A Guide to successful ZA

Tired of getting saved to lousy ZA who can down 2 bosses without getting two chests and leaving you with a hefty repair bill? Stop blaming luck and others, and take matter into your own hands...

A little about myself, i have started ZA as a prot warrior offtank in half blue/half Kara and reputation epics. I have been invited to pugs as an offtank and i remember being booted as an undergeared scrub, which was partly true. That was the moment when i realized ZA was my new challenge, and i started to work towards the goal, which at the time was full clear of ZA.

Now my group can do a 4 chest run without a single BT/MH epic in our raid, and i myself have never stepped into any 25 man besides Gruuls.

So i started to ask myself, what is the reason of failire of ZA raids that i was a part of. Was the reason my skill or gear? I was unsure about skill, but i gotten all the gear i could in the situation that i was, badge epics, most of Kara pieces, and still kept the reputation epics. So one problem was sorta taken care of.

Then i proceeded to learn fights, either by watching videos, reading guides or participating in wiping pugs.

Then, after i was pretty positive that the reason for failure was not me, i started to create my own ZA group.

A little bit about creating and leading a raid as a tank. I find it very convenient that i am a prot warrior leading a raid, because i can take many factors in my own hands, such as pace of pulling, respecting my healers by constantly debuffing mobs and using elixirs and respecting my dps by having enough expertise and hit rating for them not to die. I am sorry, but a tank with +12 stam gems in all his gem slot and no +hit rating or expertise who is not keeping demo shout or tclap on the boss is not respecting nor his healers nor his dps. So in other words, as a tank, you always have more control than any1 in the raid or group over the situation, that is why is it easier for tanks to lead raids.

In addition to that, you have control over raid's class composition and, most importantly, who you invite to raid.

Of course, there is no way to immediately tell a skilled person from a non-skilled one, but good old trial and error did its magic. I started inviting people to ZA who had experience in the first 1 or 2 bosses with suitable gear, as in, at most 4 blues, and rest are epics. Of course had to compromise to fill out hard spots such as druid/paladin offtank or spriest in the interest of the whole raid. I made no distinction between guild members or pugs, because to be honest, a guidlie is not better than a pug by default, for instance in my regular ZA run, i have only one regular person from the guild, so be careful inviting people to your raid just based on the fact that they are from your guild, however, give a chance to every1 to show themselves.

I decided to run ZA at a certain time, so people who came to one run would get used to the regular schedule. People like predictability, so make the raid at a certain time and stick to schedule.

First two-three raids were a disaster from my perspective, each of 3 bosses(Bear, Eagle, Lynx) took 2-3 tries, and trash pulls were far from being perfect. Dragonhawk requires a different level of skill from the raid, and it was usually a raid stopper, though we managed to kill him once. However, i looked at the people i played with, who keeps whining, who keeps arguing for loot, who leaves after 2-3 wipes, who goes afk frequently. All these most likely are a burden to a successful ZA raid, because wiping multiple times really tests a person's patience and personality. After all, wipes is where most learning takes place, so embrace it as a part of the gaming process. And then there are those few people in the raid, who either quietly try the boss, attempt after attempt, or looks for new strategies on the boss, suggests, experiments. Those are the gems you always want in your raid, regardless of their class.

So after 4-5 ZA raids, there are about 7 regular people who have proven their worth and are eager and capable of clearing the whole place and show up at the set time. Mind you, mostly they are people from different guilds united to reach a common goal. Suddenly, when you have about 7 capable, people in your raid, clearing ZA becomes a non issue, so in case you were wiping on Dhawk previous raid, you will probably one shot Hexlord and Zuljin the next week, and it all will go uphill, provided your skeleton crew stays.

Also, as a raid leader, take into account suggestions of your raidmates, be considerate about loot, kindly refuse to people if they ask to get in raid(but you are full) and never kick people from the raid, even if they are horrible. I make a rule for myself, if some1 gets into my raid by my invite, then the only way for them to leave is to it themselves. I will ask certain people to leave, but i wont kick them if they refuse. In addition, make accomodation priority for your regular raid attendees over newcomes, but dont doubt new people before giving them a try.

Pretty soon, the rumor will spread, and you wont have enough room for willing people to join your successful ZA raid.

In case you havent read all this, here is a summary:
Be consistent and predictable, be fair to all, respect your raid members, give players chance to show themselves, be persistent and umm.... watch for scouts =).