World of Warcraft

[ED]

Naysons 2 questions not mine. Risso is the Shaman that joined the Dashers, a week after ditching them...

BTW you can retrieve deleted accounts once, or maybe you can start fresh and level up a mage in time for the expansion! Come back Sion, its goint to be sooooo good.

[Designer1]

Naysons 2 questions not mine. Risso is the Shaman that joined the Dashers, a week after ditching them...

Thanks. Thought Nayson was going a bit Twin Peaks.

[Risso]

Come back Si. I don't miss you or anything, I just want to wtfpwn Siongest!

[Designer1]

Come back Si. I don't miss you or anything, I just want to wtfpwn Siongest!

One thing is for sure, If I ever did come back it wouldn't be as a fecking Warrior.

[ED]

Good Interview

Apparently 10-15 level 70s will be able to kill Ragnaros.

LFM MC!

[Jimzk5]

Ragnaros.

!

isnt that a pasta bake?

[The_Rev]

nabbed from the "google trends" thread in Off Topic, and something that wont surprise Dan at all?

[ED]

Why me?

Anyways:

The Dashers are safe, I only disband guilds during my trial period!

I actually outrank Risso

[ED]

Rippee

Human Lock from Nocturnal

Stick him on your KOS....He's a Blues fan!

Also....Where the **** is everyone?

[The_Rev]

Noted.

[The_Rev]

Oh, and this might be worth a read Juju. I know you said your guild are trying Zul'Gurub now. The Dashers favourite Troll rogue and forum Troll, Viskahn has started writing a guide to the place. Its in a section of the forum that only guild members can access at the moment, and its only covers the first part of the instance so far, but its stull surprisingly good.

Ill paste it here. Expect him to try and get it stickied on some WoW forum though. He got his guide to Alterac Valley stickied on the European and USA websites.

Angry Troll Studios Presents….

Viskahn’s Guide to Zul Gurub

Introduction

Hi im Viskahn, you might remember me from such threads as “Viskahn’s basic guide to Alterac valley” and “The Pristine Hide of the Beast”. But today im here to talk to you about Zul’Gurub, the ancient capital city of the Gurubashi Empire of Trolls, recently inhabited by the blood god, Hakkar.

Zul’Gurub is a 20-man instance located in the North-east of Stranglethorn Vale, the encounters are generally quite fun, interesting, and depending on your level of gear, challenging. There are a lot of bosses in Zul’Gurub, falling into several catorgories. Firstly, the aspects:

1. High Priestess Jeklik - Bat Aspect

2. High Priest Venoxis - Snake Aspect

3. High Priestess Mar'li - Spider Aspect

4. High Priest Thekal - Tiger Aspect

5. High Priestess Arlokk - Panther Aspect

These 5 “aspects” are troll priests and priestesses who were originally sent to stop Hakkar, but were instead corrupted by him and now only feed his strength.

While alive, each of them grants Hakkar an additional ability based on the ones which they themselves use. The result is that if you want to kill Hakkar, you need to kill these 5 aspects first. Some of the hardcore top-end raiding guilds have I believe killed Hakkar with 1-2 aspects still alive, but never any more.

There is a rumor (which I do not believe in the slightest) that killing Hakkar with ALL of the aspects still alive will result in some legendary item from him.

In addition to the 5 aspects and Hakkar himself, there are several optional bosses –

1. Bloodlord Mandokir

2. Jin’do the Hexxer

3. Gahz’ranka

And finally, there are 4 bosses which can be summoned in the Edge of Madness event (details later), these are:

o Gri'Lek

o Renataki

o Hazza'rah

o Wushoolay

And finally, the raid setup. Getting a mixture of classes is important in Zul’Gurub, and a balanced raid will play a key part to your success. The ideal (or so) raid setup will be:

3 Tanks (Ideally one of these a feral dr00d for some encounters)

3-4 Melee DPS (ie rogues, DPS warriors and feral druids)

3-4 AoE’rs (Locks or Mages)

1-2 Hunters (Mainly for marking, but mana draining is also quite useful on several encounters)

4-5 Healers (ie druids and priests)

4 Shammies/Pallies (one for each group)

Tactics

Step 1: Welcome to the Jungle

As you enter Zul’Gurub, you find yourself on a nice set of stairs, safely away from mobs. Near you will be a pair of Axe Throwers, as well as a couple of snake patrols and usually a Priest too.

