Braaaaiiiins
Despite the name of this post, this is actually not fully about the zombies and the scourge invasion in-game. Fooled ya, didn’t I? 
Though I feel I should express my opinion about them, and do my usual Monday morning rambling about stuff I’ve recently done in-game. I played around with being a zombie a bit in phase 1 of the event, thought it was fun and very different and then went back to my regular playtime. However, I also read stuff like wow_ladies, and it was quickly becoming apparent that people either LOVE this event or HAAAAATE it. There does not seem to be any middle-ground. What got me most is the argument I have seen used by the haters over and over: the event stops them from doing the important things they need to do in-game. Like grinding, and trick or treating. Sounded like some people have a job instead of playing a game, which I thought was extreme.
I do however understand people with lowbie characters who are upset about griefing and that’s clearly gone on. Zombies bring out the little kid in most people, the annoying brats who just want to disrupt other people’s gameplay and defend it as fun.
Other than arguing about the zombie event, I spent most of the weekend tanking some more. I finally feel that I have a good handle on things, and it’s really possible to just blaze through heroics now. I am trying to finish the heroics achievement, because that’s one that actually matters to me, as opposed to most other achievements. I still have quite a bunch left, as the only ones that were retro’d in were the ones I did for the Trials of the Naaru quest chain. I’m about halfway done.
As I am running more heroics now, I accumulated quite a few badges. I finally broke the 100 badges mark and was ready to buy Sunguard Legplates. I then changed my mind, because I didn’t feel they were a huge upgrade to my Unwavering Legguards. Or rather, I am not fighting the kind of bosses until 80 where the avoidance bonus of those pants would matter. Instead I blew my badges on Sabatons of the Righteous Defender as way superior threat upgrade from my Boots of Elusion. I hadn’t realized how awesome all the former paladin prot gear is now for prot warriors as well. These boots used to have spell hit on them in the past. I’m happy about the change, more gear options are good. I blew the rest of the badges on a Crimson Spinel and an Empyrean Sapphire for the sockets of the boots. As bonus, I am now looking very Amani-style, with all the ZA-style badge gear and ZA drops I am wearing.
Yesterday we blazed through ZA, but we only got three chests again. Seriously, you guys who got bears in the past, hats off to you, even on ezmode we seem to be too slow. We had 1 minute left before pulling Halazzi, which wasn’t really sufficient. Do you guys loot the bosses or do all of the looting after all four bosses are dead? A lot of people got very nice upgrades yesterday, which was pretty nice to see. Nothing for me this time, but that’s quite alright. The only stuff I am now still looking for are the shield and maybe the axe off ZJ. Executioner finally dropped, so it’s time to get my King’s Defender enchanted with that.
After ZA we hit Karazhan, to check out the new Scourge invasion boss. Okay, vampire blood elfs. I always had my suspicions about those crazy loons, I tell ya. The boss himself was…different, and to my shame I kissed the floor when he was at about 35%. I think by the end of it we had only half of the raid still up. Those red balls of doom are nasty business. Also, really stopping DPS during the blood siphon thing helps with people staying alive! The rock star guitar axe went to our ret paladin, who rocked out for us, and we all enjoyed the cute widdle bat everyone in the raid gets as reward. Along with two badges, that is. Fun stuff. I bet Karazhan has lots of rooms where you could slap new bosses. How many of us have actually explored Medivh’s quarters e.g.?
What have you guys been up to? Fun with the zombies? Pissed off about the event? Raiding triumphs? I want to hear it all. 
October 27th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Haha. I love the IDEA of the event. But it is kinda getting annoying. Ah well - It adds to the whole Roleplay aspect I suppose.
I have been enjoying raiding so far as prot warrior. Wearing all my ZA stuff and tanking MH and BT.
We wiped the floor with SSC and TK in one night. We continually get ZA done in around an hour nowadays. I can walk through a heroic now.
Way too easy - Can’t wait till theres some balance with the content now.
