Wind Lord Mel’jarak

I had the opportunity to check out the Wind Lord Mel’jarak (10 heroic) raid test.

It’s an intense fight considering all the elements players most contend with.

The more relevant is the boss, Wind Lord Mel’jarak, has nine mobs at his side. Pretty overkill.

Among this group of nine are three Sra’thik Amber Trapper, three Zar’thik Battle-Mender, and three Kor’thik Elite Blademaster.

Four players in the raid group have to grab a spear from the racks seen in the back of the room. An extra button pops onscreen named “Impaling Spear”.

Impaling Spear: Hurls a spear at one of Mel’jarak’s warriors, incapacitating them for 50 sec. Any damage taken directly will cancel this effect. 40 yard range. 1.78 sec cast.

These four players have a motherload of a role. If any of these four targets aren’t incapacitated it might cause a raid wipe. More important: those four players can’t die because only them have the spear to incapacitate the targets.

To make matters hectic, only four mobs can be crowd controlled by the spears until the first mob dies. If more than four are crowd controlled, Wind Lord Mel’jarak casts a room-wide dispel magic that removes the crowd control from all mobs.

That means if for any reason any of the mobs aggros you, take it like a man — err, or take it like a woman. Casting fear, sheep, or any other type of crowd control spell/ability will trigger Wind Lord Mel’jarak to cast dispel magic on all nine mobs, causing a wipe.

I’d recommend impaling 2 Menders and 2 Amber-Trappers. These are the most dangerous. The menders buff all mobs with a stacking 25% attack speed and heal. The Amber-Trappers not only imprison a player — players around that imprisoned player get also imprisoned (think of Sindragosa’s icy prison) and they also debuff a random player causing them to leave Corrosive Resin pools all around the room over time.

On top of all this, there are several degrees of difficulty to this encounter which require everyone to remember what to do. The Sra’thik Amber-Trapper do exactly as they are named. I was one of the players assigned to grab a spear and to keep my target impaled (incapacitated) every 50 sec. One of these mobs encased my character in amber. I wasn’t able to move nor cast. Thankfully, I had just cast “Impaling Spear”, and the amber prison was destroyed before the 50 sec timer was up. However, there’s a latent danger that one might be imprisoned at a bad timing, resulting in one of the mobs to be set loose while the assigned impaling player is imprisoned in amber.

I think there were five spears, so I’m assuming a fifth assigned player should be alert on Ventrilo when the imprisoned player calls he’s imprisoned and yells his assigned mark — i.e. circle, triangle, diamond, etc.

Additionally, those who helped free me from the amber prison can’t attack another amber prison for 45 seconds because they are affected with “Residue”. The raid leader has to assign groups of players to tackle the amber prison and to alternate while the previous group’s Residue (45 sec) wears off.

The other degree of difficulty is that a random player will be debuffed by these Amber-Trappers with Corrosive Resin. That player has to immediately run away from the group. Every tick, the player leaves a trail of Corrosive Resin pools. Can’t stay standing because the Corrosive Resin pool will slowly kill you. The Corrosive Resin pool seems to stay for a very long time on the ground. What the room end ups looking like is a mess of round Corrosive Resin pools that you have to avoid while on the move, with barely any room to spare.

For those assigned with keeping four mobs impaled (incapacitated) this is an extra layer of difficulty as you have to walk around these pools to be within the 40 yard range of your target to cast “Impaling Spear”.

Strategy

There are three groups of mobs in this encounter: Battle-Menders, Amber-Trappers and Blademasters. Each group’s health is linked. In short, if you kill one Battle-mender, all three die. The Fever Guild from the Malorne-server killed the Battle-Mender first. Then the Blademaster, and the Amber-Trapper at the end.

For the Corrosive Resin, I’d recommend all ranged DPS to line-up from the center outward. When a random players gets debuffed with Corrosive Resin stand back and run behind all the Ranged DPS across in a straight line toward or away from the center (depending on your position). Everyone moves a step forward counter-clockwise — including the tank and melee. Follow the diagram below. This way, you control where the five Corrosive Resin Pools are preventing the pools to clutter the area.

Each range DPS player should align along the yellow-line seen in the diagram below. Another benefit of following this strategy is that when Wind Lord Mel’jarak casts Whirling Blade, it will only affect one range DPS player because the other range players are aligned in a different location than the path of the blade.

Wind Lord Mel’jarak commands the mantid’s numerous aerial forces. Although he exudes arrogance, the cunning insectoid is fiercely protective of his soldiers and enjoys fighting at their side. Mel’jarak believes the mantid are superior to all other races, convinced that his kind cannot be defeated.

Abilities

Whirling Blade: Wind Lord Mel’jarak hurls his blade at a random player’s location, inflicting 80,000 Physical damage to all players in the blade’s path. After the blade reaches its destination, it returns to Wind Lord Mel’jarak. The blade also inflicts 80,000 Physical damage to all players in its return path.
Rain of Blades: Wind Lord Mel’jarak rains blades down on all players, inflicting 45,000 Physical damage. Wind Lord Mel’jarak throws three sets of blades before stopping. (healers tip: that’s a total of 135,000 damage)
Watchful Eye: Wind Lord Mel’jarak watches over his swarm, dispelling all forms of crowd control from every warrior if he ever senses that players are incapacitating more than four.

When one group of Wind Lord Mel’jarak’s swarm falls, he becomes more watchful. He now dispells all forms of crowd control from every warrior if he ever senses players are incapacitating more than two.

When a second group of Wind Lord Mel’jarak’s swarm falls, he becomes even more watchful, dispelling all forms of crowd control from every warrior if he ever senses players are incapacitating any.
Recklessness: When Wind Lord Mel’jarak sees a group of his warriors fall in battle, he becomes reckless for the remainder of the fight. This increases his damage dealt and taken by 50%. This effect stacks.

THE SWARM

Wind Lord Mel’jarak fights alongside his most trusted warriors.

Fate of the Swarm: Wind Lord Mel’jarak’s swarm shares health with their fellow swarm members.

Impaling Spear: Up to four players can use the weapon racks left by the Mantid army to gain the Impaling Spear ability. Impaling Spear stuns a target for 50 sec. Any damage dealt directly to the target by a player causes the target to break free.

Sra’thik Amber-Trapper

Amber Prison: Sra’thik Amber-Trappers imprison a random player and their allies within 2 yards in amber, stunning them until freed.

Players can smash an Amber Prison and free the imprisoned allies inside by interacting with it. Residue afflicts players who destroy Amber Prisons.
- Residue: Residue prevents a player from destroying Amber Prisons for 45 sec.
Corrosive Resin: Sra’thik Amber-Trappers cover a player in 5 stacks of Corrosive Resin for 30 sec. inflicting 10,000 Nature damage every second per stack. Moving while afflicted by Corrosive Resin removes a stack of Corrosive Resin and creates a Corrosive Resin Pool at the player’s location.
- Corrosive Resin Pool: Corrosive Resin Pools inflict 30,000 Nature damage every second to all players within the pool.

Zar’thik Battle-Mender

Mending: Zar’thik Battle-Menders mend their allies, healing a group of the swarm for 15% of their maximum health.
Quickening: Zar’thik Battle-Menders quicken all of Mel’jarak’s swarm, increasing all damage done and melee attack speed by 25% for 15 sec. This effect stacks

Kor’thik Elite Blademaster

Kor’thik Strike: Kor’thik Elite Blademasters focus a single player and strike them in unison, each inflicting 150,000 Physical damage.