Flashback: Zul'Aman Raiding Circa 2007

Flashback: Zul'Aman Raiding Circa 2007

This is a special entry that dates back to a completely different era in the Warcraft land of Azeroth. The following is a selection of clips from past entries that chronicle Wild's earliest experiences with Zul'Aman, as well as the guild drama that surrounded that rather turbulent time for Wild. JB was actively leveling during this period, and Philly was still an active participant in the Grunt Foundation on the faraway server of The Scryers. Wild did not yet have his Kara attunement. It was a busy, challenging, and frustrating time for Wild.

Note: Quoted clips from past entries are in italics, while the comments I insert are not.

2007, Nov 12th: "There is some decent news on the raiding front for Wild. Patch 2.3 is widely believed to be coming on tuesday, 13 Nov, barring any last minute problems on the test realm. That patch will introduce a new 10 man raid called Zul'Aman (ZA). I was honestly pretty depressed about that, since there was talk of ending Gruul's runs and cutting back on kara runs to do ZA, and Wild is far enough behind as it is. The guild plans to have ZA runs two nights a week, since the dungeon is on only a 3 day timer, allowing players to do two different runs each week. And the guild will run as many raid groups for ZA as there are players interested. Note that ZA is only on the test realm right now, so everything will have to be evaluated again when it goes live, but it looks like Wild will be able to get in on the ground floor with ZA. I will find a way around work so that Wild can be on at least one of those weekly runs. Wild is putting 14 Nov on his calendar as ZA Day 1."

Oh, and here's something even I forgot. At the time ZA came out, Wild was talent specced as a "hybrid." Back in 2007 you could only have one talent spec, unlike the two specs we can have now. One of Wild's big decisions, driven by the high difficulty of ZA, was whether to stay a hybrid (part DPS/moonkin, part healer/tree) or to respec as full healer.

2007, 15 Nov - "As the hour approaches the early evening, the high cackle of trolls and the bellows, screeches, growls, and roars of the animal gods of Zul'Aman grow ever louder. And so does the frenzy among the guildies hoping to get into a ZA run to face this new adventure."

Wild did respec to full Restoration spec for healing. Here is the reaction from a friend: "Sinstar is very sad that she lost her future husband to the resto world. She is actually heartbroken... <!--3 She will keep representing the boomkin world for Wild though and hope he eventually comes back for good."

This is a regular raid night for the guild, the first raid night since ZA became available, but there is all kinds of confusion about what raid (or raids) will be done and who will be invited. Not to mention the many bugs and addon problems that are plaguing players back in a time when a major patch could disrupt the game for days on end. Let's pick up on Wild as raid time approaches.

"5:30pm - Raid leader for group 1 arrives on the scene. Wild figures it would be best to be hanging around ZA when invites go out. Makes the trip. Hangs around.

6pm - Group 1 fills without Wild. To be expected. This is the super group. Wild fidgets while the Mrs provides dinner.

6:30pm - Group 2 raid leader has been on the scene since 6pm, asking for volunteers. Gets plenty, including Wild. But, we have no tanks. Two tanks are already in group 1. We have - one - other warrior on, who declines an invite - fury warrior, he says, I don't tank anymore. We wait, we cajole. Where are the guild warriors? We have 11 level 70 warriors. Oh, but 4 of them are alts of raiders in group 1. That's 7. Oh, two more of them have been out of the game for at least a month. Then there's that fury warrior. That makes - four tanks. FOUR!? In the whole guild? This is bad.

Wild gives his hunter friend in the Feral's guild a holler. We chat. They will be heading into ZA in the next hour. He'll check on whether Wild can get in if things don't pan out with my own guild. Starting to yawn. Wild's already collected his ZA starter quest and completed it. The easy talk to me quest is the first ZA quest you need to get before entering.

7pm - A "real" tank arrives. But one tank won't do it in ZA. We wait. Wild takes a nap.

7:30pm - Wild hear's back from hunter friend. Sorry, we have a full group and won't be able to get another one started. Dead end there. Wild wished them luck.

7:45pm - Group 2 raid leader gives up. Guildies left standing around get a kara group going. Wild waves as they leave, kicks the Summoning Stone outside ZA.

