I feel a bit silly posting this when the general consensus seems to be that Hyjal = Weaksauce, but the trash there is giving us a lot of problems. We only gave it a couple of hours worth of trying, but I still feel that there might be something we're missing, because it's definitely not as pathetically easy as people make it out to be - at least, not for us.

We keep getting overrun at the twelfth wave before Rage Winterchill, which was a pretty discouraging event for us considering we were feeling pretty good about our clean Kael kill less than an hour before. We tried using assist trains, sheeping/shackling everything that wasn't being focus-fired, but the NPCs keep on breaking the sheep, which means an awful lot of skeletons get added into the mix.

We were running with 2 warrior tanks and a feral druid, 6 healers, the rest DPS.

To outline our basic strategy for each wave:

Rogues assist a DPS warrior from mob to mob, keeping stuns on cannibalizing ghouls and necromancers. Mages sheep necromancers if they can, then assist-train along with the warlocks. Priests shackle what they can, heal/DPS as necessary. One tank takes a mob and drags it back deep into the camp to get more NPCs into the fight. Dead people run in from the graveyard.

Is there some key element we're missing or do we just need more practice? Like I said before, it's pretty discouraging considering that the trash will only get harder in the next two bases, and I'd really appreciate any help that you all might be willing to offer.

If you're in Hyjal you're probably already aware, but in the next patch the trash is getting a hefty nerf. So if you can hold out for another week or so, you should be in much better shape...

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...06676024&sid=1

We thought about the AoE tactic, but thought that it'd be kind of counter-productive with all the ghouls cannibalizing at pretty much the same time. I assume that we were wrong and the AoE damage + melee focus-fire makes it a moot point?

Thanks for the tip about the hunter training mobs, we hadn't thought about that.

Yes, but it seems like too much of a waste to just take a raid day off - we really have nowhere else to go but Hyjal now, and calling it quits just to wait for a nerf patch seems silly.

Also this may be something you already do, but save all your cooldowns for wave 12. Blow them all -- it's not like you really need Bloodlust/Heroism for Rage for example.

We single target nuked a couple of them untill the tanks had solid aggro on all of them, then just aoe'd them down. The trash waves aren't that easy, but once you master everything it becomes fairly simple. Can only speak for Rage Winterchill, but he was rather gimped atleast.

Status report: Thanks to the tips on this thread, we managed to get to (and take down) Winterchill with little difficulty tonight, as well as getting some tries in on Anetheron (which were ruined due to our tankers having little to no understanding of the encounter, but that's another story).

We used a melee assist train to take down the casters (banshees/necros) without any tanks, a rogue running with mind-numbing on his OH was enough to make them easily soloable. Casters burned one or two before opening up a can of AoE.

Having done the trash several times, I find myself concurring with the general opinion that Hyjal trash is (regardless of difficulty) tedious and utterly unrewarding. I can understand why everybody chooses to go to BT instead. :P

But anyway, much thanks to the Elitist Jerks and other members who contributed to this thread.

Hyjal is just one big supression room with a named elite in the end. The fact that you can corpserun in when you die in the middle of the encounter makes it even more of a joke.

Then again there's no need to run in when you're fighting boss. Trash is harder.

Never used an AoE strat on a successful run. Assist trains work best I think, considering ghouls cannibalize.

One thing we actually noticed when doing trash was, the more NPCs you actually keep alive, the easier the rest of the trash is. If you're pulling adds around the alliance camp and getting almost all the NPC's involved every wave, you'll have a lot better luck.

Our first time on the later waves (11, 12, and RW) we had very few NPC's alive aside from Jaina, the last couple waves became hard to control and we lost a significant amount of DPSers.

Our second attempt and kill, Rage Winterchill died with 1 raid member down, and all but 2 NPC's alive.

If nothing else, keeping NPC's alive is a bit different and helps to break the monotony that is Hyjal trash.

We also use an assist train and we drop OOC on every wave unless we really screw something up. We stack the raid very heavily with dps though (since healing is light except on the bosses). If you're tanking multiple mobs, then warlocks can just go balls out with dot stacking, provided they don't dot CC'd mobs.

Also, it's really good to keep Abominations shackled, because their aoe just destroys npcs. Usually we keep about 90%+ of the NPC's up, and it makes a world of difference. NPC's still contribute a huge chunk of damage if you can keep them alive to wave 12 (they also absorb the lol-caster-assist-train that occasionally people like me die to).

On a side note, FOR CHRISTS SAKE JAINA, STOP PYROBLASTING THE GOD DAMNED SHACKLES.