Zul’Gurub Boss
Along with some new projects to research in patch 4.1.0, Archaeologists will also be able to unlock one of four additional bosses (chosen randomly) for their group in Zul’Gurub. This is from the Edge of Madness event in the 4.1.0 patch with Zul’Gurub reintroduced. The four bosses will share some loot, but also have some loot unique to each of them.
The Write-up below is by: Malefic on MMO-Champ Forums
Just finished doing Zul’Gurub after it finally stabilised with a full guild run. In the process of editing a video and adding audio commentary but its 7am here and I don’t want to wake people talking down my microphone if I am honest. Here however is my detailed boss tactics guide for Zul’Gurub. In my upcoming video I will go into detail more about every aspect of the instance, including each individual trash pull. Overall I found the instance very refreshing and very unique, I feel Blizzard have done have a great job with Zul’Gurub so far and changes will be expected but the instance I would imagine has potential to be challenging. The instance was cleared fairly easily with a group consisting of players in mainly 365 average ilevel gear, from a 5/13 10m HC guild.
Throughout the instance there are 3 types of cauldrons, these cauldrons provide debuffs – which are ironically buffs and can be used to aid you on trash (Currently on PTR one of the abilities which I will mention is useable to instantly get a boss to 20%, I cannot for the life of me imagine it’s intended therefore don’t expect that to be useable on live) (I’ll go into these further into the guide)
The cauldrons before the first boss are useable to negate the following things; The large pool of poison after the first trash mob and the breath ability from the two Venomguards before the boss. Other then that you don’t need to use the cauldrons before the first boss for anything else.
Boss #1 High Priestess Venoxis
High Priestess Venoxis is the first encounter you will find in Zul’Gurub, she has 4.9million HP. From the initial pull she will cast an ability called Word of Hethiss. This will ’cause a ‘ Maze ‘ to form out of poison on the ground. The Maze isn’t formed instantly but over time, stepping into the poison ‘ Walls ‘ of the maze, or jumping over them will ’cause the player to take roughly 18k poison damage every .5seconds, walking through them/jumping over them would ’cause you to take 2 ticks at least. The ‘ Maze ‘ isn’t random and will be the same every time – I believe.
High Priestess throughout the first ‘ Phase ‘ will continuously cast two abilities;
This ability is a channeled ability that will deal around 13k damage/second to the target over 8 seconds. Simply interrupt this ability; if it cannot be interrupted then be prepared to heal the target it is being channeled on – they will drop low, if not die.
This ability works similar to the Shadow Link type ability from the Mother Shahraz encounter, two players are linked together and need to run far away from one another to break the bond. Be careful to not step into the poison wall of the currently forming maze, otherwise you will take large amounts of damage.
At 75% HP she will cast an ability called Blessing of the Snake God. (For us, 75% was just before the Maze had finished creating its walls)
This ability lasts 1.5minutes but won’t actually be used for that long. Whilst this ability is active, pools of poison will spawn on the floor underneath her which are very dangerous; the tank should be kiting her ‘ Through the Maze ‘ whilst avoiding the poison walls and poison pools. During this phase she will also cast an ability called Breath of Hethiss.
This ability is extremely dangerous and it is important no-one is infront of the boss when this is being cast, just like pistol barrage the boss will face the direction of the tank and cast the ability, it is important everyone (Including the tank) moves away from the front of the boss otherwise you will die painfully. The ability to put it bluntly deals about 30k damage every .5 seconds.
At around 35% she will stop doing this and run to her platform and begin to channel an ability called Bloodvenom
The ability works similar to the Eye Beam ability from Kologarn, it will spawn 3 eye beams, 1 on top of 3 different players. These eye beams need to be kited through the maze, being careful to avoid the walls of poison of the maze. If you’re stuck with the dilemna of being trapped in a wall and having an eye beam on you, jump over or run through the wall. The eye beam hits for around 50k I believe. After 10 seconds she will stop casting this and become ‘ Exhausted ‘ (Don’t have a link for this unfortunately) ‘causing her to become stunned for 10 seconds and take a 100% increased damage (Currently on PTR this is bugged, she is not taking any extra damage. The tooltip states she should be taking 100% more damage but isn’t, whether the damage modifier is bugged or she isn’t supposed to take 100% increased damaged – I don’t know).
From here the fight is simply repeated but we killed her a few seconds after her stun had expired.
