Footspeedy

Seeing how very, very few were able to copy over to the PTR in order to test ZA, I figured that this would be a good place to look for compotent people to test this content and provide the rest of the community with feedback and information regarding it. If you are interested, please hop on the US (PVP) PTR and send Zxtreme (horde) a tell for a ginvite.

I will try and do my best to update this thread with insight on the bosses, boss mechanics, "strats", loot, and other notable ZA related things. Seeing how this is one of the first PTR's with a raid instance that we can thoroughly test due to the raid community having alot of free time, I feel its very important for us to throw blizzard a bone and help them get this instance right before it hits live. Since almost all mechanics and theorycraft about blizzard design happens here on EJ I thought we could use this thread as a hub for the improvement of ZA from a design standpoint.

EDIT - I understand that some alliance want to participate in this so If someone could take over on the alliance side of things that would be a big help.

EDIT2 - Please keep the Looking for XXXXXXX i have a XXXXXXX out of this thread, it does not help.

(Credit to Dynasty, Hephaustus, and Renew On Page 2 - Thank you!)
Zul'Aman

A compliation of ZA Tactics that we find work, also some details on each of the bosses abilities. This is an in-complete guide, check the end of the guide for what we're missing.

Nalorakk - Bear Avatar, 1st boss:

A 2 Phase fight:

First phase - Human form:

He does a random charge.
Mangle - Increases damage done by bleeds by 100%.

Second phase - Bear form:

Applies 2 different bleed effects.
Raid wide Silence - 4-5 seconds long, does approx 1k damage.

Phase 1 is simply tank and spank. Make sure to heal the random person charged.

Phase 2 have the 2nd tank taunt the boss and be careful of the cleave so make sure the raid is not next to where the 2nd tank is bringing the boss.

When he goes back to human form, have the first tank taunt it, repeat until he is dead.


After this boss you can take your pick at targetting any of the 3 next Avatars first but in terms of difficulty they are listed below.

For the time quest the kill order would logically be: Bear, Eagle, Dragonhawk, Lynx, Malacrass and finally Zul'Jin.

Akil'zon - Eagle Avatar, 2nd boss:

Roughly every 60 seconds he will cast the his Storm on a random person with an emote. This player is raised up in the air and a cloud appears above them, simply everyone find this person and run under him and you will take no damage. The boss channels this spell so feel free to keep attacking at ranged unless you are lucky enough to have him target a melee next to him, just be carteful not to over-aggro the MT.

This is a basic tank and spank fight with a small twist. Also during the storm have ranged/casters target the eagles in the air and dot/attack them to give you more time on dpsing the boss, the melee just concentrate on the boss himself. A very easy fight, might take a wipe or 2 to understand what is going on.


Halazzi - Lynx Avatar, 3rd boss:

This boss has a tiny amount of hp, roughly 600k. This is a 2 phase encounter that rotates (similar to Nightbane) every 25%.

Phase 1 -

He hits quite hard and also does a Mother Shahraz type of ability like Saber Lash that if it hits more than 1 person the damage received by each person is much less than if it were to hit only 1. Once you get him to 75 % he will go into phase 2.

Phase 2 -

During this phase he will transform back into his Shaman form and spawn a Spirit of the Lynx that has approx 200k hp. Also during this phase he will drop a nasty totem known as: Corrupted Lightning Totem that does chain lightning for approx 5k, maybe some nat res is not a bad idea, but not a necessity. The last ability of this phase is a Flame Shock that he will do randomly to 1 target.

Basically tank and spank in phase 1. When phase 2 occurs, 1 tank stays on the Shaman and the other tank takes the Spirit. You need to dps down the Spirit as fast as possible so you will not stay in phase 2, too long because of the nasty totems.

Kill the totems when they spawn (similar to Tidvalas during the Fathom Lord Karathress encounter in SSC), cleanse people if needed. Rinse and repeat till dead.


Jan'alai - Dragonhawk Avatar, 4th boss:

Jan'alai has 2 major abilities, and at 35%ish hatches his remaining eggs(explained later)
- He has a 5 minute enrage that is rather unimportant, as it barely increases his damage.

1 - A "Flame breath" type cone that has a long range but a small width, this does about 4-5k to people in a single line and adds up fast (believe to be random target). It is important to minimize its damage by spreading out appropriatly.

