Lopihealsme

I recently rerolled from alliance to horde on Onyxia. I am my guild's main tank and raid leader, but having some trouble really finding a solid strategy for beating Panther. Keep in mind, we are mostly in all blues and greens. We can't just simply zerg it with dps and aoe the panthers down when she disappears. There really seems to be no solid way to negate the marks either. What I've been doing is having 2 shamans attempt to get as many panthers on them from the start with healing stream totem, etc. Basically, whatever they can do without actually attacking the panthers. It seems to work decent, but a lot of the panthers still come over to the group. I've played around with fearing, frost nova rotations, etc., but most of the time we get overwhelmed. Our best attempt was 2% after a handful of attempts. The next time we went into ZG we got him down to 17% on our first attempt and 16% on our second. I was just wondering if you would be so kind to give me some advice sicne you've been raiding on horde for such a long time and I've only done a few raids. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Lopihealsme

 

Xard

buy a small ton of flash bombs, and hand them out to everyone. They fear beasts for like 10 seconds a piece, and with the whole raid spamming them you can get yourself a -lot- of breathing room.

That said, this is still a hard fight.

The Angelmaker - http://ctprofiles.net/911671

 

Fjord

I don't believe healing stream generates any aggro. Magma totem is quality for this fight although expensive so you'll need to pick your moments. There is probably no better fight in the game for stoneskin totem.

 

Dakous

My casual guild puts a tank in each pen and puts one healer on the pair. A bear appropriately geared can hold a swarm fairly well, requiring very rare heals. While marked people do get panthers, it's vastly more manageable than the encounter by default. 3 vanishes is plenty of time to manage with modest if effective DPS.

Edit:

If you got her to 2%, and people are wearing greens, I think the solution is pretty obvious.

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

Pandul

Put a Warrior in each pen to hold as many panthers as possible, with a healer on each (pref. Druid).

The offtank Warriors will need to spam as much Demoralising Shout as possible to hold the Panthers. Items which deal damage on being hit (Shield Spikes, various trinkets etc) help immensely.

Make sure the marked person stays against the back wall at all times. You will get some Panthers out on the main group, it's inevitable .. have Warlocks / Priests fear them until the boss disappears, then have your DPS clean them up.

 

• frmorrison

A warrior and Shaman on each side drop stoneskin and GoA. Warrior spams Shouts and Thunderclap and Sunder to keep Panthers in the pins.

Everyone else stands near the portal and dps down Arlokk.

Know Thy group function; Thy DPS shall avoid aggro, Thy tank shall not attempt to DPS, and Thy Healer shall not go AFK without notifying Thy group.

 

Flubber

Ya...warrior in the pen on either side. Both shamans with stoneskin, healing stream and goa down, using light heals to proc ancestral healing and heal through zerg damage.

Then zerg her down with the other 16 while fearing/nova'ing/warstomping the ones that get by, and assisst them down when she stealths so as not to burn mana.

 

• Nemesis

We used 3 mages with a frost nova rotation on horde.
Whoever gets aggro from a panther would run towards the gong and the mages would just keep em into place with frost novas. Since we were all shatter specced at the time we would toss in the odd blastwave (lots of crits, yay!) to frag em all at once and get a second of breathing room.
It seemed to work fine, took some communication amongst the mages but with coldsnap and 3 people with half a brain it worked elegantly.
Actually the worst thing about it was the following: someone would run a panther towards us, it gets novaed and then the person just stands there doing whatever (healing/dps), totally oblivious to the fact that they still are taking damage. As if frost nova would completely incapacitate the panther(s).
Once our healers stopped healing them they quickly learned tho :p

 

Garcian

What we basically do is have everyone start DPS as soon as she spawns. You don't wait for sunders or anything. Whoever is marked goes in the center of the room. After she disappears, two different things can happen. If the marked person is a cloth or leather wearer (not druids since they can go into bear form), we AoE the panthers. If the marked person is a mail or plate wearer, we just get have a couple of designated healers healing them through the whole fight. Obviously, whoever is marked needs to be healed until it wears off. What tends to happen is the same person stays marked for a reasonably long time if you don't kill the panthers.

EDIT: And everyone besides the marked person should be pretty close to the wall on the opposite side of the gong. The reason the marked person goes to the center of the room is to make sure the panthers don't interfere with anyone else. Oh, and have your locks, priests and warriors AoE fear near the end of the fight when things start to get out of control.

 

Thelyna

Flash Bomb = 1.11's Green Whelp Armor.

