Zul'Gurub 101
Hello and welcome to this weeks Exploring WoW Instances. I'm your host, Raekin! Today we're gonna take an in-depth look into the recently introduced 20-man instance known as Zul'Gurub (ZG for short). We will be explaining main pull tactics, and more importantly. boss fights. Now this zone is very colorful with a lot of pulls, and a lot of Bosses. Each boss has an aspect of the beasts found around the zone (Spider Aspect, Bat Aspect etc) Some people love this zone, others hate it. I personally don't mind it, as it can be quite rewarding. Now lets get started!
Main Pull Tactics
Throughout the zone there are many multiple-mob pulls. Snakes, Tigers, Bats, Panthers, Trolls etc etc. First things first, snake packs can be very deadly if not handled properly. All blue snakes "Adders" must be sheeped or slept (Crowd Control or CC from now on), Browns can be offtanked with ease. Tigers are rather easy, and easily AOE (Area of Effect)-able. Bats are usually seen with a Bat Rider, and are also easily AOEable (just becareful when the Bat Riders get low on HP because they will blow up for 5000 dmg). Panthers are best dealt with Single Target and CC. Trolls are always CC'd, with the priest being taken out first, then the blood drinkers. It is important to note that Blooddrinkers do an AE drain and replenish their health, so casters and ranged stay back as far as possible, and everyone try to stunlock them when whatever you have. Moving onto bosses:
Bat Boss
First things first, make sure the entire area of clear of mobs. Main tank pulls the Bat Boss and proceeds to tank her near the wall to your right. Immediately a pack of bats will fly out to help her. AOE these down asap (assign one warrior to blow AE Taunt so there are no deaths). As soon as the adds are dead, all DPS on the Bat Boss. After a while, another set of bats will fly out, AOE them down as you did the last pack. When the Bat Boss nears low health, she will shapeshift back to Human form and occasionally try to heal herself. Mages should set up a Counter-spell rotation to stop this asap, and the rogues/warrior should be kicking/bashing as well. During the last 30% or so, she summons Bat Bombs. These suicide bats will fly and bomb random members of the group, so everyone needs to spread out and get out of the damn fire. Other than that, the fight is pretty easy.
Snake Boss
Clear the whole room except the 4 snakes up on the platform with him. Assign 3 mages to sheep three of the snakes, while the Main Tank takes and holds the boss off to the top right corner. The off tank picks up the last snake, and everyone DPS until its dead. Kill all the snake one by one until only the Snake Boss is left. ONE mage cast detect magic on the snake boss so that the priests can see when he casts Renew on himself and dispell it. DPS him down and occasionally he will emit a green poison gas around himself. The Main Tank needs to be on top of this and move him out of the gas. All melee should also be looking out for this, and move away when it happens. After the Snake Boss has been moved, melee re-engage until he does it again. Rinse and repeat until dead. Just stay on top of the renew dispelling, and getting away from the poison cloud. Overall, this is the easiest fight in this instance.
Spider Boss
Spider Boss can be a challenging fight if you're not paying attention. I'd say the fight is easier for Alliance than Horde, due to Blessing of Freedom. The fight starts out with the Main tank engaging the Spider Boss, off tank on the Speaker. About 5 little spiders come out and need to be AOE'd ASAP because they grow in size and power the longer they are out. Also make sure everyone is OFF the rocks and eggs because this will evade bug the mobs. Kill the Speaker quickly then start working on the Spider Boss. Occasionally new baby spiders will pop out and these need to be brought down quickly. Hunters put your pets on Aggreessive. One paladins needs to make sure that the Main Tank always as Blessing of Freedom because the spider boss will web the MT and make a run for the group. This is where the Off Tank should be standing, between the MT and the main group to taunt as soon as she makes a break for the group. Keep on top of the spider adds and Blessing of freedom. At about 50% she will shapeshift out of Spider form, and try to Drain Life on someone. This needs to be kicked/counterspelled asap. If you can stay on top of all of these things, she goes down rather quickly.
