I am fairly certain this was not the first time Lynx trash has respawned after a full clear.
Dragonhawk trash stays down after the boss dies but respawns after a soft reset as well. No other trash (other than Dragonhawk and Lynx) was present after soft resetting. I also noticed that the Lynx doors were closed even though the boss was killed.
Is there anyone here who is doing Za at about the gear level it is intended for?
I ask this because my guild is fairly casual, have Hydross/Lurker/Mags down and everything before that. We've taken 10 of our better geared right in and 1 shot the bear easily, no problem there. Dragonhawk we got to 35% and just hadn't popped enough eggs, again I see him going down soon. But we've tried Eagle and are completly stumped, we've figured a way to get him down to 50% or so but at this point attrition from birds, ranged attacks and knock ups takes it's toll. Irrespective of the guantlet which seems as hard as a boss.
The group is not bad, most of us did Karazhan when it first came out and were on par with the current BT guilds there, all of us are "aware" and make very few mistakes (ex. Out of 4 tries on DH boss, 0 bomb deaths). But it feels like the zone is beyond our gearing, even though we are all very well geared in Kara/Gruul/Mag gear. I've looked at the badge gear and while there are pieces that upgrade me as a healer, nothing that I would look at and go "wow" like T5 2pc bonus.
After all the the question is, where do we get the gear for this. The ideal answer is SSC/Tk but doesn't that defeat the point of smaller gears farming kara -> ZA, the zone just feels slightly too much. The eagle boss for example. Raid healing, fine can do, knockups for half your life seem extreme but again good pot/HS management. The random storms are tricky would be nice to have an exact time but we can deal with the randomness, I'd expect it to be hard so no problem there. Then throw in the eagles which don't clump up so SoC is ineffective and hit for 1300 on cloth just puts too much strain on the healers, even with full consumables we are hitting 20% mana at about 50% health of the boss. Again I'll stress if we had T5 or BT gear I can see quite easily powering through this, we got to 35% once and were flat oom, with some better dps it'd be 5% or so.
So the qeustion is are we doing it wrong or does the zone feel slightly too much for it's intended target, and is there a place to gear for it minus 25 mans. Badge loot is great no question, but doesn't feel like it's going to be enough. Don't confuse this with a "QQ it's too hard nerf plx" I like a challenge, but 2 loots from DH + Bear and a few badges doesn't seem like it will change what seem to be fights with a bit too much gear reqs. The fights feel like the first incantation of Shade of Aran, with enough gear/class makeup you can power through it, but it's always going to be messy, except here there is nowhere to gear once you are in full Kara gear. And from what I understand these 3 are the easiest in the zone.
Maybe some BT guilds who run on alts etc have some experience on difficulty going from mains to alts, but then again I've seen some peoples alts sporting 5/5 T5 :P
Edit: Also for you armory browser, ignore the spec/gems in PMC, only recently switched back to PMC set from FSW, so the gems are pretty fail.
The eagle boss for example. Raid healing, fine can do, knockups for half your life seem extreme but again good pot/HS management. The random storms are tricky would be nice to have an exact time but we can deal with the randomness, I'd expect it to be hard so no problem there. Then throw in the eagles which don't clump up so SoC is ineffective and hit for 1300 on cloth just puts too much strain on the healers, even with full consumables we are hitting 20% mana at about 50% health of the boss. Again I'll stress if we had T5 or BT gear I can see quite easily powering through this, we got to 35% once and were flat oom, with some better dps it'd be 5% or so.
Are you fully buffed? Because Blizzard might have balanced it for karazhan/badge loot, but they'll balance it for fully buffed people using full consumables. If you haven't been doing this, it might net you enough mana to down him
(Apart from that, you are all running together on the tank, when the cooldown for storm is ready, aren't you?)
Wash the spears . . .
. . . while the sun climbs high.
Wash the spears . . .
. . . while the sun falls low.
Wash the spears . . .
. . . who fears to die?
Wash the spears . . .
. . . no one I know!
