ZA Day one re-visited
I am interrupting useful stuff about the upcoming patch with lengthy stories about personal progress. Rar!
This weekend was another Zul’Aman raid for my guild. We had a great line-up, so my hopes were high to get the first chest again on the first day and progress further on the second day. But some things don’t work out as expected. Our top DPS frost mage had computer problems so didn’t show both days. We replaced her with a warlock who’s not quite in the mage’s DPS range, but better a full raid than not going, right? We start, rush towards Bear, have pretty chaotic pulls with at least one death per pull, and basically 9-man it because the shadowpriest disconnects every single pull. One of the holy priests crashes several times. Nevertheless, we push on, get to the pull before Nalorakk, and I die pretty quickly, because I have two bear riders beating on me instead of just the one I was supposed to tank. In our next try we get the pull down, but again, 9-manned, as the shadowpriest disconnected for the umpteenth time. At that point we only have a couple minutes left on the timer, I call it, and with heavy heart I had to ask the spriest to leave. In we brought the ele shaman boyfriend of one of our girls, who supposedly pulls 650 DPS, which did not quite turn out that way. At least he was enthusiastic, that matters for something.
On Nalorakk I usually tank bear phase, and I still find this boss ridiculously easy to tank. Like for real, this is just easy. And what does he drop? Jungle Stompers. These boots are huge, considering the 3.0 warrior changes, and considering I am sporting Boots of Elusion, which will not be re-itemized for 3.0. I never got the boots from Chess, so the Jungle Stompers are really a big deal for me. You can see where this story is going, right? Yup, right. I lost the roll to the other prot warrior, the one who was wearing the Chess boots. She actually whispered to me I could have them if I really wanted them, but I didn’t want to seem like a sore loser, especially as she used her bonus points to roll on them (we use a bonus point system for rolls that rewards attendance and contributions to the raid bank). Here you can tell that a girl is writing this blog, because I actually burst into RL tears from sheer frustration and disappointment. I really pour a lot of myself into our raids, and a pat on the shoulder and thanks in form of the first piece of tanking loot to ever drop for us in ZA would have been great. ZA is only on our raid calendar twice more, and given the drop tables, I might never see those boots again. And now I feel totally silly afterwards that I did. Silly loot, what it does to people, I say!
So that’s my sob story for the day, I seem to have one of those every weekend now. I couldn’t talk on Vent for a while on the way over to Eagle, because I had to blow my nose and stuff. We actually wiped in the gauntlet the first time, on the Tempest pull, tank death and it was over. Second try went a lot better. We then tried to down Eagle and I still really don’t know why we wipe on this fight so much. I don’t get it. Several times we had tank death, several times we had people too slow with collapsing for the storm. Then the gauntlet respawned and we had to do it again. Then we finally got him down and he dropped a paladin chestpiece. Our invisible paladin was happy and then cried when we sharded the piece.
On to Lynx. The trash I always find kinda relaxing and fun, no big deal. Smooth progress, in we go, and Halazzi is one-shot. How can we wipe so many times on Eagle and just one-shot Lynx? You tell me. Invisible paladin rejoiced again as the plate shoulders dropped. Again.
We usually call it after Lynx, but I am hoping that for our next raid, we can actually kill Eagle in under 5 tries and actually do all animal bosses that day. For realz.
I will continue this ‘exciting’ report of our ZA raid with a follow-up post later today, and there will be no loot sob story this time, promised. 
That doesn’t mean that I got anything, because it was invisible paladin weekend! Does tanking plate really exist in ZA? I have lost faith.
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How close to getting the bear chest are you, if you take the pulls before hand a little slower?
If your the one doing the marking, just make sure that your target dies first, and move on to mark the next.
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admin Reply:
October 6th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
We don’t really have time to pull slowly, as we’re still not super high DPS. We need a little over 6 minutes to get Bear down, so all the pulls before that need to be fairly rushed.
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Hey there.
I have been reading your blog for the past week. Including your archive of old blogs. And I just want to thank you for sharing everything. It really does help.
I have been tanking for a while now. And now I am in a WoTLK guild. We have been running ZA for a while now and we decided to take it serious yesterday and get that fourth chest.
We downed Akil’zon, Nalorakk and then Jan’alai in that order. All within the timer – We get very excited, and I ask “So what is our timer now?” – 4 minutes. To get through Lynx trash and kill him. We were heartbroken.
But I did get happy after that, as the Shield dropped and my Tuskguard helm dropped. I was thrilled – I was wondering, do you reckon I should take the Jungle Stompers OVER the Red Havoc Boots (Which I am sporting at the moment). I ask you, as you seem to have so much knowledge about the next patch. And you manage to lay it out in such an easy way without complicating things. I appreciate your efforts, and hope you continue to share your experiences.
Another thing, on topic of your ZA run, be more assertive when leading a raid. You’ll find there are 9 other people wanting to complete the raid as much as you, and when people are Disconnecting during each pull – They should be dealt with as soon as possible. When joining a riad you are agreeing to the fact that you are willing to stay and play your role. If you’re not there to do that, then the leader (In this case, you?) should notice that and pick it up straight away. A chance should be given of course, but I believe waiting that far into the instance on a 9-man group, damaged your chances of gaining that first chest.
Good luck!
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admin Reply:
October 6th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Hey, welcome! Glad to know that even my sob stories seem to help or entertain people.
Grats on the shield and Tuskguard, I am hoping to lay my hands on those too. A girl can dream!
As for the boots, I would totally take the Jungle Stompers over the Red Havoc Boots. The WotLK version of the Stompers sports a gem socket, 19 strength and 12 block value more than the Red Havoc Boots. Strength and BV are the new black, so yeah, so down with the Jungle Stompers.
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Thanks for the response!
I hope to see more blog entries!
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Well thanks for the update. Damn! I feel for you. How the hell did you loose your loot? Its a game of course, but still, it’s a big part of our lives, and loot is a big motive to raid.
Maybe I dont understand your loot system, but didnt some similar loot thing happen with your t4 shoulders? Maybe you are too nice, or your loot system needs adjusting – ? Our system is pretty simple, mainly rewards attendence, and there’s just no way the RL is going to loose a drop to another tank. Everyone pretty much knows in advance who will get what based upon how much they want it, and their dkp stash. Its bidding, not randomness that decides. I think randomness sucks in raid loot. There’s already enough randomness in what drops. On progression kills, people have bidded their entire dkp for the drop to ensure they win. If you pour you heart into organizing the runs for everyone else, and you show up the most, and contribute the most (not talking about gold donations) you should be getting the highest priority on loot, whatever system you use.
I was in a guild once that gave loot via council to the person “for whom it would be the biggest upgrade”. It was very “nice” in that it allowed people to “gear up”, ostensibly “for the good of the guild”. However, the people who played the most, knew their characters the best, and who had the best gear – carrying the weight of the raid – got ripped off every time. When I first realized this, I was so infuriated I was ready to gquit, though personally I liked everyone a lot.
I think all serious wow guilds need some elitism built in around loot; since players are never really “equal”, a model that’s too equal doesnt work against reality. My former guild had a clear elitism for loot – weakest players were at the top.
So yes, its just a game, but we’re all real people and sometimes things need to change.
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admin Reply:
October 6th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
As we only run 10-man content, we use very simple loot rules. It’s basically one epic per raid, and a normal 1-100 random roll if you are interested in a drop. We use bonus points as incentive for attendance and contributions to the raid bank. You can use those points to amp up your roll. If you use 20 points, e.g. you can roll 20-120 instead, increasing your chances.
We have a 60 point cap, both of us were at the cap, she rolled 156, I rolled 136. I lost fair and square. Just sucked for me.
We’re probably going to use a different system for WotLK, but we’ll determine that when we get there.
I am actually trying to get another ZA raid going for the coming weekend, for another shot at the boots. I am that desperate.
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Ah interesting thx for explaining. Well that is fair, now I’m not so worried that you were poorly treated by your dear guildies
You lost to a pure random roll. I totally understand why you use a simple loot system.
Well, good luck next time you go in, and good luck designed a loot system for wrath.
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hey there,
I am kinda curious on the tactic you use for the eagle boss. We use a “collapse on the tank” tactic in combination with the bigwigs addon. Bigwigs will give a cooldown timer for when the electrical storm approaches, when that is down to 6 seconds, we call for “collapse” and the whole raid runs in towards the tank. The person targeted for the storm is then raised above the boss and dps can continue quite nicely throughout the stormphase. As soon as the storm is over, everyone runs back to their original position.
In general it works pretty well, though sometimes the storm doesn’t show up when the cooldown is over. It can get very hard on the healers then with everyone taking electrical splash damage.
Good luck on your next tries though
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admin Reply:
October 7th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
That’s the same tactics we are using, however we are not relying exclusively on the timer now. We have people turn up their ambience to 100% and turn down the rest of the sound effects and then you can clearly hear the storm rolling in.
We had problems with people running in late, but also with people running in way too early, which caused a few tank deaths. We’ll have to refine the strategy a bit.
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