Thursday, April 28, 2011

Heroic Zul'Aman - First Impressions

I'll admit that I found it a bit ironic. My first post in about 5 months is a parody of the patch notes, pretty much railing on the fact that not everyone can get the Call to Arms special loot; and my first time pugging one of the instances last night, there's a Call to Arms for Healers, so I took it.

I got in a group that had already killed the first 2 bosses. It was 4 people from another guild. They obviously hadn't run ZA back in the day. When I first zoned in, they were positioning to attack Jan'alai from the North side. Here's a hint: he's only approachable from the South, where you have to deal with some annoying trash such as Amani'shi Scouts who run towards drums and pull in a bunch of adds if you don't kill them right away. Don't get me wrong... they're not hard and you can practically 2-shot them, they're just annoying.

At any rate, we killed Jan'alai and Halazzi. We took a few shots at Hez Lord Malacross (which I always remember being difficult), but the guys got tired, and we called the group.

But healing is once again tough. With gear on both tanks and and healers, heroics on my main had gotten pretty easy. Guild groups could sail through heroics like back in the old days. ZA (and I assume ZG) are just a bit tougher. And because we've breezed through them for years now, it's almost as if you're running Deadmines with a group of level 17's... you actually have to pay attention to mechanics again... and well... it's a struggle to remember exactly what they are.

So, I suspect there will be Call to Arms for healers for just a bit until the average ilvl gear moves up enough where tanks are the only ones that need their gear. Then we'll go back to the overwhelming need for tanks. So, if you're a healer, and you have 2 (or 3) hours to spare for a pug for ZA or ZG, go ahead and queue to get your chance at free mounts. But do yourself a favor: study up on the fights just a bit in case they ask you to explain it.