Talk:Lord Valthalak

Anyone know some lore on this guy? There seems to be a huge quest chain behind him. -User:Tinkerer

Lord Valthalak's Chain Lightning is NOT mana dependent.

He does it wether he's at full mana, 12 mana or 0 mana.

No point with viper sting/mana drain. The only way to avoid it is to stay far away from him. -- Xakor


 * Well mana drain does work for us. This spell is pretty much a copy from Venoxis's Holy Wrath, which can be avoided by mana drain too. -- Alassius 11:51, 19 June 2006 (EDT)

Cleaned up the whole article. All four "strategies" were little more than personal accounts usually repeating the same(or conflicting) information over and over. I've rolled all the relevant information from each post into bullets within their respective ability/phase sections. Stories are great for forum reading, but simple hard facts and tactics are more appropriate for Wiki. I've fought him a few dozen times, but as is clear from the differing stories it can be hard to obtain solid data on him during the fight. I definitely agree with the heal being separate from the Shadow Wrath, but there being a mana drain component is unknown to me personally so I've left it up until someone wants to prove otherwise. I also added more links to loot, since the staff and shield are definitely noteworthy(for looks and uniqueness, respectively). -- Sanctus 15:47, 22 August 2006 (EDT)

As of last patch, his heal cannot be interupted.

Living Action Potions
Does anyone know if a Living Action Potion or a Free Action Potion will break Lord Val's minion's Stun-ray of Death? - Free action potions do not work.

Priest "shackle" ability breaks stun We got Lord Val down to 12% before we had to call it. But we made a neat discovery: Shackle will break the stunlock. You may wanna try it, see if it works better. Helps to have two priests alternating or concentrating on shackling/healing

I do not know about those potions though I am an alchemist and will try both next time I am there. I did however make an interesting discovery. Target Dummies and Thornling Seeds are both acceptable targets for the Shades to attempt to kill. Since not everyone is an engineer, I recommend a little Dire Maul west and north sides farming. If everyone in the party drops one before the pull, you will have 10 extra targets by the healers and casters, leaving a good chance that those people will not be stunned and be able to continue their jobs or kill the shades easier. The Thornling Seeds have a 15 min cooldown, so use them on an attempt you expect to be successful, but they last much longer in duration than Target Dummies.
 * CANNON FODDER **

Wyntera, Dragonmaw...9:34am PST Oct 4, 2006

Redundancy
AssKicR's edit was extremely anecdotal, faction specific, unnessicary, and ridiculously redundant. In fact, it nearly restates the top half of the article. It also makes it much, much more confusing. In addition, it had some broken English making it slightly more incomprehensible.

I also made a minor edit to the line about his chaining shadow wrath, and noted that it heals him, as not only is that important, but for some, including people I know, its not immediately obvious that the chains equate to his healing too

Mana drain
have a warlock mana drain him, and he suddenly becomes a LOT easier. 18:08, 22 December 2006 (EST)

Ability Corrections
There are several large mistakes in describing Valthalak's abilities. Having defeated him tonight and run a full combat log parse, I present my findings below.

Shadow Wrath


 * The initial hit does 500 damage, rather than 750.
 * Each bounce adds 50% damage, not 100%.
 * The first hit is always on the player who has aggro (ie the tank).
 * Instacast, cannot be interrupted.
 * Full details:

Shadow Staff

In phases 2 and 3, Valthalak's autoattack does not change. The extra damage comes from an ability called Shadow Staff:


 * AOE that hits all players within 10 yards of Valthalak.
 * Hits for around 1400 shadow damage.
 * Cast every 2.5 seconds.
 * Instacast, cannot be interrupted.
 * Full details:

Energy Siphon

This is the Valthalak's heal. I do not fully understand the mechanic, but it does not appear to be related to Shadow Wrath.


 * Instacast, cannot be interrupted.
 * Cast every 13 seconds.
 * Heals for 10,000 damage (most of the time?).

However, once or twice Energy Siphon healed for 0, and one other time it healed for 2230. I found no correlation between Shadow Wrath and Energy Siphon. Perhaps, like Lethon's shades and Spectral Researcher's projections, it has to do with how quickly the Spectral Assassins are killed.

Strategy

In light of the above information, I present the following strategy, which is similar to the Blackstar Triangle of Doom.


 * 1) Bring no melee dps.
 * 2) * Shadow Wrath can be avoided, with careful positioning. But Shadow Staff makes melee dps completely unviable.
 * 3) Have the raid stand together, except for the tank.
 * 4) * This means the Spectral Assassins will be easier to target, but Shadow Wrath will still be avoided.
 * 5) Don't bother trying to interrupt Valthalak, since all his abilities are instacast.
 * 6) Don't bother trying to mana drain Valthalak.
 * 7) * Shadow Wrath is the only ability that takes mana, but it will only ever hit the tank and makes up a small fraction of Valthalak's dps.
 * 8) Finally, although this is only speculation, it may be worth trying to outrange the Shadow Bolt Volley by standing at maximum healing or casting range.

Lukon