The loot is not superior to T5 - it is itemized differently. Drops in SSC/TK retain superiority, and 10-man dungeons simply aren't considered 'raid progression' by conventional standards (10 people isn't a raid, it's two pick-up dungeon groups thrown together).
I severely doubt any serious raiding guilds will pursue ZA over their actual raid objectives.
Having said that, I do intend to make sure that at least one Zul'Aman group runs per reset in our guild. There are several very strong upgrades in ZA for many of our raiders, and the Badges alone are a great reward for anyone who doesn't need specific loot.
Something else that I think you are missing is that many people who are "high end" raiders usually have an alt or two lying around...alts that might be needed at some point when a key class is missing (thinking of the upcoming holidays especially) or just for the challenge of bringing some Kara geared alts and seeing how much you can clear.
Obviously you're not going to have a ZA geared alt main tanking Illidan, but there is potential for other classes to get geared up quickly from ZA (and heroic badges) to be effective enough in Hyjal/BT where they can actually acquire endgame gear if there is a need.
While Hyjal/BT would never be skipped for ZA, there is plenty of time during the raiding week to fit two, two group ZA runs in. Once you have half a dozen Illidan kills under your belt you should easily be finishing Hyjal and BT in two days.
The shear amount of players this instance appeals to is whats really amazing and well done about the instance IMO.
It has something for everyone regardless of where you stand in progression, or whether you have a lot of time or very little time. The instance just fits perfectly for nearly everyone.
Even if you're T6 geared there are still going to be a few drops that everyones going to want. The trinkets from Hex/Zuljin, the wonderful rings and theres some really nice capes in there as well. Thats just the items that everyone from this section of play will continue to run the instance for if they don't need anything else. Theres also loads of stuff for offspecs to load up on (through badges saved, and the actual items themselves) and so forth.
The place can serve as an area to gear up alternate characters during the holiday season as well as gearing up potential recruits in the future.
I don't know, I like the place. Even if we have to go back over and over again for a few select drops, I won't mind. It's only an 1 1/2 - 2 hour run for those very experienced with the zone, possibly less.
Edit: To continue on the point concerning length of the instance and the holiday season, I think it fits perfectly really. While you may have problems getting together 25 man raids during the holiday seasons, im fairly positive most guilds can scrounge up 10 people to do a ZA run from time to time, as oppossed to what may be SSC/TK (which would take a little bit more effort and possibly time to organize).
Completely false statement. The trinkets and rings from ZA are simply superb, and most classes will use them in conjunction with or over BT/Hyjal items. Many of the other pieces in ZA fill in itemization gaps that result from unlucky drops: our off-tanks are looking to get the Bulwark of the Amani Empire and the cleaver of the unforgiving. In fact, most of our members plan on running 1-2 ZA per week in between Hyjal/BT clears.
I dont know if you are speaking from a purely melee or caster orientated point, I do from a caster point of view which might explain the rather sceptical point of view on it. The caster items have haste which is nice - for some caster , not affliction warlocks for example - but then lack +hit , which means I cant take too many haste items or Im not facing hitcap which will decrease my dps more than the haste rating will do good.
The ZA caster trinket is nice and thats it, sure you can get unlucky on BT drops and then some items are nice sidegrades for the time being until you get the item you actually wanted, for example for the ring and caster headpiece are better alternatives available in MH/BT.
Farming an instance 2 times a week for a chance to roll on a trinket together with 4 other casters ? I suppose some people are up for that, I cant be bothered for it considering its a pretty small upgrade compared to the blessing card deck assuming you can keep the blessing up at all times. Maybe it has to do with me farming the Rejuvenating gem for 1.5 year in BWL and never getting it which made me learn my lesson to not always chase to have the very very best item in the slot. A very good but not best is often the most time effecient way bar cases that are guaranteed.
Obviously you're not going to have a ZA geared alt main tanking Illidan, but there is potential for other classes to get geared up quickly from ZA (and heroic badges) to be effective enough in Hyjal/BT where they can actually acquire endgame gear if there is a need.
