Being a bit bored about a month ago from a lack of raiding, I’ve decided to see what can I do to amuse myself. I knew I was able to solo the Tiger boss in Zul’Gurub, since I’ve tried it some time ago, but one boss is simply not enough, even if he has a chance to drop an awesome mount.
After a bit of searching around the Internet, I’ve found a nice warrior spec that gets Bloodthirst alongside some prot talents, and it turned out to be a very nice and easy (can’t say efficient since I’m doing about 1k dps in that spec) way to kill bosses.
Preparation
Talent spec I’m using for this is 5/31/35 with Glyph of Bloodthirst. Unfortunately taking Bloodthirst makes it impossible to take the awesome end talents in Prot, so it’s not really recommended for doing anything else. Glyph of Bloodthirst is not optional, but for the other two you can do well with any of these: Glyph of Enraged Regeneration, Glyph of Shield Wall, Glyph of Last Stand and Glyph of Heroic Strike.
As for gear, my warrior wasn’t the best geared one around when I started doing this (BoEs, crafted stuff and some parts of heroic/Naxx-10 gear) and I’ve still succeded without too many problems. If you can tank Naxx-10, you can pretty much farm yourself some nice mounts. For Onyxia, I’ve also had some fire resistance gear prepared, but I’ll talk about it later. Of course it gets a lot easier once you get more gear – what you can get right now in 3.2 with the Emblems of Conquests is completely sufficient.
Last thing you need for doing this stuff is of course a raid group. The way I do it, is I invite some guildie’s alt to a party and then convert it to a raid. After this that person can freely log out or relog to another character – their offline alt will stay in the raid. In fact, the raid group doesn’t even disband if you yourself log out, so you can send yourself some pots or stuff from another character. Also, don’t forget to turn the loot method to Free For All to skip the annoying greed/need roll windows from appearing.
And now, lets get to the bosses themselves. In this article, we’re going to visit three instances. Lets start with Zul’Gurub – a 20-man raid instance located in Stranglethorn Vale.
High Priest Thekal
Your first target in Zul’Gurub is High Priest Thekal, the Tiger boss. The fight itself isn’t very hard, but you might want to clear up his trash packs, which are annoying. While fighting them, you want to focus on the Gurubashi Axe Throwers. You need to kill them as fast as possible, because they have a chanelled 15 seconds stun (with added damage element), which might very well kill you if there are any other adds around or you are at low health. Also, if you aggro any Zulian Cubs, be sure to kill them first, as they tend to run away and aggro additional packs. Believe me, three Axe Throwers are annoying enough, 9 of them at once will get you killed in no time.
Once you get them out of your way though, the boss itself isn’t that hard. In the first phase he comes at you with his two adds (and two tigers which you’ll want to kill), and they have to die more or less together. After the first one dies you have around 15 seconds to finish the other two before the dead ones respawn with full health. Another thing to note is that one of the add is a priest and will try to heal. You need to interrupt it, which is pretty easy with Shield Bash.
The way I do it is I set the priestess (Zealot Lor’Khan as seen in the picture) as my focus and have the focus cast bar enabled, so that I can easily see when she starts casting the heal, target her by clicking the focus frame and interrupt her. I could probably make it even more easier by setting up a macro for that, but for now I’m too lazy to do it.
Once you kill the annoying trio, Thekal changes his form to a Tiger god avatar and you have to kill him again. That phase is very easy, as he doesn’t hit for much and does not have a heal of any kind. He summons some more tiger adds though, and you might want to kill them as they’re a bit annoying. One thing he does is a knockback, so remember to fight him with your back to the wall or on the hill to your right side.
Gahz’ranka
It’s the second boss worth killing in Zul’Gurub. It has a chance to drop [Tome of Polymorph: Turtle], which still might be sold for a nice price on the Auction House (or be used as a nice present for your local friendly mageling). The fight itself is easy, just remember to fight with your back to the wall again because of the knockback.
You can’t fight Gahz’ranka immediately though – first you need to complete the quest Nat’s Measuring Tape, and have to buy a [Mudskunk Lure] from him (stacks to 20, so I just bought a full stack, saves time). Then fish up 5 Zulian Mudskunks from the fishing schools in ZG, and use the Lure to summon the boss.
Bloodlord Mandokir
Mandokir, or the Raptor boss as he’s often called, is your third target in ZG. Just as with Thekal, you should clear up his room a bit so you won’t get feared into another pack. The adds aren’t very tough – first target is always the Priest, then Champions, then Raptors and save Blooddrinkers for last since they will try to life drain the other mobs in the pack. This is of course interruptable and they can be stunned.
After you have a comfortable safety zone, kill the Vilebranch Speaker and Mandokir will aggro. Take him on the temple stairs, put up Demo Shout, Thunderclap and a stack of Sunders, and start killing him. He has a raptor add with him, which you can totally ignore – in fact killing the raptor first enrages Mandokir for two minutes, which you don’t really want.
