Hi, there. Just reg'd (been meaning to do it for awhile), I'm Kerulak, Guild Leader of Descendants of Draenor, over on Deathwing. I'm a friend of a guildy over here and have been chatting with him and such and following your progression through endgame stuff.

I had a question...our guild started running Zul'Gurub last week and we were able to drop the first two bosses Friday night. However, in order to give ourselves the "edge" on boss 1, we pulled her way to the far corner, in the hopes that she would not call her wave of bats out. Well, it did the trick and we were able to drop her...but now I fear we're treading into "blizzard exploit" territory.

What is usually the protocol on this type of thing? Do we monitor the WoW Raids & Dungeons forums for stickied blizz developers saying "Don't Do This"? Do we play it safe and not use this technique...or do we just go crazy until we get our asses banned.

We haven't really had this kind of a situation to worry about before but I kind of feel like now is probably a good time to start thinking about it.

Well, on a pragmatic level, there's no chance you're going to be suspended or banned for pulling the Jek'lik far enough away from her spawn that it breaks her scripting. It's certainly taking advantage of a bug to your benefit, but it's not being done maliciously, it's not being done to top-tier content, and Blizzard's enforcement and discipline are notoriously lax. That's the cynic's response. So sure, go ahead and keep doing it. Blizzard will fix it in the not-too-distant future when they patch up lingering Z'G bugs, and then you'll have to fight her normally because she'll leash or the scripting won't break or whatever.

You are not going to get banned. Don't worry.

Now, in terms of my own views on fair play and how to approach the game, yeah, I think you're obviously not doing the fight the way it was intended to be done. Blizzard didn't put in a bunch of elaborate scripting with bat riders swooping in dropping bombs and such if their intent was for that scripting to be seen only by foolish players who didn't think to pull her far away. You're not cleverly avoiding an ability -- you're breaking the scripts.

Jek'lik really isn't that bad if you just fight her at the intended spot. Keep your casters at max range so they don't get silenced, focus-fire the adds quickly, and when the napalm bats come into play, get ready to move so no one stands in the fire for more than a second or two. You can do it, I promise.

I'm certain we can do it the right way with a bit of practice. ;) In our inital attempts we tried to mass aoe the bats with 3 or so blizzards...but it was never enough. Even with a warrior warstomping and challenging shouting them, they would pull off and attack the casters out of range of aoes, and by the the time phase 2 arrived, the casters were either dead or seriously out of mana.

Sounds like the best way to do it is just pull the rogues off Jeklik and have them MA through the bats until they're toast.

Now we're talkin'! Always better to use your head and fight it straight up than to take the easy route and exploit while you can get away with it. That mentality would be the reason we're taking down the real Chromaggus without deaths or problems post 1.7 while a number of the cheeser guilds don't know wtf to do anymore.

Kudoes to you and yours for having the sense to at least question this before moving forward on it. That mindset will pay off well for your lot in the long run. Will be looking forward to a Hakkar kill shot from you guys in the future. :)

I have a semi-related question for the jerks, and anyone else who may read this:

What order do you attempt the ZG bosses in? It probably doesnt matter as they all need to die before hakkar, but I'm interested in how their difficulty progresses.
On our first run, we downed the bat aspect first, then the snake boss, then the spider boss, and finally the bloodlord. The bloodlord seemed retardedly easy compared to the spider aspect, so I wondered if we did things out of order, or the spider boss just had our number. :blink:

Spider boss is the first "tough" boss in Z'G. Bloodlord is either very easy if you know what to do and people pay attention, or a wipefest if you're clueless.

But yeah, that's the order I kill them in. Bat --> Snake --> Spider --> Bloodlord --> Edge of Madness --> Tiger --> Gahz'ranka --> Panther --> Jin'do --> Hakkar.

Basically clockwise around the circle.

counter clockwise

Great, thanks for the speedy reply. :laugh: