Heart of Fear: Wind Lord Mel’jarak (10)

Wind Lord Mel'jarak is a single-phase fight with 9 adds that become active when you pull Mel'jarak

• 3 Sra-thik Amber-Trappers;
• 3 Kor'thic Elite Blademasters;
• 3 Zar'thik Battle-Menders;

Dealing with the adds is the key to beating the boss and can be crowd controlled. Adds of each type have a shared health pool but when 3 adds of the same kind die, Mel'jarak gains a buff that increases his damage done and his damage taken.

Mobs and Abilities

Mel'jarak has 3 main abilities as well as a basic high damage melee attack:

• Whirling Blade:  is a boomerang style attack he cast every 60 seconds. He throws his weapon at the location of a random raid member and it will damages to all players in it path, both on the way to the location, and on the way back to Mel'jarak.
• Rain of Blades: is a raid-wide damaging ability that Mel'jarak casts every 60 seconds. It deals Physical damage to all raid members every 0.50 seconds, for 6 seconds.
• Wind Bomb: after he reaches 75% health, he throws a bomb at the location of a raid member, which deals a high amount of damage to anyone within 5 yards of the location, 3 seconds later it arms and will explode if a raid member comes within 6 yards of it. It will deal a very high amount of raid-wide damage. The bombs  are cast regularly, do not despawn until the end of the fight, progressively limiting the space that players have to move around.

When adds of the same kind are killed he gains a stack of Recklessness, increasing his damage done by 50%, and his damage taken by 33%.

Crowd Control

Crowd-control spells, such as Polymorph or Freezing Trap, can be used. There are also 4 weapon racks which will give a  player a special ability called Impaling Spear, which stuns the targeted add for 50 seconds or when direct damage is done to the add. Indirect damage dealt to that mob through its shared health pool does not break the crowd-control.

There is a limit on how many adds you can have crowd-controlled at one time.

• If all adds are alive, you can crowd-control a maximum of 4 adds.
• If 6 adds are alive, you can crowd-control a maximum of 2 adds.
• If 3 adds are alive, you cannot crowd-control any adds.

Exceeding these limits cause Mel'jarak to dispel the crowd-control from ALL adds.

Sra-thik Amber-Trappers cast two abilities.

• Amber Prison: traps targeted players (and any other players within 2 yards) in amber. Players can free them simply by right-clicking it. The Amber-Trappers cast Amber Prison roughly every 35 seconds. Freeing a player from Amber Prisons causes a debuff which prevents them from freeing other players for 2 minutes.
• Corrosive Resin: is a debuff placed on a random raid member, can stack to 5 and deals a moderate amount of damage to that player every second. Moving causes the stacks to be removed but leaves a Corrosive Resin Pool.

Zar'thik Battle-Menders cast two abilities.

• Mending: an interruptible heal that is cast on a random add, which heals them for 25% of their maximum health.
• Quickening: a dispellable stacking buff that is placed on all of the adds, increasing their damage done and attack speed by 25%

Kor'thic Elite Blademasters have one ability.

• Kor'thik Strike: All 3 Blademasters target the same random raid member, and attack simultaneously dealing a high amount of damage. This ability is cast every 40 seconds.

Strategy

It is possible to one-tank the fight with a properly geared tank and the tank will benefit from a very large amount of Attack Power from Vengeance, greatly boosting their DPS and self-healing. It is safer to use two tanks.

There is no point in the fight when your raid can safely stack together until the adds are all dead. The ideal positioning is to be spread out in a wide circle around the boss. Melee DPS are unable to spread out too much, but they should still be able to stand at least 2 yards apart so Amber Prison does not affect more than one player.

During  Rain of Blades to make healing easier after all the adds have been killed and Mel'jarak's damage is increased. Be aware that Mel'jarak will often cast Whirling Blade immediately before or after Rain of Blades, so everyone must move in to stack at the last possible moment, and must be very quick to move out again once Rain of Blades is over.

It is important that players do not line up in relation to Mel'jarak's position, because  Whirling Blade damages all players in the path of the target.

Players will have to also move out of the void zones left behind by the players affected by  Corrosive Resin.

Finally, certain areas will become inaccessible, as they will be taken up by Mel'jarak's  Wind Bombs. While Wind Bombs do not normally target melee players, if everyone is stacking together to help healing during Rain of Blades, the boss will cast a Wind Bomb in melee range, so everyone must be very quick to move away.

• The MT picks up the boss and one or two adds, 
• The OT picks up the remaining adds.
• Circle the boss to minimise Whirling Blade damage & having multiple people caught in Amber Prison.
• Ensure players move from the landing location of Wind Bombs and that no one triggers them.
• Crowd-control as many of the adds as the limit allows.
• Handle the various add abilities
• Interrupt  Mending.
• Dispel  Quickening.
• Corrosive Resin victims should move and place the void zones so it does not inconvenience the raid.
• Free players from Amber Prison.

While there are many crowd-control strategies that work, the following one is teh widely accepted easy one.

• Crowd-control 1 Amber-Trapper, 2 Battle-Menders, and 1 Blademaster.
• Tank all the mobs together for additional AoE damage from cleaves.
• Kill the Battle-Mender.
• Crowd-control 1 Amber-Trapper and 1 Blademaster.
• Kill the Blademasters.
• Kill the Amber-Trappers.

DPSing Mel'jarak is not a priority until the adds have been killed. Cleave damage and multi-dotting is good, and will make the fight easier as the enrage timer of 8 minutes is strict.

When adds are killed, the remaining adds are not healed. So it is possible to bring multiple adds to low health before finally killing them. This is something we strongly recommend, as it makes it much easier to control the mobs, especially the Blademasters (because you keep the ability to crowd-control 4 adds).

Mel'jarak will be active for the entire duration of the fight and they will still have to be dealt with.

Healing Concerns

There are many different sources of damage in this fight and it is very tough on the healers overall.

The sources of damage are:

• High tank damage, and increasing damage on Mel'jarak's tank, as the fight goes on (with 3 stacks of  Recklessness, healers can expect hits of up to 170,000 on the tank);
• regular raid-wide damage from  Rain of Blades;
• single-target damage on random raid members, when they are targeted by Whirling Blade;
• single-target damage on random raid members, when they are affected by the Corrosive Resin debuff;
• damage from the Blademasters' Kor'thik Strike, depends on the number of Blademasters crowd-controlled.
• Healers can also expect to sometimes notice bursts in damage, if the mobs are buffed by  Quickening.

Finally, there may be cases of  Wind Bombs being accidentally detonated, which will probably cause a wipe.