Axe Throwers – These nasty little trolls primarily use a ranged attack, meaning that keeping aggro is all the more important, as they can kill the squishies from where they stand, without having to move to melee range. In this form they are susceptible to all forms of crowd control. They also have an attack called “Axe Flurry” which causes them to spin around very quickly. They do roughly 400 damage to you per tick in melee range (to a Rogue at least) as well as speeding up their axe throw attack, and they get a bit crazy in terms of aggro, throwing their axes at pretty much anyone they see. When flurrying, they become immune to stuns, incapacitates and various other effects, but not sheep. Since they are quite lethal in this stage, it is usually best to just sheep them to prevent the axe flurry from continuing (when sheep is broken they are back to normal). Since they tend to come in packs of 2, just sheep one and kill the other, nothing too complex.

Priests – Big nasty trolls like the axe-throwers, these priests have a few annoying, priestly abilities which are well…annoying. As with axe throwers, they can be crowd controlled however you see fit. The main abilities to watch out for are Psychic Scream (get your tremor totems and fear wards out to avoid adds), Holy Nova and a self-healing spell which you should interrupt with stuns or anything else you fancy using.

Trolls usually come in packs of 2, often supported by other animal/beast mobs such as snakes.

Razzashi Serpents – These are the smaller, brown snakes that you will see in patrols and in general all over the instance. They are weaker than their Adder counterparts, though they do have a couple of very annoying poisons which should be removed ASAP.

Tranquilising Poison – puts the victim to sleep for about 10 seconds.

Slowing Poison – Severely slows your move and attack speed.

Serpents can be crowd controlled in any way you see fit, and generally they aren’t too hard to dispatch and shouldn’t cause any problems.

Razzashi Adders – The bigger, bluer snakes you will see, and generally the more annoying of the two. In addition to their melee attack, they have a very annoying poison spit, which affects about 7 targets in front of them, and like multi-shot, wont hesitate to destealth us poor rogues (/cry). The spit does about 700 nature damage to each target. To avoid this annoying attack, try to tank him facing away from the raid so only the tank gets hit. It doesn’t ultimately make a huge deal of difference and its unlikely to wipe you, but hey, its good practice for other encounters.

Snakes usually come in packs of 2-3, and it seems pretty much random which ones you get, though ive never seen a pack of 3 all the same color.

So get clearing, at the very start do NOT take the turn left, as it leads to the harder bosses and mobs. Assuming you are going the right way, you will soon cross a rope bridge and have 3 directions you can go in. Straight ahead is another rope bridge, left leads down to the water, and right leads up a big hill.

First, dispense the pack of mobs to the right of the 2nd rope bridge, and keep your eyes out on the right because there is a Gurubashi Berserker patrolling there.

Berserkers – These big fellas are only ever found on their own, patrolling various parts of the instance. You will never be forced to fight these as well as other mobs, which is just as well as they are quite tough. In addition to a pretty powerful melee attack, and a damn lot of life, they pack a very powerful thunderclap ability which slows movement speed, attack speed and knocks everyone nearby back about 10 feet and appears to wipe aggro. They also have an intimidating shout similar to the warriors one, so fear wards and the likes are again, a good idea. Finally, they are immune to all forms of crowd control, and are very very hard to tank properly due to thunderclap. The good side is that they are slow buggers, so often you can just zerg/kite them down. Still, don’t go trying them with half of your raid dead or anything like that.

So you kill the berserker and take the turn right, up the slope. Ignore the mobs on your right and hug the left wall through the gate. You are now faced with bat-packs and some new troll mobs.

Bat Packs – These consist of about 5-7 Bloodseeker Bats, and 2 Troll Bat Riders (yes, the ones from Warcraft 3). Get your 2 tanks ready and have them take the 2 bat riders, and have your mages and locks AoE the bloodseeker bats.

The bat riders have a very powerful demoralising shout, an AoE silence and the most powerful ability – self destruct. At any point between about 10-40% life, a little line of text will appear saying “Bat Rider becomes fully engulfed in flame, and a madden glint appears in his eyes.” Or something like that. At this point, all melee except the tank need to run like hell, and the tank needs shielding, because in about 2-3 seconds the bat rider explodes, dealing 5000 or so damage to all near him.

