1 long ass night = ZA cleared

Woot

Because of the Easter holiday we didn’t have very many people on for Vashj attempts Saturday night so 10 of us grouped up together for ZA attempts. Had I known I was going in with progression psycho paths I might not have went, I was expecting maybe to go kill Bear, Eagle and Lynx but it didn’t stop there. I was in ZA from 9:00pm to 6:30am. In our group we had no one who had been past the 3’d boss in ZA so everything after that was all new territory, but that wasn’t stopping these guys. All the time, effort, and lots of gold (flasks and repairs) paid off though with a full ZA clear. I have now successfully Main Tanked all of ZA and that’s a good feeling. Besides feeling good from clearing ZA, Zul’jin dropped a nice little trinket for me!

My new Trinket

We headed in and beat Bear boss on the timer easily enough. We did not have a Pally tank so we wiped once on the eagle trash ramp which blew our shot at a second timer kill. After making it to eagle boss we quickly one shot him as well. Next we headed out to Lynx and again I would have liked a Pally tank here on the trash, not having one makes too much work for me! There were people in the raid who had been present for Lynx kills but I had never actually seen him die. On our second attempt we killed him and I got to check Lynx boss off my list of bosses to see die for the first time.

Lynx Dead

After the Lynx died the other prot warrior OT in our group said he would step out so we could get a pally tank. From what I read about the Dragonhawk boss is that you absolutely need a pally tank to hold onto the spawned dragon hawk adds. We got our Pally tank in the raid and headed off to clear to Dragonhawk. Since none of us had been to him before we didn’t realize you had to kill the scouts first to keep new adds from coming. That was discovered about half way through and made the trash much easier =). It took us four attempts to learn this fight and defeat the boss. I was really rooting for the shield but it didn’t drop.

Tanking DragonHawk (Cool Boss Graphic I thought)

Dead DragonHawk (No Shield for me, GRRR)

“Alright guys good job, we calling it a night?” I said “Well we are right next to Hex Lord we should just go see what he’s like” says some guy. *Everyone voices their agreement* In my head I’m calculating the time I’ll get to sleep before I have to wake up for Easter church service and then head to the family holiday get together. Already I knew I wasn’t going to get enough sleep and should go to bed, but I couldn’t leave these guys hanging. It took like three pulls and were facing Hex Lord. We start talking about strategies on bosskillers website and what we need to do. I think it took about 8 or 9 attempts and we killed him. This boss is pretty damn hard with his insane shadow bolt missiles going all over the place and his ability to steal skills from raid members. Example: He steals the hunters ability to lay down traps. Also at the beginning of this fight you have to deal with the 4 adds he has surrounding him. We ended up killing 3 and leaving one to be shackled the whole fight which seemed to work well for us. As a tank I have to constantly be aware of what abilities he has so I can move the boss away from traps, shaman totems, bash an array of heals, etc. He’s not an easy tank fight like the previous four bosses are. The Hex lord eventually died and again dropped no tank loot. Grrr 5 bosses down and nothing for me! I was a very sad loot whore.

Looking At Hex Lord

Tanking Hex Lord

Dead Hex Lord

After Hex Lord died the same conversation happens with me wanting to go to bed, and everyone else just wanting to have a few shots at Zul’jin. We open the doors to continue and out pours tons and tons of slaves. Thank god for the pally AOE tanking. After that initial rush of slaves there is no trash on the way to him and so a few minutes later were ready to face off against Zul’jin.

Tons of slaves pour through the doors after Hex Lord when opened

Path to Zul'jin has a neat ruins graphic i thought

Facing Zul'Jin I think blizzard was just to lazy to add a second arm to this boss

Zul’jin goes through five different phases so we figured it would be easiest to learn the phases one step at a time. We knew it was going to be a lot of wiping to learn this boss, and by not really explaining the phases up front we were guaranteeing we wiped on every phase but with so much information out there it seemed like people just needed to see it instead of having it read to them from bosskillers. Special Note to tanks: Every Phase Zul’jin except from 2 to 3 he does an agro wipe so you have to pick up massive agro on him right away every time, losing people in this fight before phase 5 means trouble. Phase 1 is simple enough where the tank holds him, melee hangs back to avoid whirlwind, and he does a knife throw that puts a bleed effect on a random person. This bleed effect is only removed by healing that person to full life (much like the big crab boss guy in slave pens, at least I think slave pens it’s been a while since I’ve been in there). On our first attempt we pushed the boss into Phase two where we promptly wiped.