8pm - It's been three hours. Wild goes fishing."

In January, 2008, Wild finally got his Kara attunement, but he then went through a long stretch where the guild was so disorganized, and Wild's real life schedule so crazy, that he did not find a Kara group. He did not get in ZA, either, as the guild never formed more than the original super group. That group had downed 3 of 6 bosses in ZA. Wild had yet to set foot in ZA or Kara. Wild was doing 25 man raiding, though, in SSC mostly, and eventually Hyjal. By March of 2008, however, Wild was not only in a Kara group, he was running it every week. Originally, the group was going to do ZA, using Kara just to gear up for it, but ... Wild was still a virgin as far as ZA went. By that time Wild really wasn't thinking much about ZA anymore.

2008, 26 Apr - So, it wasn't until a month later that at last, Wild's Kara group made their first foray into Zul'Aman, five months after it opened.

"For our kara group's first foray into ZA, we had the exact same ten raiders that we had in our wednesday run the day before - with the exception that our shadow priest is actually playing her shadow priest and not her new level 70 hunter. We had a raider who let us know he would be late getting off work, so for about a half hour the other nine of us hung around near the Summoning Stone outside ZA chatting and getting excited about doing the run. Of the ten raiders, eight have never been inside. The other two have only worked on the initial trash before the first boss, so none of us have a boss kill under our belt.

Finally, we were ready. We all mounted up and rode up the large outer staircase to the instance portal. Inside is a large, donut shaped chamber.

http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/3796/zadonut01ml9.jpg

We explored the donut ring, which was empty of mobs and anything else interesting except for a single npc and the huge, heavy wooden door at the opoosite end from the entrance.

http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/7739/zadoorway02el7.jpg

Looking at the image above, note the big gong in the lower left corner. There is an npc who wanders around the donut area. When we were ready, the raid leader talked to him. The npc directed us to bang the gong to make the doors open. The tank stood near the doors while the rest of us pounded away on the gong. It took like thirty seconds of hammering before the center seam cracked open and the doors swung ponderously inward, revealing the interior of ZA.

We stared as four trolls passed by the opening, saw us all gaping at them, and attacked. Welcome to ZA.

The raid quickly got down to business and we killed the trolls. Ok, that wasn't too hard. We moved cautiously through the doors.

ZA is an oudoor instance, very like Zul'Gurub, the twenty man raid in Stranglethorn Vale. The buildings, paths, and artifacts of the place are mostly made of stone, with heavy foilage everywhere. If you want to get an idea of the place, consider that the name of the npc we encountered just inside is named Harrison Jones. Get it? Harrison Ford. Indiana Jones.

We cleared a few more trolls from our path and then came upon two bears. Trolls and bears make up most of the trash mobs in ZA. Since this is an outdoor instance, Wild's crowd control spells were actually usable. Wild used Hibernate to sleep one of the bears while we killed the other one. They were pretty easy to take down.

Past that area we got our first look at the Boss we were after - Nalorakk.

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/2281/zanalorakk03fz2.jpg

Nalorakk is the lord of the bears, one of four animal bosses in ZA. He's considered the easiest of the bosses to kill, although Wild remembers when the first ZA group began that it took several trips into ZA before they got their first kill.

We set up in a small area fronting a set of stairs. At the top of the stairs was Nalorakk, flanked by two trolls each on either side of him. When we engaged, Nalorakk sent the trolls down the stairs after us while he retreated, expecting his trolls to take care of our intrusion. We killed the trolls and moved up the steps to a long landing fronting more stairs. Here we got to fight the first of the more unusual mobs in ZA - trolls mounted on bears.

There were a pair of them, and what makes them unusual is that they begin the fight mounted, and then the troll dismounts and instead of fighting two mobs we were now fighting four.

We fought and cleared more mobs, gaining the top of the stairs, and then killed more to clear another open area fronting Nalorakk's new position. None of this was easy, and we did not get through many of these mob groups without someone dying. But it wasn't impossibly hard, either, and our confidence grew as mobs continued to fall.

We now faced Nalorakk once again, and again he had minions with him we would have to defeat first before he would engage. There were two mounted trolls and two troll medicine men. The medicine men can heal and can cast a protective totem that must be destroyed quickly as it makes mobs within its range immune to all damage. The bears, once separated from the trolls, have an attack that when stacked can decimate the tank. They need to be kept separated from each other.