Are you sure about this? Our main tanks just picked up 2 new shields, heroic badge necklaces and wrist armor. All from running ZA. Yes, our luck with shields was that bad.
My guild is about to face Kael (just so you know our progression), and our approach to ZA is that basically it's a lot of fun, with some nice upgrades for some people in some slots (e.g. the priest healing robe off the bear boss).
We actually have a second 25-man team that's killed 3 bosses in SSC and 1 in TK and is likely to be a 5/3 guiild come January.
A lot of us play alts and such and some even run in both 25-mans and 2 ZAs.
The badges make it sort of automatically worth some time and the gold is actually quite excellent off the trash.
I loathe downtime and forever-long instances, so this is a terrific change from my Kara group which did full clears but seemed to fail at urgency, rarely making 4 hours, let alone the doable 3 - 3.5 range.
As a "for the future" instance in some hypothetical 10-man progression scheme, it doesn't have enough bosses / enough different drops. Kara is still farmable today by less-progressed guilds because it has "too many" bosses and so many solid drops. If they do something like this for Lich King, they probably need to shoot for a slightly smaller Kara and a slightly larger ZA. One way to do that and still preserve things like the time event would be to require a critical path for the time event (e.g. kill all the animal bosses in ZG and then get Hakkar) and then allow the optional bosses to be killed after. Perhaps the lore could call those the unwilling servants of Zul'Jin for example, while his animal avatars are more clearly his soldiers.
Essentially, what I'm saying is that for 10-man progression to completely work alongside 25-man progression, it needs to offer a full tier of loot with the badges as filler (and really, 25-man filler as wel). The ILvl of the 10-man loot probably ought to be a bit lower and perhaps th stuff should be itemized significantly differently so that someone in 10-mans might still want the 25-man stuff but nevertheless be deliriously happy that they have the stats they do. For example, perhaps the stam is better in a future ZA while the destructive power is slightly better in a future SSC/TK. Whatever the choice, each group should still find the other path interesting.
And, yes, perhaps a tad compelling. Having 1-2 "must-have" items per class in ZA but not Hyjla/BT/SSC/TK isn't gamebreaking. I mean I really want the melee trinket because I've had no luck with seeing drops of DST/TT/WSC, but it's not exactly massive in what it will do to my dps. It's simple a solid upgrade. The Jin'do healing neck from ZG comes to mind as something similar back when.
We all know some things about ZA that are unique to doing it now vs. actually planning a progression scheme for 10-mans around it: Specifically, it's between T5 and T6 in some ways; it's a companion instance for guilds struggling along in T5; and it's time filler for guilds that are pretty much done with BT and bored enough to go clear it at least a few times. A future progression scheme should be thought out along the lines of 10 - man 1 --> 10-man 2 --> 10-man 3 alongside 25-man 1 --> 25-man 2 --> 25-man 3.
TBC did 10-man 1 --> 25-man 2 --> 25-man 3, with the pause for Gruul and Mag. It didn't work for really small guilds and actually did some social damage to larger guilds that pared down first to 25 from 40 and then often made it clear who the "elite 10" were.
I'm concerned that the excitement over the new Naxx is misplaced by casual guillds that won't level enough people to 80 at the same time to do Naxx any more than they could quickly try Gruul. Some kind of Karazhan to help gear the groups as they reach max level will be welcome, and I expect one is planned.
Heres to hoping that the speed model or other incentive based rewards are added to the 25 man game in the expansion.
A Naxx with the ZA model for each of the first four major wings would add a new level of excitement, in my opinion. Possibly not, as the instance was pretty amazingly designed anyways
I dont know if you are speaking from a purely melee or caster orientated point, I do from a caster point of view which might explain the rather sceptical point of view on it. The caster items have haste which is nice - for some caster , not affliction warlocks for example - but then lack +hit , which means I cant take too many haste items or Im not facing hitcap which will decrease my dps more than the haste rating will do good.
The ZA caster trinket is nice and thats it, sure you can get unlucky on BT drops and then some items are nice sidegrades for the time being until you get the item you actually wanted, for example for the ring and caster headpiece are better alternatives available in MH/BT.
