Thanks for answering my question above, didn't mean to insult anyone, I am the raid leader for my guild on ZA runs and I am trying to gage the effect the new badge loot will have.

A follow up question for you concerning the 4th boss, which we are stuck on.

I have watched the Elitist Jerks time trial video a few times now. And I have compared it to other runs that I have seen. My question deals with Halazzi and off-tanking the spirit. In EJ's video it looks as though you tank Halazzi and the spirit right next to each other with the raid party in a semi-circle in front. Other videos from other guilds show the raid party circling the boss and then the off-tank tanking the spirit boss away from the rest of the party. Which way works more efficiently and why?

A second question on this fight which is better to focus on, Halazzi or the spirit for the DPS? I notice in EJ's video you continue to focus on Halazzi, again other videos say to focus on the spirit because of the low hit points. I have seen both work effectively. Which way is best and why?

Thank you for advice.

Halazzi is good to keep focus on because he is already fully debuffed.
We have our lynx spirit tank stay near Halazzi because when he has aggro on the spirit he can dps Halazzi and the totems also.

There's only one major reason we have the spirit tanked directly on top of Halazzi; so that both tanks are standing right there to eat the saber lashes as soon as he's back into Lynx form.

We used to take the spirit down, but switched to Halazzi after reading some of the earlier posts in this thread. We've found that it makes a huge difference, cutting our kill times to just over 2 minutes: Wow Web Stats. Halazzi takes so much damage he's only in his Lynx form for 5-8 seconds between spirit phases.

It also means that you can have the second tank DPS, particularly if it's a Feral Druid. (Swipe works very, very well, understandably.)

I'm getting kind of embarassed. My guild's had Archimonde down for a few weeks and we always seem to bung up our timed runs - generally at least one wipe, often accompanied by a few other time wasters. This week's attempt was the closest yet, with the timer running out about when we pulled Lynx with a wipe on Dragonhawk trash and a painful reset on Dragonhawk that probably ate six minutes between them.

Not much else we can do besides relax, I guess.

We also had this problem when we first started doing timed runs, though we didn't wait very long to do something about it. Our solution was to take only the people who had voluntarily come to many non-timed ZA runs, and of those, only the most dedicated people who really cared about it. We went from barely getting a ring, to 4 minutes to spare after Halazzi was dead on our first serious attempt. IMO, the most important factors to a successful run are skill, experience, and passion. Experience can be made up for with knowledge for an individual or two, if everyone else has experience. But if any member lacks skill or passion, you're asking for mistakes.

We already filter candidates rather strictly, so I think it's just that we get too tightly strung worrying about the timer.

And another reason to stack the lynx and the spirit is any other class ability that can hit two targets at once, like rogue blade flurry. Since it's widely accepted that you can dps down either the spirit or Halazzi and once the combined pair loses some amount of hp they merge, whacking both of them is a good thing time-wise. So I blade flurry on the first split and hope it's back up by the 3rd split.

Excellent answers. It worked well, we took down the Lynx boss using the strategy of keeping the spirit and Lynx close together, and focusing on the Lynx. Thank you for the advice.

Last reset we managed to finish the event with 11 minutes+ still on the clock. That was our 13th bear and we're all pretty much in T6 besides a few pieces but we run a rather unusual group.

Group 1:
Feral Druid (OT)
Prot Pally (MT)
Rogue
Warlock
Resto Shaman

Group 2:
Shadow Priest (me)
Shadow Priest
Holy Priest
Mage
Mage

And I occasionally switch myself into G1 for trash to give the pally/shammy a bit more mana. Our DPS as a guild is usually pretty horrible compared to others I see but I will make sure to record WWS for our next run.
EDIT: We also had around 3 deaths on that run so it wasn't our cleanest :o

We finished with 12 minutes to spare running a fairly synergistic group:

Group 1:

Restoration Shaman
Shadow Priest
Fire Mage
Destruction Warlock
Holy Paladin

Group 2:

Protection Paladin
Subtlety Rogue
Beast Mastery Hunter
Survival Hunter
Feral Druid

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5954/12minzadu2.jpg

Ok, after last night I'm certain there is something extremely weird with the Tamed Amani Crocolisk.