2 - He will periodically teleport the entire raid to him, put up "flame walls" on the outer ring of his area so you cannot escape. He will then begin spawning "time bombs" randomly throughout his area. After approximatly 10 seconds they will blow up dealing 3-5k(?) dmg in a 5 yard area, so you need to find a spot that is safe and does not have fire bombs on it. This ability seems to be on a random timer as sometimes he will forget about it and other times he will spam it.

Throughout the fight he calls 2 "Hatchers"(Low HP) which run to the side and begin hatching eggs into dragonhawks at an increasing rate. You need to Kill 1 Hatcher as soon as possible and go give the 2nd one a hug, tanking and killing the dragonhawks he spawns (we would normally do about 5-7 hawks at a time and just draw out the fight).
When you are comfortable with the amount of hawks spawned, kil the hatcher and mop up the remaining hawks. This is the hardest part of the fight as you will have to heal alot of raid damage due to the small area of the egg platforms and the damage his fire breath does, you should assign at least one healer to go with the group that willl kill eggs, preferably one that is good at raid healing (CoH priest, resto shaman etc). The other difficult part of this fight is his ability to port and put up fire walls to the egg spawns while the hatchers are busy hatching eggs, causing you to get zerged so be careful!

The dragonhawks individually have a stacking flame buffet, and a fire damage based proc on top of their normal melee which is about 1k~ on leather.

The tactics to this boss are really, really simple
1) Minimize his fire breath damage when he isnt spawning hatchers
2) When hatchers spawn kill one, send the group to kill dragonhawks spawned by the other one.
3) Dont die to the fire bomb minigame.
4) Make sure you hatch almost ALL of the eggs before 35% (yes this means light dps for the entire fight), or you will be horribly zerged.
5) Profit

Hex Lord Malacrass, 5th Boss: (in-complete info)

He starts with 4 random adds. Possible known adds:

Ogre - Melee add, Sheep him.
Imp - Fireball Spam, possible banish or kill quickly.
Dragonkin - Flamebreath & Thunderclap, sleep him/kill quickly, if you get this add, preferrably killing is a good option.
Undead - melee and instant casts, shackle him.
Blood Elf - Heals. Interupt heals/Kill quickly.
Serpent - Posion bolts. Sleep it / kill quickly, like the Dragonkin, killing it is preferred due to your druid does not have to shapeshift.

People seem to kill 1 or 2 of the adds before focusing on the boss.

Malacrass:

Does a nasty dot that lasts for approx 15 sec and deals roughly 300-400dmg per tick.

During the fight randomly he will Soul Drain 1 random person, he will take on 2-3 abilites of that persons class. He will continue to use these new abilities till he Soul Drains another victim and repeats a new cycle of attacks.

Every minute or so he will drain everyone of their power by 1% and giving it to himself, thus increasing his size and his damage by 10%.

Tank and spank and deal with the new abilities he may gain.

Possible Soul Drains:

Druid- Thorns & Lifebloom (big heal!!!)
Hunter- Traps
Mage- Frost Nova & Firebolt/Frostbolt
Paladin- Consecrate & Holy Light
Priest- Heal & Mind Control.
Rogue- SnD & Blind.
Shaman- Fire Nova Totem & Healing Wave
Warlock- ? ?
Warrior- Whirlwind & Spell reflect.

Zul'jin - The Final Boss:

This is already mentioned by Hephaustus and Renew, credits to both, it is bang on and solid so no need to write our own.

Every phase change he does do a threat wipe, when he turns into an Eagle you do not need to worry about a threat list though as explained below. He changes phases every 20%.

Phase 1:
Watch out for his whirlwind (melee range). He also casts a debuff similar to the one in Slave Pens that does a dd and then ticks until the player is topped off. Seems like it was only around 2500-3000 damage, so if you are good at assist healing you can downrank accordingly to top them off just enough so they do not take any ticks.

Phase 2:
As soon as he starts this phase you will notice everyone gets a Paralysis debuff. Dispell it off the main tank and yourself, then other healers if time (or the tank doesn't need a heal). DPS etc do not need it dispelled. After 5 seconds of having the debuff, you will become stunned and take a little damage, assign someone to top people off before the next. He can hit decently hard, so keep the tank topped.

Phase 3:
Stay away from the tornados that spawn and move around the room. They knock you back and deal around 1k damage. If you are a caster (yes healers included) everytime you cast you will get hit for about 1250 damage. The key thing to do in this phase is not get cornered by tornados and stay alive. Heal over time spells really make this phase much easier. Melee need to try and burn him down as quick as they can as they get no punishment for doing damage.

