Attumen the Huntsman is the first boss of Karazhan.  Luckily this fight is truthfully only a simple gear and skill check, as in should you actually be ready to progress through Karazhan then he won’t be able to pose much of a problem at all. Another thing, just beyond the boss is an NPC named Koren, this guy will repair your gear once you hit honored with the Violet Eye faction.

Finally, the fight itself is a pretty simple tank n’ spank combat but you should be pretty quick about it as well as the trash before the fight due to a measly 25-minute timer on respawns.  If you have any mid-boss fight respawns they will immediately descend upon the raid as well, almost always ensuring a wipe.

The Fight

Positioning

Midnight pre-fight is a yellow non-aggro mob, due to this you can happily position your raid as you wish without worrying about grabbing anything except if you go beyond midnight’s room.  Now, all healers and ranged DPS position themselves at the edge of the room within which you find midnight.

Your secondary tank/off-tank will take up position immediately behind midnight, opposite the healers and ranged DPS.  Finally all melee DPS and the main-tank as well will stand between the healers, ranged DPS, and the boss, midnight, basically at the entrance to the room/a little ways in.

The Pull

It’s simple, just have the off-tank begin smacking Midnight, generally you’ll want melee DPS to hold off a little bit here so as to prevent any sudden agro losses early on.

Phase 1

Alright, once your secondary tank has built up some threat and such all melee DPS can move into position behind midnight and the entire raid can start pummeling the boss.  Make certain that your Main-tank does not move in and attack as well, his role is to pick up the huntsman when he spawns at the end of Phase 1.

Once Midnight reaches 95% Health, Attunmen the Huntsman will spawn directly beside him.  It’s crucial that the boss is grabbed and set up by the main-tank, he also is immune to taunt so utilize more caution when doing this.

Finally, throughout this phase I’d avoid anything overt or unnecessarily agro heavy such as HoT’s, AoE, etc. As any of these may cause the Huntsman to target that player rather than the main-tank.  Also you can use a hunter with misdirect to get the Huntsman onto the main-tank immediately.

Phase 2

The main objective now will be to reduce Midnight’s health down to 25%, triggering the transition into the next and final phase 3.  Your secondary tank, healers on said tank, and DPSers should all remain focused on this.

Meanwhile the main-tank will basically just be setting up shop trying to keep himself from taking as much damage as possible, utilize disarm to great effect here as it does the greatest possible amount of damage reduction.

The huntsman does have cleave so the main-tank should be backed up against the wall, on the far side away from the raid, to prevent this from hitting anyone else.

Additionally the Huntsman will place a curse on those surrounding him, this reduces chance to hit by 50% and can be removed by Mages or even druids if necessary.  Priority is on the two tanks followed by melee DPS and then anyone else should they actually need it.

Phase 3 is entered once Midnight reaches 25% health, both Midnight and the Huntsman will rush towards one-another resulting in a mounted Huntsman.  This wipes all threat and the boss must now immediately be picked up by the main-tank.  As earlier, misdirect is useful.

The positioning for this tanking is in the middle of the room much like where Midnight previously was standing, Melee DPS standing behind the boss to avoid cleaves and such.

Phase 3

The final phase of this fight is practically the same as Phase 2 with only a couple notable exceptions, those beings Random charges and an Frontal AoE cleave.  The Huntsman will start to randomly charge ranged members of the raid, thankfully this is rather easy to heal through and shouldn’t kill anyone unless it’s a critical.

After charging the Huntsman will run back to the Main-tank or otherwise number 1 on the threat list character, meaning you don’t have to run him down.  However, melee DPS and anyone nearby the charged player should stay out of his Frontal AoE Cleave lest they get smashed.

This can take a little while to complete, but should you be properly equipped and have enough of each class and the ability to react well enough to the charges and such you’ll get through easily enough.