- Aiel chant
Just had a thought that might be the solution to the discrepancy in responses concerning purge and its being able or not to dispell MC: Offensive dispells don´t necessarily target the MC first. So you might have to purge all the other buffs the MCd person has, before being able to dispell the MC, that might be the solution.
Are you fully buffed? Because Blizzard might have balanced it for karazhan/badge loot, but they'll balance it for fully buffed people using full consumables. If you haven't been doing this, it might net you enough mana to down him
(Apart from that, you are all running together on the tank, when the cooldown for storm is ready, aren't you?)
Fully buffed with Resto Flask, and yeah we are running in, but when you do that usually the raid gets smacked with the AoE attack before the storm leaving every down 4k or so, and we've had the storm come 10 seconds after the timer is up several times. Which is alot of healing to do since being that low puts you in range of a bird attack + knockup, remember it's not until T5 ish that your casters are sitting at 10k hp, unless they are a lock 8-9k is usually the top, anymore comes at the cost of mp5/Heal.
Think I was at 300 mp5 while casting with flask, another healer was in 5/5 T4 and sitting at around a similar number.
Is there anyone here who is doing Za at about the gear level it is intended for?
...
Well, my guild is 6/6 3/4, so we might be slightly better geared than the gear level it is intended for, and I think we already outgear most of the encounter. People have to keep in mind that the fact that ZA is tunned to be the first instance post kara (i.e., t5 equivalent) doesn't mean that guilds with that level of gear will be able to clear it in a week.
As far as the eagle boss, it is all about positioning. If people stick together the lightning bolt he casts on a random person will wipe you, as it works more as a chain lightning. Also, just ignore the eagles that pop up. They don't do much damage, and since they fly around so much, the dps will often lose a lot of time having them go out of range.
As far as the dragonhawk goes, that right there was a fantastically designed encounter. I love the fact that its about dps control as opposed to just out and out dps. The only significant advantage better geared guilds will have here is mana longevity for the healers.
The only part that seems to be a little extreme is the lynx phase in zuljin. One of my friends, who is in a top 100 us guild, said that in their best zul jin kill they still lost 2 clothies. It seems to me that the fact that the fixate can crit or crush is a little excessive and almost leads to raid stacking of paladins.
Is there anyone here who is doing Za at about the gear level it is intended for?
I ask this because my guild is fairly casual, have Hydross/Lurker/Mags down and everything before that. We've taken 10 of our better geared right in and 1 shot the bear easily, no problem there. Dragonhawk we got to 35% and just hadn't popped enough eggs, again I see him going down soon. But we've tried Eagle and are completly stumped, we've figured a way to get him down to 50% or so but at this point attrition from birds, ranged attacks and knock ups takes it's toll. Irrespective of the guantlet which seems as hard as a boss.
The group is not bad, most of us did Karazhan when it first came out and were on par with the current BT guilds there, all of us are "aware" and make very few mistakes (ex. Out of 4 tries on DH boss, 0 bomb deaths). But it feels like the zone is beyond our gearing, even though we are all very well geared in Kara/Gruul/Mag gear. I've looked at the badge gear and while there are pieces that upgrade me as a healer, nothing that I would look at and go "wow" like T5 2pc bonus.
After all the the question is, where do we get the gear for this. The ideal answer is SSC/Tk but doesn't that defeat the point of smaller gears farming kara -> ZA, the zone just feels slightly too much. The eagle boss for example. Raid healing, fine can do, knockups for half your life seem extreme but again good pot/HS management. The random storms are tricky would be nice to have an exact time but we can deal with the randomness, I'd expect it to be hard so no problem there. Then throw in the eagles which don't clump up so SoC is ineffective and hit for 1300 on cloth just puts too much strain on the healers, even with full consumables we are hitting 20% mana at about 50% health of the boss. Again I'll stress if we had T5 or BT gear I can see quite easily powering through this, we got to 35% once and were flat oom, with some better dps it'd be 5% or so.