Overall my opinion of the boss is that is an excellent encounter and very unforgiving, currently I believe the encounter is very well tuned, given our gear we still had some difficulties with it originally (Maybe our lack of information on the fight, who knows)
Boss #2 Bloodlord Mandokir
Prior to this boss is a very fun section of the instance which involves dodging boulders being thrown rampantly down a ramp, while ascending the ramp. You will also come across the second type of Cauldron; using this Cauldron will ’cause your next attack to freeze the target in place for some time (Currently when having this debuff and using an ability the target takes damage equal to circa 80% of their health and are frozen – whether the large damage is intended, I do not know) (2nd Note. Bloodlord Mandokir is one of the bosses that originally we used the Frost Buff on for fun and unexpectedly he was actually literally one shot by it, so originally we didn’t know the fight but we ran the instance again so we could see the boss properly.
Bloodlord Mandokir has 4.1mill HP and is mounted on a raptor (Again), except this time, its fossilized! Very similarly to the original encounter you will find 8 spirits chained around the pit in which he is in. Bloodlord Mandokir has an ability that doesn’t have a tooltip or anything and doesn’t deal any damage where he will charge a player and instantly kill them. This ability seems to initially happen 10 seconds into the fight and then every 25-30 seconds after that, for the remainder of the fight. Once he does the ability he will get a buff called Level Up!
This ability doesn’t have a duration and can stack to 99, each stack of this ability will increase his damage by 20%. (Comically the end boss – Jin’do yells ” Grats! ” everytime he gets the buff)
When a player is killed in the encounter one of the spirits will walk towards the player and offer to resurrect them – We didn’t find anything against accepting this resurrection, so we did. Upon accepting this ressurection we were given a buff increasing our Damage, Healing and Health by 25% (Again, this wasn’t correctly working, the damage modifier that is, the health one however was and I believe the healing one was also) and decreasing the Damage Taken by 10%
At around 80% or roughly 20 seconds into the fight he will demount his raptor. This raptor has 207k HP and doesn’t attack anyone, instead it will walk towards one of the remaining spirits and if it reaches the spirit it will instantly kill it, it is important that this is stunned or whatever and killed before it gets to the spirit, otherwise you may run out of spirits, depending on your DPS.
During the fight (I don’t know if it’s on a timer or on a fixed percentage, it only happened twice during our kill however) he will cast an ability called Devastating Slam
This will cover a section of the arena in rubble/fire where after a couple of seconds (2-3) Bloodlord Mandorik will jump in the air and ’cause giant earthern spikes to rise from the rubble/fire which will one shot anyone in them – granting him another stack of the buff and causing a spirit to be consumed to ress you.
He has one last ability he will cast on a random player called Bloodletting (This was supposedly sometimes interruptable, sometimes not, we couldn’t however work out a link between it being interruptable and not interruptable) Its an ability he channels on a player – not necessarily his main target and he will continue to attack whilst he does this ability.
This ability does exactly what it says on the tin, will drain 50% of your current health (Note – CURRENT, not maximum) every 2 seconds, healing him for that amount.
During the fight (Again, not at any specific interval that we noticed) he will Reanimate his raptor, which will fixate on a Spirit and walk towards it, again you have to kill this raptor.
The entire fight is rinse and repeat from here.
Overall I found the fight very, bland. The 25% damage modifier wasn’t correctly applying and even then we still had no issues one shotting this boss without any issues what-so-ever. Very easy boss that is probably really undertuned.
Boss 3 Random
Boss 3 is triggered by an archaeology encampment within the instance. Here you will find a small trash pack (Similar to the annoying star mobs in vortex pinnacle) and a large amount of artifacts, Troll, Dwarven, Fossil and Night Elf. You have to check all of these artifacts to find one that is interactable and follow the speech on that artifact, you need to do this for all four types of artifacts in the room, these artifacts will begin circling the room and once all 4 are up they will spawn a boss. (The artifact order we got for both bosses was the same, therefore I don’t think the order is linked to the artifacts in anyway)
We managed to get two bosses for this;
First was a boss named Wushoolay
This boss has 3.9million HP and is very simple.
He will emit a chain lightning type ability similar to that of Phase 3 Ascendant Council, for these purposes its ideal to spread around him.
Roughly every 25 seconds during the fight he will cast an ability called Lightning Rush (Lightning Rush) turning himself into a ball of dark matter and charging a player. He will then cast an ability called Lightning Rod, it is important you move more than 15 yards away from the boss otherwise the ability will do nature damage and knock you back (I am not sure how much damage this deals since no-one was hit by it ever)
During the fight he will also place clouds on top of a player which work similar to the hurricane AoE ability, simply attacking anyone in them with lightning.
Again, very basic and bland boss, very simple, but as its a boss that is randomly generated dependant I didn’t expect it to be anything spectacular.
The second boss we got from this was; Renataki.
This boss is a Troll Rogue!
He, like Wushoolay has 3.9mill HP. He doesn’t do much, kinda boring really.
