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Comment by wye43

When he is pulled, a ring of whirlwinds appear centered on him and with a radius of about 30 yards. Standing in the whirlwinds will cause damage, so all players should get inside of it.

About every 40 seconds, the ring retracts to cover the boss. Either the healer should heal though it or everyone should run out.

Comment by Kopac

The best way to kill this boss is: everyone stuck in middle of the room and do not move healer just AoE heal when the shields are coming to boss and thats it nuke it ...

Comment by BaronYiffington

NORMAL MODE:

Tank and spank. The boss will pull in the tornados around the room to him - whether you stand in them or not doesn't matter, they damage you anyway, so just DPS him down. Healer will need to mostly just spam AoE heals.

Comment by 324473

Just done this on heroic and the best strategy is definitely stack in the middle and heal through - did with a prot pally, resto druid, rogue, lock and mage.

Good luck!

Comment by Valiath

I wonder if he's having a garden party there.

And I wonder how many people here actually got the refference.

Comment by rosescape

Death knights: if you're doing the stacking strategy, you can pop anti-magic shell on his first and third (and fifth...) cyclone shields, and icebound fortitude when shell isn't up. Saves your healer a bit of mana.

Comment by lufia22

I attempted this boss on heroic in a group with two warlocks telling us to run out during the tornados. The healer got overwhelmed every time and was not able to keep up. The locks left and we got two new people. We attempted to stand in the middle, which the locks didn't want to do because supposedly it hurt more, and the boss was cake.

So stand in the middle. It seems like you take significantly less damage if you don't run out.

Comment by 736642

Just tried this with entrylevelgear group. Just stood in middle, restodruid who had many boomkin pieces healed us through is easily. Our hunters weapon broke right away (he forgot to repair after wipe) and we still killed it with 2 DPS doing 9k and hunter pet doing 2k or so.

It's like Loken, but doable without overgearing. I hope they make the proper tactic easier but nerf this "stand and nuke" tactic. It's stupid :)

Comment by 438450

My condolences to the healer in this fight.

Comment by 316344

As a holy paladin, you can use Holy Radiance every single time he pulls the tornadoes in. This makes the stack-on-the-boss strategy much, much easier.

Comment by HikariOblivion

Soloed as a hunter in a 7/31/3 solo spec with 334 item level. Sadly, only to realise Altairus is almost impossible to solo currently. Chimera shot at 101k HP was able to heal through the damage dealt by this boss.

Comment by morgasaurus

This is one of the few situations where keyboard turning is useful: Since healers do not have to face their target to heal them, just continually keyboard turn while healing. This will cause you to face all the Lurking Tempests as you turn around knocking them back down to control some of the damage later in the fight especially if DPS is low.

Comment by whatyouare

No one is really commenting on the cyclone shield. It gives a 60/85% movement/attack speed debuff. How exactly is this supposed to be avoided by stacking in the middle? The group I was just with used the stack method and I got this debuff every time the cyclone's came in.

Comment by 758971

Solo'd on normal as a 334 iLevel BM Hunter on normal mode. I used aspect of the wild, a spirit beast specced with Lick Your Wounds and Great Stamina/Natural Armor.

With Aspect of the Wild+Drums of Forgotten Kings+Flask of Blinding Light and a Spirit Mend macro I was able to stay above 75% the entire fight while keeping my pet alive solely with mend pet. T5 2pc was not needed.

Why would you want to solo this guy? So you can ~~attempt to~~ solo Altairus, on normal, for the mount ~~(but it does not look like Altairus is soloable yet for Hunters)~~

Edit: This guy is a piece of cake in any hunter spec actually. And Altairus is very soloable for Hunters (check the Reins of the Drake of the North Wind thread).

Comment by 293216

It appears you no longer have to navigate your way through the tornadoes anymore despite what the above strat says. Someone had the nerve to call me a retard for doing so.

Comment by Ghaleon

This fight is being buffed in the upcoming patch 4.0.6 to require that all players navigate their way through the cyclones as they are pulled into the boss. The boss now knocks away players who are standing too close to him when he retracts his Cyclone Shield, which now inflicts Nature damage if it touches players.

Technically, this was the intended fight mechanic to begin with, but players were able to circumvent the mechanic by figuring out that you were able to stand inside his hitbox.

Comment by Uchihamen

This one can be very easy, instead of running from the inner circle to the other, during all the fight, just stay in the middle, and stacked with all the party members, of course if you got a good heler..

this is working in 4.0.3, not sure about 4.0.6...

Comment by 430528

In 4.0.6 Ertan will gain a knockback which he will use on those that are too close to him when he pulls in his shield.

Also his shield will do nature damage to those that get hit by tornadoes.

Also Ertan will has slightly less HP

Edit: *looks two posts up* Gah someone beat me to it XD

Comment by whquaint

Warrior tanks remember to hit Spell Reflection every time it's available. Keep it on cooldown.

Comment by 469943

"A vizier is a high-ranking political advisor or minister in a Muslim government." - taken from Wikipedia... interesting.

