Summary: Atal is a dungeon where there are several routes to take. You can shuffle around the first three bosses (Priestess Alun’za, Vol’kaal, and Rezan) however you please, with the most frequent path to take in this patch being going to the Priestess first, then Rezan, and then Vol’kaal. Your tank may change this up as they go through. The Lust order for these tends to be on 1st boss (the pack before her if it’s teeming), 2nd boss and last boss, but there are a lot of different ways to do the trash and bosses for this dungeon so the lust is also up in the air frequently.
Teeming Route Map, Boss order as Priestess>Voh’kaal>Rezan>Yazma
Trash Specifics (kind of in order):
The Auger will cast Fiery Enchant, this needs to be interrupted or there will be fiery circles on the floor that are hard to dodge. The Priestess will cast a stunnable but not interruptible spell where the person targeted must stand in some bad blood spawned on the floor, or the priestess will heal while sucking life force from them. If they do stand in this properly, the priestess will suck up this bad blood and hurt herself severely. This is the same as the major mechanic on the first boss. Juggernauts will cast an enrage that must be interrupted before it goes off, or soothed after it goes off. The Confessor (who is only in the pack before the first boss on teeming) will cast Bwonsamdi’s Mantle, and if they get that off a healing bubble will go up around the whole pack which the tank must then move the pack out of. In order of importance for the above mechanics, the Bwonsamdi’s Mantle is the most important to interrupt, followed by Fiery Enchant. Because of this, focus the Confessor or the Auger in the teeming pack before the first boss. If it’s not teeming, simply focus the Auger. Honor Guards have no special attacks to interrupt. Any mass silence would do well for this pack before the first boss.
An honorable mention must be placed here for the fire staircase, wiping more teams than most bosses. Take the fire slowly, it will one-shot you if you’re not careful. At the bottom of that staircase is a pack with two augers and two honor guards, simply interrupt the Augers and all is well.
There are a lot of snap points in Atal, which tanks will frequently use to snap the saurids to keep them from leaping. A leap from a +20 raging saurid will one-shot you, so in higher keys practical use of these snap points is vital. The Feasting Skyscreamers will cast a fear, which it’s very important to interrupt. On teeming there is a 3-pack of Skyscreamers which many opt not to pull. It’s a perfectly safe pull if one dps is assigned to each Skyscreamer and proper communication is used. If your group misses one interrupt here, it’s likely a wipe though. A mass silence would be very useful here too.
The middle pack is a complicated one and is often pulled off to the side by someone with shadowmeld or vanish. The trick to pulling this pack to the side is to NOT run headlong into the pack, just get close enough to get aggro and run away as fast as you can (use movement abilities or better yet stay mounted). Then pull as far as you can, making sure you’ve given your tank enough time to enter the obelisk (5-6 secs) before dropping aggro. Your goal is then to hop into the closest portal and meet back up with your group.
The Shadowblade Stalker does a bleed effect on your tank, making them impractical to pull with much else most of the time. They’re also invisible until you enter combat with them, but they path in predictable places. You can see them with any ‘see-through-stealth’ ability, hunters’ Flare and DH’s Spectral sight will do nicely, but you don’t have to see them most of the time because there are always predictable amounts of them and they don’t path very far. The Reanimated Honor Guards do a frontal cone that also applies a stacking bleed to its target, making it important to get them down fast or root them and have your tank kite off their stacks. They also have a totem much like Vol’kaal that must be killed before you can do damage to this mob. This mob still applies frontal cone stacks before the totem is broken, and additionally after the totem is broken, they start spewing green bad on the floor which must be avoided. They also blow up upon death, so watch for that.
The Shieldbearer of Zul will cast two things, shield bash which is the tank ability, and a shield which will protect enemies in its area from our attacks. It’s stunnable and likely any cc’s will work to interrupt too. For DH, Chaos Nova, Fel Eruption, and Imprison all work to stun this effect. Witch Doctors will cast two abilities, one which is interruptible that does some small damage, and a Hex which will turn a selected player into a small dino who must get away from the group before their timer runs out. An important thing to not here is that if the player who is Hex’d is dispelled before they leave the group, it will have the same effect as if the timer runs out. If the player is overlapping their circle with any other players when this goes off, they will all be Hex’d. This is an important interrupt not only for the dps loss but also for the danger to the group not running this out poses. Because of the extreme damage the frontal cone bleed the Reanimated Honor Guards do, most will avoid the pack directly before Voh’kaal. Sometimes to get the the obelisk next to Voh’kaal people will cc one of the Honor Guards, Control Undead if you have a DK, and kill them one at a time to ease up on the tank. You could also simply pull them off to the side in a similar way you would the middle pack.
