We drag him through the Tauren Warriors and tank Doomguards at Thrall, most of the lesser NPCs die during the trash, but we keep the warriors alive since they give nice DPS until they die.

Why are you wiping?

As for the SR we used Medalion when we only had that, and then medalion+cloak. If you're wiping because of tank deaths one solution might be to get a Shaman to wear +crit gear whilst spaming rank 1 lhw on the MT and just healing a bit with CL if the melees need help with their RoF (Shaman heal crit means +25% armor on your MT which helps ALOT!).


/edit another thing which helped us alot as well was making the tank stop attacking while silence was activ (to prevent parry -> haste attacks from happening).

Completely the wrong thread. Ignore.

Taurens can out range it. Not just warriors either, observe from our first go at Kaz'rogal:

Case 1:
05:44'15.437 Grondin's Melee crits Kaz'rogal for 626
05:44'15.437 Shadowdru's Melee dodged by Kaz'rogal
05:44'15.437 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp resisted by Shadowdru
05:44'15.437 Kaz'rogal is afflicted by Demoralizing Shout
05:44'15.687 Verilith's Shred hits Kaz'rogal for 1457
05:44'15.687 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Verilith for 2433
05:44'15.687 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Killshock for 2479
05:44'15.687 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Shadowmang for 2528
05:44'15.687 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Defac for 2918
05:44'15.687 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Safetyrazor for 2512
05:44'15.687 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits SrsFace for 2265
05:44'15.687 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Hyllanicen for 2255
05:44'15.687 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Srsserpent for 1227
05:44'15.687 Grondin's Melee crits Kaz'rogal for 1305

Case 2:
05:43'24.812 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp resisted by Shadowdru
05:43'24.812 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp resisted by Verilith
05:43'24.843 Grondin's Windfury Attack hits Kaz'rogal for 500
05:43'24.843 Grondin's Windfury Attack crits Kaz'rogal for 1107
05:43'24.953 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Killshock for 2447
05:43'24.953 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Shadowmang for 2510
05:43'24.953 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Defac for 2687
05:43'24.953 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Safetyrazor for 2489
05:43'24.953 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits SrsFace for 2218
05:43'24.953 Kaz'rogal's War Stomp hits Hyllanicen for 2197

Grondin is our resident Enhancement Shaman and a Tauren. Blizzard needs to fix their game.

At first I thought it was nearest 9 entities but this doesn't appear to be true since case 2 shows only 8 things getting hit (no Shadowfiend or Hunter pet's left AFAIK) while another player in melee range not getting a check.

Relevant WWS Wow Web Stats

Yea, the range of a tauren is pretty huge, on of our rogues used one of those engineering things to turn himself into a tauren and suddenly his swing radius doubled. Tauren rogues are deadly.

Not strategy related, but we got our first Kaz'rogal kill this week in possibly the most epic fashion possible. We started to wipe on our first real attempt on him at around 7%, and by 3% everyone was dead....except our one holy priest, Kaz'rogal, and Thrall. Thrall got aggro and the rest of the raid watched the last agonizing 3% until we saw thrall and kaz'rogal both keel over together at the last second, with Numukab getting the killing blow with a SW.

Just a fun little story
And then our officer updated our front page...

We had our first kill last night. I wore total of about 180 SR (BT neck, some blue SR cloak and green 37SR pants). According to WWS, we had a total of 7 marks before he was dead. I resisted 3. I beleive only 3 mana users died. I had about 5K mana left when it was over - I used mana pot as soon as first mark was over, used Dark Rune, and somewhere half way I used Shadowfiend. Had SP in my group as well. I know a couple of healers didnt wear SR, and they were nearly or oom by the end. I would lasted another 30 sec or so probably if needed. So, next time im definitely bring my SR and will try to get even more if I can. Resist 3 marks meaning I saved 9k mana from burn. That's huge. We also got Thrall and all the taurens invloved - tank grabbed him by the Thrall and dragged him up the hill to taurens. It helped with dps a lot too. Looking at WWS, we did 2.9M dmg to him. Meaning the other 1.3M or so was done by NPC.

