| Name | Complete Zul'Gurub Instance Guide |
| Category | Raid |
Zul’Gurub is a twenty man raid zone located in the northeast section of Stranglethorn Vale. One can probably judge its difficulty as harder than UBRS, but easier than MC, though a few of the boss fights require classes to do certain jobs and pay attention, so it is easy to wipe if somebody screws up. Overall, a guild not doing this for the first time can probably clear it in 5 hours, maybe 4 if there are few slipups.
Throughout ZG you will get coin and bijou drops of the mobs, which are good for faction. This is one reason why my guild clears the WHOLE zone, and kills every mob, for maximum drops. There are plenty of camps that you can skip, but since I don’t really know these because we clear the whole zone (almost entirely), you will have to see which ones you can ninja by.
It is also entirely possible to AOE the groups of mobs that you pull, and is something that my guild does personally. With improved blizzard, you can keep the mobs at bay quite easily, especially when you are fighting trolls with casters, it works well. There are also times when you will need to AOE.
To begin, group makeup is somewhat important, though not a necessity when trying to go through the whole zone. Here is a recommended (Horde) make-up of a group, though Paladins can easily replace Shamans. Remember, this is just ideal, and not necessary.
3 Warriors (Paladins)
2 Shamans
4 Priests
1 Druid
2 Warlocks
3 Rogues
2 Hunters
3 Mages
The reason for these make-ups is really in the mages (polymorph), Warlock/Hunters (Mana Drain), and just overall good healing etc.
If you need a map of ZG, http://worldofwarcraft.gameamp.com/game_map/game_map/166.php!orderBy=17 is a good map, but the numbers do not correspond with the order of the bosses I have.
To begin, at the zone in you can follow the path down, killing the mobs. These are not hard at all, they can be pulling in packs of 4-5 and just tanked by Warriors (even two at a time), and just assist and deal with easily. It may be useful to polymorph some of the mobs, such as the snakes later on, and will help save on healing some.
Continue on through the pathway across one bridge, and then you will find a path to your right. You will want to go up it, continuing to kill the mobs (always healers first, or poly), and then you will get to the top. There is a camp of mobs and then behind it a steep slope.
Here is where a few things come into play. First off there are bat riders, both elite and non-elite. These will be pulling usually in groups with 4-5 non-elites and 2 elites. Easily enough, have a warrior take an elite each, and then AOE the other 4-5 that another warrior has. The only thing about the elite bats, is they will explode, causing around 3000 damage to anybody (this occurs around 30% but can be lower). Just have the tanks keep them from the groups and you shall be fine.
Once you clear the bats up the huge ramp, you will see High Priestess Jeklik, the first boss. She isn’t very hard, but requires some strategy.
High Priestess Jeklik
When you pull her, she will morph into a bat and start attacking. Here are the main points of the battle.
Warlocks/Hunters – Warlocks should be mana draining the WHOLE time until she has 0 mana left. This will stop her from healing herself for 15% (with Mortal Strike) when she becomes low on health. After she has little mana, have a hunter hit her with Viper Sting and she will not be able to regenerate mana fast enough to heal.
Mages/Warlocks – She will call in groups of non-elite bats to her aid, which is the Mages and Warlocks job (when not mana draining), to AOE these mobs. They will stay relatively close together, so just frost nova them, blizzard with improved blizzard, and then mass AOE once they are under control.
Everybody else – Do your usual job. Warriors tank, priests/druids heal, shamans totem/offheal. The main thing is to control the adds and keep her mana down.
Once you finish her off, retrace your steps back to the first bridge you cross, and cross the other bridge next to it. You will have to deal with some mobs on the way, nothing new.
Once you go across the bridge, follow the path to the right and then there will be an opening to your left. This is the next boss, High Priest Venoxis.
High Priest Venoxis
Again, this boss isn’t one of the harder ones in the zone. It is just the High Priest with four adds.
Control of the adds and the main boss is important in this battle. The main thing is to keep the mobs away from the healers and the casters, because they have a Huge AOE.
Have the tank pull the mobs to the bottom of the platform he is on, and then let him gain some control of aggro. You will want the mages to polymorph the adds, as well as have hunters hibernate if there aren’t three mages. The main note about this boss is the add’s deaths make him stronger, so you just want to kill one. Have the other ones stay polymorphed.