You will have to kill about 4-5 of these Bat Packs, and there are also 2 troll patrols. These will consist of 2 Headhunters and 1 Witch Doctor.

Headhunters – Have a ranged spear throw attack, as well as an AoE knockdown “Whirling Tip” attack to all in melee range. He also has the “impale” spell which he does on a random melee target, and which deals pretty hefty damage over 5 seconds or so. Pretty straightforward to kill.

Witch Doctors – These guys have some amusing, but also powerful spells which need to be cleansed ASAP. Firstly they can hex someone (the person who has aggro I think, but it might be random) into a frog for 10 secs, and they also shrink people in melee range, which whilst amusing, also reduces strength and stamina by 100 each and hence does, unfortunately need to be purged. Finally, when they die their ghost appears like the old trolls from sunken temple, which you just run away from or it hurts you a lot. Also on death, a load of jungle toads spawn from the Witch Doctor, which don’t seem to have any practical effect other than keeping everyone in combat, so aoe the little buggers.

With the Bat Packs and Troll Patrols dead, you can now face the first boss, the bat aspect, the queen of all that is evil….High Priestess Jeeekkkkkkkliiiikkkk. Or Jeklik, whichever you prefer.

High Priestess Jeklik

As with all the aspect bosses, this boss has 2 phases. The first phase is bat form, the second troll form. You see the big wall that she is standing on to start with, well, put your maintank on the left side of it, and put your AoEr’s (and ideally a priest with holy nova, in their group) on the right, on the little hill.

Have the tank pull her with his bow when you are ready, and give him 5 sunders or so for aggro obviously. In phase 1 she has a few little abilities. Firstly she randomly charges and attacks someone not in melee ranged, and then returns back to the tank. This means when she does it, DON’T go chasing after her, just hold your position and let her come back. She also has a rend attack on a random melee target, an AoE silence in melee range and finally, while in phase 1, she will periodically call waves of bloodseeker bats down to attack. This is why your mages are over there. The bats pour over the wall and the mages should nova them in place and begin the aoe, and they should go down pretty easily.

At 50%, she gets off her bat and phase 2 begins. In this phase she will occasionally try to heal herself, which you must interrupt with kick, counterspell etc. She also has some kind of mana drain/mind flay looking attack as well.

At 30% or so, the fun really begins and she calls on the bat riders. At this point, bats will appear riding around in the sky, dropping huge burning fire-bombs around. It is imperative that ranged classes spread out to minimise the impact of these bombs, and make sure you stay out of the fire. The tank needs to move her around whenever he gets hit by firebombs, and you need to make sure you keep an eye out for her healing spells. Keep nuking her down and she should die soon enough, and that’s your first boss done. Woot.

Ok, after patting yourselves on the back for getting a boss down that everyone else did months ago ( Razz ), leave back through the door and go back to the “junction” where you originally turned right. From coming down the slope from jeklik’s area, you have a choice.

IF you have someone with the required fishing skill and mudskunk lures (details later) then go straight on, down to the water, and deal with the crocolisks. They are so easy im not going to bother making a little tactic note for them, just aoe the fudgers and let your fisherman do his work.

IF you already have all the mudskunks you require, or you have no fisherman, turn right over the second rope bridge and follow the road round to the right. There is another pack of mobs here for you to clean out, and a snake patrol which comes down the ledge from the road you are on, kill this patrol too.

Now you should find yourself with a turn on the left into another walled area – yes its another boss, but first you have a load of snakes to butcher mercilessly. Do this. We usually crowd control all but 1, but if you feel brave you can go for the old AoE approach. The second pack of mobs surrounds a fireplace and not surprisingly, these need killing too, nothing new that you haven’t killed before except the Vilebranch (I think) speaker. Don’t be scared by the name, he isn’t too hard and should be killed before any of the others.

Now you are ready for the second boss – High Priest Venoxis, the Snake Aspect.

Venoxis

You will see Venoxis himself and 4 snake adds up over the stairs. When you are ready, assign your mages (or if you don’t have 3 mages – a druid as well) to 3 of the snake adds, which they will sheep/sleep. Venoxis himself will be tanked at the very top of the stairs, with the maintank standing on the stairs so that he can be healed. Kill the 4 snakes one-by-one, starting with the one you didn’t crowd control, they are pretty easy to kill so don’t sweat over them. Once the four adds are down, unleash hell on Venoxis. When learning this encounter, you might consider going ranged DPS only for phase one as he has some potentially deadly AoE/chain abilities. Keep the MT healed and get him down to 50% when he will transform into a snake and make a poison cloud. A general rule for this boss – stay out of the poison clouds.

