Wintrow

Relevant Strategies
Wowwiki – Trash Waves
Wowwiki – Kaz’rogal
Bosskillers – Kaz’rogal

Strategy Breakdown

Trash

We still have 8 waves of trash coming at us. We still have random NPCs to engage to help us DPS. This set of trash will be in the Horde camp, which is much more spread out than the Alliance camp was. Engaging all NPCs looks to be a bit more challenging and may require 2 hunters to kite 2 separate mobs along different paths. The Bosskillers strategy linked above includes a picture of the trash pulls and the raid setup; this can be used as a study guide until we get in there and see what works best for us.

We will also be seeing 2 new mobs in these waves: Gargoyle and Frost Wyrm.

• Gargoyles: The Gargoyles don’t strike me as being too tough. The key in dealing with them will be to get them to land so melee can join in on the DPS. Once the Gargoyle aggros to someone from the air, that player will need to run out of the 35 yard cast range of the Gargoyle’s ranged spell. This will force the Gargoyle to land at which point they will stay grounded and should be easier to control.
• Frost Wyrms: These guys look to be tough. There will be one of them in waves 6 & 7 and they will always stay airborne. As such, melee DPS will play no role in taking these guys down. Because the Frost Wyrm’s primary attack has an AOE effect to it, he must be tanked by a caster away from the rest of the raid. Conceptually, this sounds very similar to the Leotheras demon-phase tanking where we all have to avoid standing close to Celltar. In these waves, all ranged dps should focus-fire the Frost Wyrm down first before starting AOE on the other mobs.

Hunters: It will likely be your job to ground the Gargoyles when they appear and kite them to the tanks for pickup and AOE. Be sure you study which waves have Gargoyles. Also, take note of the Bosskiller’s diagram; from the look of it, the Gargoyles spawn behind us rather than coming in from the road with the rest of the mobs. Be aware that you will need to be positioned to quickly gain aggro on all of the Gargoyles (6-10) and quickly out distance their cast to force them to land. Then it is just a matter of kiting them to the pally tanks and dropping aggro. I’d imagine Multi-shot would be useful for getting all the Gargoyles on the 3 of you.

Mages/Warlocks: Read through the hunter’s role above in dealing with the Gargoyles as you may have to help depending on how many hunters we have in the raid.

Celltar: I’m thinking that you will likely be our designated Frost Wyrm tank, given your high stamina and ability to generate threat relatively quickly when the situation calls for it. There is no special need for any resist gear and you won’t be taking obscene amounts of damage. You will simply need to get yourself far enough away from the rest of the raid that they don’t take the splash damage, but close enough that ranged can nuke it. You will also need to keep your threat very high so that DPS can nuke without pulling aggro. The Frost Wyrm appears to come up the main path with the rest of the mobs, so think of a good approach to deal with this guy.

Boss

The only complex part of the Kaz’rogal fight is the Mark of Kaz’rogal aspect. ALL mana users need to do everything that they can to keep from running out of mana. 60 seconds into the fight, he will cast the Mark on the entire raid which will drain 3000 mana over 5 seconds. If at any time you are reduced to 0 mana by this debuff, you will blow up, dealing 11k damage to everyone within 15 yards of you. As you can imagine, we will also have to be very disciplined in our positioning to ensure that individual detonations only affect one player. The tricky balance here is that the cooldown on Mark of Kaz’rogal is reduced by 10 seconds each time it is cast. So the second cast will be 50 seconds after the first, then 40 seconds, etc. So this fight is a DPS race because eventually the Mark will be cast constantly and mana users will be wiped out. Thankfully, Mark of Kaz’rogal and the detonation damage can be resisted by shadow resist. We’d use our [Blessed Medallion of Karabor] (the normal medallion of karabor link didn't work) if we had them, but the priest shadow buff should be sufficient as we cannot afford to gimp our DPS by equipping extra shadow resist gear.

The exact spot where he is tanked is not as important as how we arrange ourselves. Please look at the diagram in the Bosskillers link provided above.

Tanks: Only one MT will be needed for Kaz’rogal. He walks slowly in, so there is no pressing need to grab him quickly. He has a frontal cleave for 10k, so it is crucial that you always tank him facing away from the rest of the raid. He also does a War Stomp that will stun you for a few seconds. It will be important that we engage the Horde NPCs, especially the Tauren Warriors, so there may be a need to drag Kaz’rogal a bit in the beginning before settling into our tanking spot. Given the Mark of Kaz’rogal debuff, using a pally tank would probably be a very bad idea. Prot warrior would likely be the best choice for tanking here. Pally tanks should help heal, druid tanks should flip to cat and DPS.

