Zul’Aman

Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman Boss Strategy Notes

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Plan on invading Troll instances today? Not quite sure what to expect? Got you covered. You can find the TLDR versions here. Comment if there’s any additional noteworthy mechanics that you find on live servers that glossed over. Notes were taken from my experiences on the PTR and from kill videos.

Zul’Gurub

Venoxxis

Stay within the maze.

Players will get linked (Toxic Link) which deals damage to both players. Break the link by increasing the distance between the two players. Poison bolts get shot at players, heal through it. Boss has a frontal cone attack. At some point, watch out for pools of poison. Not sure if that’s linked to time or health.

Bloodlord Mandokir

Randomly targets a player and one-shots them. Mandokir levels up. Kill the raptor. The raptor goes around killing ghosts (which will resurrect you when you de) and you have a certain amount of them.

Watch out for big conical, fire spike thing

Kilnara (Panther boss)

First 50%: Tank and spank. Last 50%: Calls in panther buddies.

Interrupt Tears of Blood. Pull 2 packs of panthers during phase 1 and kill them to reduce the amount of panthers coming in the final phase. When they do engage you, AoE them down.

Zan’zil

Three phases (Fire, Ice, Poison)

Zombie troll phase: Grab red cauldron . Gives your attacks additional AoE powers. Destroy zombies.

Berserker phase: One big mob? Grab the Ice cauldron. Attacks gain freezing powers. Slows down Berserker and kills them quick.

Cloud phase: Entire environment covered in gas. Grab poison cauldron, become i mmune.

Jin’do

Phase 1:

Casts a green shield bubble reducing magic effectiveness within it. Keep the tank and Jin’do within it. When Jin’do casts Shadow of Hakkar, run into the shield. Then run back out and resume DPS. Last I checked, he’ll do an AoE chain nuke of some kind if you stay too long within the shield.

Phase 2: Hakkar

There are four chains on the ground. They each have 1 million health. Those chains need to be broken. Look for Gurubashi Spirits. Really big mobs that have the ability to jump. The group needs to stay near chains so that the big guys will jump onto the chain thereby breaking it. Arrow on the player’s head signifies the target. Clear out the Twisted Spirit mobs.

Kicker: Need to keep moving to dodge assorted Shadow Blasts.

Zul’Aman

Akil’Zon (Eagle boss)

Eagles will pick players up and fly them around. DPS the birds. If you’re picked up, you can still DPS them. Look for the thundercloud and stand beneath it.

Nalorakk (Bear boss)

Standard tank and spank. Also does an AoE silence.

Charges the furthest player standing away. Inflicts a +500% damage taken debuff on the target. Don’t get charged twiced. Rotate with other group members in being the furthest person away. (Thanks Katherine and Wynn)

Halazzi (Lynx boss)

Kill totems. Kill the pet Lynx (likes to randomly rush players, healers need to stay on top of that). Lynx form frequently hits random players for massive damage. Your healer needs to be on the ball. Any self surviving cooldowns are encouraged to be used. (Thanks Katherine)

Jan’Alai (Dragonhawk)

Has a straight line fire attack, watch for it.

Watch for fire orbs and make sure you don ‘t stand near them. That hit box is a little larger than the graphic. Kill 1 of the hatchers. Healers need to dispel a fire debuff which comes from the hatched eggs. If Jan’Alai drops beneath a certain percentage, he hatches all of the eggs.

Hexlord Malacrass

Only 2 ads now. Kill them, blow up Malacrass. Remember Malacrass will assume the powers at random of the different classes in your group due to his power drain.

Daakara

Similar to Zul’Jin, he instead undergoes 2 animal forms instead of 4. Switches phases every 33%.

  • Lynx form: He rushes everybody and his damage gradually ramps up.
  • Dragonhawk form: He will dish out fires in a line from him as a center point. Watch out for flame pillars. It was a pain in BC, it’s a pain now.
  • Bear form: Randomly charges a player.
  • Eagle form: Spawns 5 random cyclones. They tend to stay stationary but will shift position every few seconds. Will shoot out lightning to players nearby.