Affixes Effects:
Generally, for Atal, of the first two affixes you can have Tyrannical is the more annoying, with Yazma causing problems with spiders that continually spawn during the fight. If you’re going to tackle this dungeon with this affix, it’s important to have good single-target dps cooldowns. For DH, that means single target essences, but I tend to stick with AoE gear (TD and such). If it’s Fortified, just go full AoE.
Bolstering means you’ll need to watch your dps on the small saurids found in packs with the fearing skyscreamer mobs. Don’t unload on non-elites and watch your cleave. Save big AoE cooldowns for packs with mostly elite mobs. Raging isn’t too much of a concern, the raging saurids can be solved by snap points and having a druid or hunter solves or any other enrages in this place. Try to stagger when you get different adds down to help the tank. Sanguine isn’t too bad in this place either, given there’s a lot of space to move around. You may want a druid with Typhoon or a DK to get out any stubborn mobs casting while standing in sanguine. Teeming doesn’t make or break this dungeon but the pack before the first boss can be concerning and the 3 skyscreamer pack requires deft coordination as mentioned previously. Teeming changes dungeons a lot, but rarely is the death of a group if communication is used. For Bursting we’re back to the saurids, watching when those go down and if necessary, using personal defensives is important. They sometimes leap and kill themselves at inopportune times too, so use caution. Of the level two affixes Bursting and Bolstering are the most concerning for this dungeon.
Of the level 3 affixes, Necrotic and Grievous both are the worst for most dungeons, this one included. Necrotic requires imaginative kiting, which thankfully there’s enough room in this dungeon to do most of the time. Grievous asks a lot from your healer, and if this is paired with any level two affix that requires a lot from your healer, like Bursting or Raging, you’ll want to watch your own health carefully and use any group-wide damage mitigation you have practically on cooldown. Healers would likely want to take different talents for this kind of run. Skittish can be a problem for some tanks, but that can be solved for with tricks of the trade, misdirect, or simply waiting a bit for them to gather aggro before unloading damage. If your tank is okay with Skittish generally, nothing about this dungeon makes it too much harder. Explosive means no huge pulls, but other than that it’s not too bad for this dungeon. Orbs only spawn near the location of any mobs in combat with someone, so if you group up adds and move them slowly it helps people get down orbs. Explosive can be a concern for places like Temple because of this, but not for this dungeon. Finally, Quaking and Volcanic are basically jokes in this place, just watch your feet. If you have trouble with timing your channeled casts with Quaking, get a weakaura or simply wait until one happens, then Eye Beam your heart out.
The Seasonal Affix mini-bosses will be discussed later, but here I will touch on the Obelisk placement. Generally, in all dungeons the Spider will switch with the Blood, and the Tank-Breaker will switch with the Fearing. That’s the extent to which they’ll shuffle though. Obelisk placement in this dungeon allows for a lot of routes to be taken, but often at least one of the obelisks will be accessed by having someone pull the pack in front of it and shadowmeld. This isn’t too bad as there’s good places to run for kiting these packs. I’d say obelisk placement in this place is not incredible, but not horrible either.
Bosses:
Priestess Alun’za
The basic mechanic for this fight is the same as the Priestess mobs soak. It’s a good idea to watch the DBM timer and start running to your blood pool sooner than the actual ability (Transfusion) starts casting, because you don’t want to run into any gold orbs on your way there even if you do have good movement speed. Also, because if you soak your blood pool too late the boss will heal and especially on Tyrannical the boss killing herself by soaking bad blood from all players does more damage than even the best dps.
There are two other mentionable mechanics. First, the mob that spawns on the boss at the top of her pedestal, who slowly goes around the room soaking up the blood pools. Because of the importance of everyone soaking a blood pool for the major mechanic on this fight, it’s very important not to let the mob soak any of the pools. This means stunning the mob, RoP, roots, Chaos Nova, basically any cc or snare effects will do. Get the mob down fast and get back on the boss. This mob has very little health compared to the boss, so one stun, snare or slow will likely get the job done if it’s about 3-4 seconds long. The other mechanic on this boss is a consumable ‘gilded claws’ effect on the boss which DHs, Mages, and others with consume magic effects can get rid of. It’s not too important since this boss is generally easy on the tank, and that’s its only real tank ability, but it can help if they’re having trouble for any reason.
