So with ZG coming up, I thought I would make a raid guide for us so that we can be all prepared as best we can for any guild runs or pugs we may end up doing.

First off a map. https://i.imgur.com/kawkPMX.jpg

We first make our way to High Priestess Jeklik (#1) through some packs of trash.

Most trash on the way to Jeklik will have some sort of CC priority, or will need to be stun locked in order to be dealt with effectively and easily.

Gurubashi Headhunters, Gurubashi Axe Throwers, Hakkari Witch Doctors, and Gurubashi Bat Rider all have some bad shit they can do to melee or ranged and so should be kept CC'd until engaged, or stunned while engaging.

One thing to note about Gurubashi Bat Riders is that if they aren't stunned while low, they will cast a suicide spell dealing 4k damage to all people within 10 yards. So if that goes off, just back up to not be deaded.

Gurubashi Berserkers cannot be CC'd, but still are high priority as they can fear melee, they enrage at around 20-30%, and they have knockback on tanks which can cause them to easily fly into the water below.

Finally, you have bats and snakes, both of which are relatively harmless, they attack, they don't do anything special, cleave em down, etc. However, you don't want to pull them just because they are there, wait until all trolls are dealt with and then if given the opportunity pull the other stuff. With Gurubashi Bat Rider, they come with bats, so not much to do there but to cleave off of Bat Rider.

On to Jeklik. She has 2 phases. Phase 1 she will call down waves of bats which we have to kill, about once a minute. Given our gear, we will probably only ever have to deal with 1-2 waves of bats. She will also charge, so if a ranged caster wants to get inbetween the ranged group and melee to tank those they can (usually hunters). Phase 2 starts at 50%. She will get assistance from her bats from above who will start chucking fireballs down on the raid. During this phase, the tank will be constantly moving the boss to keep fire off of melee with the whole raid focusing on iterrupting her casts as she will try and heal herself. If she heals herself she will heal for a significant amount (on Pservers she went back to full, not sure if the same for classic) so interrupts need to be called out and rotated. Once downed, you make your way to High Priest Venoxis (#2).

Hakkari Priest is the new trash here, like all other trash trolls before, stun them as much as you can. They have anti-magic shields, and can cast holy nova, heal and psychic scream, so the less they are able to do the easier they are to deal with.

Venoxis is like a mini Sulfuron. He starts with 4 cobras around him, and so when the pull happens the goal is for the pull to start with the OT or a hunter, and the MT to pull Venoxis off to the side while we kill the 4 cobras before we actually deal with Venoxis. The cobras themselves are nothing to write home about. If they become a problem we can always sheep/hibernate them and kill them one at a time. Once on the boss, melee needs to get right on top of him, and ranged needs to be max range. He casts a chain lightning which if chained to range will 1 shot them. Once to 50% he becomes a big snake and will drop threat (so stop damage). He will occasionally drop poison clouds, he won't cast chain lightning anymore. We need him to be moved out of those poison clouds asap, so constantly moving him is usually the strat. Once dead we move to boss #3: High Priestess Mar'li.

Here, we deal with Hakkari Shadowcasters who we want to, say it with me, CC and stun as much as possible. They do mana burns and shadow bolt volleys, not fun.

Outside of that, we have spiders. The Razzashi venombrood are the important ones as when they die they spawn little broodlings, so be ready for some massive cleave when dealing with these guys. You may also get extremely drunk due to intoxicating venom (you may even drop your weapon occasionally). Don't panic. If you want it to not be a hassle, go into your video settings and turn off full screen glow effect.

Now to Mar'li. Here the main issue will be her switching from human form to spider form. When she goes into it, she casts a melee aoe net, which drops aggro, including the tank, so the boss will go the casters. The way I've seen it be handled is having a tank sitting in ranged group and when the boss comes, to have that tank pick her up with taunt and bring it back to MT to taunt again. I suggest casters to stop dps when this happens like Shazz to make it easy. When she goes human form, she will cast a life drain that needs to be interrupted. There will also be spiders spawning, these need to be killed ASAP as they can overrun the raid if not killed off quickly enough.

