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Comment by 92181

Akil'zon the Eagle Avatar is one of the 4 "Animal" bosses before Hex Lord Malacrass and Zul'jin in the 10man raid instance Zul'Aman.
Zul'Aman will be introduced in Patch 2.3.

Comment by Sunsilk

He drops two Badges of Justice.

Comment by Raydawn

Comment by 17783

The fight up to Akil'zon is pretty fun once you realize what you're in for. You need to kill everything up to the Amani'su (szu?) Tempest, and then kill the tempest, to stop the waves of birds and humanoids from spawning.

The strategy that worked best for us was to have one tank pick up the two stationary mobs (Amani'su Wind Walker (heals and nukes), and Amani'su Protector (warrior w/ sunder armor), and have our secondary tank (druid in this case) pick up the humanoids from the rear so our ranged wouldn't get pwned. Kill the healer first, AoE as nescessary, then single target nuke the humanoid adds/protectors.

While the stationary mobs are immune to poly, fear, etc, all of the waves of mobs are cc'able. Which means aoe fears and other mass CC is awesome.

Comment by 7809

This fight is about spreading out and collapsing in whenever periodically.

The Electrical Storm is on a know timer. At about 5 seconds before he's going to cast it, everyone get around the Main Tank. This will allow your raid to easily huddle together under the person. You may take some 3500 hits, but those are more survivable than having to run all the way across the platform during a storm.

So basically, spread out at the beginning of the fight. At 5 seconds to go before Electrical Storm, collapse onto the main tank. Get cozy underneath that person. When the Storm is over, spread back out to your original positions.

The birds are somewhat of a nuisance, but they don't hit very hard. Ranged dps should do what they can to kill them. Another way is to AOE the birds or Seed of Corruption the boss when you all get together for the Storm.

Top off people so they don't die when lifted in the air.
Be careful of Static Charge on your MT. Melee may have to run out if it stacks too high.

Comment by 46241

We killed him last night with kara/crafted epic geared folk. We found that killing the birds was pointless, as there were only ever a set number which respawned pretty soon anyways. We ignored them and concentrated mana and dps on the boss.

Rather than running to the person with the storm, we all ran to the boss himself a few moments before the debuff was cast.

Our set up was - prot warrior, feral druid, Resto shaman, 2 holy priests, 1 shadow priest, 1 fire arcane mage, one afflication warlock, 1 enhancement shaman, one BM hunter. Shadow priest cast VE which helped with the splash damage from the birds, and concentrated on steady dps rather than MB/SWD all the time.

Very fun fight.

Comment by 88134

The group I was going with considered it best to dot the birds, almost no work for an affli lock, you just chuck on siphon+corr (which is enough to kill them) and keep going at the boss. This saves the healers a lot of stress as the birds wont do so much random raid damage. Our hunter also popped some out of the skies, and everybody else just focuses completely on the boss.

Seeding the boss to kill birds seemed very inneffecient to us as the birds are only in range for a very short time, and seeding isnt exactly mana friendly.

Comment by 43377

http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=23574#drops

This is not REAL loot :@

Comment by 33818

One thing I have to mention about this boss.

The Electrical Storm is on a static timer,
*however* he will not cast it unless someone stand far enough from him.
It seems the spell has a "dead zone", if everyone in the raid stand on top of the boss he will not cast the Electrical Storm and just wipe your raid with his Static Disruption .

One more note on the Electrical Storm is that he will cast it on the one who stands the furthest. So it is simple to make sure someone stand far enough to allow him to cast it while other people in the raid group around the tank before he casts it.
So when he starts channeling the spell people just have to run under the one who's assigned for standing at the furthest spot.

Hope this helps.

Comment by Elqqura

Strategy from Bosskillers
http://www.bosskillers.com/cgi-bin/bbguild/index.cgi?action=view_guide&guide_id=246&sid=zWl9yy83UV

And a video how to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otck95-qeyw

Comment by 89659

We just had our first Aki'zon kill for our guild tonight. It was on our third attempt, but we used a special little trick that is not mentioned here.

If you go to sound options, go to sound. There are a few boxes that should be automatically checked: The first one (sound effects I think), Music, and Ambient sounds. Uncheck First box and music, but keep Ambient sounds on. What it will do is eliminate all background noises besides birds chirping. If you are using DeadlyBossMods like you should be, the Electrical Storm timer can be off by a bit sometimes. You will hear a sound that sounds like rain, which means the storm is coming in.

Once you hear the sound, everybody falls onto the main tank who should be marked with an orange circle. We still had a few people die, but it was mainly the people who weren't paying attention (I was one of three :-D).

Good luck and happy epics!

Comment by 61169

After some trouble with this boss we finally found the easiest way ever thanks in part to the previous post.

The boss is on a slightly raised square platform. Have everyone stand along the perimeter of the square. Tank him exactly where he stands at the start. It's a good idea to figure out where on the square everyone will stand before the pull and make sure after the storm they return to the same spot to minimize chain damage.