Give 2-3 to every member of the raid, tell them to drop one any time they start getting chewed.

DeeNogger: "No dot timer? Get your belt off, its spanking time."

 

• Calantus

We have used basically this strat since we were in greens/blues (new server you see) and it works fine for the gear level. We have the panther tank run in an oval away from the raid with warriors piercing howling and mages frost nova'ing from time to time so they're not getting quite as beat up. A clothie can even tank them this way but it can be risky. The good thing too is that once the panthers are on a mark they will typically stay on that person even after the mark is gone, and since they stop spawning that person will be able to tank the panthers forever. The only thing is that new marks have to stay at the back far away from panthers or they can attract them onto their mark.

 

Grayson Carlyle

Since you're Horde, have a healer assigned to healing the marked kiter move the marked person into a group with a shaman on the fly for stoneskin totem, and the rest of the shaman keeping up a good earthbind spread. In this case, don't try very hard to kill the panthers while she's gone, just have the rogues keep their SnD rotation and the warriors build up rage for when she appears. Controlling the panthers is far more important in your level of gear, than keeping them down.

And of course, as everyone said, Flash Bombs.

 

• Aggrippa

As we are at BWL level these days, we just dont worry too much on Arlokk and we DPS the hell out of her. But it was not always like that, we had to do it too in blues/greens.

Panthers can be handled during the first vanish but they become a real problem on the second one. Flash bombs and all the others gadgets you can use to gain some time while she vanishes are the key (ie. thornling seeds from DM work great and last just long enough).

If the marked person is not in a group with a shaman, switch him/her as soon as possible . Make sure a lock is in that group too. Stoneskin + imp buff does quite a lot to preserve a squishy from being torn apart by panthers. We never did any fancy kiting strategy around the room as its very small and you just cant see anything with all the AOEs. Everybody is grouped toward the gong and the MT just runs around frantically to make sure he gets Arlokk when she gets out of stealth.

IMHO, it's not the best ZG encounter..

 

JimTheEternal

I'm not horde, so your mileage may vary, but this is what we do. We have a warrior in each pen, and a healer assigned to each warrior. The tanks spam BATTLE shout, not demo shout, because buffing people gives an absurd amount of threat, and isn't resistable. This keeps aggro to the point where if one is spamming battleshout, and the other is spamming demo, the battle shout tank will pull panthers from the other pen. The only downside to this is that a warrior spamming battle shout will almost always get Arlokk going for him after breaking out of Vanish.

 

evilhacker

We have everyone group up (basically on top of each other) and two warlocks use hellfire for the entire encounter (lifetapping when needed). MT keeps Arlokk away from the group, everyone focuses on the boss and the healers keep the warlocks up.

It all works pretty well.

 

Mordekhuul

We started with ZG only (twice a week) when we were in blues/greens, and I higly recommend offtanking panthers in each pen.

We never wasted mats for flash bombs on this one. We find that druids make the best healers in pens, btw, as they can go bear when Arlokk comes out of stealth.

99% of the time she heads straight for one of your off-tank healers when she comes out of stealth since they are the only ones doing anything, and a druid going bear gives the MT time to pick up Arlokk and bring her out of the pen for DPS.

Feral druids and warriors shouldn't have trouble tanking panthers once they get some rage built up (the panthers don't hit hard, so you need a few on you to start getting the rage you want to spam demo shout/roar).

Tanks, position yourself inside the pen, about half way in, and close to the wall (towards center of the room). You'll notice that your demo shout/roar reaches throught the wall, and you can often snag a panther that got past you as it makes its way to the main raid on the back wall.

We also like to have one hunter sitting just outside each of the pens. Hunters can position so that they can keep a flare up inside the pen, between the tank and the wall where the panthers spawn - they spawn stealthed, so the flare lights em up so the tank can auto-attack them early and burn a sunder here and there if they have the rage. The hunter can also DPS arlokk from that position.

Like Pandul said (Hi Pandul), fear any loose panthers and kill them when she's stealthed so they will respawn and the tanks can catch them.

 

furniture

We used a nova rotation for a long time without too many problems (pre-MC gear). Main party hangs at the opposite end of the gong where the mages are. When someone gets tagged they start running circles around the main section of the room. When they are up by the gong, a mage nova's the panthers. Even without coldsnap 2-3 mages can keep enough panthers off the runners to take the priestess down.