Background:
I pull that patrol with captain american shield, burst handler down and then do crocs. A week or 2 ago, after 2 full consecration cycles, our lock put up CoS on one, which instantly targetted it and I completely lost agro.

Now this week I was healing my first ZA in a long time (double druid tanks) and the same happens, so I BoP the lock. The Crocolisk IGNORES the BoP and continues pounding on the -immune- lock. Druid taunts while lock is under BoP. BoP and taunt debuff run out and the corcolisk instantly goes back to the lock (which still hadent done anything but CoS) and kills him.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on here? I've never ever seen a mob try to attack an immune target when he has other options.

edit: my money is on some kind of fixate which would make us probably sheep one croc, kill the other and then kill the handler next time.

I can't believe noone of the people targetted ever told me about this debuff, goddamn retards.

Thanks, we'll burst down the Crocs from now on indeed (and stop loosing our clothie there each time).

hi!

Our guild is currently attempting bear mount runs. We have got very close in the past with paly tank and fury warrior as our tanks with 2 healer setup. But we miss by about 1 minute.

I wanted to post a few points on tricks in this forum and also had a question on the dragonhawk boss.

First if your a hunter and you run through the huts to avoid the 1-2 mins to pull the extra patrol, make sure you are mounted or dismis your pet or your pet will path around the buildings and pull the pack you want to avoid.

We have also found it is important to be mounted the entire time you are in the instance unless you are in combat.

It is also possible to swim past the crocolisks which we find is a 30-45 second savings if they are walking towards the group.

We have found that prot paly is not as suitable as a feral druid + fury tank because they cannot chain pull as sufficiently as a feral druid.

I have a question on a speed strategy relating to the Dragonhawk boss.

We decided to change our tanking setup to a feral + fury. Our feral tanked the dragonhawk boss wihle the fury warrior was dps. It was suggested to us that we could use a frost trap in the walkway to the egg spawning point and hatch an entire side. Then it was suggested we seed the entire side with a warlock and by the time the dragonhawks get to the warlock to blow him up, they are dead. Our warlock and mage both died with this new strategy. The four frost traps we used didn't proc (two hunters) at all. We essentially missed the timer because our dps died as a result of out of control dragonhawks from one side hatching.

Note we have the dps - most of us are in 4 peice t6.

Any suggestions on the "hunter frost trap" strategy. Does this really work? Anyone using a feral + fury to tank 1 side of dragonhawks at a time? I had suggested using the fury warrior as our tank on dragonhawk (he has t5/t6 prot gear) and using the feral to tank the dragonhawks as they spawn.

Any suggestions for this specific tanking setup to maximize the kill speed with no deaths would be highly desired.

Thanks in advance!
riley

To be honest, if everyone just zergs the dragonhawks as soon as they spawn, you shouldn't have a problem with the fury warrior whirlwind tanking. Just try that next time. Right away meaning as soon as one spawns all the dps moves over there.

Just tanked our first successful bear run as a prot pally (feral druid OT), and I never stopped to drink. From my experience most protadins spend too much mana unnecessarily - I generally consecrate until one mob is down and then just autoattack for the remainder of the pull, ending at full mana and grabbing the next group (I usually stun the last mob and then go pull the next pack as the DPS is finishing the stunned mob). Basically, if your DPS can't catch up on threat, there's no point in spending more mana. And if you misjudge your threat, that's what taunt is for.

Well, we could use some help on snagging the 4th chest as we're now consistently snagging the 3rd. However, our problem isn't getting to Jan'Alai, it's actually downing him...

Right now, we've been going Narolakk --> Akil'zon --> Halazzi and we have anywhere from 30 seconds - 5 minutes left on the timer when killing Halazzi. Our group makeup usually has very similar people:

Healers:
- Resto Druid
- Resto Shaman
- Holy Prieste (CoH)

Tanks:
- Prot Warrior ALWAYS there (me, actually, if you want to check armory)
- Feral Druid

DPS:
- Retribution Paladin
- Warlock
- Boomkin
(Other DPS varries)



Here are a few questions that I have

1) In several locations I've read that a key element to getting the 4th chest was dropping a healer and picking up a DPS, preferably a shadow priest. While this seems like an okay idea, I can't imagine really pulling off much of what we do in these situations. Are there any healer tricks to helping drop a healer and pickup a shadow priest?

