A few days before my WoW break, I partook in what was my second Burning Crusade instance. As a die-hard solo player, I'm hoping you will forgive me for waiting such a long time until I could solo these dungeons. As ever, I brought my Hunter.
There isn't much to say here unfortunately. For those of you who haven't been here before, the dungeon is linear and once you defeat the final boss, a portcullis opens that takes you back towards the entrance. The interior isn't very impressive so if you're going there strictly for sightseeing, you might be disappointed.
I found the mobs to be slightly harder than Hellfire Ramparts but most people are saying the opposite so I'm assuming that my impression came from the fact that I was more reckless (being 80 and all) and AOE'ed large groups of mobs. At one point my pet was down to about 50% and I caught a few hits too due to excessive aggro. In any case, if you're 80, there's nothing to worry about.
Gold-wise, I made roughly about 100G, including disenchants. I wasn't going there for the gold though, or else I might have tried taking some readers' advice and offered my services as a dungeon runner to interested people.
I've you are planning to visit this dungeon for the first time, make sure to grab 2 quests from Honor Hold (or Thrallmar if Horde):
The Blood is Life can be grabbed right away after delivering a letter.
Heart of Rage is a followup to Weaken the Ramparts. For efficiency sake I would advise you to finish Ramparts first, so you can get access to this quest.
Time-wise, it will take you a little bit longer than Ramparts, depending how thorough you are. If you want to kill and loot everything, it will obviously take longer. In fact that's what bothers me about these old instances: it takes me longer to loot all the bodies than it takes to kill them.
As is the norm these days, I was also confronted by the dreaded "Additional instances cannot be launched, please again later" message. What seemed to work for me was to attempt to enter the instance repeatedly back and forth until it let me in. I did that for a minute perhaps so I guess persistence pays.
There you have it: another entry-level Burning Crusade dungeon that is very easy to solo by most (if not all) level 80 classes and specs. If you haven't done it yet, go ahead and do it!
P.S. I haven't attempted it in heroic and will pass on that for now. Perhaps at level 90.
16 comments:
I tried to go do some ZG for rep (easily soloable at 80, by the way, though I didn't bother attempting bosses since they've always seemed pretty hard when running the place with two of us) and got 'Additional instances cannot be launched' for nigh-on 15 minutes...
Might run this with my rogue before I leave, see if its soloable with him :D
Heroic Blood Furnace is a pain since the trash is VERY hard, at least the first mobs. Which is encouraging enough, so I didn't even try the rest.
Zul Gurub solo is possible for a hunter on all bosses except Jin'do, although I'm not 100% sure about Hakkar, because he mind-controls a lot and I do not know if he still does it when he can only target you or your pet. However for the entire instance it is a must to bring a gorilla, since this is the only pet that can interrupt spellcasting, and quite a few bosses have healing abilities that must be countered. The "Pummel" ability of the gorilla is the only way for a hunter to do that.
oops it's discouraging, not encouraging ^^
"Additional Instances cannot be launched" for only a minute or two? Wish I was on your server. On Eonar-EU it's not uncommon to get that message for over an hour, and yes that's with constant "portal dancing". It's incredibly frustrating.
@Celebrandil: Yeah, I mean I'm rolling a Warlock so survivability can be an issue - killing a boss would entirely depend upon how much damage I did to him while using Meta, since once that wears off I'm unfortunately easy pray.
@Sierro: I wonder if it's somehow possible to portal dance so that you're in-training for Heigan at the same time? That would be good; everyone would be experts.
I got invited to tank Blood Furnace a couple of weeks for three levels 65s that were trying to put together a PUG. Since I generally run instances as a Holy Paladin, it was an interesting experience. Haven't tried soloing it yet, but I don't think it would be particularly difficult.
ZG trash is very easy for a lv.80 hunter. However the bosses are tricky. I went with a bunch of people a couple of months ago. There were 5-6 of us. 2-3 80's, about 2 70's and 1 59 I think. We couldn't kill High Priest Thekal no matter what. We pounded on him for at least 15 minutes and couldn't get the people to coordinate so in the end we gave up. A couple of us even died. As a hunter, I didn't.
I couldn't kill Thekal solo, because it's very hard to kill him and his two adds at the same time, and taking care of (i.e. interrupting) his priest's heals. But once you get through phase 1, phase 2 is plain easy, just tank and spank.