So the qeustion is are we doing it wrong or does the zone feel slightly too much for it's intended target, and is there a place to gear for it minus 25 mans. Badge loot is great no question, but doesn't feel like it's going to be enough. Don't confuse this with a "QQ it's too hard nerf plx" I like a challenge, but 2 loots from DH + Bear and a few badges doesn't seem like it will change what seem to be fights with a bit too much gear reqs. The fights feel like the first incantation of Shade of Aran, with enough gear/class makeup you can power through it, but it's always going to be messy, except here there is nowhere to gear once you are in full Kara gear. And from what I understand these 3 are the easiest in the zone.
You make some great points. I'm curently the MT for our group which clears ZA when it's reset. Normally we can clear the place in about 2 hours without really trying too much for the timers after the 2nd one. Most of our raid is wearing 2/5 t5 with some alts wearing mainly KZ/heroic/badge gear. If the zone was indeed intended for people wearing only karazahn gear I agree that it needs to be toned down. I don't think the eagle or bear boss specifically need to be retuned but I can see malacrass/dragonhawk/zul'jin being out of reach for most raids transitioning from kz. You can view my armory on the left, I'm by no means undergeared for this instance and I can see your point that some of the boss abilities are over-tuned for the intended audience. I'll list below my ideas for some possible changes that should be made if the intended audience is a KZ-only farming guild:
Bear Boss: Slightly reduce his melee damage in bear form.
Eagle Boss: Decrease the number of eagles or reduce the amount they hit for.
Dragonhawk Boss: Possibly decrease his hitpoints to help with healer longevity, otherwise this is a fun and creative encounter.
Lynx Boss: No changes, this fight seems perfectly tuned.
Hex Lord Malacrass: Decrease the damage done by some of the abilities he gains when draining specific classes. For instace, the paladin consecrate damage or the range/damage of the shaman's fire nova totem (from testing the range seems to be around 15 yards and it hits for 6K).
Zul'jin: Reduce the amount of damage he does when fixating during phase 4 (or remove his ability to crit/crush) and possibly remove one tornado during phase 3.
These are just my opinions based on my experiences in ZA, take it as you will.
[the eagle boss] just puts too much strain on the healers, even with full consumables we are hitting 20% mana at about 50% health of the boss. Again I'll stress if we had T5 or BT gear I can see quite easily powering through this, we got to 35% once and were flat oom, with some better dps it'd be 5% or so.
My guild has found that having a CoH priest as part of the run makes a huge difference on this fight. We clump up behind the boss a few seconds before the storm cooldown timer is up so that melee can continue to DPS during the storm no matter who gets levitated. We usually eat a few static charges during this early clumping, but a CoH priest can quickly and efficiently bring the whole raid back up to full health with much less effort than any other type of healer could. We've had no trouble with the eagle boss, but we've been lucky enough to have a CoH priest on every run so far; I suspect we'd be struggling a lot more with any other healing setup. I'm not saying that a CoH priest is 100% required, but it really does trivialize the healing on this fight.
I think this is unfortunate since I think most guilds want to keep at least one or two of their priests specced for Imp DS for the 25-man raids, but then these priests become almost a liability on this fight, making you have to work much harder for the win.
Is there anyone here who is doing Za at about the gear level it is intended for?
It's definitely possible to do it with only Kara gear as my team has never stepped foot into any 25 mans other than myself and we've been able to down the first 4 bosses with a lot of people still wearing select blues. Our strategy for the Eagle boss is to clump up as well on top of me (MT) 7-6 seconds before the storm. Some of the faster and more aware players ignore this however and DPS from a safer distance to avoid lightning chains but are still able to run into before the storm hits. We normally use holy pally, holy priest, resto shaman or resto druid for it.
Also, we don't ever try to SoC the birds. I just stick the warlock on DoTing them to death and with people sufficiently spread out they shouldn't cause too much trouble.