Bloodlord
Now this fight is rather difficult and takes some time to get right. Clear the room he's in up to the speaker, and do not worry about the other groups as they wont aggro. Positioning is key on this fight. Have all the ranged/casters on top of the ledge on the corner next to the sticks sticking out of the ground. The tank needs to be down on the ground to the right of this ledge and a little in front of the group. This ensures that the Bloodlord does not have a good LOS to charge up to the group. At the start, you kill the speaker first, then pull him. When you pull him, he dismounts off of his Raptor, and you now have two targets. Main tank gets the Bloodlord and bringing him in position. Off tank grabs the Raptor and pulls him away from the bloodlord. All DPS on the raptor and kill him quick. As soon as the raptor dies, the Bloodlord goes into a rage and attacks the MT very quickly. Healers need to be on top of this and heal appropriately. The Bloodlord also shouts that he is "Eyeing" someone. The actual debuff name is Threatening Gaze. As soon as you get this buff on you, STOP whatever you are doing until it wears off (unless you are the main tank). This will royally fuck your attempt over if you do not stop. Melee need to stand at a 90 degree angle to the MT on either side to not get hit by his cleave. He does whirlwind sometimes, and I have heard of people getting out before getting hit, but most of the time you do get hit. Melee need to back out and bandage themselves when they get low. When this happens, the melee need to go to the EAST by the wall with the shields (away from the casters). Everytime the Bloodlord charges someone, the Main Tank loses all aggro. DPS needs to stop for a few seconds so that the Main Tank can reestablish hate. Everytime someone dies, the Bloodlord grows in strength and attack power.. but the good thing is that the Chained Spirits will come and rez you for free so you can get back in the fight. If the Bloodlord gets up to the casters somehow, the Off tank should be there to taunt and bring him down. As an extra caution, if he does in fact go up there, the casters should jump off the ledge to avoid getting whiped out by a cleave. If you can do all of these things, you will win the fight (sometimes it takes my guild 1-3 tries to down him, just because its a very uncontrolable fight).
Tiger Boss
Tiger Boss is also a pretty difficult fight. Clear the room as usual, and you are left with 5 mobs: Two Zulian Tigers, Zealot Zath, Zealot Lor'Khan, and the Tiger Boss himself (High Priestess something). Usually we assign the Main Tank to the Tiger Boss, and assign two offtanks for Zealot Zath and Zealot Lor'Khan. We then place one group of the four groups on each of the main three mobs(i.e. Group one kill Zealot Zath, group 2 on Lor'Kahn, group 3 on the Tiger Boss, and the remaining group is split up between who to attack). At the start, both tigers need to be dropped asap by everyone but the tanks. As soon as they're both dead, all the groups attack their specified targets. The goal to this part of the fight is to kill all three at the same exact time (or damn near close to it). If you don't, they will rez each other. Lor'Kahn will try to heal as soon as she gets low, so that needed to be Counter when it shows up. If shit goes wrong, you CAN run out of this fight. Just run down the slope and to the left. Sooner or later they will leave you alone. Once you down all three of the mobs, everyone needs to run into the hut excluding the Main Tank and one off tank. The other off tank should hang out right at the enterance of the hut. The High priestess will rez up and turn into the Tiger Boss, along with two new tigers. The two tigers need to be killed asap by everyone, then DPS down the Tiger Boss. She will occasionally summon those tigers again, so be on the ball about killing them. The Tiger Boss has a huge AOE knock back called Force Punch and it will knock the melee back quite a ways along with some decent damage. She also likes to make a run for the hut sometimes, so the off tank there should be ready to taunt her and bring her back out. If you can keep on top of everything, she is a decent fight.
Panther Boss
Equipment is key to this fight. At least THREE people need Green Whelp Armor. This armor has a chance to put beasts to sleep when you get hit. At the start, three healers (usually druids or paladins) will be picked to stand near the gong in the back. The Main Tank will stand near the opposite wall as she spawns there. Everyone else will have their back to the wall where yoiu come in at. ONLY those three healers with the green whelp armor will be healing the Main Tank at the start. There will be NO DPS until someone has been Marked. As soon as someone gets marked (hopefully one of the three healers in the back), tons of panthers come out and start raping them. This is where the Green Whelp Armor comes into play. If a druid is marked, make sure to go into bear form. This marker person needs to be kept alive for as long as possible. As soon as one of the three healers in the back gets marked, everyone should go all out DPS. Try to bring her down ASAP. In case someone but one of the three hunters gets marked first, that person should run out to the healers so that they can get the aggro on them. Randomly during the fight she will mark different people. This does NOT matter because they will always go for the person who was marked first (so dont run out to them if you are marked second). Mages can ice block to dispell the Mark if need be. She also likes to stealth during the battle. At this time, do NOT kill the panthers. If you kill them, they will respawn as ELITES. Just spam healers on the person who's taking the heat from the panthers. When she comes back from stealth, kill her again ASAP. Main Tank needs to tank her away from the group though, since she does cleave. Try to kill her before she stealths for the 3rd time, or else you are dead. Its basically a pure DPS fight. Not too bad IMO.
