This is the third installment of my Pimp Your Druid series of posts. This will focus on High Priest Thekal and how to solo him for your very own Swift Zulian Tiger from Zul`Gurub. In regards to difficulty, he the easier than soloing Anzu or soloing Bloodlord Mandokir and is manageable with any level of gear.
Prerequisite
- The only firm requirement for this is that you must be in a raid to enter Zul`Gurub. Find a free friend and create a raid.
- While you don’t have to be level 80, it definitely helps to make things easier and faster
What gear do I need?
- Personally, I wear as much stam as possible, with no buffs aside from Mark of the Wild and Thorns
- If you are worried about your gear, try entering battlegrounds to get some buffs/food first, before starting your run
Getting There/Clearing Trash
- As this is a level 60 instance, you can literally mount up and run past everything.
- Kill the packs in the immediate area of Thekal to be safe. Kill the Gurubashi Axe Throwers first as they are a pain in the ass
How to Solo High Priest Thekal
High Priest Thekal, Zealot Zath, Zealot Lor'Khan and 2 Tigers
The basic mechanics of the fight are as follows. High Priest Thekal is surrounded by 4 adds to start. There are two tigers which can be killed quickly and two followers Zealot Zath and Zealot Lor’Khan. During the fight both Zealots will aid the High Priest with their own set of abilities. In order to kill the High Priest, all 3 must be killed at the same time. The abilities to note are Zath heals his allies while Lor’Khan occasionally gouges you so that you can’t interrupt Zath’s heal. To interrupt you can either do it in one of two ways, you can either tab target and hit your interrupt or you can use a macro which works as well with a bit less effort. The macro to interrupt is as follows, make sure that you do not include the <> brackets when making your macro.
/cast [target=Zealot Lor'khan] <Your Spell Here>
Slowly but steadily bring down all three targets and interrupt when you can. If you miss an interrupt or if you’ve been gouged, don’t worry it’s not the end of the world. Keep each of the 3 targets around the same percentage as close as possible. The easiest way to see their health at the same time is to turn on name plates. You can do this by hitting Alt +V at the same time. Once you get all 3 to relatively low level (I’d say 10-15% each), pop Berserk and quickly burn all 3 targets down. If you’ve done this correctly then they will all stay down and phase 2 will begin. If you happen to be low (you shouldn’t but just in case) going into phase 2, you do have time to heal yourself. Phase 2 is a complete tank and spank and there is nothing else of not to mention. Thekal will also summon two tigers (similar to the ones in phase 1) that will need to be killed.
Bring them down evenly and pop Berserk to finish them at the same time.
Rawr!
Keep working on it every 3 days and you will be the proud owner of a Tiger. Installment 4 will feature the discussion of how to solo Attumen the Huntsman for a Fiery Warhorse’s Reins!
Just use the exact same strat and it went smooth.
I use feral charge on the healer since the cast is easy to see, you move 10 yards and charge. Berserk is just so cool to burn them down at the end !
Not as lucky as you, but working on it !
I forgot smthg : you don’t have to clean any pack (which can be pain in the ass cause of the stun…) but beware of the bump in P2…
i tried this last night and i totally failed. i dont know if my gear sucks that bad or what but i didnt last a minuite. im duel speced feral and resto main spec resto but i was in my feral spec and gear and it sucked. plz look up my armor in the armory and see if my gear is keeping me back. but i really want to solo this but………..too hard
name:telamichus
server:azshara
Your gear I would say is fine, it may not be the best but it’s still completely doable.
I would suggest that you need to fix your spec, I’m not really sure what that is as it seems a bit off to be honest. Also it would also help to use proper glyphs as well.
If you’re looking for spec suggestions you can pull my spec for a cat spec but if you’re not geared enough you could try and bear spec. Darksend of Blackdragonflight has both cat/bear specs that you could use.
Also if you’re having issues, at least gem your gear! Use some cheap green gems and put some stam gems in. Give that a try and report back if you still need some help!
i want to run heroics and start rolling dps as cat because i always. ALWAYS. heal. so i dont want to spec total bear spec but i can i still get good dps in cat and use your cat spec to run this? thanks for all the tips vallen i love the blog =)
Telamichus, it looks like you’re specced for feral cat DPS? But 3/3 Natural Reaction and 3/3 Protector of the Pack will help immensely.
Also, were you in bear form for it? Pretty much for soloing stuff as feral you have to think like you’re in plate…aka Bear form. With diminishing returns you can’t stack enough dodge for Cat to do it.
yes when i did it i was in bear. i knida figured cat would not be best. thank you for tips and also was my gear reasonably good when u checked? any tips on getting gear. i currently have almost full t9 on resto including the 245 helm but not much feral. i might start dpsing on heroics but ill need gear.
I’ve been soloing this boss for a while, and increasing your movement helps a *lot* to interrupt those heals via feral charge.
I use the 4 piece feral PvP set and a movement speed enchant on my boots, for +24% increased movement, plus a PvP trinket to remove stuns.
What happens is that, some days, you run into a lot of server lag. This causes Lor’khan’s heal cast bar to show up late, in a partially casting state, thus reducing your reaction time. So increasing your own speed helps compensate for the lag.
The PvP trinket is just insurance against getting stunned when you have to interrupt that heal. Again some days, it just seems like you’re always getting stunned at the wrong time.
Finally got my Swift Zulian Tiger! Thanks for the great strats on this and other solo-able bosses. Looking forward to your take on the Hawkstrider. Keep up the good work!
Those in the hunt for this one or the raptor should do it ASAP. Once Neltharion (aka Deathwing) makes his return in Cataclysm ZG is going bye-bye. The fate of these mounts is yet to be determined, but it wouldn’t suprise me if they are no longer available when the Destroyer lays waste to the world as we know it.