The Black Stalker

The Black Stalker is the final boss of The Underbog wing in Coilfang Reservoir.

The Black Stalker is called "Schattenmutter" in the German client, which translates to Shadow Mother. Therefore it is assumed to be female. Also, the quest refers to her as "the great mother of the marsh walkers".

Attacks and Abilities

 * Static Charge: This ability does 750 nature damage per second for 10 seconds and is not dispellable. This effect is similar to the Treacherous Aura placed on players by the Omor in ramparts. As long as the party spreads out you can minimize the damage that this debuff causes to the party as a whole and the healer can usually heal the debuffed player and the tank through it. (Vanity/noncombat pets should be dismissed before the fight, as she can place a static charge on them as well)
 * Chain Lightning This ability takes her three seconds to cast and hits the target for 2000. It then spreads to nearby players, with the damage falling by approximately half each time.
 * Levitate: This effect brings a player in the air and when it wears off, a debuff will come on(Suspension)which lasts 20 seconds. However, it is dispellable. Players with ranged attacks can still attack the boss in mid air. Healers can be (but usually aren't) lifted high enough that the tank is out of range of heals.
 * Spore Strider Adds (Heroic only): Throughout the fight, the Black Stalker will spawn sets of three ~5000 HP adds every 10–15 seconds that will cast 1000 nature damage lightning bolts at targets. These adds are immune to fear.

Strategies
Like most other bosses in The Underbog, The Black Stalker does not have a lot of health, but hits hard. A good balanced group is advised, especially at lower levels. The chain lightning effect is similar to that of Venoxis in ZG, so try to spread out to minimize this effect.

Tank- Tank her in the center of the room with the rest of party at max range. Turn her either to the left or right, so melee can stand in her back to avoid the Chain Lightning, and be still in heal range.

Healers- The Black Stalker hits hard. Keep the tank near full health. As mentioned above, the chain lightning effect can end up hitting the tank multiple times. This on top of the static charge effect can drop any where from a quarter to half of your tank's health. Try to stay at max healing range. You will also be trying to balance your time between healing and dispelling the levitate. It helps to have either a back up healer, or a back up "cleanser" (priest/pally) to worry about dispelling the levitate.

Melee- Positioning yourself on the opposite site of the tank, you can avoid being hit by the Chain Lightning. Most important is keep an eye on the enemy cast bar. Chain lightning has a long casting time (approx 3 sec). There is time to run out of range during the Chain Lightning cast even if you are a bit laggy.

Levitate information

 * Priests, paladins, or a warlock's felhunter can dispel this effect.
 * Mages can blink to escape.
 * Whilst traveling, only instant spells can be cast.
 * When fully levitated, all spells can be cast.
 * Healers will sometimes be out of range to heal some party members when fully levitated.
 * Ranged attackers will sometimes be out of range to hit the Black Stalker when fully levitated.
 * Standing under one of the small mushrooms near the walls can completely prevent the Levitation effect.
 * It is usually the second person on threat list that gets levitated. Some groups have tried a tactic where there is a second tank gaining threat to prevent healers and vulnerable cloth wearers from being affected.
 * Priests can try to use their Levitate spell and try to stay second on the threat list. The Levitate spell will keep them from taking fall damage and will only have to worry about dispelling the effect on themselves.
 * A suggested way to keep the healer from being levitated is to stand slightly around the corner out of sight from the Black Stalker, but still in line of sight of the party in order to heal.
 * After being dispelled/cleansed it is possible to be levitated again even before you hit the ground. This can happen 3 or 4 times in a row.
 * If the healer is levitated, it may be better to adjust everyone else within 40 yards of him/her, rather than dispelling it. Levitate by itself does no damage, and once the healer is levitated they are relatively safe from chain lightning, static charge, and melee attacks - while no other party members can be levitated until the effect ends.  When the effect ends, priests can levitate, mages can Slow Fall, and druids can shift into cat form to avoid heavy fall damage.
 * As a Feral Druid you can trigger Feral charge as you start levitating, and it will bring you back to the boss and keep your aggro.

Heroic
Spawns several non-elite mobs with 5,000 health every 10 seconds which cast lightning bolts for about 600 - 800 nature damage. It is suggested you simply burn the boss as the adds despawn when the boss is downed.

Tanking the boss inside the alcove near the entrance to the Black Stalker's room will reduce the number of adds spawned during combat.

If healing is a problem, the adds can be killed by a single damage dealer at their spawn rate.

Adds

The adds in heroic mode are the only things that seem to bring about a wipe on this boss. The spawn rate can sometimes seem like a lot faster than every 10 seconds and then in other encounters the adds hardly materialise at all. Generally there will be 3 or 4 adds at once and they can be burned very quickly with decent dps or ignored completely if they spawn towards the end of the encounter. Occasionally you will quickly seem surrounded by adds and have 8 or 9 in the room as well as the boss. This seems to be completely random. Their attacks generally do very limited damage on mail armour, between 500-750 damage every 3 or 4 seconds. As they only have around 5,000 health, they can be 2 or 3-shot killed by most dps at this level. When you have a room full of the adds it can become problematic as their attacks interrupt the casting time on abilities such as Aimed Shot and Steady Shot - this obviously makes burning them quickly more difficult. What would otherwise be an almost straight forward tank and spank encounter can quickly become a wipe. If the adds become overwhelming, run around the corner and reset the encounter - beware that unlike the Black Stalker, the adds will follow for a short distance beyond the reset point. (Netherstorm Pride [Sporeggar])

Resets and resurrecting group members
This boss may be reset by running out of her room. While not in combat, she moves around the room, so be careful when trying to resurrect fallen comrades. If you do pull her while resurrecting, you can always run out to reset her and try again. It is also possible for the boss to reset in the middle of a fight unintentionally, restoring the boss to full health and dropping the threat list. This usually happens when all DPS is ranged and stands near the entrance to the room, and the tank gets levitated out of range. When this happens it is best to have the whole group run out of range, re-buff and get mana to full before trying again.