Bosses of Zul'Gurub
Optional:
Edge of Madness encounter
- Required an alchemist to have learned the recipe for the Gurubashi Mojo Madness potion, which in itself required Blood of Heroes, Black Lotus, Massive Mojo and 6 Powerful Mojo. Needless to say, this was an unpopular encounter in general.
- The boss in the encounter was cycled to be different each raid reset. There were four bosses in total, each dropping a different reagent that could be used (along with a class-specific voodoo doll) to make a class-specific trinket. At the time, the trinkets were actually best-in-slot for many classes.
Gahz'ranka -- Health: 330,000
- Required completion of a fishing quest from Nat Pagle to get a Mudskunk Lure, along with the max fishing skill available at the time. Using the lure, you needed to fish in "Muddy Churning Water" and fish up 5 Zulian Mudskunks. With the mudskunks in tow, you then needed to fish near the abandoned fishing camp south of Arlokk (panther) to summon Gahz'ranka.
- He drops the rare mage spell Polymorph: Turtle.
- It was most advantageous to fight him in the water, because one of his abilities caused the entire raid to be shot way up in the air, and being in the water caused no fall damage. The drawback to fighting in the water was a fast respawn rate on nasty, bitey little fish in the water.
Jin'do the Hexxer -- Health: 319,000
- Most raids considered him harder than Hakkar, and wouldn't even attempt him (since his being alive didn't affect Hakkar's difficulty), at least until after Hakkar was down.
- Mechanics of the fight:
-- Brain Wash Totem: Mind controls a party member, persists until the totem is destroyed.
-- Powerful Healing Ward: Heals Jindo for 10,000 HP per 3 seconds until destroyed.
-- Teleportation: Teleports random raid member into a pit of low-health skeletons for a good old-fashioned gang bang.
-- Hex: Turns primary target into a frog. Dispellable.
-- Delusions of Jindo: Curses a random party member and creates a Shade of Jindo. The curse lasts 20 seconds, and only those with the curse can see any shade. Shades are immune to AoE, and could quickly overwhelm a raid if the cursed people didn't pay attention and take out any shades they saw.
Bloodlord Mandokir -- Health: 460,000
- Drops the rare Swift Razzashi Raptor mount, which is going away with the death of the ZG raid.
- Fight is in tandem with his raptor, Ohgan. Ohgan will regularly stack an armor debuff on his target that continues until the target's armor is 0. When Ohgan is killed, Mandokir receives a 50% damage buff and a 65% attack speed buff.
- Mechanics:
-- Charge: Mandokir will regularly charge the raid member furthest from him and dump aggro from his primary target.
-- Fear: Mandokir will use an AoE fear if more than one person is in melee range (suck it, rogues!)
-- Whirlwind: 2500 damage for anyone within 10 yards of him (but you shouldn't be in melee range anyway, right?)
-- Watch: Targets a specific random player. If that player does anything in the subsequent 2 seconds (attack, heal, move, dance, jump), Mandokir charges him and does a 5k attack. When the content was relevant, that killed anyone.
High Priests of the Five Aspects:
High Priestess Jek'lik (Bat) -- Health: 330,000
- First half of the fight she is in bat form, second half in human form.
- Mechanics (Bat):
-- Sonic Blast: AoE silence for 6 seconds (i.e. casters stay back!)
-- Charge: Random member of raid is charged (often followed by sonic blast!...i.e. raid stay spread out!)
-- Terrifying Screech: AoE Fear for 4 seconds, often countered by Tremor Totem or tank fear avoidance
-- Summon Bat: Every 45 seconds, she would summon a group of non-elite bats from the cave above, which would need to be dealt with by the caster AoE (and an off-tank would need to pick them up as much as possible or else the casters would die)
- Mechanics (Caster form) :
-- Shadow Word: Pain: 400 damage per 3 seconds, dispellable.
-- Mind Flay: 325 damage per second for 10 seconds, interruptable.
-- Greater Heal: 100,000 HP heal on herself. Annoying as all hell if not interrupted.
-- Summon Bombers: Every 30 seconds she would summon non-targetable bat bombers that would drop bombs on raid member targets that would leave behind a patch of fire on the ground. Basically just to keep the raid moving.
High Priest Venoxis (Snake) -- Health: 213,000 HP
- Often considered the easiest of the bosses, the one boss that could be handled by even a moderately coordinated raid of 20 at level 60.
- First 50% of the fight in caster form, last 50% in snake form.
- Guarded by 4 elite snakes that were often dealt with first. Not too hard, just needed to be picked up by off-tanks, because all 4 snakes + the boss damage would kill the main tank.
- Mechanics (Caster):
-- Holy Nova: Damage to raid in melee range, healing to Venoxis and guards within 10 yards (thus pull guards away from Venoxis)
-- Dispel Magic: Remove a harmful spell from himself
-- Holy Fire: Single target cast for 2500 damage and 500 more damage over 8 seconds. Packed a bunch when relevant, but interruptable.
