As you know from some of my recent posts, my guild has been making an effort to get a bear mount or two before the big patch hits. While we are close to success, I thought I’d use the mouthpiece of my blog to try to dredge up some extra tips and advice from my readers.
First, 3 questions:
- What kind of group do you take?
- Do you use any fancy tricks or shortcuts to cut time?
- Is there a particular use of trinkets or other tools that you consider necessary to a successful Bear run?
By way of example, here is the general group make-up we have been using. All members have some or most of their 2.4 badge gear. They represent most of the best our guild has to offer.
Tanks:
- Warrior
- Pally
Healers:
- Tree
- CoH Priest
DPS:
- Elemental Shammy
- Elemental Shammy
- Boomkin
- Mage
- Rogue
- Hunter
We also have a VERY well geared Lock that often comes along for one of the DPS spots.
There you have it. I don’t need to get any further into details, the rest of this post is up to you guys. Let’s hear it!
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We’ve had successful bear mount runs for a couple of months now, geared in mostly 2.4 badge gear, some pieces of Tier 5, and recently a handful of Tier 6. Our successful groups typically are comprised of the following:
* Two Tanks: one is specifically a Protection paladin, the other has been both a Protection warrior and a Feral druid.
* Two Healers: one Holy priest (sans Circle of Healing. Screw that crap — Spirit or nothin’, baby!) and another specced healing class. We’ve done it with two Holy priests, a Holy priest and a Holy paladin, and most recently a Holy priest and a Restoration druid. Guess which one I am…
* Six Assorted DPS: at least two are capable of crowd control and two capable of AoE damage. We rely heavily on roots going to Jan’alai, so we like the idea of a DPS druid here. Our Balance druid also serves as our off-healer, in times when our healers are unable to heal or when two healers isn’t enough.
Our group is typically a mage and a warlock (or two warlocks), a Balance druid, a rogue, a Beast Mastry hunter, and an undetermined sixth class. This has been an Enhancement shaman, another rogue, another mage, an Elemental shaman, and something else in the past. We’ve been basically nine-man running it while filling in the tenth slot with another person to flesh out the group.
Regarding route? Eagle, Bear, Dragonhawk, and Lynx. We typically pull the first two stationary groups on the way to the Eagle and pull the Tempest at the top of the ramp as soon as it is possible. On the way to Bear, you can skip the two Amani Bears with judicious use of Soothe Animal (and not Hibernate, even though we call it “putting the bear to sleep” each week); this should allow you to sneak by them without fighting. Dragonhawk is just avoiding patrols while always, always, always pushing forward to avoid a scout from appearing behind. On the way to the Lynx, take advantage of hut-jumping to cut your route short, go into water to avoid the ‘gator patrol, and don’t be afraid to pull two groups of lynxes at the same time. We also typically pull a group and a patrol in the room with Halazzi and depending on how much time we have left the Balance druid either heals or DPSes.
One thing to make sure is that you have people capable of dispelling or cleansing. A healing priest does this well since you don’t have to minimize damage then. This is important for when people get mind controlled or given that oh-so-very nasty debuff during the Lynx fight.
Full consumables are a must. A lot of people tend to bring a lot of mana potions (in particular our Balance druid), but as a human Holy priestess I very rarely drink. I rely heavily on my Earring of Soulful Meditation to keep my mana reserves up. This gives our other healer opportunity to drink if needed. Downtime is kept to an absolute minimum, with perhaps a ten to fifteen second stop before a boss.
You can mount up everywhere in Zul’Aman, so any time you have a large expanse to travel don’t be afraid to jump onto a mount. You can easily shave off a minute or so by doing that instead of walking.
Not quite sure what else I can say. I had intended to make a movie of our bear mount attempts, but then my computer exploded and I don’t have a very good video card at the moment. If you have any specific questions on things that I either forgot or just wasn’t clear on let me know!
My guild isn’t big enough for 25-man instances, so we are mostly geared in ZA loot and BoJ rewards. We’ve been doing bear runs for about a month, and we got our 8th bear yesterday. Typically we have around four minutes left on the timer.