Like usual, there should be a Viper Sting as well as mana drain on him at all times. You will want to have the mages just focus on keeping the adds controlled, while the other classes DPS him.
He isn’t that hard of a boss fight, once he gets to 50% he changes forms and his damage is amped up, but you can still easily heal the tank and keep him alive. He will have a poison cloud AOE at some point that comes from him, so just keep rogues out of there while it is present.
Leave the room, and take a left out of it following the path, take care of the adds, and when you can go either right of left, take a left. You will kill some easy spiders, and go up a large ramp.
You will come to a room full of spiders (and really annoying pulls). You will just have to pull them, and kill the elites first (obvious), but the thing is the spiders, upon hitting you, will make you have a poison that makes it seem like you are drunk, and the screen will be blurry. More annoying than a hindrance, just keep up and clear the whole room of spiders.
High Priestess Mar'li
This boss will be pulled with one add, a speaker, who can be killed right off the bat. She will also summon some spiders, which need to be killed as fast as they can be. Every 5-10 seconds or so they become stronger, and if left alive too long, they will be a big problem to the raid.
Once you have the spiders and the speaker taken care of, tank control is easy, so just keep healing, as well as mana draining like usual. She will occasionally keep spawning more spiders, which need to be taken care of quickly.
She also has one other trick, which is to transform into a giant spider and go on a rampage, losing aggro from the tank and going after everybody. Just keep the people getting attacked healed, and the warrior should be able to take back aggro.
Just keep her at a distance from the casters, and she shouldn’t be a problem at all.
Once you finish up with her, retrace your steps out of the spider room, and go back to the split in the road, and take the right up the ramp. Here is a big room with a lot of raptors and trolls.
When you pull, poly the Blood Drinkers, and kill the rest. The blood drinkers can be a problem, but are easy if known how to be dealt with. Every 7-10 seconds the blood drinker will take health from anybody in range, and heal himself. This can be a problem obviously, and just requires people to space themselves. Have rogues stun the mobs in a chain so they cannot pull of their life drain, and you should be ok (Kidney shot works wonders). Once you clear the entire room (not really necessary, but get those coin and bijou!), you can see an opening to another room. There are mobs in here, which will need to be killed (just along the right wall), and on top of the temple there is Bloodlord Mandokir.
Bloodlord Mandokir
The Bloodlord isn’t a very hard battle; it only requires people to pay attention! You will want to pull the Bloodlord, and have one tank on him and his pet. Kill off his pet first, even though it makes him mad, it will make the battle easier with only having to heal one person.
You don’t have to mana drain on this battle (finally), and you can focus on attacking him. The Bloodlord’s main ability is to “watch” people. This ability will have him shout (Name), I am watching you! At this point, whoever is being watched needs to stop attacking him, or doing anything for that matter, or they will be charged and aggro’d.
Just keep watching on that, and if the MT gets “watched”, just have him keep attacking, but be ready to heal him. The Bloodlord will also charge random people, not a big deal, but just be ready for it; the MT didn’t lose aggro.
Once he is dealt with, head back to the beginning of the zone (repair if necessary).
Once you are back at the beginning of the zone, don’t follow the path; jump off to the left side and kill the mobs, then cross the river (don’t fall down the waterfall!) and continue going and killing until you reach a new path.
Take a left on the path and head up, this will be where the next boss is.
Clearing this room is a little challenge, as there are casters and Warlock Summoners (though not nearly as bad as BWL). You will want mages to poly as many of the midget mobs as possible, because they will summon Infernals (they can be tamed by the warlocks if you want, but not very useful). You will want to concentrate on the big mobs while the little ones are polymorphed, and then just bash the rest. They don’t do anything extremely terrible, but you don’t want all of them to be attacking at once.
The pulls are mostly the same in this area, and just clear the entire room (you will really want to this time, not just for coins).
This boss is one of the more tricky ones, and will require everybody to be paying attention to debuffs, and what is going on.
Jin'do the Haxxor
First off, mana drain.
Second off, don’t debuff the curse.
Third, kill the totems FAST
Lastly, AOE the mobs when somebody gets teleported (one mage)
That is the battle in a quick overview, but there is obviously more to it.
This boss will be pulled, and will seem normal. He casts mind controlling totems, which need to be disposed of quickly. Make sure rogues and hunters are on that very quickly.
