Pet Feat: Zul’Gurub (S)

(Warning: Screenshot heavy) This is a great feat and a great read, and it is the first post to utilize more than one pet (i think), even though 3.1 hasn’t hit yet. Cheers!

Who: Alarawk of Laughing Skull (80)
Pet: Sunwukong (80 Gorilla) and oldgreg (80 Turtle)
Group: Solo

Details:
Zul’gurub used to be one of my favourite instances back in the day, and with people doing all manner of crazy things solo these days I decided to give this a go. Besides coming on with a new character on a new server I still needed my ZG achievement, and there is always the outside chance of one of the mounts dropping. It definitely was a huge challenge, I went with a full on tanking BM spec(catlike reflexes etc) and utilized both a gorilla and turtle pet depending on the fight – it was just a bit of an annoyance travelling back to town swopping pets. I would say it took me about 6 hours in total playtime to get this done(thanks mostly to the tiger boss), although if I had to go back and do it now I could probably do it in 2. Spirit bond + the hp5 elixir + bandages/health pots were very important in keeping my health up. Although I have close to best inslot raid gear, I do not have 2piece t5, I’d imagine someone that does will have a much easier time. All bosses drop about 22-23g and Hakkar drops 34g.

High Priestess Jeklik (bat)
Pretty straightforward, although I did fail the first time around since I do not have an interrupt to Jeklik’s heal. Killed on my 2nd attempt by using Viper Sting to drain her mana to zero – easy from there on in, spank and tank and keep mend pet up at all times.

High Priest Venoxis (snake)
A little bit tricky especially on the pull to get all the snakes and boss aggro on the gorilla. Once the adds are down though it is relatively easy but you cannot afford to have any mend pet downtime as the gorilla’s health went dangerously low towards the end. 1 shot.

High Priestess Mar’li (spider)
The first really tricky fight … master’s call is worth its weight in gold here, I used it each time my pet got snared. Mar’li hits rather hard and I wiped the first 2 attempts because I got pwned. Although you need to keep mend pet up all the time, the pet doesnt really have any survivability issues. Had to use a few tricks …master’s call, FD, detterence … to get this done.

Bloodlord Mandokir
I decided I would give this one a go to have a shot at the mount. Difficult fight. Gorilla was not up to it, but the turtle was. Shell Shield is superb. Whereas the gorilla would just gradually get whittled down in health and never recover … the turtle gets back up close to full health each time Shell Shield is used. Killing the pet first is imperative, and using shell shield immediately after the pet has died is important too as Mandokir gets a temporary buff increasing his damage when the pet is killed. Needed about 6 attempts. The mount did not drop

High Priest Thekal (tiger)
The hardest fight in the instance. It was a nightmare. Being a fight with multiple adds I wanted to use my gorilla but it just proved to be futile as I just could not keep my gorilla up long enough. The shaman add heals so I had to viper sting mana drain her first (I had a focus macro setup for this) and only then can you think about getting the 3 adds health down. So I had to switch to the turtle. This was an aggro nightmare + the pet gets snared every now and then by the rogue, but it is workable. Once you get all 3 adds low though finishing them off is easy as cake… the tiger boss that then spawns after the adds are down is even easier. Took me about 11 attempts, nearly gave up.

High Priestess Arlokk (panther)
Tough fight, but not nearly as bad as the tiger aspect. Not too much to say about it except that it is a DPS race. While Arlokk is visible you have to get in as much DPS time as is possible. While Arlokk is invisible I would typically FD and stay down to regen health from spirit bond/hp5 elixir as the pet can take a huge beating from the panther adds without a problem so long as I got a mend pet off before FD’ing. Got it down on the 5th attempt.

Hakkar
Easiest fight of the lot. Takes a while, but is out and out tank and spank. Hakkar just does not get healed enough from the heals from just one player … using Sons of Hakar is completely unneccesary.