The Lurker Below

The Basics

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This section contains a basic outline of the fight, and is a must read for everyone, as it contains information you need to know so as not to wipe the raid. If you are interested in knowing the why of the instructions here, or in improving your individual performance, the details are available below.

The Lurker Below is a two phase fight which alternates between DPS'ing him, and killing some adds when he dives. The first phase lasts two minutes, the second one minute. This fight requires one main tank, and four offtanks for adds.

Once all of Lurker's trash has been killed, the water "boils" which kills the nasty fish which had previously been in it, and causes 500 damage every 3 seconds to those in it.

Lurker is pulled by fishing him up, so bring your fishing pole! Once he is fished up, he prox aggros on someone in melee distance at random, we need this to be the main tank, so make sure you fish from the outer edge of the platform. The way the pull is structured, threat can be a little weak in the beginning so mind your threatmeter if you are melee. Lurker can't leave the center pool, and can't attack at range unless there is no one in melee distance, so ranged dps has no threat worries at all on him.

DPS is subject to random damage from two sources, the Whirl and the Geyser. The Whirl hits everybody in melee distance knocking them back, he can whirl around once or twice each time. The Geyser hits people at range, doing damage and knocking back the person targetted and anyone nearby.

He also uses his Water Spout (on a 45 second cooldown, but he doesn't necessarily use it at that time), which is a blast of water which does a lot of damage, and will send you flying a long distance. The Spout always starts where his aggro target (the MT hopefully) is and he turns slowly either clockwise or counterclockwise for a full turn plus about 30 degrees. In order to avoid the spout, you have to be in the water. Your number one priority during spout is not to get hit by it. If you get hit by it you waited too long to get in the water, or you weren't under far enough.

After two minutes, Lurker will dive, and nine adds will spawn, six Coilfang Ambushers, two on each of the three outer islands, and three Coilfang Guardians who will swim into the main island. Three of the OT's will go out to the islands to deal with the Ambushers there, the MT and remaining OT will each pick up a Guardian, and the third Guardian will be sheeped.

Ranged DPS will kill the Ambushers, and melee DPS will kill the Guardians. The Ambushers have a lot less life, and so ranged DPS will probably finish up first, and can help DPS on the Guardians if they can reach them. Our usual OT for the Guardians is a paladin, who will break the sheep on the third Guardian at the appropriate time, it must not be resheeped or otherwise messed with until it reaches the tank.

When the Guardians swim onto the center island, they are not attackable for the first few seconds, then they prox aggro on whoever is closest. If someone on one of the outer islands gets aggro on them before a tank can whack them, they will teleport to that person and own them hard, and then usually teleport to a healer and nail them. If you are on an outer island, you must sit on your hands and not do anything until the mobs have finished swimming in and are picked up by their tanks.

After one minute, Lurker will reemerge, and immediately start a Spout, be prepared for it. He wipes all debuffs when he dives, so they will have to be reapplied.

The Details

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The Lurker Below:

Health: 3.8 million
Enrage timer: Apparently none
Base damage: 3.7K to 4K physical damage every 2 seconds on tank class armor
Immunities: All crowd control
Special abilities:

Coilfang Guardian:

Health: 70,000
Base damage: 2.8K on tank class plate
Immunities: None
Special abilities:

Coilfang Ambusher:

Health: 26,000
Base damage: melee or bow shot, about 1.2K to 1.5K on decent tank armor
Immunities: None
Special abilities:
"OMG, this naga just teleported on me and killed me! Why?" The Coilfang Guardians will teleport to whoever they have aggro on if they are not on the same island. How do you get aggro? The tanks can't attack the Guardians for a few seconds after they reach the center island, so if you do something that generates AoE threat and you are on one of the outer islands, you can very easily end up getting your butt kicked. What generates AoE threat? A surprising number of things:

Healing (including bandaging and using health pots)
Rage gains/energy gains/mana gains other than the usual do damage/take damage, usual energy tick, or spirit based or mp5 based mana gains (using rage pots, mana pots, mana gems, bloodrage, a feral druid shapeshifting with furor, thistle tea, etc)
Buffing (things like pally blessings, MotW, Fort, etc.)
Short lived buffs like PoM, clearcast, Nature's Swiftness, although the amount of threat from these is very small and will never outthreat even a renew ticking

For this reason we don't put healers on the outer islands.

"I'm melee DPS and the Guardian killed me!" They have a frontal AoE cleave called Arcing Smash. The tanks do their best to get them positioned together so that DPS can be behind both being DPS'd, but because they are coming from opposite directions, it requires one tank to run through and then back to get the Guardian turned around. Be patient and wait until both are facing properly.

"I swear I was in the water, and still got hit by spout!" There are two reasons this could be. Due to latency, the synchronization of where you are and where the spout is can be somewhat different on the server and where it shows on your screen. Don't try to cut things close, either getting in the water or getting out. The other issue is that some character models have their "center point" higher than others, and you may have to be well under the water to not get hit.

"Help, I fell in the water and can't get out." Before the pull, practice getting out of the water. Ask others who stand near where you usually do to show you good spots where it is easier to get out.

"I swear this water damage ticks faster than every 3 seconds." Stop jumping unnecessarily. You take damage everytime you jump.

"Why is the tank in the water?" If the tank is on the platform, when Lurker double whirls, the tank is likely to be knocked out of melee distance, at which point Lurker will have some melee DPS for lunch.

"Why is the tank's threat so weak at the start? Do we just have a sucky tank?" Because Lurker gets fished up at a random time, the tank has none of the usual lead up/prep time on the pull to get the skills in place needed to not get crushed into a fine red mist right off the start, and because the tank is in the water, the hunters have no line of sight to misdirect. The tank has to Bloodrage immediately when Lurker is summoned, and get Shield Block and Commanding Shout up with that initial rage. The remaining rage on Bloodrage comes in over 10 seconds, so Lurker has to actually hit the tank before the tank can use any threat generating skills, and a parry/dodge/miss string can leave the tank with no rage to do that.

"I see some of the melee DPS running around Lurker during the spout. Should I do that?" You can DPS Lurker just fine in the water if you jump into the center pool, they do that because they want to stay at Lurker's back for maximal DPS. If you are new to this fight, I recommend just jumping into the water until you get comfortable with the fight and the timing, and then you can try it out. Be aware that Lurker turns more than a 360 circle though. Remember, your priority on spouts is not to get hit, dead DPS does no DPS.

"When should I use cooldowns for more DPS?" Aside from rogues using Blade Flurry on the Guardians, damage cooldowns should be kept in case some DPS get themselves killed, and then used on the adds during the dive phase to make up the missing DPS. Lurker himself hsa no enrage timer, but the adds represent a kind of soft enrage timer, in that if you don't have the DPS to get them down you are likely to wipe.