Birkin

We are also running ZA with everyone in Kara/Heroic gear and zero 25 man content items. We have everyone flask/food/weapon buff.

Our general dps setup varies greatly from reset to reset. The only thing that remains the same is we always have 2x Prot Warriors and 3x healers. Usually healers are best geared: 2x Holy Priest and 1x Tree Druid (although we've used 1x Resto Shaman or 1x Holy Paladin in place of any of these).

We have downed bear boss every time we have attempted him, usually first attempt. The only wipes are usually on the pull when the tanks don't run in together and the pulling tank gets hit for the full Brutal Swipe amount. We have always done him first, for ease of the fight. For the first two kills, we decided not to even attempt the timer since we felt it was better to learn the pulls. The third attempt we decided to give the timed attempt a whirl. We took out the initial wave and ran down the stairs. We ended up running into the pat, so we took them out. We skipped 2/3 of the bear packs before the boss stairs. We charged up the stairs and didn't wipe on any trash. The pull before Nalorakk we keep 1 add sheeped and 1 add perma-feared. After they are killed, drink up and the tanks run in together to pull the boss. (We actually wiped on the pull due to tanks not running in together, so we wiped as fast as possible - ho heals - and ran back together, buffing along the way) After all were ready, wasted several minutes, we pulled again. We generally fight him on the stairs for less movement. We actually have all DPS/Healers stand on his 6 o'clock. We are all bunched up on his back side and nobody gets charged. BigWigs seems to be perfect in the form timer, so it makes the transitions very easy for our tanks. Healing doesn't seem to be a problem. Priests keep up Renews and if we're blessed with a Druid, all the better. After knockback from the AOE silence, we all reposition ourselves behind the boss again. We pulled the second attempt with 7 minutes left on the timer and beat the bear boss with 20 seconds to spare.

Knowing we didn't really have a shot at the Eagle timer (have only downed him twice at this point and still perfecting the gauntlet), we watched the event for the chest.

Our strategy for the gauntlet is 1 tank up front and 1 tank in the back. We burn the healer first obviously. We do ZERO aoe on the gauntlet. I think that due to us being T4 geared and not overgeared for the instance, we have problems with aoe taking too much damage, or when they put on +stam gear, not outputting enough dmg. Our OT in the back burns the back adds along with the Afflock/Spriest refreshing DoTs (only) on the back pair. Melee dps single target the birds down and all casters take out front pair of elites. We take a slower pace up the gauntlet than most it seems, probably due to lack of AOE, but we find this the most effective way to reach the top given our situation.

We timed the birds/back adds one night and the birds seem to come every 30 seconds and the back adds every minute (maybe slightly more on the back pair).

Eagle boss we use the "collapse on melee" method. We spread out around the square that surrounds Akil'zon to prevent the Static Disruption and run in to melee when there is 2-3 seconds left on the BigWigs timer for Electrical Storm. The first time we downed the Eagle, we were lucky enough to have a Resto Shaman to raid heal, but the couple times since, we did it with 2x Holy Priests and 1x Tree Druid. The first couple times we decided to use AffLocks/Hunter to down the summoned birds, but on our most recent attempt last night, we decided not to kill any of the eagles and focus on the boss (we were melee heavy: DPS Warr, Rogue, Enh Shaman, 2x Prot Warr). Due to the heavy melee + not killing any birds, the raid took a bit more damage than our previous attempts, but didn't really notice the difference until around 20% when we started to feel a bit overwhelmed. We downed Eagle with the majority of the raid alive. Despite the new strategy attempt (seeing if there was a cap on the number of birds that spawn), it does seem to be easier if you kill the birds.

We have only attempted Dragonhawk one time, and still working on an effective strategy with our group composition, so I can't talk too much more. Our biggest concern at the moment is perfecting trash pulls to Dragonhawk. We must not be skipping enough, because it seems silly how much there is to clear.

 

victual

Most of the guilds completing all four timed event bosses have a Prot Pally. The advantages of this being that you can multi-tank the Gauntlet, and Dragonhawk. Plus you have an off-tank for 3 of the four timed bosses. The only problem I'm having with this is that the Prot pally can't do any damage on the Eagle boss. Roughly doing half my damage, and I'm the MT.