- What kind of group do you take?
Tanks:
Warrior
Paladin
Healers, any combination of two out of these:
CoH Priest
Druid
Shaman
DPS: any combination of six out of these: (we typically don’t have enough people online to be picky
)
Rogue
Enhancement shaman
Fury warrior
Feral druid
Survival hunter
BM hunter
Destro lock
Fire mage
Frost mage
Shadow priest
Boomkin
Ideally we try bring one pure caster group (this is also where the tankadin and both healers go) and one pure phsycial dps group. Having two competent and synergetic groups helps everyone to get the most out of their classes. Melee dps is awesome to bring, because you never have to wait for their mana bars. Bringing one or two casters that are capable of AoE damage is especially useful on Jan’alai, although we have managed without. Finally, I’m glad you’re bringing two shamans, because they really rock the house. Two bloodlusts can easily shave off a minute of any given boss.
- Do you use any fancy tricks or shortcuts to cut time?
Like the commenter above me, we use the hut jumping shortcut on route to Halazzi, and we soothe a warbear on the way to Nalorakk.
We use as little CC as possible, an occassional sheep at most. Our tanks are our CC.
Our feral druid is in cat form 90% of the time, but puts on his tanking set and goes bear for some particulary nasty pulls just before Nalorakk.
Conversely, our warrior tank puts on his dps gear for all of the easy trash pulls prior to Halazzi (which is up until you’re about to enter the building).
We pull bosses while dps and healers aren’t at full mana yet. As long as the tankadin is close to full mana, this should never be a problem.
We don’t loot anything. The corpses will remain long enough to still get your loot and badges after getting your bear.
If at all possible, then the ressurections are handled by the enhancement shaman and the shadow priest.
Both of our shamans use their fire elementals on both Akil’zon and Jan’alai. They’re especially useful on Jan’alai, as they are immune to fire damage.
- Is there a particular use of trinkets or other tools that you consider necessary to a successful Bear run?
Our paladin tank puts on a few pieces of fire resistance gear when he’s tanking the dragonhawks on Jan’alai, which makes him considerably easier to heal. (He always makes sure he remains uncrittable.)
Our dps classes time their dps trinkets with the shaman’s bloodlust.
All our leatherworkers make royal use of their Drums of Battle. We use addons to announce when they’re used and when they’ve expired.
We normally don’t use voice chat a lot, but we’ve found it very handy to announce the storms on Akil’zon and the scouts on the Jan’alai trash.
Overall, there are three things which your raid should be doing at all times:
- keep moving forward. Don’t sit down to eat and drink, don’t let the tankadin res anyone, don’t stay on the bosses discussing loot. Move, move, move!
- trust each other, blindly. If the trust isn’t there, it ain’t going to happen.
- competent dps. Every dps class in my guild is capable of dishing out over 1000 dps on any given boss – and that’s including the shadow priest. Our lock, rogue, enh shaman and survival hunter push 1500 dps with ease.
In your particular case, well, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where your guild could improve. I’d be happy to look at a recent WWS report (if you have one) for specific pointers. However, the one thing I do notice is that you seem to have too many casters to put in one group. Maybe you could ask whether one of your two shammies has a decent enhancement set? I think that adding an enhancement shaman would be a very big help to both your rogue and your warrior tank, through improved weapon totems and UR.
Finally, I’d like to recommend a movie that has helped us a lot: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=74493
Good luck!
Also, just to add outside of the gear/strategy comments: you need to all be on your game, know each others play style, and not make any mistakes. It helps if you do it with the same group over and over again. Dont swap players in and out each week. That’s what makes a bear run so exciting. If you’ve cleared ZA a few times, you know the fights well enough. So yes, be honest with yourselves about where you need to improve… and, just to mention it one more time: be on your game and dont make any mistakes
All the strategy & gear in the world wont help at all if you cant rely on your players (which is true for raiding more generally of course)