PTR 4.1: Holy Word Sanctuary and other Screenshots

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This post goes without saying. There are going to be a few spoilers in here. If you’re not into that sort of thing, mark as read and move on.

But here’s a look at Holy Word: Sanctuary.

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Yeah.

I know.

I don’t think the graphics work is complete yet. It just seems a touch small. Actual affected radius is still the standard size. Bliky over there on the right is still being affected by it.

* Yes, that’s my PTR UI. I just picked a random compilation and set it up because Real UI wasn’t functioning properly.

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The current Zul’Gurub load screen. Wonder if its a placeholder or if it’ll be updated with WoW 4.0 tech.

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Quest area just to the left of the entrance as you stroll in.

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Also the front area of the instance. Learned fast that the cauldrons provide a 90% magic resist buff. Once you kill that mob that’s got those tendrils attached to it, the area gets flooded with gas which is where the cauldron kicks in. Don’t dispel it. You’ll find another cauldron further down along the path.

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Nesingwary’s camp under siege. Many snakes. Handled it.

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Found this on the ramp leading up to the raptor boss area. Frogger, yo?

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Sup Bloodlord Mandokir? Way to instan-gib me. (Hint: Remember those spirits back in the day? Yeah, don’t release)

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Ran into the first boss already where the old ZG snake guy was. Dude is absolute nuts. Likes to paint the whole ground with poisons and stuff. Some kind of nature resist will be handy to have.

Note that it appears heroic level instances at tier 2 when randomed into offer 140 Valor points (twice that of current). No word on whether you can run tier 1 and tier 2 for a combined 210. Gut instinct says its one or the other. Will verify and confirm later. Some problems with zoning back into the Zul’Gurub portal. Looks like theres a few phasing bugs that need to be fixed. For now, if you want to run ZG, I advise you abandon all ZG related quests. You can teleport into it via the dungeon finder. But if you die (and you will), then you won’t be able to zone in since the portal is non existent in that phase.

More to come…

Get a Bear Mount: 10 Tips on Beating the Zul’Aman Timer

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Image courtesy of Daino_16

The Zul’Aman timer run is one of the most difficult challenges in the game. If executed perfectly, you’ll find yourself with a brand new bear mount along with a host of other extra epic goodies. You have exactly 45 minutes to kill the first four bosses in Zul’Aman if you intend to get that bear mount. I haven’t been able to get a bear mount yet myself, but I’ve learned a few tricks after talking to a couple of guildies and from my own experience.

Be Overgeared

This is a real big no brainer. If you plan on beating the timer, you should be almost out of T5 level gear and into Black Temple/Mount Hyjal gear. That means your Kara/Gruul/Mag gear has got to go. In fact, you shouldn’t even need ZA gear.

Know the fights

Again, also a no brainer but there is no time to explain. You have to know the encounters by heart because it simply takes too long to explain it.

2 Healers

Yes, you read that correctly. Bringing three healers is almost essential just to completing the instance. To bring 2 healers would almost be suicide! But believe me, by bringing only 2 healers, that extra DPS will go a long way in netting a bear mount.

Prot. Paladin, Feral Druid, Fury Warrior

This is the suggested tanking group. Your Prot. Paladin’s going to shoulder most of the load. Your Feral Druid will be switching back and forth from DPS to tanking as necessary. Your Fury Warrior is just going to lay the smackdown on everything. Trust me on this. If you can find an awesome DPS warrior, you’ll be amazed at how fast trash can drop and go down. Furthermore, less down time without having to get mana back.

Group Make Up

Consider running 2 Warlocks and 2 Shadow Priests to increase longevity and overall damage. This was recommended to me by a Guildie who has successfully done it.

Skip the Chests

Yes, seriously, skip the chests. Don’t open them until after you success or your failure. The clock is ticking while you handle the extra loot. Just get everyone to get their badge, and haul ass to the next one. The chests will still remain there untouched and unopened while you’re plowing through the bosses.

