Diogo

Yeah, we are also having massive problems on the lynx phase on zul jin. We seem to be able to consistently get him to between 15-25%, but since we have at least 4 cloth wearers in our group, a good chunk of them gets nuked either during the tornado phase or the lynx phase. Those seem to be particularly hard without raid stacking (i.e., doing it mostly melee, with paladins and druids healing).

 

BlueGlyph

Dunno if it's posted yet, but here is a more complete list of Malacrass abilities

Paladin- Consecrate, Avenging Wrath & Holy Light
Shaman- Fire Nova Totem, Chain Lightning & Healing Wave
Warlock- Curse of Doom, Unstable Aflication & Rain of Fire
Warrior- Mortal Strike, Whirlwind & Spell reflect.

 

Mideci

It happens. You should doublecheck recount to make sure you are both getting hit, but it happens.

The reality is, with a 5 sec break in between them -- or more -- there is time. We had 1 very well geared healer, 1 so-so, 1 slightly less geared and it was annoying, but doable.

Druid MTing it = better, from our experience.

 

Dominick

Anyone else think that Malacrass's Soul Siphon is completely ridiculous for a T4, even early SSC guild? Its no longer out-rangeable, and combined with his half dozen other AoEs, makes this fight a giant pain in the ass.

 

◊ Ulfgar

Likewise. Makes sense - have your high armour tank MT Halazzi so that Saber lash will hit for less and there's less risk of being spiked down by Saber lash + boss melee. We went with a warrior our first try, and me offtanking; our healers all agreed it was much easier when we switched things up and we killed him the next try. Although they were all dry on mana right at the end (no shadowpriest).

 

tekkel

Yes we tried Malacrass last night. I'm usually tanking as paladin but since we cc'ed all adds I ended up healing. Due to not having anti interrupt talents besides concentration aura I ended up doing 1.5 flash of lights during his aoe. I guess other healers might get out a few more with the aura. It's not outrangeable and not losable. We're an early SSC/TK geared guild. 5/6, 2/4 atm and with his other abilities it just feels like too much incoming damage unless we start stocking up shadow res gear. 1 person not topped above 8k and receiving a heal midway and he's dead. He went down to 30ish% at one point but we should get better at interrupting his healing abilities. Burning him down doesn't seem to be the problem. Keeping everyone up is If all ranged dps and 1-2 healers can outrange it. Say it would be 40 yards the fight might become trivial. We also had issues with the MT losing aggro due to alot of fears. Him mind controlling the healers wasn't really fun either.

I guess we'll go try again tonight. Seems ccing everything and trying to burn him down in 5 minutes is the only way to survive the massive incoming damage that will overwhelm your healers at some point. Some abilities are easily dealt with, others are quite nasty.

 

Tojara

If I was in a T4's shoes for Hexlord I would..

A) Bring a Priest
B) Scavenge the Auction House for 2-3 green shadow resistant items for all of your raid (Warlocks probably don't need)
C) Flask of Chromatic Resistance

Honestly the encounter seems a little bit out of whack to me. If you don't DPS him down fast enough he starts doing insane amounts of damage. Not to mention that depending on who he drains, it may hinder your DPS. To kill him fast enough would require you to control as many adds as possible, but this causes the problem of taking away possible DPS and the worst part is the massive spell pushback from the shadow volley thing.

I don't know, seems a little bit too hard for who the instance is 'truly' intended for. Not impossible though. It's really not that insane to have 10 members get a few shadow resist gear items and use the chromatic flask. Even around 200 shadow resistance (should be easily obtainable) would make the fight much more managable without losing too much DPS/Healing. It's not like the healing requirement (except volley) is that high or the tank takes too much damage, rather the volley is the hardest part of the encounter.

My view is a little skewed on this though, so maybe I am wrong. I certainly can see a group geared with early ZA loot, heroic badge loot and karazhan loot killing him without Shadow Resistance gear. We did it with some Shadow Resistance on and it was easy. Im fairly certain that we could just DPS zerg him down as well, given our gear.

Regardless though, if it was intended for these players to acquire some Shadow Resistance gear and pots then thats perfectly fine considering how good Hexlord/Zuljins loot tables are, not to mention earlier ZA!

I find the zone as a whole pretty well balanced though, and while you're pretty much open to go wherever you want, theres a pretty nice natural progression route you can take when first learning it. The only exception to this is Zul'jin who seems a little less interesting then the other bosses in the zone ( obviously more complex then the bear, im more or less implying how simple each phase is). The boss just seemed very rushed compared to that of say, the Dragonhawk (who is one of the more creative bosses in the game, mostly new mechanics too).

 

Caryna

For what it's worth, here's a WWS parse of the Bear boss encounter from a purely Karazhan/Badges/crafted guilds point of view:

Wow Web Stats (renamed to Patchwerk to make it work with WWS)

Only three people have one piece from Gruul and the druid tank has the trash staff from SSC. No one has killed any boss in SSC or TK so far. The warrior tank is still using greens as well. The warlock has no enchants and shit gems.

