Purpose: Here are some simple tips and tools to speed your ZG progress.
First - Order of March. The fastest way we've found to clear ZG is in a big circle. Bat -> Snake -> Spider -> Bloodlord -> Edge of Madness -> Tiger -> Fish -> Panther -> Jin'do -> Hakkar. Clear in a big circle, you end roughly where you started, then it's a short run up to Hakkar to collect your rewards.
Second - Come prepared. Have a few of your engineers bring a repair bot or two. It saves an unbelievable amount of downtime to repair inside the instance, instead of having to run all the way to Nessingway to repair. By the time you get there, repair, pvp with the nubs camping Nessingway, and get back, you can lose a lot of time. Come prepared, drop a repair bot when needed, and you save a lot of time.
Specific bosses (given in order of march):
Bat - Bat is one of the easiest encounters in here. There isn't much to her. Have the tank engage her, kill the bat adds at the beginning, then dps her down. Around half life she reverts to caster form. She will attempt to heal herself (you'll see a big golden glow). Kick & shield bash are key to interrupting this. If she is able to heal herself, the fight can quickly suck. Eventually, the bomb bats will begin incoming. At this point, the tank begins to slowly kite her around the battlefield. The reasoning for the kiting is to avoid killing the rogues if a firebomb lands and everyone hangs around in the middle of the fire. Casters and healers should also avoid staying in one spot too long, to avoid the firebombs. Just before she dies, a firebomb generally lands on her location doing a lot of damage to those around her. Either accept the possible death to dps her quickly, or move out of the way.
Snake - Generally one of the easier fights as well. Label Venoxsis's 4 serpent adds from left to right 1, 2, 3, 4. Assign crowd control to each add. The group should be against the back wall (in that wall fountain), with the tank forward. The tank aggros Venoxsis, then pulls him over to the campfire. The reason everyone stays far away from the tank when he pulls is because Venoxsis will do a holy wrath style ability that will do a lot of dmg to anyone around him, so you want to stay far away during the pulling. Kill the adds while the MT tanks venoxsis by the bonfire, we usually start with 3, then go in the order of the nearest add. Once the adds are dead, start on venoxsis. Somewhere around 50-60% health he will turn into a serpent. At this point, the MT begins to kite Venoxsis around the bonfire in a big circle, with the dps classes following right along behind. The reason for the kiting is to stay out of the poison cloud that forms if Venoxsis stays in any one location too long (500-600 dmg a tick is not fun). Keep kiting him around and he drops quickly.
Spider - This can be one of the hardest fights (with the exception of Jin'do). We first pull the speaker and the first wave of spiders out to the ramp and kill them. Once they are dead, we divide the killing area into two zones, with the road as the dividing line between them. The MT stands on one side of the road by the lone egg sack, while the other stands across the road, a bit diagonal from him
Code:---------------Marli--------- | ~ | | ~ | | ~ | | ~ (MT1) | | ~ X | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ RAMP | X(MT2) | -----------------------------
The entire group stands with MT2, except for someone who will pull the spider wave spawns away from Marli when MT1 pulls. MT1 pulls, everyone else kills the spider wave at MT2's position. IF you have enough healing, send the dps in to attack Mar'li while she is in caster form. Greater Nature Protection Potions help for this fight A LOT. When she turns into spider form, that's when things get tricky. We generally stop melee dps while she's in spider form because of the aoe webbing. When she webs everyone, she will run across the road towards the casters. EVERYONE MUST STAY IN POSITION until MT2 secures aggro. Then with a macro /yell of "RUN AWAY" spammed, everyone runs across to MT1's position. This back and forth trading of tanking and running is repeated. Eventually she will drop back to caster form, and rogues/warriors can charge back into melee her some more. Warlocks be sure to keep felhunters out the entire fight, as they can eat her life drain spell (the spell can also be shield bashed). The more healing and the more ranged dps you have, the easier this fight is. Warlocks are extremely useful in this fight because of their high ranged dps and their felhunters.
