Feedback - Zul'Aman (Post all ZA feedback here)

Personally ZA was the most fun I've had on my character since I turned 70. The post-raid buzz took hours to wear off! I thought everybody did amazingly well, but my special thanks to Lander for being our guide through the jungle and Braith, Itzpaelotl and Asua for joining us at late notice and turning out to be lovely souls.

2 out of 4 bosses down in the time limit when we didn't even know what direction to run in is nice. I hope we can get 3 out of 4 next time.

I was especially impressed by how nobody grumbled or complained on the wipes, how fast you all learn, and most of all - that you kept the spirit of fun alive.

Here are the screenshots:

NALORAKK



AKIL'ZON



JAN'ALAI



HALAZZI



HEX LORD MALACRASS



ZUL'JIN




Grats!

Great work and awesome ability for learning and recovery! I'm looking forward to seeing the Northrend raids with the same kind of resourcefulness and motivation

We came we saw and we conquered, with no OP retpalas to hold our fins! AND.. we got our target of 3 bosses down before the timer ran out. So let's all grab an extra fishy treat to nibble on while we pat ourselves on the dorsal fin.

Now, before I start ranting let me state one fact: we were NOT short on healing last night. We had a shadowpriest respecced as a healer and a resto druid (and a boomkin on standby for backup healing), and that was well enough to get all bosses down! Thanks to Mirium for helping out on the healing front - Zul'Aman is NOT a friendly instance to healers with long fights, bouts of massive burst healing required and complicated boss mechanics that mean we have to move around loads (at least resto druids can heal on the run, priests can't).

As Advent said last night, we may recruit one more healer.. or we may not! We have a good number of them already but some of them joined after Monday's raid was posted and were unable to sign up before the raid was fully booked.

About Zul'jin, phase 3 (cyclones) - these seem to be targeted (at casters only or melee too?). Perhaps all casters should stick together and move around as a group, that way the ranged group can attract the cyclones and kite them round and round, reducing the chaos, and opening a larger cyclone-free area for those who need to bandage? Anyway, that's just a thought.. it's the only bit of fight that's still too chaotic for my liking..

We had Braith and Pryn tied for top deaths at 8 each - thanks for staying cheerful throughout! With time and experience healers learn to identify specific dps who tend to need extra healing lurve, so expect casualties to drop. Personally, I need to work at watching the damage meters to see who needs extra healing lurve - if I'd kept my eyes on the damage meters I might've figured you two would attract more attention from bosses, etc.

Other stuff: I think we can all agree that hearthing mid-instance is a bad idea when we don't have a warlock.. So in future, bring your crafting mats if there's a chance something yummy might drop! Also, nice loot mastering by Faehla. Would it be helpful to designate someone to whisper the ML the extra drop so it can be auctioned faster, to save time when racing the clock?

I look forward to trying to get all 4 aspects down before the clock runs out next week!

Oh yes the run was fairly fast even though we had our pauses, I think it's important for people to memorize why we wiped and they'll remember much better next time. There are nice brain tickling tricks in Zul'aman and you can be sure when we head into the raids of the Lich King, we will have loads more challenges in store. Having to grit your teeth while raiding and maintaining absolute focus are mood killers and will tire you out in record time, it's not a question of peak DPS or reaching that one extra minute. In the end the game is about surviving encounter mechanics and reacting to changing conditions. We can survive ages on many encounters if we have low DPS and often our tanks don't drop that low either unless a healer dies prematurely. What do I want to say with this?

Find your comfort zone in raids, focus on analyzing the fights and reacting according to situations as they present themselves. Doing 110% at crucial times and 80% the rest of it makes for smooth raiding, trying to do 105% all the time may make you lose your edge when push comes to shove. Any DPS class doing over 800 DPS at the moment I'd consider doing its job well(most if not all of our DPS in ZA looked to manage that well) and you don't have to push that extra mile to do much more, the single most important thing I feel we need to make raids enjoyable for everyone is consistency and ability to adapt to unexpected situations. We can then focus peak DPS on fights like Patchwerk in the future, but on most fights the number one key element for everyone is to survive the fight and don't cause anyone else to die because of your actions.

Eight deaths, its a record for me! But I'll hold my hands up and take full accountability for them, I don't see it as an issue for the healers to overly be concerned with, but instead something for me to improve upon. Truthfully some of those eight deaths were my own fault - like when we pulled Lynx trash, and I start stabbing the elite and not the one marked for Advent to tank! Same goes for charging in after Braith when she hit a patrol on the way to collect Mirium.

As far as I'm concerned, being a melee DPS means I'm responsible for myself and that ultimately, I'm disposable. Being a rogue means I should have enough tricks and stunts to look after my own survivability and manage my agro. Right now, I'm out of practise with Pryn so tricks like Feinting, Evading, Vanishing and popping Cloak of Shadows are a few seconds slower than usual. Add to that, it was my first time going melee to ZA and only second visit overall.

I thought the healing was great, tanking was fantastic (certainly made my job easier) and the progress on the night was a good healthy pace considering there were learners like myself. Onwards and Upwards from here!

Pryn

Thursday 30 October

It was rough to see us wipe with 3 minutes to go on the 45-minute timer, especially when we'd done so well (no wipes) on the other three bosses! Of the very few things that went wrong last night, only one was a cardinal crime in raiding: if you haven't been to the instance before, let the rest of the raid know - or at least the raid leader! I could say a lot more about this, but I'll save my ranting for next occurrance.

On the matter of dps: we were a bit low on dps, as we seemed to hover around 6k* dps for the entire raid (I think we've been as high as 7.5k before). 6k seems to be nearer the lower limit for Zul'Aman if you're going to make the 45-minute run. Also, we were heavily tipped towards melee dps. The latter was an issue on bosses where you have to spread out or eat zaps, as there was a lot more zapping than usual with half the raid huddling around the boss. On the upside, it meant that the cyclone phase on Zul'jin was over more quickly!

On tanking: we had a melee heavy group last night, so bosses with intimacy issues were doing a lot more nastiness than usual - great job on your first ZA run as MT, Enth!

Good things now: thanks again to Mirium for jumping in and helping with the healing. You do a great job for a pewpew respeccer, and we could not have done the instance without your help! Also, Võlla was doing some truly sick dps - scary to see such lethality coming from one the little people. Another thing I liked was how the raid worked hard at suppressing the urge to start blaming someone for the mistakes made - it's bitter to see an achievement slip through our slimy fins, but everyone tried to remain constructive in /raid (and kept their misgivings to other channels - venting ain't bad if done in the right place, mmkay?). Very well done!

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*I use Recount as my damagemeter and set it to show Totals for the raid. I set it to show Damage Done but keep an eye on the DPS figures in parentheses. They tell me what people are capable of. Of course, if you've got top dps but low overall damage it probably means you're busy doing something outside the raid, like chatting in guild or fending off rl problems. And viceversa, if you're low on DPS but higher on the Damage Done than you "should" be it means you're working you butt off in-raid!