From here there are two choices, we can either go to the next High Priest Thekal (#4), Bloodlord Mandokir (#7), or the Edge of Madness event (#10).

On the way to Thekal, there will be some tigers and cubs, like the adders and cubs, nothing special, just tank and spank.

Thekal has two phases (man blizz loves the two phase fights in this raid). first phase he has two Zealots next to him: Zealot Lor'Khan, who's basically a shaman, and Zealot Zath, basically a rogue. The key is to seperate these dudes super far away from each other so they don't cause problems. Zath can blind the tank taking Thekal, and Lor'Khan can heal him and give him totem benefits if close. Once they are sufficiently far away from each other (about 30-40 yards) each group needs to keep track of percentages. Once they are all around 10% the triangle collapses and we cleave them down. If they don't all die within 10 seconds, they will respawn with full health and the fight starts all over again. If they do die, then Thekal becomes tigerman and a much simpler tank and spank phase 2 begins. He will occasionally spawn some adds, which need to die, and will cause knockbacks on the raid. So we want tank and raid up against some walls to prevent that as much as possible. Once dead, you check to see if you got a raptor mount and then move on to High Priestess Arlokk (#5)

On the way to Arlokk, the new trash is Shadow Hunters, they cast multi-shot, so once again CC/stun to keep them occupied and not killing the raid.

We gather up on the gong, and when ready ring it and start the fight. Ideally the tank will be in the middle of the room to pick up boss immediately. She will spawn panthers occasionally which means a mage will need to blizzard or a warlock hellfire to get them out of stealth. She will occasionally go stealth and mark a player, the marked player will draw panthers, so that player needs to put their back to the wall to prevent from being backstabbed by panthers, and when she goes stealth every needs to put their back to the wall to avoid being backstabbed by Arlokk. Other than that, she is pretty simply. We can now move to Hakkar (#6) or Jin'do (#8)

On the way to Hakkar we start seeing wing serpants. These are Soulflayers and Sons of Hakkar. They aren't too bad, but CCing them is nice so to not overwhelm healers. Especially since Soulflayers can fear and enrage. The Sons will leave pools of poison when they die, so don't stand in the green fire please (for now). There are also Hakkari Blood Priests, like all other trolls, CC them. Hakkar's area in particular has some pretty dicey trash pulls, so the more mobs CC'd the easier it will be to get through. Once we clear our way through all the trash on the first level, we finally make it to the main event: Hakkar.

Hakkar has three main mechanics to worry about. First his MC, which targets the highest threat player in the raid, usually the MT. As a result, we want the tanks to go in first, without any dps behind them, so they can get high enough on the threat table, so that when the MC comes out, Hakkar switches to the second tank instead of a dps. In addition, all tank warriors need to keep their intimidating shout on CD so that when they get MC'd they don't fear the raid. Mages will work on poly'ing the MC'd target, and then when MC is over we can cleanse the poly. As a result of this MC mechanic, and the fact that Hakkar is untauntable, dps will need to be kept to somewhat of a minimum (200-250 max) so that way the tanks will always be able to have threat on the boss. The second mechanic to worry about is corrupted blood (yes, that corrupted blood). When cast it will hit a random player, plus all players within 10 yards of them, doing 875 initial shadow damage, and then a DoT for 10 seconds (200 every 2 seconds). Since this is the only raid damage during the fight for a whie, it would be nice for ranged to stay somewhat spread, but melee shouldn't have to worry too much about it. Finally, we have Blood Siphon. This ability would normally heal Hakkar for approximately a shit load, but if poison our blood with his Sons, we can actually deal approximately a shit load of damage back to him. He will deal damage during the blood siphon channel, so healers make sure people don't die during it, but once it is done, he will cleanse all of the poison off, and that should be the end of that. So how do you time that? Well you have a mage also dedicated to poly'ing a Son of Hakkar so that way when Blood Siphon is about to be cast, everyone in the raid (except current tank) goes over and kills the Son and stands in the poison. Rinse and repeat that until the boss is dead. He will enrage after 10 minutes, or at 5%, so be weary of increased damage on the tank during that.