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2) How EXACTLY do you do Jan'Alai? We do him a lot, and usually it's a 1 or 2-shot, but it's consistently chaotic and hell. We used to spawn half, half, half, and half (4 hatchers total), but we don't think that's practical if we're actually going to try the chest. Now, we spawn the entire side, but that usually involves all hell breaking loose.

I've read something about having all your dps standing on top of the eggs, but I don't really understand it. Is there a strategy here for it?


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3) Are there any other tricks or tips that you can give to helping clear trash faster?

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4) (Jan'Alai) Some websites suggest that we should not kill birds and only dps the boss. How exactly does this work? With Bloodlust and all focus on boss (still 3 healers), we can knock out 30% of his health easily.

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5) Why exactly do you always veer left on Jan'Alai trash? The "hatcher packs" on the right seem easier and could be blown through faster.

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6) How exactly reliable is Mind Control for the packs leading to Jan'Alai?

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Group we plan on taking for our attempt:
Group 1:
- Protection Warrior (me)
- Retribution Paladin (1100+ dps)
- Holy Priest (Circle of Healing)
- Restoration Shaman
- Shadow Priest (800-900 dps)

Group 2:
- Feral Druid
- Beast-Mastery Hunter (1200-1600 dps)
- Destruction Warlock (top dps in guild)
- Destruction Warlock (2nd top dps in guild)
- Boomkin (1100-1400)


Our time-ticks currently (with 3 healers):
- Gauntlet (3-4 Minutes)
- Akil'zon (4-5 Minutes)
- Narolakk Start to Finish (12 minutes)
- Halazzi trash (10-12 minutes, 8 minutes if we're hauling ass)
- Halazzi (5 minutes)


Places we really struggle:
- Narolakk trash seems to take FOREVER.

- Akil'zon probably takes longer than it should.

- Jan'Alai consistency

- Jan'Alai "big" pack next to the 3 scout huts.

Hatcher packs are easier. There's also more than one of them. Going left, there is exactly one trash pack you need to fight. It's slightly harder, but unless you completely cannot handle flame caster packs, it'll always be faster going that way.

Some answers for Blacksen:

1/ I can attest that you can do the entire zone with any 2 healing class characters at a full T6 gear level and no Shadow Priest. Even at Bear mount speed. Your healers will chug a lot of mana potions, but that is the main problem.

2/ My groups strategy for the eggs is to kill one hatcher each time and let the other hatcher release an entire side. The moment he starts releasing hatchlings, all ranged dps switch to single target killing hatchlings and the off-tank moves in to tank as many hatchlings as he can grab aggro on. Once the entire side is hatched, aoe happens (hopefully the offtank has aggro on most mobs) and non-aoe kill off any adds that are running amok. It's chaos, but controlled chaos because nobody is getting hit harder than they can be healed through. Sometimes we have let the hatcher run across and hatch the second side and sometimes we haven't. If it's faster to kill them all in one wave of hatchers, it's not by a whole lot. If somebody died during the first side worth of hatchlings, you should probably kill the remaining hatcher and battle res/heal/buff them back to full in time for the second wave.

Note: We don't ever let 2 hatchers start hatching eggs, even if they are on the same side and we have a paladin off-tank because it tends to make the adds spawn too fast, leaving you with too many adds up at once when they are all hatched. Your goal is to make as many hatchlings die through single target fire as possible before the entire side is hatched.

3/ Don't sheep too much. If your healers can heal through it and/or you have people who are good at interrupting/silencing, you don't need to sheep anything outside of Medicine Men and Beast Tamers. Medicine Men drop annoying totems that slow your dps down if you don't keep them sheeped or kill them first. Beast Tamers usually come two at a time and having 2 players mind-controlled at once can lead to some really unfortunate situations. I note that you don't have a mage in your current ideal raid, so this pointer doesn't really apply to you, but it's worth noting that you aren't really losing much by not having it!

