioning. Players should form a semi-circle around the boss, maintaining 8 yards or more between each other to prevent Static Disruption from hitting multiple people at once.

Healers will need to keep all raid member's health high -- Akil'zon will sometimes cast Gust of Wind on a player and then follow up with a Static Disruption.

Recommended positions for this fight are for all ranged members to spread out around the left or right side of the platform. This will reduce the overall area in which the raid is spread out and reduce the maximum distance anyone will need to run to get under the Electrical Storm.

This fight discourages stacking melee classes because they will often share Static Disruption. If using more than two melee classes, assign two with markers and have additional melee stack on one or the other. The marked melee should attempt to be as far from each other as possible. Disruptions will hit all stacked members, but this will reduce the overall jumps.




Electrical Storm
Akil'zon will create an Electrical Storm centered on a random player in the raid. This person will be lifted into the air and a cloud emanating lighting bolts will form around them. There will also be a black circle on the ground. All raid members must move underneath the storm as the damage received from the storm will kill most players in only a few seconds. Players with the Static Disruption debuff will take increased damage.


The Electrical Storm ability is on a 45 second cooldown, which begins when he is initially aggroed. Because this is a cooldown to his ability and not a timed use, the actual case point can appear random.


Generally the best approach to dealing with Electrical Storm is for the entire raid to collapse at 10 to 5 seconds before the storm cooldown is up (this is the time tracked by mods such as Deadly Boss Mods or BigWigs).


Collapse Method 1
Raid members should collapse towards the bust but attempt to spread out slightly so that any Static Disruptions cast will chain to as few people as possible. People should begin collapsing towards the boss with 5 seconds left on the storm cooldown timer.

This method greatly benefits from group heals as the group will likely take one or more static disruptions before the storm appears. Attempt to keep everyone above 50% as best as possible.

Notes regarding this method:
Requires extensive healing as Akil'zon can continue casting disruption past the cooldown
Greatly benefits melee DPS as they can continue dealing damage during the storm
No one needs to be move then storm finally forms



Collapse Method 2
Using timers to establish when to collapse during this fight is risky because of the unpredictability of the Storm ability. The full raid taking more than one Static Disruption at this point will typically result in a wipe. Alternative strategies require large amounts of awareness on the part of the entire raid and will often result in the raid wiping because the storm spawned far away from the other nine people that were collapsing.

Set group based collapse points:

Tank the boss in the middle of the platform
Assign raid to spread out on left side of platform
Group 1 collapses to one corner of the inner rectangle of the platform
Group 2 collapses to the other corner
Begin collapsing when the timers show 10 seconds till storm
When storm spawns, the exposed group moves under the storm
This method results in a 50% reduction of post-cooldown pre-storm Static Disruption damage making healing much easier for the healers but can be less attractive for groups attempting the timer as melee will likely be unable to contribute DPS to the boss during the storm.


Listening
The following sound settings can be used to allow you to hear when Akil'zon is about to use Electrical Storm.
In the sound menu, maximize Ambiance:

Disable: Sound Effects, Music
Enable: Ambient Sounds
Master Volume and Ambiance: Maximum Volume
Sound and Music: Minimum Volume
Before the fight all you should hear are birds chirping. During the fight, you will hear the storm roll in!

Eagles
After the first Electrical Storm, Akil'zon will call forth his "bruddahs" which will bring some Soaring Eagles into the fight. They are different from the birds you met during the gauntlet run to the boss. They fly in the air and dive-attack random party members. That means melee dps and off-tanking is useless against them. These eagles have Eagle Swoop which hits for around 1500. Warlocks can seed, hunters can shoot down, mages can fireball, and shaman can chain lightning. They move very quickly across the boss area and some players may find it difficult to finish casting a spell before they are behind the player or out of range.

Strategies
There are several strategies for dealing with the birds:

Assign a Shaman: Use chain lightning and finish them off with instant ranged attacks.

Assign a Hunter: great ranged DPS and the advantage of instant ranged attacks.

Assign a Warlock: have an affliction Warlock with decent +dmg (800+) put Seed of Corruption and Curse of Agony on each bird as they come in range.

Ignore them:
Eagles will only spawn to replace the ones that are killed, so if your healing is strong, you can heal through it. The damage they do can be overcome by a shaman using chain heal and a paladin with Concentration Aura to reduce the chance of losing casting time to the swoop attacks. A shaman healer can also very effectively utilize Water Shield in this fight, since the birds hit you for a low amount of damage every 3-4 seconds.


Notes
Killing him will add 10 minutes to your sacrifice timer (see the Zul'Aman timed event article).
Pets are not targeted by anything in this fight. The only damage they take is splash damage from Static Disruption.