Warcraft Experience

About Zul’Gurub

* The instance is designed for a 20 member raid party.
* Can be completed by organized hardcore raiding guilds in 2 hours.
* It is on a raid-timer similar to Onyxia’s Lair and the Molten Core. Once you kill a boss, you are saved to the that instance for the next 3.5 days.
* “Over 120 new Epic and Superior items, including a new five piece set for each class!”
* It is mostly outdoors (with the exception of a temple), which means druids can cast root.

Location:
Zul’Gurub is located in Stranglethorn Vale. Have a mage portal the raid group to Stormwind (or gryphon your way there) and then fly to Duskwood and run down. Head out of Duskwood on the road, when you come up the party of NPCs standing at the crossroads go South towards Stranglethorn. Zul’Gurub is located near the top of Stranglethorn and is waaaay easier to get to from Duskwood than going all the way to Booty Bay and riding North.

If the party doesn’t have a repair bot, mount up (only do-able since the instance is outside) head on out and go to Nesingwary’s Expedition to repair. Coordinates: 36, 11.

Bosses
- Bat Aspect - High Priestess Jeklik
* Before the fight begins give the mages and warlocks /rs rights if they do not already have it. Figure out who will start the silencing chain and who will follow. Create a macro that whispers the next person, states in raid chat and shows up in /rs. Basically have it say something to the effect of: YourName: CS cast…Party Member Your Up. Then that party member will cast their silencing spell (either CS or with the felhunter) and call the next in line. If you die - make sure everyone is aware of it so they dont count on you to silence and you aren’t there! The CS and felhunters are on the same cool down so we try to alternate mage, lock, mage lock, depending on the party config. That way if a mage dies the lock still can jump in. Tanks can shield bash and rogues can kick her also to interrupt her healing spell.

* When you pull Jeklik from her ledge, she morphs into bat form, and attacks. You need to tank her away from the casters because she occasionally casts an AOE silence. In addition to this, she summons packs of non-elite bats which should be killed by mage/warlock aoe. Have the casters stand in the back and somewhat together. When the bats come out, AOE freeze them in place and then AOE the hell out of them. Make it very clear when the bats are coming and which healers will be concentrating on the tanks and which ones on the AOErs. You can not do out-of-combat rezzing with this boss.

* Once she reaches 50% health, she changes back to humanoid form and no longer summons the packs of bats. Instead, she will lifedrain and heal herself while a bat rider drops magmadar-style ‘fire globs’. If you get a glob dropped on you, you should stop casting/fighting and move immediately. Very similar to the fire poo that Magmadar casts. As a mage I pop my fire shield, keep my mana shield up and put on some fire resist gear. She can be counterspelled, so use that to interrupt her from healing herself - enter silencing chain. If you get an immune message, it’s because she is immune to the silence portion, but it will successfully interrupt her spell.

* Make sure you have the latest or at least a newer version of CT Raid/Mod and that you have the boss announcements turned on. It will warn you when she is about to heal.

Snake Aspect - High Priest Venoxis
* For this fight, we had the main tank fight Venoxis by the fire, and use a pally to pull him over there for the tank to grab. Meanwhile we sheep/sleep his four snake pets. We then killed the snake pets one at a time, and then focused on Venoxis. He casts an arcane explosion while in humanoid form and he is a slow steady fight. Have an off-tank on the sheeped snakes, they go down very easily as long as they are kept apart from the boss. Assign targets before the fight begins and healers. Also have warlocks on mana drain on Venoxis. Do not attack Venoxis until his mana is completely drained.

* When he reaches 50% he transforms into snake-form which has an AOE poison aura that does 450 damage a dot if you are next to him. In addition to this, he casts what looks like a venom bolt that does about 1600 damage. His health goes down a lot faster while he is in snake form, so you have to burn him down with ranged damage while the healers keep the main tank alive.

* If your raid is wiping run outside of the room and the fight will reset.

We are still working on the spider boss and have killed the boss with the dinopet. I’m off to play my alt for bit but will continue the tips when I get back.

Ok, so the announcement was made earlier this week but it is worth a mention:

Blizzard is proud to unveil their new parental control system for World of Warcraft, which allows account owners to create play schedules for their accounts. With the parental control system, you can determine when your World of Warcraft account is accessible. This system can be used, for example, to ensure that your children only play during predetermined hours, such as after homework is done or on weekends. For more information on how to access and use these controls, go here.

