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We found that we were getting 4 mages during the fight, the fourth being right as the opposing ship was in the 5-10% health range. The mages are timed, not triggered by the ship's health. Here's what we did.
The whole raid waits on the defending ship until the first mage appears. Our two gunners get kicked out of their guns and begin finishing off the mobs on the defending ship. Meanwhile, one tank, one healer, and two DPS jump to the opposing ship to kill the mage and tank the boss. Make sure your tank flies over first, because the boss will quickly 1-2 shot anybody else who arrives (he throws his weapon at players from range when not being tanked, this can hit for 27k+).
First mage dies, and the players on the opposing ship stay there until the second mage dies. At this point the boss is doing quite a lot of damage to the tank. When the second mage dies, that group immediately jumps back to the defending ship.
All players then wait on the defending ship until the third mage spawns. At that point, the original gunners get kicked out of their guns and they, along with the other tank and healer, jump to the opposing ship. When the third mage dies, two different players take over on the cannons. The group on the opposing ship remains until the fourth mage dies, then all jump back to the defending ship. At this point, there should be 5-10% health remaining, so just finish the job with everyone on the defending ship.
We used three healers because one of our tanks was very weakly geared, and we also had to stack cooldowns on that tank during the fourth mage. If the boss is tanked very close to the edge of the ship, healers on the defending ship were able to heal the tank.
Note that the opposing boss gains a stack of his debuff everytime he melees somebody. However, you cannot kite the boss around, as he will simply remain in his original location and throw his weapon at people, hitting very hard. Also note that despite rumors to the contrary, no ranged DPS can ever hit the mage from the defending ship (we tried this with a survival hunter with a 41 yard extended range).
We don't have to do the achievement, but would be nice to give it a shot while we're there.