He has a bunch of abilities, most of which I totally ignored. Only one you can’t ignore is a fear, which you should get out of by using your Berserkers Rage. Other than that, keep your debuffs on the boss, use Bloodthirst every time it’s up (for me it was about 1.7k healing each time, with 4 second cooldown), and dps the boss. If you get to about half health, pop Commanding Shout, Last Stand and Enraged Regeneration to heal up, and continue. Use Shield Wall early in the fight, so it can be off cooldown later again.
That should be enough to kill the boss if you keep it long enough. Takes a few minutes, but a raptor mount is totally worth it. Oh, and don’t forget to clear the raptor packs around the boss for the pet as you go there.
Onyxia
I went to solo Onyxia simply out of pure curiousity if I can do it, and for some of the rare drops she has (mostly the Orb of Deception, since I cba camping the Dire Maul arena). It was also a test if I can solo the questline for Quel’Serrar, which requires you to forge the sword in her Flame Breath.
To do it, you need some kind of fire resistance. I’ve had 138 points of it, which was enough – 50 from [Lesser Flask of Resistance], 15 from [Drakefire Amulet] (you can skip it, but as I’ve had it, why not use it once in a while), 20 from cloak enchant (I used my [Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions] for it) and 53 from [Inferno Tempered Boots] with [Flame Armor Kit] slapped on them. While using all that silly gear I wasn’t even uncrittable with about 524 defense, but it wasn’t a problem at all. If you have a spare helmet, you can also use the [Arcanum of the Flame's Soul] availaible from Kirin Tor quartermaster for another 25 points, and [Lesser Arcanum of Resilience] for yet another 20 points of resistance on legs. The extra 45 resistance is definitely not needed for Onyxia, but it might help you later if you want to get a shot at getting Thunderfury.
Strategy is basically the same as for all the bosses – keep debuffs up, use Bloodthirst each 4 seconds, pop Shield Wall on every cooldown and LS+ER combo when low on health. The second phase, when she takes off and starts flying around the room, is the most tricky and annoying one – fortunately she still can be hit while she’s in the air, but you need to run after her to keep close (which isn’t that easy without Warbringer and in-combat Charge). She’ll also summon her whelps, but they don’t do much damage and will usually die after a few Thunderclaps, so don’t even bother wasting rage on Cleaving them. Just keep your health up with Bloodthirst and you’ll be fine.
Also, be prepared for a very long fight, as it took me over 25 minutes to kill her. She didn’t drop anything cool either, but oh well, 40 gold is still enough for my repair bills of that evening.
Attumen the Huntsman
And now the last one of soloable, mount dropping bosses. If you’ve been around in Burning Crusade, I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with this guy. If not, he’s the first boss of TBC’s introductory 10-man raid dungeon, the Karazhan, which is located in Deadwind Pass. You still need [The Master's Key] to enter it, but you might be able to open the doors with high level Skeleton Keys if you’re a blacksmith, as I’m sure they can be opened by a rogue’s lockpick ability. If not, simply ask someone to open the gate for you, they don’t even have to be in your group, and can go back to their business as soon as you enter.
You need to clear all the trash mobs on your way to Attumen, because otherwise they will join the fight and wtfpwn you. They’re pretty easy, but don’t get cocky and don’t try grabbing more than one pack at a time – they can still kick your butt if there’s too many of them. Remember that they have a pretty nasty respawn timer of 30 minutes, so you need to be quick. They don’t respawn once you pull the boss and after the kill.
Once you get to the boss himself, you will see Midnight, the Attumen’s horse standing alone in the stable. Just pull her and start slowly dpsing her down. After a while Attument himself will join the fight and add a bit of damage to the fight – don’t forget to disarm him once in a while to keep the damage lower. There are two annoying boss abilities in this encounter.
First is that the horse keeps using Knockdown, doing about 1.5k damage on top of the normal hits and stunning you for 3 seconds. That makes it really important to use Bloodthirst on every cooldown to regain the lost health.
Second large annoyance is the Intangible Presence. It is used once every 30 seconds and lasts for 12 seconds. Normally you would decurse it, but as a protection warrior you just have to deal with that. It makes keeping your debuffs on targets and regaining health through Bloodthirst a bit harder than on normal fights, especially when you are on a lower level of gear and don’t have a lot of hit and avoidance.
After you bang on Midnight for a while and get her to 25%, Attument will mount her. If you can get to this part, you have almost won. He will still use all abilities from the first phase, but it won’t be so annoying as you only have one target this time. Keep disarming him, keep all the debuffs and best luck with your drop rates!
Until next time!
That will be it for now, as this post already is very late and getting long. Sometimes in the hopefully near future, there will be a part 2 of this guide with even more soloing. See you soon!
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It’s been a while since the release of the 3.2 patch, and we finally made some serious shots at the new raid instance. I have some really mixed feeling about it now. While the instance was on the PTR, I’ve been reading endless whining on the forums here and there, about how easy the raid bosses are. Well, it’s only partly true.
Oh man, have it really been over a month already? All this summer holiday stuff really makes days blur into one big blob. It really feels like only a few days. Well, I don’t have any good excuse, apart from “it’s hot” and “the bloody workers are making noises just outside the window for a whole month now”, and I know they aren’t the best ones. I feel kind of bad for not writing for so long, but I was just too focused on other stuff.