Aku’mai 10 Raid Guide (Season of Discovery)

Blackfathom Deeps Raid Overview

Ghamoo-ra

Lorgus Jett

Blackfathom Deeps Loot Guide

Lady Sarevess

Twilight Lord Kelris

Baron Aquanis

Gelihast

Aku’mai

This guide will offer a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to deal with Aku’mai, the hydra that seeks to devour the world.

TL;DR

• Avoid being hit by breath
• Do not enter Phase 2 with any green stacks
• Kill any adds ASAP
• Don’t cleanse in Phase 2 at all

Raid Composition & Preparation

For this fight you will need at least two counts, and potentially some willing sacrifices.

The Fight

Phase 1

This fight primarily revolves around the tanks and how they choose to handle their stacking debuffs. Aku’mai will regularly debuff its target with a stacking damage over time effect. This will start fairly weak but will be effectively unhealable at around 5 stacks. This cannot be dispelled normally but can be removed by standing on top of the friendly elementals that spawn randomly around the room.

Any time stacks are cleansed from a player, the elemental will explode into smaller, hostile elementals. These will need to be DPSed down quickly, and preferably picked up by a tank where possible. This also makes it difficult to regularly clear your stacks, as clearing 1 stack spawns as many enemies as clearing 5 stacks. Death also does not remove your stacks instantly, instead slowly ticking them down one at a time until they are all gone.

At 50% health, the boss will enter Phase 2. You will want to make sure both your tanks enter Phase 2 with zero stacks of the stacking debuff, otherwise, it will create even bigger problems down the line.

Aku’mai will also regularly fixate on a player and cast a breath attack at them, spewing a cone in their direction. All players including the fixated player will need to rotate around the boss to avoid being hit. Make sure you don’t delay, as even getting hit by a single tick can cause some big issues.

Phase 2

At 50% health Aku’mai will transition into void form. The fight remains mostly the same mechanically, but everything has been beefed up a bit. The stacking green debuff is now a stacking purple debuff, and instead of dealing damage over time, it decreases the target’s maximum health and increases their Shadow damage taken. Cleansing this debuff will spawn a single Void Elemental instead of a bunch of smaller Water Elementals. These Void Elementals are monsters and will derail the fight for most raid groups. Additionally, if you happen to have any green stacks left when you cleanse in Phase 2, you will still spawn the little guys to go with your big guy.

The intended strategy is to have the tanks reach around 5 stacks of the purple debuff, cleanse it, and have the raid focus down the Void Elemental. I think that’s too much to expect, so I recommend instead not cleansing. That’s right, for the entire Phase 2, just do not cleanse your debuffs. Once your tank either has too many stacks to survive or is already a corpse, have your next tank start gathering stacks. Having a Hunter pet with Beast Mastery can also work wonders, allowing the pet to taunt and take a handful of stacks.

Burn the boss down before the stacks become a problem. If you have to, force someone who isn’t a tank to put on their tank hat for a few stacks. This strategy will prove a lot simpler than ever having to deal with a Void Elemental and brings the boss from one of the hardest in the raid down to one of the easiest.

Congratulations on defeating Aku’mai, now get back to Ashenvale and show the enemy faction your sweet new gear.