Go into the sound settings and turn music and sounds down and turn ambiance all the way up. When you hear the storm rolling in have everyone run immediately on top of the tank. It works perfectly every time. Once the storm is done run back to your previous positions.

We have our lock tab target the birds and use his instant casts to pop em out of the air. Bring a hunter for the nature resistance buff and druid isn't bad to take over in case the tank gets killed he can pick it up.

I recommend brining 3 of your best healers and the rest of your absolute highest dps. The faster you kill this guy the better. Good luck in there.

Comment by 30698

Here is another video for the Akil'zon encounter. You can see the placement of the tanks/boss, ranged DPS and the coordination of the raid group when the electrical storm comes. Its from the ranged DPS perspective with good audio throughout.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqTmUI_7eWE

Comment by Briseus

Does anybody know if the vanish trick still works for the Gauntlet adds before the boss?

Comment by Lucid

I just wanted to put this out there in case you encounter this scenario. We wiped on our first attempt yesterday. As we were buffing up preparing for a second attempt, we saw a bunch of birds spawn right on Akil'zon and shortly after Akil'zon despawned. Our first thought was that, for some odd reason, the birds that usually circle the air had 'landed' or something, but it turned out the gauntlet had repopped after 1 wipe and these were the bird spawns.

We responded by going down the stairs and killing the tempest as fast as we could. The runners from the back pulled all the mobs up with them, so we wiped shortly after.

After coming back in the instance, we found the runner gone. We proceeded up the gauntlet and got no spawns, simply fought each pair of mobs on our way up.

I speculate that the reason we got a reset after 1 wipe was a bug because we wiped twice on Nalorakk. Our 1 wipe on Azil'kon would have made 3 total wipes between the 2 bosses contributing to the 3 wipe limit on the bosses in ZA. (though i may be completely wrong about the 3 wipe limit, it may be that most times, 3 wipes ~= reset timer)

Comment by Lucid

Our strategies as a casual raiding guild with about 75% kara geared players. I wanted to mention some things I didn't see covered before now.

For the gauntlet, I recommend a lock and a frost mage (frost nova/blizzard is a huge help). One source of problems is aoe damage grabbing one of the 2 mobs the front tank is tanking, they run into the crowd among the birds and are tough to get back, easily tearing apart the healers. Your front tank has to be prepared to tank both targets up front and keep enough threat over healers, and to get hit with occasional aoe damage. Additionally, make sure you have a strategy to get the birds off the tank in the front. We had our paladin consecrate and run back. For the pairs of mobs up front, the one with the mana bar should always be priority. Your offtank should be able to handle the guys from the back.

For the boss :

We ignored the birds. I recommend raid leaders communicate with your cloth wearers and see if the birds are giving them grief. We found they weren't hurting too much and ignored them. Prayer of mending is great for the birds. Don't forget about Concentration Aura if you're having difficulties. Seed proved to be too unreliable, often hitting only 1 bird. Also we asked our hunters to multi-shot often, never managed to get an additional target.
Healer diversity. We did this with 2 druids and a priest. Tree form druids have to be aware of the slowdown when running to the person in the storm. Plus side of druids is overall raid healing was awesome, downside is, as MT I dropped pretty low on health on a few occasions.
Keeping dps alive. This proved to be the biggest factor in our attempts. When we kept the dps alive (burning battle rez'es on rogues for example) early on, we did significantly better. On our very first try, we had 3 dps die early, as a result, he enraged (10 mins) at 2% health.
Memorable positioning. Everyone should try to keep a consistent location when doing this boss. It helps when people have a general idea on where to go, especially those who don't see the cloud shadow very well.
Treat DBM Storm timer as a cooldown, not a timer. It will not be accurate, he will be late on many occasions, but he has never been early. There's a tip above that I found to be quite true. He roughly thunderstorms every 10% health right about on a steady dps raid.
Storm sound + rain. The suggestion above regarding ambient sounds is great. Though if people don't wish to adjust their sound settings, we found the rain to be a very good indication. Once you see rain, you have about 2-3 seconds before he casts it.
Storm is not always on farthest person. We believed this to be true, and found it pretty consistent keeping a hunter out for bait, but then out of the blue had him pick someone else and the raid wiped, expecting the same location. He will however almost always pick very far targets.
Static disruption can jump on pets. Most boss encounters, blizzard is nice enough to make it so pets don't count. But on several occasions we witnessed it bounce of a water elemental and a summoned infernal.
You cannot run out. Unlike Nalorakk, you cannot run out of this encounter once it starts, the entire raid needs to die.

Comment by Khalez

A note on the Proximity meter used in BigWigs and other addons like it. Do not trust it for Static Disruption. The distance measured uses CheckInteractDistance and (atm) measures duel-range (9.9 yards). A better option would have been trade-range (11.1 yards), but even that is too close. There is no way of for a addon to measure 12 yards.

Do not trust the Proximity meter here.

Comment by 66342

We always collapse under one marked person for the storm. As of the last patch (2.4.2) he shoots his Static Disruption at someone just before he casts the Electrical Storm, causing the raid to take quite a chunk of damage. We were waiting until the last possible moment to run in. Might have been bad luck, but have your chain heals or CoH ready just in case.