Comment by 752804

Got this as my random on patch day and the new knockback definitely prevents stacking inside his hit box. Being outside the ring when it's contracted, we all had a constant lightning channel on us. My guild healer who's pretty much heroic geared had some mana issues for the first time in a long time. We tried to line of sight, stacking, and spreading out, and nothing seemed to prevent us all from taking the damage. PUG dps was a little low, but not terrible considering the added movement. I'll be interested to see if other people find it's now tuned higher than a bunch of other bosses in heroics at this point in terms of healing, or if there's some mechanic we were missing.

Comment by 246904

As of patch 4.0.6 you may no longer stack inside the cyclones.

The new strat is to be just outside of them in melee range. =D

Comment by 752161

The best way my guild mates and I have found to do this so far is to let your group get pushed out of the tornados when he summons them to him, then gather up and heal through the lightning spam phase. Have the melee go back in when he pushes them back, being careful not to be hit by the tornados.

Comment by 29036

Well that new knock back surely does add a bit more spice into the mix.

We did it on our second try after realising that you can't all just stack on him.

What you do is have the melee at maximum hit range, so that they are still hitting him. And casters just a bit further back than the melee and just avoid the tornado's when he sends them out and heal through. Rinse and repeat every time he does it.

Comment by Angeldragonn

Just did this on heroic. You must now run out to avoid the tornadoes or else get punted back. Avoid the tornadoes as normal, and the spawned elementals are still trivial.

Comment by 669731

I noticed something that may be a way to avoid lightning damage while the tornadoes are contracted. If you look at the circle of tornadoes around him, there should be a larger gap in one spot, like a tornado is missing (might be a bug, but I don't think so). When the tornadoes contract, if you exit them through this hole and stand just outside the circle exactly in front of this gap you should not take any lightning damage. The spot to stand seemed very small but I was able to stand there and not get hit with lightning. Could someone please confirm this. This was on heroic difficulty, haven't done normal since the patch.

Comment by Nobbel

A video guide on how to solo this instance as a protection paladin on normal:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auNZJ4i3HXU
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGlx3_kFv70

or a quick guide to farm the mount:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6pASZj3Ing

Comment by TurtleTutorial

Since latest update you cannot stand IN the middle and just heal through it.
You HAVE to keep distance during it's retract phase now or it will face-roll you.

Comment by 802668

So I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's had problems healing this, so I've written a few tips that I hope people will find useful. I'm a Restoration Shaman, BTW.

1) Spin around! As a healer, you don't have to be facing your targets. If you spin while all the players are inside the cyclones, your chat frame will fill up with Lurking Tempest feigning death messages. This brings down the healing needed a bit. I just rely on DBM and Healbot to tell me when to move and whom to heal.

2) Ask your team to move in really close during the "step inside" phase. This should make your AoE heals more effective. If I tell my team to do this, I can usually fit everybody inside a Healing Rain. Huge help.

3) Use any abilities you can to lower damage on others. I always drop a grounding totem just before he retracts his cyclones and begins to chain lightning, and I ask any shamans in the group to do likewise. Two shamans and this boss is cake.

4) If you are not a healer, please use abilities that lower damage done to yourself. Power Word: Shield, Mana Shield, Bubble (while not meleeing), Grounding Totem (mentioned earlier), Barkskin, etc. There are probably others but I'm just throwing a few out there.

With proper coordination this boss can be very easy.

Comment by 823100

We did this dg last night. Prot pally, mage, 2 hunters, 1 priest. We wiped 3 times trying to move out of the way when the cyclone shield collapsed. We finally just tried dog-piling in the middle. The cyclone shield kicked us out when it collapsed, but we just ran straight back in. We beat it on the first try with this method. (4.1 patch) I can affirm that this battle is extremely taxing for the healer. Everyone should buff up before pulling.

Comment by Yaminoyugure

I'm wanting to know why wowhead and wowpedia even say this boss is male, when the voice acting is female, dungeon journal says female, and dbm says SHE retracts HER shield. Just curious. Also wanna know why this is downrated?

Comment by NFalcon

Druids,

After farming this instance for the last few days I have some tips for soloing Ertan.

Doing the fight in Resto is the most risk-free method of downing her, but it takes 8-10 minutes to clear and isn't something anyone would enjoy. However, it is there if the other options below don't work for you.

You certainly can pull off the fight in Feral without any resistance gear/flasks, especially if you're geared enough to burst her down before she can kill you, but you're risking a lot to RNG.

I would advise using the Baradin Warden's trinket, Mirror of Broken Images, in conjunction with Sindragosa's Flawless Fang from ICC. One trinket is usually enough, but two makes it easy, because the cooldown on the trinkets are perfectly matched up with this fight, so you can trinket every shield retraction.

Would advise doing the entire fight in bear, and staying in for the shield retractions (at max melee range, to avoid getting knocked back). Prismatic Elixir is also helpful if you are unable to get your hands on the above trinkets; or possibly in conjunction with the above trinkets if you want to make the fight really easy.