Per the World of Warcraft Community Site:
Fantasy Flight Games has posted a detailed preview of World of Warcraft: The Board Game. This preview answers a number of questions that World of Warcraft players and board-game aficionados alike might have about the game. If you saw their recent announcement about World of Warcraft: The Board Game and want to learn more, check out the new preview here.

- If you equip the key before fighting Rend, when Rend dismounts right click the key. The dragon will become a ghost and buff the party.

- In the same fight in Blackrock Stadium don’t AOE while standing too close to the left hand side. If you do you will pull all the mobs down from the top and it’ll be wipe city.

- If you stand near the front in the Blackrock Stadium you will kill the in-coming mobs a lot faster (it won’t take them as long to get to you hence quicker kills). Since you kill them so fast, it gives you longer to mana up or to rez if need be.

- When pulling the mobs down the hallway at the end. Have a mage stand to the right or left of the bridge and sheep while they are pulled across. It keeps the sheep out of proc range and makes it easier for everyone. Also have a hunter put an ice trap out to grab a dragon while they are crossing.

Which loothog mod do you have? Apparently there are two different versions of loothog out there. For those of you that don’t know what loothog does - it tracks when the party or raid /random on loot and who is the winner, if there is a tie, etc. You can set it to PM the person rolling so they know their roll also. Apparently the difference between the two versions is one will track is the person types “pass” in the chat and the other one won’t. This version of Loothog will track the “pass” rolls.

The Admiral’s Hat now lets you wear it and buff your whole party instead of just yourself. Cool for a quick +10 stamina.

If you have a warlock in your party (or are a warlock of course) use your Eye of Kilrog to test the Warpwood Pods. If they are “bad” the Eye will pop them and you are out of harm’s way. If nothing happens, then the pods are good and you can go loot them for Runn Tum Tuber. Babbaganoosh and I farm DM all the time so he can get that.

On Wednesday night we did an all-night MC marathon in honor of Thanksgiving. Thanks to everyone that stuck it out! Since we normally run on Thursdays, the MC timer wasn’t up until 7:37p on Wednesday night, so we started later than we liked but at least it gave us time to get water to put out the flames.

Babbaganoosh was out in Azshara and saw Azuregoes was up still (he logged on earlier in the day to get the water and the dragon was up then), so he was our look out. We gathered up a crew, sent calls for people in guild and lmrbo chat and portaled our way to Darnassas. Of course we were too late because the 2 major Alliance guilds on Blackhand were already there. We haven’t figured out how they always seem to know Azuregoes is up. Sucky! We continued out there anyway in hopes that they would wipe and give us a shot. And Avanta Corda went first, got Azuregoes to around 10% and wiped, so Nephilium picked it up and took her down. Dang it! When is our turn?! At least it wasn’t a total loss since we could all get our MC water to put out the runes.

Since I already had 20 people together I finished putting the raid group together for MC. First time I ever got to play leader for that. Hurtu still had the Onyxia head from Monday (we had decided on Monday we’d wait to turn it in until MC) so we portaled to Stormwind and gathered in the front to watch the head go up. Poor Hurtu though! He went to the King and as he was about to turn the head in, someone else did And 2 Onyxia heads can’t be up at the same time. Not only did he not get the buff for some crazy reason but he didn’t get to turn in the head, so he didn’t get to get his quest reward either.

Buff in hand we busted ass to get to MC. No sense in wasting those cool stats. I gave Smokinjoe masterlooter, no way in hell I want to deal with that. I don’t want to accidentally give it away to someone else. And Smokin and Aveliana were going to run this raid group since Burthona was out of town for Thanksgiving and Babbaganoosh was going to be in NY, but a last minute change of plans kept him here. So Babba, Smokin and I led the group. Poor Aveliana had a hell of a time connecting and then had to drop before we even started. Cox cable was apparently doing something in her area and screwed up her lines.

We had an awesome run and go me and my awesome leader seed! Off the first fire mob the [item]Nightslayer Bracelets[/item] dropped and Varlok won with a 78. The raid group was worse than 5-year olds at Christmas though. Giddy could not describe how we were acting.

Lucifron
- The tranq shot tome went to /random again. Really wish that wasn’t BOP. We could put it in the alliance bank until someone could use it.
- [item]Lawbringer boots[/item]. Check this generosity out! Barrex won with a 97 but since Theseus (rolled a 28) was the only paly without purple boots he gave it to him.
- [item]Gauntlets of Might[/item] went to Druela with a 19. The only two warriors that didn’t have them, have existing purple gloves but since they were bought our raid loot rules don’t apply and they could roll.

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