Kazrogal Learning Experiences

[Han]

Well, after surviving the entire kazrogal fight to see thrall die at < 1%, I learned a couple of things, from a healers perspective.  I think  I was the only caster to survive. Healing this fight is relatively easy in terms of HPS you need to put out.  Swapping some gear around for shadow resist and more INT seems like a good idea.  I think shadow resist is even more important for DPS casters than for healers.  I had no problem regenning mana outisde five second rule when I needed it to stay alive.  MAX Mp5 consumables are a must - flask of mighty restoration, blackened sporefish, mana oil etc.  Also I was using mana pots every CD, but I am going to switch to Fel Mana potions (more on that now) Fel mana pots - I think we should all try and use these.  Bottom line, they give you more mana than any other pot in the game.  Also, its not a range of mana like super mana potions, its a consistent amount and its over time, ideal for this fight.  Hanh has the recipe and is specced for it.  I will *try* and farm some mats, but please try to get some together for thursday.  Shadow resist: I was able to mitigate 67% of the explosions using ONLY the SR cloak with a SR enchant on it.  I will try adding in the neck on thursday and see what happens. 

[mahonri]

I read on elitistjerks that the best thing a resto druid can do is heal til oom, then innervate, and pop cat dps til all the other healers are dead and then pop out to finish the fight.  I am going to try that on thursday.  Also, I think I might try a little more sr.

[Akumabarai]

o/~ Let's talk about trash bay-be, let's talk about you-and-me, let's talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be...

Kazrogal trash: What's the plan of attack on the gargoyles?
They seem very disruptive, kill NPC's, keep us in combat so our healers can't drink, and are just plain annoying.

Bosskillers has a description of them, but no real "strategy". Does anyone know any working strats for the trash?

Do we:
A) Break off a sub group with a healer or two and some DPS that run to the back and:
A.1) Kill them there, or at least close to the hut. Or
A.2) Grab aggro and kite them back to the front line?

or:
B) Let the NPC's take care of em, and when the NPC's die, they come to the front lines on their own.


For A, I'm not entirely sure a tank is needed, as they only hit for 2-3k shadow(I think). It was very difficult for me to build up aggro on more than 3 with my cheezy +20 spell damage moonfire spamming. Perhaps we can get a shadow resist lock/mage setup to pull off the NPC's and kill em. Or perhaps a SPriest/hunter as a single target dps would be great here to peck em off.

For A.1, if we kill them there, do the healers at the front line go out of combat, and can drink? This IMHO should probably be tested.
For A.2, we would kill them faster, but there's little to no chance of going out of combat to drink.

For B, ignoring Thrall, who can easily tank 1-2 himself, we won't have any of the warrior dudes left, however from our first attempt, it looks like we won't need them for the boss. Therefore we could theoretically let the NPC's handle most of em.

[zarkk]

Akumabarai wrote
For A.1, if we kill them there, do the healers at the front line go out of combat, and can drink? This IMHO should probably be tested.

Yes, if the people in front is not involved w/ combat in back, they will go out of combat and can drink. This happened to me last time during the transition between trash waves.

[Jon]

Here's a good strat for the trash: scroll to the comment at the bottom to see a good way to do A.2 that Akuma describes: http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=17888#comments A few things that are different that look good is involving Thrall and the Warriors in the hard trash waves.  For gargoyles in the back it describes a new strat for kiting those back to the front without getting all the NPCs killed.  I think our positioning will change slightly that the raid will be a little farther back than we were last time, if possible.  I know those front NPCs mess with aggro a bit, so I'm not sure how much farther back we can position.  But a little farther back would help.  Everything I read points to getting the Warriors involved on the boss early is good.  I think starting the MT with a MD by the wars and then kiting the boss over to Thrall would help, but I imagine the cleave will chew into them pretty quickly....but this fight is a dps race...front end heavy...while you have mana to use - including heroism, and I believe the help of those tree wielding tauren. The SR on the cloak/necks seems good enough when I was healing.  An enchant on the cloaks will help a lot.  Besides the binary resist on the mark, preventing that much dmg on the blow-up kept me alive almost to the end (well I had a SS).  For resto druids, I tried switching to cat before the mark and it worked fine.  The raid warnings tell you it's going to happen in 5 seconds and it's easy enough to swtich.  The big thing I learned from that though is not to do it early.  Early on the marks are so far apart you can keep full mana while still healing the raid.  The timing of the marks is the following: The first Mark of Kaz'rogal is cast after 60 seconds. The time until the next Mark is cast is reduced by 10 seconds each time, so that the 2nd mark happens at 1:50, the 3rd at 2:30 and so on. In the end, it's cast every 5 seconds.   So I think staying in caster form until the end is near, having already used your innervate, and then switching to cat as John mentioned above is the way to go.  Then the resto druids can pop out, drink a pot, and hopefully keep some melee alive long enough to get the final dps in is a good way to go.  Also, I read innervates are good for shadow priests in this fight.  Not sure how much mana they can return to the group overall to make this worthwhile, but maybe Akuma can give his out (I can't imagine doing it as resto =). Lastly, I think we were good on consumables last time, but I'm not sure if anybody has Dark runes these days, those would definitely help as well.  FYI, my band practice got cancelled tonight, will try to show up.

[Fargol]

I chatted with my coworker about the gargoyles - he said the technique they use is kiting them all toward thrall, which I assume gets the tauren involved along the way. I think having a lock or hunter on this duty with a healer sidekick would be the best stat.

[WarmApplePie]

From that wowhead link it just looks like the trick is to have the ranged up there pulling them back before they are too aggro set on the NPC's...  I don't see us having a problem with this fight again. Time to read up on boss #4!!