The paladin gear is good now…But also means I’m seeing more than often the paladin rolling on my gear now. I lol anyway seeing as my gear still most of the time is better than MH stuff etc. Got Mace from SSC and Unbreakable will from MH. I am beginning to feel….Meh. I also got my Hand Of A’dal achievement…Which confused me as I thought they took them out?
Anyway good luck. Power to the women….o.o;
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admin Reply:
October 27th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
The idea of the event is awesome. I heard rumors that it’s going to be over very soon, and there are quests in for a cure now, so the QQing can stop any time now.
You can still get the Hand of A’dal and Champion of the Naaru achievements, if you already had the quests before the patch.
I wish my guild had enough people to do 25-mans, or we’d be rolling through SSC and TK ourselves. We’re doing AQ40 on Saturday, looking forward to it.
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October 27th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I would argue that the annoying thing about the zombie invasion isn’t that it interrupts a job, but that it interrupts fun. The analogy for me is sitting down with friends to play a card game at the local library, then having someone pass by and toss the deck to the ground. It’s interrupting what I want to do, even if what I’m doing isn’t serious business. So far the zombie event has kept me from running instances (couldn’t get to a banker for my healing gear) and it kept me from getting the bat pet (glitched and wouldn’t let me log back in for a Kara run). I’ll live with it, but that’s different from liking it.
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October 27th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
For the bear runs, what my guild did when we attempted them was to put loot on FFA, with a threshhold for epics. On the boss themselves, we told people to roll need if they wanted it, the disenchanter would roll greed, and once everyone got their badge, we moved on.
I think we spend too much time with the ML on bosses. It requires you, as ML, to stay behind and deal with loot, when you could be going off to tank the next set of adds as we move onto the next boss. If you wanted to keep MLing loot, then having someone who isn’t a tank or a healer (ie, some DPS) as ML would be better.
We also had the mispull on Jan’alai which caused us to reset and wait for him to respawn. And in IC, we also go through/on the water to avoid the croc patrol, and we pull the group in front of the hut to the quest guy (and also not the pathers) instead of in front of the exit to Halazzi, though that can cause problems if people end up going too close to the hut while heading to the water, since we don’t pull the ones on the hut.
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October 27th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
For ZA runs here’s what we do. Don’t loot.
Seriously!
Ok well don’t loot the bosses I mean.
Just leave them unlooted and run to the next boss, you save minutes this way and they are valuable. After you finish the first 4 go back and do loot normally on the 4 bosses. Do this and you cannot help but get 4 chests now!
We took 2 ZA runs with 5 of the 10 people having never done ZA and in mostly kara gear to get 4 chests…its trivial now. Just don’t loot the bosses!
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October 27th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Both times we’ve run ZA since 3.0.2, we’ve done the 4-timed chest.
1. Eagle-Bear-Dragonhawk-Lynx obviously.
2. I just tank all of the trash in my PVP gear to maximize my AOE damage and threat. If I OT, then I only switch to tank gear on the bear and Hex Lord. I’m not sure I even needed to do it on the Hex Lord but if the MT died I wanted to be able to pick him up.
3. Run with just 2 healers.
4. Loot the chests when the run is done. Once the boss dies, mount up and move on.
I believe the last run, we finished with more than 10 minutes on the timer.
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October 27th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Thanks for the updates! Zombie-wise, I’ve been mildly amused and mildly inconvenienced. I guess I dont really love it or hate it too much since I spend more time in instances than in towns. Took zombie-life for a spin too - but got bored quickly.
Took my alt round kara at 69 with some better geared kind souls - free lootage. We also killed Illidan for the first time last night - this was one of my pre-wrath goals. Easy? Err kind of, once you know the fight. Again, with the health nerfs, it’s a lot more forgiving. Now we have a couple of weeks to play around in Sunwell.
Also, still doing those speed heroics whenever I can fit them in, they’re just so much fun.