On the gauntlet, only single target dps the casters and have your warrior tank on those for sunders. At the end of the gauntlet, your off-tank should have 4 melee mobs piled on him (and maybe a couple of warriors), while the main tank pulls the Tempest to finish it. AOE might happen about 3 times and you should only get 1 pack of 2 warriors run up from behind. If you didn't achieve this result, you should have been going faster.

On scouts, your Boomkin should start by Rooting the scout and followed by everyone else landing a big nuke and the Shaman Frost Shocking (half run-speed). This is a very effective way to prevent a scout from ever reaching the Drums to summon reinforcements. Communication is paramount here. Roots is a 1.5 second cast. Most big nukes are 2.5-3 seconds. You want those big nukes to land right after the roots just in case it is resisted. Same with the Frost Shock. Also, having people with eyes in the back of their heads to call the approach of Scouts from behind is highly useful as well. Giving your boomkin time to start a root before the mob starts running is extremely important. Naturally, scouts can be stunned until dead as well, but your raid doesn't have a rogue, so it's not a reliable plan.

4/ Edit: Wait, Jan'alai, ignore 50 birds beating on you just to dps the boss? Sounds like crazy talk, especially if you get a fire bomb phase in the middle of it.

5/ As others have said, there are multiple dragonhawk pulls if you go right. If you go left, you do have to deal with a few scouts, but there is only 1 major trash pack that cannot be skipped before the paths meet up again. One mistake you can make that actually makes this single trash pack harder is to pull them rather than fighting them in place. If you pull them, you wind up with multiple scouts spawning right next to the raid and running away from you to summon reinforcements or pathing towards you and summoning reinforcements. If you fight them in place, a single scout may spawn in the hut to your left, but it has to run through the raid to reach the drums and therefore dies very easily. Any scouts pathing towards you from behind can be seen from far away and either avoided or killed with plenty of warning.

Secondly, there is just physically less distance going "straight" left than looping around to the right.

Finally, if you arrive at the steps to Jan'alai's platform at the right time, the Dragonhawk patrols will be away to your right. You can run up on the platform and fight the 4 pack of 2 Flamecasters and 2 Guardians right where they stand. If you do this correctly, the Dragonhawk Patrol that comes up the stairs will never aggro you. If that Dragonhawk patrol gets in your way however, you should dps it down rather than wait for it to path away. They take less time to kill than they take to wait for them to path away.

On the topic of dealing with Flamecasters, you have 3 classes with a 1 minute cooldown stun. The Protection Warrior tanks both Flamecasters while the Feral Druid tanks both Guardians (and maybe a Dragonhawk). You pile them up all together. The Protection Warrior stuns the first focus target while the Feral Druid stuns the second focus target. If the first focus target is still alive after it gets out of stun, the Retribution Paladin can stun it again. The Restoration Shaman should be sure to purge the second Flamecaster, preventing it from nuking at increased speed and giving the Protection Warrior a good chance to interrupt its casts when everyone switches targets. With this plan, the pair of Flamecasters may get off 2 or 3 aoes due to timing mistakes amongst players, but not enough to kill anyone. The rest of the fight is then just like any other guardian pull.

6/ My group has never tried it, so I can't answer directly. As far as I know, the only mobs that would be susceptible to this would be Flamecasters and there would be only 1 spot I think would be safe to use that spell (the trash pack on the left path). Anywhere else and you may be risking pulling a second pack with the Flamecasters aoe. In a lot of ways, it's far nicer to just aggro the whole ball of wax and chain stun/interrupt the Flamecasters while single target dpsing them.

This is poor group composition.

Group 1:
Protection Warrior, Retribution Paladin, Feral Druid, Beast-Mastery Hunter, Restoration Shaman

Group 2:
Holy Priest, Shadow Priest, Destruction Warlock, Destruction Warlock, Boomkin.

With this group composition, you will up your raid DPS significantly due to party synergies.

