Teenee

I'm curious as to the gearing requirements to beat the timer. The OP mentions that T4 just isn't going to cut it, is this realistic though? Would it be possible for an all Kara/ZA guild to beat it? Or is it just too harsh in terms of gear requirements.

 

◊ Praetorian

All four chests? Probably not, no. Three chests for sure. But the bear mount really exists for t6 guilds as a carrot to interest them in a zone that otherwise offers them little.

 

Xrhino

My guild is going to have its second attempt at this today. Last week with a wipe on bear boss included (wasted maybe 3 minutes) we had 3 chests down with 11m to spare but found the trash to Lynx took quite a while. Does anyone have any suggestions for this trash? I am downloading Praetorians movie at the moment but any extra tips are appreciated.

 

Kozik

I think it may be possible. Understand that when our guild does our bear runs, we are even flasked, so it would not be a cake walk by any stretch of the imagination. The reality is that you may piss some people off, but you need to get your BEST 10 players together to lean the encounter. After that, you can expand into more groups. Just remember some basic notes.

1: GROUP loot. If you want a boss drop, roll need. Have your DE'er greed everything. Don't waste more than 15 seconds on loot. REMEMBER, you are here for the bear, not the other stuff. If people want the gear, then can take their sweet time and not go for the bear.
2: Save your chests for after. They will still be there. If you don't make the bear, think of it as a consolation prize.
3: Take your time before. This is the fastest instance in the game. If you are anywhere near the bear time, this whole instance will take 1.5 hours. Sit out before and talk out each boss before you start the instance.

Most T4 guilds will not do this before going for a bear, for one reason or another. This is the most important detail.

Do Not Get Discouraged!!

You WILL not get a bear on your first run. It may take the same group of 10 a full 2 month to get your first bear. Don't give up.

 

Kozik

It really depends on what your gear level is like. Lynx trash is all about quantity. Most of the trash does not hit that hard, and can be grouped up, and almost be AoE'ed. If your tank(s) are in mostly T5 gear, don't be afraid to kill a few mobs, then continue on, dragging 1/2 the mobs with you into the next wave. The packs that are only cats can be moved into the next wave without hesitation. When we do this, we usually have a shadow priest in the healer group, so the healers can easily keep the tanks up without stopping to drink. Also work on your other 3 bosses, we usually have about 15 minutes going into the lynx trash, so that extra time may make the difference.

 

Borelock

I would like to chip in with another ZA timed run related bug that we have experienced two weeks in a row.

We have been pushing for three chests to try and get some rings for people, as a result taking the E -> B -> L option as we are more confident with our lynx clear/kill than we are with hawk.

Both weeks we have completed lynx with one minute on the timer and released the gnome promptly, however both weeks the bag has de spawned as the timer has ended resulting in lengthy ticket escalations to get said rings allocated.

Moral of the story, if your pushing for three chests and kill lynx with one or two minutes on your timer, have someone move straight over to the jar containing the bag and angle their camera down to open it.

P.S. 2x Signet of Eternal Life & 2x 48 hour ticket responses = FAIL.

 

◊ castille

Serious Casual just picked up a bear mount today. SC's loot is, basically, mixed T4/T5, lots of ZA loot. So, it's possible for T5 to do it. I don't know if Kara / ZA only might be able to do it, but obviously our group's antics tonight prove that you don't, at least, need any T6.

23:40:55> [Illidan Stormrage's] [Shear] was blocked by [Castille].
^ Yes, this actually happened. Yes, Castille is a shaman.

 

Jebraltar

I have to second that. We're an early BT guild, but we're definitely not strong on DPS and we were still doing pretty well, especially for a group that hadn't even seen the zone since before we killed Kael'thas.

 

Darkmantle

Was this with a fairly balanced group or with a heavily stacked group?

 

◊ castille

Described fairly balanced? Groups were ... (from memory)

Prot warrior, feral druid, enh shaman (me), rogue, warlock
holy paladin, shadow priest, warlock, resto druid, mage

23:40:55> [Illidan Stormrage's] [Shear] was blocked by [Castille].
^ Yes, this actually happened. Yes, Castille is a shaman.

 

• Agwho

The nature of a timed run pretty much demands a 'stacked' group.

Whether this is a melee stacked (warrior/rogue/druid/enhancement shaman/'x'), as in the EJ video, or caster (shadow priest/ele shaman + 3 warlocks/mages/lolboomkin), isnt really a big deal (although the melee group obviously never needs to drink). We have some people going in a hunter stacked group this weekend too.