For phase 2, have your tank bring Venoxis down to the campfire and move your ranged classes back to the door. Your tank needs to (if doing it our way) gradually drag Venoxis round and round the fireplace (whilst hitting him of course) to minimise the damage taken from any poison clouds he spawns. Alternatively you can just keep him in 1 place and move whenever he makes a cloud, choice is yours really. DPS him down solidly and watch for his enrage at 20% or so. Nothing too hexing (pun intended) yet, and he should go down easily enough.

So you’ve done two out of 10, don’t get cocky yet, there are still plenty of trolls out there who want to turn you into mojo, me included. Go out the door and turn left, some more snakes for you to deal with here, as well as two berserker patrols (separate ones, don’t worry) and various other trash mobs. After going up the ramp you find yourself at another junction with a big staircase in front of you. Go up there if you like, the dude who handles your ZG enchants is up there. But aside from that, turn right through the gateway and you will soon reach another junction. Going right will take you to Mar’li, the spider aspect, going left will take you to Bloodlord Mandokir. Frankly, lootlord is easier so we will cover him first. Head left and kill another berserker patrol, and you will find yourself heading yet higher, and into an area filled with large amounts of trolls. Fortunately, you don’t need to clear this entire area.

The entry to this room is where you should be fighting, and pulling all the mobs back to this point. Start off by pulling the raptor group on the right, these can either be done the classic way or by AoE, and its your choice really, and depends on your raid setup. Keep the raid group at the entry point and have a hunter pull for you. Basically, you need to follow the road. There are only about 4-5 packs of mobs you actually need to kill, but there are some new mobs to encounter –

Blood Drinkers – Fairly standard melee trolls, with a cleave attack. Their other ability, and one which causes much frustration, is a periodic attack which does about 300 damage to all nearby the blood drinker, and heals him for about 5% per enemy it hits. This means that you have to use ranged dps only on Blood Drinkers. The only one getting hit by his blood drink should be the tank.

Gurubashi Champions – More standard melee. Has a charge attack, knockdown attack and cleave. DPS them down and try to keep them taunted before they charge the squishies. Not much else to look out for really except the knockback knocking you into adds – this is bad, and should be avoided.

Once you have cleaved a path through this first room, you should be going under a little arch into the next room which will, not surprisingly, be full of more enemies to kill. Oh joy! When you are through the arch, turn right into the corner. This is the best place for fighting the first few packs before you have enough space to move out a bit.

The majority of the packs here are more of the Blood Drinkers/Witch Doctors/Champions. There are however, 2 packs of 6 raptors each.

Gurubashi Raptors – As I just said, they come in groups of 6 or so and hit fairly hard. For your first few runs in ZG you should crowd control the majority of them and pick them off one-by-one. Once you are a bit more confident however, feel free to pull them back and AoE them. They have the usual Rend and Knockdown attacks, nothing too strenuous.

By now unless you are blind you will have noticed another of those big buildings, with another speaker at the bottom of the stairs. At the top of these stairs is our next boss – Bloodlord (AKA lootlord) Mandokir.

Bloodlord Mandokir

Back before 1.10 or so, this fight was a doddle. Unfortunately they then increased Mandokir’s health by about 50% or so, and it is now a lot longer, if not directly harder. The key to the fight is positioning. See the raised platform with a spear wall in front of it? All your ranged classes should be cowering behind here. If you stand on the ledge, you should have Line of Sight to the area where Bloodlord will be tanked. If you step back down off the ledge, you should be out of LOS. And therein is the key. Melee classes and the maintank will be out in the open area in front of the spear wall, this is where Mandokir will be tanked.