-- Renew: Heals himself for 2000 over 8 seconds. Dispellable.
-- Holy Wrath: Like a holy "chain lightning", but doubled in damage per target jumped to. Not out of the ordinary to see some poor sap get nailed for 10000 damage. For this reason, most of phase 1 was done at range so the holy wrath would only hit the MT.
- Mechanics (Snake):
-- 50% additional melee damage, 50% reduced armor
-- Thrash: 2 extra attacks per attack, if that makes sense (every attack was 3 attacks)
-- Poison cloud: Dropped at his feet for 500 damage per second (i.e. keep moving the boss)
-- Venom spit: Randomly targeted for 2500 damage and 1000 more over 10 seconds, requiring someone besides the tank to get healed
High Priestess Mar'li (Spider) -- Health: 333,125
- When Zul'Gurub released, there was a huge jump in difficulty between the first two bosses (Jek'lik, Venoxis) and the rest of the instance. Many a raid hit a wall here until Blizzard finally nerfed Mar'li, Thekal and Arlokk (and buffed Bloodlord Mandokir to make him harder as an optional boss).
- Mar'li switches forms between caster and spider randomly, so there really wasn't a set "phase" working here.
- Strategy was to split raid into two groups (melee and ranged), with a tank in each group. When she switched forms, she webbed everyone in melee range and charged for the highest aggro ranged player, at which point the other tank would taunt her and pull her back over to the melee area.
- Mechanics (Caster):
-- Poison Bolt Volley: 30 yard range poison AoE that did initial and then dot damage over 8 seconds (i.e. ranged, stay more than 30 yards away)
-- Spawn Hatchlings: Creates two Spawn of Mar'li, that would double in size and damage every 10 seconds until killed (i.e. kill the adds fast)
-- Drain Life: Drain 3500 life over 7 seconds. Interruptable and dispellable.
-- Poison shock: Poison damage spell interrupt ability against anyone within a 20 yard range (i.e. no, we mean it, stay away ranged)
- Mechanics (Spider):
-- Enveloping Webs: Immobilizes everyone within 10 yards and slows attacks for 8 seconds.
-- Charge: Charge and stun highest aggro ranged opponent for 2 seconds
-- Thrash: Again with the 3 attacks per attack
-- Corrosive Poison: Reduces armor by 5000 and does 800 to 900 damage over 8 seconds. Used on tank.
High Priest Thekal (Tiger) -- Health: 133,250 (per phase)
- The first boss that had a second form after the first form died (and it seemed so easy until then...)
- Spawns with two elite tiger adds, as well as two accompanying zealots (Zath and Lor'Khan). Thekal, Zath and Lor'Khan had to all be defeated within 15 seconds of each other, or whoever was dead would resurrect to full life immediately.
- Typical raid strategy for the first phase was to separate the three as much as possible to avoid Lor'Khan's Greater Heal and Bloodlust, DPS each down individually to about 15-20%, and then group them up and AoE down (while interrupting Lor'Khan's Greater Heal).
- After the three are simultaneously down, Thekal resurrects for full life and goes tiger form the rest of the fight.
- Drops the famed Swift Zulian Tiger mount, going away when ZG does.
- Mechanics (Zath - rogue):
-- Sweeping Strikes: AoE cleave in front of him
-- Blind: Causes target to wander around aimlessly for 8 seconds (i.e. Zath needs a backup tank)
-- Gouge: Stuns target for 2 seconds (yep, we said backup tank)
-- Kick: Interrupt a spellcast within melee range (err..don't tank him with a caster?)
- Mechanics (Lor'Khan - priest):
-- Lightning Shield: Deal damage to an attacker, dispellable
-- Bloodlust: Increase attack speed of target by 35%
-- Disarm: Disarm target's weapon for 6 seconds.
-- Greater Heal: Heal target for 50,000 (<--- interrupt this!)
- Mechanics (Thekal caster):
-- Mortal Cleave: It's like Mortal strike on a cleave. Hits all targets in front melee range for about 1000 damage + a -50% healing buff.
-- Silence: Silence target on his attack table (often the guy healing the Thekal tank)
- Mechanics (Thekal tiger):
-- Frenzy: 35% attack speed increase
-- Speed Slash: ~550 damage over 8 seconds to primary target
-- Force Punch: Knockback attack on primary target (i.e. tank him with a back to the wall)
-- Charge: Charge random ranged target (who should then bring him back to the tank asap)
-- Summon Zulian Tiger: Summons 2 tiger adds that like to run crazy through the raid killing things (usually an off tank grabs these asap) Occurs every 30 seconds, so either burn him down quickly or deal with the adds as they spawn.
High Priestess Arlokk (Panther) -- Health: 279,825
- This boss was crazy hard on release, far tougher than even Hakkar. Many raids just tried to kill Hakkar while leaving this boss alive (just factors in an extra 50k HP and a tank stun) early on, until the mechanics of the encounter were nerfed.