However, throwing together 10 random classes isnt going to get you the bear mount, especially if gear is a limiting factor. The synergy of your DPS classes is crucial to meeting the high DPS requirement.

 

Desall

About group compositions

Personally I don't feel using shadow priests is worth it unless you got more than 2 casters and/or only 2 healers.
First times we did the timed run we had mostly melee, 1 mage and 1 warlock while healers just used mana potions.
Pallie tanks or consecration in general are being louded as awesome and I certainly agree but with some good coordination and slowing traps or earthbind totems dragonhawks seem to die more or less within the duration of an aoe taunt.

We have been able to do the timed run with most combinations of classes with just considering stacking in the sense of melee vs casters and their specific needs.
What seems to me to be the biggest loss in time from class stacking would be heroism.


About bosses

We tank everything in the middle of their platform and spread around the boss (melee exempt).

Eagle boss casters stand as close to the melee they can without making the lightning bolts jump to them.
This gives the benefit of melee being able to keep dps up while the storm is up.
You also won't need to group up just before the storm and risk getting hit by that last lightning bolt he decides to throw on you anyway.

On Dragonhawk healers can keep track of which side the hatchers are breaking the eggs.
And move accordingly to the opposite side. As dps and at least 1 tank are now on that side killing hatchlings there is no need to increase the chance for flame breadth by standing there as well.

 

Grogi

Excellent movie and first time trial speedrun that I've seen. Hopefully other guilds take challenge and try to beat your time (and fraps it). There seem to be speedrun category at warcraftmovies but unfortunately there are no new 10 or 25 man movies in there. This movie should definately be there.

Not only this movie is great speedrun, it gives nice insight how world class guild raid leader is different from your average guild raid leader. Speech is fast but at the same time calm, clear and easy to understand. Even minor details are noticed and very few mouse or keyboard moves are wasted.

I think it's safe to say that ZA timed trial has been success among the better guilds and Blizzard should notice that. In end of the movie, it's argued that it might be possible to beat timer by ten minutes. In the future instances Blizzard should prepare for that and give even better rewards for the fastest guilds. Either do it by rewarding best groups per battlegroup/continent weekly/monthly or just make several tiers of time trials (several minutes apart).

Speed, if properly supported by developers, can be great way to create competition among the best guilds in MMoGs. It takes very little development time compared to creating extremely difficult instances for the minority. Although I'm not sure if all world class guilds would be happy to see this, as it wouldn't be possible to "brute force" best results by just adding more raid days/hours. You get only one shot per instance reset but IMO that's great way to test teamwork and personal talent.

 

◊ songster

Seriously impressive. My current group are within spitting distance of getting three down under the timer - only reason we haven't is lack of practice because not so many people are interested. That's in mixed T4/T5 loot, no T6 yet.

My previous group is closer to the advertised market for ZA - been farming T4 content for a while, and are only just starting T5 content. They can only reliably kill bear and eagle at all, and of those only one at most will be under the timer. They just got their first kill on dragon hawk and lynx by pretty much hand-picking their top 10 players. Three chests in pure T4 gear doesn't sound remotely achievable to me.

 

Jebraltar

At the end of T5 content, you're at the point where you can do the third chest with well over ten minutes on the timer. I have a hard time believing there's that big a difference between full T4 and full T5, particularly if everyone is well equipped/gemmed.

 

◊ songster

I guess it depends what you mean by "end of T5" - is that everyone with full T5, or the day you get your first couple of Kael kills and drop T5 like a hot potato to get started on T6? :-)

 

Jebraltar

The latter, which means that you have a few T6 items (mostly bracers) spread out amongst the raiders to make up for the fact that their gear is only "mostly" T5. Sort of similar to how "full T4" seems bizarre to me when Lurker, Tidewalker, Void Reaver, Al'ar, and Solarian hand out epics like candy to any guild that could kill Magtheridon anyway, not to mention the T5-quality loot from Z'A itself.

 

kingkaos

We run the Eagle->Bear->Dragonhawk->Lynx route. Got my Bear earlier in the week, its our third. Here's the WWS for those interested. WWS Loading... We usually run with 3-4 Shaman but we had both the Enhancement and 2nd Resto shaman disconnect/lawnfire while we were at the gong. We all have full t6 with flasks and consumables where applicable. Think we had 7min when we engaged Lynx.

 

Amonra

I would guess that it's probably going to be possible with T4/Kara equivalent loot but only if those raiders have done pretty much everything possible to max themselves out on this type of loot, including crafted, heroic and badge items (which for many classes are as good as T5 at least).

