Off-tanking during the Jan’alai fight in Zul’Aman can be a source of major frustration for Protection-specced Warriors. In an attempt to lower the collective blood pressure of all tanking warriors who are running into a brick wall with their faces here, let me share with you what has worked for me and my group countless times now. Fights like this make you want patch 3.0 to hurry up, doesn’t it?
The Gear
You’ll want to put on your threat gear, making sure you focus on hit rating, shield block rating and shield block value. This is a perfect time to pull out that Petrified Lichen Guard I talk about this this post, and make sure you have a Felsteel Shield Spike on it. The idea is you want the adds to smash their faces into your shield and get hit by the Shield Spike and the poison proc as much as possible while laying down copious amounts of Cleaves and Thunder Claps.
Fire resistance gear is not necessary assuming you have a priest or a paladin in your group dispelling the Flame Buffet debuff. I don’t know from experience if Blessing of Protection will drop the debuffs from you but I wouldn’t count on it since your paladins will probably be dropping the BOP on one of your AOEers when they inevitably pull aggro from you.
The Group
First and foremost: you’re going to want a patient group who don’t mind resetting the boss fight numerous times while you fall into your groove and who will work with you. Bring a Shaman for Earthbind Totem or a Hunter for Frost Trap. I suppose a Fury Warrior with Piercing Howl would work too; what you need is a class that can slow down a large group of mobs at one time.
Here’s an example of my usual group make-up:
- Myself
- Arms Warrior
- Shadow Priest
- Warlock
- Enhancement Shaman
- Holy Paladin
- Restoration Druid
- Hunter
- Restoration Shaman or Holy Priest
- Rogue, Mage or another Hunter depending on the night
The First Platform
I’m going to assume you know the fight and therefore are just going to focus on the parts that have to deal with the Hatchers and the Dragonhawks.
- Where to stand. Once the tank engages Jan’alai himself, you’re going to want to run up to where one of the walkways to the eggs starts while staying on the main platform. Do not go onto the walkway.
- Hatchers spawn. When the Hatchers are up, the ranged DPS are going to automatically kill the Hatcher that is going to the opposite platform from where you’re standing. Usually we have a Hunter mark with Hunter’s Mark and it gets DPSed down very quickly.
- Slowing the adds. After the first Hatcher dies a Hunter will place a Frost Trap, or a Shaman will put down Earthbind Totem at your feet to give you some extra time to lay down some hurt on the Dragonhawks.
- Don’t let too many hatch. You have to communicate with the DPS directly here. After about five waves of adds (there are 10 on each platform) your DPS needs to kill the Hatcher who’s still alive or you’re going to be overwhelmed quickly. This means you will have to repeat these steps again to clear out that egg platform. Just be patient, take it slow and easy here.
- Dealing with bombs. When you have that many adds on you, it’s going to be hard to look at where the bombs are landing. I suggest moving your view until you’re looking straight down on your character and using the following command to zoom out as far as possible:
- Killing the adds. Once you feel you have a solid hold on the adds let your DPS know and they will kill them with Seeds or other AOEs. When well-geared AOEers open up there is no way you are going to hold on to them all indefinitely, at least not with the amount of time you have to gather them up. When that Warlock inevitably pulls aggro have your Paladin BOP ‘em, the adds should come running back to you.
- Rinse and repeat. Repeat steps one through seven again until the first platform is clear of eggs.
/console CameraDistanceMaxFactor 4
You may have to move to a space that you know is devoid of bombs. After a couple of tries on this guy you can see a pattern when the bombs start flying and you’ll be able to predict where the safe spots are going to be. Be there.
The Second Platform
Because you’ve been having to take it slow and easy to ensure no one dies, the odds are good that Jan’alai is going to be close to 35% by the time the first platform is cleared. While learning I highly suggest that the DPS go slow and easy so you can repeat the steps above on the second platform. As you get better you can kick it into high gear and try this strategy for the second platform:
- Positioning. Again you want to run up to the entrance of the walkway but not onto it. Hope against hope that your Priests and/or Paladins have been cleansing as many of the debuffs off of you as healing has allowed.
- Get ready to pretend to be a Paladin tank. When DPS gets the boss to 35% he will release all of the remaining eggs. That amounts to a lot of Dragonhawks so you and your AOEers need to be ready. When the mass of adds start to pass you blow Challenging Shout and then Shield Wall. Put as much aggro down on the mobs as you can and have your AOEers wind up with everything they have. The goal is to kill as many of the adds as possible in the shortest amount of time you can. I won’t beat around the bush here, this is highly dicey and will likely fail the first couple of times you do it. Just keep at it.
- Cleaning up the adds. A few Dragonhawks will be loose at this point, there’s really nothing you can do about it. The DPS will have to peel off of the boss and get any adds that are on healers or AOEers and then continue to lay down the hurt on the boss.
The Boss Kill
With all of the adds dead this is the time to strap on your DPS weapons and spam Devastate on the boss. Tell your healers to stop topping you off at this point because their heals are better spent on people who are still useful in the fight. Try to keep yourself up with bandages, Healthstones and Healing Potions.
I hope this guide is useful to people, if it is or if you have your own strategies, please leave a comment.
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3 comments so far...
That’s pretty much what we’ve tried to do. For a number of reasons, things always go haywire with platform number 2. I am going to try again on Sunday, and will try to remember all this helpful advice. Will let you know how it goes!
Great post!
Would’ve loved to have read this yesterday. I offtanked ZA for the first time and those Dragonhawks indeed are some pretty annoying folks. The group I went in with let open up some 10-15 hawks every time and do the same thing on platform 2 until there’s only about 5 eggs left, so the waves were somewhat managable.
Still, it cost some good nerves to get this going and without my trusted felsteel-spike I wouldn’t have been able to manage any aggro there I guess. Gotta get that Lichen Guard out of the bank again, I actually forgot that I have it
The name of the game when you’re doing the adds as a Warrior is just slow and steady, slow and steady. Once 3.0 hits it’ll be a lot easier for us to keep aggro since we’ll have Damage Shield and the new Thunder Clap but until then we have to flail around wildly hoping to keep aggro long enough that the AOEers don’t die.
Let me know how it works with the Lichen Guard!
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