Interesting note... I just noticed Kaz's cleave had a funny name (and a tiny area relative to his hitbox), and checked wowhead.

Well...

Malevolent Cleave - Spells - World of Warcraft

It's a Saber Lash effect!

A really weak one, but yeah.

They sure love that saber lash effect, huh? It's like that new "beam" art they came up with, and started using everywhere.

We tank him near thrall, start nuking asap, swap our shamans to give our melee triple bloodlust.
Works really well to switch those shamans, give it a shot.

On our first kill we didnt use any SR at all, for every kill after the first i myself used the Nights End and medallion of Karabor, have your rogues stealth to the front after the last wave distracting kaz'rogal to make sure you have enough time to Shadow Prot the raid.

As for kiting to thrall we all move way back behind him and had a hunter MD him to our MT and our MT then walks backwards and picks up thrall and does the same for the tauren warriors, making sure the raid is moving with him and staying spread out.

I saw mention of them on page 2, but no clear answer.

Do most people pull the gargoyles back to the raid or kill them by the Tauren warriors, or split the raid into two groups for these two waves? This is the only part we are struggling on, we always fall behind here and barely catch up before Kaz.

We always split. All but melee and one healer head up for wave 2. Two healers and 6 ranged head up for wave 4. Those waves are really light on the "normal" side of things, and since we have a pallytank we can mindlessly muddle through without having to care about anything but controlling the small number of necros in 4.

Sorry for the Necromancy, but my guild recently made some attempts on Kaz and I wanted to get some opinions. Seeing the well-established rules of not double posting topics, as well as me being under the 10 post limit for making new threads, I didn't have much choice.

Anywho.

One time we tried to pick him up right at the gates, and couldn't get the Tauren or Thrall involved in the fight. We wiped due to our non-casting mana-using DPS (ie Hunters and Enhancement Shaman) blowing up the melee or whoever was around them. That and basically going into the fight unready because he was agro'd early.

The second attempt we tried to get the Tauren and Thrall involved, but the NPCs at the gate messed us up. We tried chaining MDs to our MT, but the MDs couldn't overcome the agro from the NPCs. Not only that, but as soon as we tried to MD him, he started throwing mana burns on the raid.

A few posters earlier in the thread mentioned just letting Kaz stroll into the base up to Thrall, so I'm wondering if you just pulled everyone back about as far as you could away from the NPCs at the gates, waited for Kaz to kill them and then waited for him to stroll up closer to Thrall before engaging him. A possible issue with that is that we were wondering whether the mana drains could reach us from Thrall to the gates or if the mana drains affected players who are out of combat. We also figured that Kaz, like many bosses, has a instance-wide pulse that places everyone in the instance in combat.

Another thing I was wondering is that if anyone had their MTs or melee use Free Action Potions. I figure that the loss of the pot cooldown for Health pots would be more than overcome by the amount of damage that is avoided when the tank is stunned.

As for the melee using them, I'm not sure if it would outweigh the Health pot, but I think that it would definitely outweigh the use of Haste Pots. Considering that the war stomp is about 5-8s of doing nothing, and the Cripple is 7-9s of 75% attack speed reduction, I would figure that the damage that can be done in 12-17s of uptime at full attack speed would outweigh the damage that could be done with the possible 15s of 40% increased haste. Especially since you could time a Haste pot poorly and have some of its duration where you are either stunned or Crippled. I don't have any numbers, so I was hoping that someone who plays a melee dps class could enlighten me. I play a feral and I can powershift out of Cripple, so it doesn't affect me much at all.

Another question I have is whether using Aspect of the Viper would be better than chain-chugging mana pots and using Aspect of the Hawk. I figure that Viper would actually increase DPS because our Hunters would spend more time DPSing instead of being dead.



TLDR Version
1. How do you get Kaz to Thrall? Does it matter that the NPCs will agro him? (Worried about the Mana burn starting early)
2. Would Free Action Pots on the MT be better than using Health pots or Ironshield pots? (Damage avoided vs. Damage mitigated)
3.Would Free Action Pots on the melee DPS lead to an increase in DPS over using Haste Pots? Would this increase in DPS be enough to justify the loss of Health Pot availability?
4. Should Hunters be using Hawk or Viper here?

