Kashmir


I've always had a checkered history when it comes to shields in WoW. Even going way back to the original Russta on Anetheron, I had to run Shadowfang Keep way too many times to get Commanders Crest. Then, in an infamous act which still gets brought up today, I "ninja looted" the Imperial Qiraji Armament from Satura for Blessed Qiraji Bulwark in my first ever raid just a few hours after hitting 60.

Moving onto The Burning Crusade, I guess I got lucky with Shield of Impenetrable Darkness dropping pretty quickly from Nightbane. The next upgrade to that, Ondori Legacy Defender, dropped on our tenth Gruul kill and even that was memorable to me because Bert had it on master looter and when he told me it dropped, I didn't believe him. Even though I'm pretty sure I was the only one that ever gave the fact that I said something untoward more than a moments thought, I still kinda feel embaressed about saying anything remotely insulting.

That's pretty much where the shields stopped for a long time. I used that beautiful looking shield through all of Serpentshrine Cavern, Tempest Keep, Hyjal and Black Temple and even blessed it with an ironic sorbriquet. Over the span of just under six months, Vashj, Kael'thas, Archimonde and Illidan all took the full force of Ondori until a shield finally dropped for me to be able to upgrade to. The one Kaz'rogal's Hardened Heart we got in seventeen kills I simply couldn't justify taking over Inffest, who was still using season two arena shield at the time. I caught some flak in the hypocrisy vein for it and it was two months between Heart and Bulwark but it's still a decision I'm glad I made and have never once regretted.

The only tanking equipment I'm missing now is Band of the Abyssal Lord, which isn't a big deal, and Myrmidon's Treads, which is. It's kinda ridiculous that in eighteen kills we still haven't seen a single pair. That we have to raid five days a week for four months in Black Temple to keep getting shafted by the random number generator when Joe Casual can spend two hours a week losing ten games in arena to pick the item he wants after a month is really fucking backward. But that's another argument for another day. I've finished my tier 6 and got my exalted Hyjal ring (even leveled Enchanting just to put +4 stats on it) which were big goals of mine. Now I aim to just relax and enjoy what little raiding we do until Blizzard sees fit to release Sunwell.



I had for the longest time intended to just do Zul'aman with the same exact people I did Karazhan with for many months. For whatever reasons, that didn't happen. When I sat down with my illuminous yellow Post-it and blue ball point pen, I fleshed out a balanced group of ten from within the guild that would greatly entertain me with good chemistry on Ventrilo. I'm very happy with the group I put together. They're all exceptional and reliable players and they make it fun for me everytime we go. Having Darm, QQbits and myself in a room together is a pretty solid guarantee of hilarity if I do say so myself. I don't need any equipment from the place really, I'm just doing it for fun so when it ceases to be that, I'll step away.

There's not really much to say about Nalorakk. One person tanks the Human form that does bleed effects, one person tanks the Bear form that multiplies the damage those bleed effects do tenfold. It's a simple yet ingenious concept for a fight, one that doesn't take a whole lot of explaining. I remember when we did him on the PTR and we kept getting Taunt resists, which is pretty much a wipe. He's single handedly the reason that all taunt's were changed from spell hit to melee hit which is great because even with zero of each, it's gone from a 16% chance to resist to 9%. I'm still not really sure how it kept that archaic mechanic for so long but at least it's changed now. I still haven't checked if you can taunt while silenced now though.



Akil'zon was the only other boss we managed to do on the abomination of a server that is known as the PTR. Unless we magically got better at it, it seems like they made his electrical storm a lot more forgiving. I seem to remember taking a phenomenal amount of damage when running from him to the designated cloud back then but not it seems negligible. The only problem I have with this fight is dealing with the fucking eagles. They're incredible annoying and impossible to traditionally DPS. Even with the two Warlocks in my group, SoC and DoT's don't really get rid of them sufficiently. I guess it's a simple enough fight to not really complain though and boy does that storm look pretty.



I think Jan'alai is an incredibly fun boss, probably up there with Thaddius.

In this game of full out DPS on anything and everything, the key here is to focus it perfectly in the correct area. Kill one hatcher, let the other pop a certain amount of eggs, kill him, kill birds and repeat that while being sure not to push him over 35% until you know you're not gonna get overrun and sodomised. From the few times we're killed him, it seems as though you wanna have pushed him into enrage just after all the birds are dead, which is a pretty steep DPS requirement for what I feel Zul'aman is aimed at. I'd be interested to see how groups wearing primarily Karazhan gear deal with all aspects of this fight. To us, it feels as easy as the other bosses but I can imagine it's a decent jump in difficulty when you aren't wearing tier 6.

