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October 21, 2007

Fighting Nalorakk: You Got Your Troll in My Bear! No, You Got Your Bear in My Troll!

Ok, neither bears nor trolls are great tastes, but when it comes to the Amani lord of bears, they go together whether you like it or not. My 10 man raid spent Friday night fighting the good fight against finnicky PTR instance servers and the first boss of Zul'Aman, and here's what I've got to report.

Nalorakk isn't a pushover, but he's not an especially complicated boss either. Best of all, you only have to clear about six pulls to get to him: one AOE pull after you talk to Harrison Jones (it'll have two elites, too), a double troll pat, a couple of angry bears, and then some packs of trolls and trolls riding bears that Nalorakk sends at you as you get closer to him. Quick tip on the bear-riding trolls: their bears' growl debuff stacks, so be sure to space your tanks far enough away from each other.

Once you get through that trash, you'll need two tanks for the bear boss himself; one for each phase. Nalorakk will start as a troll, and alternate between troll and bear form. In troll form he casts mangle, which increases bleed effects. Then in bear form he hits whoever's tanking him with a lacerate and rend. (You can remove his mangle with stoneform, but if you've got it, save it for that emergency missed taunt.) Put your better geared tank on bear form, and have your tanks swap each time Nalorakk shifts to bear or troll. Finally, you want your tanks to stand on top of each other so that when he uses his 14k brutal swipe attack, its damage will be split between both of them.

Aside from the tanking, it's pretty straightforward. In troll form he'll charge at random and can cleave anyone around his target, so spread out. In bear form his deafening roar will damage everyone for ~1.3k and silence the raid for two seconds. Other than that, he's a tank and spank with 1.7 million health, so pile on the damage. The best kind of bear-troll-thing is a dead bear-troll-thing, after all.

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