On the way to Jin'do there will be Withered Misstresses, unlike most trolls these aren't too bad. Will occasionally cast a veil of shadow which needs to be dispelled off tanks immediately (75% healing reduction). They are technically undead, so if you want to reduce damage on large packs (they sometimes can be as large as 9 or 10) priests will need to shackle and hunters can freezing trap.

Another dangerous troll are the Voodoo slaves who will cast rain of fire and summon infernals, so CC/stun these guys as needed.

Once clear of this trash we finally get to Jin'do. His main mechanic is a curse that is a small dot that must not be dispelled on anyone but the MT. When you have this curse you will be able to see Jin'do's shades. These shades deal small damage, but they keep spawning during the fight and are immune to AoE spells. So they need to be controlled by whoever is getting cursed, or else they will overrun the raid and kill everyone. He will also drop healing and MC totems, these need to be killed instantly. He will also teleport a random player into a pit of skeletons. This can be dealt with by a mage standing near the pit and helping the teleported player kill the skeletons when they get there. Finally, he will randomly hex players. Shadow Protection is really nice here, so if you have Shadow Protection gear that will help mitigate damage from the shades, which only deal shadow damage.

When making way to Bloodlord Mandokir, he's near a village of trolls, so if you remember the hinterlands trolls area, this is going to be similar. Pulling one pack at a time, and trying to get pats to clear the area. Remember that we want to CC and stun as much of the trash as we can. Since most of these trolls can do AoE bad stuff, the more that are able to be up the higher chance we have of wiping.

Gurubashi Blood drinkers are the only new trash to worry about here. There are two ways to deal with them because they heal up off of melee if they aren't stunned. You can either have a tank take them way out of range and have ranged DPS deal with them or you can chain stun and kill them that way.

There are also Gurubashi champions, but as far as I can tell their only issue is a knock back they occasionally do. Nothing too serious.

There is a Vilebranch Speaker just before Bloodlord, once he's dead, Bloodlord fight will begin.

Bloodlord has 2 mechanics: first his raptor. He is a hunter, and has a pet raptor with him. Generally the way fights will go is Bloodlord will be tanked by the MT, and raptor by an OT. There are two ways to proceed from there. Either kill raptor first or Bloodlord first. If killed first, healers need to be ready to chain heal MT. Bloodlord becomes enraged and will start chunking for a little bit until he calms down again. The other mechanic is "Watch Somebody". He will target a random player and that player cannot do anything to get on the threat table, no self-heals, no drinking potions, no damage. Nothing. You just walk around looking at whatever. If you do end up doing something to generate threat (not only on Bloodlord, but literally anything in the instance), he will target the farthest away player with a charge and everyone will have the same threat. If this happens, don't panic, tanks can go over and taunt him off, but you will have to wait for tank to gain enough aggro so people don't pull off. Finally, if you die, Bloodlord actually has an experience bar, and he has rested xp, so if he kills you, you will give him XP, he can level up, and if enough people die to him, he will start chunking people just because of him outleveling us. He also does whirlwind, so melee get out once he starts spinning. He also has Execute, overpower, and mortal strike so tanks be careful if you get low.

When heading to Edge of Madness, we will encounter Mad Servants. These aren't too hard on their own, but when they die they start a portal that summons 2 Voidwalkers (PServers it was 3), and they come in packs of 3. So general strat is to banish one, kill one, and tank the second somewhere else. That way you can kill them off one at a time and not be overrun with voidwalker. Other than that, you douse the fire, and depending on the time of the month you'll get one of the 4 bosses. They rotate on a two week cycle, and since this guide is long enough as it is, I'm not going to go into each one individually.