Secondly, he summons shades, and lots of them, to attack people. They do 1 damage, but can hit for more than that with skills as well as interrupt cast. It is annoying, and the best part is they are invisible. The only time they can be seen is if he debuffs you, and that is why you don’t debuff the people who have the curse. There job is to kill those shades, or at least get them off healers. If you let the shades get out of control you will die.
Lastly, he will also randomly teleport people into the pit in the middle of the room with skeletons. Whoever gets teleported needs to run towards the battle while a mage nova/cone of colds them.
Basically you just have to keep up on the shades and the totems, and you should do fine. It may take a few tries to get adjusted too, but you get good loot from it!
Continue back down the new patch, following it for a while, and killing mobs on the way (you can ninja past some of them). You will come to another place on your left, a giant temple. You will be fighting mobs all around the front, as well as up the stairs and inside. You may want to clear all around for coins, but that is up to the raid. Continue inside, killing the mobs all the way to the basement.
High Priestess Arlokk
This is a battle which takes some paying attention too, as well as good AOE’ing.
You will want Warlocks and hunters to mana drain when she is up, as well as have healers heal the MT and the person “marked” by Arlokk.
What I mean by marked: She summons pet panthers throughout the battle to attack, and will “mark” one person, which will make all of the panthers attack that person. Have a stoneskin totem on that person, and have them just stand there, and get healed while the panthers attack. They won’t lose aggro while they are marked, so just keep them alive.
You will continue to mana drain/heal and just attack the High Priest until she disappears, in which all of the panthers will be left. This is where massive AOE becomes essential. You will want warlocks and mages to AOE these mobs, as much as possible until she reappears. You can rid yourselves of a lot of the panthers, but probably not all, but it is essential to stop AOEing when she comes back. This will trigger her to just bring more and more panthers and will end up killing the raid.
This process probably needs to be repeated twice; on the third reappearance she will most likely die.
Once you make work of the High Priest, head on out on the temple and back to the path, taking a left. After going about the same distance from the last two bosses, you will find another ramp to the left that will go upwards, with lots of Zulian Tigers.
You want to clear this room, though AOE isn’t suggested because these guys do make quick work of casters. Anyways, once the room is cleared you can face High Priest Thekal.
High Priest Thekal
If you have done MC and Core Hound Packs, this won’t be that hard. It isn’t exactly the same, but you have to balance.
The High Priest pulls with two adds. You have to drain the mana of the right one first, and then start on the high priest afterwards, because the right one is a main healer. Basically, you want to pull with a tank on each of the guys, and spread out the damage. Have AOEers hit them with blizzard and Rain of Fire, as well have rogues split their damage. They have to die within about 10 seconds of each other, so make sure they are all at 2% before you start making any final push on them.
Once you have killed the three, Thekal will transform into a tiger. His hits become a lot more power, and he charges a lot at people. Healers really just have to watch anybody who gets charged etc, but overall, mana drain and it’s not that hard of a fight.
With the last of the seven mini-bosses done, Hakkar is next on the list. If you retrace your steps to near Haxxor (see map), there will be a bridge that leads to the middle of the zone. There is a temple, and Hakkar resides in the back of it.
Pull the bottom front of the temple and clear it, and then go up the stairs. You have to clear the whole second level of the temple before you attempt to do Hakkar, so make sure everything is dead.
You can approach Hakkar, and have everybody stand on the same level as him up the stairs, very close together. This fight is probably the easiest in the whole zone, but just requires one good puller. There are the small dragon mobs that upon death emit a poison that is AOE. You need to have one by your group and make sure everybody (except the MT) is poisoned. Every 40 seconds, Hakkar will drain every persons life, unless they are poisoned. If they have the debuff on them, it will hurt Hakkar instead.
The main point of this battle is to not attack Hakkar, but have a hunter pull a small drake and kill it, so everybody becomes poisoned. You can start of by having everybody, including the MT get poisoned, then charging him right after.
It will probably take about 12 rounds of poisoned to kill Hakkar; quite boring, but the loot is nice. Just make sure everybody stands really close together and gets the debuff every time, but remember, the MT doesn’t have to have the debuff, he can just tank Hakkar. Hakkar’s hits aren’t very strong, so it won’t take any special healing to kill him.
Once Hakkar is down, ZG is complete.
){kind=link}
Comments