His fire bombs still enamor me when he throws them out. It's such a treat for the senses.

A special mention must go to his trash here, most notably Amani'shi Scouts. We haven't successfully gotten to the point where we're rushing through it yet on the timer due to some pretty fucking epic fails by us but I have no doubt that these will be the biggest cockblock for all attempting it. We've tested several methods for killing and controlling them and I think we have it down now, however, that doesn't stop the massive gayness that is their respawning. How fair is it that you're fighting a four pull and, while in combat, a Scout spawns in the hut behind you and runs to a drum ten feet away from him before you can react? Yeah, as shitty as it is, sure, have them spawn and despawn between huts but in combat? Fuck that, it's not fair.



Incorperating Mother Shahraz, Fathom-Lord Karathress and some random pet, this guy is pretty easy. I still haven't figured out what's going on with his HP when the Spirit of the Lynx splits out but there's not really much to it. The totems taking forever to die brings me back to all the shit we had with our Rogues not wanting to waste combo points on Spitfire Totems.

The most interesting thing about this fight is not the fight itself, but the loot. While we were taking a short break before moving onto Malacrass, QQbits decided to tab out and look up the stats of a ring he wanted. Upon doing so, he noticed a marked down comment on Wowhead that said there was an urn inside of Halazzi's room that you can loot if you angle the camera correctly. When everyone was back, we ran there to see if it was true and, sure enough, there inside the jar was a chest containing... an Amani War Bear! We told the other group about it and, when they tried it, they got a mount too which was pretty suspicious. I told Chilicheese but his group got Signet of Primal Wrath. I asked him this morning if Halazzi was the third boss he'd killed and he said that it was. So, upon some discussion on EJ, the forth chest has 100% drop rate on Amani War Bear. Seeing as you don't have to try or put any effort in to get one chest, if you make sure Halazzi is the last boss you kill, you'll get a free mount every three days until they fix it. Then, you'll have to actually try.



I love this guy, not least because he drops the only item I truly want in Zul'aman (Tiny Voodoo Mask). To me, the concept of having a mob pick someone and use their class abilities against the raid is amazing. It adds such a fun, random element to the fight that'll never get old as long as we're doing this. The worst one we've experienced is definitly Paladin. Avenging Wrath and Consecration for 2.5k a tick is brutal. The adds are pretty much a non-issue and we keep one shackled, one banished and kill the other two. I think they just wanted another Moroes in here.

The one aspect of Malacrass I feel that would be pretty tough is his shadow volley but like so many other fights in WoW, we're able to negate that with our game destroying Shadow Resist BT gear.



Zul'jin is pretty easy for being the last boss. I'd be amazed at any guild able to get through the first five bosses and being unable to kill him. Still, I guess retard attrition during phase three could negate previous luck.

Phase one: Pretty straight forward. The only nasty thing he does is a high damage Whirlwind but considering there's very little other damage going on, it's hard to complain even if it does make topping off to remove the grievous wound type debuff more work.

I lol'd at being unable to disarm him.

Phase two: Starts hitting harder, but, again, straight forward tank and spank. The paralysis debuff is easily taken care of by two or three single dispels then a mass one on the rest of the raid.

This is the best phase of any fight ever due to the amount of Terry Schiavo jokes we can squeeze out in the 20% it lasts.

Phase three: Everyone, including myself, swears bloody murder at this phase but it's really not that bad if you stick to the Archimonde mentality of "live first, DPS second". After instilling that into peoples minds we didn't have a single death the last time we killed him. Just don't get cornered... not rocket science. The 1250 damage penalty for spellcasting is really, really shitty though.

Fun fact - you can use the tornados to knock yourself out of the arena at which point you can kite it around till he's almost at 40% and then use it to knock yourself back in. Do this if you're a worthless caster.

Phase four: Needs Sweeping Strikes for epic lulz. This phase is stupid. It's just nothing. We were using all manner of threat switches to put the debuff on me and he dropped in no time.

Phase five: I read that the flame debuff thing that stacks up on people acts as a sort of enrage timer in that it will stack to a point where the Heaven's Punisher will just one shot you. That made perfect sense until we were able to have the stacks reset without even trying.