Hey guys I’m Sulya from WoW Weekly and today we’ll be taking a look at Fel Lord Zakuun in Heroic Hellfire Citadel. These tactics also apply to the normal version.
This is a 2 phase encounter, it has the Armed phase and the Disarmed phase. Each phase will give Zakuun different abilities for the tanks to deal with. But this encounter really revolves around pillars that will spawn and waves of shadow that are not allowed to hit it. So let’s talk about how that works first.
Zakuun will cast Fissures and Crystals. This will spawn 3 or 4 green swirls on the ground and Crystal pillars will spawn from them. You can prevent pillars from spawning from 3 of these by having different players stand on top of each one. Once 3 of the swirls have been absorbed, a pillar will spawn from the 4th swirl. The idea is that once the first pillar has spawned, when Fissures and Crystals is cast again, you will want the swirl closest to the existing pillar to remain empty so that the pillars are close together.
From now on whenever a wave of shadow hit the pillar, it will deal a big amount of damage to the entire raid. On top of that the pillar will also deal damage to anyone standing close to it, and a small amount of damage to everyone in the entire raid. And on top of this the players who prevented other pillars from spawning will get the Latent Energy debuff. This basically makes them walking pillars. They are not allowed to touch the waves of shadow at any cost, as they will explodes just like the pillars if they get hit by them.
Lastly when you prevent a pillar from spawning and get a Latent Energy debuff, you will not be able to prevent another pillar from spawning until the debuff disappears. This means that everyone is responsible for dealing with pillars spawning.
So how can these waves of shadow spawn? Zakuun has a bunch of abilities that will make them do so. First of all when Zakuun is Armed he will cast Soul Cleave on the tank. This will deal a lot of shadow damage and put them in an alternate realm in which they have to dodge waves of shadow. Should they get hit it will mean damage for the rest of the raid. Once the tank is back in the regular realm some waves of shadow will spawn from them and increase their shadow damage taken by 50% for 1,5 minute. This is basicly is the tank switch mechanic for this phase.
His next ability is Cavitation with which he will send Wakes of Destruction, or as I call them the waves of shadow towards random raiders.
The final ability when he’s armed is Befouled. This will put a debuff on random players which will absorb heals. When it has healed a certain amount of heals it will fade away, but as it does it will explode dealing a huge amount of damage to any players within 6 yards of the target. So this means that when you get Befouled you should run out of the raid, to not harm anyone.
So there are multiple abilities that cause waves of shadow, which are not allowed to hit the pillars. To deal with this you want a couple of players to guard the pillars. If a wave of shadow glides toward a pillar the player should get hit by the wave of shadow instead. This is so that only that player will then take damage instead of the entire raid. This only applies to these waves of shadow though. Waves that would not hit pillars need to be dodged by everyone so that the raid doesn’t take unnecessary damage. The players assigned to guard the pillars are not allowed to prevent them from spawning because otherwise they will get the Latent Energy debuff.
You will have to continue dealing with the pillars and waves of shadow in the Disarmed phase. Zakuun will throw away his weapon, which will then pulse damage to the entire raid every 3 seconds. On top of that Zakuun’s auto attacks will now cleave to the closest target. This means that the tanks will have to stack on top of each other during the Disarmed phase. This phase hurts your tanks and they will require external cooldowns.
The new ability Zakuun has during this phase is Seed of Destruction. This will put a debuff on 5 players and after 5 seconds they will shoot out a wave of shadow in every direction. This means that players with Seed of Destruction have to get away from the rest of the raid, but also stay away from the pillars so that they don’t get so many waves of shadow moving towards them.
So just like in the Armed phase, in this phase you will also need a few players to intercept waves of shadow that move towards the pillars.
At 30% health Zakuun enrages. With this he will pulse damage and do cleaving damage even when he is Armed. Your tanks have to stack up on top of each other and you should use heroism to get through the enrage. Zakuun will now also alternate between all of his abilities.
So what you will want to do in the encounter is the following: Everyone should be responsible for preventing from pillars from spawning. Assign a few players to take the hits of waves of shadows that are heading towards pillars. Dodge any waves of shadow that are not going towards the pillars and if you get the Befouled debuff, run out of the raid.
When Zakuun is Disarmed, have your tanks stack up. And finally if you get the Seed of Destruction debuff on you, move away from the rest of the raid and the pillars.
Other than the mechanics let’s talk about the coordination in your group. To make the encounter easier we put up raid markers in each of the 4 corners of the room so we could reference them.
The raid leader would call out which swirl to leave empty for the pillar to spawn in and it also allowed easy communication to the tanks for where to go to when they’re in the alternate realm in the armed phase. You don’t want the tank to go to the corner where the pillars are and having the shadow waves from them spawn and hit the pillars.
In the Disarmed phase we moved around the red marker for the group to group on. The players with the seeds debuff would then have more room to get away from the group as well as the pillars.
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