And on top of that they would need to play pretty much perfectly to beat the timer.

Bu the thing is, most guilds with this kind of dedication will have already progressed to T6 content. I'm sure that there are some small, very dedicated guilds who don't run 25 man content, but I would think that these are the very much the exception to the norm.

 

Allyana

ye would say so aswell, its is possible without t6, but then realy nothing can go wrong. Our record was something like 10:45 left, so there is still space.
gonna post a vid from one of our runs later.

 

Snagawaga

Chainpulling and a group that can do this without mana breaks was the key for us.
We went with 3 healers and DPS classes that can sustain their damage for the whole duration of the trash. The holy priest was mind-controlling the flamecasters, which was our only CC and it turned out to be great damage at the same time.
10 minutes left is scary stuff, we made it just in time.

 

◊ Nfariessence

We did ZA last night with an eye to our first 'real' bear attempt. We tried the 1 whole side => other whole side for Dragonhawk and wiped the first time. We ran back in and pulled again and managed to eke it out with both myself and the mage dying with the 2nd side at about 20% health. We pushed the rest of the trash to Lynx and ended up killing the boss... 13 seconds after the timer ended

Prot War, Feral, Rogue, Enhance, Affliction Warlock
Resto Shaman, Spriest, CoH Priest, Holy Pally, Fire Mage

We're going back on Sunday to seal the deal. Is anyone selling bear mounts at this point? And if so, how much do they fetch?

 

• Ren

This is a video of our 35 minute clear. It was recorded and edited by Clyche (resto shaman) sometime last week. It's not a flawless clear by any means. We wasted seconds here and there between pulls--most glaringly we messed up the first bear trash pull (they were supposed to walk off the cliff earlier). We run Might over Salvation, which resulted in a rogue dying from aggro on the bear boss. We also could've chugged a lot more consumables than what we used.

676mb 24 min.
Catalyst_vs_ZA(TimeTrial).avi - FileFront.com

Group 1
Fury Warrior
Rogue
Rogue
Enh Shaman
Feral Druid

Group 2
Prot Warrior
Holy Paladin
Holy Priest
Resto Shaman
BM Hunter

We found that a prot paladin required far too much downtime to drink (not to mention contributes less to boss fights than a feral druid would), and that a shadow priest's mana inefficiency and lackluster dps actually slowed us down more than VT helped out. We made him go holy, and that's why you'll see a semi-undergeared holy priest with us.

 

Taciturne

I also believe end game stuff isn't necessary.
You need a good group setup as said before
Also all 10 guys must know very well what they have to do, what patrol to skip and be aware on the Dragonhawk's trash
Doing well the Dragonhawk boss is the key point of the run because it's very fast when well executed

you must have at least 15 minutes up when Dragonhawk boss dies to finish the run
with 18 minutes or more, at this stage you've already win.

If you have a rogue in your party you can still skip the lynx pack just after the Dragonhawk boss

 

Milk

Just thought I would post our group setup as an alternative since I didn't see another setup like it.

G1
MT: Feral Druid
OT: Fury Warrior (has protection gear for Bear/Lynx)
Combat Rogue
Enhancement Shaman
BM Hunter

G2
Holy Paladin
Holy Priest (Circle of Healing is huge for a 2 healer setup)
Shadow Priest
Destruction Warlock
Elemental Shaman

We clear Eagle->Bear->Dragonhawk->Lynx without using any paths to skip trash. Our best so far has been 8min remaining when Lynx dropped. Another note: We tank the Lynx's pet next to Halazzi and use Cleave/Blade flurry/Chain Lightning/Multi Shot to dps both targets, the transition back to Phase 1 occurs when 100% has been dealt to both targets as a whole, so often times he will switch back when the pet is at 70% and Halazzi is at 30%.

Our only form of CC was our Spriest Mind Controlling all Flame Casters. We would use small scale AOE on every single pull. Fury Warrior + Rogue + Elemental Shaman + Warlock AoEs brings everything down very quickly. We brought a mage (over Elem Shaman) for a couple runs but found the polymorph useless (prevents use of AOE) and their Damage to be far lower than the Elemental Shaman overall on bosses+trash.
This setup also allows for optimal totems and two blood lusts (we clear so quickly now though we can't afford to use BL on the Bear Boss). Our Fury warrior OTs in DPS gear (usually just 1 mob) with the exception of the Bear boss trash, which can hit very hard at times.

We feel we might have enough of a time buffer now to start bringing in paying players for the mount. Actually had one offer for 9k the other day, hard to say no.