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.

Awe Inspiring

While our guild has been downing Zul'Jin in ZA for quite some time now, I personally hadn't made it past Malacrass. Granted it's been quite a while since I've been in ZA, so I'm sure I could have done it a long time ago had I been in a proper group.

Last night, we again didn't have enough to go play with the 25-man's, so we headed in to ZA. In the back of my mind, I figured maybe we'd get super lucky and finish all of the time tests and one of the bear mounts would drop for us. So, one of my officers (who was actually already saved) and myself picked out the group that we thought would do well in there. (I didn't tell him about my bear aspirations, we'll just keep that secret between us, kk?)

We killed the Eagle boss (or, as was later referenced over vent: the owl boss), within the 20 minute easily. We now had 15 minutes to take down the Bear. We had a few badly timed silences that caused one of the tanks to go down at about 15% health left or so. Shield Wall, Last Stand, and a little bit of luck left us killing the Bear with a few minutes to spare.

Quickly head on over to the gauntlet and then the Dragonhawk boss. 20 minutes is plenty of time, right? The boss was done almost flawlessly. Our paly tank let all of the eggs on one side pop. Then on the next egg-popper guys, the other side was cleared. We killed him shortly after his mini-enrage timer.

Alright! Let's move on to the Lynx boss. (Not to be confused with the Linux boss. (Inside joke)) What? No new timer? You have got to be kidding me. We're given only 20 minutes to kill 2 bosses? Yeah... I guess I didn't read up on that, or it had just been too long. The rest of my group knew that was the case, I was just the noob there.

But Wow! There's guilds that will take down those 2 bosses in 20 minutes? That's just impressive. I'm not even sure how else to write that.

Moving on with our night. We killed Malacrass without any problems. Then I started lagging bad. I realized just before we pulled that it was because my wife was uploading photos (sigh). So, I was of little help to that fight. But we got him down to like 10% or something. So, I got to see all of the fights and abilities... I just didn't get the loot. Oh well... it was neat to see everything except the actual death. lol.

Lightbulb Fights

There are a lot of boss fights in Wow that I would consider lightbulb fights. They're those fights where you seem to be pounding your head into the wall, but you just can't seem to kill the boss. You get to the point where you feel like you just can't take another wipe, but yet you still do. It's the fight that has become the bane of your Wow existence. It makes you want to stick puppies in the microwave. You're contemplating cancelling your Wow account because of this one boss, and then... you kill it. Furthermore, you go back in the next time, and you 1-shot it. That's the lightbulb fight. It's the moment that something clicked, everyone has finally figured out everything they're supposed to do, and it's as if a lightbulb has finally gone on in everyone's brain. The fight is then practically farm status because it's become so "easy".

There's a few lightbulb fights that are like this in World of Warcraft. I would say that Shade of Aran is kind of like this. Once you figure out all the things you have to do AND deal with the elementals... it's usually cake-walk. Netherspite is another one because it's so hard to stand it beams. High King Maulgar: positioning. Magtheridon: clicking (although do people still have problems with him post 2.4 nerf?).

And now, to add to that list, Al'ar. Well, maybe not completely "easy", but still. Last night, we walked in and smacked Al'ar upside the head on our first shot. That's only the second time we've killed him. And yes, only the first attempt after our last kill. We still had a few deaths by the end of the fight, but the whole thing felt very controlled and when somebody died, it was easy to assign another person to the position. I doubt our gear has improved that much in the week and a half since our last kill... it's just that the lightbulb went on.

Side Note: My DPS is now officially sick. I'm still learning the best way to use my super combo of IV, trinket, AP, AB spam. Originally I was told to use mana gems/pots in the middle of that, but I think my quick evocation (when IV is still on) will probably take care of most of my mana. At any rate, if I can get that one down and using it every 3 minutes, I'll easily top the charts.

Side Note 2: Went with a guild group into ZA last night, and pretty much pwn'ed the first 4 bosses. Got the Hexlord to about 20%, but then we were all getting pretty tired. It reset this morning, so maybe we'll go play again tonight. (We'll see when the SSC run ends.) Also got 2 of the timed bonuses. So much fun to have runs that are fast paced like that.

Dragonhawk Down!

This one's for real. Not like that other time. :) Primogeniture took down the Dragonhawk boss. Granted I wasn't in the group. I wasn't even online, actually. But still, we did it. (Like how I took credit there?)

I hear they also had a solid attempt at the Lynx boss as well.

Man! Take a day off of Wow and blogging, and I feel like I'm out of the loop. As Ferris Bueller said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Work kicked my butt for yesterday and most of today. Now it's just Friday afternoon, and I'm ready to go home. Weekend ZA anyone? I guess I'm LF a guild that will run with me. lol.