ZA and ZG

[hung]

General gripe post i guess. Maybe provides something useful down the line. Haven't tried ZG yet but ZA last night was interesting.

ZA:
- Incurred a unwanted soft reset after our first wipe. Boss kill remained, but all trash respwned meant we had to redo the eagle gauntlet . (hopefully a one time error).
- Reported in-combat bug. Avoiding the central region of the instance meant we didn't encounter this bug. Until more testing/official announcement from Blizz, I recommend taking the long way around just to make sure. (long path means going through bear>firehawk on the way to Linx/malakrass)

- Bear boss: ROFL stomp assuming DPS can coordinate being charge targets. Tank Dmg does spike pretty high during bleed phase. Coordinating healer/tank cooldowns is probably a good idea, just to prevent all the 'oh shit' buttons from being used the first time.
- Eagle boss: Besides having to burn down the white bird add, having a dedicated range to dps down the little birds is critical. Hildur found that being BM made this possible over being SV. Requirement for staying on top of little birds: being able to spam ranged AoE. They fall over really easy but if they're allowed to stack up, they will wipe you.
- Firehawk boss: high DPS can be a hindrance here. Make sure to let the hatchers pop the eggs. Fat waves of all remaining birds do bad things to tanks. Can't provide official life level at which all eggs pop. Felt like 40%, though the frenzy is at 20%.
- Lynx boss: Starts out pretty chill, but the dmg ramps up towards the end of the encounter. After the second cat phase, he started summoning both totems instead of just the healing one.
- Malacrass: This guy felt way easier than he did in BC. Only 2 adds means CC/add burn is pretty easy. Maybe bad group composition could still make this awful, but we got: hunter, priest, and mage, and it was no biggie.
- Dakaara: Jul'jin's replacement was the only boss we couldn't kill. From what we could make out, he's got 2 patterns he can go through, which are decided when you first engage him: bear>eagle or lynx>dragonhawk. We had the latter and only got through lynx phase once... Lynx adds can be CC'd (but then must be controlled for the rest of the fight...). Dakaara in kitty mode will pick a random target and tear them a new one. Only way we survived it was by redirecting it to the tank and having cooldowns active (he's tauntable even while he's mauling). I was unable to survive the mauling without shieldwall though... so he's got to be burned before he does it 2~3 times (cool down coordination). All the more challenging if you try to burn the adds.
nothing much to say about non-kitty phases... since we didn't really get to see any of them.

[Ishildur]

On eagle boss, if you are ranged, I recommend saving any personal cooldowns that let you burn fast (over hard) for when he calls the birds. While survival is harder hitting, being able to pop bestial wrath for the reduced focus cost was the only way I could get the birds down fast enough since it meant twice as many multi to take them down fast - and then popping the +50 focus ability the second time.

For those who still remember ZA, it's mostly unchanged. So except for the things Hung mentioned you can expect the old mechanics including for trash. Except for Dakaara the entire place feels pretty reasonable. I mean some of the fights are hard, Dragonhawk's number of adds just get absurd if you bring him down too low too fast and Eagle is rough at first due to how high the damage spikes while the eagles are up. Bear, Lynx and Malacrass felt pretty easy.

[Reiss]

So, for lynx phase Daakara, I found it went much better if I taunted Daakara a few seconds into his Claw Flurry/Rage/whatever, you simply won't survive getting hit by it for the full duration as it stacks a debuff on you that increases damage taken by 3000? per stack. I think it may also be a timed duration for the ability, instead of a number of hits, so standing further away from his initial target may help too. It was not worth CCing the lynx adds, just burn them down.

The real key to that phase is correctly timed taunts during the Claw Rage to keep people alive.

[Texaporte]

Eagle gauntlet respawns are intentional - if you wipe on eagle boss, you'll have to do eagle boss trash again. At least, that's what I remember from old ZA.

[Reiss]

Eagle gauntlet respawns are intentional - if you wipe on eagle boss, you'll have to do eagle boss trash again. At least, that's what I remember from old ZA.

nope, we've wiped on eagle before and not had to do the gauntlet again. Also, other trash respawned.

[tethealla]

If it's like the original ZA, the eagle boss gauntlet stops when you kill the one elite standing in center of the stairs. It was considered eagle trash and would respawn if you didn't kill the eagle boss and came back another day (obviously not an issue here).

Something that dawned on Andy and I yesterday while doing ZA/ZG: It's not a raid, Battle Rez's are not limited. We BR'd each other once or twice. So if you're in an instance with two BR capable classes, feel free to use them even if another has been used before.

[Logos]

As I recall, if you failed on the boss, you could run as fast as you can back to the Eagle boss in time without going through the guantlet again, but only if you died quickly on the boss. If you took long preparing for the encounter or wiped towards the end, then you probably will have to do the trash again. I could be remembering wrong, but that's what I remember.

[tethealla]

Oh yeah... I think you're right, the gauntlet had like this remarkable quick respawn timer. Something like 10-15m. Man ZA was a long time ago.