Bloodlord - This guy doesn't have much to him. When he comes down, have MT1 tank him, and MT2 offtank the raptor. Kill the raptor first. Once the raptor is dead, dps on bloodlord. If he is "watching" you, mash your escape key and stop all movement. When he starts his whirling around aoe cleave, RUN OUT OF IT. As soon as he starts it, if you run straight ahead through him, you'll be out of range by the time it goes off. The melee save the healers SO much mana if they do this one thing that often saves the fight for you. I've heard that the casters can disrupt his charge if they stay behind the barricade, but we've never had to use that to beat him. Just stay out of the AOE cleave, stop moving completely when he's watching you, and the fight is in the bag.
Edge of Madness - leaving this one for your enjoyment. 4 different bosses, you can figure out which one you are going to fight by reading the tablets and seeing which tablet says "He now dwells near the edge of madness."
Thekal - This fight is best accomplished with 4-6 warriors. Reason being: Disarm. Thekal can easily be disarmed, and if kept disarmed, the fight is almost trivial. With 4-6 warriors, you can usually keep disarm up most of the time, saving the healers a lot of mana, even though disarm will miss (a lot). But that's why we bring so many warriors. Phase 1 you have from left to right Zath, Thekal, then Lor'Khan. Zath is a rogue-type mob that will often gouge his tank (or blind) and run off to whack somebody. If you have a second warrior handy, keep him nearby to handle the gouges. Zath and Lor'Khan are also stunnable, so a Hammer of Justice might be just the ticket to limit Zath's post-gouge rampage. DPS Zath to 20%, then move to Thekal. DPS Thekal to about 10% (Thekal's 10% life = her add's 20%). There isn't much to Thekal other than keeping Disarm up. Lor'Khan is a shaman-type mob who will heal herself and cast silence on nearby casters. Make sure to keep healers a good distance away from her. DPS her down to 10%, group all 3 close together, and AOE nuke them. I recommend keeping Lor'Khan stunlocked as much as possible from 15% onward to remove the chance of an unlucky heal. Once Phase 2 hits, it's a DPS zerg. Have the MT with his back against the wall and Thekal right on top of him. There is a fine little zone where you are out of the knockback range but inside healing range for the MT. Find it and use it. Melee DPS must charge in and zerg him. Thekal doesn't have much life or armor in stage 2, so you can dps him down quickly. You should have the mana pool to outlast Thekal in stage 2, provided you kept disarm chained in stage 1 (can't remember if you can disarm in stage 2).
Fish - My favorite boss in ZG. Clear the water all around where he spawns (and the nearby crocs). Summon him, fight him in the water. Warlocks cast water breathing spell on everyone. This sounds silly, but have your casters swim to the bottom of the river, and heal/cast from the bottom looking up. There's a reason the water is so deep there. If you get the fish bosses "kick you high into the air" knockback from the bottom of the river, you might not even break the surface of the river, and sometimes avoid it entirely. :-D Don't try to hold aggro on Fish, since the knockback seems to wipe his aggro table. Just use all those warriors you kept from Thekal and bounce the tanks around. Whatever warrior has aggro is the tank. Also, warriors tell me that if they get knocked up in the air, sometimes they can use intercept to shoot right back down to him. Fighting in the water gets rid of the fall damage, and makes the fight so much fun I wish Blizzard would add an underwater raid instance.