Phase 4:
Lynx form he melees fairly weak all around. He also will fixate upon a random player in the raid and melee them. Intervene near the end of the 10 second or so phase to help out squishy people. Also does a weak version of the whirlwind Leotheras / end boss of Shattered Halls. I think it also places a debuff on people that will make them take more damage, it's either this or the fixate. Watch debuffs and note that that person will need extra heals.

Phase 5:
As stated above, you will get a buffet like debuff put on you every so often. He will choose random people throughout the raid and place a beam of fire on them. If they are not topped they will probably die due to the debuff. It's a simple phase if people are good at staying out of void zones.

Any additional comments / suggestions or helping me compile a decent Dragonhawk tactic or the full list of CCable ways / drain soul of classes on Malacrass would be appreciated.

 

Lambach

((slightly off topic))
I want to get up on ptr to help test this but I'm having some issues. I was able to get my char copied, but when I start up test realm, it says no servers are up. I thought they might just be down for the moment, but its lasted 5 hours. What can I do to fix that?

/end off topic


How are you looking at on class make up so far, and when were you planning on running stuff? I'll be free most of the weekend so hopefully we can bust that place up a bit.

 

lav

Well I am not horde but I will have my two characters on the ptr hopefully by this weekend. They got copied last night. Any alliance wanna hook up I have a shaman and a warrior ready to go. If interested send a tell to "lav" or "smoothlav" on the ptr.

 

• Groglox

I am totally down for it in my Undead Mage. Once I get transferred that is.

 

◊ manly

I can go as long as its not a tuesday/wednesday. I would in all likelyness respec to fire however.
EDIT: player should be copied by tonight.

[Kreeg's Stout Beatdown] [Basic Campfire] [Crystal of Insight] [Goldenmist Special Brew] [Very Berry Cream][Midsummer Sausage] [Dark Desire][Fire-toasted Bun] [Sweet Surprise][Toasted Smorc] [Buttermilk Delight][Elderberry Pie] stacks with everything else.
Please fix the ChatEdit_HandleChatType exploit.
Not Manly/Manlyy on PTR.

 

sovelis41

I tried to copy my shaman over earliar today and the queue was full and at a 5 day waiting time.

Hopefully that will go down sometime so I can get him over to test this weekend.

"He has such a lack of environmental awareness, I'm pretty sure he can't tell if he's standing in his own bedroom or if he's in the middle of the Andes mountains."

 

Aoife

Once I manage to get my mage copied over, I'd be happy to do some Zul'Aman alliance side.

 

Zedd

If somebody wants to do this on EU I am very interested. I know you probaly did not want this to be posted but I did not know a better topic Gear Here

 

Benegesserit

I am transferred on PvP (US). I was able to log in early this morning and get most of my mods to cooperate. If I'm not already inside ZA, please feel free to shoot Benegesserit (renamed spriest) for an invite.

 

Psi

My guild will be setting up a run tomorrow morning at 10CST ish (On the PVP realm(Horde)).

Depending how many people are able to get their characters over.

 

Zulamanpics

Skullshatter Warboots
WoWScrnShot_101207_164347.jpg - Image - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Enchanting: Enchant Weapon- Executioner
WoWScrnShot_101207_164100.jpg - Image - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Robes of Heavenly Purpose
WoWScrnShot_101207_164051.jpg - Image - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

 

Emeraude

How exactly does Executioner work?

Is it a duration proc, like -840 armor for 10 seconds? Or does it randomly ignore 840 armor on a hit-by-hit basis?

 

Chewy

If it keeps with Blizzards phrasing conventions, it will likely be a proc that gives you 840 armor ignore for 10 seconds (or however long)

 

KrinKer

Boss #2

Dragonhawk Avatar

Stand on top of a pillar type room and there is two smaller platforms on each of his side every minutes or so he will call two hatchers who will go on the platforms and hatch the eggs. HE also teleports the whole group to his feet every so often (30 seconds i think ) and will throw balls of fire on the ground after 10 seconds ( i think ) these will explode and basically one shot anybody that is standing on top of any. Once you've pushed him through the 50 % mark he will enrage and deal 50 % more damage and attack 50 % quicker. When he's down to 30 % he will hatch all remaining eggs. He also has a fire breath that targets anybody in the raid and that hits everybody close to that target.

Tactics:

Just dps him, and when he calls the hatcher, we killed one and let the other one run off to the platform, basically let some of the eggs hatch ( and they spawn hatchlings with about 6k health ) and then kill the hatcher before the boss teleports you. Rinse and repeat 'till he's dead.

Oh, btw, he has a 10 minutes berserk timer !


