Zul'Gurub Guide Index
Section 1- General
1.1 - Coins, Bijous, & Reputation
1.2 - NPCs and Reputation Rewards
1.3 - Map of Zul'Gurub
Section 2 - The Bosses
2.1 - Boss 1- High Priestess Jeklik
2.2 - Boss 2- High Priest Venoxis
2.3 - Boss 3- Bloodlord Mandokir
2.4 - Boss 4- High Priestess Mar'li
2.5 - Boss 5- High Priest Thekal
2.6 - Boss 6- High Priestess Arlokk
2.7 - Boss 7- Jin'do the Hexxer
2.8 - Boss 8- Hakkar
Section 3 - Links and Contributors
3.1 - Links to other guides
3.2 - Contributors
Boss 4- High Priestess Mar'li
Mar'li is the fourth boss located in the Zul Gurrub Instance. Her aspect is that of the "spider" her area is found in just under that of Mandokir and is easily recognizable by the webbing that fills the area.
Mobs Surrounding Mar'li
Spiders surround Marl'Li, and not your standard pull of 4-5 spiders. Pulls in Mar'li' zone come in about 10-15 in number of level 60 elite spiders and 1-2 larger spiders that break up (much like the spiders in UBRS) into several smaller spiders.
The large red spiders need to be tanked, while the lesser elite spiders need to be AoE'd to death by mages and warlocks. Beware of the special attack that the spiders drop down on those who they attack; it will leave your vision "wavy" as though your character is drunk.
Mar'li' Abilities
Mar'li has several abilities that he uses in the fight. They are as follows:
Spider Summon: At the beginning of the fight Mar'Li will summon 4 spiders that will "grow" the longer they are alive. These spiders start at about 500-600 damage a hit but once fully grown and enraged, they can deal 1800 per hit! After the first 4, Mar'li will sporadically summon spiders as the fight continues.
Web: When Mar'li turns into her spider form (about 90% health), she will drop down a web attack that immobilizes all those effected, allowing her to break agro and attack other party members.
Silence: Mar'li unleashes an AoE silence when she transforms into her spider form. Stay away from her at this point or you will be unable to cast for about 5 seconds.
Life Leech: Mar'li heals herself through a dispellable life drain. This attack heals herself quite quickly and needs to be dispelled ASAP.
AOE Poison: This is a very nasty AOE poison effect that does 400-600 dps. You need to dispell it ASAP. Everyone in the group should have bandages handy, as the healers first prority is the 2 tanks.
Strategy
You will need at least two tanks for this fight, as one needs to stick on Mar'li and another needs to be pitted against any of the spider spawns that pop up during the fight. The group should start scattered and then slowly move in once Mar'li transforms into her spider form.
The initial burst of 4 spider adds need to be pulled by a mage and then rooted with a frost nova. This will give ample time to AoE the spiders into dust while the main tank gets agro from Mar'li.
For the first 10% of health, the raid should just be dropping minimal DPS and conserving mana. Once Mar'li makes the shift into spider form, she needs to be tanked immediately to get agro (as the transformation will break it). Immediately after the transformation, Mar'Li will web those in range and they will disappear from her agro list. You will need your second tank to pickup agro from her at this point as she will go to the highest person not webbed. Continue to "flip-flop" tanks as needed for the remainder of the fight.
At about 40-30% health, Mar'li will shift back into troll form and use her life leech ability to regain health. Be sure to dispel this ASAP or she will become undefeatable and the group will wipe.
This is by no means an "easy" fight, and it may take a few tries to get her down. However the Mar'li battle is mainly add control (much like a Firelord in Molten Core) and if that is mastered, the rest of the battle will come.
We got the following suggestion on how to deal with the drukenness effect from Stormchaser
The "drunken poison" effect that those spiders hit you with can be annoying, but you can reduce the problems with it by disabling any full-screen shading effects (full-screen glow) before the battle if you use it. I know lots of people who still play with this effect on because they like how the world looks, but it's what forces the blurry screen when you get hit with this poison (much like getting drunk in IF during a guild meeting). :)
You still get hit by it's knock-down effect for the duration - and apparently anti-venom doesn't work on removing this - but it's manageable as long as you can see what you're attacking.