So yeah, so far it looks well tuned for Karazhan "farming" guilds (we only have 2 Nightbane kills so far). Next stop Dragonhawk and Eagle I guess.

You know that you play too much WoW if you partners pants become a rare drop.

 

groktar

I keep seeing Malacrass strats recommending we only kill 1-2 adds, however we struggled keeping them crowd controlled the entire fight, and had random deaths from them. Just for fun we decided to kill three, and we noticed something interesting: He didn't do a single drain until he hit 75%. Next time we killed for adds to see if it was a weird timer thing, and again no drain until 75%. I highly doubt our DPS was good enough to kill all four adds and knock off 25% of the boss' life within one minute, which has been the suggested timer on his self buff.

The fight just seems a lot less hectic without things like shackle breaking while your only priest is mind controlled and trying to rebanish the elemental before it can smash a healer. It's probably even worse becase DPS has to take time off to CC. Is anyone able to confirm the first drain at 75%?

 

icon41gimp

Dampen magic on everyone but the tank(s) seems like it would be pretty huge. If it gives full reduction on each volley that's about 30% of the damage reduced right there. Combined with a bit of Shadow resistance and it could turn the fight from hard to trivial pretty quickly.

I didn't get a chance to try it earlier this week since we just brute forced it first try but I'll give it a shot later today.

 

• Snowy

I had the opportunity to go back in here with my paladin last night, in a group that is essentially Karazhan-geared. We cleared the first 3 and almost killed Dragonhawk, but we had to call it a night before we got him. I think it's really well tuned overall -- certainly you benefit if you have ventured into SSC/TK but tanks without a single piece of gear from there can still do fine. My paladin MT'ed both the bear and the lynx -- for reference, I have anywhere from 13.5k-14k health completely unbuffed. The Lynx saber lash was hitting me for about 9k, which was about half my pool competely buffed. However, quaffing an ironshield made it a little easier, and if you're in the same boat that I'm in, I'd recommend bringing a couple of these along.

This zone really is nice for a paladin tank -- I get a huge amount of initial aggro on both the bear/lynx, allowing us to just rip right into them, and have absolutely no mana problems with all the incoming damage. For the Eagle, I swap to heal gear and help make it smoother. For the Dragonhawk, I'm an ideal tank for the egg hatchlings. For the trash, especially on the way to the Lynx, it makes it a lot smoother.

Obviously we didn't get to Malacrass so I couldn't quite see how rough it would be on us, but from my main I can definitely tell you this -- this is a healer check. You want your glass cannon casters to shelve some of that gear and wear stam gear instead, eat food, etc. A piece or two of SR could be very useful, but don't think flasking is really necessary. I would suspect just leaving one add up would be the way to go, to minimize the risks of any CC breaking during the soul siphon, although I always made sure to reapply shackle often and had no such problems.

Overall I think this is a really well tuned and fun zone and challenging for a guild just in Kara gear, as it should be. As for the time trial, I'm not sure it's intended to be completed by people with just gear from the zone, I seem to recall saying it was aimed more at BT-geared guilds. On the other hand, a guild only with gear from the zone is still going to be able to kill several of the bosses before the timer expires, for a few extra pieces of loot. I think that's pretty fair.

Benefactors' Bar, where you get free English lessons:

 

Darkrenown

@Loomax: I'm pretty sure intervene was working on fixate as I know my healers weren't pulling aggro and it worked on them.

@Tigertooth: We didn't have a pally with us. Our rogue claimed he hit evasion and every hit still landed. Vanish works though, he just returns to the tank. I assume BoP, bubble and iceblock would do the same thing.

 

Jarlyn

For dealing with Malacrass, I think a CoH priest would trivialize the volleys quite a bit, but we did it last night with a shaman, druid and paladin healing. The druid kept up hots on everyone and we collapsed on top of the shaman so he could chain heal for max effect. Saved tranquility for the end when the damage was higher and Malacrass pretty much fell over dead for us. The only serious issue we ever had with the fight is when he has shaman abilities and drops a Fire Nova totem, which if allowed to go off is quite nasty. We're 5/5 MH and 8/9 BT, for reference.

Overall I think it's well tuned and a well designed instance in general, we cleared it for the first time last night and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The spell pushback from Malacrass' volley was a bit excessive, and we found the the eagle phase of Zul'Jin to mostly just be obnoxious rather than difficult. The tornadoes were causing minor UI lockups for several of us and the damage from spellcasts combined with the Lynx fixate thing pretty much punishes all clothwearers. Those are relatively trivial issues though, I think with a tiny bit of fixing it'll be a great zone for everyone.

 

• Falk

Dodgeball, WoW style! I found this to be the single most enjoyable part of the instance since it combined furious DPS with the need to grow eyes in every direction. I see how it can be mega-frustrating for casters though. :X

 

Jeffrey

We got most of the gauntlet while the Tempest was around 30% or so. I imagine it might've been related to the other bug following up though.

But thanks for the advice, good to know that it does work normally.

