Hi there. You’ve probably seen me in every thread about Zekvir, ever. Well, here’s my own.
This fight thoroughly enthralled me. I first did it as a Resto Druid, and I enjoyed the process of figuring it out, and ultimately defeating, it so much that I started leveling alts with the express purpose of doing this fight. I know it’s not perfect, and I can see why the disparities between classes/specs can be thought of as a problem, but for me, the differences in classes is actually content - because it makes the fight a slightly different challenge on different characters.
Aside from the basic mechanics of the fight that we all know - avoid Claw Smash, interrupt heal, etc. - each class/spec has its own pros and cons that make the fight interesting to complete on multiple characters. I’m going to describe the specific advantages and challenges of each of the 8 classes/specs that I did this fight on, and rank them in terms of difficulty from easiest to hardest.
I’ll also indicate the item level at which I beat it. That doesn’t really mean anything for you, it’s just a reference point to understand my commentary. I was not explicitly trying to complete these at low ilvls or anything. Note that for the first 2 chars I beat him on (mage, druid) I didn’t realize I’d be doing this, so I did not pay attention to my ilvl at the time, and so my figures here are estimates.
Frost Mage (ilvl ~612ish, Troll)
Frost mage is the perfect spec for this fight. Not only do you have Energized Barriers to handle every spittle, and recurring burst damage for the eggs, but you also have 2 Shimmers to get out of mistakes, and 2 Ice Blocks in case you don’t. You also have 2 quasi-interrupts in Blast Wave and Dragon’s Breath in case you let an egg hatch. Lastly, Shimmer allows you to continue casting through it, so if you’re casting a Glacial Spike on an egg, and you’re forced to move because of Claw Smash or something, you can keep casting that GS and kill the egg. Overall, Frost Mage can’t kill Zek at as low an ilvl as Shadow Priest, but it’s much more forgiving, so it gets the top spot.
Shadow Priest (ilvl 594, Gnome)
Similar to Frost Mage, SP can handle every spittle instantly. SP is better than FM on burst because Shadow Crash and Void Torrent line up perfectly for every egg, and Dark Ascension and Power Infusion are 1 minute so you can use one of them on each egg. This, combined with shields and passive survivability, allow SPs to beat Zek at ridiculously low ilvls. But it’s not quite as forgiving as Frost Mage.
Marks Hunter (ilvl 610, Orc)
Marks Hunters also handle every spittle with ease by disengaging. It can be a little awkward, as positioning Zek in the middle of the room is part of the basic strategy for this fight, and disengaging can temporarily screw that up. But it’s usually not a big deal. The main challenges for MH are survivability and killing eggs. Zek seems to hit Mail (and Leather) disproportionately hard. Until you over-gear this encounter, you need to be careful spacing out your Brann potions to keep the stacks going but not use them all at once. The eggs are also a minor challenge. You have a few instant casts, but will undoubtedly rely on at least 1 (probably 2 at ilvl 610) Aimed Shot(s) to kill the eggs. You need to make sure you’re casting them when you won’t be forced to move and abort the shot. Unfortunately, True Shot is just too long a cooldown to be reliable here.
Unholy DK (ilvl 604, Undead)
DKs are quite good at this fight, but it’s a little more complex than the previous classes. Mobility is a little limited compared to the previous 3 classes, but Death Charge and Wraith Walk are more than enough. Having a fair bit of ranged damage and especially a ranged interrupt are hugely helpful. The two main challenges of DK are Spittle and killing eggs. Killing eggs is really not so bad, but our damage cooldowns don’t line up well with eggs, so it’s a bit of a juggling act trying to figure out in advance which CDs will be needed to kill a specific egg. Spittle is a little annoying. You can Anti-Magic Shell the Spittle, but you really need to do it preemptively (before the spittle actually hits you) to prevent the debuff. If you get the debuff, you can still AMS, but you’ll be slowed and will take damage. Also, AMS only allows you to get every OTHER spittle, so you’re hoping Brann will dispel you. Fortunately, as a DK, you can survive spittle anyway, but if you’re in that situation while an Egg is up, it’s easy to fail killing the egg as you focus on surviving spittle. Lastly, DKs are probably the best class at dealing with eggs that hatch. You have 2 Death Grips and 1 pet stun to stop its cast, and a lot of ranged damage, so you can dodge mechanics while killing the spider. You can also get out of (or prevent) the stun with Icebound Fortitude.
