First Zul'gurub night 14/15th december 2015

Zul'gurub was released on the 13th, with Hakkar dying about 20 minutes afterwards on the hands of Synced. I couldn't raid with my guild on that day and that means I dodged a Hakkar that made mind-controlled players unhealable, repeatable client error 132 crashes upon killing enemies, odd pet behaviours, Mandokir charge spam and other miscellaneous bugs. For all I know releases are often messy, this is not very surprising. As I was writing this post some issues had been fixed, others not.

I was lucky enough to be invited in an unfinished ZG raid (Gahz'ranka, Edge of Madness and Hakkar left) with 17 <Friends> guildmembers tonight. Here is how the night went :

At 23:00 ST an officer asked on guildchat if someone was interested in coming to Zul'gurub to finish someone's raid ID. Knowing that there was an excess of warlocks in my guild's raid I decided to ask for a spot just in case, hoping for the best. And I got invited straight away*. I stopped farming the ever eluding Fireblooms and rushed to the entrance, only to meet them by feet when they finally could summon. They had just wiped.

We skipped some trash, jumped into the water and swam up to Gahz'ranka's altar. It was already there, patiently waiting for us. After a bit of explaining and strategic positionning (ie: summoning players too slow to understand instructions underwater) the tank aggroed and everything went well with a clean kill. ... Actually no, it didn't. Gahz'ranka got aggro when the raid was unprepared, it hit the raid with a 2500+ damage slam (yes it is bugged, it shouldn't deal that much damage), frost breathed into the raid and the rest is history.

Here shown: Great positioning gone bad.

I have to say that this is a great start, very motivating. Anyway, we decided to move to Hakkar to try something else (because when you fail on an easy boss, go try the hardest one). We mounted up to the top of the pyramid. Killing the trash on the way, we barely aggroed Hakkar due to fears and lost 80% of our members on the last trash pack because of some sons respawning in our faces. Standard raiding to say it differently. Then the leaders explained what we would do : fear mind-controlled players, aggro a son every now and again and stack on its corpse. Okay, let's pull!

Hakkar try number 1. Notice how I forgot to change my hat and how I have no idea what to do with my felhunter.

I feared some raiders, we stacked on the son, we didn't dispell the debuff, his health barely got up during siphons, all goes well. Hey, tanks are even healable! Goodbye annoying bug!

Strategy followed. A few players did not get hit by the drain though.

Nocando was close to killing us all with his novas, that's why he is dead. If someone tells you your guildmates are what makes a boss hard, then believe them, that's a good example. Otherwise nothing special happened, Hakkar died without much fanfare or hype.

And I got a sweet trinket that does magic. Unfortunately its quest doesn't give everyone in the area a buff.

We jumped down towards Gahz'ranka and tried a different strategy : outranging the slam. ... And Gahz'ranka went from being a hard-hitting boss to being a trash mob.

More loot. Who wants it?

That's it, we did not continue afterwards, too many players were leaving and it was getting late. Hakkar seemed to work quite well, even if his health was unaffected by the high priests being dead. The sons on his platform did not respawn which is nice. Gahz'ranka is likely very overtuned because of his slam bug but with the right strategy goes down easily. Some bugs from the PTR are thus still present, others have been fixed and some are in-between.

Otherwise the part of the raid I have seen seems quite simple when compared with Nefarian or Razorgore. But I like it, it is good to be raiding again on new grounds with people you appreciate. I hope you will also enjoy your raids and have a good day!

On a side note I ponder how Synced gets to do about 2-3x more average damage on Hakkar than my guild's first kill and how they managed to kill him with him having all high priests buffs. But oh well, magic happens, just look at what Paragon does on retail.

*because my officers are the best, obviously, and you should join Friends straight away

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