Emalon the Stonewatcher is a huge bump up in difficulty compared to his flat-mate Archavon.  The days of easy-mode WOW are officially over.  While Wowwiki has some great tips on defeating Emalon, I thought I’d give my view of the fight from a Holy Paladin’s perspective.

Gear Requirements

You and your team are going to need very good gear to defeat Emalon.  Ideally, everyone will have full epics.  You absolutely need good dps, good tanks and good healers who can last the entirety of the fight without running out of mana.  Food and Flasks definitely won’t hurt.  Ventrillo or another way to voice chat will help a lot as well.

Group Make-up

You will only want to bring 2 healers for 10-man Emalon, since you’ll need all the dps you can get.  Ranged dps will make this fight much easier.  Regardless of the strategy you use, your melee dps are going to need to take breaks from doing damage while your ranged can dps 100% of the time.  So, unless your melee dps is good enough to make up for those breaks, you’ll want to bring as much ranged dps as possible.  The other benefit of ranged dps is that they have a much lower chance of messing up and dying compared to melee.

Emalon Does Enrage!

Contrary to popular belief, Emalon does have an enrage timer.  We tried bringing 3 melee dps in our attempt, and while we were going slow and steady and executing everything perfectly, Emalon eventually hit his enrage timer at 15% health.  The tank dodged a few enraged melee hits, but eventually he was one-shot and then the entire raid wiped from a big red Emalon.  So, yes, there is an enrage timer!  Make sure you bring your best dps!

The Pull

Emalon

The pull on Emalon can be very difficult and cause your group to wipe before its even begun.  Usually, your off-tank will run in first, pull all 5 mobs and then the main tank will peel Emalon off of the off-tank.  This means your off-tank will take a ton of damage right at the start.  Make sure you have Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light on him before the pull, because you won’t usually have time to apply it while you’re running into position.  Also, make sure you’re standing on top of the off-tank and run in with him.  You’ll want to get into position as soon as possible and you definitely don’t want either of the tanks going out of range while you’re still running into position.  As soon as the tank pulls the mobs, use your judgement on the tank’s target to get your haste buff and then hit the tank with a Holy Shock as you run in.  You may need to use your bubble if the tank has trouble grabbing all the mobs and one of them goes for you instead.  Get in your position quickly and get to healing up the tanks.

Where to Stand

It can be very difficult in this fight to find the right place to stand.  If you have Deadly Boss Mods, make sure to type /range and right-click on the box to set it to 15 yards.  You should not have more than 1 person appear in this box at any time.  Ideally, it will be empty.  However, you also want to make sure you’re always more than 20 yards away from the boss.  There’s not a lot of room to move, so this can be difficult to do, especially with melee and the tank moving around.  I found a good strategy was to stay closer to the boss (and away from others) during most of the fight, and then move away from the boss (and closer to others) when he does his Lightning Nova, since he isn’t going to Lightning Nova and Chain Lightning at the same time.  Once Lightning Nova is done, move back out of range of the others to avoid the Chain Lightning.

Healing the Tanks

You usually will have one healer assigned to each tank on 10-man.  Both tanks are going to get hit really hard and the damage can be quite bursty.  You may find you’ll be able to go as much as 5 seconds without needing to throw a heal until your tanks lose 3/4 of their health in half a second.  The damage isn’t as bad as Patchwerk though and you shouldn’t need to spam Holy Light.  The fight can be a long one, so make sure to conserve mana by using Flash of Light and Divine Plea as much as possible.  Reactive healing is probably fine to cut down on overheals, as long as you’re quick.  I usually found a Holy Shock and a couple Flash of Lights were good enough to heal up the tank in most cases.

Healing the Raid

If everyone is doing their job right, there will be no raid damage.  Realistically, this isn’t going to happen.  People will get hit by Chain Lightning, Lightning Nova, and maybe even an add’s melee as the new adds spawn.  I like to keep my Beacon on the tank, so I can heal up this raid damage without worrying about the tank going down.  It also lets me help out the other healer with his tank if I need to.  Use Holy Light if you need to, but watch your mana.  Make sure to pop a mana potion if you start to run low.  Keep it up for the entire fight, and you win!

Loot to Look For

Emalon will drop the best loot you can get outside of Ulduar, so get in there and down him every week!

10-man

• Valorous Aegis Gloves
• Valorous Aegis Tunic
• Valorous Aegis Greaves
• Deadly Gladiator’s Pendant of Dominance
• Deadly Gladiator’s Pendant of Subjugation
• Deadly Gladiator’s Cloak of Dominance
• Deadly Gladiator’s Cloak of Salvation
• Deadly Gladiator’s Cloak of Subjugation
• Deadly Gladiator’s Bracers of Salvation
• Deadly Gladiator’s Greaves of Salvation
• Deadly Gladiator’s Girdle of Salvation

25-man

• Conqueror’s Aegis Gloves
• Conqueror’s Aegis Tunic
• Conqueror’s Aegis Greaves
• Furious Gladiator’s Pendant of Subjugation
• Furious Gladiator’s Pendant of Dominance
• Furious Gladiator’s Pendant of Salvation
• Furious Gladiator’s Cloak of Subjugation
• Furious Gladiator’s Cloak of Dominance
• Furious Gladiator’s Cloak of Salvation
• Furious Gladiator’s Bracers of Salvation
• Furious Gladiator’s Girdle of Salvation
• Furious Gladiator’s Greaves of Salvation
• Furious Gladiator’s Band of Dominance