For the second week in a row the MM guild was unable to field a raid on Friday night. We had six signed up for the raid and all six showed up, but there were no other guildies in game. The raid was called after about 45 minutes. That did give us an opportunity to attempt the new 5 man heroics, known collectively as the Zandalari Tribe: Zul'Aman (ZA) and/or Zul'Gurub (ZG). There was only one problem - there were six of us. The raid leader and tank announced up front that he would tank (of course) and that he, Fl (our pally healer), and a rogue were "going to run a heroic." Of the three of us left, there were two DPS and Wild. Obviously, Wild was not going to be the healer. Wild said he had a moonkin off-spec. No one said anything further. Much as I wanted to get in on the run, it was clear how things stood. After a couple of awkward, silent minutes, Wild offered that if Fn had five for his group, then Wild could find something else to do. Fn thanked Wild for understanding and they went off on their Heroic. Sigh. Wild is going to end up PUGing those dungeons. Maybe Wild and Lao will catch each other in game this weekend and get in a run together.
Saturday morning - Wild was in game around 10am on Saturday. He was the only guildie in game. Wild scratched the hard bristles on his head and wondered where everyone was. Well, it's going to be a beautiful day outside, and I had plenty to do besides WoW. Yet ... it was still early. Wild got in the queue for a random Zandalari dungeon. While waiting in the queue Wild was going to do the two daily quests available in Orgrimmar, and if he was still waiting when those were done, well, Happy wanted to horn in and get some AH work done.
Happy would have to wait. Within five minutes the dungeon finder collected Wild up and deposited him in Zul'Aman. ZA was once a level 70 raid requiring ten players. With Patch 4.1 it was redesigned as a Heroic level five player dungeon for level 85s. It was challenging and fun as a level 70; Wild was about to find out just how hard it will be as a Heroic 5 man.
When Wild zoned in to ZA he was not where he thought he should be. ZA starts with a set of King Kong sized doors protected by elite guards, and a circular antechamber where the quest givers are. At least that is what it looked like many moons ago when Wild last ran this place.
Three players were already inside on a large platform. A fifth player zoned in right on Wild's heels. He immediately asked, "Which boss u on?" Ok, so this is a dungeon run already in progress. Seems they lost two players, including the healer, for some reason. Not good from that standpoint. And Wild wondered at how difficult the healing would be if one healer had already failed. However, they had killed the first three of six bosses, so they were doing something right. The tank was a paladin. We started on a group of trolls. The healing was pretty intense, with a fury warrior pulling aggro and taking as much damage as the tank. We got through that and worked deeper into ZA. ZA is an outdoor dungeon and is quite beautifully laid out. There is jungle, and swamp, and every kind of Indiana Jones style ruins. It is also not linear (ie, with one path to boss A, then another to boss B, etc). There are the obvious paths stretching through the zone, but also not so clear shortcuts going every which way depending on where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do when and in what order. The best paths were those meandering right through the jungle and off of the safer, but more roundabout, roads. Wild knew if he got behind or separated, he would be instantly lost. It's dangerous country, with mobs in groups, and hidden in the foliage, and in some cases, stealthed until we stumbled into their midst. In other words, it was scary and delightful.
As we killed through several more mob groups Wild started getting a feel for what was needed. He was putting out close to 9k healing, which is raid level healing, with a lot of damage being done to the group. Wild was getting it done, but Wild had yet to face a boss.
The first boss Wild came to (which is the fourth boss in ZA), was Halazzi, also known as Lord of lynxes. Wild remembered this fight - kill totems and stack when Halazzi summons his lynx spirit, which he does twice. There was a discussion about whether to focus on killing Halazzi, or kill the lynx spirit before Halazzi. The strat guide says kill the spirit first, then Halazzi. The tank wanted Halazzi focused on, and forget the lynx.
We did it the tank's way. Wild lost one player, the warrior, killed by the lynx spirit. Wild thought later that we were lucky it was the warrior the lynx spirit attacked. If the lynx had gone for Wild it would have been all over. The fight went very long, since Halazzi heals back to full health twice during the battle. Wild was too busy to rez the warrior for a long stretch, but was finally able to get him back into action. We brought down Halazzi. Wild was elated. It had been two weeks since he'd last killed a boss.
There was more trash to kill, and we got a little careless with a large group of stealthed panthers. Wild well remembers how easy it was to aggro multiple groups since they are hard to see and even harder to figure out how the groups are divided up. We fought and fought, but there always seemed to be more of them attacking all the time. They wore us down, but couldn't put us away, and we eventually cleared our way to Hex Lord Malacrass.
Wild remembers the witch doctor Malacrass,too. He has two adds that are usually crowd controlled throughout the fight. Malacrass steals the abilities of other players, and then uses them on us. Our warrior had his Mortal Strike taken and used on another player, for example. It's an awesome fight because you just don't know what kind of attack you could be facing minute by minute. This was also a long, battle of attrition fight as Malacrass gets stronger over time while the rest of us grow weaker. If the scale tipped too far in his favor, we were doomed. Which we were, wiping on our first attempt.
We came back strong (Wild managed not to get "too" lost coming back from being rezzed at the graveyard) - and beat Malacrass on our second attempt.
There was more trash mobs to kill, and we arrived at - drum roll -
Daakara The Invincible, Warlord of the Amani trolls, Chieftain of the Amani tribe and the final boss in Zul'Aman.
Wild had never seen Daakara before. Daakara took over Zul'Aman after the previous leader of the trolls, Zul'jin, was killed in the level 70 version. Nonetheless, Blizz didn't stray too far from the Zul'jin script in setting the encounter with Daakara. It is very much like the original, and even shortens things a bit by giving us only three phases instead of the five in the original.
We got ready, and engaged. The battle started as a straight up fight with Daakara. Wild's biggest worry at the beginning was getting heals on every player to rid them of nasty bleed damage that had the whole group down to half health within seconds. We survived that as well as the whirlwinds, and Daakara transformed himself into a bear for phase 2. This was not the worst of four possible forms he could take (bear, eagle, dragonhawk, lynx), but was the one form that was the most danger to the tank. Wild earned his keep keeping the tank alive for that phase.
Daakara then transformed again, this time into a dragonhawk, for phase 3. I couldn't remember what this form did, but I knew enough to stay out of the column of fire he tossed out and getting out of spitting range of his flame whirls. Too many of the DPS stood in the fire, making Wild's job a lot harder. One player died, but Wild got him rezzed pretty quickly. After getting off the battle rez, Wild turned to heal the tank - and caught a Flame Breath right in the face. Wild went down instantly. But it was our lucky day - Daakara went down at the same time.
Wild was in on only the final three bosses, but we all got our credit for clearing Zul'Aman. Daakara dropped [Amani Headdress], an ilevel 353 leather helm. Wild's helm was i346, and Wild got the Headdress. It is truly, truly cool looking. Who needs a guild run, anyway. :-)
Wild Struts in his new Headdress
Bonus Entry - I went searching through my archives to find those old level 70 ZA runs. Here is what I found - see next post.
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