Hakkar (tactics)

Hakkar, the Soulflayer, is the last boss of Zul'Gurub.

Abilities

 * Corrupted Blood: 875-1125 direct shadow damage plus a 200 every 2 seconds shadow DOT that hits a player and several players around. Corrupted Blood in its previous state has become well known due to the small scale epidemic it caused. Hunters and warlocks were able to infect their pets, dismiss them and call them outside the instance, thus releasing the disease to the outside world. Thousands of players (especially low leveled) were killed by this disease, and players had to flee to unpopulated areas to prevent infection. Soon, Blizzard had to reset all the servers to balance the system again.
 * Blood Siphon: Every 90 seconds from the time that Hakkar is pulled he will cast Blood Siphon on the entire raid. In its base state this is a 8 second channeled drain that deals 200 damage per second, stuns, and heals Hakkar for 1000 health per second. However, if the player has been infected with Poisonous Blood (released as a cloud around the corpse of a Son of Hakkar) then the Blood Siphon changes its effect. The stun remains but it now does 200 damage per second to Hakkar. Blood Siphon will appear as a debuff for each person affected. The number of these debuffs will remove nearly all existing ones.
 * Cause Insanity: A 10 second non-dispellable mind control with a 150% movement and 100% attack speed increase, this is cast approximately every 10 to 15 seconds on the person currently highest on the aggro list. While mind controlled, the person temporarily loses aggro - however he will re-gain aggro once mind control expires.


 * Enrage: After fighting for 10 minutes or at 5% health, Hakkar enrages, greatly increasing his damage output. This ability will generally wipe the raid. He will hit a Tier 1 plate warrior for a 7500 crushing blow. Hakkar's enrage does not seem to affect his defense, so he can still be killed if enough damage can be done to him before he kills everyone.
 * Will of Hakkar: Takes control of a humanoid enemy up to level 65 for 20 sec.

If the High Priests around Zul'Gurub are not killed before Hakkar, then he is granted several powerful abilities which combine to make the fight near impossible. In addition, he gains approximately 50,000 health per priest that remains alive.
 * High Priestess Jeklik (Bat Aspect) - 1200-2000 AoE damage + 8s silence.
 * High Priest Venoxis (Snake Aspect) - 800 damage poison to the raid.
 * High Priestess Mar'li (Spider Aspect) - 6 second stun against current aggro holder. (Prior to patch 1.12, there was additionally a complete aggro reset).
 * High Priest Thekal (Tiger Aspect) - Frenzy, increasing attack speed by 150%.
 * High Priestess Arlokk (Panther Aspect) - 2 second gouge (aggro wipes the main tank)

Strategy


The fight revolves around the Blood Siphon. You need to ensure that the entire raid is poisoned by a Son of Hakkar's poison cloud before each Siphon. To enable this, you will need one person to pull a fast re-spawning Son from the left and right platforms to the raid so it can be killed. The entire raid should get the poison from the ensuing cloud while ensuring that the entire raid is not poisoned for too long, due to the damage caused. There are two common strategies for this.
 * 1) Using a hunter or mage to pull a Son a few seconds before the Siphon, then the raid kill this as soon as it arrives and gets the poison.
 * 2) Using a hunter to pull a Son immediately after a Siphon (or prior to starting the fight) then to have this Son sheeped or hibernated near to the raid and killed several seconds before the Siphon is due. The Siphon process will remove the poison, so it is possible to keep the damage from the poison to a minimum if the Son is killed only very shortly before siphoning. It is important to pull a new son only AFTER the siphoning, if pulled before there is a risk of it unsheeping during the Siphon while everyone is defenseless.