After disposing of the speaker at the bottom of the stairs, Mandokir will ride down on his raptor and dismount. You will need one tank to get Mandokir and tank him down in front of the spear wall, and for the first part of the fight, someone will need to tank his raptor whose name evades me at the moment. There is a lot of debate about which you should kill first, raptor or troll. Basically the raptor is pretty easily killed but he hits hard, and when he is killed, Mandokir gets pissed for 2 minutes and becomes enraged. Personally I find it a generally better tactic to focus on the raptor (oughan or something…), he should go down within 30 seconds or so of solid DPS. After this your tank should have plenty of aggro on Mandokir. Mandokir himself has a few abilities:

1) “Ding” – You will notice during the fight that there are a lot of chained spirits around. If someone dies, one of these spirits will come and offer to resurrect them. If they accept the res, Mandokir effectively levels up, becoming bigger and stronger. As a rule of thumb, if he levels up more than about 3-4 times, you are probably going to wipe.

2) Whirlwind – Hits the melee classes. A level 1 Mandokir’s whirlwind will hit leather for about 1500. If he levels up a few times however, this can and will 1-shot your rogues. If you have good reactions, you can see him start spinning and the red animation appear, and run out of the range of this attack before it actually hits. I recommend to all rogues to try to get the hang of this as eating whirlwinds can be a pain as well as a drain on healers mana. Remember that it CAN be dodged, parried or blocked however, so evasion is your friend.

3) “Im watching you!” – Mandokir will yell that he is watching someone. It is CRUCIAL that that person then stops attacking, moving, pretty much everything. Just stop. Otherwise Mandokir gets angry, charges you and hits you for about 10K. This is bad.

Aside from these, there really isn’t a great deal to this fight. It is a very long fight now, even with good DPS, the key is more to avoid going OOM and just keeping up the damage on him and not making mistakes.

Its incomplete at the moment, but excellent i think. Its also told from a Rogues point of view, but i dont think its Rogue specific at all, is it?

[Risso]

Visk is pretty good with his guides, which are very thorough. His AV one was excellent, just not as good as mine, which is:

Don't bother with AV, it's shit.

[The_Rev]

Im tended to agree with you.

Id extend that slightly to "dont bother with AV unless you can equip that **** Mace that is a piece of piss to get if you are a Warrior. Its shit."

[The_Rev]

And progress on the PvP movie. Slow. I do want to make something to remember WoW by when i finally decide im finished with it (which will probably be ages, but what the hey.)

Went to find some Alliance in Winterspring earlier. First person i saw? Risso!

We ended up killing a few Dragons, including that big elite Brummie monster thing, who just isnt scary any more.

Only alliance we found was this poor bastard who had an angry Infernal run at him. And he tried to feign death so we would think we had killed him. Muppet!

[ED]

Riss what happened with MC? Have you ever actually done anything in there except kill Ragnaros?

[The_Rev]

Dunno what happened when you first arrived either Riss.

Tried to summon you, but just kept getting a "TARGET MUST BE IN THIS INSTANCE" message. Bravoman and Nix got the same thing too, yet everything else (friends list, guild list, CTRA) said you were in Molten Core. Weird.

Anyway. What dropped after i **** off? (Golemagg, Sulfron, Majordomo and Raggy?)

[ED]

After you left, the raid went to shit (coincidence I'm sure) we wiped on trash and somehow on Sulfuron (Gurok got precisely 0 heals when tanking the boss....how?) We decided people must be tired so we got it together for Golemagg and ended the raid after we killed him.

Majordomo and Raggy remain untouched, I hope we can finish them tomorrow maybe.

[The_Rev]

Late night raid on Azuregos. Just a collection of people online at the time. Few Dashers were there, plus some other people we levelled up with.

Drops:

Mature Dragon Sinew some Hunter who isnt in a MC guild so is a million miles from getting the leaf!

Fang of the Mystics i was second on the roll. Resto Druid won it. Resto! The greedy ****!

Drape of Benediction Resto Druid got ninjaed this by mistake. Lucky greedy ****!

Still, six gold for the kill!

[ED]

Was it just a shout out in Org or what? I'm suprised there were enough online.

BTW, I have a feeling that The Dashers are going to migrate, while I have mixed feelings about this myself, I'd like to know if The Old Grudge/CWP are leaving too, and if not whether the lowbies (level 60 lowbies) are willing to gquit to come and join us. What a test of loyalty!

[Risso]

I'd say it's almost certain that the Dashers will migrate, the way people are talking.

Like Nays says, I'm not bothered, but wouldn't want to leave Limpid, Sam, Juju and Tarq behind. But I imagine that the grudge will move if everybody else does, or basically they'll be left on a nearly empty server with no top end guilds and all the cash etc that entails.