Citrinite

Getting two packs of warriors from the back on eagle trash is very realistic. The warriors have low hp. Also you can aoe the eagles that spawn without a prot pally, a holy pally is a viable aoe tank.

Our runs use well geared players but our alt runs easily get 3 chests. We frapsed our last kill, when I think we had 9 minutes left when the 4th boss died (post instance nerf). Watching the movie I noticed that we only got one set of warriors to spawn but I know that we have done it many times with two.

 

Kenera

We use a holy pally to tank the adds. It's worth noting we aren't bothering with the timed event (we're t4 geared, stepped into ZA not all that long ago) as we're still learning the instance. We normally run without a mage, and just bring a warlock; with a mage it would be very feasable not to need a pally at all (frost nova them after the seeds are in place; then nuke them and watch them blow one another up).

I walk through walls.

 

Modhne

Mind Controlling the flamecasters seems to be a drop in DPS for us since they die so quickly. They tank the pulls nicely but the loss of spriest DPS (I guess it's also different if you have a Holy Priest MCing) is large enough that we just started killing them right after the Scouts.

Another thing we've been doing is on the first two Lynx spawns having a feral druid run up and pull them back to my consecrate. We'll only do this if we're behind or close on the timer, as it sometimes will get a healer killed before they're picked up. Paladin tank takes a bit more damage but it's quite doable as long as you don't get the patrol with it. (T6 gear probably could take the pat too but I'm mainly in t4/badge tanking gear while the rest of the raid is in t5/early t6)

 

Samurai

Bit of an interesting occurency tonight, a quite unexpected one.

We managed our fasted ever timed run (just over 10min left) but with rather odd setup, which we weren't sure would be any good at all.

Group 1
Rogue
Prot Warr
Feral Druid
S.priest
Holy Pala

Group 2
S.priest
S.priest
Destro lock
Fire Mage
Resto Shaman

Granted we have been doing this for a while now and had done 9mins left a couple of times, but that group seems far from optimal. It was very smooth, obviously never needing to break for even a second to drink and 3 x silence on the trash was nice, also the scouts went down with ease which can cause little hiccups along the way.

Maybe we under-estimate the soft-loss of time due to mana restraints even though it may not be as obvious as people stopping to drink, but holding back on higher mana spells etc. It's something to think about though, nonetheless.

 

Hegen

Try to get chest 1 pretty soon. With a little practice, that's relatively easy to achieve for a T4 group, and the additional loot will help you gear up. Don't waste that.

 

◊ alinna

For dragonhawk strategies, we initially did "Let one hatcher hatch 4 eggs, Kill the other hatcher instantly" strategy, which was very controlled, the only problem being that the hatcher would sometimes run to the wrong side. We've since switched to killing one hatcher instantly and letting the other hatch all the eggs on one side and then switching, with our protection paladin tanking all the hatchlings while our DPS, except the shadow priest, take them down. The original strategy we used didn't rely on a protection paladin either, we managed to pull that off with a feral druid tanking the hatchlings.

Warlocks and Shadow Priests tend to go together very well due to synergy, so I'm not too surprised. Here are two WWS from two of my timed runs, the only changes in group composition being a resto druid/destruction warlock and a BM hunter/Survival hunter. With Curse of Shadows/ISB the shadow priest's average damage on each spell is much higher:
Wow Web Stats
Wow Web Stats

 

xyruul

Some of our early runs on ptr and I think our first run on live bugged and did indeed cap at 20m after each kill. Haven't seen it since.

 

songster

Interesting. That's getting towards the point where you could do the bosses in a different order, even a severely suboptimal one. I wonder who'll be the first to go B -> D -> L -> E, for the sheer e-peen value?

 

Lavode

nah - for bragging rights, try to get zul'jin under the timer well-- more seriously, 10 minutes is definately enough time to kill the hex lord

 

WiPe|Domin

Hex Lord dies in ~2min, Zul'jin takes 3-4min? So its definetly possible if you have ~10min left after killing Lynx. I recall Cold Snap cooldown not beeing reset when we engaged Zuljin, and i used it on Lynx fight.

 

• Falk

I wonder if the rescuee's would zoom off right to Zul'jin's terrace if he's killed before collecting chest loot. Not something I'd be willing to test, though. :P

You know, assuming that:
1) Chest loot requires one to be present at the boss kill to be eligible for looting (like the chests in Ramparts/Mechanar/Karazhan event after patch 2.3 - see patch notes)
2) Nalorakk's chest by design actually doesn't have this limitation (as can be seen by its currently missing need/greed roll dialogue when opened)

it could actually be a subtle cherry on the cake on Blizzard's part, in that if you're actually amazing enough to tear through four chests ending with Bear boss (hence not getting his 15min bonus) you could actually sell the bear mount for loads of cash.

Of course, knowing how buggy some other things are in the game, this probably isn't the case, along with the fact that it's probably easier to just bring a potential buyer and complete it in the tried and true order. :P

 

Dra

This is actually not true. After we complete our timed run we log our alts to pick up loot from chests 1, 2, and 3. We have not yet tested if this is true for the lynx bag, but it definately isn't for the others.

 

• Falk

I -know- that's not the case (atm, Lord knows if this is a bug) which is why I stated 'assuming'.

