I suppose it’s just Zanther being that way then. His behavior reminds me heavily of the Alpha and more specifically how Afrasiabi used to come to the forums and troll players with “MVPs”, and accuse them of stuff. Just troll behavior the mods let slide, and evidently are still comfortable allowing in lieu of actual dialogue.
I kind of default assume Blizzard accepts that sort of crass behavior and immaturity, so I plopped him on ignore after he went into repeat mode. No point having a conversation with someone who lacks the brain capacity to make cohesive dialogue.
Concur. Good job on killing him as a Mage. I know that wasn’t easy by any measure. This is also what I’m talking about Ellip. Yes it’s been nerfed now, but lets take stock for a moment at the reward. It’s a Zeppelin with a Void customization. It doesn’t let you use the other parts you got, because it’s akin to the Fyrakk / Razageth skins. It is just a stand alone.
I personally feel that it was for some classes much harder than the Mage Tower. When I compare and contrast the experience say a Monk or Rogue will have with the Zekvir fight, as opposed to how say my Paladin or Demon Hunter handled Kazzak; my thought is that easily Zekvir trounced Kazzak.
The artificial randomness of spells adds to this issue, something Variss for an example did not actually have. Mage Tower as we both know was also nerfed, and the difficulty became much less near the end of Legion; so there is that as well.
I just feel like if Players complete a challenge like this, there should be multiple rewards to choose from, and as a default since I have too many times had to tell people they can’t get my Paladin’s armor any longer… I’ve never been a fan of the practice of locking any reward for challenges / gameplay oriented stuff away.
Mounts and at the time raiding achievements? Throw the mounts on the Black Market for an insane sum of cash. Achievements? Nothing ventured nothing gained, that much is fair to be a seasonal thing. Items and such? Not in an MMO unless you really want to have a bunch of old players and see the game stagnate with them like some macob rest-home. It’s far better to offer new methods to get the items, as they did with the Tier 3 stuff finally.
I would of thought Blizzard finally understood how toxic elitism is when they canned Furor was all.
Ignore the elitist reply to your efforts Kalenia - I too am a rogue well omw to 400 attempts and 50k gold in repairs, flasks pots, food ect. As of today i still have not got him into phase 2. The rng is so random that even though I focus on egg and watch for his heal it still is a guessing game on what he’s going to cast (even casting heal twice in a row - yes twice - not a spittle thank you). It’s a mess and why Blizz wonders why so many just walk away. I plan to finish this somehow - got tier 8 done but that only took close to 100 attempts. There is just no way to get into any rhythm with tier 11, just have to hope your cool downs are ready and you can react quick enough. Oh and Brann - no point in paying attention to him - if pots are there, good but i have to rely a lot on my own self heals and defenses, if they are ready great, if not another death. I stay in it because I want that skin but also for my own pride, but understand it’s not fun and I think I can safely speak for most the player base on this. After this week I will not play for a while - take a break for nothing else out of disgust. I’ll go play some other games for enjoyment.
Regular food buffs stack with Brann’s FYI. I toyed with Zek ? on my rogue while I was bored, and I think if I would have taken the time to make a cast sequence macro to target zek, shadowstep and kick him, it would have trivialized a lot of the fight. You’d still be dealing with the mass RNG issues, but just a thought to help your grind. Good luck. That ticking clock is probably not helping your case any.
Honestly I was feeling this way at first but after an embarassing amount of attempts I realized that the fight was 5000% easier once I just expected Bran to be useless and kept Zekvir in the center of the room.
Egg Target macro and silence focus macro really helped trivialize the other two mechanics on my warlock. That said I imagine it’s a LOT more annoying for a Melee where you have to move for the egs so can’t always control where Zekvir is as easily.
The rng in the figh is very very annoying and I agree, the stairs were an awful design choice.
My biggest frustration after I basically started ignoring Brann was that the spittle cd didn’t really line up with my snare clear perfectly so I’d often have to pop a defensive and pray it came up in time or Brann would do his job. Like a few instances I just had NO way of countering it and those were incredibly frustrating.
I’d also add that as someone with the book, this was way more annoying than the mage tower. (Except maybe the havoc Demon Hunter one because what WAS that???) I think that might be that it’s not particularly tailored to any one class so some feel much worse than others. (Can you even do it as a healing priest?)
I had trouble on my rogue too. I don’t know anything about assassination - I play sub, but I assume brann will get agro at various times. This is painful because the following things can happen:
zek goes on the other side of the room from an egg and casts a giant claw smash on you
zek goes on the other side of the room from an egg and heals himself
zek fears brann out of the room and follows him
brann takes too much damage and dies, and thus can’t dispel or heal you
For the first 2, the only solution is to watch zek and be ready with sprint and/or shadowstep. This is not easy, but it is doable. I recommend using mind numbing poison. It increases the cast time of his heal.
For the fear one, you can try to prevent it by tanking zek towards the back of the room right in front of the stairs (maybe even stand on the stairs yourself)
The last one is the most annoying. You can’t survive a spittle at your gear level unless zek completely leaves you alone throughout. Just remember that feint reduces its damage, and you can take the talent to reduce its duration so 2 feints will cover basically the entire duration. Lastly, wear a pvp trinket just in case.
Edit: you are mistaken about him double healing. It simply doesn’t happen. And if it does, you should go out and buy a lottery ticket.
i think i’m just going to do this on my paladin as ret. one of my pals got it the other day on his ret on attempt #1 without really knowing what to do.