The above setup is also good for the following boss, Altairus, because most of his damage is magical as well. However, in that case, any resistance gear is completely unnecessary, as the fight is significantly easier and shouldn't pose any problems to anyone.

Good luck on getting the mount!

Comment by DoraTE

Stack 6 yards from him (use a distance addon, go to 0-5 yards, then move back to 5-10 yards), and DPS away. The tank can taunt from there. When the tornadoes retract, just get the healer to spam chain heal or the equivalent. Also use self heals.

This way there is no knockback, the healer has her workload reduced, and the Vizier is mincemeat.

Easiest cata boss on normal.

Comment by Esploratore

I understand it's easy to do at normal with 5 people (lol), but solo on heroic?

On my dk I did it easily on normal, just a gearcheck since you cannot absorb his damage but you can only heal using DS.

On heroic, anyway, he does more damage, but now with 392 tank gear it shouldn't be a problem, the problem is that he summons adds which are unkillable (375k hp or so and 37k hps) and doesn't have a limit to how many he can summon; I know that you can face them and they don't attack you, but when he summons 3 on the left and 3 on the right?

I haven't seen any videos of dks soloing him on heroic, anyone was able to and knows how to do? Saw a hunter soloing him, though, "this fight is a joke", can believe it, if you have a pet you are in 2 to watch adds and let them disappear!

Comment by 1018818

This boss is amazingly easy to solo as a rogue with Souldrinker, if you are lucky enough to get one here is how I soloed the instance:
I started out by skipping trash going up to the first boss open get recupe up as soon as possible preferably 3-5 point so it lasts a good amount of time. Pop Adrenaline rush and just zerg with Souldrinker on get slice and dice up now and begging using Feint on his Lightning Bolt attack. Try to Feint at the very end of the cast so it has its maximum uptime and can reduce multiple hits of the attack. From there when he does his first cyclone shield just move outside and don't touch and tornadoes while doing this. You then just quickly feint and dps from the outside don't get to close or a tornado may debuff you. Once they begin to move back out just run in and continue dpsing keeping your recupe snd and feinting the bolts. the second shield if he isn't almost dead you feint again, but if he is about to die or close to it just use cloak of shadows when they all get together. Easy fight
Altarius is a lot easier in my opinion you pretty much have a heroism all the time in the fight. Just start off getting a 3-5 point recupe up and then saving adrenaline rush until he shifts the winds. Once he does you need to position yourself so that the wind HITS YOU BEFORE HIM. If you do this then you will gain the buff Upwind of altarius and will increase your attack casting and movement speed. This is where you pop you adrenaline rush potion if you want and just zerg. A bit after he does the wind shift eh will begin his Chilling breath casts you need to Feint these they do about 30k on me when I didn't so its very helpful to do that. If you can't make one just cloak if you need. Continue to re position yourself as he does his changes the way the wind comes in. From there it's pretty much a kill just jump off the edge and you will be brought to the entrance and leave reset get back in and farm more!

Heres my build http://www.wowhead.com/talent#fcbbZfGccRc0RGo0h:0komfoVMm
For the Souldrinker I put Enchant Weapon - Mending on it, but you can also put Windwalk for increased dodge procs

Another thing to know is that Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker IS helpful for bosses that their main damage output is their melee swings. The debuff slows their attack speed by 20% and will help out a lot in that sort of fight.

If you really need extra heals you should use flask of steelskin btw it will increase the healing done by your souldrinker and recuperate since your stamina is buffed. Also you can buy the inscription scroll for the stamina buff Runescroll of fortitude II.

Comment by Thebe2

There are quite a few bad posts about staying out of the center. To solo this boss as a hunter, run right up to him with your pet and stay there, and just pound, he will not move much. Stampede helps a lot. Just keep hitting him. When he shields, his minions will throw you out of the center, but your pet will remain. Just run back in, even while they are hitting you. Heal pet while out of center, pet actually did better than I did. I only needed one Master Healing Potion, and probably could have squeaked it out. Assume this would just be a close spanker for non-pet chars.

Comment by ModishVision

Reins of the Drake of the North Wind mount drops from Altairus in the The Vortex Pinnacle on either difficulty.
The Vortex Pinnacle Entrance Uldum /Way 76.7, 84.4
Altairus is the second boss followed after Grand Vizier Ertan
I obtained the mount after 84 attempts farming it on/off for months.

https://youtu.be/vtUBIjMwSFQ
https://youtu.be/vtUBIjMwSFQ
https://youtu.be/vtUBIjMwSFQ

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Grand Vizier Ertan

This NPC can be found in The Vortex Pinnacle .

The Vortex PinnacleGrand Vizier ErtanAltairusAsaadGrand Vizier ErtanThe Vortex Pinnacle

Heroic		Mythic
Deadly		Important
Tank		DPS
Healer		Interruptible
Magic		Curse
Poison		Disease
Enrage

Grand Vizier Ertan

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