If you take a warrior or a rogue with you who are in melee range of the priest, it becomes a walk in the park.
I'm only doing Zul Gurub until I finally reach Exalted, and I'm still hoping that Mandokir drops that damn raptor. I've never seen it, even though we killed him on a weekly basis back in vanilla. Would love to get the tiger, too, but somehow tauren on tigers look ... strange.
How easy are the other bosses to solo? I mean, really solo.
The tiger boss Mandokir isn't too bad if you can mitigate some of his damage, since he hits quite hard. Thekal is doable with two people, preferably one of whom has an interrupt.
Those are the only two I kill frequently so I'm not sure about the others but I don't think any of them would be too bad once you learnt the fight - maybe you could go experiment, and let us know? :D
Vel.
P.S. As an aside, Hakkar uses MC (which WILL work if you're there by yourself with a pet) but I don't think he's too bad for an end boss.
Bat boss Jeklik: very easy, but gorilla pet is a must. Tank and spank, feign death once the pack of bats come to you, and pummel (gorilla-only ability) her heal. Move out of bombs from the bat riders.
Snake boss Venoxis: very easy, kill the snake adds first, then the boss. Make sure pet doesn't die. That's all.
Spider boss marli: hard. Spawns spider adds (easy to kill but annoying), switches to spider form every now and then and drops aggro 2x everytime she's a spider. Hits quite hard, can be a problem if FD is on cooldown. Uses Life Drain once she switches back to human form, must be pummeled immediately.
Raptor boss Mandokir: easy. Have your pet tank him down at the stairs, pull aggro on the raptor and run to the top of the pyramid and jump down to the ledge. This way the raptor can't reach you and Mandokir's stare can be ignored because he cannot charge you anymore. Make sure the raptor aggros you the whole fight (he can't reach you anyway), because when both the raptor and Mandokir are on your pet, healing will become very hard. DPS him down slowly (never pull aggro or he will evade and reset the fight) and then the raptor. Cross your fingers for the raptor mount (0.5% drop chance).
Ghazranka the fishing boss: easy, tank and spank. Sometimes drops aggro, then just feign death.
Madness bosses: have only tried Renataki and he is a real pain in the ass, dozens of aggro wipes and you eat lots of damage because of that. Couldn't kill him, pet survives easily but I don't.
Tiger boss Thekal: could not kill him solo. Though I've seen a video of a hunter kill him solo, it's still VERY difficult to make sure all three die together and at the same time interrupt the priest's heals (gorilla pummel).
Panther boss Arlokk: very easy. Basically 80% of the damage comes from the pet and you lie on the floor, feign death. Every once in a while get up, heal your pet and do some dps. The panther adds can kill you if they become too many (and they will after some time), but they are not a problem for your pet, especially if it has a swipe ability.
Jindo the Hexxer: impossible to solo IMO. By far the hardest boss in all ZG, back in vanilla he was a gear check. Guilds had Hakkar on farm status but still wiped frequently on Jindo. Have not tried him, he has too many very annoying abilities.
Hakkar: have not tried him because I could not get Thekal down, and I don't really want to deal with the end boss if he still has an additional ability from one of his priests. But I could be wrong and he's a walk in the park?
Hope that helps. Some bosses need a bit of practice and luck, but it's a good feeling when they go down, and the loots frequently cause nice deja-vu's. ^^ Besides they give about 23g per kill. Not too bad.
Forgot to add that I use a special Beastmaster build for Zul Gurub and BC heroics, and pet healing glyphs. Makes life so much easier, but dps drops significantly of course.
The bosses also give a ton of rep each - about 250? - in comparison to the measely 4 or 5 each from the other mobs in the instance, which probably makes them worth it for rep grinding.
Wowsers Celebrandil!
That's a mighty fine and detailed guide! Would you mind if I create an article out of your response such that more people can read it? I would use your exact words (without any additions) and I would obviously give credit to you. Unfortunately you don't seem to have a blog/site link. But let me know man!
No problem, go ahead! Although I must add that I can't take full credit for that guide, since I checked other hunters and their videos/guides before I went into ZG and tried it for myself.
By the way bosses give 100 rep, Mandokir and Jindo give 200, and Hakkar 500. If you want to farm reputation, it's easier to farm all those coins and bijous that the trash drops. If you turn in the coins (3 of a type per turn in), you get 25 rep plus a badge that gives another 50, and bijous give you 75+50 reputation.
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