As a 3/9 BT, 4/5 MH guild, we managed to get a group of our strongest raiders through for our first Bear last night. It was only our second week of attempting the run (we got 3 down in time last week) and was completed with approximately 30 seconds left on the timer. The route that we took was Eagle -> Bear -> Dragonhawk -> Lynx. Our group composition was as following:

G1

Prot Warrior (MT1)
Prot Paladin (MT2)
Enh Shaman
Rogue
Arms Warrior

G2

Resto Shaman
Resto Druid
Shadow Priest
Elem Shaman
Fire Mage

Most of the things that we did were influenced by this thread. To bridge the DPS gap between us and full T6-equipped groups, we had all of our DPS flasked and with food, plus healers with potions/elixirs. After watching Gurgthock's video (for which myself and our group leader is very grateful for seeing - it's worth the download), we basically followed this to pretty much the letter. In particular, I would urge people to pay particular attention to the strategies for the Eagle trash and the hatchers on the Dragonhawk - both of these were very beneficial. In terms of timing, we were ready to pull Eagle with around 16mins left, and we killed Dragonhawk with about 16mins left. These are the only times I paid attention to the timer. Even 16mins left, it was close on the Lynx - we did get real lucky on Scout spawns to the Dragonhawk and the roaming trash pack in the Lynx's room, but had a trash death or two on the way to the Lynx. For a T5-equipped group, I feel 15mins+ to the Lynx gives you a little bit of breathing room.

The main benefit of our group set up was the 3 BL we could use on every boss. We had another Mage instead of our Elem Shaman last week, and while we were initially thinking that a Warlock would provide the best utility/damage, the extra totems and BL probably got us through towards the end. I would certainly recommend 2 or 3 Shaman for those groups that have them available. The only time we really used any AoE was on the packs of hawks on the hawk gauntlet, so we weren't really lacking in that department. The Warlock probably could have done the same personal DPS (and probably more), but the 3rd BL almost certainly outweighed that.

I'll answer dogy's questions too:

1. We had a Prot Paladin on the adds, and he didn't wear any FR.
2. Since we only had one Mage, we largely single-target DPSd them down. The first wave went down pretty easily, then for the second wave, we threw down Fire Elementals from all 3 of our Shamans.
3. We did this, yes. We kill one hatcher quick, and let the other hatch everything. Melee stay on the boss until the first wave are all on the Prot Paladin, then we move over and kill them all quick. The other hatcher moves across and we do the same there, just with Fire Elementals in there too.
4. Nope. As stated, just more efficient for the Shadow Priest to stay on the boss.

We decided our first bear would go to our group organiser, our Enh Shaman - this was nice, since he is a regular raid leader/organiser and often running alt Karazhan. It was also a server first too (afaik), so that made it nice. We've decided to keep the same group for our runs, and simply getting everyone to /roll on the bears from now on. This has lead to a little bit of discontent within the guild (since we basically hen picked the strongest raiders), but the closest comparison I can find is that of an arena team - certain classes and specs lend themselves to this run, and it requires a consistent team and a regular time commitment. T6 guilds can be a little more flexible, but at early BT/MH level, I suggest that sticking to the fairly standard group makeups suggested here.

I hope my input adds to this great thread

I'm the prot pally in my group and we used to use FR but stopped using it. Half the time I forget to turn on my FR aura as well.

Quick question regarding leaving the prisoners behind while moving on to the next boss. Example my team has taken down the Eagle and bear and are working on Dragonhawk. If we do not kill the Dragonhawk boss in the right amount of time his prisoner will die...but will our first two prisoners that we left behind die?

Thanks for the help.

No they will stay alive in their cages.

We just got three chests with four minutes left using the following raid makeup-
G1
Protection Warrior
Protection Paladin
Combat Swords Rogue
Holy Paladin
Destruction Warlock
G2
Elemental Shaman
Moonkin
Fire Mage
Survival Hunter
Resto Druid

We made a lot of messups but some of them were forgivable considering we had two healers. I think with more practice we could have a shot at the bear with this group makeup/gear level.

Two people died on Eagle and were battlerezed.
We wiped on Bear Boss (protip if you have a taunt resist, bop the person who has aggro).
We had numerous deaths on the way to dragonhawk and we got 2x2 reinforcements on the way to dragonhawk. (another protip, don't have a broken mic and scream into it when a scout is coming because nobody will hear you and don't pull two packs at once).