Fury Warrior (ilvl 612, Orc)
Fury is similar to DK because our damage cooldowns don’t line up well with eggs, making it a bit of a juggling act to figure out which CDs to use when. But it’s more complex than that because those damage CDs (Odyn’s Fury, Avatar, Bladestorm) are also abilities that get us out of Spittle. Charge also removes spittle, but charge can be awkward to use, and is also valuable for other reasons (mobility). So Fury has a lot of fairly intense trade-offs to make in real-time. I will say that improving your gear reduces these problems substantially. Essentially when my gear was worse, I really NEEDED a full-power Bladestorm to help kill eggs occasionally. This meant I could not spec for 2 (reduced-power) bladestorms, and that I couldn’t really use bladestorm for spittle. Once I got over that gear hump, I was able to take 2 bladestorms, and use them almost exclusively for spittle. That makes things a heck of a lot easier. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal this is. The cascade of benefits from being able to routinely bladestorm out of spittle makes everything easier.
Affliction Lock (ilvl 610, Undead)
As you can imagine, Aff is not particularly good at killing eggs. Our damage CDs don’t line up with eggs at all, and even if they did, they take a while do damage, so they really need to be used at the first sign of problems. I had to use the Kaheti Shadweaver’s Emblem to help. At least this item is available in Delves, so should be fair game. But generally speaking, if you can get Unstable Affliction up on an egg immediately, you’ll be in pretty decent shape. If you have to move a couple times at the beginning of an egg, it’ll really screw you up. Fortunately Aff is pretty decent at dealing with hatched eggs. Make sure dots are up, then Mortal Coil into Fear and the thing should be dead.
The other problem with Aff (and I’m not sure if this applies to all Warlocks) is Spittle. Demonic Circle: Teleport removes spittle, and makes you immune to it for a few moments. Unfortunately, the cooldown of teleport is just barely longer than the cooldown of spittle, so you get into the following awkward spittle pattern:
- Teleport the spittle preemptively (while he’s casting it)
- Teleport just in time… about as he finishes the cast, or slightly afterward
- Teleport a couple seconds after you get spittle’d
- Teleport is not up in time. Dark Pact, Healthstone, and pray for a dispel
- Die
Basically you need Brann to dispel around #3 or #4, but you also need to NOTICE his dispel and be sure not to teleport, otherwise you’re in for a hard time. This all happens very fast, so can be difficult to deal with.
One random nicety about Warlocks is that you can Burning Rush before you engage, and get your HP down to ~70% and then Brann will put down a fire which you can use to get a 5% Intellect buff. Very nice.
Resto Druid (ilvl ~612ish, Night Elf)
It’s debatable whether rdruid belongs this low on the list. The two problems rdruids have are getting the eggs down in time, and, surprisingly, survivability (in Phase 1). As for getting the eggs down, it’s not so much a matter of real-time performance, though that does matter. Rather it’s a matter of spec and gear. You need all the Feral AND Balance damage talents, especially Starlight Conduit. You also need to replace any gear pieces that have really high Mastery with pieces that don’t. Mastery does absolutely nothing for rdruid damage. Of course, since Mastery is one of the best rdruid Healing stats, this gimps your healing, contributing to survivability problems.