For Eagle with the other group I go with, I'm on my prot pally. (we are all Kara-geared, no T5 gear on us) I let the warrior MT the boss, and I switch into full healing gear, just keeping JoTC up on the boss for the extra crit. The fight definitely takes longer as effectively we have 4 healers, but we have good control over it as a result. I call out when to collapse, and we just tighten the semi-circle up by about 50%, then when the rain starts I call out to collapse the rest of the way. Works pretty well and we've never lost anyone to a storm or taking a bolt just before it.
My guild has found that having a CoH priest as part of the run makes a huge difference on this fight. We clump up behind the boss a few seconds before the storm cooldown timer is up so that melee can continue to DPS during the storm no matter who gets levitated. We usually eat a few static charges during this early clumping, but a CoH priest can quickly and efficiently bring the whole raid back up to full health with much less effort than any other type of healer could. We've had no trouble with the eagle boss, but we've been lucky enough to have a CoH priest on every run so far; I suspect we'd be struggling a lot more with any other healing setup. I'm not saying that a CoH priest is 100% required, but it really does trivialize the healing on this fight.
I think this is unfortunate since I think most guilds want to keep at least one or two of their priests specced for Imp DS for the 25-man raids, but then these priests become almost a liability on this fight, making you have to work much harder for the win.
That would actually help alot, not sure if we have one specced, but I can always spec that way if needed, or one of the other priests. Dragonhawk I agree with feels pretty well tuned and it's more of an execution fight than anything, and the damage is fairly preventable (I.e not standing next to people). Problem with eagle is that you are forced to stand close making splash damage unavoidable. We havn't tried ignoring the birds we assumed it would lead to more and more and get overwhelemed, I suppose we could try it, just worried about an eagle or two peccing the healers for 1-2k of dmg then getting bolted, if they are not at 100% its likely to kill them or put them in a bad way health wise.
Bear boss only thing I'd change is the hp on him, we got him down in 5 min 30 ish last time and that felt like it dragged on and we had (for us) high dps. The damage spikes + silence may hurt if you don't have any instant heal casters or HoT'ers but it's like Gruul which should be familarish for most.
Eagle boss I'd tone down the eagle damage a bit and maybe make the storm more reliable, I don't mind taking 1 or 2 clumped charges a fight, but everytime because the storm can come + 10 seconds later or instantly is annoying and a massive mana drain.
Dragonhawk: Pretty much fine, maybe reduce his hp a slight bit, but imo he seems prety good for our gearing. More of an idiot check fight imo.
In regard to the Hex Lord mind controls - it can definitely be purged by a shaman as well as offensively dispelled by a priest (speaking from experience, not conjecture). The main difficulty for us was me having to burn a GCD to do it while running with 2 healers.
We had a strange wipe at one point in Zul'Jin's lynx phase, where he crushed our spriest for 13k immediately at the start of the fixate (definitely was not a rip). It seems he may have the same wonderful mechanic as some charging bosses (Attumen, etc) where he at times gets an autoattack along with the charge.
I found your comment about two healers interesting. Did you run the whole zone with two? Which other class besides a priest? Did you attempt a timed event with two? I have to say, the extra DPS slot would be nice for the timed event, but seems like it would be a lot of healer stress.
It's definitely possible to do it with only Kara gear as my team has never stepped foot into any 25 mans other than myself and we've been able to down the first 4 bosses with a lot of people still wearing select blues. Our strategy for the Eagle boss is to clump up as well on top of me (MT) 7-6 seconds before the storm. Some of the faster and more aware players ignore this however and DPS from a safer distance to avoid lightning chains but are still able to run into before the storm hits. We normally use holy pally, holy priest, resto shaman or resto druid for it.
Also, we don't ever try to SoC the birds. I just stick the warlock on DoTing them to death and with people sufficiently spread out they shouldn't cause too much trouble.
This is good to read, perhaps it is our members, I'm not saying we're perfect. Will definatly keep trying, looking at your members it seems their gearing is about what we have. Perhaps with CoH specced priest we can eliminate our AoE dmg woes and pull out a kill more reliably.
