The Best Buffalo Wings in Azeroth

When I think of Buffalo Wings in WoW, my mind typically goes straight for Skettis, and my hate/hate relationship with the Kaliri flying around the place like overgrown mosquitoes. One of the more common daily cooking quests has you head up to the mountains and farm a Buffalo Wing off of one of them puppies.

But, last night we found out that the best wings in the game come off of Jan'alai in Zul'Aman.

Not quite as easy to come by as the Kaliri, but when we finally fried him up, it was quite the feast. Mmmmm, Frank's Red Hot.

Zoned into ZA. Our goal for the evening was Nalorakk and Akil'zon within the timed event, followed by attempts at Jan'alai with the hopes of killing him. Our previous attempts had us pretty close, but not quite there yet.

We also had a change in our team. Our previous Team 1 off-tank is having a rough time with the conflict between bed time and raid time, so he's opting out of 10-man stuff. So the team has a new Paladin tank, and visions of a dead Eagle Boss.

Here's where we admit the complete and total incompetence of our raid.

The Gong. That stupid gong that Indiana Jones bangs, and five of you need to bang in concert with him.

I think this is the hardest part of the dungeon for the team. We laugh on and on with the Guild Master as he counts down repeatedly to coordinate our actions. Never works. We wasted a full 9 minutes trying to bang the gong last night.

But, eventually the stars aligned and the timer began. Nalorakk, Akil. No sweat. Both timed events nailed, with what feels like a reasonable amount of time to spare for when we decide to try an additional boss within the timer.

The loot in ZA is outstanding. Nalorakk dropped some mail shoulders that look like little bear heads that rest next to your head. I passed on them in favor of our Survival Hunter, since they were agility upgrade for him. Expose Weakness, FTW!!!

Cruised through the Scout gauntlet section.

Made 5 unsuccessful attempts at Jan'alai. Each attempt was progressively better, but was mostly the same strategy each time, only tweaking the number of eggs we allowed to hatch each time.

At 30% health, he spawns all remaining eggs. At 25% health (or 5 minutes elapsed time), he enrages, painfully messing with his aggro table and wacking anybody he can find.

For the 6th try, we changed it up a bit.

Rather than treat the eggs as purely an AoE thing, we went hybrid.

When the first set of hatchers arrives, Amava kills one before he can hatch anybody. Concussive Shot does the trick, and he's dead before he even enters the bridge towards the eggs.

Everybody else focuses on the other side, with Amava joining in once his hatcher is dead.

The first 3 eggs get treated as normal, single-target mobs, not AoE. Pally tank picks them up, DPS hammers them down.

Allow the hatcher to hatch all remaining eggs on the one side.

Now its AoE time. Seed of Corruption, Arcane Explosion, Volley, 2xConsecration (Ret Pally, FTW).

So, in the first arrival of Hatchers, we cleared one full side in this manner.

Next arrival of Hatchers, same routine on the other side.

The reason we did the hybrid "single-target mode / AoE mode" approach was that the Mage doing Frost Nova had to wait for large quantites of dragons before she froze them in place. Plus, and I'm no expert on Warlock-iness so take this with a grain of salt, Seeds of Corruption would go off too early if he cast it on the 1 or 2 initial mobs. By waiting for the large pack of mobs to be present, maximum value out of the AoE damagers.

Now its just Pew Pew Pew, and avoid the fire bombs. When he starts throwing the bombs, rotate camera to directly overhead looking down, and the safe spots are clearly visible.

Hunters, save your Misdirection for when he enrages, because his aggro table will get all funky.

And that's all there is to it :-)

Its the first progression boss we've had to struggle through lately, wiping for two weeks, followed by a 6-try night ending with a kill.

He dropped a Leather chest with over 200 Ignore Armor. I was drooling over it, but no way I could justify using it over the Merciless Gladiator's Chain Armor S2 Chest I just got.

We probably would have DE'd it, but we really wanted the WoW Jutsu scan to register the kill, so we forced a Resto Druid to take it in case she ever wanted to play Cat Woman.

And we're now 3/6 in ZA, which feels pretty good for a bunch of jokers who just recently set foot in the Big Boy Raids.