Is there a way for him to maximize his dps during this fight? We can currently get 3 bosses down before time runs out. I think we need to maximize his damage on the eagle boss to help squeeze another minute. He's only in T4 gear.

 

Jebraltar

Easiest way is to bring a bear and make the pally MT. If that's not an option, though, give him mana pots. He's going to do crappy DPS regardless, but it's at least somewhat sustainable with mana pots.

 

Denogran

You could always have him MT it. That boss seems to do enough damage where it'd be possible for your pally to keep consecration up all of the time if he's the one getting hit. This has the added benefit of passively killing the birds without too much effort. I don't know how you're doing the boss, but that could free up your warlock/mages/hunters to just concentrate on the boss, and it's highly likely you could do more damage pretending to be fury than your prot pally pretending to be Ret.

Lastly, you really can't judge a prot-specced tank trying to dps versus a prot-specced tank actually getting wailed on. TPS is directly related to DPS, and the one tanking has the bonus of basically endless rage/mana to play with. If you do switch places, watch the meters. If he's not doing a substantial amount more damage than you, then I'd guess he needs to work on his threat cycle.

 

Caryna

I have posted the strategy that works for us in the other ZA threat, so I'll quote myself:

Raid makeup: Wow Web Stats

So yeah, I have to agree with the previous posters that you lack one more AoE class instead of one of the shadow priests or shamans.

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

 

Mem

I'd second the idea to switch tanks and test whether its viable (I've honestly no clue what the eagle boss does to a T4 pally tank). Protection dps in fury gear isn't that bad. I won't assume though that it will give you the full minute you need.

 

Poggrid

We have our T4 pally tank take eagle without any problems whatsoever. He had ~18k buffed (full Kara gear + S2 shield + heroic badge chest + heroism card) on our run last night. But even before the patch, when he had ~15-16k buffed, everything went fine.

 

Denogran

Before that patch there was no ZA, so I find this comment confusing.

If you do have your pally do it, make sure he remembers to toggle Righteous Fury( I forgot that once and the shadow priests in the raid became ghost shadow priests fairly quickly, much to my confusion ).

 

• giansm

If you have decent Fury or Arms gear, you could go as DPS and let the paladin main tank. Our normal ZA group has a protection warrior main tanking and a fury warrior offtanking when needed. This ends up being the bear and lynx bosses, and some of the harder hitting trash, although on the majority of the trash he is just doing damage while we sheep / prot warrior tanks everything else. This is pretty nice since the fury warrior can do very good DPS when we don't need him to tank, more than a feral druid.

 

Saabik

Prot pally = tank/heal hybrid
Prot warrior = tank/dps hybrid

I remember Natural doing significant DPS on Teron as prot. Swap your tanks.

 

Poggrid

You're right; I was thinking of early runs we did, where he only had 15-16k. Last night he showed up with 18k+ and our druid tank felt somewhat embarrassed.

This pally tank also remembers to put up Righteous Fury all the time, unlike our other pally tank (not me)...

 

Aurelius

 

taleden

Has anyone finished all 4 timers that hasn't been killing Illidan for a good long while?

We just killed Illidan last week, so our main raiders mostly have 1-3 T6 and miscellaneous MH/BT gear, but on our best run yet we killed the Dragonhawk boss with only 4min left -- not even remotely close.

Is the timer really that hard, or is there some specific raid comp or strategy that yields a huge increase in speed?

 

xiaoxin21

Not sure if this a known bug. When we are doing the eagle gauntlet trash. Our hunter tag one of the Reinforcement to trap and FD immediately.

Both the Reinforcements despawned and no further reinforcement spawned , neither does the eagle packs come from the front. When we got to the top, the Amani'shi Tempest on top at the end of the gauntlet is also missing. We are all laughing at Blizzard at nerfing ZA for the casuals but after checking with our other ZA group, it seems that theirs is perfectly fine.

Anyone else have experienced this too before in ZA?

 

xiaoxin21

Some unconfirmed rumors I heard from a reliable source, not going to try it because it might get my account banned and it could be not worth it. The Chinese players has discovered a bug with the ZA door(the one that requires 5+ players to bang the gong).

Apparently, if you stick to the side of the door and keep pressing jump, you will eventually get to the top where there is a gap for you to drop down. This way you can kill the 4 bosses without starting the timed event and get bear mount.