Hakkar himself needs to be held by 2 or 3 tanks due to him Mind Controlling the current tank, which will cause him to switch to next person on the aggro list. Hakkar's Mind Control is technically considered to be a Charm effect, so druid tanks are not immune to it. When a tank is Mind Controlled, he should be sheeped by a mage to prevent him causing too much damage to the raid. This sheep should be dispelled when Mind Control fades. Additionally, due to this Mind Control it is necessary to have warriors burn their Intimidating Shout as soon as it cools down to prevent the raid being feared. Hakkar will also frequently spit Corrupted Blood at members of the raid, dealing a large amount of shadow damage. Spreading the raid to limit the number of people who can be hit can help but also causes problems collapsing back to receive the poison. The best strategy is to keep the priests in the center rear, so they don't have to move around to get the poison, and spread the ranged DPS out to both sides, and closer to Hakkar. As with many boss fights, limiting the damage the AoE attack does it crucial. The Corrupted Blood attack does about 2000 points of damage to a player in total, and if 15 people get corrupted this means a total of 15,000-30,000 HP (depending on how fast it gets cleansed) which need to be healed. Since this happens every 20–30 seconds, this puts a massive load on the healers.

The fight itself requires relatively little DPS, although there is a 10 min Enrage. Hakkar has about 745804 HP. He will do around 1/4 of the damage himself via Blood Siphon assuming everyone in the raid gets the Poisonous Blood each Siphon. As a worst case scenario no more than 3 people can be without the poison, or Hakkar will heal each Siphon.

This goes without saying, but if at any time you're left with one tank, and the boss isn't at very low HP, a wipe is inevitable. Reset by running down the stairs. Hakkar's the first boss you'll come across that's untauntable, therefore it's impossible for a just-ressed tank to gain enough aggro to tank him - and, of course, he hits hard enough to make healing any randoms that get aggro during mind control into a nightmare. In order to prevent tank death, it is advisable to have at least 6 main healers in the raid. The majority of failures on Hakkar happen because of tank death.

Note that Hakkar can be reset by pulling him down the stairs.

Mage sheeping of Mind Controlled tanks
Targets both Main Tanks and sheeps which ever is Mind Controlled.

/tar MT1 /cast [harm] Polymorph(Rank 1) /tar MT2 /cast [harm] Polymorph(Rank 1)

Place the names of your 2 tanks in for "MT1" and "MT2" (if you have more than 2 tanks then add additional lines for them)

Priest/Paladin dispel of sheeped tanks
This must be pressed twice. Once before the sheep breaks, and once after.

NOTE: <> <> /cast [target=focus,exists,help] Dispel Magic /clearfocus [target=focus,exists,help] /tar MT1 /focus [harm] /tar MT2 /focus [harm]

If you are a paladin, replace "Dispel Magic" with "Cleanse" and it will work.

Again, place the names of your MTs in there, and add additional lines if you have additional MTs.

At level 70
It's possible, with a small raid and high DPS, to DPS through his Blood Siphon without the need for poisoning the raid. However, this does make the fight much more difficult.

At level 80
A small team of moderately-geared characters can rather easily kill a full-strength Hakkar (without killing any other bosses).

A feral druid can easily solo this by hunkering down in Bear Form and keeping a steady Rejuvenation to heal themselves. This was done after soloing the 5 "main" bosses in ZG. Warrior in passive unhittable set can solo this without a problem. Also a Death Knight, Paladin or Shaman can solo it with Death Strike and self healing. Though, you have to have the damage to get him down before 10min enrage or you will die and it does take about 8-10mins to solo him. It will only take you about 4mins in current high end PVE gear.

Warlocks and Hunters, while able to be mind controlled, can still solo this boss. The Mind Control effect causes the afflicted target to use low-end spells, meaning that a MC'ed Warlock/Hunter will not kill their pet during a full duration MC and can therefore heal their pets up between MCs. It's highly suggested for a Warlock to use a passive, Phase-Shifted Imp during this fight, as they will still gain Soul Link (but they will not be Mind Controlled as long as the Imp stays phased).

Tip for DK's - Make sure you aren't spec'd for Bloodworms, and make sure you don't use a ghoul or Army of the Dead while fighting Hakkar. If you are the only one fighting Hakkar he wont use his MC ability. If Bloodworms or a ghoul is active, he WILL use his MC, and you will kill it(them) before the duration of the MC is up, thus causing him to reset, and fully heal.

Quotes

 * First player enters in Zul'Gurub
 * yell


 * First player steps on the Altar of Blood
 * yell


 * Aggro
 * yell


 * Mind control a player
 * yell