Group Loot

While we’re speaking about loot, don’t use master looter. I’m assuming that there is little if any upgrades for you in this instance. Set it to group loot instead of master loot so that you don’t waste precious time handling rolls and timers and such. If a player wants it, hit need. If not, pass it. Get your DE’er to greed it. Except you might want to consider master looting the bear when you get to it

Use your cooldowns to minimize downtime

I’ve mentioned it before but you cannot skimp out on cooldowns. This is especially true as a healer. Remember our Shadowfiends have a 5 minute cooldown between use. Innervate is 6 minutes for Druids. Heroism is 10 minutes. Evocate is 8 minutes. You get the idea. Be very liberal in their use. You can’t spend a lot of time drinking. It’s literally pull, after pull, after pull.

Shortcuts

Check out these screenshots:

Zul'Aman Shortcut Outside Lynx

Zul'Aman shortcut path for Lynx

Recognize the location? This is the area leading up to the Lynx boss. There are a couple of huts on the left side that have no mobs inside them. Those windows might look small, but rest assured you are small enough to jump through them. Anyway, there are 2 such hits. The one shown above is the first. The diagram above is a very crude reconstruction. But hopefully, it will give you a better idea of what you need to do. If executed properly, you will bypass about 2 pulls which should save you between 1 minute to 2 minutes.

There’s another shortcut amongst the trash pulls leading to Dragonhawk. I’ll see if I can nab a few shots of it or even make a quick video about it in a future post.

Stable Core

If you plan on doing this run, you have to find a stable group of people to run with. Start off doing non-timed runs but try to keep the people the same. You don’t want to pug any players at all. Get the team chemistry going. I’ve communicated with my other healers enough to know who is healing who without having to ask. But playing with 9 other people you are familiar with is a good thing to do.

Good luck! I expect screenshots of you on your bear when you pull it off!

Guest Post: A First Look at a Feeder Guild

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This is a guest post from Galadria. She represents half of the knowledge from the Light and the Dark.

We’ll start with a sample scenario. You are a member of l33t Guild, part of the raid core. Your guild is farming the lower bosses of TK/SSC and trying to down Vashj and Kael to get into Hyjal/BT. Since most of your raid core doesn’t need gear out of T4 content, it’s basically PUG. Whoever can throw a run together does whenever they happen to be in the mood. Since the raid core doesn’t want to have wipe fests, when they do farm that content (for badges or off spec gear) they tend to do it with each other so they can blow through it quickly. One day JoeRogue; who has been raiding in Kara for a while and gone on a few runs of Gruul and Mag, asks that oft dreaded question in Gchat:

    “How come I never get to raid?”

This sets off a fevered discussion with much flaming from the raid core and much grousing from lower echelons of the guild. The core raiders don’t want to hear it, they’ve put in the time and effort to be where they are. The lower ranked players feel shafted, they never get a chance at better gear or to show the raid leaders that they can play competently.

Overlooking the fact that there seems to be a bunch of whining, it shows a problem I think a lot of guild at this level have. The guild is split between those that are part of the progression raiding and well geared, and those that are just getting Kara keyed or just out of Kara, and learning how to raid. These two groups have different needs from the guild. Both groups need structured, scheduled raid time for their level of content, lead by a competent RL to make things go smoothly. They just need different content.

Requirements

Kara (1-2 nights), Gruul (1 night), Mag (1 night), SSC (probably 2 nights), TK (probably 2 nights). If you stacked groups correctly, you could do Kara in 1 night and Gruul and Mag in the same night. That’s still 6 nights of scheduled raiding! I don’t see many guild leaders (in average guilds) being able to handle that.

As I see it you have a few options:

Option 1

Let the lower level players fend for themselves. They can probably make in-guild PUG Kara/ZA runs without much problem but Gruul/Mag is going to be a lot for some random person with a little initiative to get together. This may lead to unhappy players in your lower ranks. However, since they’re not part of your progression team you may not care if they come or go but I tend to think that’s kind of a crappy way to deal with the situation.