Rezan
Rezan has two major abilities that dps must worry about – Pursuit and Terrifying Visage. The boss is generally positioned with ease of completing these two mechanics in mind. The boss is generally placed hugging one of the large pillars to the side of the stairs, most frequently on the back-right pillar (top-right if you’re looking at the map above). This allows dps to simply run to the sides of the square pillar to LOS the Terrifying Visage fear mechanic. You don’t strictly have to LOS this, with things like a Shaman Totem or DK’s Anti-magic-shell nullifying the effect. If no cooldown is being used though, safe to assume you should LOS the boss. If you must run Pursuit out, run it in a straight line down the water to the next pillar. Beware that after the cast ends naturally if you rush back in and melee attack the boss before the tank has aggro back, there is a bug where he will Devour you anyway. Be patient in getting back into your spot. Most often though, there will be one or several people with shadowmeld. Most often in pugs’ people will meld for themselves and no one else because of a base assumed lack of communication. If you have comms with the people you’re running with though, you can coordinate shadowmelds because they can be used to break anyone out of Pursuit, not just the person casting it.
The most important thing when being followed with Pursuit is to not be Devoured, but the second most important in how you plan your route if you must run this out is to avoid bone piles on the ground, as those spawn raptors that will conform to trash affixes. This means that they will apply necrotic stacks to your tank, or rage at low percent, or burst when they die, such to the affixes that you’re in that week. It’s important to note that not only player characters running over bone piles will spawn raptors, Rezan running over them while chasing you will also spawn raptors so watch his feet as well as yours. The path down the water is the easiest to avoid bone piles. Oh, and he does a tail swipe, watch for that. Won’t kill you, just a mild knockback.
Vol’kaal
This boss is arguably one of the more complicated in this dungeon, having two phases. In the first phase, each damage dealer should focus one of the totems in the corner of the room. This generally takes around 40 seconds, and if you’re doing more damage than the other dps you must throttle, so I’d recommend not popping cooldowns until the 2nd phase. While the dps are doing this, the boss will be hopping around, get out of the green swirl if he jumps on you. He will also periodically cast Noxious Stench, which the tank should the interrupting. If you see it not getting kicked though, do go kick it as it does tremendous party-wide damage.
Once you’ve gotten the totems down together, we’re into the second phase. Vol’kall will start spewing green bad on the floor and will still cast Noxious Stench but will stop leaping. He must be kited slowly around the outside of the room. Try to be quick on your feet here, don’t stand in any bad for too long. It won’t one-shot you if you must channel something while in it, but it does hurt. Ranged should stand in the middle of the triangle, painting bad around in that area while the tank kites with the melee around the outside. If you did not pull the trash before this boss, do be careful of the gate and give it distance in both the first and second phase. The trash is very much still pullable before, during, and after the boss is pulled, so watch your Twilight Dev.
Yazma
Yazma has 3 abilities to watch out for – Soulrend, Echoes of Shadra, and Wracking pain. For Soulrend everyone but the tank is targeted with an arrow over their heads and must run away from the boss. It’s generally more important to stack this than run super far away, because then people can stun and AoE them down easier. Try to get as far away from the boss as possible AS A GROUP before it goes off. Then stun/kill the adds. If the adds get to Yazma, they will explode doing a lot of damage to the whole party. Any cc/stun/snare/slow effects will work on these adds.
Next is Echoes of Shadra, which is WoW’s fancy name for the spiders spawning. They spawn at players feet, in small purple swirlies. The spiders then alternate between being small and roaming randomly and being bigger (with bigger hitboxes) actively pursuing the players. If you collide with a spider they will explode, doing damage to you and leaving bad on the ground. Players with full immunities can run over them and burst them, but this isn’t that good at the beginning of the fight because they will simply spawn more until back to the earlier amount. This can be good at the end of the fight if your party is getting overwhelmed in execute phase and need some breathing room. The best way I’ve found to work with these spiders is to stack with the tank so that the spiders are all following one group. Run out for Soulrend, then get back on the tank for spiders. If your tank knows what they’re doing, it’ll work out fine.
Finally, Wracking pain is the only interruptible spell that Yazma casts and does a lot of damage to whoever it’s on if it finishes casting. It is imperative to kick this every time it’s up, and that task generally falls to the tank. As with Noxious Stench in Voh’kaal’s fight, if you see a cast getting off do kick it even if you’re not the tank.