 

Gearknight

My ZA group did Bear->Eagle with ~3 minutes to spare last reset, and we're going to try for Bear->Eagle->Lynx this weekend to hopefully score one of the rings. Can anyone confirm or anti-confirm that the Lynx chest is bugged if done third? We won't be pleased if we beat the timer and get nothing to show for it, and we especially won't be pleased if we're forced to change to Eagle->Bear->Dragonhawk, as Jan'alai poses some issues for us (we've never 1-shot him).

 

Riot

Jan'alai is 100% execution fight. There are no random elements that can force you to wipe or start over. Additionally, you can reset Jan'alai at nearly any point.

It looks like this thread has confirmed the bugginess of the Lynx Bag, so why not go practice on Jan'alai?

My group is the one earlier referred to by Castille that cleared all four chests in mainly T5 (very little T6, Bands of Eternity on a few people).

This is how we execute Jan'alai:

Typically we have two warlocks. We assign one warlock to each Hatcher that comes up. One hatcher is allowed to hatch three eggs, and then is immediately killed, opening up three hatchlings. The other hatcher is allowed to hatch 10 hawks. The OT is given time to build threat on the hawks, then Jan'alai is seeded and the hawks are killed.

Repeat. Now one side is cleared fully of eggs after two waves of hatchers.

Third hatcher wave: Half the remaining eggs are spawned and killed.

At this point Jan'alai is at 35% and the remaining hatchlings are spawned and killed.

If executed properly and with enough DPS, you can kill Jan'alai in 4 minutes, certainly before his 5 minute soft-enrage timer.

Overslept, / So tired. / If late, / Get fired. / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again. - The Commuter's Lament
Norman B. Colp

 

roq

Well as I noted to Cylyna (in a PM), we actually had a problem with the Spawn and opened a ticket with Blizzard. Right now we are escalated and just waiting to hear from Blizzard, but yes there may be a problem with the chest spawn. We are currently going wait before doing this again and maybe practice on going to the DH instead. We just pull that Area VERY Badly and had a slow kill strat on the boss. The EJ video gave me some ideas, and may try that in the next few days.

 

Kemortia

Here's a question about the timed run that I haven't seen really asked:

We all know that the first chest done is armor, second is weapon, third is ring, and fourth is chest. What I'm curious about is wether or not there is an increased chance of some items from some chests. While it seems like common sense (not that that means anything to Blizzard :p) that an armor chest is an armor chest, from looking on the armory I'm questioning wether that's the case.

For example, consider the Shadowcaster's Drape (Armory Link). According to the armory, there's only a "Very Low" chance of it dropping from Harkor's Satchel.

Another example, the Mantle of Ill Intent (Armory Link) has a "Low" drop chance from Tanzar's Satchel and Kraz's Package, but only a "Very Low" chance from Harkor's Satchel.

If you say go Tanzar (Bear) -> Harkor (Eagle) -> Kraz (Dragonhawk) would I have an increased chance of the mantle, but no chance of the cloak? If there is indeed slightly different loot per chest, perhaps if you're looking for a certain item it'd be better to run in a different order then the standard.

 

Riot

I have no idea, and it seems nonsensical to me, honestly.

But it doesn't hurt you in any way to open up the chests in a different order, so feel free to experiment.

Overslept, / So tired. / If late, / Get fired. / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again. - The Commuter's Lament
Norman B. Colp

 

◊ Cylyna

I am in the same boat as Roq. I am waiting on a GM response and our ticket has been escalated. As soon as I hear something, you guys will be the first to know.

In other news... My bets would be that if you can clear Bear --> Eagle --> Lynx with 3 minutes left on the timer (to let the stupid gnome run around the room for 2 minutes) then it might be worth a try.

I totally understand why you would want to avoid the Jan'Alai as that has always been our biggest crap-shoot in the zone. However, after watching the EJ video (and this chest fiasco), I will probably go for Eagle --> Bear --> Dragonhawk on our run tonight. I don't know if I am gutsy, or geared, enough to let the 1 hatcher spawn everything but we will find out tonight.

 

Stoical

We did Bear->Eagle->Lynx last night with around 6 minutes to spare. We got the bag, but everyone passed to discuss it and manually /roll, and when the person who won went to loot their ring, the bag was gone.

 

Kemortia

Order opened doesn't matter. We usually do eagle -> bear -> dragonhawk kill order, but open dragonhawk first and get rings. If there is some difference between the chests, it'd require a totally different kill order, which could make for some.. interesting.. clears if you wanted a better shot at a certain ring.

Eek, Shaman

 

Krazen

As I posted earlier in the thread, we ran into the exact same issue. After a week of an 'escalated' ticket, the GM told us there was nothing he could do.

If you can't make it with 3-4 minutes left, don't do Lynx last.

 

Lavode

The diffrent drop rates listed on armor pieces from each diffrent bag is not due to any diffrence in drop rates - its due to the fact that the kill orders dont have the same popularity - If 75% of raids that do ZA go Eagle->bear->whatever, and 25% go Bear->eagle->whatever then the bag from the eagle will have far more armor pieces drops listed on all the relevant sites. The cape looks like a lower percentage drop than it is because it got added to the drop table recently, so not as many drops have been recorded.

 

Borelock

As stated by me on page 2..

Now is it possible we could avoid this promising thread turning into 300 pages of repetition? Thanks.

 

• Falk

Quite a few of the 2.3 items are misleading on Armory. For example, Dory's Embrace shows sources other than the Badge vendor.