Farming an instance 2 times a week for a chance to roll on a trinket together with 4 other casters ? I suppose some people are up for that, I cant be bothered for it considering its a pretty small upgrade compared to the blessing card deck assuming you can keep the blessing up at all times. Maybe it has to do with me farming the Rejuvenating gem for 1.5 year in BWL and never getting it which made me learn my lesson to not always chase to have the very very best item in the slot. A very good but not best is often the most time effecient way bar cases that are guaranteed.
There are better alternatives available in MH/BT, but they are difficult to acquire. Not only does your guild have to be at that progression level, but you also have to overcome the RNG and have the item drop. In addition, because of the deficiency in the amount of caster loot, you also need to have enough DKP to win the items. When you consider the quality of the mage/warlock 4-piece bonuses, it's not surprising that many casters choose to save their DKP for tier pieces. This leaves gaps in their off-pieces, rings, and weapons.
Are you sure about this? Our main tanks just picked up 2 new shields, heroic badge necklaces and wrist armor. All from running ZA. Yes, our luck with shields was that bad.
The key word in my statement was "alt". While some mains will find upgrades (and tanks have a couple of good ones from the heroic badges, my alt warrior now has 21 expertise thanks to two badge upgrades) I don't think someone geared up exclusively in ZA and from the badge vendor would be able to MT all of BT...but then again I'm a rogue, what do I know.
Heres to hoping that the speed model or other incentive based rewards are added to the 25 man game in the expansion.
A Naxx with the ZA model for each of the first four major wings would add a new level of excitement, in my opinion. Possibly not, as the instance was pretty amazingly designed anyways
I think the bonus loot for speed model is such a great idea. Doing everything possible to cut time makes the instance a lot more fun imo.
The downside to continuing with a pure speed based model is that you're screwed if you need to do player swaps for bosses, or get a bad disconnect etc.
The trinket being so good has more to do with the gap between icon/crusade(heroics/AH) to skull of gul'dan(illidan), for spellcasters that don't have high crit.
Last edited by Darkmantle : 11/20/07 at 4:53 PM.
Reason: Grammar
I have cleared this instance twice with no AoE beyond 2x magma totems, and with no CC to speak off beyond the MC from a Shadow Priest. While yes, with a little more AoE / CC, the instance becomes easier, I didn't notice marked difference between ZA with a "sub-optimal" group and those Karazhan fights you mentioned with a "sub-optimal" group.
Your guild has killed Archimonde and up to Teron in BT. I'm sure that gear difference allows for more sub-optimal groups than for those of us with Kara/early SSC gear.
You can't MT all of BT, but you could most certainly OT it. Our protection paladin replaced his chest with the drop from Zul'jin, and is anticipating grabbing the shield when it first drops. Badge purchases are equivalent to T5, and technically can be purchased with rewards of your time spent in ZA.
The following items are equivalent or better than the T5 alternatives that most secondary OTs are still wearing when you start pushing Illidan (unless you have stupid-good luck on things like [Kaz'rogal's Hardened Heart] and [Praetorian's Legguards] to start gearing up your 3rd, 4th, 5th tanks):
Basically, there's no excuse for your tanks to not all be "caught up" for pretty much all slots up to your level of progression. Our OTs will all be in T5-equivalent gear within 2 weeks, which saves ever having to run SSC for them to get random tanking gear. Our paladins are all picking up full tanking sets for kicks. It's a very good thing for catching your guild up on those stupid little things that you never quite got.
I think a cool model for the future would be something like:
Typical top-level rewards are 10-man and 5-man heroic (badges). 25 man content would be relegated to bosses, and would be Onyxia (Magtheridon) style.
Bosses would drop a token for everyone in the raid which could be turned in for a weapon or chest piece, and a large sum of gold, maybe some fun loot, like a rare mount.
Bosses would also give attunement to the next tier of 10-man and possibly new difficulty of 5-man (merciless?) dungeons.
What this does:
Reduces administrative burden in that raids are now 10-man, and easily staffed. Raid attendance is less stringent. 5-mans can be used to make up missed raids.
