Classic Raider - Zul'Gurub Part 1

First I have to say wow, great job WOW. This instance was a blast, of course I am a big fan of Zul'Farrak which I used to run quite often for the fun of it and a little gold making. This instance is the first Raid level instance I am attempting to solo, and just the second time I've been in the instance. Yes I have run this one before, but it was with a group of guild mates and they had already cleared much of the instance before I go there, so I was completely lost in this large and crazy instance and while I did get the achievement the first time I did not down all the bosses nor see most of the content. What I did get to do the first time was get the quest to obtain the Mudskunk Lure used to summon Gahz'ranka. So I entered the quest ready to gain one of two achievements Deadliest Catch, seeing as how I already acquired Zul'Gurub on my previous run. Much to my surprise there were two more achievements I could potentially get on my run, the Swift Razzashi Raptor and Swift Zulian Tiger achievements for the two mounts that have the potential to drop from two of the bosses inside. So with fingers crossed I entered the portal ready for anything I might have to face...or so I thought.


The first time I entered Zul'Gurub alone had nothing to do with running it Solo, it was simply to try and get the Deadliest Catch achievement after my goup finished the instance. At that time I was a cocky young Death Knight thinking that since I was 80 I could take on anything. I proceeded to run through the instance aggro'ing mobs and ignoring them. I could just handle them all at once when I got to where I was going, or so I thought. Thus was my first lesson, and not my last, in how to much confidence can cause you to die. Yup I got my a$$ kicked by all those mobs and realized I wasn't as tough as I thought I was. But it was a good lesson learned the hard way and due to be learned again.

So this time I was more prepared. I had completed Heroic Underbog, become more familiar with the new rotation that came along with my blood spec and I had already learned a harsh lesson from this instance. I also decided to try using my DPS gear instead of my tank gear in hopes that I would be able to down the bosses quicker and the armor I lost wouldn't matter to much in the lower level instances. I was good to go. I entered the portal to the instance and started on my first group of trash. Dead, dead, dead, first group down on to the next, and again, and again. I kept grinding away feeling overpowerful and full of blood lust. These poor fools didn't stand a chance. And then I came across my first boss encounter, feeling confident but still remembering my overconfidence caused problems for me before I approached High Priest Venoxis cautiously followed my rotation kept an eye on my health and finished him off easily.

Then the next boss, and the next, I was a machine I was careful on my mob pulls but every so often I pulled more then intended, with no problem. I never went below half my health on trash, and rarely below 3/4 health. If I went below half I would put my Oh Crap sequence to use and quickly jump back up to full health. I summoned Ghaz'ranka, completed the achievement, mowed him down, moved on. I was a little worried when I arrived upon High Priestess Arlokk but I handled her with no problems at all. I continued through the raid running what I thought was all the content, remember I had only been here once before and then with a group that had cleared most of the content already.

Finally I arrived at Hakkar, having had no issues before I was confident I would clean him up easily as well. I started the fight, which at the begining of he has this little speech he gives, for some reason I still don't know if it was bugged but after a short time into the figth Hakkar would reset, regain all his health, and start his speech over again. Not that it made much difference, his reset that is, because I was getting my ass kicked. I'm not sure which ability he was using but I was assuming mind control (although I read some posts that state he doesn't use that when your alone) because he would take control of me and start randomly casting spells/abilities, one post I read stated that this cause him to come out of combat with Hakkar and reset him. I was alone in the instance so I didn't think this would matter but I'm wondering if it was because I still had someone in my raid group, not in the instance but still showing up on the raid info page. Either way he made short work of me and so I went to do some research to figure out how to beat him. During my research, which is my way of saying I went to Wowhead and read up on the instance and the bosses, I found out that I didn't kill all the High Priests and this give Hakkar more abilities and health. Now my goal is to run these instances like any group would, that is progress through the trash, clear the bosses, and then finish off the last boss so I was intent on going back through and finishing the rest.

I had two other High Priests to kill in order to tackle Hakkar again. The first one was the bat one (can’t remember their names anymore) and then the tiger. The bat one was easy but again, I was over confident, took on to many trash mobs at once and died. No big deal, I should be able to handle all these guys at once but I’ll chalk to up to little experience and skill with this spec as well as no tank gear. After the wipe I went back, cleared the trash killed the boss. No problem, on to the tiger boss.

After spending some time trying to figure out where he was I entered his area, cleared trash and got ready to take him on. Now I hadn’t read up on this fight before hand but I noticed that he had two adds present with him. I figured no problem I would ignore them and just down the boss. So I pulled the boss and started the fight. After a short while I noticed that after getting the boss lower and lower in hp he suddenly would jump up again. I realized one of the adds with him must be a healer, so after paying a little closer attention to them I figured out which one it as and decided to kill them first. I targeted the healer, killed him and went back to the boss. Much to my surprise a short time later the healer was resurrected. Damn I thought, have to kill the other add first. So I went back to killing the healer, switched over to the other add to kill him and wasn’t able to kill him fast enough before the resurrection. OK I thought I’ll kill the add that keeps resurrecting the healer then the healer then the boss. Well that doesn’t work either. I kill the second add, move on to the healer who then resurrects the previous add. So at this point I run out of his area and go to Wowhead to read up on how to kill this guy. Turns out you have to kill all three within a tight timeframe (I believe about 15 seconds). OK I think no problem I’ll just get all of them low and then finish them off. So I go back and start again this time intent on killing them all quickly. End result was I spent 30 minutes trying to kill these three guys. No matter what I did I just could not get them down quick enough. I will say I am very impressed with the spec I am using, for 30 minutes I never had a time where I was seriously worried about dying. Just kept grinding away trying to get these guys to fall down together. After spending so much time on them I ran out of their area again and called it a night.

When I go back again I have a new strategy. This time I will focus on one of the three, not spread my diseases around so they don’t get killed by my DoT’s and get each one real low on health. Then it’s all out DoT’s and mass killing. I also think I figured out my problem with Hakkar, thanks to a friendly poster at Wowhead. Turns out it is probably my blood worms that are causing it to reset, I’m going to respect, getting rid of bloodworms and probably taking Death Rune Mastery. I didn’t take that before because I didn’t expect to have a need for the death runes, figured I would be using death strikes more often than not. However after a few runs I realize there are times I want more DPS then health regen and those death runes could be used for more Heart Strikes. I’ll try it out and let you know how I fare.