Zerging Zul'Gurub

Ah, Zul'Gurub. When I started raiding, about 3 years ago, Zul'Gurub was hard. At least at first. I still remember wiping multiple times to the Bat boss. Killing Hakkar without killing at least most of his aspects before was considered impossible, and for my guild we always killed all of them and still occasionally wiped to him (although near the BC release he was becoming pretty easy).

Level 70 changed all that of course, and I haven't been there in a long time. Not much fun in something which is not a challenge, and there was always something else to do. However, last night, the guild we sometimes join with for raids was organizing a ZG run and there were a few open spots. As Solidstate didn't have the achievement I joined. We were nearly 20 people when we started, so almost full.

I knew ZG would be easy. Heck, the rest of my guild were in ZA (I logged in late) and rolling though the fights without any problem, I later heard they got the 3rd chest with ~25 minutes to spare on the timer. But I didn't reallize how easy it would be.

Trash lasted seconds, and barely hurt us. Several times I pulled agro from the tank and had a Gurubashi Berserker hitting me - I usually didn't even bother to Ice Block.

We skipped the Bat lady. We also skipped the Spider boss and Panther boss.

We downed the Snake boss and all his adds together, first by doing AoE to kill the snakes, then killing the boss. I may have managed to get off 5 frostbolts - I'm not sure. We didn't bother keeping distance from him.

We killed the Raptor boss. There were no tactics, we didn't even get ready for the fight as a priest pulled the add by mistake. The boss even killed 2 people and it made no difference. No mount dropped, alas.

Tony the Tiger and his adds went down so fast he didn't manage to do even one of those annoying AoE knockbacks that used to annoy me so much at level 60. He also didn't manage to summon any tiger adds - or if he did they went down too quick for me to notice. We didn't bother seperating the adds, just AoE'd them both. Again, no mount dropped.

We ran straight to Hakkar, skipping most trash. Once we started the fight, the MT spent most of the fight Mind Controlled. Hakkar used abilities from 3 aspects. Once or twice I even pulled agro and had Hakkar melee-ing me - I lived. Hakkar even manged to do the Blood Siphon once (and of course we didn't nother with a Son of Hakkar). All of it didn't matter, he went down. Alas, I lost the roll on the Heart, which I had never won back when I was raiding him at 60.

The entire run took about 25 minutes, not including time to invite and summon people.

On the one hand, it was fun to get an achievement so easily and quickly and not have to worry about nearly anything (keeping mana up with the fast pace was my only real worry :)). Tip to those going to ZG and reading this - kill the Bat Lady as the AoE silences from Hakkar were annoying for the casters.

On the other hand, my main enjoynment from raiding has always come from the careful planning, execution and cooperation needed to take down a complex boss. Last night's ZG run was not a raid by any definition, except for the technical aspect of being part of a group of 20 people. Of course most people would not have wanted to do the run any other way - getting a ZG achievement in ~30min (summons and all) is the fastest and best usage of that most precious commodity, time. But I'm weird :) In spite of it having been longer, I would have liked to try and re-create the feeling of challange. Perhaps by going in a group of 5 people. Or even just talking over the tactics before the boss and trying to execute them, even if they are not really needed now.

If it's hard to understand my motivation, consider this - a group that can force themselves to follow an exact and personally demanding tactic even when it is not needed - such a group can have a much better chance to down bosses that do need such tactics.