Remains challenging, in terms that, sure, maybe the majority of "raid time" is spent in smaller more relaxed groups, but once your gearing up is achieved, you still need to fight the Kael'thas or Vashj style encounter in order to open up the next tier.
Because the typical loot raids are smaller, individual guilds only require a small roster. This means that in order to take down a gateway boss, it could require some inter-guild cooperation. While now, guilds are quite isolated. It's also beneficial to assist other guilds to move up the ranks, as it will mean a large pool of people to do the next tiers of 5-mans with in off-time.
Because of the shortness of the 25-man gatekeeper bosses, and their high gold drops. (I'm thinking to the tune of 50+ gold per player) and the fact that there is guaranteed loot, guilds will generally not mind killing the boss to attune new players. (IE: Imagine if killing super-gruul attuned you to Hyjal and he dropped 60 gold for each of your raiders. And took 1/2 hour when you've effectively learned him. Would anyone complain about attunements? The gold influx isn't any more than a set of daily quests, and you could only do him once per week. But it would still require you actually be skilled enough to kill him...)
In terms of ZA: I haven't done it yet. I can't afford to fit another night of raids into my schedule. The best gear (mostly) still comes from 25-mans. Unless I'm in a point of progression where 10-man loot is the top I can get, I don't expect to run it much.
I can't say whether I like the 10 man or 25 man model better. The 10-man model is always frustrating when your guild is built around a 25-man raid. You have incorrect composition, and people get benched when they don't want to. I've never been in a guild built around running a single 10-man raid. But if I were, I think I would enjoy the 10-mans better. I still think the 5-man model is my favorite. Unfortunately, it's very easy to top out in terms of loot quality.
There is also a lot less you can *do* in a 10-man to make it truly unique without starting to require class balances. They can design a 25-man raid that will require the presence of a warlock (tanking), a mage (spellsteal tanking), paladins (BoF), priests (Mind Control), druid/mages (curses), etc, etc..
You start doing that in 10-mans, and you stratify the raid groups. It's already annoying enough that the "easiest" heroic clearing group contains a mage, and our mages play strictly Raid-0.5 to Raid+0.5, and then hop on their alts.
Zul'aman is a step in the right direction in that it does appeal to a lot of people from all over the raiding spectrum. I would hope blizzard learns from this and tries to impliment similar features into the 10 man instances in the next expantion as well as in Naxx upon release since it will be the "starters instance." These things that people have mentioned are the positive aspects of Zul'aman however overall as an instance ZA feels more like AQ20 then ZG. The backstory is never built up, the instance seems to just be there for us to collect phat loot. For as long as we've been hearing about ZA there is a lot more blizzard could have done in regards to faction and story. Somewhere above it was stated that ZA feels more like a 5 man than a 10 man and I would have to aggre. At least when went through Karazhan there was a sence of progression through the instance and through the story via the quest chains and just how massive the instance was. ZA while working on many levels is lacking in depth and feels unrefined outside of of it's graphics and instance mechanics.
ZA has about as much back story as ZG did. What do you expect? They're trolls. They don't factor largely in the mythos of the world. They were there, they got smacked around, they retreated to the woods to /QQ. They're the rednecks of WoW.
AQ20, on the other hand, was tied intrinsically to the entire quest chains in Silithus, AQ40, the Gate Opening, and the Silithid Invasion. It had a fair bit of lore for a 20-man.
Coming from a guild that contains a lot of players who used to raid hardcore but now just play casual, we really enjoy Zul'aman. You can start immediately in zul'aman after being able to kill prince and basically see how well your guild is geared. I also really like the fact the zone reminds me of a 8-bit nintendo game with the way bear boss will stand with a bunch of mobs, have them fight you and run back to another position repeatedly.
Something that was done right in zg was the fact that the trinkets everyone wante4d were a 100% quest drop from hakkar. I'm not entirely sure why this wasnt extended to za. I can already see this being a huge problem in the future. It would have helped also to make the tank trinket a bit better, so warriors had more of a reason to want to come to za in t6, besides helping guildies. The flip side is all of the trinkets could have been worse, so there wasnt as pressing a need for dps classes to go.