At 75% HP he will vanish and ambush a random player in the party for roughly 100k so healers, make sure the party are topped!
At 50% HP he will cast an ability called Thousand Blades (Thousand Blades)
This ability is simply Fan of Knives spam whilst bladestorming to random members of the group, this happens for around 10 seconds, simply avoid him if he’s coming towards you, not too challenging.
At 30% HP he will go into a frenzy (I presume it’s increased attack speed – didn’t check the tooltip) Not that the frenzy is anything worrying, he hits like a nothing still.
At 25% HP he will again vanish and ambush a random player in the party for roughly 100k, so again healers, make sure the party are topped!
That is the entire fight, he might cast Thousand Blades again but we killed him pretty quickly, the abilities coincidentally happened at those HP intervals, related or not I don’t know!
Again, pretty simple and boring boss, but as I said previously, didn’t expect anything spectacular from a randomly generated boss.
After the Archeaology section and the random boss is low and behold another gimmicky part of the instance, Frogger! Tiki masks on the wall spitting out lava that you need to avoid in a frogger style fashion!
Boss 4 High Priestess Kilnara
High Priestess Kilnara is the 4th boss in Zul’Gurub and is located in the temple in Zul’Gurub where the panther boss was located at Level 60 and has 4.5mill HP. An important note about this boss is that all trash within the temple must be killed otherwise an aspect of the fight will ’cause the trash to enter the room. The trash on the outside of the temple and on top of the temple are irrelevant, however the trash inside the temple must be killed. The packs of Panthers in the boss room you see are linked to the boss, therefore don’t worry about killing them.
High Priestess Kilnara is a very simple fight! She is at the bottom of the tomb and is surrounded by 4 packs of 4 Panthers, each of which having 154k HP.
She initially spam casts Shadow Bolt on her highest threat target aswell as meleeing I believe. I am not 100% sure but I would presume the Shadow Bolts are interruptable (I play a Warlock, I don’t know).
About 15 seconds into the fight she charges a random player and leaves a debuff on them called Lash of Anguish
This will hit the player initially for about 30k and deal 20k damage a second to the player for 10 seconds. I am not 100% sure this what the ability does; this is what the tooltip states it does (Apart from the initial hit) however looking over at the video the players with the debuff certainly didn’t seem to drop in 20k/second spikes.
About 45 seconds into the fight she will cast an ability called Tears of Blood
This ability will ’cause her to stand there ‘ crying ‘ with shadow orbs spitting out everywhere, after the cast has finished she will deal 15k damage to everyone in the raid.
At random intervals throughout the first 50% of the fight she will ’cause a shadowy/purple wave to spawn, standing infront of this wave will ’cause you to take damage and be knocked back (I presume – no-one was actually hit by it) (I didn’t catch the name of this since I was rarely targetting her therefore didn’t catch all of her abilities)
At 50% HP she will ’cause the temple to shake and ’cause all packs of panthers and any trash remaining in the temple to join her and she will change into a giant panther called Avatar of Bethekk
Originally when we first pulled this; we had all 4 packs of panthers and we actually managed to AoE them. (NOTE – I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS, IT WAS A SHEER FLUKE WE MANAGED GET AWAY WITH AOEING THEM)
Now before you pull the boss its not possible to attack the panthers, when you pull them however it is; they won’t attack you unless you attack them and the mobs in each pack are not tied, however when we actually did it correctly, we simply pulled one pack, killed them, pulled another, killed them and left two packs up to be tanked for the remainder of the fight when they were pulled at 50% (They actually died due to passive AoEing regardless).
During this phase she also stacks a buff which increases her Haste and Damage by 10% per stack (I didn’t check the tooltip, forgive me).
The fight seems very simple and can get a little healing intensive during sub 50%, especially if your DPS isn’t the best in the world. Overall I liked the fight, it seemed fairly tank and spank but I enjoyed it nontheless, wasn’t of the greatest difficulty however.
She will randomly vanish during this phase once but that doesn’t seem to achieve much.
Boss 5 Zan’Zil Yes! Him, from Stranglethorn Vale! :O
Just before Boss 5, actually Boss 4 (But you don’t need to use it then) you will encounter the 3rd Cauldron in the instance, a Fire Cauldron. Taking this Cauldron will ’cause you to get a debuff that is basically a hellfire, ‘causing you to deal minor damage to yourself every second and 8k~ damage to all enemies around you every second (This doesn’t deal damage to your party members) This can be used on one of the AoE pulls before Zan’Zil.
Time for, in my opinion the most fun boss in the instance! Definitely love this one!
This boss brings in the play of all 3 cauldrons and has one of each kind near him.
