High Priest Thekal

High Priest Thekal was the High Priest of the Primal God Shirvallah, the god tiger. In order to quell Hakkar the Soulflayer, the trolls of the land banded together and sent a contingent of High Priests into the ancient city of Zul'Gurub. Each priest was a powerful champion of the Primal Gods, but despite their best efforts they fell under the sway of Hakkar. Now the champions and their Primal God aspects feed the awesome power of the Soulflayer. Any adventurers brave enough to venture into the foreboding ruins must overcome the High Priests if they are to have any hope of confronting the mighty blood god.

Thekal comes with 2 named humanoid adds (Zealot Lor'khan and Zealot Zath) and 2 tigers. The 2 humanoid adds are a shaman and a rogue. Thekal initiates the fight in priest form, where he can mortal strike. If any of the adds or Thekal dies, the remaining ones will resurrect them. This means all 3 must die simultaneously (within a 10 second window).

After dying once, Thekal respawns as a Tiger. In this form he can charge, Flurry, enrage, and Force Punch. Force Punch is an AoE attack around Thekal that does ~1000 damage. He often does it twice in a row. Furthermore he spawns 2 tigers periodically throughout the fight.

Zealot Lor'Khan

 * Lightning Shield
 * Bloodlust
 * Greater Heal
 * Disarm

Zealot Zath

 * Sweeping Strikes
 * Sinister Strike
 * Gouge
 * Kick
 * Blind

High Priest Thekal

 * Phase 1
 * Mortal Cleave
 * Silence


 * Phase 2
 * Frenzy
 * Force Punch
 * Enrage
 * Charge
 * Summon Zulian Guardian

Priest form
Thekal comes with 2 humanoid adds: Zealot Lor'Khan (shaman) and Zealot Zath (rogue). 2 Tigers are also in the initial pull.

If any of the humanoids die, they will be resurrected by any remaining humanoids with full life. This means all 3 adds must die simultaneously. Once all 3 are killed, Thekal will resurrect in Tiger Form.

Tiger form
In Tiger Form, Thekal gains a new set of abilities. He will periodically spawn two elite tigers which need to be either taken down as quickly as possible or crowd controlled (fear, sleep, etc.). The tigers are capable of killing healers in a few hits, but do not have many hit points themselves.

Strategy
This fight is another two-phase affair. Phase 1 has three tanks grabbing the Priest and the Zealots. The offtanks take the Zealots about halfway to each corner of the lower area. The Priest is tanked just south of his hut. Lor'Khan needs to be far enough away from the others so he cannot heal them. Alternatively Lor'Khan can be mana drained by priests/locks and a hunter. Once he's at 0 mana a hunter can keep him down alone. Zath can be closer to Thekal, but again needs to be away from Lor'Khan.

Note: Zealot Lor'Khan has been confirmed that she's susceptible to chain rogue stuns - not sure if this also works for Zealot Zath. Also Note: Zealot Zath can both Gouge and Blind, so you need either two tanks to keep him controlled or a mage to stay second on the aggro list ready to blink to the tank upon gouge/blind. If you're really unlucky, he'll gouge one tank, blind the other, and go for the healer. Be on your toes.

All 3 can be disarmed in phase one, so be sure to do this whenever the cooldown is over.

Once the MT has enough aggro on Thekal, everyone attacks until 20%. They then switch to Zath, and take him to 15%. Finally, Lor'Khan is taken to 10%. Rogues need to kick and mages need to silence to avoid him healing, and making this a longer fight, and a potential wipe.

By this time, Thekal and Zath will be at around 10% as well. Then all that is needed is to kill all three in quick succession. It is recommended that most of the DPS kills Lor'Khan, and a few of the ranged start to kill Zath. As Lor'Khan gets lower, more of the DPS can move on to Thekal and Zath, but the Rogues must stay until Lor'Khan dies, since a Heal at any point will mean everyone has to either get back on Lor'Khan, or run out and start again. Once Lor'Khan dies, the Rogues and other melee can move on to Thekal, whilst the ranged finish off Zath.

An alternate strategy is to simply split into three groups and try to keep the DPS even all the way down, but this can be easily ruined by a single heal from Lor'Khan. By having Thekal and Zath at 15-10%, the Tanks can simply stand there and take a beating, getting healed, until Lor'Khan is ready to be killed. This strategy is more forgiving of lag, mistakes, and mistimed kicks/silences.