We went the right way to dragonhawk which I think is slower but we are more comfortable with that. As for our gear level we killed Kael'thas this week so the only BT gear in our raid was the shoulders that dropped off of hyjal trash on me and also me and the warlock both bought hyjal bracers. I think if we executed a lot better (specifically not wiping on bear and not being retards on the way to dragonhawk) we could execute it within a few resets. I also think our raid composition and group setup weren't very optimal but it was kind of a spur of the moment thing.

Just curious why didn't your warlock and druid swap groups? 8% crit 3% hit, spelldmg totem AND 3% dmg from the hunter could have been a VERY nice boost.

Considering you don't have a shadow priest I'd say the mana totem is pretty much essential. Mana regen is a big deal in ZA. Going through a couple dozen mana pots is not uncommon.

At the expense of a massive dps boost which = shorter fight =less healing needed. Also the tanks would get tree aura and the warlock would get mana spring for less lifetaps which again = less healing needed/less regen needed.

If you insist on one of the 2 healers being in the dps group switch the paladin, at leas the would benefit from the crit.

Our guild finally managed 4 chests with 3 mins left. We are 4mh 3 bt guild. After couple of months of stupid wiping with random setups i decided to choose people, not let them roll. There were couple of rather well geared alts and our MT was in arms spec with pretty decent gear. Also i decided to take 2 healers for the first time. Almost everyone was fully flasked. We had the following setup:
Group 1
BM Hunter
MM Hunter
Feral
Arms War
Ench Shaman (Alt)

Group 2
Resto Shaman
Holy Pally
Prot Pally (Alt)
Destro Lock
Shadow Priest

We followed the usual route: eagle>bear>dragonhawk>lynx. We had couple of deaths during trash pulls (stupid as always). Me and holy pal probably didn't expect that tank (feral) can be instagibbed by bear, thus we lost him and had to reset the fight losing 3-4 mins. Generally i was inspired by this thread and Gurg's movie.
So thx everyone and good luck.
PS WWS if you are interested Wow Web Stats
PPS It turned out to be server first legitimate bear, so i'm very happy. Thx to EJs and EJ community again.

Ok we did our first "proper" try (as in with 2 healers) and run today and succeded, we farm Illidan for a while now(about a month and a half) and have really good geared rogues and warlocks, so we decided to take full advantage of that. We had some stupid scout pulls and 2-3 times of scouts ringing the bells, and a healer dced right before the Lynx boss and managed to make it with 5 minutes left on timer. Due to having no pala tank we just decided to make an assist-train.The only proper CC was a mindcontroling priest and a stunlock rotation between 2 rogues and me.The setup was this.
Group1
Protection Warrior
Feral Druid(leatherworker)
Rogue (combat swords)
Rogue (combat swords)
Warlock (destro)

Group2
Warlock (destro)
Warlock (destro)
Shadow Priest
Holy Paladin
Resto Shaman

We followed the usual route as well as in E>B>D>L. We "forgot" to hatch a lot of eggs and our dps was fairly high, almost all eggs hatched after 35%.Double aoe taunts and 3 warlocks make it quite easy without a paladin tank.So well if it wasn't for all our mistakes I am pretty confident a brute force group which pops bloodlusts and drums all the way can make it with 8-9 minutes spare.

My suggestion is to read all the bits in this topic, it helps quite a lot to know almost everything about something that you wanna beat.

OK... this is question is for experienced RAID leaders in the ZA timed run... All I'd like to know is are there any spots which you could see the entire RAID popping Inviso pots to skip content? I went into ZA the other day (Just for fun and to mind vision packs to see if I could locate areas where we could pop pots!) and after we opened the door (and DIED!) come back in there were two mobs guarding the entrance into ZA... I was easily able to mind soothe them and walk past without any aggro... That got me to thinking about Inviso pots for the RAID.


Curious

Geta

But it is possible.. So where might one use it.. what trash.. what mobs.. where... just looking for ideas.. Not a "No" answer or don't do it...



Read my question again

kkggthx

The only place really is by lynx boss but the trash you can walk past unstealthed anyways.

Ignoring the fact that you're skirting a ban for flaunting the posting rules, I would say the answer to your question is go and do it yourself. We all stopped the hand-holding phase when we were children, there's no reason to think that every answer you want is going to be fed to you off a silver platter. Your total lack of initiative to go and try things for yourself is sad.