We recently moved to the much cleanier, and efficient way of throwing a tank in each pen (MC, post-MC gear). As mentioned earlier bear form works fine. Throw some thorns up for the tanks. Range DPS class stay back in the gong cubby and nuke. If you get called out usually the tanks can intercept the panthers, or just move to the tank so he can grab them off you.

 

Cloudgatherer

Whenever this comes up, I never see anyone suggest what my guild does.

We don't bother with tanks in the pens. When someone gets marked, we have them run to a spot between the posts. There they run around in a circle (kite) while a mage channels r1 blizzard (3/3). Pretty easy to avoid alot of damage when you can just move away from all those panthers. If you have mage with 5/8 NW, makes this fight rather easy for the adds.

 

Vhex

His guild is in mostly greens/blues. =p Doubt they even have one piece nw. <3

But as others have said, yeah, a warrior in each pen with a healer or two covering them. I don't think I can stress enough how uber flash bombs are for this fight either. We're in 4+ pieces of T3 and I still fire those off when I get hit. <3

 

• frmorrison

The issue with Flash bombs is each bomb takes a few blue pearls (found underwater in STV). Without a Lock or Shaman, they are quite tedious to get but they are very useful to this one encounter.

Whenever I did this, no one had any bombs and we always did fine.

Know Thy group function; Thy DPS shall avoid aggro, Thy tank shall not attempt to DPS, and Thy Healer shall not go AFK without notifying Thy group.

 

Christmas

Well, other people have given lots of tips. I can also suggest using Advanced Target Dummies, they sometimes help. We still do Arlokk the same way now, but we did it for the first time with trash gear. Anyway, here's my sucky map.



EH = Emergency Healer. Assign this person to save one of the two pen healers if they get mass aggro/Arlokked.

Have a warrior in each pen. We've always found Demoralising Shout works fine unless someone's Marked and doesn't move fast enough, but that's just us. The warrior should be healed by a druid (or paladin, but I'm not sure Shaman can fill that role). When Arlokk comes back, as noted above, she loves to run over and smack people responsbile for HoTs running on the warriors in pens. Have a backup healer positioned by the gong, ready to keep up the pen healers if they get panthers long enough for Arlokk to despawn and the raid to kill the panthers on that pen healer. When you're just about to ring the gong, have the warriors pop Bloodrage so they can spam Demo Shout for the first few panthers and start building up the rage.

Start the main tank roughly in the middle of the room, where Arlokk spawns. This should be the same place every time. Start the rest of the raid (i.e. not pen warriors or healers) by the Gong. When you ring the gong, have people move over to the shield wall (if casters and priests) or over to Arlokk (if melees). They can DoT or instant as they run, to avoid losing precious DPS time. The shield wall is very important. Most of your raid will need to be there, most of the time. The thing about the shield wall is that, if someone is marked, and hugs that wall, the panthers won't path out of the pens and hit them - they'll just stick to the warriors in the pens. If the person leaves the shield wall, the panthers will flood in and annoy you. If you're just starting ZG, obviously you want the smallest possible amount of annoyance. Brief everyone (except tanks and pen tank healers, and melee DPS assigned to Arlokk) that if they get Marked, they run to that wall - and stay there. They can do whatever from there. If the gong healer gets marked, have him switch position with another healer who is on the MT, assuming your MT can survive that. All this work is slightly reducing the DPS you will do to Arlokk in exchange for greatly reducing the number of panthers that are reaming your more fragile raid members (after all, being reamed reduces raid DPS far more than moving for a few seconds).

When Arlokk disappears, spread the (non-Marked) people away from the shield wall. This is because occasionally Arlokk will spawn there and cleave someone if they were healing, and since your fragile people will be at that end of the room, it's bad to have them together. Generally, again as noted above, he'll go for druids in the pens. We found our best-geared druid gets Arlokk probably 9 times out of 10, probably because his HoTs heal for more than the other pen healer. So, he eats the cleaves, hopefully lives, and the warrior grabs Arlokk.

With a couple of Combat Mana potions for the healers (or cheap equivalent) you should find the reduced damage your raid suffers from hiding Marked people away from panthers allows you to kill Arlokk over 2 or even 3 vanishes.

 

Cloudgatherer

Of course, I was just noting that it is _really_ easy with the enlarged aoe area. We were using this strat even before we started getting alot of NW, it certainly gives everyone the chance to practice kiting on slow moving mobs =0. Pretty hard to beat the damage avoidance of using the blizzard strat IMO, but like I said, seems almost no one but us uses this approach.