How many times have I been in Zul’aman? I lost count a long time ago. So many nights of just doing the first 2 bosses after our main progression raids. So many nights of learning the Lynx boss fight. So many nights of learning the Dragonhawk boss fight. And then lately, nights of getting totally owned by Malacrass, the Hex Lord.
I love the layout, scenery, aesthetics, etc. of ZA. I love that it is a 10 man raid. I love the race on timers. On the other hand, I hate the troubles we have had fielding a solid raid. I hate the nights of no progress after several wipes. I hate when other players get so frustrated they don’t want to come back. I hate Malacrass.
My guild just doesn’t want to make ZA a priority. We had a solid group dedicated to ZA back in May and June but most of those left the guild. Others have joined our ZA runs but couldn’t stomach the wipes as we learned the content. The continuous rotation of people of course lead to more wipes. It has gotten to the point where we have resorted to PUGing some to fill the raid group.
With the reset happening every three days it has been hard to progress through the bosses. We’ve only seen Malacrass on 3 runs and haven’t made it past him to Zul’jin. These 3 runs were a mess wipes and people leaving the raid and new people replacing them.
Tuesday night we went back into ZA with 6 out of guild PUGers. 2 of those had a lot of experience in ZA. One even already had a bear mount on another character. The other 4 were clueless and caused wipes. After 3 hours we finally had the Eagle, Bear and Lynx bosses down. It was painful but worth it because we learned a few things. We learned about the exploit to make the gauntlet to the Eagle boss super easy (not sure if we will use that in the future or not). We learned to have both tanks share the same footprint on the Bear boss fight. We knew to do that on the Lynx but never did it on the Bear boss fight. And we learned the much shorter path to get to the Lynx boss by coming from the lake and jumping through the hut.
Wednesday night we managed to scrape together 9 guildies and only had 1 from LFG. The trash to the dragonhawk went well. Our pally tank is getting better at holding aggro, which makes a giant difference. Just before the last pull before the boss, our mage abruptly says he is ill and has to go. We nearly wiped without his sheep and spell steal abilities but at least a couple survived. We scrolled through the list of guildies on trying to get someone to replace the mage. It was late so we got rejected over and over. At last a hunter came in. Turns out this hunter in our guild is just the player’s alt and he has a pally tank in a more progressed guild. He took a look at the gear our pally tank was wearing and told us there is no reason to go slowly on the eggs like we always do. He said to let a full side open at once and then AOE them down. I was really nervous about the idea but we tried it. And it worked! Unfortunately the healers had trouble dodging bombs and keeping me healed so after all the eggs from both side were dealt with we wiped from me going down. This happened again on the second attempt. We got him down on the third attempt. At least we learned another thing that will help the raids in the future.
Very late we were once again at Malacrass. We had 2 priests healing with CoH, which really helped. Our 3rd healer was a druid. I dished out a Flask of Chromatic wonder for everyone in the raid. 4 of us used the shadow resistance necklaces. All I can say is we did better than ever before and one attepmt we got Malacrass down to 43% with 3 adds dead and the 4th banished. I think if it hadn’t been so late (like 2am my time) we could have done it.
We went back in late last night after our SSC progression raid. It was late and we were tired. Instead of 2 CoH priests and a Druid healer we had 2 pally healers and a shammy healer. The shammy couldn’t get any heals off during the spirit bolts. None of the 5 attempts had us surviving to the second round of spirit bolts. We just didn’t have the rght mix of classes.
So much for the third round of attempts on Malacrass. ZA reset this morning. Down but not out, we are going to be back in there tonight. We know enough that beating 3 timers is a real possibility if we get the right players in the raid. Fast or slow, we plan to get the first 4 bosses down tonight. We’ll then have all Saturday and Sunday to get Malacrass and then Zul’jin afterwards.
Tankette's Rambles 
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