Another finishing off strategy is once you have them down around 10 percent health bring all 3 together and AOE as much as possible. This is an easy way to kill them all at the same time. From the time of the first death, you have about 10 seconds before they start resurrecting.

Some more info! As Zealot Lor'Khan can be stunned it really helps the healers out on conserving mana. You assign one healer for the tank with Lor'Khan. 2 healers on Zealot Zath's tank, and 3 healers on Thekal's tank. This worked for us and we didn't go out of mana by the time we pulled em all together and AoE'd em down when they were all low percent. The rogues chain stunning Lor'Khan is also good for kicking to interrupt the heals she can cast. In any case she does get a heal off during the AoEing, just have all single target DPS focus on her.

During phase 2 We pulled Thekal to the right side near where we tanked Zealot Lor'khan and had the rest of the raid on the other side where Zealot Zath is tanked. We then have 2 mages polying the tigers as they come in. All extra melee DPS is tasked with breaking a poly of one of the tigers (hibernate and cheap shot work on these tigers also) and DPSing down these tigers down one at a time. Meanwhile, all ranged DPS focus on Thekal and you'll have two tanks for Thekal. Once Thekal does his AoE punch he'll lose aggro on the main tank. That's where the 2nd tank intercepts and brings him to his tanking spot. The old tank then takes his place for intercept *away* from the punch standing toward the middle. Note: It's a good idea to keep the tank in between the majority of the raid and the boss or else the punch will hit them as well.

Alternate Phase 2 Strategy: Since the AoE stomp is nearly unavoidable, it can help to have the whole raid run up into the small alcove where Thekal and his guards started before the encounter. The MT and melee fight Thekal against one wall while the OT, healers, and ranged DPS stand against the other. When he unleashes the AoE attack, the walls allow everyone to quickly recover and prevents the raid from being scattered about on the battlefield. Everyone's close proximity also allows for extremely quick disposal of tiger adds.

A variation on the above which we've found to work well is to AoE the three down from 10% in the small alcove in front of the cage, then tanking Thekal in the niche to the left facing the cage, and having the ranged in the cage. Ranged takes tigers, melee's behind Thekal, the tank doesn't go anywhere if there's a knockback, ranged can get out of LoS to bandage, and, if there's a random charge, an offtank in the cage's mouth can deal with it straight away.

Soloing
For a player of level 80, soloing this boss can be done and this boss is often farmed for its rare Swift Zulian Tiger drop. Tank classes such as feral druids, protection paladins, protection warriors or frost death knights will have a much easier time dealing with the damage the boss and his adds spit out.

The main thing to think about when soloing the boss is that Zealots and the boss need to die at almost the same time - when any of the humanoids die there is a grace period of around 10 seconds, then one of the remaining humanoids will cast resurrect on the dead humanoid, bringing it back to life with full health.

Aside from resurrection, Zealot Lor'Khan will also cast Greater Heal on any of the other adds, decided by which has the lowest percentage of their maximum HP left. Interrupting the heal will make the fight very much easier.

High Priest Thekal will also cast silence on the player every 15 seconds or so, preventing spellcasting for 6 seconds. This means that protection paladins will have a much harder time interrupting Zealot Lor'khan's heal, compared to the other tank classes.

Keeping the tiger adds alive is a viable strategy, as they will receive heals from Zealot Lor'Khan. This means that if the tigers' health percentage is constantly kept lower than the humanoids, only the tigers will receive healing. If a tiger should die it will not be resurrected.

When the player kills the humanoid adds within 10 seconds of each other, High Priest Thekal will resurrect in his Tiger form, in which the fight gets much easier to solo. He will continually spawn tiger adds, but they're easily killable and do little damage. Just worry about killing the boss.

As a protection paladin
Because of High Priest Thekal's Silence spell, protection paladins have a harder time soloing this boss, but it's still doable.

The easiest way to do this is to keep the tiger adds alive for as long as possible. Use AoE spells such as Consecration, Hammer of the Righteous, Holy Shield and Avenger's Shield to burn down all enemies' HP quickly, then don't touch the tigers when their HP reaches around 1000. Putting focus on one of the tigers to keep track of their HP is a good idea. When any of the tigers have low HP, only use single-target abilities on your target to make sure it doesn't die, as they are not resurrected. When Zealot Lor'Khan decides to cast Greater Heal, one of the tigers will be healed, provided their health percentage is lower than any of the humanoids. When any of the tigers is healed you should DPS it down to around 1000 HP again, to make sure it's ready to receive another heal.

