Al’ar Strategy Guide (Tempest Keep: The Eye)

The Eye Raid Guide

The Eye Attunement

The Eye Loot

Al’ar

Void Reaver

High Astromancer Solarian

Kael’thas Sunstrider

Al’ar is one of those bosses that changed significantly over the course of TBC, and Blizzard themselves seemed uncertain about which version they’d give us in TBC Classic. The version we ended up getting was different to the version players tried on the PTR even, and thus tutorial videos & guides on her can be a bit off.

At face value, Al’ar has many abilities but they’re all extremely simple. In fact, it is pretty likely that if your raid has decent DPS, she will only use 1 ability in phase 1 — Ember Blast, the ability she uses when she “dies”. It doesn’t get any simpler!

But while her abilities are simple, they are also very lethal, with the smallest mistake resulting in death. Coupled with her whopping 6.8 million HP — second only to Kael’thas Sunstrider himself in Tempest Keep — the Phoenix God can prove to be a long, grueling fight, where your members keep dying one by one, resulting in a wipe.

This guide will offer your guild a step-by-step analysis of how to prevent the Phoenix God from rising from the ashes.

Role Summaries

Abilities – Phase 1

Abilities – Phase 2

Raid Composition & Preparation

The Pull

Al’ar will not attack your raid unless you attack her, so you’re safe to buff anywhere in her room. She will keep flying in circles around the room until you engage her, at which point she will land in spot 1, as per the picture below.

When you’re ready, a hunter waits until Al’ar is directly above spot 1 and pulls with Misdirection on the MT. The raid positions itself as shown below.

Essentially, ranged DPS and healers stay on the bottom side of the arena while the tanks and melee stay on the top side. Tanks and melee should be at the very edge so they are inside the healers’ line of sight, and the melee should be behind the boss to avoid parry hasting it.

Note that on the picture above, tanks are marked as A, B and C.

C is your prot paladin ideally, while A and B ideally are prot warriors or feral druids, in any combination.

Tanks B and C can stay with the melee when they aren’t currently tanking, but they should move to their designated platforms when there’s ~10 seconds left until the boss moves, which DBM can point out.

The fight itself is highly scripted, with little RNG, so learning to deal with the mechanics will ensure victory.

Phase 1

The longer phase 1 goes on for, the more dangerous it becomes, so the goal is to end it as fast as possible.

For that reason, the rest of your hunters should use Misdirection on the MT right at the start.

As soon as the MT has a healthy aggro lead on the boss, you should use Heroism / Bloodlust and your single-target DPS players should use their damage cooldowns.

As mentioned before, tanks that aren’t currently tanking can help DPS, but should be prepared to move to their next spots when there’s 10 seconds left until the boss flies off, which will happen roughly 30 seconds into the fight.

While Al’ar is above 30% HP and has repositioned fewer than 3 times, she can only fly to an adjacent spot, as shown in the following picture.

Thus in this situation your tanks should be ready to reposition as follows:

On the other hand, if the boss is at 30% HP or less AND has repositioned at least 3 times, she can now fly to the platform across the room from the current one, on top of to adjacent ones, as shown in the picture below.

This naturally complicates things quite a bit. You can’t have tanks run that far to get to Al’ar because she’ll spam Flame Buffet and wipe your raid. So from that point on, your tanks should reposition as follows:

Tank C (ideally a prot paladin, as mentioned previously) will be permanently stationed on the platform across Al’ar.

If you get Flame Quills in this situation, with Tank C being positioned across, Tank B should take over Tank C’s assignment, as Tank C needs to tank the 2 Ember of Al’ar that spawned. Tank A will have to take over tanking on both adjacent platforms, so you will want to make sure it is someone with a charge ability.

Other than that, you rinse and repeat. Just keep an eye out for Flame Quills, indicated by her flying upwards. Your tanks and melee need to jump down, and the entire raid moves to spot 1, as that’s where she’ll move to afterwards.

If your raid DPS is high enough, you can kill Al’ar before she repositions for the 4th time, meaning she will only be able to move to adjacent platforms and will have a very low likelihood of casting Flame Quills, making phase 1 incredibly easy.

Some general pointers for phase 1:

• Tanks need to taunt as soon as they reach Al’ar, she does not reset threat when she flies off.
• For the same reason, melee should not reach Al’ar before a tank taunts her, as they will get aggro and die. You should never have to worry about this if your tanks have a charge ability and moved earlier, however.
• She can never attack ranged players, so ranged players can just go to town, no need to worry about threat.
• Healers need to quickly follow Al’ar when she flies off, specially if she flies across. Being late can result in a tank death.
• There is generally very little damage coming out in phase 1, so healers can help DPS and get her down a bit faster.

When she’s about to reach 0 HP, melee and tanks need to jump off in order to avoid dying to Ember Blast.

Phase 2

Make sure nobody’s standing in the middle of the room (the pink… glass… thing) because that’s where Al’ar will reappear, dealing massive damage to anyone nearby.

As soon as she reappears, your tanks need to charge in, else she will start casting Flame Buffet, which hurts a lot more in phase 2 as raid damage is high.

Then, you will want to position as follows:

Ranged DPS and healers will need to spread out slightly so as to avoid having Flame Patch hit too many people. Do not spread out too much, because AoE healing spells will not be as effective.

You have roughly 40 seconds until the first Dive Bomb, at which point it’ll become significantly harder to damage Al’ar as you move around constantly, so this is a pretty good time to use your DPS trinkets and cooldowns.

When the boss flies up into the air, everyone should stack in the very center of the room. Make sure everyone is topped off as the raid’s about to take a lot of damage. Ranged players can keep damaging to her while she’s mid-air, but they need to be careful of threat, as the MT cannot generate threat at this time.

Then, as soon as you take the damage, before the boss re-appears, everyone needs to move towards the ranged spot, making sure to avoid any Flame Patches on the way. If you wait too long, you’re going to get hit by Rebirth, which will likely kill you after the Dive Bomb damage you took a moment ago.

It is important that the raid stays together in avoiding Dive Bomb, so AoE heal can top people off quickly.

Your MT needs to charge and taunt Al’ar right away, else someone will likely die to Charge or Flame Buffet.

Your protection paladin needs to be ready to pick up the 2 Ember of Al’ar that spawn as soon as she dives. Loose adds will kill people, so Misdirection can help if your paladin is struggling to get initial threat on both of them.

If your raid has good DPS, you can just ignore the adds by having your prot paladin tank them for the entire fight. If your raid’s DPS is low, you might want to kill the first set of adds that spawn, else you may end up having too many up at once, possibly killing your prot paladin.

If you decide to kill them, make sure they are nowhere near your raid when they die, as their explosion damage will wipe you.

The rest of the fight entails repeating what you have seen so far. Change tanks when your MT is affected by Melt Armor and avoid Flame Patch. There’s a lot of things that can kill you in this fight so you will likely lose players over time, but as long as you have the Dive Bomb maneuver figured out, the rest of the fight isn’t too bad.

Congratulations on being one step closer to the last and most difficult boss of Tempest Keep – Kael’thas Sunstrider!