Comment by Baerce

Small question: does barkskin help with the fall damage of gust of wind? I did use this the only time I got in on me during our last ZA-run. Never got thrown up again, so couldn't check if it really worked.

Comment by 134143

Tocked co. offering all the strats for ZA made easy!

This boss summons an electrical storm which MUST be called out on DBM. When he does this he will target a random raid member and put them in a cloud, you all must get on the black spot or else this storm kills you instantly almost... Mark someone up to stack up on. He summons eagles which you can pretty much ignore i just like to seed them as a lock because it helps the healers out a little bit so dont worry.

Comment by rhoark

Collapsing to two locations about 10 yards apart from each other is much safer than all collapsing to one spot, as it halves the number of hits people will recieve from static disruption (which means less than half of the damage, due to the stacking debuff.)

Comment by Alderaan

If you complete the time event (Zul'Aman Time Event) for Akil'zon, you can open the Harkor's Satchel and receive one of the items of level 132 (Harkor's Satchel).

Enjoy.

Comment by cms2k

Our guild's strategy for running the gauntlet is going right prior to entering the gauntlet instead of left. There is a "peculiar" rock formation that a Hunter or Warlock can stand next to and "/Target Amani'Shi Tempest". They then send the pet, engage the tempest and pull the pet back. This allows the Tempest and two other mobs to come.

Simply kill the Tempest and the mobs. Once dead, go up the gauntlet the normal route and you will encounter no extra birds.

Makes having a pally tank for this leg of the trip unnecessary.

Comment by 75756

For Hunters:
Hunter's Guide in Zul'Aman - video
By the way... the easiest way to keep alive group members during the storm is hugging the boss 5 seconds before the storm is casted.

Sorry for my bad english.

Comment by TMWNN

If you are using DeadlyBossMods like you should be, the Electrical Storm timer can be off by a bit sometimes.

I've never been a fan of boss mods in general, but this boss made me even less so. The timer is indeed inaccurate and (for example) in one attempt killed three DPS in the first 30 seconds with Static Disruption as people collapsed on the boss and tank too soon, eventually resulting in an enrage wipe. The ambient-sound method is 100% reliable, by contrast.

As a paladin I normally announce incoming storms while healing while the other tank is on the boss, but I performed this role once even as tank (the paladin-tanking threat cycle leaving ample time between button presses). Were we playing without voice chat I'd not want to tank though, given the need to use /raidwarn instead.

Comment by 225880

SOME MORE TIPS :

The key for this boss is to SPREAD OUT, not so much but to only have the Melee DPS and the Tanks within 12 yards. His "Static Disruption" ability is a killer for healers and mages

Besure that the healers can outheal his Static Disruption and his Call Lightning Spell.

Comment by 8153

As of 3.0.2 the storm sound effect does not seem to be as apparent when the lightning ability happens. Our raid wiped a couple times because we couldn't hear the storm like before. The smartest thing to do post 3.0.2 is to assign someone with a symbol and have them always be the furthest person standing from the boss (since he will always target the person furthest away from him). When the storm goes off everyone rushes to the assigned person.

Not a terribly big difference but if you don't know what to expect you could lose your chests as we did.

Comment by Zeroblazin

As of Patch 3.0.2, turning off all sounds other than Ambiance no longer works, we had 4 different people try it and none of us heard any change in noise when the storm came...(needless to say this led to a couple wipes). However even though "Deadly Boss Mods" does not work correctly we would stack on the tank about 10sec before DBM said it was coming and that worked out fine. :P

If anyone else has a better idea or knows why it doesn't play a sound anymore I'd be more than happy to hear it/try it out. So please post back here if anyone finds out anything new to this. Thx.

Edit: Heh I guess I should L2read before I start double posting, sorry everyone. And thanks for the tip Lucavious.

Comment by Zerul

Was always funny to hear fellow raiders whine in Ventrilo whenever they died, only to hear this boss say:

"Stop your crying!"

Comment by Xaxus

Can someone post sound files for this boss?
"ALL YOU BE DOIN' IS WASTIN' ME TIME!" is always fun to hear. :P

Comment by 367444

Hes a troll w/ eagle parts... kinda cool

Comment by mixter

accourding to wowhead he is the highest lvl humanoid...consumed by the eagle aspect...

O.o

Comment by 505272

Not soloable and not doable in a duo, because of his "Gust of Wind". Kills one pretty quick ;)
Tried with a prot paladin/hunter duo.

Comment by IsWindy

Soloed as a prot paladin
-sacred shield, holy shield and judgement of light on all the time
-seal of vengeance when on high health and under 2 stacks of the nature damage debuff, seal of light otherwise
-used ap flask , str food and str greatness trinket in order to have enough dps for enrage timer (was about a min ahead of it)

I bubbled to remove nature debuffs if they got above 5; these debuffs can run out naturaly if the timing on his electrical storm is right , if you're unlucky you can get overwhelmed by the stacks as bubble will not be enough .
Take advantage of your ardent defender, use LoH in combination with it.
Do not try this unless you have at least ToC 25 gear, it is a survival and a dps check.

