Hey, we pulling? What’s up? It’s Jimfro and this is our official guide for the Assault of the Zaqali. Big thank you to our supporters on Patreon, your support means the world to us and it’s what makes these videos possible.
This is a two phase, bloodlust on pull, add management fight. In phase one, you split the raid in half and fight waves of adds on two different platforms while the boss occasionally jumps back and forth between the platforms. Then in phase two, you come back together to fight the boss as he keeps trying to break down this door.
Phase One
Before pulling, split your raid in half with a tank, healers, and equal DPS on either side, and assign each half of the raid to a platform. On pull, you fight the boss without any adds for a little bit, so everyone can pop cooldowns right off the bat and get him as low as possible before he jumps away. As soon as he jumps away, the raid needs to quickly split to each platform and start dealing with the waves of adds. There are four different kinds of adds that spawn but they’re all pretty simple. The kill priority should be: Mystics first, then the Guards, then Huntsmen, and then Wallclimbers.
Mystics spawn with a huge shield that makes them pulse a ton of raid damage while it’s up, so everyone needs to burn through the shield as fast as possible. Once the shield is broken, the mystic occasionally puts a dot on random players that needs to be dispelled, and it spam casts Lava Bolt at random players, which needs to be interrupted.
The Guards occasionally put a dot on anyone in 25 yards, and on heroic, they fire a beam at random players that everyone else should avoid. Huntsmen put circles around random players that explode on anyone in them after a few seconds, and then another explosion happens at that same spot a few seconds later. The classic dodge-dodge mechanic. And the Wallclimbers are just regular melee mobs, but when they spawn they initially try to sneak by you and run to a big door that’s between the platforms, so someone needs to quickly damage them to prevent that from happening. If they do get to the door, the door explodes on the raid which is pretty much a wipe on normal, and it’s definitely a wipe on heroic.
While you’re killing all these adds, one platform is also having to deal with the boss, because he occasionally jumps back and forth to each platform for a bit. When he jumps, he spawns a circle where he’s going to land that everyone needs to avoid, and after he lands a bunch of swirlies will spawn that need to be dodged. His only mechanic while he’s on the platform is a frontal on the current tank that needs to be faced away from the raid because it does big physical damage and increases physical damage taken for a while. The more interesting part of this mechanic is that it spawns these rocks on the ground that you can actually pick up. Picking one up gives you an extra-action button that you can use to throw the rock off the side of the platform and knock down the adds that are crawling up the side. There’s a faint red glow off the side of the platform where adds are crawling up, so anyone that picks up a rock should keep an eye out for these and run over and use their extra-action button to get rid of an add. You can actually get rid of a lot of the adds this way which means that you’ll be able to do more boss damage in phase one.
Phase Two
When the boss gets to 25% health, he jumps to where the door is between the two platforms, heals for 10% of his health, and starts phase two. So everyone should quickly make their way over to the door while finishing off any remaining adds. The boss still casts the same frontal on the tank, but now it also puts little circles around the entire raid that explode on any other players in the circle, so everyone just needs to spread out a little bit.
And finally, the one new mechanic of this phase happens each time the boss gets to full energy. He casts a big slam at the door that everyone needs to stand in, because it does a ton of split damage, and if there’s not enough players soaking it, the door explodes and pretty much wipes the raid on normal, definitely wipes it on heroic. Also on heroic, players who soak the slam get a debuff that makes them take more damage from the next slam, and it stacks up each time, so you can’t be in this phase too long before the slams just start to one-shot the raid.
And that’s pretty much it! Here’s a quick recap of the fight for you to review or screenshot for later. Our Patreon supporters get these guides early, so if you’re interested in that, check the link below. Peace!