Option 2

Another option is to be up front with this group and tell them that you will not be scheduling any events at their level of progression and if they want to experience that content they should find a guild at their level to grow with. This is tough since a lot of these people will be friends of members of your raid core. I think it’s good to be up front and honest, and you’re doing them a favor by letting them know that you are not able to meet their needs. It can be up to them to find someone who can.

Option 3

What I think is the best option is to establish what I call the Feeder Guild. This can be a separate entity or a sub-set of your existing guild. This guild becomes a leveling and early raiding guild that prepares your lower level players for higher content. This option will take more work at the beginning to get started, but will be worth it in the end.

You’ll need to find someone (or a couple of people) who have the organizational skills and the drive to run the show. This person should be outfitted with the resources and responsibilities to organize your lower level raids for those that need/want them. It’s also a good idea to get a few of your higher level raiders willing to help out. Even a few above level players can make a huge difference in how smooth a raid goes. If you don’t have anyone willing to help, you can consider offering a small amount of DKP for an incentive with a weekly limit.

This is also a great way for your Raid Core to get their alts into the lower level raids. Just about every 70 raider that I know has and alt (or 5) and most of them have been at it long enough to have another 70. They always seem to ask to take their alts on Kara runs. Here’s a great opportunity to get them access into regular runs of lower level raids.

Splitting the raiding responsibilities between 2 groups means a manageable 2-4 nights of raiding for each group.

Each group can also handle loot individually. I know a lot of guilds tend to throw DKP out the window for lower level raids. Then the guy who’s been playing with your guild for a while can get unlucky on a roll and loose loot he’s been waiting for to a guy who just joined looking for some quick purples.

As with everything else, this is a highly personal situation. What works for one guild will not necessarily work for another. You may be really picky about who gets a ginvite and don’t have this problem since you don’t let anyone in that’s not geared well enough. You may let everyone and their dog into the guild, but don’t really care if they get any raid time. If however, you do have a similar situation, consider this solution.

Minimum Class Stat Requirements for Zul’Aman

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Here it is. This is the long anticipated list of the minimum stat requirements you need to do the early bosses of Zul’Aman successfully. Having stats like these should carry you through Bear boss with a little luck.

Guilds attempting to go through raiding should understand the principle of progression. When you’re going through it for the first time, you should have no blues and not need more than 1 or 2 items from Karazhan. You will have acquired all the badge gear that you need and you’ve done Gruul’s or Mag a few times so that you’ve developed some ingame smarts.

As always, this list is subject to change at any time and without notice with your help and feedback.

Remember, I’m only a Priest and a Shaman. I don’t know the other classes as well. Any corrections and suggestions will be valued. All figures are after any kind of raid buffs or consumables and should be used as a guideline rather than a rule. These numbers are based off of observations and conversations with Guildmates and other colleagues who have made progress in ZA.

In Zul’Aman, there is a certain threshold of stats you need in order to survive and be productive. If you can meet them unbuffed, then you’re fine. There’s a variety of consumables and buffs to configure your character to surpass the mark that you need. It doesn’t matter what buffs they are as long as they exceed it. But if you go in there raid buffed and you DO NOT match the stats you need, you will be ineffective.

Let’s use my Priest as an example. I strongly advise anything over 8500 health. I’ve got a Priest that’s 6500 without buffs. Raid buffs he would top out at about 8000 health. That’s not enough. You never know what kind of class make up you will have going in there. You may not have Kings. You may not have fort. Maybe you don’t have a certain flask or something. This isn’t a 25 man raid where you can expect to get every buff known to man. That’s why I created the list with raid buffs in mind.

Do not take Zul’Aman lightly. It drops loot that is on par with Tier 5. The difficulty is about the same as SSC and TK.

Updates and modifications at the bottom of the page

Suggested Composition

2 Well geared tanks, ideally different classes (Pally/Druid, Pally/Warrior, etc).
3 Healers (Ideally 1 Priest for Imp. Fort and Imp. DS)
3 Caster DPS (Warlock, Mage, Shadow Priest, or feel free to toss in a Moonkin and an Elemental Shaman instead)
2 Physical DPS (Hunter, rogue, enhancement shaman, DPS Warrior or any combination thereof)

The DPS part isn’t as crucial. You can mix and match however you like. Zul’Jin has a phase where you have to have some physical damage going in there and when you read about it, you will understand why (phase 3). Bring 3 healers. I seriously recommend bringing 3 healers. You can disregard everything else on this page if you want, but please listen to me when I say to bring 3 healers.