All in all, a very satisfying way to finish TBC.
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admin Reply:
October 27th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Yay, glad you met your goal, Ara.
My shaman just hit 70 and I was pondering having her dragged along for a free loot ride, but eh, doesn’t matter if that won’t happen.
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October 27th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I have done two ZA runs since the patch and both of them were all 4 chests. The first run we barely did it, the second run I think we had a little under 10 minutes left.
A lot of it was done with, well, not really being careful. We didn’t CC anything at all except for rooting scouts. Loot was need/greed and we didn’t do chests at all. There was no need to explain fights, so it was basically “Ok you tank this, you tank that, go!”
I’m hoping to pop into an already-cleared Kara from early last week to get the boss down tonight. We’ll see if we can get some people!
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admin Reply:
October 27th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Haha, on the way to the Kara boss I did the sloppiest tanking of my life. Warbringer just makes me charge recklessly into groups.
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October 27th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I’ve been really bored only raiding 2 nights a week. I’ve been trying to do achievements but I’m not as hardcore as some people in my guild or server. (two of my guildies have around ~3000 points…wtf!? which I didn’t raid pre BC but still…) I am alliance, so I’ve been going to Org and sitting down behind a tree/rock to fish, so far I have not been spotted 0.o
Sometime this weekend, I decided it would be a good idea to port to Stormwind…it wasn’t. I was greeted by about 15 zombie players and almost instantly turned. The mage tower has that portal door so no lvl 75 npcs can enter the room. My feelings of anger from getting ambushed soon turned into delightful glee when I soon realized how entertaining it was to turn people into zombies the instant they were ported in.
@anyone thinking about checking out SWP post nerf. I really encourage you to do so. Although all the bosses are minor challenges compared to what they used to be, there are still some fights where you can get a pretty good understanding of what the fights were like pre nerf. A good example would be Felmyst…you will still get rocked by arcane damage during encapsulate if you are slow and you will still get mind controlled if you stand in the green clouds. The only fight in all of TBC, that i wish they wouldn’t have nerfed would be Muru. From a tanking perspective, it was the best fight in the game in TBC. I tanked the sentinels, and every fight was different. Slight changes in DPS or the randomness of the spawns could cause changes in the fight that would make things go south fast unless everyone responded accordingly. /sigh it makes me sad to think about =( Hopefully there will be more fights like this in WotLK. Anyways, see all the content you can before the expac., imo-who cares that it’s nerfed, if you have not seen Kael or Vashj, Illidan, or Sunwell and you have the opportunity to do so - do it.
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October 28th, 2008 at 2:29 am
Congratulations on the new boots - I was pondering the same thing this weekend - Are the Sabatons of the Righteous Defender better than the Boots of Elusion? I think they are and I will spend my badges on them next unless the Jungle Stompers drop for me in ZA. I’m also hoping for the Pauldrons based on your glowing review.
I got the shield in ZA this weekend but we only got 3 chests and then the raid broke up because two shamans were arguing and the OT had to split. I bought the Sunguard Legplates before the patch. They were nerfed a bit to add strength and now the Unwavering would put up a good fight for my badges.
Regarding the zombies - I’ve not been a zombie but I understand it’s fun for some. I do get mildly annoyed when all the quest givers in Shattrath are dead and I can’t turn in my dailies. And watch out for your bank toons in Stormwind…
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October 28th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Re: Mirkblood, the new kara boss:
I don’t know how common the following strategy is, but it worked for us.
I MT’d him a couple of days ago, and I basically kited him down the stairs and through the huntsman area to keep the raid out of the red balls. We eventually killed him pretty close to the front door of Kara.
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October 28th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Loved the zombie event, it was new and different and fun. I can understand how some people didn’t like it, but… I was certainly not one of them!
Pike´s last blog post..Plottyness
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October 28th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Wow, I didn’t see how good those boots had gotten (I still use the Red Havoc boots - more fashionable? xD). I like the Sunguard legs - imo one can never have enough expertise.
