Once a huntard, still a huntard? part 3

Zul'Gurub. Ah, what an instance it was. ZG or Zee GEE a we called it. Zul'Gurub was a raid focused on the Hakkar worshipping trolls, with Hakkar being the final encounter of the instance.

Zul'Gurub was the first place I encountered complex raid strategies. Although nothing compared to 40 man strategies of say late Molten Core or up the instance was no cake walk for those who were only just geared enough for the dungeon.

It took my guild, Nemesis, a long time to clear that dungeon; there were a lot of fights that were largely gear dependent and we didn't want to fight Hakkar until we had all the bosses down. This was for a number of reasons: Aspect bosses (bat, snake, tiger, panther, spider) provided Hakkar various buffs and they also were easier opportunities for loot.

Hakkar was an interesting fight, however. There is a mechanic that is rarely seen in boss fights and that is needing to hurt yourself to hurt him. In order to kill him you get him to 0%. See what I did there? lol. The strategy was quite simple, but timing was important to avoid enrage. So you had to do it right. Every so often Hakkar will cast a life drain which drains about 16 of your 20 raid players. Life drain will heal him for a certain amount per player being drained. To counter this a Wind Serpent that spawns on the lower tier of the pyramid needs to be pulled up and CC'd until the raid decides it needs to die. It needs to die because upon death they lay an AoE poison cloud on the ground that deals nature damage to you. Why would you want AoE poison? Because when Hakkar drains you and you're poisoned he will take significant damage. Timing the kill of this mob is important so you can get as many people into the poison as possible for as little time as possible i.e. just before he casts his life drain everyone should get poisoned. Killing the mob too early meant you HAD to stack into the poison and put more strain on healers. First Aid is a good thing guys, make sure you keep that thing maxed out.

Threat was a touchier subject back then, abilities like vengeance and misdirect simply did not exist. Tanks had to rotate due to a few reasons in the Hakkar fight so that made threat even more difficult to manage.

I never really got that much loot from ZG, my DPS was great for my gear and I tended to top the damage charts so I gave the gear to players who needed it more as they would see a larger increase in dps output than myself. A bigger gear upgrade increases overall group DPS. My generosity paid back in Molten Core where other hunters insisted that I was the priority for getting Tier 1. On our first successful night of Molten Core I acquired 5 of 8 items of Tier 1. An amazing result :) However it took me ages to get my final piece of Tier 1. Molten Core talk another time :)