Aside from zek’s melee attacks, which aren’t that frequent, basically everything he does will 1-shot you, or close enough. Being X class doesn’t magically imbue you with knowledge of how the fear orbs work in phase 2, or let you survive claw smash. Sure you can bubble one, but you need to be able to control and dodge it. If you can’t dodge swirlies as a priest, you won’t be able to dodge them as ret.
It’s a tab targetting MMO in a fight where you control the boss positioning. If you cannot find a way to target one of 3 hostile units in the encounter, that’s a player issue.
Brann’s dispel has a debuff on his unit frame indicating when it is on cooldown. He always dispeled me when he wasn’t channeling, cc’d, or on cooldown. Also, you are a warrior. You have 3 separate CDs to handle the spittle.
Was he dead, or the potions on cooldown from grabbing all of them immediately? I do not recall seeing this ever. He’s certainly thrown them into lingering ground effects in other delves, but once the major balancing changes were done I do not recall any issue of him not producing potions.
You had several months to learn and practice the encounter, don’t play this off as fomo content. The encounter is not buggy, nor is it rng, it’s pure class knowledge and practice to develop the muscle memory for the fight.
Thank you for the advice - I have been using food with Brann"s and since the patch he consistently drops that campfire so I can have it all times! And I actually was using a target kick macro for him but I will try the shadow step you suggested though, been using shadowstep defensively. Just literally found out I can get the skin on a low drop chance after next week…so maybe later I will get it, but I will continue to try since I’ve come this far and it’s still 100% drop…got 3 more days.
The Zek’vir fight identifies the massive issue with balance and ability bloat requirements and IMHO is not a particularly strong fight or content.
Depending on class / spec you will always have a different time. Some specs can’t DPS high enough burst for the add. Some specs can’t defend well against melee, etc.
examples where different classes will struggle. Warrior pummel is timed and works well against the spit. Mages cooldown is though too long. you have no choice but to eat every other spit. And Brann is useless at dispelling.
Why the Mage Tower originally was so well received was the ballance, or at least semblance of it. Different specs and roles had fights tuned for them.
You cannot do that with a “one sizze fits all solo boss” like this. IMHO, Zek was a good attempt, but ultimately failed as good content because of the massive imbalance.
Then the fact that Delves and it’s related content was supposed to be soloable. Yet there’s zero way as a solo player to gear to the Zek’Vir ?? fight. forcing you into Mythic just to beat solo content.
The fight is just a combination of too long with too many mechanics and way too easy a failpoint. one mistake shouldn’t end your entire 10 minute run.
Either drop a mechanic for the next attetmpt of a Zek’Vir light, or reduce the HP. at some point, tapping your head, rubbing your stomach clockwise, hopping on one foot, singing the star spangled banner, while doing quadratics math in your head is tiring and not worth a LONG LONG fight.
pick one: Long fight or difficult fight. either way. I have zero patience to throw myself at it for the reward given.
Thank you for the advice…I have used sprint and shadowstep in those circumstances and I am talented into mind numbing poison too. Most of his one shot and fear I can handle appropriately but again it does comedown to rng. With so much going on if my cd’s aren’t ready just once or twice often turns the tide and I just can’t seem to get it under control, can’t get my timing right. I can find no rhythm what so ever except at the beginning of the fight. My ilvl is 619 with a tier set bonus and lvl 30 Brann. I thought I read Zek scales down a bit but, for t11 I think your right, my gear isn’t cutting it especially my season 1 BiS veteran weapons.
Unfortunately all I can tell you is that your brann is much lower level than mine. At 60, his heals are massive. Rogues don’t have as much control over this fight as other classes, so I’d call it pretty difficult (definitely the most difficult of the 8 classes I’ve done it on). Good luck
There are definitely disparities between classes. Some can do it at much lower ilvl than others, which is unfortunate. But every class (probably spec too, but I’m not making that claim personally) can do it at delve gear levels.
This is not right. You should not interrupt spittle. You should interrupt his heal. And his heal will never be up again before your interrupt is off cd (nevermind priest specs that don’t have interrupts). And mages can spec for Energized Barriers which removes spittle. It will be up every time. Mages are among the easiet to do this fight with.
This is just a ridiculous claim. I’ve done it on 8 classes, have never done a single m+ or mythic raid, have done no group content this xpac other than heroic and tw dungeons, and have no crafted gear. All my chars did it between ilvl 594 and 615. I have no gear obtained outside delves other than low level gear, and one piece I got from a nerubian cache (though that one is a good one! but I got it long after defeating zekvir ??). Many, many people have done it at the gear level you claim is impossible.
Well this is designed as a challenge mode. You’re supposed to (I assume, anyway) do it once and be done with it. I personally have done it many times, but I guess I’m just nuts.
Well it’s not for everybody. If it’s not content you enjoy, then forget about it. But it does seem like you have some misconceptions. It might be more fun to you if you read a guide or watched a video or something. As an aside, I love doing this on my warrior. When I sit down to play, I’ll frequently fire up my warrior and swing by zek’s place to see how fast I can kill him.
And yet the fight is doable by every DPS spec in gear that was available in pre season let alone delves or anything harder, and if you really want to do it as a tank / healer you don’t need anything more than 610~ which is easily acquired through delves and world content. Even 619 would be a trivial task to acquire.
Just got the kill on this character(Yay me), decided to preserve my sanity and go Shadow because relying on Brann ain’t it. But yeah he was going down like over 5 times in P1.