If you do kill the tigers, Zealot Lor'Khan's Greater Heal will need to be interrupted as often as possible. Because of this, High Priest Thekal's silence becomes very annoying. A small amount of luck will be required in order to time Hammer of Justice between Silences to interrupt Greater Heals. Make sure the humanoids' HP goes down at about the same rate - if any of them receive Greater Heal, just focus on in until it's at the same percentage of HP as the other adds.

When all adds are at around 5000 HP, finish off Zealot Lor'Khan and then kill Zealot Zath and High Priest Thekal as soon as possible. Hammer of Justice comes in handy when finishing them off.

As a Shadowpriest
Soloing Thekal and his minions was possible pre-patch 4.0.1 - post patch 4.0.1 it is considerably easier. Certain glyph and talent choices can also make this fight considerably simpler.

As Inner Fire no longer has charges and remains applied throughout the fight, the extra armour it gives is extremely useful and significantly reduces the incoming damage. Glyph of Inner Fire should therefore be used if possible. In addition, the Glyph of Power Word: Shield is beneficial as it will heal 20% of any damage taken - this fight relies on constant shielding and running while silenced so any healing that doesn't rely on casting is crucial. Finally, taking the Silence talented spell can shorten the duration of this fight although it is by no means necessary.

To begin, clear the entire area of all Axe Throwers and tigers paying particular attention to apply all DoTs to the Axe Throwers - although it's possible to DPS them all down before an axe flurry, you really don't want to be caught in a Flurry without DoTs still ticking on them. If 2 or more Throwers manage to chain Flurry then you will probably wipe.

In addition, make sure you kill both of the Berserker trolls who patrol near the entrance, for reasons I will discuss later.

Start the fight by focus targetting Lor'Khan (to make silencing easier), then pre-cast Prayer of Mending, Renew and Power Word: Shield. Open by applying Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain (SW:P) to all named mobs and Shadow Word: Pain on the tigers. The trick for this fight is to keep moving in a loose circle around the centre of the room, reapply DoTs whenever possible to keep their health ticking down, but more importantly making sure you apply Shields, Renews and Prayer of Mending whenever they drop off. As the Shadowy Apparitions added in 4.0.1 proc more frequently when moving, we are using SW:P to ensure all three mobs are killed simultaneously while mitigating the fact we will spend the majority of this fight silenced.

When Lor'Khan tries to heal, silence her - she will inevitably get many heals off over the course of the fight due to the cooldown on Silence, but it can help in shortening the duration. If you do not have Silence, or are silenced yourself during a heal, then to counter the increase in health on one of the boss mobs, apply Devouring Plague to that mob. The extra damage from DP, in conjunction with SW:P should see the heal countered relatively quickly. Although it's possible to recast Vampiric Touch when it drops off, because we need to kill all mobs at the same rate it's usually impractical to expect to cast it on all three before being interrupted/silenced and we certainly don't one to die faster than the others. Casting SW:P repeatedly and kiting in small circles, so your Shadowy Apparitions keep up, is the key to success.

In particular, more so than DPS, staying alive and above 75% is the key as with some unlucky silence chains you can lose a lot of health very quickly. Indeed, it's entirely likely you will need to spend the bulk of the fight out of shadowform to ensure you can Renew and Prayer of Mending yourself. Provided you have the patience to reapply DoTs and keep yourself above 75% health, the fight should only last 5 – 10 minutes.

Invariably, you may on occasion need to reset the encounter. To do this, simply run out of Thekal's area towards the river - this is why we kill the Berserker Trolls - and Hakkar will yell a warning, resetting the encounter. Please note, this reset has been known to bug so the occasional corpse run might be unavoidable.

Loot
Like Bloodlord Mandokir, Thekal drops a very rare epic mount called the Swift Zulian Tiger. It is rideable by both Alliance and Horde players, and for Horde players it is nearly the only possibility for obtainining a tiger mount, besides the Spectral Tiger obtained through the TCG. The mount has a drop rate of only .58%.

Quotes
Phase 2: Death:
 * Shirvallah, fill me with your RAGE!
 * Hakkar binds me no more! Peace at last!