You should be having a Hunter Misdirect him to your MT when Kaz strolls in the front gate. Your tank should then engage him, and start backing up directly toward Thrall, until Thrall is engaged. DPS can start in as your tank is backing him up, it shouldn't affect a good tank's TPS too much. (basically just watch Omen and don't be a retard)

Furthermore, you can get more NPCs if you then have your tank back him up to the taurens in the camp to the NE. This is a fairly long jaunt, and there will be a couple of warstomps along the way, but it is well worth the trouble. DPS just continues as normal, keeping an eye on Omen. Again, unless your tank is actually stunned, his TPS should not really suffer.

Just be sure to get Kaz onto your MT via Misdirect before the NPCs aggro him.

It does't matter if the gate NPCs aggro him. You can have everyone stand uphill from Thrall while he kills the NPCs; you'll be put in combat, but once he finishes killing the NPCs he'll reset and go back to his normal path and you'll drop out of combat. Then you can wait until he paths to Thrall before engaging him. You do lose the dps of those NPCs if you do it this way, and it can sometimes take a minute or two for him to gank all the NPCs, but in my opinion it's worth it to get a fresh start on the mana burn timer when he reaches Thrall (at least if you're still learning the fight).

And then, as Snowy says above, pull him over to the Tauren warriors to get them involved, with everyone being careful to avoid the frontal cleave.

Our hunters seem to like Viper.

---

Also, on an unrelated note, this is one fight where micromanagement can actually be worthwhile. Have someone watching the raid's mana bars and calling out on vent when people get low can prevent an "oops" moment if someone's not paying attention.

Hmm..

Ok, so that answers the questions I had about positioning and whatnot, but can anyone speak to the value of Free Action pots on this fight?

I use a free action potion on the pull of the fight, I pop it a few seconds after he starts hitting me in melee. It lets me build a lot more threat, on a potentially threat sensitive fight (when casters are going extremely hard). For learning it and general kills its unnecessary, but when you just want to kill stuff as quick as possible, it will certainly help.

By the way, we have rogues who chain-distract kaz'rogal when he shows up. It can gain some precious time for the healers to drink up, and priests giving out SP buff to the casters who died during the trash pulls.

It is just a trick though, because your distract can be resisted.

Our fastest kill at 2m6s had us tanking him right at the gate before he would reach any npcs. I really don't think running him all over the place and trying to pickup npcs is worth it at all. At best you break even from the dps you lose from standing around while he's moving. The time he spends running around is also ticking down on the mark timer making it harder for less mana efficient classes.

If nobody's near him when he finishes with the gate NPCs, he drops out of combat and the mark timer resets. If you do it properly, the only time spent dragging around is moving him from Thrall to the Tauren camp, and you can position your raid to minimize the lost dps due to the movement.

By all means, if you can kill him at the gate you should, just to save the time he would spend killing the gate NPCs. But for guilds still learning the fight, or on the borderline dps-wise, it definitely makes sense to get Thrall and the Tauren warriors involved.

We always have the rogues chain distract until we are all ready, then have a hunter MD him to the MT who is standing by Thrall. Once the MT gets him so he isn't cleaving Thrall we all just go to town. Ranged spread out in a circle around him and basically if they get to 3k mana and have no pot timer up (or whatever else they could do for mana) they run away from the raid. Some of them choose to wear the medallion and night's end for resisting the mark. We have had some people resist 7 marks and others resist none so it seems luck plays a factor.

Worrying about the warstomp seems kind of silly to me. We in melee just take it. Yes you are not dpsing constantly but we have never wiped to Kaz either. He has given us the least problems of all the bosses, including Rage. We normally don't wipe to Rage either, but generally have a few deaths.

If you're going to move the boss to engage Thrall and the Tauren, Free Action Potion is nice. Take it, move into position then use your timer for something else when it's up.