Black Temple - Shade of Akama

Sorry for not getting this up yesterday like I promised, got busy at work. Bosskillers strat here for the full rundown. I'll just go into the Tankadin-specific stuff here.

Phase 1
The first phase is the more complicated part of the encounter, as there are many adds that need to be picked up and tanked. There are two spawn points that adds will run from, little caved-in doors on the east and west sides of the room. From these two spawn points, three basic types of enemies will come.

Sorcerers: Ignore these; they'll just ignore you anyway. They run up on the platform to replace Channelers as they are killed, and will be dealt with by the same people killing Channelers. Neither Channelers nor Sorcerers do any damage to anyone, they just stand there and die.

Defenders: One of these will spawn from a random side every so often and run at Akama (the real one, not the Shade). They need to be picked up before they get to him, and will be offtanked for the duration of the fight. If you're put on tanking those, just do your best to take as little damage as possible. No DPS will be on them at any point. There should be 2 tanks picking them up, to help spread the damage out a bit.

Spiritbinders, Elementalists, and Rogues: These all spawn simultaneously and run out after whoever they happen to have aggro on (most likely a healer). AOE tanking these guys is probably the best use of a Tankadin on this fight. Have a Hunter keep a frost trap (the slowing one) down by the spawn point, as they move fairly quickly and that will buy you time to get an AS off and get aggro on all three. From that point, just hold onto them and let your DPS go to town. It helps to have a DPS order figured out ahead of time (we go Spiritbinder->Elementalist->Rogue) so you can put as much threat as possible on the target being DPS'ed. These spawn roughly every 35 seconds, just long enough for your AS cooldown to come up for the next pack. They don't hit too hard, so wear threat gear.

Once all 6 Channelers have been killed, as well as the 6 Sorcerers that come to replace them, the Shade of Akama will break free and start attacking Akama.

Phase 2
At this point, all DPS gets focused on the Shade of Akama. That includes you. If you don't have any mobs on you, good. If you do, bring them with you. Run over there and start hitting him with everything you can. He doesn't need to be tanked, he'll be focused on killing Akama, and it's impossible to pull aggro. You've got about 60 seconds to kill the Shade before the Shade kills Akama.

It's really an easy fight, a lot of raids kill him the first time they get to Phase 2. Dealing with and killing the adds effectively in Phase 1 is what makes or breaks the fight.

Have fun!
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The danger must be growing, for the rowers keep on rowing!

If you spam tab, you will target the adds in the doorway a solid 2 seconds before they spawn, giving plenty of time to toss an Avenger's Shield and hit them all. Frost trap is still a good idea in case it misses.

Just be careful not to sling your shield at a Defender by accident, because they WILL come running for you once they get to Akama, and this will cause problems for the other tanks.

You can see our video (PoV is a mage on my side) as an example of what happens when you do that. Poor bear got smacked in the backside by all the other mobs trying to pick up the one I tagged, made phase 2 a little more interesting than necessary...
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Gladiator Psiven, 70 Tankadin (retired)
Rival Psivenia, 70 Warriorlol
Psivenne, 60 Bare
Longtime addict of Space - Glory Through Conquest

I'm having problems here, me and a Warrior is on defender duty. After the defender has run to Akama (and i have Concecration up all the time) I judge it and start hitting it, warrior tabs and auto hits him a few times and takes aggro, and I can not get it back without taunting. It is just really weird aggro.
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I'm not sure what could be wrong with Defender aggro; they seem to retain all aggro from hitting them as they run just fine, but they won't act on it until they get to Akama.

To make it pretty foolproof for Defender tanks you can do what we do, which is dedicate most of the DPS to channelers/sorcerers. You'll see maybe a couple defenders pop before Shade of Akama dies. IMO you should be soloing a door unless you have 3 prot pallies in the raid.
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Gladiator Psiven, 70 Tankadin (retired)
Rival Psivenia, 70 Warriorlol
Psivenne, 60 Bare
Longtime addict of Space - Glory Through Conquest

Well we downed him after a few tries, aggro on defenders was very weird, basicly, at the end, the warrior was tanking all of them, even tho i picked up every single one, I could not for the life of me hold them on me. But it was strange, my addons blinked "Aggro by xxx" all the time, but they just turn to me, hit once and turn back to the warrior. Thing is, Warrior didn't, on any mob I had on me, try to get aggro, just hit my mob a few times to stay on its aggro list. When we both made sure we had aggro on eachothers adds, the no longer ran off to others, just between us and we managed to down him.