Jin'do the Hexxar
Probably one of the hardest, if not the hardest fight in the zone. This guy has so many moves, its amazing. Hunters are definitely a plus on this fight (four or so) Clear the Area until only him and the skeletons in the pit are alive. Assign one mage to be on "Pit Duty" and a back up mage as well to the pit. People will get randomly teleported into there, only to be fucked by 10 skeletons. The assigned mages need to watch for this and make sure to kill the skeletons as soon as they see someone teleport in there. They only have about 800 hp, so one blizzard will kill them all. They respawn every 15 seconds or so. Jin'do also likes to drop totems. He drops a Powerful Healing Ward which heals him for a couple thousand hp a second, and also a Brain Wash totem. The Hunters need to be on top of these, as they can seriously hinder your performance. The Brain Wash totem will pick someone to mind control, and it has about 4000 hp. The Powerful Healing Ward only has about 1000. Dagger Rogues do shit damage againt totems, so they're better off sticking on Jin'do. Hunters also need to pull out their pets and stick them on aggressive near the healers. Jin'do randomly curses people and it should NOT be dispelled. This curse allows peopel to see the "Shades of Jin'do" who have 1500 hp and deal shadow damage (1 dmg per hit, 650 per proc) on random people. You cannot see them unless you are cursed. If someone gets cursed, it is their job to take down as many shades as possible. Hunter pets on aggressive can see the shades without the curse, so having 4 hunter pets killing shades really helps out. If the mage on Pit Duty gets the curse, the other mage has to take over the pit while the former mage kills shades. Mages can take down 3-4 shades in the time the curse lasts. Main thing is to take down shades, and kill the totems asap. If you can do all of that, you can win.
Hakkar, the Final Boss
Getting to Hakkar can be tricky. There are two major pulls involving about 10 mobs each. Mages need to sheep, druids need to sleep, and hunters need to trap. Once you get to Hakkar, set up camp on top of the stairs. On either side of the stairs along the wooden bridges will be a Son of Hakkar. These mobs respawn every 30 seconds and are key to winning this fight. Assign one hunter to either side to pull the Sons to the group when the time comes. Also assign one rogue/melee to be the Mind Control bitch, and to take off his weapons. At the start, one of the hunters will pull a Son of Hakkar and the group will kill it. When it dies, it emits a poison that does 100 dmg per tick. Everyone in the group needs to get this poison on them (its good to stay clumped together). After everyone has the poison, the Main Tank engages Hakkar, and the Mind Control bitch stands kinda close to the MT, but not close enough to get Corrupted Blood. The MC bitch will basically be MC'd the whole fight (off and on) Mages need to sheep him, or set up a frost nova rotation to keep him away from the group. If you cant, its no biggy, because he should only be hiting for about 50 dmg. After about 40 seconds pass, Hakkar will do an Area Drain. This will drain everyone of their POISON instead of life, thus killing him. This is why it is essential to keep the poison on everyone. After the 1st Life Drain, the other hunter has to pull his Son of Hakkar back to the group and kill it within 40 seconds to set up for the next drain. As soon as the Son dies, make sure everyone has the poison, then the Hunters can go back into their ready position for the next one. Hakkar will keep life draining every 40 seconds, draining the poison, and effectively killing himself. As long as you can keep this cycle going, Hakkar is very very easy. Sometimes a Hunter will be Mind Controlled instead of the MC bitch, and this is very very bad. This is why the MC bitch should always be the 2nd one closest to Hakkar besides the Main Tank. Enjoy the phat lewts.
Now that the zone has been covered (save for a few of the summoned bosses in the Edge of Madness), I must say that the loot from Zul'Gurub is very very exceptional and downright cool looking. If your guild is every bored waiting for Ony and MC and BWL on cooldown.. or bored of PvPing all the time, I'd definitely check it out. But if you're doing BWL anyway, you probably dont need any loot from ZG. Good Luck and Happy Hunting!