Azgalor (tactics)

Azgalor is the fourth boss in the Battle for Mount Hyjal raid instance, preceded by the most difficult set of trash waves. The fight is a battle for survival. Even though a raid member dies every 45 seconds, the emphasis is on avoiding the AoE fire damage, not on nuking the boss as quickly as possible.

Azgalor

 * Melee: 6000 to 9000 on plate; cannot crush.

Lesser Doomguard

 * Health: ~145k HP
 * Melee: ~2.5k on plate

Preparation
The MH Boss Tips apply as usual. There should be one tank for the boss and at least one more for the Lesser Doomguards (two is better, in case one of them gets Doom). The Doomguard tanks need two healers, the Azgalor tank three. The other healers should keep up the raid.

Casters should wear some shadow resistance gear and the Shadow Protection buff as well, to resist the silence. Fire resistance potions can increase survivability; the melee group can wear some fire resistance gear if available. All Warlocks should have a Soulstone available, but not pre-cast.

The boss can be tanked next to Thrall or at the Tauren camp which is the best method if you have a hunter in your raid. It would also help to try to get as much help as possible from the NPCs during the waves,(try to keep the pats alive). Thrall won't die from the rain of fire. The other NPCs probably won't make it through the fight, but they still do decent DPS while alive.

Rain of Fire
The first priority for everyone is to avoid Rain of Fire — move out of it fast. Beyond that, the periodic silence makes it challenging to keep the tank up. The tank should have as many HoTs as possible at all times, and (like everybody else) be generally at top health, so that there's a good chance to survive 5 seconds without a heal. It's also possible to stop all melee attacks during silence, so that the Boss doesn't get the increased swing speed from parries.

It is possible for many ranged DPS classes to not be targeted by rain of fire by simply staying out of its 30 yd range. Probably, the only ranged DPS class that can't do this without severely lowering their DPS is shadow priests, as their mind flay ability has a short range. If a DPS class that can't out-range the rain of fire is DPSing near other longer range DPS, the rain of fire can hit the longer range DPS simply because of its 15 yard radius. This being the case, keeping the ranged DPS that can't out-range the rain of fire separate from the longer range DPSers will minimize damage taken by the raid.

Lesser Doomguards
When receiving the Doom debuff, players should run to the predetermined Lesser Doomguard tanking spot. At that place, the melee DDs and the NPCs should kill them. The easiest setup without a hunter misdirect is to tank them at the Tauren camp, while tanking Azgalor next to Thrall. If there is a hunter in your group the best method is to tank Azgalor at the Tauren camp, and let Thrall and his camp fight the Lesser Doomguards. Thrall and his camp alone are perfectly capable of dealing with the Doomguard and keeping no more than 1-2 Doomguards up at a time. At the end of the fight, the tanks should have a total of about 3-4 Lesser Doomguards on them which the raid must kill after Azgalor is dead.

Warlocks should have their soulstones at the ready, but unassigned. When a vital player (e.g. a healer) is Doomed, they should assign the soulstone. Set up a rotation so that the warlocks are clear on who should hand out the first, second, etc. Soulstones and battle rezzes should be used early and often in order to maximize DPS on the boss and bring him down quickly.

Note: There is a known bug (as of 2.4) that Doomguard tanks may be unable to get loot because they are not on the aggro table of the boss. It is highly recommended for Doomguard tanks and healer to go in range and do a couple ranged attacks on the boss before going to the Doomguard tanking spot. Healing or bandaging someone who is on the bosses aggro table also should work. A small domed clay oven is present at the Tauren warrior camp that is terrain bugged — if players with Doom die on top of it, the resulting Lesser Doomguard will spawn in the middle of the raid, causing a wipe.

Positioning
If your raid has high ranged DPS, it is possible to completely avoid the Rain of Fire through careful positioning. The raid should be split into camps according to roles (ranged, melee, healers). The melee should stand at the designated Lesser Doomguard tanking position and help take down these ads. The ranged DPS should stand in a semicircle in front of Azgalor at absolute max range (30 yds). As his Rain of Fire is cast on a person rather than a spot on the ground, having the raid outrange his ability causes him to cast it rarely if at all. Healers should stand off to one side where they are in range of the main body of the raid, but able to run to the Doomguard tanking position if Doom is cast. At the Lesser Doomguard tank spot, there should be a healer and 2 tanks. If you are having trouble, add one more healer or tank as you see fit. There is no need for a Lesser Doomguard group if you tank Azgalor at the tauren camp as explained above. A few DPSes can be moved to Lesser Doomguard duty if it makes you feel better.

Tips

 * DPS Cooldowns: Should be used early but not too early (watch aggro).
 * Cleave will not be cast if the Main Tank is the only target in front of Azgalor. With careful positioning of NPCs, and leaving pets to DPS the Lesser Doomguards, the amount of spike damage from Cleaves can be significantly reduced. Since the change to pets that keeps them behind a stationary target, if Azgalor is held still pets will likely not trigger cleaves.
 * Hearthing will remove the Doom effect. This can be used productively later in the fight when no further combat rezzes are available. It will not remove the person from the loot table, though the bug regarding Doomguard tanks may still apply.
 * Improved Concentration Aura: Creating a healer group with a Paladin specced into this will reduce the chance of the tank dying to spike damage during the silence, as the healers have an additional 1.5 seconds (assuming 3/3) to recover from the silence (this group should be made up of the MT healers).
 * Curse of Recklessness: CoR makes Azgalor hit significantly harder than normal. Use a different curse.

Quotes

 * Intro
 * yell


 * Doom
 * yell
 * yell


 * Killing a player
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * Death
 * yell

Trivia

 * He's voiced by Dave Mallow.