 

constantius

We cleared up to Zul'jin last night, and I have to echo the previous poster's comments: wtf is the Lynx on? The whirlwind effect with the stacking dot, where he's moving at 2x the speed of the SH boss, and the fixate where he stuns someone and then nukes the crap out of them, usually picking someone who is JUST out of range of you (because clumping means his whirlwind just hits harder) ... and typically the one remaining cloth person.

Our last attempt of the night, we got to Lynx, 10 people up, lots of mana, every under control, and he proceeds to kill:
- warlock
- me (holy priest)
- shadow priest
- resto shaman

in that order. We were running 3 healers (me, resto shaman, resto druid), so BoP wasn't an option ... he just nuked us. Of the entire instance clear, there were only two things I really felt needed to be reined in:

1) The pushback on the shadow volley for Hex Lord (we 1-shot him, but only because we all wore our Shahraz gear for the volley)
2) The strength and annoyance of the Lynx phase of Zul'jin.

We actually beat the Lynx phase twice, and got to the final one, and it's fine -- seemed reasonable, etc -- we just were down to too few people to finish him off. We had no rogue and no fury warrior in the raid, though, so we're going to try again today and see if we can speed up the dps in that phase (2x heroism/bloodlust will help) and get him down.

All in all, I have to say I *love* Dragonhawk -- excellent fight. It was the only fight I've done lately that I felt, at the end, that it was well balanced and genuinely fun. It took time to figure out a strat, tons of stuff happening, but it's all controllable, no-one died ... just genuinely interesting as a mechanic.

Meanwhile, Bear is just retarded. Silence + 18k dmg = stupid. Manageable, yes, but stupid.

 

Thessaly

This is exactly what was happening to us. We could finish the Lynx phase, but healers were either too low on mana or we had too few people up, and it resulted in a series of single digit percentage wipes. So much melee dps was lost trying to chase him around and then trying to get out of the way for the Lynx Rush. Combine that with him systematically wrecking clothies whenever he fixates on them, even with a BoP to save one of them, and it left us with a bad taste after what was overall a quick, enjoyable instance.

 

• Snowy

One cavaet though, you really still want to watch aggro here. The first time we met Zul'Jin, we essentially wiped on this phase, as casters got meeled for 5 digit hits after the charges, before it would go back to the tank. We laid back on the dps a little bit the next time and it was smooth and controlled. This is another fight where casters need a good HP pool, and your healers really have to be on the ball ready to assist heal. (one could say this is really good practice for Rage Winterchill and his Icebolts in a way)

Benefactors' Bar, where you get free English lessons:

 

Kluian

Has anyone completed the timed event fully yet, or if its even possible? Last night our guild attempted it with 10 good and geared players (T6). Our boss kill order was Eagle, Bear, Dragonhawk, Lynx so no time was wasted back tracking.

After killing Eagle boss we received 10 minutes (we had 7 remaining and it jumped up to 17).

After killing Bear boss we received 15 minutes (we had 2 remaining and it jumped up to 17). We did not get any loot from our box from saving the prisoner. After you opened it, the box just disappeared.

Our timer for the dragonhawk boss went away mid-fight. We did not wipe on anything prior to this.

Our raid composition was

3 Healers: 2 Paladins, 1 Resto Druid
2 Tanks: 1 Prot War, 1 DPS War
5 DPS: Spriest, Mage, Lock, Rogue, Enc Shaman

Has anyone completed the timed event since ZA has be on live servers? Maybe you can only bring 2 healers to do it to have the dps (though that might make dragonhawk very difficult).

 

GSH

Do any of the bosses in ZA deal crushing blows? WoWWiki indicates that the Bear and Lynx bosses do not, but what about the others?

If they don't crush, is this a sign that the crushing blow mechanic is being retired (at least on bosses)?

 

◊ Xerophyte

From this WWS log:

22:16'28.969 Jan'alai's Melee hits Awnh for 4924 (crushing)
20:30'54.307 Akil'zon's Melee hits Awnh for 4006 (crushing)

Crushings aren't going anywhere just yet, it seems.

 

Tuhalu

You do realize there is absolutely no difference between him fixating a plate class and fixating a cloth class right? His fixate does fixed damage. You can't mitigate the damage with armor, defense, resilience, dodge, parry or shield block. The only thing that helps is having more stamina so you don't die before heals land (druid > bear is one great example of that). So if you are having trouble with clothies dying to fixate when other players are not, then it's a problem with lack of stamina or lack of heals (if a healer is being fixated, the other healers need to step up and spam heals on them).

And really, by the time you reach Zul'jin, you should be used to the concept of "spread out, but not too far". You have to spread out on Bear (aoe charge affect). You have to spread out (chain lightning), but not too far (storm cloud) on Eagle. You have to spread out on Dragonhawk (breath attack). Lynx and Malacrass don't require spreading out so much as very fast reactions to changing conditions. So when you get to Zul'jin, you should naturally be aware of how to best spread out to minimise incoming damage while maximising dps and healing. Zul'jins Lynx form is your test for that concept.

 

• Chicken

On that subject, if you have a sufficiently geared Paladin for this it's very viable to just have the the eggs on one side all popped on the first Hatcher spawn, and use the second Hatcher spawn to clear all eggs on the other side. Will make the fight pretty boring though.