Beta 5 Man Instances: Zul'Drak (Major Spoilers)
Zul'Drak is a zone, not a set of instances. The first zone, Drak'Tharon Keep, is technically actually in the Grizzly Foothills zone. However, since it clearly is themed around Zul'Drak, and the story behind you even venturing into the instance revolves around Zul'Drak, I am going to lump it into the Zul'Drak grouping for the purposes of this blog.
As usual, we did this with just a resto druid, a rogue, and myself - a protection warrior.
Drak'Tharon Keep (74-76): This instance is unsurprisingly very trollish. It feels like a mix of ZA and ZG. A lot of things in both the instances in this blog entry will feel very ZG inspired to you.
The first boss wasn't very exciting. The only thing to really even note is that adds will run at you, and then they die, the boss will use the bodies to cast corpse explosion. So moving him away from corpses is a logical idea.
The second boss reminded me very slightly of the M'uru encounter. He starts off immune to damage with some pillars protecting him similar to Lady Vashj. Waves of adds will constantly come down the stairs. Very fun little encounter that lets you play with Shockwave quite nicely.
Every once in a while a Crystal Handler will spawn and attack. When it dies, one of the pillars is deactivated. After all the pillars are down, the boss becomes active. He isn't very interesting so I won't go into details about him.
The third boss, King Dred, has a pretty sweet name. He is a giant dinosaur, which is also pretty sweet. I predict this boss will be quite interesting with subpar healers.
He does a bellowing roar type fear, which you can stance dance easily enough. He also applies a debuff that reduces your armor by 75%. He does some bleed effect which stays on you until you get to 100% health like the boss in Slave Pens. He also has an ability that increases damage you take from bleeds. It all synergizes so if your healer gets feared or just isn't up to snuff, he can hurt real bad.
The final boss has a mechanic that I haven't seen before. If you want to be surprised by something new and unique, you probably shouldn't read this!
The boss will constantly melt everyone's flesh, turning you all into skeletons. While you're a skeleton, you get certain abilities and cannot use your normal ones. The interesting thing is that healers can't heal like this. The downside is that... well... there isn't any healing required.
It's a really cool mechanic but it also makes the actual fight a complete joke. It's virtually impossible to die in this fight.
Overall this was a pretty quick instance without much unique appeal besides the last boss, but it's not bad.
Gun'drak (76-78): Another very trollish instance. This one has two entrances. You can zone in on either side of the instance, so you can start with either of the two periphery bosses. The entrances reminded me of BFD, with a long drop down to water and a spiral ramp leading back up.
We started with the snake boss. He isn't very interesting. However, he makes small snakes fall from the roof and attack the party. They are quite weak... but they aggro the first pack of elites from the next room! I couldn't understand why, the pack isn't even close to the boss room. But after two wipes from the elites joining the fun, we decided to just clear half of the next room before engaging the boss.
The next boss we did starts with a bunch of little stone guys around him. When you engage him, the stone adds merge with him. During the fight the boss will become immune and summon a stone add that you kill before getting back on the boss. Pretty boring.
The third boss was so uninteresting that I don't remember anything about him except that he turned into a wooly mammoth or something during the fight, which was pretty surprising at the time.
The final boss was also boring. He throws spears around and has some ability that makes a little white rhino charge a person and stun them, but it instantly disappears so you don't even fight it.
This instance was unspectacular to me. It wasn't a bad instance, it just had nothing unique that stands out in my memory. The coolest part of the whole place was the little altars that you use when you kill a boss, which causes a beam of light to burn a rope and make a giant animal head land in a hole in some gearwork. After all the altars are used, it rotates a bridge to the rhino boss.
Maybe I'm just sick of troll instances.
As usual, we did this with just a resto druid, a rogue, and myself - a protection warrior.
Drak'Tharon Keep (74-76): This instance is unsurprisingly very trollish. It feels like a mix of ZA and ZG. A lot of things in both the instances in this blog entry will feel very ZG inspired to you.
The first boss wasn't very exciting. The only thing to really even note is that adds will run at you, and then they die, the boss will use the bodies to cast corpse explosion. So moving him away from corpses is a logical idea.
The second boss reminded me very slightly of the M'uru encounter. He starts off immune to damage with some pillars protecting him similar to Lady Vashj. Waves of adds will constantly come down the stairs. Very fun little encounter that lets you play with Shockwave quite nicely.
Every once in a while a Crystal Handler will spawn and attack. When it dies, one of the pillars is deactivated. After all the pillars are down, the boss becomes active. He isn't very interesting so I won't go into details about him.
The third boss, King Dred, has a pretty sweet name. He is a giant dinosaur, which is also pretty sweet. I predict this boss will be quite interesting with subpar healers.
He does a bellowing roar type fear, which you can stance dance easily enough. He also applies a debuff that reduces your armor by 75%. He does some bleed effect which stays on you until you get to 100% health like the boss in Slave Pens. He also has an ability that increases damage you take from bleeds. It all synergizes so if your healer gets feared or just isn't up to snuff, he can hurt real bad.
The final boss has a mechanic that I haven't seen before. If you want to be surprised by something new and unique, you probably shouldn't read this!
The boss will constantly melt everyone's flesh, turning you all into skeletons. While you're a skeleton, you get certain abilities and cannot use your normal ones. The interesting thing is that healers can't heal like this. The downside is that... well... there isn't any healing required.
It's a really cool mechanic but it also makes the actual fight a complete joke. It's virtually impossible to die in this fight.
Overall this was a pretty quick instance without much unique appeal besides the last boss, but it's not bad.
Gun'drak (76-78): Another very trollish instance. This one has two entrances. You can zone in on either side of the instance, so you can start with either of the two periphery bosses. The entrances reminded me of BFD, with a long drop down to water and a spiral ramp leading back up.
We started with the snake boss. He isn't very interesting. However, he makes small snakes fall from the roof and attack the party. They are quite weak... but they aggro the first pack of elites from the next room! I couldn't understand why, the pack isn't even close to the boss room. But after two wipes from the elites joining the fun, we decided to just clear half of the next room before engaging the boss.
The next boss we did starts with a bunch of little stone guys around him. When you engage him, the stone adds merge with him. During the fight the boss will become immune and summon a stone add that you kill before getting back on the boss. Pretty boring.
The third boss was so uninteresting that I don't remember anything about him except that he turned into a wooly mammoth or something during the fight, which was pretty surprising at the time.
The final boss was also boring. He throws spears around and has some ability that makes a little white rhino charge a person and stun them, but it instantly disappears so you don't even fight it.
This instance was unspectacular to me. It wasn't a bad instance, it just had nothing unique that stands out in my memory. The coolest part of the whole place was the little altars that you use when you kill a boss, which causes a beam of light to burn a rope and make a giant animal head land in a hole in some gearwork. After all the altars are used, it rotates a bridge to the rhino boss.
Maybe I'm just sick of troll instances.
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