Phase 1

Phase 2 once learned is also very simple. He turns into a bear which will do this special roar that will paralyze everyone for a certain amount of time (can’t remember how long) and will then do about 5k damage per person when it wears off. The first time the pally didn’t remove the roar from me fast enough so I was frozen in front of bear unable to block,parry,dodge, etc. I was smacked down like a bitch in no time. From then on it was decided that the pally would remove roar from himself, me, then the priest who would pick up removing the roar while the paladin kept me alive. That worked well and we were able to push through phase two with no difficulty. Side note: The pally has 6 seconds before the roar paralyzes everyone.

Phase 2:

Phase 3, WHAT A HUGE PAIN IN MY ASS – WORST BOSS IDEA EVER – MAKES ME MADE ENOUGH TO GO KILL SOMEONE. In Phase 3 Zul’jin turns into an eagle and hovers in the middle of the room. As a tank the boss does no direct attacks so you just dps as much as you can. Why is this boss a pain in the ass? He lets loose about 5 tornados that will chase you around the room, randomly switch targets, or they just go float around the floor in a crazy pattern. You have to avoid the tornado’s and the wall because when a tornado hits you it does 1000 damage. I realize this doesn’t seem like a lot but the tornado can throw you against a wall and then you’re stuck and can be picked up and tossed again over and over till your dead. They also can toss you into other tornado’s which does another 1000 damage and that tornado has the possibility of tossing you into ANOTHER tornado. The melee in this fight have to dodge the tornado’s run up and hit the eagle 2 or three times, then run out again to dodge the tornado’s. We have the easiest part of phase 3. Any spell that requires mana will directly cause the caster 1200 (Im pretty sure its 1200) health. So mages/warlocks have to have constant hots on them so they can DPS the boss. A druid is really your only healer in this phase because flash heals damage you for at least half of the heal in general. This is the longest Phase and possibly the biggest pain in the ass I think I have ever come across for a boss fight. The reason this phase is the longest is because it takes the most time to push him through 20% of his life since the melee has to keep running around and the casters have to wait on life before they can cast again. Our highest damage dealer this phase was our warlock who kept up constant dots.

Phase 3: Cool looking tornado graphics with the feathers and stuff, not cool enough to make me like this shit ass phase though

Phase 4, he turns into a mean ass cat. We handled this boss by everyone stacking up on the cat. He will randomly turn around and do these lighting quick cat claw attacks 10x on a person. It took our healers several attempts to react fast enough to keep our clothies from dying. Each hit was doing around 1000-1500 per hit so if the person got no heals they were dead pretty fast. The cat also turns around and does a charge which would sometimes one shot a clothie but there is nothing that can be done to prevent this except having the clothies wear stam gear which is eventually what we had to do. As far as tanking goes this is a pretty easy phase, just turn him away from the raid and do your thing.

Phase 4:

Phase 5, he turns into a huge dragon hawk. If you made it this far you should probably be able to kill him pretty easy. This is one of the easier phases if people pay attention. He will do a spinning whirlwind of fire which our healers just ended up healing through while our melee stayed on him. What you have to watch out for is the pillars of fire which will erupt from the floor. As a tank you also have to watch for these and be dynamic about moving the boss. If you stay in this pillar for longer than 1 tick you will almost always die. Other than watching out for the fire pillar though it’s an easy phase and we tore him down giving us our first Zul’Jin kill.

Phase 5:

Zul'jin Dead!

As mentioned Zul’jin was kind enough to give me a nice tanking trinket. I still need to get a chest piece and tanking axe from him so I’ll be going back as much as possible. Sunday morning the instance actually reset for us so when I got home from my family day I got online and we went and beat eagle and bear on the timer but missed boss 3’s timer. I logged after boss 3 because I was running on 1 hour of sleep and just couldn’t stay up any longer (bastard dragon didn’t drop my shield). I believe they replaced me and kept going so I’m not sure if I’ll get another shot at Hex and Zul’jin tonight or not, hopefully I will though if they are still alive. If those bosses are dead though I’m f*cking going home and going to bed.