Another one bites dust
While I am still woefully behind on my crafting goals for the alts, this past weekend wasn’t bad at all. On Saturday, we managed to beat the first timer in Zul’Aman, finally, killing Bear with a minute to spare. Much cheering, I was really happy. I will say that having a mage along really helped with CC on the last pull before the boss. I was a bit worried about the Eagle gauntlet, as we didn’t have our usual holy paladin along, but we managed to rush through without too many difficulties. Eagle himself took three tries again. We had some bad luck with DPS dying early and such. Lynx trash is pretty easy IMHO, and I kinda really enjoy the Lynx fight, despite the spikey damage. We’re pretty good at it now too.
I will say though that ZA seems to hate tanks, at least our raid IDs do. We have yet to see a single piece of plate dropping. I had my hopes up on Bear again for the Jungle Stompers or even the shoulders from the chest, but nooo, Bear dropped Fury, and some caster cloak was in the chest.
On Sunday, we did our day two of ZA, which in the past had been filled with nothing but Dragonhawk attempts. I have to admit I copped out on Dragonhawk tanking. Our holy paladin went Retribution with the rest of the points in protection, and she helped me with tanking the dragonhawks. In fact, she had most of them, I only picked up stragglers. It worked, but it tastes a little bit like defeat to me. Just a little bit. I am looking forward to trying again in 3.0 to tank those birdies and then hold them myself, rar.
We then tried Hex-Lord a couple times, our best attempt being 45% or so. It looked promising, but it also looked really hard. We had imp, wight, blood elf priest and dragonkin adds, and I think I didn’t have them handled the right way. We DPSd the imp, dragonkin was hibernated then killed second, and last was the wight, shackled and then killed. We actually only managed to start DPS on Malacrass once, as it took a while to kill the adds and respond to Malacrass Soul-Drain accordingly. Holy crap, Consecrate sucks, doesn’t it? Opinions seem to differ how to handle the adds, so now I will be hunting for strategies for a while, to see how T4+badges gear equipped groups can get him down. I am proud of my girls, and I am positive we will pay a visit to Zul’jin before Nov 13. Go us!
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I see ya, kneeling in tha front.
Great Job Girlie, I’d buy ye a pint ifin you was on my server-verse thingie.
All my best ta you and tha Ladies, and I hope ya beat down tha Hexxy one an Lefty soon!
Sig’s last blog post..Times be Changin’
[Reply]
admin Reply:
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:44 pm
@Sig: Don’t make me use my favorite female orc /flirt on you: You will do, let’s go!
Thanks for the well-wishes, I’ll keep y’all posted, even dwarves.
[Reply]
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:20 pm
I think if we’d had an spriest along, we probably should have only DPS’d down the dragon, then sheeped the caster, kept the imp banished, and the ghost shackled. Or maybe imp and ghost, and dps’d the healer after the dragon.
I don’t think we had enough quick DPS on the imp; he seemed to take really long to kill. I know being affliction is not great for that kind of fight. A hunter would probably be a better choice over me.
It’s another fight also where I think having 2 prot warriors can put the raid at at DPS disadvantage. When we did him for the first time in IC, I bear tanked the adds in cat gear, then could swap to cat and DPS once our chosen DPS adds were down.
[Reply]
admin Reply:
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:46 pm
@Tryna: Yeah, I know it’s generally recommended to have a more DPSish warrior as OT for this fight, or a druid. Skirting is working on her gear, but it’s likely not going to happen before WotLK. I still think we’re doing fab, and come 3.0 things might look a bit different.
[Reply]
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Ah congratulations glad you had some good progress. I cant remember what we did exactly for malcrass - we were probably geared enough that strategy didint matter.
At least you killed some bosses; I spent my raid w/e wiping in BT, no kills at all
..and levellng my alt - which is going great
[Reply]
admin Reply:
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:01 pm
So what alt are you leveling, Ara, and where’s your own blog?
I am crossing fingers you’ll see some progress soon. Bosskills really feel great, especially beating the first timer made me very happy.
[Reply]
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Consecrate really does suck. Other things to watch our for are Fire Nova Totems (Shaman), Rain of Fire (Warlock), Thorns (just stop melee, if you have a threat lead).
Remember, he’s Disarmable. Its really helpful on Warrior (for Whirlwind) or Rogue drains.
Consider looking into some Shadow Resist Gear. There is a JC Craftable Neck with 30 SR. Epic BT SR Cloaks only take one heart of darkness each, which may be as low as ?300g? depending on your server? Beyond that, Prayer of Shadow Protection, and Flasks of Chromatic Wonder will all stack. Removing all that damage lets your healers last longer, and their mana is really the big limiting factor in this fight.
Yakra’s last blog post..Illidan Down, and Guild Master-Ness
[Reply]
September 23rd, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Ah if I started my own blog, that would probably suck up the remained of my non-wow related time, and use up even more mind space. (tempting though)
Yah, I’m just messing with a mage & warrior, then along with a DK, should have 4 level 80s to play around with (and 3 different tanks yeah!!!!)
Spent time “powerlevelling” (aka spending a lot of gold) tailing, enchanting & first aid last night on the lvl 40 mage. Got them to 300 or close. Mat prices are dropping quite fast these days as people sell off their old mats. Need any cheap nethers or voids? Nows the time. I expect raw jewel prices will be dropping a lot more as wrath gets closer.
[Reply]
September 30th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
tanking malacrass is lots of fun imho.
warrior - disarm
rogue - disarm then pop evasion trinket
druid - turn auto-attack off
mage - interrupt frost bolts like crazy
pally - walk away while he casts heal to avoid conc
lock - stay out of the fire
hunter - tilt camera up, watch for traps. If you see blue move to the other side of the room.
shaman - move away from totem
priest - ask for a fear ward immediately since he does do an aggro wiping fear (old school)
Thats my tips for tanking him other than keep your buffs/debuffs up and if possible have someone cook up a cauldron of shadow protection in the room so that people can restock mid fight for the bolts. It really helped us learning the fight.
gearing: full EH with clicky evasion trinkets.
[Reply]