We're a mid level SSC/TK guild and the eagle boss is more about strat and efficient healing than anything. Everyone else has talked about how to avoid the storm damage (collapse on main tank and heal through the static discharge). We, however, use the time while collapsed to trim down the eagles. Our mage and lock AoE while collapsed (hits the boss, and any eagles that come down to our level) and the eagle damage is never a problem as they are kept down to only a couple between storms.
In regard to the Hex Lord mind controls - it can definitely be purged by a shaman as well as offensively dispelled by a priest (speaking from experience, not conjecture). The main difficulty for us was me having to burn a GCD to do it while running with 2 healers.
Our team equipped 2 minute pvp trinkets and that worked very nicely allowing for another option.
Lynx Boss: No changes, this fight seems perfectly tuned.
Having cleared T5 content, I would've thought this would be the one boss slightly out of tune. The amount of damage he does in Lynx form sub-25% is pretty crazy.
Akil'zon just needs to be executed well, and it really becomes a joke. Spread out fully for the normal part of it, if the melee gets the debuff stacked to 3, have then run away far enough that they don't get splashed by it anymore. At ~10s before the storm timer, everyone moves just into the square in the center and watches for the storm. Just as it's starting, everyone collapses onto Akil'zon. This minimizes Static Disruption damage and brings everyone close enough that noone should take any storm damage at all. After implementing this, our healers end the fight with 80% or more mana. Don't try to kill the eagles flying around, just let them die to Cleave, Whirlwind, Blade Flurry, Chain Lightning, Multishot, Seed of Corruption, etc...
Jan'alai can be hugely simplified for the healers by keeping 9/10 people out of LoS from his fire breath (ala Firemaw) while you're killing hatchlings. Chances are you won't even see a flame breath cast until all the hatchlings are dead this way.
I don't know about consecreate damage on Malacrass, as we've never had a paladin on our clears. The shaman fire nova totem has very little hp (at most 2k; I've always 1-shot it) and is extremely easy to kill, it should not be hitting anyone. The spirit bolt damage is healable with a single well-geared CoH priest, and that's the only way we've even tried so far, but I imagine it would be extremely intense with lesser gear or or undesirably healer makeup.
Lynx phase on Zul'jin comes back to execution. We haven't had anyone die to fixate after we realized it's a normal threat table, and we've had no paladins. If the tank doesn't have 110% threat and is in melee range when the fixate is over (or 130% at range), then Zul'jin will not return to the tank. So the simple solution is to clump up so the tank doesn't run anywhere, and keep low on threat so he goes right back to the tank.
I don't know about consecreate damage on Malacrass, as we've never had a paladin on our clears. The shaman fire nova totem has very little hp (at most 2k; I've always 1-shot it) and is extremely easy to kill, it should not be hitting anyone. The spirit bolt damage is healable with a single well-geared CoH priest, and that's the only way we've even tried so far, but I imagine it would be extremely intense with lesser gear or or undesirably healer makeup.
Lynx phase on Zul'jin comes back to execution. We haven't had anyone die to fixate after we realized it's a normal threat table, and we've had no paladins. If the tank doesn't have 110% threat and is in melee range when the fixate is over (or 130% at range), then Zul'jin will not return to the tank. So the simple solution is to clump up so the tank doesn't run anywhere, and keep low on threat so he goes right back to the tank.
On malacrass we've killed the totem and it still cast the nova. The consecration seems to do about 2k per tick and is instant cast/ticks immediately. The only class abilities that really seem to be out of line are these, otherwise I think it's a great encounter.
As for the fixate on zul'jin, I was sitting at well over 130% threat on all other members of the raid. He was never pulled but the fixate killed our enhancement shaman in full SSC/TK gear in less than 3 seconds. I don't think its the normal damage thats the problem, just the ability to crit/crush.
As for the fixate on zul'jin, I was sitting at well over 130% threat on all other members of the raid. He was never pulled but the fixate killed our enhancement shaman in full SSC/TK gear in less than 3 seconds. I don't think its the normal damage thats the problem, just the ability to crit/crush.
