This is the second installment of my Pimp Your Druid series of posts. This will focus on Bloodlord Mandokir and how to solo him for your very own Swift Razzashi Raptor from Zul`Gurub. The difficulty of this is more challenging than soloing Anzu but it is still manageable with any level of gear.
Prerequisite
- The only firm requirement for this is that you must be in a raid to enter Zul`Gurub. Find a free friend and create a raid.
- While you don’t have to be level 80, it definitely helps to make things easier and faster
What gear do I need?
- Personally, I wear as much stam as possible, with no buffs aside from Mark of the Wild and Thorns
- If you are worried about your gear, try entering battlegrounds to get some buffs/food first, before starting your run
Getting There/Clearing Trash
- As this is a level 60 instance, you can literally mount up and run past everything.
- You will need to clear one trash pack, this is the pack of raptors to the right of Bloodlord’s tower.
How to Solo Bloodlord Mandokir
First and foremost, when facing Bloodlord, there is a raptor pack to the right of his tower. Clear this trash pack, this is vital to the strategy and will be explained later.
Once you kill the Vilebranch Speaker (at the bottom of the stairs), Bloodlord will engage you automatically. At the start of the fight, you will have to deal with both Bloodlord and his raptor Orghan. It is advisable to kill Orghan first to minimize the overall amount of damage in the long run. When Orghan dies, Bloodlord will enrage and gain Frenzy which will increase his attack speed by 65% and increases damage by 50 for 1 min and 50 seconds. At this point you should pop your cooldowns to minimize the damage taken. Barkskin, Demoralizing Roar, Frenzied Regeneration are all things that you should be using and on cooldown for the remainder of the fight. Throughout the fight, Bloodlord will also cast Threatening Gaze which puts a 2s timer on you. If you are using abilities at the end of the 2s timer, he will Charge you. While you can stand stationary and avoid the charge, if your gear is not as good as you’d like it to be, you may way to consider this. I personally don’t do this and push through the extra damage.
The fight presents two main problems for druids, which are fears and damage. Both can be managed by doing the following:
- Fear – This can be really messy, especially with all the trash in Bloodlord’s room. Rather than clearing all the trash, you can use his tower to fight Bloodlord. When Bloodlord is engaged, move him and fight him at the top of his tower. This way when he fears, instead of being feared in a random direction, it will force you to be feared down his staircase. After the fear, move yourself back to the top of the tower and repeat throughout the fight. This will ensure that no extra trash will be pulled into the fight.
Tanking at the top of the stairs, forces fears down the stairs. No Extra Trash!
- Damage – Bloodlord does a lot of damage (even at lv 80). It is probably possible to not require heals if you’re in bear spec and bear gear with buffs and consumables. However I’ve never tried it that way as I do this in stam gear + cat spec + no buffs. For those who don’t have the gear or don’t want to respec, you can do the following to heal yourself. At the top of the tower, when you are getting low (If I fall below 40% I make the move), jump from the tower to the left side (facing the staircase) into the open space that was created by killing the raptor pack. Due to pathing, Bloodlord will be forced to run down the stairs and around to the back of he tower to engage you. During this time, you can easily case off multiple heals to bring yourself back up in health. Once you’ve topped yourself off, shift back to bear form and take Bloodlord back up to the top of the stairs.
Off in the corner where the raptor pack was, heal here and run him back up to the top of the stairs
So there you have it! Unfortunately Zul`Gurub is on a 3 day raid timer, so you won’t be able to do this everyday. However keep at it and soon you’ll be the proud owner of a Raptor like me! Stayed tuned for installment 3 which will be Pimp Your Druid: High Priest Thekal to obtain a Swift Zulian Tiger
Rawr!
Feral Aggression 
I went and did this after my 25 man Ulduar on Monday night.
I didn’t clear any trash and never needed to heal up out of form. I used my CD’s about 60% through the fight just to be safe but probably didn’t have to.
I did it in Bear spec with good tanking gear.
Note… if you kill the add at the bottom of the stairs it pulls the boss.
I did the whole fight at the top of the tower, never did get feared further than half way down so no risk pulling add packs.
I look forward to a write up on how to solo for the Tiger. I did 1 attempt but had to stop for the night. It is definitely soloable but it might take a trick shifting back and forth from bear and cat.
One thing I have that has been a big boon to solo tanking is the The Undeath Carrier enchanted with Lifeward, works great along with the health procs from ILotP.
I had a feeling in bear spec it wouldn’t be necessary and you could just tank and spank it. If you are cat spec though you will need to make those type of adjustments as he still hits kind of hard on me 😦 Also at lv 70 this was possible in t6 with full tank gear, I used to do this back then too but it required a lot of buffs to get through it all 🙂
I’ve got the article all written up for Tiger boss but I don’t have any screenshots so I gotta go back and do it all over again. Just when I thought I’d never have to go back and solo ZG hehe.
Can’t wait to read about the article for the Tiger boss! I’m about to try the Raptor boss right now.. Hope I do well.
no big deal if you’re bear-specced and bear stuffed. it went very nicely. I never get under 80%, and you have your frienzed regeneration if needed…
Just down hakkar but it seems buggy if you don’t kill arlokk (penther priest) : it resets very quickly. I kill him with the Mar’li buff (just a 3 or 4 seconds stun), just before hitting the enrage timer (1400 dps cause i went lazy !)
Have a good time in ZG !
Possible to do this as resto?
Never tried but highly doubtful 😦
Was there a stealth nerf to the reset timer on ZG? After I did this yesterday I checked my reset timer rigt after and it was 19 hours some odd minutes. I just checked it again before leaving for work this morning and it was at 18 minutes.
Just wondering if I missed something as I don’t regularly check the timer just go back every three days?
Just did the mount run for 2nd day in a row, but, false alarm. Guess I just got lucky one time as the reset is now back to 2 days 19 hours.
Definitely 3 days, you wish it were 19 hrs =p
Those in the hunt for this one or the ZG tiger should do it ASAP. Once Neltharion (aka Deathwing) makes his return in Cataclysm, ZG is going bye-bye. The fate of these mounts is yet to be determined, but it wouldn’t suprise me if they are no longer available when the Destroyer lays waste to the world as we know it.