Zan’Zil has 4.1mill HP.
Throughout the fight he melees the tank whilst again, casting interruptable Shadow Bolts.
About 10 seconds into the fight he will face a direction and cast Zanzili Fire
This will initially deal damage if you stand infront of it and will deal roughly 20k damage/second to anyone that steps into it after, simply, don’t be infront of him and don’t stand in it. Again tanks, it works like pistol barrage in where you can move from it before its finished casting to avoid being hit at all.
During the fight Zan’Zil will switch between 3 ‘ Phases ‘. Similar to Maloriak he will use a random elixir which will have different effects on the fight.
Blue Elixir – He will resurrect one of the large troll berserkers in the room with 2million HP which will fixate on a person and need to be kited. To negate this, you simply have people use the Blue Cauldron, get the Ice block debuff, attack him to drop him to 400k HP and encase him in ice, you then simply kill him, if you don’t kill him before the ice drops off him just have the person he’s fixated on kite him you finish him.
Green Elixir – He will cover the giant area of land in which you’re fighting him in green poison, this will deal 10k/damage a second I believe to anyone in it (That might need verifying) For about 12 seconds, taking the green cauldron will reduce that damage by 90%
Red Elixir – He will ressurect an army of undead trolls with 150k~ HP. Simply take the red cauldron and stand on them to AoE them down.
The whole fight is simply about sticking to those and whilst it sounds basic, definitely the most enjoyable fight in the instance in my opinion.
Boss 6 – Final Boss – Jin’do the Godbreaker
Jin’do the Godbreaker is on Hakkars platform and before you pull him you can see him channeling an ability into what seems to be a phased out version of Hakkar (You will find out what it actually is later on in the fight)
Jin’do has 8.3mill HP (Yes, really)
From the initial pull Jin’do just melees the tank, about 20seconds into the fight he will spawn an Anti-Magic Zone like ability directly on top of him; or as its actually called – Deadzone
As you can see this ’causes anyone in the zone to take 85% reduced magic damage and ’cause 10% less magic damage. The entire party needs to stack in this zone and ideally you’d like to have the tank position Jin’do after the zone is down so he’s not in it.
Roughly 5-10 seconds after the zone has spawned Jin’do will cast an ability called Shadows of Hakkar
This ’causes his melee attacks to hit the raid with chain lightnings, without the deadzone buff on the raid you’ll probably wipe after 2-3 melee attacks, its important to take the deadzone buff to mitigate a good majorty of this damage.
The fight is an entire repeat until about 70-75% where he runs off to the phased version of Hakkar and he grows in size by about 1000% and appears behind Hakkar, teleporting everyone into what seems to be some phase shifted realm.
In this realm you have 3 Chains, Hakkars Chains to be precise. These each have 1.1million HP.
The idea is to DPS down these chains to free Hakkar. Simply burn down the chains as quick as possible, whilst this is happening Jin’do will bombard the party with giant shadow bolts which work similar to Halfus’ Proto Behemoths Fireball abilities with the Time Warden released (They emit a shadow hellfire like animation where they’re going to land and you can avoid them before they land). During this phase Twisted Spirits will spawn with about 30k HP, just kill them easily, I don’t get the point of them so far they don’t seem to do much except divert your attention for brief seconds.
*Note – Credit goes to Kujja* Currently the chains are bugged and are supposed to be shielded and immune to all damage, once it is fixed however one of the trash mobs from the second level of the temple will need to be pulled in order to break the shield.
Once all 3 chains are killed Hakkar is free’d and will proceed to one shot Jin’do and thats it! You’ve just completed Zul’Gurub!
Theres no loot yet on PTR, the only loot you can obtain from Zul’Gurub is loot from the last boss which is currently random loot from BRC Normal.
The last boss feels unfinished and I can honestly say when I saw he had 8.3mill HP I was genuinely hoping that 8.3mill HP wasn’t burnt via damage modifiers/NPCs etc, I was hoping it was a ‘ mini 3 phase raid boss ‘ Hopefully they’ll change it, it has such a good dramatic build up with such a disappointing ending.
I am going to work on the video today or tomorrow, I cannot promise when but i’ll get it done as soon as I can. I don’t currently have any movie editing and not sure of the best way to record a voice over for it and I don’t want to release a sub-par quality video.
A quick note I would like to add, the instance has alot of trash, alot of it is optional also. The video I release will be detailed and will involve trash aswell, since the trash itself is not your straight forward run in and DPS the shit out of stuff trash. Alot of it has abilities that initially will ’cause pugs to wipe and I will go over those in my video. I would go over them in here but this is just the boss’ and look how long this post is!
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