Melee DPS: Aside from the common sense that you MUST stay behind Kaz’rogal to avoid getting hit with his cleave, you also have to concern yourselves with the War Stomp, which has a 15 yard range. Apparently, Kaz’rogal’s hit box is big enough that you can avoid getting hit with the War Stomp if you stay at max melee range (assuming the tank keeps him in one spot the whole time). Be sure you position yourself appropriately here.

Ranged DPS: You must be spread out such that you are 15 yards from everyone around you in case you detonate. We have a lot of room to work with so this shouldn’t be a problem. We will likely practice our setup before starting the trash to get our positioning correct.

Healers: Nothing special here, aside from managing our mana very carefully. The majority of our healing will be focused on the MT, as he will be taking significant damage. There will be need for raid healing as well, but we need to be extremely efficient in doing so to avoid wasting mana.

All Mana Users: Do everything possible to keep your mana bar as full as possible, short of not casting any spells. You should be taking a mana pot every 2 minutes. There are also a number of other consumables that give you mana (Dark Runes, etc); figure out if any of these work for you and bring some along. Also, consider down-ranking some of your damage spells too; I’ve read that in some cases down-ranking saves you a ton of mana without sacrificing your DPS too much. Please don’t gimp your DPS, but look into this.

Mages: Be sure you evocate prior to running out of mana. Don’t cut it too close.

Warlocks: Life tap! Don’t cut it too close. Also, be ready to throw a soulstone on a mana user mid-fight. This will likely require some quick reflexes and may not be too planned out in advance. We’ll see…

Shaman: Mana totem may be worthwhile here. Enhancement shaman may have a problem with this fight. It might be a good idea to rely solely on your weapon damage this fight and avoid using mana on shocks. Keep in mind that if you happen to detonate, you will likely kill all of the melee DPS.

Hunters: Keep Aspect of the Viper up and do whatever else you can to keep your mana bar as full as possible. Pet damage will be key here as well.

Paladins: Be prepared to LoH the MT towards the end of the fight. We should work out a rotation to maximize the effect of these. You will likely die after, so make sure you are positioned appropriately.

Priests: Use the shadowfiend early and manage your OOFSR regen very well.

Druids: All druids will need to use their Innervates during the fight. The strats suggest using them on Shadow Priests, though these may be called on other classes depending on how the fight progresses. Be ready to get these off fast.

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70 Priest

Tarenth

That means we need to kill Al'ar in TE to progress far enough into the BT chain to get the medallion.

Feh

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My sanity is not in question...
It was a confirmed casualty some time ago.

Gaviin

We'll get there. No worries.

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70 Ninja

Gollaen

So if the Pally did LoH with Mark on he'd blow up correct? And if he LoH'd himself would he still blow up?

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Koliana: 70 Feral Druid
Tarma: 70 Enhancement Shaman

I had it all! I had it all and then I lost it. Lost... all gone... like... my mind. My mind is like... cheese. I like cheese.

Wintrow

Only if he was affected by the Mark debuff at the time he LoH'd. Otherwise, he'd almost certainly blow up the next time the Mark was cast unless he was able to recover 3000 mana by then.

LoH also restores a certain amount of the target's mana, so if a pally LoH'd themselves while affected by the Mark debuff, I'd be curious to see what happens. The pally would regain some mana, but the LoH would temporarily reduce you to zero. It all happens pretty much immediately, but would the technical drop to zero trigger the explosion? I'm not sure.

Let's just nuke the SOB and not bother having to find out...

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70 Priest

Wintrow

Just need to kill Al'ar and then Rage to get our Medallions. Like Gaviin said, there's plans to do just that in the near future.

I will be posting our goals for the next 2 months or so shortly...

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70 Priest

TeaLeaf

Remember you can also equip some cheap greens with SR or craft a number of Night's End cloaks which can then be enchanted with additional SR. You'll need the SR for Mother in BT anyway, so you may as well start making the cloaks for the mana users in this fight. DPS requirement is not huge and you can either stack melee or LOL at the fight with max SR gear when you have it.

One thing worth doing on this fight is delaying the time at which the first Mark hits. When Kaz'rogal approaches let him fight the first group of NPCs (but do not get into combat yourself). He will then leave combat and keep walking further into the camp. Only then should you enter combat with the MD to the tank. The advantage of this is that the Mark timer does not start until you MD, as opposed to it having started when he aggro'd the NPCs some 15 seconds earlier - so you get 15 secs extra without an additional Mark at the end of the fight.