Other Players Strategies
- Penguin Fury sent in the following information on a strategy that his guild has come up with to deal with Mar'li. If you are an Alliance player it looks very promising.
Jukor and I made macros for the fight to use Blessing of Freedom. BoF removes all roots/snares on the target and makes them invulnerable to further roots/snares for an additonal 10 seconds. The cooldown is 20 seconds. There is a talent to increase the length of the blessing in the protection tree for pallies but it is rare in non-pvp spec pallies.
The macro is basically:
/target
/cast Blessing of Freedom
/t
/target
/cast Blessing of Freedom
The last two lines are there to make sure the macro is useful if the MT is dead.
Ok, so during the fight, the boss yells something (red text) and then switches to spider form. As soon as I saw the text, I would use my macro. Jukor would roughly count to 10 and use his macro. The thing to know about BoF is that a second pally casting it will just refresh the timer rather than result in the "A more powerful spell is active" error message. So the timing is not critical. Additionally, the cooldown on BoF is 20 seconds. So not only do I have Jukor's tell to remind me but I also have the cooldown timer on my icon bar. When the cool down is up I cast my macro again. Hopefully, the end result is the MT is invulnerable to roots the entire time the boss is in spider form. The technique requires at least 2 pallies per tank to work.
- Madball from the Red Storm of Death guild on the Burning Blade server sent in the following tactic that they use to defeat Mar'li.
Start AoE'ing the first group of spider adds, while off-tanking both the boss and the add with her. after this frirst group of spiders, they will come 1 at a time. kill the add after 1st wave of spiders are down while tanking the boss, it will drop very quickly.
Note: It is everyone's priority to kill these spiders as fast as possible each time one pops.
Everyone except warriors stays ~40 yards from MT *in a close group together*, 2 other warriors stay ~30 yards back from MT AT ALL TIMES (between raid and boss). even when she is in troll form, everyone but rogues and MT stays back from her. fight her as if she is a spider the entire time.
When in spider form:
1. She will AoE root/silence all those around her
2. *All DPS stops*
3. She charges for the main group
4. 2 warriors @ 30 yards taunt (order of taunt is pre-determined)
5. Warrior that ends up with her agro becomes MT
6. Other 2 warriors move to 30 yard position while new MT moves her to 40 yards.
7. DPS resumes after new MT gets 5-10 seconds of agro building on her
****Repeat steps 1-7 merry-go-round until she is dead, remember priority on killing spider adds during all this.
When in troll form:
Same as spider form except rogues go in and help to interupt life drain (it heals her). if 4 warriors in raid, 1 warr can go in to assist in interupt. while 2 stay @ 30 yards ready to taunt.
Blugar from Kirin Tor - Warclan Shadow Storm sent in the following tip:
We found that what worked really well when fighting Mar'li is to have one, or two hunters and a warlock drain her mana.
While it seems a waste to do this against a boss with such a large amount of mana, it has made all our battles with her since discovering how effective it was, super easy. She seems to be very susceptible to mana drain and this prevents her from using her heal nearly as often, and once it gets down low enough its easy to keep her mana drained. That way Rage and such can be focused more on damage and aggro control than having to worry about interrupting her when she life drains quickly, getting a chunk of hp back before someone can interrupt even at the best of times since the instant she casts it she gets a 'tick' back. I was the main tank for the battle so I didn't notice, but it seemed to cut down on her spiders as well, but again, I could be mistaken on that bit.
You can search for items that drop from Mar'li using the TenTonHammer Search engine here http://searchcgi.tentonhammer.com/queuer.exe?Query=Marli&GameType=wow&SourceType=item
Have comments or suggestions? Thought of something that has been missed? Found another tactic that can be used? Found an error? We would love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] or [email protected].
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