I just about everything about ZA. It's short and fast, there's still an element of challenge (timed event), and there's a broad spectrum of rewards (epics, badges, mounts, gold, vendor-spawned goodies). The only real problem that I have with it is how they randomly decided to sprinkle a T5.5-ish loot table with items that are better than T6. Every single one of our casters needs Hex-Shrunken Head (and nothing else); all of our melee need Berserker's Call (and nothing else). Running ZA for these items today is fine, but there will definitely be people who still need them three months from now. Everyone will have their bears, everyone will have every conceivable badge reward, and we will be running the instance in the hopes of seeing one of two items.
It's really silly that I will be replacing a trinket that drops from Illidan with one that drops from ZA, and it's insane that the guild is probably going to have to do 70+ runs of such a trivial instance to get that same trinket for everyone. Right now, ZA is fun. By January, it will be agony. BWL for Rejuv Gems all over again.
wtf are you using with the head trinket if you get it? Crusade?!?! ... Hex + skull = win imo :P.
Some of the loot is nice, though as a mage there are very few usable items for me, since the spell haste gear is mostly awful. We got a shield last time through for our Sanguinar tank who was using (deep breath) the blue from Shadow Lab which is nice. It's definitely nice getting badges while running it over and over for That One Drop.
The avatar bosses all seem to have more or less the right difficulty. Dragonhawk has been extremely hard for us to do with one AoE class but that's pretty much because we're retards. Malacrass on the other hand seems way too hard for the intended audience, and almost impossible to do at all if you don't have a priest (for fort & shadow prot) or resist gear. Zul'jin phase 3 is extremely punishing to a caster-heavy raid, wanding for 2-3 minutes is not fun.
The trash is a mixed bag. The patrols in the center seem to respawn, for which there is no excuse. We wipe to these frequently when running back because they often don't draw on screen until they're within aggro range. Bear trash is trivial, like it should be. The eagle gauntlet is very reasonable for a suppression room type thing, though such are never fun. Lynx trash isn't overly difficult but still highly annoying. Dragonhawk trash is downright reprehensible, with Scouts chaining to one another, putting the whole instance in combat, and constantly respawning. Flame Casters are completely insane in all the places they appear, heartbeat-resisting polymorph so often I basically have to chain-cast it, though it's amusing to Spellsteal their buff. The amount of trash is generally right though, so if you do pay attention the overall instance clear speed is pleasantly fast.
Generally I don't find it very fun. If we take 10 t5-geared people in, we mop up the avatar bosses, though we fail the timed event due to people goofing off since it's "just a 10 man". Then Malacrass is painful and Zul'jin downright punishing. Plus we shard most of the loot. If we take a more mixed gear level group then Lynx and Dragonhawk become difficult and Malacrass near-impossible. And if the lesser-geared folks are so because they raid less, we get even more trash wipes due to silly mistakes and mental AFKness. Yes, a lot of this is due to the properties of the people involved and not the content, but I don't think these issues are atypical for guilds at our level or below.
We have more than enough interest to run it on non-raid nights (wed, fri, sun) so it is not interfering with our 25-man progress.
Overall I'd say it is a step in the right direction. A few things feel like they need some tuning and the itemization is spotty, but it generally feels like a success.
...
The following items are equivalent or better than the T5 alternatives that most secondary OTs are still wearing when you start pushing Illidan (unless you have stupid-good luck on things like [Kaz'rogal's Hardened Heart] and [Praetorian's Legguards] to start gearing up your 3rd, 4th, 5th tanks):
...
Basically, there's no excuse for your tanks to not all be "caught up" for pretty much all slots up to your level of progression. Our OTs will all be in T5-equivalent gear within 2 weeks, which saves ever having to run SSC for them to get random tanking gear. Our paladins are all picking up full tanking sets for kicks. It's a very good thing for catching your guild up on those stupid little things that you never quite got.
The only issue with most of that gear is it's lack of defense.
