Disclaimer: This is the heroic version of the fight, and I will only be going into changes and the strategy specific to heroic mode. For a full list of abilities and general strategies, please check out the normal mode guide.
Introduction: This guy has been bowflexin’ and treating his tentacle ED. They now stay up permanently until you medically beat them back into the ground!
Difficulty (Heroic): 3.5/5: This fight was bugged early on making it quite easy, but has since been fixed. This fight will really stress your healers, and is no pushover on DPS either. While there are not a huge amount of mechanics in this fight, the ones that are there have to be executed very well.
Comp and Stats:
Tanks: 1 (Bear > Paladin = Warrior > DK)
Healers: 3
DPS: 6 (Ranged are very good in this fight, as is a combat rogue)
Zon’ozz: 86M
Claw: 1.8M
Eye: 710k
Flail: 310k
Enrage: 6 minutes
Heroic Changes:
- The tentacles in the black blood phase are now targetable mobs and must be killed. Each one places a stack of the Black Blood of Go’rath debuff on all players as long as they are up. This debuff does around 4,000 Shadow damage per second per stack.
- Claw Tentacle (1): This tentacle must be tanked and will always spawn in the same place. The tank must be on top of the tentacle or it will ooze spit and wipe the raid. When tanked it does not hit very hard.
- Eye Tentacle (4): These deal damage to random raid members in the form of a single target beam attack, Shadow Gaze which hits for 37k Shadow damage. They will squish themselves down towards the floor when they are about to attack, when they are in this position they can be interrupted. Solar flare is amazing on these.
- Flail Tentacle (2): This is a tiny tentacle and will deal damage to raid members randomly with Sludge Spew, hitting for 45k Shadow damage. It will also perform a knockback on players within 15 yards dealing 15.5k physical damage.
- Disrupting Shadows: This is cast on three raiders (healers/DPS). This spell will still deal large damage until dispelled, and will still hit and knockback for 60k when dispelled. In Heroic it will also deal 60k and a knockback to any player within 10 yards of the player who was dispelled.
- Focused Anger: Increases Zon’ozz’s physical damage by 20% (up from 10%) and his attack speed by 5% (down from 10%).
Positioning:
Ping-Pong Phase: The boss should be pulled to Green quickly where it should then spawn the void orb to ranged who should be stacked on X. You will always have a 4 / 5 split on green and red, because you do not want your tank to take bounce damage. We had 4 in the green (melee group) and 5 in the red (ranged) group.
Black Blood Phase: The claw will spawn on Green and the tank will be right there to pick it up. Zon’ozz still jumps back to the middle for 10 seconds, and will then move back to green. You will need to split your DPS and heals into 3 groups.
Ranged: The ranged group should start DPSing the flail by red and continue killing the eyes on the blue side. Assign one healer to the ranged group who can position themselves around yellow.
Tank: The tank must remain on green. A melee DPS who will kill the eye tentacle as described in the picture and will then stay on boss. This is best suited for a combat rogue or other cleaving class. Finally a healer will be assigned to this group.
Melee: Two DPS (Melee or ranged standing in green for bounces) will kill a flail and an eye. They will also be assigned a healer who can position themselves around purple.
Burn time: On the fourth black blood phase all ranged and healers stack on Green and burn boss. Any melee DPS moves to Zon’ozz when Zon’ozz jumps to the center then move to green when Zon’ozz moves back. Tank stays on Claw position.
Strategy:
- Bounce counts: I found that the combination 5-5-7-3 was the best possible bounce combo for our group, and allowing for around 10 seconds left before berserk on our first kill. The choice to do 5 on the first few allow for more time to kill tentacles before he casts his orb again. It also removes an annoying timing of Disrupting Shadows going into the first Black Blood phase if you were to do 7 bounces. I highly suggest trying this combo and if you find yourself hitting berserk for purely DPS reasons, then look at changing it.
- Focused Anger: The tank will be taking immense damage during ping pong phase between melee hits and Psychic Drain. The tank needs to have cooldowns once Focused Anger gets to 5 stacks.
- Disrupting Shadows: This can prove to be one of the most challenging parts of the fight.
- In each bounce group determine the direction each raider will run when they get it.
- I would recommend having one heal in each group deal with their group’s debuffs. Have the third healer watch and assist the healers in case they get it.
- For those dispelling, mouseover macros are very important as the player must be 10 yards away.
- Abilities such as Cloak of Shadows and a Pally’s Bubble can dispel the debuff without triggering the explosion.
- Having affected players call out when they are ready for dispel can be useful.
- Players who receive the debuff must be mindful of the orb’s positioning as if 2 or 3 get it on the same group, and the orb is about to hit that group, the players affected should stay in for the bounce and the healers will need to heal through the DoT and orb damage, then dispel.
- Learn these timings: When disrupting goes out, where the location of the orb is, what bounce is it.
- Cauterize and Dispersion: These spells are amazing for helping healers on this fight. A mage or shadow priest can solo a bounce reducing the overall healing that is needed. Having this for the 6th bounce on the 3rd set is extremely useful.
- Managing Healing: This fight is a huge healer check, but certain things can help push you through. Keep in mind all healers will need to maintain around 23-24k HPS.
- During Black Blood phase, make sure healers do not scoot and shoot with the DPS. Find a happy spot and make sure the onus is on the DPS to stay in range.
- Very precise cooldown rotations should be known for both phases. Tanks will need cooldowns once focused anger gets to 5+.
- Minimize the time spent with the debuff: This may seem like common sense, but you must dispel immediately when the affected are 10 yards out.
- Do not go into black blood without people being very topped off.
- Before healer blame goes out, logs and execution must be checked! Very minor mistakes are enough to push healing over the edge.
- 4th Black Blood / Burn: As described in the positioning section, you will ignore all tentacles and move to the spots described earlier. Heroism and all CDs should be blown to stay alive. Have a solid raid CD rotation to get through all the damage.
Video:
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