Well, the spell itself can't crit. Claw Rage - Spells - World of Warcraft That's the spell he uses while he's fixated on a target. He attacks exactly 12 times with it. From what I've seen, it never misses, it can't be dodged/blocked/parried, it never crits or crushes and can't be mitigated by armor. It will appear in the combat log as unresistable spell damage.
The target takes roughly Σ n=0, 11, 500+150n damage: 15900 damage over 6s, really not that hard to heal through. The problem occurs when Zul'jin does an extra hit after he has finished his claw rages, which quite often will crush or crit. I'll have to amend my statement about threat if you're very sure you were well ahead of the fixated target and he still got that hit off, it just hasn't happened to us since we became aware that that's what happens.
The target takes roughly Σ n=0, 11, 500+150n damage: 15900 damage over 6s, really not that hard to heal through. The problem occurs when Zul'jin does an extra hit after he has finished his claw rages, which quite often will crush or crit. I'll have to amend my statement about threat if you're very sure you were well ahead of the fixated target and he still got that hit off, it just hasn't happened to us since we became aware that that's what happens.
I don't think it's so much the fact that the target takes ~16k over 6s that is the issue--because that's really not so bad--but the fact that the target takes around 6.5k damage in the last 1.5s which causes problems. Obviously the first couple seconds are not going to be of any note, but the last 2 seconds will basically outright kill most classes unless a meaty heal lands within a window of around 1-1.5s...and that's before the occasional normal melee hit after.
If they removed even 1 (or 2) ticks from it, it would go from extremely difficult to fairly easy to heal through, IMO.
On malacrass we've killed the totem and it still cast the nova. The consecration seems to do about 2k per tick and is instant cast/ticks immediately. The only class abilities that really seem to be out of line are these, otherwise I think it's a great encounter.
Weird, we had no trouble with the totem really. I basically killed it alone as a feral druid in offtank gear. It never nova'ed after dying on us, but wouldn't be a far reach to suspect there might be some bugs to it. The consecrate sucks though
Overall I love the instance and the fights apart from the bear being a little boring and maybe a couple too many trash packs before lynx boss and one before dragonhawk.
I notice that in Hortus' list of 2.3 bugs he states:
It is possible for Zul'jin to perform Claw Rage improperly.
Although this doesn't really describe the problem as outlined in this thread (normal melee hits on fixated targets = doom), at least it shows they are aware that there is an issue.
I found your comment about two healers interesting. Did you run the whole zone with two? Which other class besides a priest? Did you attempt a timed event with two? I have to say, the extra DPS slot would be nice for the timed event, but seems like it would be a lot of healer stress.
We've done 2 full clears with 2 healers in mostly kz/t4 gear. Our guild is very casual, so 3/6 and 2/4:
We missed the timed event both times (had not tried it on PTR before) - the first due to just learning the instance and the 2nd due to a miscommunication between me and the other healer costing us the tank on the bear during the silence.
Having a shadowpriest for both healers was key - a departure from 25's where we try to use the shadowpriests for dps. Most of us were using full consumables - and both Jorakai and I were chain-potting on everything but Bear and Eagle. I found mana to be less of an issue than pure healing output - especially on the bear, Hex Lord, and Zul'Jin p3/p4. The only time mana was an issue for either of us was coming into phase 4 on Zul'Jin (due to the shadowpriest not returning any mana over p3 and me being forced to swap to the melee group and drop healing stream instead of mana stream for p3 only).
To help with output on Bear, Lynx, and Hex Lord, I actually swapped out Alchemist's Stone for the Scarab, and used the spell haste cloak off Hex Lord on the second run. If you run 2 healers in t4, I'd strongly recommend some haste - the extra output made those fights much easier. If the healers are in t5/t6, the extra healing output
Also having the shaman in a pallie group with imp concentration aura makes Hex Lord healing a fair bit easier - no spell pushback at all.
11/20/07, 11:04 AM
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