It all started with an out of the blue pst…. “Would you like to join a TA (The Afflicted) sponsored ZG run”. As a priest I get at least two or three of those every time I’m on and rarely do I have the required time to join the group. So needless to say I accepted the invite and was promptly summoned to the gates of Zul’Grub.

LESSON LEARNED #1: Every 20 man group has to have a warlock. Just getting the people to the instance would have taken forever. With in 10 minutes all 15 invites were summoned and ready to roll. Because Zul’Grub is so huge with tons of patrols and nasty monsters once in the instance replacement group members were summoned to the boss being downed instead of waiting for them to find their way back to the group. Saved a ton of time!!

The Zul’Grub instance has a 3.5 day reset time once you kill a boss and our group was the last of the TA people going through… they just needed to fill some gaps in their ranks. Our group was made up of 2 priests, 2 druids, 2 shaman, 4 warriors, 1 warlock, 3 mages, 4 rouges and 2 hunters. No pets were allowed.

We started moving through the instance to the 3rd boss (2 others had been killed earlier). ZG looks a lot like the rest of Stranglethrone Vale… very dense vegetation with monsters  lurking behind bushes close to the roads. Follow the leader and stay close were the instructions given by raid leader and probably wasn’t surprised when someone took a short cut and aggrod a bunch of nasties! Basically they let him die… instructing him to move away from aggro area and then rezzed him. He didn’t do that again!

As we started clearing trash to get to the boss I quickly noticed that raid healing is far different than group healing! With only 2 priests I thought we would be in trouble… man was I wrong.

LESSON LEARNED #2: At least one healing specced Druid with innervate spell is a must in any raid…. And protect this guy like he was a priest! Basically this druid spell increases a player’s mana regeneration rate by 400%. I was NEVER mana limited on my healing power. The Druid in this group had +537 healing and at the end of the run was responsible for 37% of all healing. That is impressive!

LESSON LEARNED #3: Priests do big heals… druids and shaman handle the rest. Having 20 health bars to watch is a little like managing controlled chaos. Anytime someone hit 50% health 1 or 2 healers would respond. In most cases the druids and shaman could NOT keep up with the tank’s healing requirements so the Priests hit them with the Greater Heals as needed. I’m sure there was a fair amount of overheals happening but mana regeneration wasn’t an issue.

LESSON LEARNED #4: CTRaid Mod is a must for all party members! The group was very well controlled by the raid leader who used the raid markers religiously. Before each major fight detailed instructions accompanied by an alert sound described everyone’s role. Any special instructions for individual classes were also covered (example: mages sheep mind controlled tanks & priests disspell sheep when mind control wears off). One other major benefit was the main assist and tank targets window. This really helped every one focus on the right enemy to kill because you can quickly just click on the group member to target the same target.

Zul’Grub reputation – in one run killing about 60% of the things there, I got 2800 points of reputation. Some of that came from destroying dropped items called Bijou’s at the alter where you will find multiple quests from the Zandalar Tribe. The gear, patterns, potions and plans you get from this group are better than stuff from Stratholme, Scholo and Dire Maul but not quite as good as Molten Core. You will find the Zandalar Tribe off of the north west coast of Stranglethorn Vale. I expect this will be our guilds first 20 man instance as we build up members and improve our gear for Molten Core, AQ and the rest of the higher end game instances.

One last thing… I got a semi-rare drop called a Blood Scyth which is used by Herbalist gathering herbs in ZG. When you use this special blade to gather herbs you have the possibility of a Bloodvine herb dropping anytime you collect other herbs in the zone. Bloodvine is used in engineering items, tailoring, blacksmithing and alchemy. Check out the plans and recipes you can buy when you gain rep with Zandalar tribe, there are some really nice pieces that don’t require tons of mats to make.

Loot I got:

1. Zulian Scepter of Rites – http://www.thottbot.com/?i=53630
2. Hakkari Loa Cloak – http://www.thottbot.com/?i=51190
3. Primal Hakkari Sash – http://www.thottbot.com/?i=51580
4. Blood Scythe - http://www.thottbot.com/?i=51691
5. Golden Hakkari Bijou (x2) -http://www.thottbot.com/?i=51344
6. Blue Hakkari Bijou (x2) – http://www.thottbot.com/?i=51371