Comment by MasterVayne

A friend and myself were running the bosses in here for lulz (myself a druid with a tank and a resto spec, my friend a pally with ret and tank) We did the bear and dragonhawk boss without problems with me tanking and her dpsing. It wasn't until this guy we ran into problems. After trying every other combination (feral and ret, feral and prot, and resto and prot) we finally found one that worked. We came close with Resto and prot, but didn't make the enrage timer.

Resto and Ret worked perfectly. She was able to keep up enough dps to beat the enrage timer, and I managed to keep us alive through it. The trick is, if you're knocked in the air, go cat. Feline Grace will keep you from splatting, and keep the damage low enough to make healing through it a breeze. I almost went splat at one point when I tried healing too soon, and it brought me out of cat before I hit the ground, but other than that we did fine.

I can see this being possible with any plate melee class and a druid. I dunno if a priest could levitate during the cyclone, since birds constantly attack you. And I can see a badly timed cyclone make you miss an essential heal, regardless of class. -shrugs- Hope this helps anyone else trying to kill this guy

Comment by 295266

Solo'd as a blood tank in icc25 gear. Tough but doable. I'd get killed if the nature debuff stacked too high. I thought I'd just have to get lucky with the storms, but I found the trick. After he puts you up in the thunderstorm pop ams with 5-6 seconds left on the nature debuff to consistently prevent restacking, and allow you to survive. pestilence and bloodboils to take of the birds, not that they're all that much of a problem.

Comment by 201669

Solo'd as a feral (tank) druid in mostly ICC10/frost badge gear. It's actually pretty easy but I REALLY recommend using either 4pc t9 or 4pc t10 if you are fortunate to have it (I used to former). Also, I think the frost badge tank trinket is a MUST for this fight. It's going to last about 7 minutes, so that's a total of 18k completely negated.

You pretty much just tank and spank him, and pop either barkskin or your skeleton key trinket when the nature debuff stacks to 3-4. Then he'll toss you in the air which is pretty nice actually because you're not taking damage, your 5 stack lacerate is ticking, and your cooldowns are coming back up. Also the debuff will fall off in the air. Pop (glyphed) SI/FR at 50% no matter what, you're going to want to use this ASAP so they can come off CD.

Would have been a lot easier if I had used a resistance flask, and the kings/fort scrolls. Would not recommend attempting for bears without well over 40k unbuffed because your ILoTP heals are just not going to cut it.

Comment by 274557

As a heroics/early ICC 10 geared DK, blood spec, tried soloing him, but got him to 70% only, I'm guessing it'd be better with tanking gear, so I'm gonna try again then

Comment by longueiro12

MY EAGLES GONNA BEAR YOU SPIRITS TO MEH!

Comment by Dyaxion

I came in here with a hunter friend and tanked him as a druid. My advice to all druids is to blow all your CDs at the start of the fight (it's what helped me do a lot of Kara bosses solo) and just beat on the guy.

The hunter was MM, and he just stood back and shot the guy. We ignored the birds for pretty much the whole fight.

For the Electrical Storm, I was the first to be stunned, and he just ran under me, no serious damage. On the second storm, he got hit but I just ran under, popped a Rejuv and a Regrowth on him and we killed Akil'zon.

Comment by Nobbel

In Cataclysm he can very easily be done solo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sozlxgo-pf0

Comment by cheeze740

Completely soloable at 85 as a hunter with the following strat:
Use a marksman spec, aspect of the wild to avoid debuff stacks, and pet of your choice(I used a wolf)
Burn him down as fast as you can, use chimera shot to heal through the damage you take, and mend pet as needed. When you get air tossed, disengage right before hitting the ground, either ignore or shoot down the bird adds and he should go down eventually.

Comment by 778982

Had real problems dealing with the falling damage on this guy. Seems to be pretty random, I once had him down to < 10k, but died from the Gust of Wind fall. Other times, he hit me twice in a row fairly quickly and it was just too much. Popping deterence just before landing just didn't work, still took 57k+ dmage on landing. Think I might get a back-up cloak and get a Flexweave underlay for it (or is itstackable with enchants). That will prevent the damage from one of the Gusts at least.
Had no problems with the Bear and Dragonhawk bosses (apart from failing to clear the trash beforehand, they pull with the boss). It was just this guy.
Do I need to kill the 1st 3 before getting to the Sabre boss? Couldn't get into his building.

Edit: now I know why, I was popping Deterrence instead of Disengage :facepalm:

Comment by 388159

Easily solo'd as Assassination rogue in 345 gear.

Kept recup up, waited for ~5 stacks of Static before using CoS.
Didn't even have to use Evasion.

Oddly enough he never raged at 20%.

0 fall damage due to Glyph of Safe Fall.