For a 4-timer ZA post patch, there’s alot of minor things to get the pace going such as:
1. Put the 1st 4 bosses on group loot.
2. Brief or no explanations of boss fights.
3. Loot the chests afterwards.
4. No cc on trash mobs and 1 tank for weaker mobs.
5. Just dps’ing Dhawk boss until both sides spawn then C shout and aoe away (risky).
However, even with these tips, it honestly boils down to the dps. A good way to gauge this is to look at a meter vs. your own dps. Most dps will be twice your own tanking damage and exceptional dps is about 3x your dps. So many fights in BC are heavily dependent on dps and with threat cap usually not being an issue now then it’s whether or not dps’ers can reach at least 750-800 dps. Chat it up with your dps’ers. My 0.02.
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October 29th, 2008 at 5:37 am
For the ZA timed chest we always had it on group loot and just looted badges if we needed it we needed. It was really simple. Getting from boss 3 to 4 in ZA was hardest part for us because sometimes we had a fowl up along the way. We managed to get 12 bears though! We only stopped for 20seonds before pulling a boss and we’d have a dps res the fallen (if and died).
Zombie mode I like alot. Ran into Ogrimar (alliance gnome hehe) a couple times with some friends and managed to turn a ton of people into zombies! I really liked it never went around greifing lowbies though.
I haven’t really checked the new gear since update - My next plan on upgrades were my pants but now I see those boots are wicked. I’ll have to see where my badges are going to go now
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October 29th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
My group did ZA for the first time last weekend, and we made it all the way to Zul’Jin. We wiped twice on Hex Lord, but third time was the charm. No timed chests, but it was our first time, we were feeling it out. I think this weekend we’ll get at least one for sure, maybe even defeat Zul’Jin too.
I enjoyed the zombie event, but sometimes it was a little annoying; such as when all the horde battlemasters were dead or quest NPCs were zombified. When the roaches first started popping up, I killed one(out of habit, I’m a critter killer =P) and became infected. I decided to let it run it’s course and proceeded to infect UC. Fun stuff.
Our last Kara run, it took us two tries to down the vampire elf. We would just run him into the adjoining rooms when the spheres started to get out of hand. I ended up with the axe, and I love the use ability. I met three other people in Orgrimmar that had one as well, and we spent about half an hour jamming on top of the bank. It’s a pretty fun item.
I didn’t realize how nice those boots are until you pointed them out. I might have to reconsider how I spend my badges now. I am currently wearing the battlescar boots, and those look like a nice upgrade. I’m currently saving for the sunguards, because I have the kara legs from curator, but I might reconsider.
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admin Reply:
October 29th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
I think I might have to write an article about former tankadin plate and which items are now awesome for us. On my to-do list for tomorrow!
If you have the Curator legs, I would still save up for the Sunguard Legplates, the Kara legs aren’t that great. I just have the 75 badge pants and from those, the Sunguard aren’t such a huge upgrade anymore, for me.
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October 30th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
The zombie thing was at first humorous but quickly became a pain. Luckily it ended before it got really frustrating. Even on my priest I couldn’t keep the plague off of me and it made preparing and going to my raids difficult.
As for ZA, we handle loot like Tryna spelled out. You must loot the bosses or they can despawn and your purple is gone forever. We learned that the hard way. We just use the need/greed roll. Need for main spec or greed for offspec.
I think our guild was capable of beating 3 timers before the patch but we never had the perfect run. I think beating the 4 timers was beyond us since we were only T5 and badge gear equiped.
Now we can beat 4 timers. The last run we did there was still around 10 minutes left when the 4th boss dropped. At least it is more of a challenge than Kara. But the only way to keep either of these instances a challenge is to bring in poorly equiped guildies. Not only do they keep you on your toes they can actually still use the gear that drops.
Tankette´s last blog post..Weekend raids, Kara, ZA, Vashj
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