Boss #3 Lynx Avatar

Has only about 600k

He has 2 phase s which he switches every 25 %.

Phase 1 = Hard hitting boss. He does a Sabber lash, pretty much like Shaz where the more people get hit by it, the less damage it deals. Straight forward. Once you get him to 75 % he will go into phase 2

Phase 2 = Transforms back into a caster (shaman to be more exact) and spawns a Spirit of the lynx that has 200k health. During that phase he will drop Corrupted Lightning totem that does chain lightning for 5k (around 5k) He will also flame shock someone.

Tactics

Basically tank and spank in phase 1. When phase 2 happens, 1 tank stays on the shaman, 1 tank tanks the spirit of the lynx. You need to dps down the spirit of the lynx as fast as possible. Kill the totems, and cleanse people, rinse and repeat.

Boss #3.

Eagle Avatar.

Doesn't hit the tank very hard and does a bolt of lighning type hability which hits one person and splashes to the targets around you. Every so often (10% i think) he will start doing and electrical storm which will put one target in the air and will do MNASSIVE damage to the rest of the raid. He will, after that, call eagle that will dive on the raid for 1500 damage.

Tactics

Prety straight forward tank and spank ... except we never got through the storm, it's not a shaz type spell, it has nothing to do with range ... we only did like 3-4 try so..


Boss1 dropped a healing plate helm, boss two dropped a pretty decent tanking shield, boss three dropped leather shoulder with hit and ap and agi.

that's it


Btw, When blizzard said that Za would be casual friendly they fucking didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. Ok first boss is pretty easy ( but needs a hell of a lot of gear ) but once you hit boss 2-3-4 you need some tactics and good players. We barely made the enrage timer on dragonhawk and we had people in bt/hyjal gear for the most part

 

ANSeranov

Do you think that maybe there's a different tactic that would let you do it? My guild, which is just starting SSC/TK will NEVER match the DPS of a BT/Hyjal guild, and I fail to see how they think it'd be tuned around a guild of my level if you're going all-out and just barely making it.

Maybe that's why it's on the PTR. <_<;;

[Ikarii] [70 Dwarven Rabbi]
[Yuuzu] [70 Draenei Shaman]
[Karydin] [70 Draenei Paladin]

 

Muggins

Willing to do some testing on the EU pvp realm. As soon as the character copy page is available that is, swings and roundabouts at the moment.

 

Eloran

Anyone know the current reset timer for ZA? I'd like to hop in a group tonight possibly, but not if I'll be locked out for the next 3 days when the rest of my guild hopefully gets their copies completed.

 

Wintern

Agree, although boss one is harder than the Eagle boss imo, this instance will be really hard for the guilds it is aimed at (tier4/5), especially Dragonhawk. I can definately see it being nerfed before it's been released. Reset timer is either at 12 or 24 hours.

 

Swordwaltzer

Not taking into account the possibility of really bad tuning, there are probably alot more effective strategies (gimmicks?) that worse geared guilds will have to try to get by while BT/HS-geared people can just zerg everything down basically. Also with Z'A-loot being of the quality that it is, equal to T5-level raids, it has to be atleast as hard even if it's 10 man instead of 25.

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r.../youarenot.jpg

 

mek

It sounds like you just bruteforced the Dragonhawk fight, which is pretty AOE heavy. I'm sure it'll definitely trouble casuals as much as Illhoof did in Karazhan. Coordination and class composition are > gear on those types of fights.

It sounds like moderate amounts of nature resist gear on the raid will compensate for poor skill on the Eagle fight.

 

Balkoth

I'll see if I can transfer, Hyjal/BT geared Shadow Priest. Let me know what times you're going to try to put something together and I'll try to make it.

 

Hate Monkey

The bear boss strat is a little off, but close:

2 Phases:
First phase - Human form:
Has a random charge.
Mangle - Increases damage done by bleeds by 100%.
Second phase - Bear form:
Applies 2 different bleed effects - Ripe Flesh(iirc) and one other.
Raid wide Silence - unsure of range, 4 seconds long, does 1000ish damage.

Phase 1 go in, tank and spank, heal the random charged people.
Phase 2 have the 2nd tank taunt and reposition to avoid the nasty cleave.
When he goes back to human form, have the first tank taunt it.
Repeat till dead.

Got these nice bracers from him tonight:

 

Losar

Send Losar a tell Alliance-side on the PVP SERVER for an invite to a somethingawful guild I'm also running to test ZA. Have a sense of humor and have fun. Mention you're from EJ.