Comment by Fluffypawz

New Strat for this boss is simple. Have tank hold the boss in the middle and DPS. About 15 seconds into the fight the boss will summon eagles to help him. Some will swoop in and do MAJOR damage to your group. Best to have a group healer for this fight. But here is one, called the Amanai Kidnapper, who will pluck one of your teammates off the ground and kill him, if the eagle isnt killed fast enough. A tip for this fight is to have all ranged attack this bird when it plucks someone off the ground. Another tip is that you can melee this bird if you are the plucked target. Stuns also work to keep this bird still, so paladins will be extra healthy for this fight. As usual all the damage is increased due to the fact that it is heroic. Other than that it is pretty much like the old fight. Hope this helps you guys, This is Fluffypawz, signing off.

Comment by 314557

Easily soloed as a level 85 balance druid, in 361 ilvl gear. I stayed in solar eclipse the entire time, and shifted out to heal twice. When he summoned the birds, I cast thorns on myself and they died instantly after meleeing me. I used barskin once I got him low, right after the first storm.

Comment by 534021

Easily soloed as 85 Enhancement Shammy in 361 ilvl. Simply rip him to shreds, his damage is pathetic, nothing to watch out for, use wolves during the eagle add phase, in case you start taking too much damage.

Comment by MazzaTheFirst

Soloable as a 85 BM hunter in all PvP gear. The trick is to time your disengage perfectly to avoid as much fall damage as possible. A Spirit Beast will be able to tank the boss fine and can heal you in between Gust of Wind. A solid tactic is to start the fight and burn every cooldown and burst the boss down as much as possible. When hit with a Gust of Wind use disengage to avoid fall damage and use feign death. While using feign death I was not hit by another Gust of Wind. When Disengage reached a cooldown of about 10 seconds I resumed damaging the boss. Fully ignored the eagles that spawn to attack you.

Comment by Ketho

My eagles are gonna your spirits to me! Your sacrifice is not gonna be in vain!
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\creature\\Akilzon\\AkilzonEvent01.ogg")
Your death gonna be quick, strangers. You shoulda never have come to this place...
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\creature\\Akilzon\\AkilzonEvent02.ogg")
I be da predator! You da prey...
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\creature\\Akilzon\\AkilzonAggro.ogg")
Ya got nothin'!
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\creature\\Akilzon\\AkilzonSlay01.ogg")
Stop your cryin'!
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\creature\\Akilzon\\AkilzonSlay02.ogg")
Come and join me, bruddah!
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\creature\\Akilzon\\AkilzonSummonEagle.ogg")
Feed, me bruddahs!
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\creature\\Akilzon\\AkilzonEagleSnare.ogg")
All ya be doin' is wastin' ma time!
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\creature\\Akilzon\\AkilzonBerserk.ogg")
You can't... kill... me spirit!
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\creature\\Akilzon\\AkilzonDeath.ogg")

PTR 4.1.0.13875 -- 2011.04.12

97299 SPELL_CAST_SUCCESS, SPELL_DAMAGE
43648 Electrical Storm SPELL_CAST_SUCCESS, SPELL_AURA_APPLIED, SPELLCAST_CHANNEL_START
97300 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED, SPELL_AURA_APPLIED_DOSE, SPELL_DAMAGE
97319 UNIT_SPELLCAST_SUCCEEDED
97298 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED, SPELL_AURA_APPLIED_DOSE, SPELL_DAMAGE
97316 Summon Amani Kidnapper SPELL_SUMMON

-- Amani Kidnapper
97318 Plucked SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE

-- Soaring Eagle
97301 SPELL_DAMAGE

Comment by 292559

I currently have a new loot table, but it's just not updated on Wowhead yet. So do not fear, you won't be plucking level 70 gear off my dead body.

Edit: Update has been put in. Good luck getting what you need! :D

Comment by Thekor

Patch 4.1 info for the Heroic Cataclym Dungeon. Akil'zon works very similarly to the previous raid version of himself. The boss is a fairly simple fight with only a handful of abilities to watch out for. He only has one phase and just like the other 4 platform bosses, has around 4-5 million HP.

Akil'zon (Avatar of the Hawk)

Abilities to watch out for:

Static Disruption: Akil'zon will select a random party member and shoot a ball of lightning that spreads to people near the target. Static disruption deals minor damage and applies a debuff that increases nature damage taken by 25% stacking indefinitely. Party members should spread out to avoid this.
Electrical Storm: Akil'zon will select a party member and apply "Electrical Storm" to him/her which will propel him/her into the air and all party members need to stand under the person to avoid the nature damage that will be going on.

The fight starts with him on the middle of the platform. The party should spread out 10-15 yards away from each other to prevent his Static Disruption from hitting multiple targets.
Tiny hawks will periodically spawn over time that randomly come down and pluck at a party member for insignificant damage; these can be ignored or killed with multishot as they only have 3-4k HP.

Akil'zon will occasionally select a party member and apply Electrical Storm on him/her. At this point, the party needs to all run under the affected member as all other parts of the platform will be shot by lightning and die after 3-4 seconds.

He will also summon an Amani Kidnapper that will pick up a random non tank party member, and carry then around while dealing damage to them. The party needs to switch to the kidnapper and drop it ASAP as the party member will be taking damage and unable to do anything. You can, however, ice block or bubble to avoid the damage portion!

Kidnapped players will be able to attack the bird (if melee) or attack the boss. Healers will be able to heal while flying around!

Comment by Muspel

A quick tip for warriors who are tanking this boss: the birds with 4k hp give Victory Rush procs when killed, so if you put Rend on the boss, you can usually kill a bird with Blood and Thunder every time you use Thunderclap. Other AoE abilities (Shockwave, Revenge, and Cleave) will work too, but they can be a bit tricker to hit the bird with due to their more restrictive ranges.

Blizzard may end up changing this in a hotfix, though.

Comment by Parrky

Amazingly horrid fight for healers if the DPS don't spread then decide to kick you...

Comment by 46232

Made an account just to note how incredibly difficult this fight is for healers. I'm like 90% sure blizzard is going to nerf this encounter somehow in the future because it's far and away the hardest fight to heal out of ZG/ZA (by miles, at least for priest) and I've cleared both many times now with relative ease aside from this boss. For example, Daakara can be fairly difficult at first but once everyone fully understands the fight and performs well in unison, it isn't that bad and is quite puggable. The thing about Akil'zon is everyone can perform virtually perfectly and it is still incredibly heal-intensive and sketchy the whole way through.

I consider myself a very competent holy priest and consistently top heals in BWD/BOT, am geared well, and the strat involving stacking on the boss is just absolute garbage even with priests having a mass dispel. There is no possibility of MD'ing enough times before going oom just to get the boss significantly below 50%, let alone actually kill him if you are MD'ing every time Disruption hits (this is flasked, potting, fiending+hymning, 3300+ spi). There is simply not enough dps to accomplish this before you will be completely dry of mana. Every party trying to force you to use this strat simply does not understand how mana intensive MD is and how much extra damage intake you receive from the front-loaded aoe disruption does when people are stacking- it's massive. I've made attempts this way where I was pushing upwards of 20k hps (this is a hell of a lot for 5 man fyi) between MD's and people were still falling over one by one, with no one getting topped off, and me rapidly going oom.

Even with competent people using the normal strat and spreading out, which substantially reduces the mana you have to spend, it is still very mana intensive and incredibly heal intensive even when every single person doesn't screw up (kills birds instantly, tank pops defensive cd's correctly, etc).

All of my kills on this boss typically come from some sketchy combination of popping army, receiving battle rez's, well-timed LoH/guardian spirits, or barely finishing him with several people dead.

Nerf plz, thanks

Comment by suffacate

This boss is really hard for disc priests (and pretty much every other healer).
The "call lightning" that does 30k damage every 5 seconds and gives a debuff (which has to be dispelled) is really impossible to heal through.
I don't know what Blizzard is thinking.
If you're doing this dungeon, I suggest if someone else can heal in your group, I would keep 2 healers up.

And I agree with Ragious, whenever I get this dungeon the group is always stuck on this boss. It's really tough for healers, even if they're really geared and experienced, really poor planning on Blizzard's part.

Comment by 161783

This fight is a nightmare. The Boss has a tiny hitbox, you MUST spread out and the adds that fly around do considerable damage considering they can't really be targeted since they fly around far too fast. The only easy thing is killing the "kidnapper" but then you will again run into spreading out issues on that too.

The trick is to make sure you spread out on the normal attacking phase and all group up (including the tank) when the lighting field is being generated (stand under the targetted player to avoid being hit). Melee can usually take out the kidnapper bird if they get picked up themselves and the only class that will struggle is a Hunter due to range - although I can't vouch for targetting if you are a dps...just that you can still cast spells as a healer. But this is definately a fight that you will either need to over-gear, be very VERY good (or lucky) or be in a particular group configuration.

If you are melee heavy I would recommend taking the fight slower and assigning one melee at the very least to simply AoE birds and kill the Kidnapper rather than try to crowd around the boss - the healer just will not be able to keep everyone alive (certainly the Disco priest we just had with us couldn't - could be a case of Holy or a Resto druid being better for this fight but again....seems a strange decision to make a 5-man heroic so class dependant).

Yet another cata fight that favours all ranged dps groups over melee heavy teams. Nice job Blizz - Bring the player not the class my rear-end!

Comment by exen

The difficulty here seems to have taken a drastic spike since patch day. Kidnappers start coming in earlier, Static Disruptions go out more often, and even the pesky little birds seem to hit harder.

It was a taxing on the healer before, now it's brutal to anyone who can still benefit from the 353s you earn.

Comment by Aparchee

It really isn't that bad. I joined a group tonight and no timer so I asked "Wiped here?", reply was "Yes noob healers", I thought ok lets try it, we start it, Shad Priest comes and stands on me in melee, DK tank D grips bird onto him with player attached suddenly everyone with stacks of debuff we wipe. Noob healers eh? Lack of tacs and people spreading debuff more like.