A much better post would have been "Hi, I decided to try some invis pots while on my last ZA run and since I hadn't seen any other information regarding them, here's what I found worked."

We got our first bear timer last night with an incredibly non optimal group, the tanks were 1 Prot Warrior and the Feral Druid, the other Prot Warrior was dpsing. Our Paladin forgot his FR gear in the bank so we had to do DragonHawk the old fashioned way, breaking 4-5 eggs per side, taking 2 hatcher spawns to finish it. Also had 2 scouts manage to summon reinforcements on the way to dragonhawk. I think we had about 15 min on the time when dragonhawk died, and killed Lynx the precise moment that the timer expired.

Prot Warrior x2
Arms Warrior
Feral
Enhance Shaman

Mage
CoH Priest
Survival Hunter
Tree Druid
Holy Paladin

I think this just goes to show that a large part of the run is just "don't fuck up" more than anything else.

I wouldn't say non-optimal mainly because you have virtually every melee buff possible. A feral druid, blood frenzy, expose weakness, incredibly fast sunder applications from two devastates on trash and an enhancement shaman. That's a stacked group in my book .

I've tanked the hatchlings in two waves (so doing an entire side at once) using only my aura for FR, 300 or so spell damage, and the rest ZA and badge gear (zero 25-person drops). Basically, there's about a 10 second span when your healers have to pour healing on you, and then everything's dead. You bubble the debuffs off, repeat that again, and then you stand around and clap for the rest of the fight.

Without FR though there is a possibility of being insta-gibbed if the boss decides to throw a breath on you while you're tanking all the hatchlings. (As soon as the hatchlings are dead the first time you bubble, and once they're dead the second time it's not a big deal if you die, but you don't want to go down while you're tanking them.) Wearing full FR would probably completely trivialize it (the hatchlings don't melee for much at all) but as I said, I've done it with zero FR gear, which is risky but very possible.

Regards threat, I've always found that the hatchlings die so fast that it doesn't much matter. You just have to hold them long enough for your warlock to throw up three or so seeds and then everything melts (and you can always BoP an AoEer if it comes to that). Your basic purpose is to keep them off the healers and gather them all in one place so the AoE can hit them, and once the AoE hits them they fall over.

Breath is easy to avoid for the bird tank (and everyone on hatchlings) - have the tank and one healer head to the opposite platform of the one you are hatching, and noone but that tank and healer takes breath. - this makes killing hatchlings a lot safer, as there is no additional burst that can happen.

.... It is incredibly non-optimal. There is no reason to take more than one warrior, who should either Fury or 2H (Unless a prot warrior is going to tank in full block value gear for TPS). His group even had 3 healers which is completely unnecessary (only time I've done it with 3 healers was the first bear, and it was the exact same case, seconds to spare, one less healer 3 days later and we finished in with 5 minutes left.) Survival hunter would have to be extremely decked out to match a BM hunter as well, his group was by no means optimal. (Not that there is any point to being optimal once you have the entire run down besides going for personal records).

As for dealing with dragonhawk adds, never really have had to used FR gear on anyone, let one side out during first wave at approx. 75%, then the rest come out at 35%. As long as all DPS besides say a shadow priest (nice to have when your running with 2 healers) moves to the side as soon as the first hatchling spawns and starts killing them as they come out you should be fine, if your going to AoE get ready to BoP, simple. At 35% fire elementals usually help, but more or less between a frost trap/aoe+BoP it shouldn't really be a problem for a single healer to deal with.

We took the multiple warriors simply because that was the group we had on hand at the time. It was a fairly spur of the moment decision to run ZA after we finished BT and Hyjal for the week. None of the rogues wanted to come that night.

For the paladin FR question, we had our holy paladin wear ~170 FR gear for the dragonhawk tanking.

As long as the healers get on it fast enough, we've had success with tanking an entire side of hatched birds using a shaman earth elemental totem.

It is also possible to distribute fire protection potions for the emergency button.We use a feral druid tanking the side with a shaman in the egg area then after a breath, our warlocks drink the pots (we got 3 warlocks in our ZA group) and cast SoC. When the 35% hits i just aoe taunt 1 second after the warlocks begin SoC casting and use Shield Wall.Then again 3 healthstones and a fire protection potion comes really handy in this fight.