As mentioned before, Leather and Mail seem to take disproportionately high damage from Zek’s melee. Doing this as a healer (with DPS Brann) would seem to make this a non-issue, but it’s hard to describe how easy “stepping on a pot” is compared to a rdruid making sure they can burst heal themselves. In order to survive P1, you’ll spend a lot of mental energy making sure you have HoTs rolling so you can Swiftmend->Regrowth. You’ll also need to use defensive cooldowns liberally. Just to illustrate the problem here, Zek would hit me for ~1.9M and crit for > 3.8M, on a just-under 5M HP pool. That means that any time you take a melee hit from Zek (crit or not), you’re potentially 2.0 seconds (just over 1 GCD) from death. It’s fairly harrowing. Now that my druid is at ilvl 622, this is much less of a problem and I rarely die in P1, but it still does happen (double crit, eh?) It also seems reasonable that this survivability problem would be much eased by using health pots (not Branns, just relgular health pots). Personally I don’t use any consumables, so that might have made rdruid unnaturally difficult.
I estimate it took me about 70 tries to kill him, and I only got to Phase 2 maybe 4 or 5 times before I got the kill. Phase 2, with no melee sequence, is comparatively trivial for a Resto Druid.
Of course, it goes without saying that Spittle is a non-issue for druids of any spec. Also, Druids, like Warlocks can get Brann’s Intellect (main stat) buff by just spamming heals and wasting mana before the fight. I think spamming Efflorescense is the most efficient (it still takes ~11 casts).
Sub Rogue (ilvl 611, Orc)
What a mess. This fight is very different as a Rogue (maybe it’s just Sub - honestly I play rogue so little that I know nothing about the other specs). Typically this fight is all about face-tanking Zek in the middle of the room to control Egg position and Claw Smash. This gives you a lot of control over the fight.
As a sub rogue, you are forced to give Brann agro on a regular basis. Every time you Shadow Dance to kill an egg, you immediately shed agro onto Brann. You can’t really control Brann’s positioning, but you can do your best by opening on him from behind (standing on the stairs), and as the fight goes on, doing your best to position him right below the stairs with you standing ON the stairs. Despite all this, it’s still totally possible for Zek to fear Brann out of the room, in which case you can’t Dance or Vanish (more on vanish later). And even if Brann doesn’t get feared out of the room, you can still end up with Zek very far away from an Egg, meaning he can do a gigantic Claw Smash or just try to heal himself while you’re on the opposite side of the room. These can be handled with Sprint and/or Shadowstep, but you need really fast reaction time.
Spittle is also a major problem. You have 2 Vanishes and 1 Cloak of Shadows. These are all 2 minute cooldowns. So you don’t have enough ways out of spittle even if Brann dispels every other spittle right on time (which he won’t). You can also potentially survive spittle by having the Unbreakable Stride talent (reduces duration of movement impairing effects by 30%), and using Feint (which with 2 charges lasts about the entire duration of spittle), and Crimson Vial. Unfortunately, the ability to survive spittle in this way depends on gear. Having more HP will allow you more leeway in surviving due to both a larger pool of HP and Crimson Vial scaling based on that HP pool. At ilvl 611, this will allow you to survive spittle if you execute it perfectly, but only if you don’t take any other damage (like melee from Zek).
Also problematic is the fact that Vanish (the most often available way to clear spittle) will reset the fight if Brann is dead. And Brann dies a lot because you’re shedding agro to him frequently. Frankly this seems to be a feature only of Phase 1. If you vanish in Phase 2 when Brann is dead, and immediately attack Zek again, the fight will not reset. I’m not 100% clear on the mechanics, but this was my experience.
All of this together makes Spittle very difficult to deal with. Frankly I needed another option, so I donned a PvP trinket. It saved my butt exactly once, and allowed me to beat him, in a nearly 17-minute slog of a fight.
Summary / TLDR
I loved this encounter so much that I did it on 8 different characters just to experience the differences between classes and specs. I wish I had known about this encounter earlier, and I might have leveled up a few more alts to do this with! I’m looking forward to Undermine, and hopefully the Delve boss is just as exciting.