Tank boss in centre everyone spread 10 yards +, only 1 player will get debuff, remove it asap or let it tick off, 2x melee whoever gets it go stand in a space and wait for debuff removal or tick off. Player picked up can dps bird himself and shud be prio for other dps and dies in a few seconds.

Lightning storm stack under player then back to places, once I explained this he died next try with no problems at all. Healers can easy keep up, what they can't keep up with is clueless dps spreading the debuff around onto everybody, before you start badmouthing your healers take a look at stacks of debuffs on people in the group when you are wiping, that'll soon tell you who is at fault as 3x stacks is unhealable ;-)

Key is not spreading the debuff and removing it, fight is trivial once thats under control.

Comment by 311947

Fight is hard on healer mana if there is more than 1 melee dps.

I just hope Blizz makes the range smaller on static.

Comment by 451903

What a horrible fight this is for healers, we wiped big and hard on this last night, and that was in a guild group with us talking to each other on Mumble.

It all starts off OK but as soon as people get a bit out of position, the static disruption will be hitting 2-3 party members at a time, along with the tank getting whaled on with call lightning, so it's not even like you've got surplus GCDs and/or mana to spare to help keep the DPS alive.

On top of that, the little adds appear to hit people for surprisingly large chunks of their health, in about a minute you can be looking at being in full 'emergency mode' and burning through mana at a ridiculous rate of knots.

I don't mind a tough fight but this one feels a bit unreasonable at the moment, even a guildy DPS was giving it 'Can I get a heal a please?' on Mumble, and I'm like 'You wanna see the utter mess that is filling up my GRID, I haven't got spare GCDs for anything.'

My healer is raid-geared and has successfully healed Cata 10-mans (Indeed, our whole party was made of raid-geared characters), but this was just awful.

I've no doubt it's entirely possible to get the fight right and get through it, but after 6-7 wipes and still not got the boss past about 40%, we called it a night, as that 'head against brick wall' feeling was starting to kick in.

We'll return to it another night I'm sure, but I'd hate to have to do this on a PUG for now.

Comment by sylrune

Everything in this fight is fine except the area of effect on Static Discharge. With it set at 12 yards you will get the debuff on the tank if you have any melee dps, and god help you if you have more than 1 melee dps. Your healer will simply be overwhelmed.

As usual the only real solution is "dont bring melee dps". I imagine it wont be long before melee dps starts getting votekicked from groups even if they ARE doing their jobs. The good news is that this might actually give Blizzard a metric to show them (after all these years) that they fail at tuning encounters for melee dps.

Comment by 34072

April 29th Hotfix

Akil’zon will summon Amani Kidnappers less frequently, but their health has been increased.

I don't know if this will help much though. It doesn't solve the problem with having too many melee or the excessively high rate of damage taken in the encounter.

Comment by zuwr

Your healer has to be a superhuman to manage 3 melee dps on this boss. 2 is still hard, but doable if you have a good healer. 3 is just... urgh.

Blizz, please increase the boss's hitbox. If you do that, we'll be able to maintain some distance and still work with the boss's mechanics.

Thank you.

Comment by dlbert2000

Hunters CAN kill the kidnappers while picked up. There are no minimum range issues.

Comment by 728325

A summary/clarification post from a Holy Paladin/Hunter:

1. This fight is near on impossible with more than one melee dps. If you have the opportunity to make one of them ranged (with an offspec), I recommend it. (e.g. feral druid going boomy, or even turn that enhancement shaman into resto). It's not a dps race and two healers, one of whom can remove magic effects, is a pretty cruisey way to kill this guy.

2. Hunters can indeed range dps on the birds while being carried.

3. If your healer gets plucked, it's all hands on the add (except the tank). Especially since the hot fix to 4.1 on Apr 29, the birds now have more health, so low dps and another role to fulfil is not condusive to bird death for the healer. A tip for groups with melee dps; stun the bird.

4. Minimise the debuff spreading by keeping at range from each other. Melee dps need to be aware that Static Disruption is coming and get away from the boss. I regularly use the four corners of the centre square that Akil'zon is standing in as range markers for the four non-tanks.

5. The little brown birds are no problem. If the healer is not spending all their time removing debuffs, the throughput required is not horrific.

After 2-3 runs with a good number of wipes, I think we've got this guy under control now. Hope this helps you too. :)

Comment by 822538

Something is definitely up after they applied the hotfix-- the little brown birds were hitting me for about 15k a pop, which definitely seems like a higher number than usual. Otherwise, yea, it's a nightmare if you have anything more than a melee dps. Hopefully this gets a look at soon; it's by far and away the hardest boss in the instance, and it has nothing to do with the actual mechanics.

(unlike say, Dragonhawk, where if you fail it's because you stood in the fire.)

Comment by Parrky

Good tip for holy paladins on this fight I found today, judging the birds will proc crusader making healing extremely effective.

Comment by 341306

I entered as a healer and found your typical pug carry from the same server/guild: 1 very raid geared pally tank carrying 2 dps (mage and hunter), both under 10k.

