ZA Timed event information

[Shaiden]

Please bump this post off the page at a later date, I don't mean to bump any strategy or question posts off the page ^_^;;;

I just felt that this should be mentioned.

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE, OR WILL BE ATTEMPTING THE ZA TIMED LOOT EVENTS.

Eagle = +10
Bear = +15
Dragonhawk/Lynx = +0

That's right, you get your beginning time, then you only gain the above amounts of time based on which boss you kill. The timed event is theorized NOT to go past the four animal bosses.

This means that you will have 45 minutes TOTAL to kill off all four animal bosses. This has been noted as a "designer choice", yet many T6 BT clearing guilds are having massive issues clearing out 3/4 bosses.

For those attempting ZA, I would highly reccomend the following orders.

Eagle --> Bear --> lynx/dragonhawk (based on level of experience with dragonhawk)

The eagle and bear have the least amount of trash (The bear having slightly fewer due to the "gauntlet" event. They also grant the largest addition in time, so it makes sense to do one then the other. In this case, I advocate the eagle first because his trash, and the boss himself has less of a chance of "insta" gibbing raid members, it's long and enduring, but it isn't rediculous damage, and it isn't reliant on taunts not being resisted.

Lynx and dragonhawk have the same general dynamic. Lynx technically has more trash, but dragon hawk has a "scout gauntlet". Once you're familiar with the dragonhawk trash, it would make more sense to head to him next. But on the other hand (And this is just based on my personal experience), the dragonhawk boss himself has a higher chance of wiping the raid due to the nature of the fight (This might be mitigated via a prot pally).

Considering the difficulty of the instance, if the timer event is going to be cleared, it looks like our groups are going to have to be fairly over-geared, and suffer from roughly NO downtime. So I expect this will be something of a trial of tenacity. :)

(To those only interested in the bear mount, it typically drops on chest 2 or 3 of the timed event :P)

Anyway, I know it's a long way off to look for regarding most groups out there (my own included), but I felt this information should be out there "NOW" so we have something to plan for!

Talk to you all later!
~Shaiden


P.S.
For those of you wondering where I got this information, there is a debate currently in the Dungeons and Raids section of the US WoW forums including a few members of Elitist Jerks.
LINK (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2969688721&sid=1)

[veneretio]

I think the reason T6 geared guilds are having issues with the timed event is because gear isn't a massive factor in ZA especially regarding the timed event. It's about pace and playing nearly perfect. It doesn't matter how strong your gear is if you don't know how to pull the trash mobs quickly.

It's still early. It's like the 45 min strat run. Some pick up it quickly others it takes a while to learn. Sure it certainly helps to have better than full Kara gear in doing it, but it's more about knowing how to execute the pulls than being able to do Infinite + 1 dps.

[Ruminator]

Is anyone here getting all 4 chests?

We've been able to get the first 2 chests pretty reliably. Our timeline looks something like this:

Start (20 mins) - clearing trash
(~13 mins) - engage bear boss
(~6 mins + 15) - bear boss dies, haul ass to eagle boss
(~19 mins) - start clearing to eagle boss
(~13 mins) - engage eagle boss
(~6 mins + 10) - eagle boss dies

So at this point, the most time we've had left is 16 mins, and we simply can't make it to either of the other 2 bosses fast enough. We clear pretty quickly, but with 5 or so minutes left when we reach either boss, we don't have the dps to kill them before the timer is done.

Any tips?

(edit: I guess it's probably not helping that we don't really have any 25 player gear on our members lol)

[Nuberino]

Start (20 mins) - clearing trash
(~13 mins) - engage bear boss I am impressed, in basically full kara gear (through Gruuls) for the entire group we reach the bear boss with about 8mins to go. What is your group make up?

[brain9h]

We are able to get 2 chests with 5 minutes left. Our guild is 3/4 TK, 5/6 SSC.

Our main limiting factor is dps. I've made a spreadsheet where I calculated our party dps versus boss/thrash HP and you need pretty high values (1300+ dps) AVERAGE dps to succeed the 4 chest run.

Getting your healers to do damage and having a dps-based offtank seems to helps a lot.

Also helps to leave loot behind while the clock is running, you can safely loot later.

[Ruminator]

We've been skipping the chests until we're off the timer. I didn't realize you could bring people in after the kills, though - I'll keep that in mind next time!

Generally we have this makeup:

War (me, MT)
Pal (prot, OT)

enh shm
rog
lok
lok or hun
mag

healer
healer
healer

I have a feeling we are at the point we can get through the avatars (at least all but lynx) with only 2 healers now, but we haven't tried it yet. That would probably buy us a couple of minutes overall. Ok, I guess we're more or less on the right track to get a 3rd chest - we just have to be FASTER!

I guess one big problem for us is that we tend to have to reset the dhawk boss a couple of times every time we do him because someone dies a stupid death early, so we've been hesitant to go for him third. Generally, we don't wipe to the lynx, but clearing to it definitely takes longer than a flawless clear to dhawk.

I've heard rumors of people rezzing up to the dhawk platform, also. We've experimented with it a little, but I'm still not convinced it would be any faster than just doing a good job clearing up to him.

As for clearing to the lynx, I'm not sure if we can go a whole lot faster... we've tried going over the waterfall from eagle or through the center, and skipping a couple of packs where we can. That seems to save a little time.

[Nuberino]

Out of curiousity, where does that work effectively... that would be worth it for a T4 guild to push to a second or even third chest loot.

[Ruminator]

Nice! We'll check out the invis pot thing!

[Nuberino]

Rather, changing my question, Invis pots wouldn't seem to help for bear and eagle since you have to run through the script.

Which pull would be most advantageous to skip for dragonhawk or lynx (I am thinking the second to last pull to dragonhawk would be nice as that can be a pain to pull with 2 scouts pathing next to you).

[Nuberino]

Going to have to time that... wonder if you could make it past those pulls in 18 seconds... that would be phenominal.

[Arrivan]

18 seconds wouldn't be long enough to skip all of the stealthed lynx packs. You could probably skip a few groups though. It depends on how quickly you could move.