In Group 1, the Protection Warrior provides Battle Shout to every physical dps that can benefit from it in your raid. The Feral Druid is providing a physical crit bonus to every physical dps class. The Beast-Mastery Hunter is providing his AP bonus to every physical dps class. The Restoration Shaman brings Windfury and Strength of Air to buff the dps of your group and increase the threat of your main tank. Don't bother trying to twist for Grace of Air and Windfury both, that would just be a waste of cooldowns and mana for the Resto Shaman. If the Restoration Shaman wants to drop a Mana Tide, then he should swap himself with a Destruction Warlock in group 2 for the time it takes the Mana Tide to finish and then swap back. Finally, the restoration shaman is in the right group to cast Bloodlust for increased raid dps.

In Group 2, the Shadow Priest is benefiting the classes who will see the greatest DPS increase from the extra mana and health regen (saving Warlocks Lifetap time is very significant to dps and helps save healer mana too). The boomkin is providing his spell crit aura to the classes who benefit from it the most as well. More crit on Destruction Warlocks means more Improved Shadowbolt uptime and more Inspiration procs from the Holy Priest. The Holy Priest and Warlocks are in this group to soak up the benefits of the SP and Boomkin only. Otherwise they could be in any group.

The increase in raid dps by building parties in this way will speed your clear by minutes.

Nitpick: You're thinking of Marksmanship. BM provides Ferocious Inspiration, which is a 3% boost to group dps (not only physical) when up. I agree on the placement though, since the hunter will benefit from Imp. Sanctity and Leader of the Pack, and his pet from this and Battle Shout as well.

6) How exactly reliable is Mind Control for the packs leading to Jan'Alai?
Our shadow priest is usually mind-controlling flamecasters each pack - pushing his damage(including pets) to the top3.

Mindcontrol one if only one and tank one of the elites. If its two then MC one and nuke the 2nd dead.
Announce when it breaks so tanks can taunt - the Guardians cannot dispell it.
The Quad pack near the stairs => CC both, let everyone run around the corner and MC.

We generally do this with spriest + 2 healers.
Gauntlet 3-4 mins is fine.
Boss - 3 minutes.
We found it easy to, if we have a hunter, missdirect the tank and give him + DPS Bloodlust from the start.
That way the BL is up right at Bear.

- Narolakk trash seems to take FOREVER.
Focus targets, chain pull - nothing more to it.
Again we usually BL right from the start, which readys it right before 3rd boss.

- Halazzi (5 minutes)
My guild might be a little better geared, but 5 minutes is LONG.
Last 2 weeks lasted 2min 32 and 2min 45 seconds.

- Jan'Alai consistency
The big problem with Jan is if you have too much DPS.
Usually we just let one sides hatcher open 3 and the other side opens 10.
If you don't have superior DPS then the 2nd pair of hatchers will come before you hit the 35% mark - rince and repeat above step for the other side then.

- Jan'Alai "big" pack next to the 3 scout huts.
Root/nuke the scout, CoT/Stun/Mindcontroll the Flamecaster.
If 2, spam poly and keep stunned.
Let a destro lock just solo nuke the bird.

hope that helps

This video features our first successfull Zul'Aman Speed Run within the time limit. I have frapsed it as main tank. It's not that fast (1' left) and we had deaths at the 3rd encounter but maybe there are a few helpful suggestions for someone.

Zul'Aman - Speed Run by Bellum & Friends By Azhag

Remember if you decide to go the route of hatching an entire side then ALL the dps (except the Shad Priest if you have one) must be on hatchling killing. Put simply:

Pull, start dps on boss.
Hatchers incoming. Kill one hatcher ( we kill the left one).
Hatcher starts spawning eggs. Paladin starts aoe tanking. Earthbind/Hunter traps down. Once 5 or 6 hatchlings are out all dps classes go to help kill them - Feral in dps gear swiping helps a lot.
Nuke hatchlings with AoE. Unless you have exceptional aoe dps you will probably get a fireball phase before they are all dead - if this happens the OT Warrior/Druid uses aoe taunt to gather them up while the Paladin moves to other side to start tanking as the hatcher will be over there by now.
Repeat dps startegy on hatchlings.
Clean up any loose hatchlings and all go nuke the boss.

Make sure your Shadow Priest dispels the Hatchling tank - if he gets targetted by the boss for Flame Breath with stacked debuffs he is likely to die fast.