After two wipes, they raged on me until the kick timer was ready, then booted me. I got the full blame as I kept trying to run away from their ranged who kept parking near me. Yet, after looking at Recount, here is what damage taken by the group looked like:

Fight 1:

Soaring Eagle: 410k
Static Disruption: 349k
Electrical Storm: 196k (friendly fire by mage)
total damage on birds: 28k

Fight 2 (lasted longer):

Soaring Eagle: 1,020k
Static Disruption: 901k
Electrical Storm: 0k (not listed so we either avoided it, or it didn't register)
total damage on birds: 93k (85k from tank)

But of course, those darn eagles are entirely the healer's fault. Such is the state of pugging.

Comment by 822981

I just attempted to heal this with 3 melee dps and a warrior tank. As a holy pally, this has got to be one of the hardest fights I've ever had to heal. I've healed this fight no prob these past couple days but I've never had a group with 3 melee dps. The dps stacked on the tank and expected me to dispel the debuffs on everyone every single time it comes up. With them stacking and not spreading out along with me trying to keep them all up and cleanse, I just kept going oom. One of the dps even had the nerve to ask why I kept going oom so fast. Ugh. Cause healing this with 3 melee who just stack on the tank and expect you to cleanse and heal through the debuffs is easy right?

Comment by tokyodove

imo this fight is ridiculously unfair for healers. theres just so much damage coming in and not enough rest periods to catch a breath. i end up having to burst all my cooldowns before 50% and going oom

Comment by 349177

Just attempted this guy. As a Arms Warrior in a PuG its not much fun! Im not one for playing the blame game since ive been known to stand in the bad stuff or make silly mistakes from time to time. But really you dont stand a chance in hell if you dont know/care about the tactics.
After the 2nd wipe worked out the static is quite hard to deal with but if theres only 2 people getting it better then if the whole group is stacked! and the lightening bits nice and easy really, couldnt work out the massive damage off those poxy brown birds tho! Hopes something changes here less dmg, bigger hitbox whatever, but somethings gotta give, best of luck healers i'm going to re-queue since im a sucker for punishment!

P.S im melee but even I can hit the bird with 2 throws just because your a Warrior dont mean you cant contribute.

Comment by Parrky

3rd May 2011

Akil’zon’s Static Disruption will no longer chain if players are more than 5 yards apart and is now cast every 12 seconds, up from 5.

Rejoice!

Comment by Vlad

If you have more than 2 melee on boss you will have a hard time keeping all up on health, someone will probably die in the end unless you outgear the encounter that greatly. But no fear, they will make the lightning range smaller so you can perhaps get in a 3rd melee in range without stacking the debuffs like crazy. ;)

Comment by dragontooth

"You can't... kill... me spirit!"

reminds me of Old Man Waterfall from Futurama

You can crush me but you can't crush my spirit!" "Argh, my spirit!"

Comment by Eveliniz

Kill the white bird. Kill the @#$%ing white bird.

Comment by 833372

As of today I attempted this boss as a disc priest (ilvl 363, so def. geared enough for this) in a guild group, but failed miserably. Usually I down this boss no problem (always a bit sketchy but it gets done) but this time it just wouldn't work out. Group composition:
- Warrior tank (stam/mastery stacking)
- Arcane mage
- Arcane mage
- Hunter
- Me as disc priest

We made sure to stay 6 yards apart, and the dps switched to the eagle immediately, we ran under storm, but I don't know what we were doing wrong because the incoming damage was just unhealable. It was as if every party member had a 10k/s hp debuff, in addition to the 50k blasts that I have to dispel and heal through. It may be that the tank failed to handle the soaring eagles which would explain the massive party damage. Pretty tough fight healing-wise indeed...

Comment by 659192

what hp does he have?

Comment by 921895

I was gonna write a serious comment but listening to Datsik i forgot. Sorry :D

Comment by LanceofAbel

This guy is slightly different from the other three in that he has a different model from them. His appearance is a modified form of a generic troll model. The other three have an entirely new model especially made for them. You can see this from the model viewer. Just look at all the actions he can do that they can't.

Comment by Harrilal

Akil'amon (who summons eagles) shares a naming convention with 2 Eagle Loa: Akil'zon and Akil'darah.

"Akil" may mean eagle in Zandali. It may also mean bird or have some other bird/eagle-relevant connotation.

Comment by Nobbel

How to: Solo Zul'Aman & Zul'Gurub Heroic in Mists of Pandaria. Also includes the achievements.
http://youtu.be/fzmR5JiNQmo

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Akil'zon <Eagle Avatar>

This NPC can be found in Zul'Aman .

Zul'AmanAkil'zonNalorakkJan'alaiHalazziHex Lord MalacrassDaakaraAkil'zonZul'AmanBakkalzuAmani Battle Bear

Heroic		Mythic
Deadly		Important
Tank		DPS
Healer		Interruptible
Magic		Curse
Poison		Disease
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Akil'zon <Eagle Avatar>

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