 

Zegai

Hm..
We're having issues with the Zul'jin fight. Our raid is composed of T4-geared folks, with some badge gear mixed in. I'm probably the best equiped player, so if you want to check gear levels you can check my armory ;P.
We did the first four bosses with different raid groups, so no prob there. Dragonhawk still gives us some grief, on our second kill we.. didn't use a tank for him, the mage, lock and arms war DPSd the adds by themselves, since our druid was having a tough time getting the dragonhawks. Malacrass was cake, got him in the third try I think.. because we messed CC up on the second try.

Now.. Zul'jin is sure giving us a hell of a time. Several people have trouble staying alive through phase 3 (eagle), so we tried dpsing him down and healing through the damage - it helped, but usually one or two people died anyway. Any tips there?
Also, we had a lot of trouble on phase 4 - almost every time he fixates a healer, the healer dies. Tried it with 2 priests/1 pally and 3 priests, with the same result. I don't know if there's anything we can do besides getting one more healer or the PvP/Badge-trinket-thing, since our HP pool is quite limited because of our gear level.

I'd gladly hear any suggestion. For now, I'm thinking Zul'jin will be a 4-healer fight for us, probably something like 1-2 priests 1-2 holy pallies 1 resto druid.

 

Kulldam

My Guild/experiences sound fairly similar to yours so I'll offer a few select tips that helped us. We're all Karazhan/Heroic geared, and as the Main Tank, I'm the best equipped probably and similar to you (with T4/Kara in all slots except my BP, which is a Hyjal drop).

We only raid once per reset, so it took us quite a few weeks to get to Malacrass/Zul'jin. Our first night on Zul'jin, our best attempt was 2%. We had four healers in the raid, and we actually were doing very well on the fourth (Lynx) phase, but the third phase was extremely long with our very weak DPS and took forever to get through, almost negating the extra healing we had to begin with.

Raid was:

Warrior (Prot)
Shaman (Enhancement)
Hunter (Beast)
Paladin (Holy)
Druid (Feral)

Druid (Resto)
Priest (Holy)
Shaman (Resto)
Mage (Fire)
Warlock (Affliction)

We ended up blowing our Bloodlusts for the Lynx phase, but had mana and DPS issues by the final phase and couldn't keep up with the raid heals.

The next raid, we had two 1% wipes, then finally managed to down Zul'jin, but with a very screwy raid makeup of five healers (partly from availability of classes, to be sure). Raid was:

Warrior (Prot)
Shaman (Enhancement)
Hunter (Beast)
Rogue (Combat)
Druid (Resto)

Shaman (Resto)
Paladin (Holy)
Druid (Resto)
Priest (Holy)
Mage (Fire)

As you can guess, it took forever. We also had five people dead when he died, so it was certainly close.

Our next raid (which was last night), we put together a very ideal group and plowed through the first bosses, managing to down the Bear, Eagle, and Dragonhawk with two minutes to go on our timer (the best we'd ever done before was to get the Bear down before timer, so that was quite exciting!). We also managed to down Malacrass and Zul'jin, though Malacrass gave us a lot of trouble (maybe 5 wipes), but only took two tries on Zul'jin for the evening, which was nice. It seems we're learning, which is the hope.

Our raid makeup was:

Warrior (Prot)
Shaman (Enhancement)
Hunter (Beast)
Warrior (Arms)
Druid (Feral)

Shaman (Resto)
Priest (Holy)
Druid (Resto)
Priest (Shadow)
Mage (Fire)

Unfortunately we rarely have access to one, but it's clear that the Shadow Priest really makes the difference for us in terms of raid DPS, lowering the number of raid slots dedicated to healing. Also, I can't stress enough how useful even a semi-averagely equipped Feral Druid is for ZA in my experience. They provide much more stability for tanking/OTing than a DPS Warrior (at least at the T4 level), AND can do significant damage once their tanking job is done, even mid-fight.