Panther. 2 keys to success. One, get two sets of green whelp armor. Two, put them on your paladins. Put the paladins in the same group, so one has devotion aura, and the other has concentration aura. Put blessing of light and blessing of sanctuary on both (wisdom if you have that too), then start the fight. Using seal of wisdom, a paladin with decent gear will replenish his mana and be able to heal himself, while controlling all the panthers (place one pally at each kennel. If the positioning is right, the auras will overlap. Get very close to the corner posts). Ring the gong, start the fight. The pallies keep the panthers occupied, everyone else fights Arlokk. When she disappears, send one off tank warrior to each paladin, ready to pull aggro in-case she pops out of stealth on top of one of the paladins (a rare occurrence, but a wipe-causer if it happens). DPS her down, then kill the panthers. The fight is almost trivial with the whelp armor and 2 decently geared paladins. (As an aside, my paladin alt Shieldnherth performs this duty. He has NO MC gear, only ZG/Silithius gear and has +480 healing / +35 mana regen... this fight is a snap for him).
Jin-do - I cursed this fight for a long time. It was so hard, almost insurmountable it seemed, but with enough practice, it becomes easier and easier. CTRaid is a huge help for this fight, as the ZG boss mod will announce who is cursed (and send them whispers). This fight is all about doing the little things right. First, fight Jin'do roughly beside the teleport skelly pit. Not so close you aggro them, but close enough that it's only a run of a few seconds to get out of the pit and back in the fight. Secondly, have your rogues put on wounding poison. Jin'do is not immune to poisons, so wounding poison will help you IMMENSELY. Warriors, keep Mortal Strike on Jin'do to further reduce his healing. Assign 1 mage to skeleton pit AOE duty. If he has good mana regen, just have him clear the pit whenever skellies spawn. If he doesn't, have him wait until someone is teleported. For this fight, the priority is Healing Totem > Shades > MC Totems > Jin'do.
The healing totem is weak (like 1500 health), but it must be killed as soon as it dropped. Vent is KEY for announcing the arrival of a totem. We assign totem killing to EVERYONE in the raid who is not a main healer/main tank/cursed. If a healing totem drops, EVERYONE (except the ones listed above) stops what they are doing and kills the totem asap.
Shades. Shades spawn at the rate of 1 per curse. Everytime someone is cursed, a shade is born. Therefore, as long as each person who gets cursed is able to kill ONE shade, they will never get out of hand. Rogues, Warriors, Hunters, Mages, and Locks can typically kill multiple shades (my Rogue will clear the field if he's on a lucky crit streak), ensuring that the population never gets out of hand. Don't use shadow dmg or shadow based dots on the shades, as they have very high shadow resistance and it is wasteful of mana. A cursed priest can usually kill 1 shade using holy smite, a druid can moonfire/starfire spam, a paladin can switch to a 2 hander and knock one out. The fact is that even the low dps classes can kill ONE shade while they are cursed (or at least get one really low), so as long as everyone pays attention, shades should never get out of control. As an added tip, Shade dmg is shadow based... meaning a greater shadow protection potion and the priest shadow protection spell are of great assistance.
Mind Control totems. We've noticed two facts: 1) that MC totems merely MC the person who is closest to them when it's dropped, and 2) Jin'do tends to drop MC totems directly behind him. Therefore we have a paladin tail Jin'do the entire fight. He can keep wisdom judged, heal, and if he's lucky/skilled, pick up about 50-70% of the mind controls.
Finally, Jin'do himself. Provided there aren't any totems up, and you aren't cursed, you are free to wail away on Jin'do. If you have a high dps group, he should drop fairly quickly. Keep him heavily dotted, have the hunters use viper sting (if you lack dps and the fight drags out, viper sting will drain him dry, which will keep him from dropping totems). Paladins be sure to keep wisdom judged and blessing of wisdom cast on the priests, as priest mana conservation is key. Once you get used to the pace of the fight, it's fairly easy. You just have to get used to the frantic pacing. "Listening for totem drop, crap there it is, spam SS, totem dies... good... oooh, i got cursed, kill shades, kill shades, back on jin'do, another totem just dropped..." It's very fast and very fun. Rogues, you generally won't have time for 5pt eviscerates, use your built up combo points to keep SnD up and running. The dps will help, and you are constantly switching targets anyway.
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