We assembled at the top of the stairs and discussed strategy. The raid leader moved further in to pick out a good tanking position. He didn't even come halfway toward the waiting mobs when Nalorakk aggroed and sent the four mobs at us. Wow, that's a large aggro radius. Run! We tried, and we wiped.

We then returned and made four "more organized" attacks on those four mobs, that of course became six mobs shortly into the fight. We tried trapping the medicine men, we tried mind controlling one of them, we tried, oh, all kinds of things. We could not take them down.

The raid leader asked a guildie vet of ZA to come on vent to see if he could add some advice. He looked at the four mobs we were facing and told us we were facing the absolute hardest set we could have gotten. You mean those four mobs are not always the same? Nope, they are a random set. Great, our first foray and we get the toughest grouping.

With the verbal help of the guildie, we tried several more times. On our best effort, we killed both trolls and one troll/bear combo. But that still left a dismounted troll and his bear, and we wiped again.

We were a little disappointed that we did not get a chance at Nalorakk, but it wasn't a bad effort for our first try. We were getting ready to pack it in for the night when someone asked about the first ZA quest, which most of us needed to complete. Called [Promises Promises], it required that we retrieve a map . That map is near Nalorakk, in a side area to the right of the raid as we faced the mobs. Could we get to it without aggroing them? Here's what the area looks like:

http://img128.imageshack.us/img128/1550/zanarlokkagain04hl6.jpg

The rogue talked about trying to stealth to it, and some of us wanted to stay and others wanted to repair, and as usual with our talkative group it looked like we would be at this awhile. So Wild went cat form, stealthed, and slinked around the outer edges of the area toward where the map would be found.

There goes Wild, someone said. And the talking stopped while they watched Wild to see what would happen.

Wild got as far as where the stone path starts to rise when the hollering started and the mobs came after me. Wild broke stealth to get a little extra speed and covered the last few steps to the map. I clicked on it, and waited the long few seconds for it to complete. Got it! And then the mobs arrived and Wild died.

The other raiders that had hung around had all abandoned the top of the stairs when the mobs aggroed. The mobs reset without killing anyone else.

Wild had to die to get that map, but heck, I died more times than I can count already tonight. What's one more? And I had my quest map.

Several other raiders now wanted to try. In order to give folks more time to collect the map, the raid leader said he would aggro the mobs and kite them as far away as possible, clearing the way to get the map. Wild volunteered to keep heals on the tank so that he could keep the mobs away longer.

The warrior aggroed the mobs and made his dash, and Wild stacked HoTs on him, even staying long enough to get a longer cast regrowth going. Then Wild raced along behind the warrior, spamming Lifebloom on him (and me) as we ran.

Since Wild had stayed behind an extra couple of seconds, the warrior had a pretty good lead on me. And at some point in our little race, Wild's heals became more interesting to the mobs than the furry back of our escaping warrior. Wild died while the warrior slipped out of aggro range, and the mobs returned to their position. All of the raiders needing the map got it and got safely away before the mobs returned. Mission accomplished. The warrior even thanked Wild, noting that he saw me hang back to get that extra heal on him, which probably saved him and allowed him to escape. There is that old adage when being chased by a bear - you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the person next to you.

The quest turn in got everyone 10g and a 20 slot bag, which is the largest general purpose bag in the game. In Wild's world the two extra slots over the 18 slot bag I have makes a difference, so it was truly a nice quest reward. Wild paid 10g in repair bills. There went my gold. The warrior tank, who died two less times than Wild but who took a horrific beating throughout the night, paid 46 gold in repair bills. That's one good reason Wild has no desire to tank.

Wild finished second in healing, but it was very close between Wild, the priest, and the pally. We were pretty much constantly casting heals the entire evening.

No boss kill, but our "kara group" now has our first ZA attempt under our belt. We should consider giving our group a name. All the other ZA groups have names.

So there you have it. It took five months for Wild to get into Zul'Aman for the first time. I guess you'd call it progress that it took Wild less than a week to get into the new, re-visited ZA. And pwned it!