Re the trash waves with Gargoyles:
Rather than kiting them (which is tricky with so many mobs and loses DPS time), we found that it was far easier to plan to split the raid dps into 2 here for these waves.

Ranged Group:
Send all ranged DPS to the rear camp where the gargoyles arrive. Set a focus DPS MA (hunter usually) and just single target them down - most will be attacking an NPC so damage is light and they go down real quick. One healer is sufficient to to heal the ranged DPS camp and no tank is needed here. When you have finished simply return to the melee group and help finish the mobs off.

Melee Group (+ 2 Mages for the additional necromancer wave):
Stay at the front and deal with mobs there.

This planned split usually ended up with both groups finishing at more or less the same time and we found was 20-30 seconds faster than trying to kite the gargoyles down to a tank or NPC.

HTH.

TL.

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-=[dMw]=-TeaLeaf
deadmen.co.uk
Sora (soraguild.org)
Currently having fun learning Felmyst!

Wintrow

Interesting advice TeaLeaf. We may just try this stuff out...

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70 Priest

BigSlick

At such point as we need it, I can enchant [Enchant Cloak - Greater Shadow Resistance]. Mats are not cheap ([Primal Shadow]x8, [Large Prismatic Shard]x4, but it looks like we may need to start farming them up for the long run...

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Alassari

For the debuff, I may have a suggestion for druids. The idea comes from arena as a druid, to prevent being mana burned and drained, I switch into bear form - because bear form has no mana, there is no effect from the spell. Perhaps druids can counter Kaz's debuff by morphing into bear form? I figure its worth a shot.

Druids = OP =)

Gollaen

While not getting mana drained from the debuff, that's 5 sec of the druid not being able to heal/dps, not to mention then the mana drained from shifting to bear/cat form and then back to moonkin/tree form. I think that would end up being roughly 1500 mana. Might be interesting to see how that would work out for caster druids.

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Koliana: 70 Feral Druid
Tarma: 70 Enhancement Shaman

I had it all! I had it all and then I lost it. Lost... all gone... like... my mind. My mind is like... cheese. I like cheese.

Alassari

I agree. I've never had a caster/healer so I don't know how the mana regen might counter the boss's debuff. Perhpas shifting to bear could be used as a last resort; if a druid know's he/she can't keep up the mana required, they could shift into bear to eliminate that AoE Damage explosion.

Alassari

Seeing as we were having trouble on the trash to Kaz, I looked into it and I think I may have come up with something to at least help us with the first 4 waves - we got behind wave by wave and as you know, by waves 5 and 6, there were too many mobs to handle.

Wave 1 - Do what we normally do, mark, kill etc.

Wave 2 - Pally tank and 1 or 2 healers stay to tank 4 ghouls. Pally tank picks up 4 ghouls and drags them to Thrall NPCS. Doing this would eliminate any concern the rest of the DPS would have for the "front" (or south side). The remainder of the DPS would continue what we "picked up" on our 3rd try, using the huts to break LoS, thus bringing gargoyles to ground and allowing for group AoE.

Wave 3 - Do what we normally do, mark, kill etc.

Wave 4 - Seeing as Wave 4 only has 6 gargoyles, perhaps only ranged could take care of the gargoyles that way, time won't be wasted an effectively grounding the gargoyles. Melee can stay at the front quickly killing 2 banshees while a prot pally, again, makes his way over to Thrall and Co. After Ghouls and Crypt fiends are down, if time allows, melee could help finish off gargoyles.

I think if we can get through the first 4 waves without getting behind and succesfully get passed wave 6, than everything would be a little less chaotic =).

vee

It doesn't take much mana if you're spec'd into natural shapeshifter - the blowing up part is similar to doomwalker. That's what I do for that fight.

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Delectable - 70 Druid
Nymphai - 70 Rogue
Meepmeep - 68 Warlock

Sular

What if we were to bring the NPCs that are over by the gargoyles' entrance into the fight during the first wave? Would they stay by us for the next wave, or would they reset to their original position? Because if they weren't there to aggro the gargoyles, wouldn't they just come by us and the AoE area? That way, a few people could stay a little bit behind, get initial aggro, and just run towards the AoE area, making them drop down, and come to where we're already blowing things up. Otherwise disregard this, because I could just be completely wrong in what I'm thinking