The last three weeks have been the pinnacle of my World of Warcraft experience to date. Amazingly, our guild has downed the end bosses of both Zul’Aman and Serpentshrine Cavern. Both of these conquests I never thought possible (too hard, too much coordination, not well enough geared, not enough patience) – just a whole raft of reasons really, so I’m ecstatic at our progress. It’s no different to a football team going up against last season’s premiers; they beat you again and again, and pretty soon a certain percentage of your team get down in the mouth about it, so a victory or two boosts everyone’s confidence.
Lady Vashj (Serpentshrine Cavern)
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I think it was our 4th entire night of Lady Vashj attempts and we finally got the 25 man team balence right – more ranged equals good. People got better and better at spotting the tainted elementals and looting the cores. In particular, Tedebear was fantastic at standing next to the generators and closing them down. I wish I had recorded the audio of our conquest because communication was frantic and the roar after MethosNZ hit shield wall, last stand and finally received a Lay of Hands, with Vashj on 1% and only 1 tank, 2 healers and 6 dps alive and she dropped was incredible. People were screaming with pleasure. It was the proudest moment of my WoW career without question.
Hex Lord Malacrass (Zul’Aman)
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As for Zul’Aman, being only 10 man, it’s been a bit easier to organise runs, and we’ve had a blast now that we have better knowledge of the various fights in there and are better geared. Hex Lord Malacrass is enormously challenging for both healers and for the tank, being described as a “Moroes on steroids”-type event. I think he took us 3 or 4 dedicated days of attempts also, but eventually, we learned to recognise the different event syphons and prepared for them beforehand. I really love this fight now, but I would hate to be a healer in it.
Zul’Jin (Zul’Aman)
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Zul’jin, the final boss in Zul’Aman was surprisingly easy to deal with in comparison. He has 5 phases and the 3rd is an excrutiating tornado-phase where he does 1250 damage to anyone casting a spell (including healers), and the whole while you have tornadoes chasing you around. So melee dps are kings here. I wasn’t there for our first guild kill, but when I did give it a go the following week, we took 4 healers including 2 restoration druids in, and did it easily.