Anyway, tips for Zul'jin for T4 gear-level:

Phase 3

We found it useful to "front-load" as much of our necessary spell-casting to avoid taking the 1250 shocks as much as possible. Therefore, we found it handy to have everyone in the raid recast important buffs/totems at 62-63% (I.E. While Zul'jin is still in Bear phase) and have everyone who is capable load him up with DoTs. Things like totems, judgements, healer DoTs, Curse of Whatever, etc. are prime examples of useful spells you'll want for Phase 3, but will take damage recasting during the phase. Therefore, if you aren't doing so already, have the raid reapply all such spells just before the phase starts. They'll carry over into a good portion of the Phase without the need to waste time/health recasting when you'll actually get hit for it.

Depending on your raid makeup, it may also help to swap groups around to maximize survivability (I.E. Hit Points). If possible, we give both groups one or more "extra" HP buffs, such as Commanding Shout, Blood Pact, etc. Then swap groups back to normal after the phase (though this is also useful for phase 4, especially for cloth types).

Also, I'm sure it's obvious, but make sure healers are aware of the damage intake from spell casts and how that translates into efficiency. Our healers generally try to use a pattern of sorts to manage outgoing and incoming heals, such as "heal other", "heal other", "heal self", "repeat". Also, things like Prayer of Healing/Mending, Tranquility (if you can avoid interruption), etc. are very efficient for the phase if timed well.

Lastly, though the Lynx phase is awful, we often find a well-timed Bloodlust on the melee group more useful during Phase 3 just to end it sooner, as that's where our healers tend to spend more of their mana on the fight as a whole.

Phase 4

The biggest challenge we had on learning this phase, like most, was getting our healers to work together in a smart way on the Claw Rage targets. Once they got the system down the raid before last, we haven't had any deaths from Claw Rage (though certainly some close calls).

First, make sure all healers have target-of-target in their UI somewhere and can heal with it. This is huge for us, and lets the healers keep Zul'jin targeted almost full-time and easily tell who he's on (without needing to rely on BigWigs or DBM to announce it then target that member in the raid window, wasting time via slow reactions).

Second, make sure one healer is assigned to "small spam heals" for Claw Rage targets and the other two or three healers are assigned to "big heals" for Claw Rage targets. This was the biggest change for us that really gave us some stability.

During our Zul'jin wipes on phase four, we finally realized that too many healers were making bad assumptions about the best way to heal through Claw Rage. They'd instinctively want to use their fast, small heals because the target always seems to have low health, and that's something engraved in healers' brains.

Instead, we generally use a Paladin or Shaman, depending on raid makeup, to be on small spam heals, which covers the damage from the initial 3-4 ticks, while the other healers are casting their largest, most hit-points-per-second heals on the target. The Claw Rage target will get low, but once the big heals start landing, they're rarely at risk of dying since it's very effective healing per second.

We also Intercept cloth Claw Rage targets when they get low/near the end of the Claw Rage duration, in case of a regular melee swing, though I can't say I've seen very many if any instances of it happening lately, but it's a precaution so no reason not to.

We also found it helpful to make sure healers/raid members themselves are topping off their health before the "claw whirlwind crazy spin move thing" goes off, since the DoT is somewhat severe and can kill people without heals midway through the ticks or with low HP to begin with.

Additionally, Prayer of Healing/Tranquility can be used quite effectively after a "spin move" since there's generally at least 2-3 people per group taking DoT damage afterward and Claw Rage doesn't start again for a few seconds.

For healers getting targeted by Claw Rage, if priests or druids, suggest they keep a HoT or PW:Shield on themselves at all times (or at least when Claw Rage is expected, but that's harder to manage), which will provide an extra bit of breathing room if they should end up targeted by Claw Rage when it's cast next. Although it costs more mana of course, one Super Mana Potion is much cheaper than the cost of repairing after a wipe.

Also, make sure the weaker hit point classes (priests, mages, etc.) are getting maximized Hit Points. Stick your Warrior for commanding shout, warlock for blood pact, etc. all in the same group with those people, even if it lowers efficiency of DPS/other classes. It'll benefit you in the end if everyone lives to Phase 5, and you can always swap people back during transition.

Lastly, if all else fails use Bloodlust/Heroism during Phase 4 if available, along with bigger cooldown abilities (Recklessness, Hunter Haste, etc.) where applicable.

