Am I ready for Zul’Aman?
Well here’s how I would measure it. If you have 1 shot tanked Prince and Nightmane 3 times each then you are ready.
Okay, so I’m ready
Yup, you are. Now be fair warned that while some of you may walk into Zul’Aman and find it easy … for 99% of you, it’s not going to be. Nothing is more challenging than tanking a completely new encounter that no one in the raid really has any idea about. After your first night of attempts in ZA you may…
- doubt your gear
- doubt your team
- doubt yourself
And you know what that’s natural. Don’t be afraid to be a bit frustrated, just don’t be a lot frustrated, and most of all do not underestimate the encounter. When you get hit for 10,000 damage by the first boss, you’ll know what I’m talking about 
But most of all…
Enjoy it.
New content doesn’t come around too often and new content that’s immediately accessible is even more rare still. So take it all in, learn it, love it, tank it.
Best of luck my fellow tanks and readers a like.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:14 am
Amen. Popping ZA’s cherry was refreshing and invigorating, even while being frustrating.
[Reply]
November 14th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Went there for the first time last night. We started late so we didn’t have those expectations of a full clear.
For a little background as a guild we are 5/6 in SSC and 2/4 in TK (just got Al’ar). I have decent gear 2/5 T5, and 2 pieces of T4 as the chest and helm are the best pieces I have seen thus far.
The trash is interesting and will take a run or two to adjust to the intricacies. From a tanking perspective it is akin to the Horrors leading up to Prince.
Got to the first boss and we one-shot him….he ‘can’ hit hard so be forewarned. Raid buffed I am anywhere between 19.6 - 20.5K health. I never felt in danger of dying. Think Prince in phase 2 for damage taken and intensity.
We cleared the gauntlet up to the Eagle boss. Just stay on your toes. If you are a main tank, your duty will most likely be on the two forward elite adds….if you have dual tanked heroic elites, it isn’t much different. An OT will most likely pick up the adds the come from the back end of your group.
The boss is pretty simple from a tank perspective. We wiped a few times getting the storm movement down. Essentially the fight is spread out before storm, when storm is coming group on the tank then move back out afterwards….rinse and repeat and hope your AoE on the birds is sufficient.
We called it a night after that.
Difficulty wise, it seems like a continuation of Kara. No Attumens or Maidens here. Now of course if you are MH and BT geared, it won’t be much of a challenge.
The important thing I’d note…everyone needs to be on the ball even with trash. From the feedback I’ve seen, groups that have been doing 25 man content for a while might struggle a little bit since in my opinion the 10 man environment has a different dynamic.
Don’t get sucked into the premise that you should be able to clear “X” bosses. It’s new and fun. I personally am looking forward to taking my time with it.
- Bodd
[Reply]
November 14th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
I did the bear boss and the lynx boss. Bear can hit really hard especially if one of your tanks is off their game. The tank I was doing it with chased the bear when he charged our warlock and the bear came right back to him and basically 1 shot him. That was against a tank in t4/t5.
The Lynx boss hits pretty hard. It’s a pretty heal intense fight. Every 25% he splits from a lynx into a troll and a spirit of the lynx, he aoes the whole group for near 2k I believe when this transition happens. OT the Spirit and MT on the Troll. The troll will drop totems that will cast an evil chain lightening. It seems it will chain infinitely if people are connecting it, we had a 4 chain take down a mage.
We had melee dps back out at 76%, 51%, and 26%. The reason being if the melee is moving after the transition and he drops a totem it can quickly kill 2-3 people in combination with the area wide AOE.
After the split the OT would quickly take the lynx to the opposide side of the room where the boss was being tanked. We did that so the MT and OT wouldn’t chain off each other. It will probably work out to less overall dmg to the raid if you just spread out properly and eat the lightenings, that will allow you to dps the lynx quicker.
We were switching DPS to the totem when he dropped them. In retrospect, I don’t think the totems are that big of a deal if you’re properly spread out.
At a certain % the lynx will re-merge with the troll ( I was MT so I’m not sure if it’s at 0%, 10%, or what). When you get close to this point have the OT bring the Lynx back and stand on top of the MT again. If timed correctly you can limit chain lightening dmg and also have the OT there to eat 1/2 of the Saber Lash attack. It does something like 12k dmg but can be divided among 2 targets (or more, haven’t verified). I know Mother Sharhaz’s can be divided among 3 and it’s a very similar, if not the exact same, attack.
At 25% the boss does his final split, when he re-merges together, he will hit harder and now cast totems in his normal form. I would suggest having ranged dps take down the totems for this phase as healers really need to focus on the tanks.
I actually died at about 15% due to poor cooldown management on my part. I was under the impression he didn’t split at 25% just enraged and started casting totems, so I hit shield wall at 25% to allow healers to ease into it, then it was another split phase so it was a waste of shield wall. My OT tanked him for the next 2-3%. After that he ran around and one shot a couple healers before eventually landing on a rogue who evasion tanked the last 10%. Sloppy kill definitely, but I think it will be much easier next time.