I consider myself to be a pretty averagely geared tank that is heading into the T6 zones. I plan on taking the hat out of ZA, and that's about it for tanking. I'm hovering at just over 500 defense. Granted, I have the smithing chest, but other than that, it's pretty standard tanking gear. You can't outfit a tank in all the ZA and badge loot and be crit immune without gemming for stats other than stam or wearing defense trinkets, which I think is suboptimal for your 'everyday' tank set.
ZA lets you fill 1 or 2 gear holes that you never got to fill due to unlucky drops. I'm really more excited about getting dps loot for the fights I'm not tanking.
I think arguing that ZA is 'boring' or 'pointless' is jumping the gun a little bit - even as the MT of a 5/6 & 2/4 guild, I can find a number of great upgrades for my tanking and DPS sets in ZA, not to mention the ~300 Badges of Justice worth of tanking upgrades alone that I could use. This gear is well itemized, and the appeal is absolutely there. If you're in a BT-farming guild, sure, there's no meaningful upgrades for you - but there's likely not many meaningful upgrades in BT, either, so the point is moot.
Overall, I think ZA was a timely addition to the game, and it has a very strong offering in terms of supplementing gear for progressing guilds.
We are at the same Progression level as you and most likely have similar gear distribution. While I enjoy the challenge of the fights in ZA, I find the inflated HP on all NPC's to be quite annoying. I understand that the large HP pools are there to make the timed aspect harder for the Tier 4/5 guilds and provide some sort of challenge for Tier 6 guilds. However, it adds a very boring and tiresome aspect for lesser geared runs. The execution has been easy for us when we have time to go in there (Vashj attempts have allowed us enough time to only to get in 4 bosses so far), but after several minutes of doing the same tank/heal/dps rotation on each boss with little change, I find I no longer care about the encounter. Dropping the HP by a small amount on most mobs/bosses would make the zone a bit less tedious and would offer Tier 4/5 guilds another option at pure upgrades from the timed loot. And honestly, are there that many upgrades from Timed loot for Tier 6 guilds?
On a seperate note, as a raid leader I am still not a fan of the 10 man instance and the logistical annoyances it causes, let alone the drama.
The only real problem with ZA I (mage) have is... is not the instance itself - but a bunch of the gear that drops is haste gear. I'm not sure where blizzard is going with haste gear itemisation yet. All items are sta/int/haste. No crit/hit etc. At the moment I dont know any mages who are getting a serious raid-gear full haste set. Everyone is getting it for a 'fun haste set'. Naturally, casters want meaningful loot which we'll use in raids - like the Hex Shrunken Head - and not really loot that we won't use in serious encounters.
On my first time in Za last night I thought the Eagle and Dragonhawk bosses were superb boss design. Lots of movement = Win. Blizz obviously listens to their players - C'thun, Heigan, Thaddius, Aran etc - players like movement fights and having to be on their toes and this brought back memories of those bosses pre-tbh.
The following items are equivalent or better than the T5 alternatives that most secondary OTs are still wearing when you start pushing Illidan (unless you have stupid-good luck on things like [Kaz'rogal's Hardened Heart] and [Praetorian's Legguards] to start gearing up your 3rd, 4th, 5th tanks):
For argument's sake, a lot of the ZA/badge items you listed aren't "equivalent" to their 25man counterparts. They fill different itemization holes or are simply downgrades.
Theorycrafting procedures per role:
DPS = Theory -> Spreadsheet -> Practice
Healing = Theory -> Practice -> Logs
Tanking = Theory -> Theory -> Theory
The only issue with most of that gear is it's lack of defense.
I would say it has enough defense. My common gripe about tank itemization is it typically has more defense than you really need, and not enough other stats. Typically block value is very good, more armor and stamina.
The trend I'm seeing on badge/za tank gear is exceptionally high block value, and very good stamina/armor itemization - and what looks like an adequate amount of defense.
Sure, I'm not going to take off all my onslaught to put on ZA gear, but there's definitely items out of the dungeon that would go into my bag as part of the wardrobe I take to dungeons on a regular basis - block value gear swaps mostly. Particularly this [Signet of the Last Defender]
I really think for gearing progressing tanks, they've done quite a good job.
11/20/07, 4:06 PM
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