Zar'jira, the Sea Witch needs a buff

This mercenary is so bad, and she seems even worse when compared to the other female naga.

  1. She does little damage
  2. Her most useful skill has 2 round CD
  3. All her equipment is inconsequential stat buffs.

To make it all worse, all the treasure she gets in PvE is related to her cold skill, the one with 2 rounds of CD. Meaning you could literally only get benefit from your PvE treasures every 3 rounds… WHY?! Even the level 5 versions of these treasures mean nothing if you can only benefit from them 1/3 of the time.

She only EVER feels useful when I get the “all casters have no CD on their abilities” boon. Which, obviously can also make some fights harder if the enemy has too many powerful casters. Or, she feels useful when I get the “Start of Game” effects like Ice Wall, or Remorseless Winter, in which case I don’t even need her fighting, she’s just there for the bench. Otherwise, she just feels like a trash version of Azshara.

In order to fix her, IMO, I would do two things:

  1. Lower the CD on Freezing Touch from 2 rounds to 1 round. This would give her a niche in Naga builds, and would be especially good for Frost builds. It is not OP because she has to essentially stay locked on to a target to keep it frozen, so it’s almost like they are both out of the fight. Also, at a 1 round CD, it is still not “spammable” and she’d need to weave in her other spells between turns.
  2. Give her access to Shadow treasures in PvE. Her kit has a lot more synergy with Shadow than with Frost because (a) her Witch’s Curse is spammable, (b) it’s her main source of dmg, (c) it does not make her target immune like her freeze does, and (d) it is her only skill that can crit.

This would be similar to the buff Athissa got, which lowered her CD in Riptide from 1 round to 0) and buffed the speed of her Captive Tides.

Anyway… Azshara is amazing with her ST, AoE and defensive ability. Vashj’s has a similar combination of ST vs AoE to make her good vs most enemies (even if Bleeds are utter garbage). And Athissa got a great buff that made her really good. But the male nagas, and especially Zar’jira is completely worthless. Make her usable, please.

The two male nagas maybe just need higher attack and HP; they are weak but workable. Zar’jira is the only one of the nagas that feels useless. Help a girl out…

I don’t think you have quite got how to get most out of Zar’jira, her freeze is much more effective if you use it to protect your own characters, especially with the equipment that makes it also freeze an enemy when you freeze an ally. this way the damage from the freeze will also benefit from your spell damage and can do massive aoe. Also she is one of the few mercenaries in the game that can get the most powerful treasure that basically auto wins most bounties (Remorseless Winter) just that alone makes her worthwhile and is why I have her in my frost team.

obviously… but…

I’ve yet to see any youtube “expert” rank her above D tier. Very garbage merc. Needs a buff. I’m really not alone in that opinion.

From what I have seen, those experts only rate mercs with pvp in mind, and yes she isn’t that great for pvp, same can be said by like 80% of the characters. She has her uses in pve however.

In the very beginning Zar’jira seemed like more of a PvP-focused ‘tech’ merc, designed to ‘counter’ the likes of Trigore or Shadow parties (yep, that third equipment was probably the most remarkable thing about her). While the first part is questionable, I even used her in PvP back then for that ring, sometimes successfully (it depended on a match-up and so on). Of course, this was in a much older ‘meta’.

If you take this into consideration, this probably explains the cooldown on her second ability, which could otherwise be a bit too much.

I wasn’t aware of it, especially the latter.

I’d stay clear of most YouTube ‘experts’, especially those who indulge in those ridiculous ‘tier lists’. Many of Old Guardian’s bounty guides are of decent quality and can be recommended — not all of them, though, but errare humanum est — that’s more or less about it, especially re PvE.

As for male nagas, I’ve already made a point in another thread that Slitherspear packs quite a punch with ‘You Lift Bro?’.

PS On some other nagas…

Ironically, in PvE she almost looks better in a Shadow party than in a dedicated Naga party due to that equipment.

Vashj seems more geared towards PvP than PvE, too, since her best equipment and skills tend to work best agaisnt faster opponents, which often isn’t the case in PvE… Some of these Nagas have had their moments and have seen play in PvP, actually.

In PvE, parties that have good synergies or mechanics often tend to work well against various opponents, while others generally struggle. Nagas are… not unplayable, just not that coherent as a tribe and thus as ‘good’ as some other parties. The thing is, even mercs who are strong on their own sometimes just don’t fit in a party you would play in general and therefore are maybe not as ‘popular’. Zar’jira might be one of these mercs… Her skills are not bad, just situational, and it’s hard for her to fit in any particular party.

In that regard, some Nagas might be better off as individual units in some other compositions: Azshara with Shadow, for instance, or something like Athissa-Trigore-Lokholar as a cheap and very effective combination against those big greens in the original BRM boss fights…

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Azshara’s other equipment makes her pretty good in a dedicated naga party. She gets a lot of HP.

Definitely. I’ve gotten a chance to test other comps now and I’d say Fire, Orcs, or Old Gods are much more synergistic. Old Gods are way OP, and really make Zar’Jira look like even worse garbage. But, Nagas feel more or less on the same power level as Frost or Nature. Heck, Nagas basically have a Nature core, and a Shadow core, so you just build around whatever equipment you get.

Back on the OG topic… Zar’Jira really has no “place.” She doesn’t excel at anything, she is mediocre at everything… and she relies heavily on equipment to make use of her. More than anything, on the Caster Coin that removes CDs.