We had a druid pick up one side, and on the other side, no tank needed for pickup.
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hmm, you're much better off picking up a side though, a druid needs mage support and has a harder time building threat on 3 targets, and you don't really need more then 1 tank for defenders, or at least we only use 1, a prot warrior, a feral druid 1 side me the other side, seems the best job for a tankadin there rly, 3 targets, perfect for as pulling
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LoL, a paladin tank!

There is some sort of bug regarding this, I found more ppl reporting this in the Elitist Jerk forum.
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Yeah we had a rogue get loose from the other side a couple nights ago that somehow made it all the way across the room to me O_o
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The danger must be growing, for the rowers keep on rowing!

Afaik this problem is only related to the Defender type mobs.
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Lore was clearly tanking without a shield and got SA aggro from the rogue across
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LoL, a paladin tank!

Did this guy for the first time tonight. It took a couple spawns for the hunter and I to work out how best to manage it.

What seemed to work best was when he put the freezing trap inside the door (just past the threshold) so that when the mobs spawned, they would trigger the trap and be slowed before they ever started running. This allowed me to pick them all up easy with an AS w/ JoR backup in case AS missed one of them.


We only got 2 attempts and wiped because the opposite end of the room was complete chaos, while my door was on solid lockdown.


Very impressed with how well this fight suits a paladin tank.
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<3

After maybe 5-6 attempts we downed this boss tonight. I was originally going to solo tank the defenders as they run to Akama but as other people have mentioned here that didn't work at all.

It was really strange. I would even avenger's shield the first ad as it came, judge righteousness, and hit it a few times, then when a new defender came I'd judge righteousness and hit it a few times... then one of them would go after a healer. I don't understand this, rank 3 consecration and rank 1 holy shield is more than enough threat to keep mobs off healers, here I am max ranking and going all out, yet they kept peeling off of me and running straight for healers more often then I could taunt. by the time 3 defenders came out I was overwhelmed.

I didn't get a chance to check my combat log but... from boss killers:
Ashtongue Defender
79,000 health
2,000-4,000 melee hit on plate

Debilitating Strike - Melee strike that does 100% weapon damage and applies a debuff that lasts 5 seconds, reducing any melee damage done by the target by 75%.

I have a sneaking suspicion this is not right, has anyone checked their combat log to see if it's affecting spell damage too?




anyways, I ended up tanking a door, we had some kinks to work out but we had it smoothly done. I would stand right in front of where the ads spawn and have a mage stand 2 yards behind me. with enemy nameplates on you can actually see and target/attack them before their character model actually appears. As soon as the enemy name plates appeared I'd drop a consecrate and the mage would frost nova. After we devised that plan it was easy sauce, didn't even have to use avenger's shield.
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Yeah I posted about it as a bug in the wow-europe.com forums, I found a post on ElitistJerks where several Paladins mentioned this.

Our guild has this fight down quite well, we down him 1st or 2nd try depending on how awake everyone is. Ive learned to use and abuse this bug instead of fighting it, our Warrior MT that tanks the defenders wants me there cause it is so easy for me to pick them up. If he gets low, I taunt 3 of them off him for a few seconds then they go back to him and I'm free to pick up the next one, easy as hell. We use druid tanks for the doorways, they are doing a good job at that. It is a bit sad to be reduced to pickup duty, but really, it completely eliminates a possible wipe scenario that the Defender tank gets to many mobs and have problems picking up the new ones. Also, with me as a failsafe taunt if the warrior goes low on HP towards the end, gives our healers time to get those heals in.
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so tonight we hit akama for the first time (downed him in 2 attempts)...

i don't know what it was, but i was getting ROCKED. i was picking up one side with a warrior and i would get 4-5 guys on me... i dunno if a rain of fire got to me or if the adds are just hitting me that hard but i pretty much /splatted on both attempts. thankfully we were able to fear bomb them enough to get shade down in time, but wtf is hitting me so hard??
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