- Dropped an 18-slot bag, which until then was only available with insane tailoring materials or a random Onyxia drop.
- To start the encounter, players had to hit a gong in the back of the room.
- She switches between caster and panther forms at will.
- She regularly vanishes, attempting to sneak up behind a random raid member for a backstab. This would often kill anyone wearing cloth (especially at release), and was unfortunately unavoidable.
- During the fight, invisible non-elite panthers automatically and regularly spawn from two pens. They are not immune to any damage, but cannot be targeted. As the fight progresses, the panther spawn rate increases and the panthers increase in HP and damage.
- Mechanics (caster):
-- Shadow Word: Pain: 500 damage per tick to random target. Dispellable
-- Mark of Arlokk: Purple arrow appears above random target. That target is the new panther punching bag! Keep that person alive and help them kill the incoming panthers.
-- Gouge: Stun for two seconds. She will use this just prior to vanishing.
-- Backstab: Weapon damage + 30 to random target. At release, this was upwards of 4k damage to cloth and could easily kill them. Nerfed to just being a huge pain, especially if the target also was marked.
- Mechanics (panther):
-- Thrash: 3 attacks for the price of 1!
-- Ravage: 500 damage + 2 second stun
-- Whirlwind: Weapon damage + 300 to anyone within 10 yards (boy, did rogues just hate most of this instance or what?)
Hakkar the Soulflayer -- Health: 719,550 + 50k per aspect alive (so up to about a million)
- As said several times above, Hakkar was accessible at any time, but for each aspect alive, he gained an extra ability and 50k HP. Thekal's ability (+150% attack speed) was the toughest to deal with. There was no tangible reward besides respect for killing Hakkar with aspects alive, but many raids tried to see how many aspects they could leave alive and kill him with (at the end of vanilla, raids could kill him with as many as 3 aspects alive).
- At release, Hakkar was a great fight, but a complete gimmick fight. Normal attacks barely damaged him at all, so the only way to kill him was to get the whole raid poisoned during Blood Siphon. It was a great mechanic, but all the DPS felt useless during the fight, as they were only able to kill sons of Hakkar to get poisoned.
- Later on, they nerfed the Blood Siphon damage to Hakkar and let him take normal damage (although the Blood Siphon heal was still a nightmare if you ignored the mechanic at 60, so you still had to get poisoned)
- This encounter also spawned the infamous Corrupted Blood plague, which at release did a % of damage to its target and all nearby targets within 10 yards, and spread to any target it hit, and lasted 3 minutes. Raids quickly discovered that if a pet got the debuff and was dismissed, they could recall their pet in their favorite capital city, which would still have the debuff and infect everyone, including guards who wouldn't die but would never get rid of the debuff (because they would eternally spread it to each other). Disease control centers actually studied player behavior during the week this was active, as it functioned as a surprisingly accurate simulation of how people would react in the event of a real outbreak of an airborne disease.
- Mechanics:
-- Aspect of Arlokk: Gouge - 2 second stun + aggro wipe of main tank (could be worked around by multi-tanking)
-- Aspect of Thekal: Frenzy - Attack speed + 150%
-- Aspect of Mar'li: Enveloping Webs - 6 second immobilize to all nearby raid members
-- Aspect of Venoxis: Poison Bolt Volley - 300 damage to all raid members, plus an additional 300 damage over 8 seconds
-- Aspect of Jek'lik: 1500 damage to nearby enemies plus a 6 second silence
-- Cause Insanity: Mind controls current target, causing it to attack the raid. Usually countered with a polymorph (then dispel when the insanity wears off). Requires raid to have multiple tanks.
-- Corrupted Blood: 1000 damage + 200 damage to all raid members within 10 yards. Lasts 10 seconds (no longer affects pets).
-- Blood Siphon: Every 90 seconds, Hakkar will use this on the entire raid. Adds nearby, called Sons of Hakkar, released a cloud when they died that would infect anyone in the cloud with Poisonous Blood (which did 100 damage every 3 seconds for 2 minutes). Every raid member that did not have poisonous blood would heal Hakkar for 1000 HP per second for 10 seconds. So, a 20-man raid that ignored the poisonous blood healed Hakkar for 200000 HP for every Blood Siphon. On the flip side, every member of the raid that had poisonous blood would do 200 damage per second to Hakkar during Blood Siphon. So, a 20-man raid that was all poisoned would do a total of 40000 damage to Hakkar during Blood Siphon. So, as you can see, Blood Siphon was the whole fight when the content was relevant (and the damage used to be 1000 per second per member).
-- Berserk: After 10 minutes, Hakkar would berserk and do 500% damage at 250% increased attack speed until everyone was dead. This was a tight enrage timer at the time, especially if the raid had trouble with the Blood Siphons.
That was awesome. I didn't know about the alchemy encounter. Very cool info.