I know rarity is not a good measure of power, but she does not look even remotely viable when you compare her to other epic Caster like Khagdar, Baron Gedon, Maestra, or Chi-Ji, or even to rare Casters like Cookie, Morgl, Patches, Varden, Guff, Xyrella or Blink Fox. And she’s LOL… utter trash next to good legendary casters like Yogg-Saron, N’zoth, Gul’Dan, Jaina, Anduin or Long’xin.

Azshara being actually strong makes Zar’Jira look even more pathetic than she is. In nagas, she’s just filler, as one more option to get the Naga team speed and dmg reduction, or the Naga Hp and spell dmg. In other comps, she doesn’t really do anything other than SOMETIMES lower an enemy attack (after they’ve already done dmg). She gets all the frost secrets… but her only frost skill has a very long CD. That’s why she doesn’t get played.

She really feels bad, and IMHO… needs a buff. I think the CD reduction on the frost skill would be the best way to go, but anything, really. She needs something.

Ironically, she doesn’t attack herself, so someone else probably becomes a target — that’s it. I’ve been thinking about it, and, if we were to buff the Naga tribe a bit, I’d probably start with that equipment and rework it, so that it gives a buff to the whole team (all friendly Nagas or something), giving them an incentive to fight for their queen.

Fire and Old Gods are some of the ‘top’ ‘comps’, as people call it.

Orcs used to be a premium, although not cheap, party in the old BRM, when Ragnaros (Executus) was the final boss, and there were not many options, especially on the protector side, against such heroic bosses as High Justice Grimstone (that one even got nerfed — he was much more powerful) or Geddon and big green minions. Nowadays they’re falling behind, but there are still a few bounties where Orcs are very good, and they can be fun to play. I’ve written about them, so let’s not go further into this here.

Back in the day even Kurtrus was a relatively good ‘budget’ merc. Nowadays, of course, with immensely powerful rare protectors available, Orcs in particular are not that exclusive in that regard.

You’ve got to be kidding… Frost is one of the most powerful parties in PvE, and so is new Nature with Nemsy, which I’ve also written about. Nagas, on the other hand… Well…

One more thing: in PvE, some parties are more or less good in different zones. Admittedly, if anywhere, Nagas are more playable in The Sunken City or Darkshore, where you face either a lot of nagas boosting you as well or fast Murlocs, which they counter. As for my general recommendations — somewhat subjective, of course — for various zones, mostly on Heroic, about which party is the ‘best’ or the most comfortable, from my point of view, against both mobs and bosses (some particular cases, where you need a specific party, notwithstanding, of course):

  • Barrens, Felwood — these are you levelling zones, use whatever you’ve got.
  • Winterspring — not as tough and infamous as it used to be anymore, you could go with Fire, for example (although it is really good only with Balinda), or Beasts (maybe I should write about these… or perhaps I have) are also particularly good there. If nothing else, even starter mercs can do a lot there nowadays — including, for instance, the infamous Heroic Snowclaw.
  • BRM — Nature (yep, even the good old trio was quite enough; Holy is also good), but some bosses require special solutions.
  • Alterac, Onyxia’s Lair — Team H, sometimes Orcs. Dragons are another viable alternative in Alterac.
  • Darkshore, The Sunken City — Fire, Pirates, Frost is also not bad (as it is in most zones, really)
  • Darkmoon and newer bounties in other zones — it depends… Frost, Nemsy Nature, Fire, etc.

Frost can do almost anything… Pirates or Old Goods are very powerful, too. Against certain bounties, I like Beasts a lot.

Of course, this list is not extensive.

Sometimes — well, quite often nowadays, actually — the cheapest mercs are the best in their batch.

Khadgar is something else, Maestra is probably more about PvP, as far as I know, and as for others mentioned, especially Geddon — they are only good because they fit in particularly strong parties.

There are excellent mercs such as Scabbs or Illidan (used to be Xuen also, but I’ve found a place for him in the new Beast party) which are excellent and powerful, but often just do not fit in and thus are staying in the village.

As for Zar’jira, as said, I think her place was in PvP. Against the old Shadow (although it has reemerged a bit recently… the one with Trigore and Kazakus as an opener), she was impressive, but otherwise…

Cookie used to be the most powerful merc in PvP (less so nowadays, though) and is always useful on the bench, if there’s space, in PvE for his nearly unique equipment… Xyrella is excellent, especially for a free merc, fitting in the ‘starter’ party (Cariel, Xyrella, Samuro) or a Holy-Human party (my most recent version is generally with Yrel) in PvE and having had her moment in PvP. Blink Fox is a unique story… And others, again, are as good as their ‘tribes’ or ‘parties’.

Well… Yogg would be quite… mediocre but for that synergy with others (notably, Y’Shaarj’s Rage Unbound), N’Zoth is not that good at all in PvE, unless you don’t want to play C’Thun against a red boss or something… Gul’Dan has never been that great, honestly, even though they buffed his Fel side: he’s got that Amulet of Souls for Orcs, which is not even that mandatory nowadays with many other good Orcs to choose from, and that’s about it. Jaina used to be the staple of the Frost party, and she’s still strong, although sometimes she’s falling behind. Anduin — yeah, see about “Holy-Human” above… And Long’xin isn’t that strong in PvE — not bad in a dragon party, but you might as well play Brightwing in his/her (hard to tell with these dragons) stead (unless you need both, for instance when I want to do Heroic Onyxia with dragons, which probably isn’t even the easiest approach to that bounty) or even roll with the budget trio (Yu’lon, Sinestra and Nefarian). PvP is another thing…

Well, you could use her for healing with Xalatath (or however it is spelled).

Once again, probably not for PvP.