Zul'Aman != Hell?

Well as I mentioned, last night I led a raid into Zul'Aman. I've had something of a checkered history with ZA. We'd gone into it expecting something that was the next stage up from Kara, that is to say something that people in full Kara gear could go and have a chance to defeat. What we found was an instance more tuned around being challenging to a group of people with a lot of the Tier 5 content under their belts.

We dutifully retreated, and apart from the occasional run at the first two bosses, we ignored it in favor of farming Karazhan/Heroics for badge gear on our offnights.

After last weekend's Kara run, I decided to give Zul'Aman another shot. Kara now offerred no new drops for Ulu and running the place was dull as hell. It was frankly embarrasing to me that we were making solid progress in Serpentshrine, but we couldn't scrape up ten decently-geared people people to try ZA.

So I made a post on our forums stating my case. I asked for SSC-level volunteers in the following makeup:

1 Main Tank - Ulushnar
1 Offtank/DPSer - We ended up getting a Feral Druid here
1 Melee DPS - A Rogue came along
3 Healers - We got a Priest, Resto Druid and Paladin
3 Ranged DPS - A Beastmastery Hunter, Shadow Priest and Mage
1 Random DPS (melee or ranged) - Got a Warlock

I regretted doing this almost immediately. I don't enjoy raid leading, but I usually end up doing it because I don't seem to be able to keep my gob shut on Ventrilo. I didn't especially enjoy ZA, but I saw the fact that the bosses hadn't yet been mastered by CD as a basic affront. Since no-one else was willing to be cutthroat enough to make it work, I was gonna have to!

The end result was that in three hours we managed to get all four Animal bosses down (including CD-first kills of the Dragonhawk and Lynx bosses), and my love of the instance was reignited.

First boss we tried was the Bear boss, the easiest one in the instance. We had one wipe on the trash due to the healers being confused about their assignments (the average CDer possessing as much individual initiative as a sponge, they need to be told which things to heal). That wipe cost us the timer for the timed event, but the Bear Boss himself didn't prove to be a problem.

Next was the Eagle. The AoE gauntlet proved to be no problem with Ulu leading the way, and the Eagle went down smoothly with only one hiccup when somehow Ulu managed to die at 30%. The Druid offtank managed to react quickly and tanked him for the last 30%.

After that we went for the Dragonhawk boss. After getting through the deeply annoying trash packs, we faced the boss, and managed to one-shot him. This was especially significant since the Dragonhawk has been the single-most awkward fight that CD's faced to date.

The Lynx was up next, and after one wipe caused by the offtank's poor positioning, we managed to take him down in a fight that is best described as a frenzied DPS race.

We pushed on and made 4-5 attempts on the penultimate boss, Hexlord Malcross, but he proved too tough for us. We called it a night after three hours in there, two fresh boss kills and general high spirits.

Thinking back to the reasons I disliked ZA before tonight, I realised it came down to the group compostion. I'd spent too many nights in that place with suboptimal groups or undergeared characters. Too many people look at ZA with it's 10-man raid cap and 3-day reset as casual content and treat it as such. At CD's current gear level, we're only going to beat it with a hand-picked and well-geared group.

I'm going back on Sunday afternoon for a two hour clear of the Animal bosses, before doing some serious Hexlord training on Monday. I'm not giving up until Zul'jin's dead.