[Reply]
November 14th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Cleared it tonight. Harder than I expected. After a few pulls on each boss the strategy becomes obvious. All in all a fun little dose of new content. 18 badges from a full clear. (28 if you get the vial of blood of Zul’jin). I was able to finish getting the 35 badges I needed for the brooch of deftness here. So that makes me happy
[Reply]
November 15th, 2007 at 4:26 am
i thought the dragon boss was most fun!! (watch out for the bombs).
we cleared all but the last boss, very challenging and not as easy as you think
Bear boss: have another tank taunt him when he goes into bear form (if u’re a dwarf tank then you’ll love stone form on this fight)
Bird boss: spread out and be quick to get to the safe spot when the storm comes
Lynx boss: nuke the totems and the spirit, keep the tanks alive
Dragon boss: Solid aoe and be quick to find a safe spot when the bombs come
Hex boss: CC adds (maybe kill one off) and hope for a rogue, druid or a mage class call thing (i think soul drain was the name)
Last boss: survive
/arma
[Reply]
November 15th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Nightbane, not nightmare =P
The best part of the whole zone is the frogs though. We’d kill very avoidable trash just for the chance of getting the frog wands. Probably lost a half hour goofing around with those.
[Reply]
November 15th, 2007 at 10:54 am
We did the bear boss, it was easy. The lynx boss seems to need a fairly solid group and we just went in sub-par healers, so we only got him to 50%. I
[Reply]
November 15th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
I’m going tonight. ^_^ Thanks for the tips, guys…I added them to my existing notes. I’ll come back tomorrow and add anything new I noticed.
[Reply]
November 16th, 2007 at 8:21 am
So, we had no mages or hunters…and our only ranged DPS was a mediocre lock and a shadow priest. We 2-shot the Bear boss (omg he hits hard!) and got the Eagle to 20%. The non-elite adds were just owning us with no ranged.
[Reply]
November 17th, 2007 at 9:31 am
We’re a bit undergeared for ZA, still we tried it. As a rule, no one in our guild reads anything about new content ahead of time (or if they do, they don’t share it). We make an honest effort to try and figure out new content on our own. We all feel it makes the game more fun… more expensive for sure, but also more fun (nothing against anyone who reads ahead). Also, we all feel great when we figure something out by ourselves. Anyway, we went in “blind”…
Couple of tries on the first boss… took us 3 wipes to figure out the “swipe” mitigation strategy. 5th try we got him down to about 15% and then one of our healers fell asleep or something, and down went the OT during a bear phase. On the subsequent bear phase I was mangled and we couldn’t heal through the damage and bleeds… about 10% was our best effort.
We’ll probably get the bear boss next week… then we’ll go back to Kara for a few more weeks… In all of our months raiding Kara, I’ve only ever missed 1 guild run, and I’m still missing 6 drops… 75% of the guild already has everything they want out of Kara, I’m still missing 6 drops. Where’s the sweet tank love?
[Reply]
November 17th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Went in there yesterday. Got caught out a little bit on some of the trash but nothing too hard. Bear boss went down on the 4th try, kept losing OT, changed some things up and got through it.
Went onto the bird boss, that gauntlet up the hill is a bit of a slog but easy enough once you hit the rhythm. We got screwed on the boss tho, we were very melee heavy, Tank, Druid OT, 2 Rogues and a DPS Warrior so chain lightning blasted us into oblivion, 30% was about our best try. Back in there tommorow, see how we do.
[Reply]
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:33 am
Love it! In I went on my tanking alt with all the kara gear you need. Went with a pug for my first time and was OT. Tanking the bear boss really pushed me, we lost the main tank at like 70% ish. I ended up solo tanking the entire bear boss fight on my own. Thankgod for flasks, healthstones, pots and healers who know how to overheal
I love Zul’Aman as a tank. On my shadowpriest (main), I dont care about it to much at all even though I probably should hehe.
[Reply]
December 11th, 2007 at 10:36 am
This instance sucks, pure and simple. Bear boss, no problem. Eagle gauntlet: annoying as hell and absolutely no fun. Trash pulls to lynx? Too many and they kept going straight for a druid, no matter how far away they were, before anyone actually engaged (this was on test, don’t know if they fixed it.. haven’t cared to check). Scouts on the way to dragonhawk boss? Gee, did we really need to waste more time micromanaging constantly respawning pats?
I’d like to know what sort of drugs the designers were on when they made this steaming pile, really.
1) Annoying pulls that aren’t any fun at all. If you enjoyed Karazhan, or are even in the process of enjoying and downing bosses in SSC and TK like my guild is, you’ll hate this instance. We had people begging not to go back.
2) Zul’Gurub Mark II. C’mon, how about something other than trolls? Other than trolls that take on aspects of certain animals? Other than trolls that take on aspects of certain animals and are strategically placed around a rectangularish tropical temple? Oh, don’t forget the godawful ugly gear that’s come out of it.
3) Any guild that has successfully cleared Kara and has it on farm can march in here thinking it’s the next step, when Gruul, SSC, and TK are much easier. Way to balance for test realm groups in T6, Bliz.
Epic fail.
[Reply]
February 7th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I hate when people say ZA is for T6 players. If you’re kara geared and having trouble in ZA, you’re either giving up too easily, or you just plain suck. ZA is fun and new. Yet annoying at times, it feels so good to succeed in there. To top it off, the loot is very nice.
[Reply]