On a final note, as the MT, I have found transitions between Phase 3 to Phase 4 and Phase 4 to Phase 5 (I.E. When Zul'jin moves center and changes forms) to be very iffy with agro. It seems his actual "reset moment" may not occur until he breaks free of his stationary location, but that's very anecdotal so just be careful with the transition into the final phase. More than once we've had him run after a healer even with the tank slamming/devastating during transition. It's usually not the end of the raid as he reagros quickly after an intervene/shield slam, but it's scary and hectic. Use of Fade and Misdirection are advised when possible.

Good luck, you'll get him soon!

Edit: Thought I'd also add a tip for the Dragonhawk boss.

When we first started ZA, we had real trouble with this boss. It took us I believe three raids to finally down him as I recall, and we ended up coming up with a rather unique strategy.

Due to the vast amount of damage dealt to the raid from Flame Breaths (even with ideal 'spreading'), and because we've never had the makeup or overall DPS to deal with a huge number of Hatchlings at once, we started splitting the raid into two teams. The "Tank Team" is made up of a healer (usually Tree Druid), the MT, and any Hunters or Shadow Priests at the raid (more on this later). The "Hatchling Team" is everyone else, usually 6-7 people.

We have the Tank Team immediately pull the boss into the right-side cubby, back-peddling down the bridge and moving him slightly to the side once in the cubby. Meanwhile, the Hatchling team kills the right-side Hatcher (the one that would've come to the Tank Team's side) and then kills Hatchlings from the left side. We spawn four waves of Hatchlings then kill the Hatcher.

By splitting the raid, the boss only Flame Breaths the members of the Tank Team, and with spreading out, only one person gets hit per breath, letting the rest of the raid and healers worry only about Hatchlings/Hatchers.

Once he ports everyone to the middle, there are usually 5-10 Hatchlings still alive, so they're dealt with during the Flame Bubble phases. Once the Flame Bubble phases are over and adds are soon to spawn, the Tank Team immediately moves back into right-side cubby position.

After two Hatcher waves, the left side is clear and Tank Team then moves to the left side so Hatchlings can spawn from the right.

After four Hatcher waves, all eggs are spawned and Hatchlings are no longer an issue, and from there the raid just needs to survive and keep the MT alive. The obvious downside is this method really takes a long time and lowers DPS on the boss (as he's only engaged full-time by one or maybe two people, a Hunter and/or Shadow Priest, since they are less effective than other DPS classes at Hatchling killing in our experience). The other issue is you'll hit Enrage about 10-15 seconds before the final (fourth) Hatcher phase ends (before the first 'center summon'), which can be a bit dangerous for the MT with only one healer. We solved it by having the MT drink an Ironshield potion and simply communicating with his healer. Once the raid gets ported center, a second healer can help with the MT as needed, and once Hatchlings are all dead, all healers can focus on the MT, which makes it fairly easy to heal through enrage.

 

swills

One useful strategy I've recently worked out for Zul'Jin's third phase is that you can effectively "tank" the damage in that phase as a resto Druid.

What I do now is to get a triple Lifebloom stack rolling on myself just prior to switching into phase 3, and then maintain that throughout the phase. That way you can just cast 3 Lifeblooms on other players, and then renew the 3-stack on yourself throughout the entire phase. Assuming you have relatively decent gear your Lifeblooms are ticking for 600 HPS so you gain 900 health every global CD while taking 1200 damage from the casts. All you need to do is skip an occasional GCD (or throw a Rejuve on yourself once or twice) and you stay at max health throughout the entire phase while still putting out a ton of healing. This also has the advantage of you never ever having to stop moving to heal so you basically take no Tornado damage either.

Having one healer who can cast a heal every 1.5s without ever being danger of dying really eases the burden on everyone else. I won't go so far as to say this trivialises the phase, but when I finally tried this out on a clear we did last night I don't think we once had a player drop below 50% in the third phase, and it smooths things out considerably.

 

xyruul

We managed to wipe on the bear boss about half way through tonight and still completed the timed event with 2 minutes showing on the clock. Last reset with no wipes we had 4m left. It doesn't require perfect execution to beat the timer, so I wouldn't just give up on the first mistake you make.

 

Akai_Kage

Im not native english and Im typing fast so sorry. I think you got the idea so no need to laugh, specially when the information is useful and more accurate than the previous one posted.

Don't blame for my english, it's still better than ur spanish.

PS.: And yes, it was Hex Lord info, not Zul'jin, my bad.