If any player’s health is below 8000 after all buffs are cast, you may want to consider someone else instead.

Tanks

Note: I shouldn’t have to mention it, but as a tank you should be uncrushable and uncrittable at this point.

Warrior

Health: ~17000
Block/Parry/Dodge: A very high number combined. Hoping to find a Warrior to give me an exact figure.

Paladin

Health: ~17000
Mana: ~5000+
Block/Parry/Dodge: ~100% combined
Spell damage: 200+

Druid

Health: ~17000
Dodge: ~40%
Armor: ~30000+ (Thanks Karthis, Argonaut)

Healers

Note: The combined healing output of your healers should be approximately 5000. For example, you could have a Paladin with 1500, a Priest with 1800, and a Druid with 1500. But don’t go too far in the wrong direction. I strongly suggest bringing in 3 healers.

Holy Priest

Health: ~8500+
Mana: ~9500+
+Healing: ~1600
MP5: ~140 while casting

Resto Druid

Health: ~8500 (Tree druids move slow)
Mana: ~9500
+Healing: ~1600
MP5: ~140 while casting

Holy Paladin

Health: ~8500
Mana: ~9500+
+Healing: ~1600 (Flash of Light spam)
MP5: ~140 while casting
Spell crit: 20%+

Resto Shaman

Health: ~9000
Mana: ~8500
+Healing: ~1600 (Rank 2 or Rank 5 Chain Heals)
MP5: ~150 while casting (Achievable with recent Water Shield improvements)

DPS Classes

Note: Caster DPS should be hitcapped (Thanks Trollin’).

Rogues

Health: ~9000+
Attack Power: 1800
Hit: 200 rating+
Crit: 25%+

Shaman

Elemental

Heath: ~9000
Mana: ~8000
Spell damage: ~850+
MP5: ~130 while casting

Enhancement

Health: ~9000+
Mana: ~6000
Attack Power: 1600
Hit: 9%
Crit: 27%

Mage

Health: ~9000+
Mana: 9000
Spell damage: 900+
Crit: 30%

Warlock

Affliction
Health: 10000+
Mana: 8500+
Spell damage: +900

Destruction

See above. Warlocks, comment if it should be different.

Hunters

BM/MM

Health: ~9500+
Mana: 6500+
AP: 2200+
Hit: Capped
Crit: 20%+

Survival

Health: ~9500+
Mana: 6500 mana
AP: 2200+
Hit: Capped
Crit: 40%
Agility: 950+

Druid

Moonkin

Health: 9000+
Mana: 9000
Crit: 18%
MP5: 120 MP5
Spell damage: 900

Shadow Priest

Health: 9500
Mana: 8500
Spell damage: 900

Fury Warrior

Health: ~9500+
Attack power: 1800+
Crit: 40% (That too much to ask?)

Retribution Paladins

Health: 9000+
Mana: 7000+
Crit: 26%
AP: 1700

There you have it folks! Those’re are my suggested stats to get into Zul’Aman. Use it as a guide as opposed to a rule. I’m expecting a flood of comments saying that I went too high here or too low there. Keep it coming! Any updates to this, I will post on the bottom.

Updates:

12/01: Lowered +hit requirements for melee. Equalized mana regen among healers. Lowered health requirements among melee. Equalized tank health. Thanks Mera!

15/01: Added armor figures for Druids (Thanks Karthis). Raised mana pool and healing for Paladins slightly (Thanks Arduanne).

16/01: Split up the Hunters into three different specs. Posted one for survival. MM and BM I’m unsure of, so I’m using existing numbers. Hoping another Hunter can confirm.

14/03: Added fury warriors, Ret Paladins, several stats adjusted for hunters, shamans, etc.