Gear Requirements for Zul'Aman

[Efluvious]

DPS warrior (two types, but basically the same stats apart from hit)

ARMS:
Attack power: 1650
Crit Rating: 29% (not with zerker stance)
Hit Rating: 50

FURY:
Attack power: 1750 (not in zerker stance)
Crit Rating: 27% (not in zerker stance)
Hit Rating: 95 at least, but 150-200 better.

[Efluvious]

DPS Warlock

Spell damage (fire/shadow): 1000
Spell hit rating: 6%-7% for affliction locks. destruction needs a LOT more because there are no talents to increase your hit for destruction spells. Spell Penetration is good as well, again especially if you are destruction or rely on ruin as your main form of damage.
Spell Crit (if applicable): 20%

[Efluvious]

DPS: Willy. Yes, he's the best so I don't really need to post anything here for the mighty non-combat pet Willy.

[Mahiah]

<SIGH> I swear Fluv...always running around with your willy out!

[Logros]

Well, I hate to say it, but so far I don't see a good reason to use a paladin tank here. One could take the place of the warrior tank, but frankly, we suffer from having lower health than a warrior tank in comparable gear, and that's just a huge liability in there.

Having a paladin to tank the eagle gauntlet would be great, imo, and the lynx trash. But using a raid slot for easier trash clearing makes no sense for a timed instance, since we are useless for anything but tanking (well, in healing gear we could be weak healers). Perhaps the later bosses will cater more to the multi-tanking power or massive tank-aggro that a paladin can dish out. So far though, it seems like you just need to max mitigation and have a monstrously high health pool.

[Gioron]

I don't see anything particularly wrong for a pallie tank, but I agree that the boss fights don't seem to have any cases where a pallie does better than a warrior or druid, and some cases where you want as much health as possible. If there's a pallie available, it wouldn't be a bad thing to bring them for easier trash clearing, but there isn't a huge bonus to having a pallie along, except for one more pallie buff.

However, when you get into the timed part, a pallie might be an advantage there, since its significantly faster to use a pallie tank and AE down some of the trash.

[Logros]

Any paladin with a good tank set can do that though - I regularly tank eagles in my tank gear, as healing spec. Righteous Fury + Consecrate = enough aggro. Sometimes have to taunt off the locks/mages, but not often.

****

My recommendations (all stats are unbuffed)

General

Frankly, if you can't yawn your way through Kara, don't bother showing up to ZA. It's much, much, much harder, both for the gear requirements and raid coordination.

Anyone that's not at 8k unbuffed HP is going to be kinda risky. If you're not topping 10k after raid buffs, there's some encounters that you're going to have trouble with.

If you're DPS, be at or very, very near the hit cap (caster or melee). Your job in ZA is /hard/, and you need to do well. There are no 'stand there and swing' fights in ZA.

If you're a tank, +hit is critical for Nalorakk, because if he resists a taunt on the form-shift, you're in deep crap. Optionally, have a paladin ready to bubble the previous-form tank.


Shaman: Restoration
Mana: 9.5k
+healing: +1600 (R: +1800)
regen: 200 (R: 250)
Talents: The usual, but Mana Tide is massively useful

Shaman: Elemental
Mana: 10k
+damage: 850
crit: 20% (paperdoll)
Talents: Storm Reach is very important, as nearly all fights require you to spread out.

Paladin: Holy
Mana: 8k
+healing: +1600 (R: 1700)
+crit: 16% pd
regen: 200
Talents: Aura Mastery is a must. Going deep enough into prot for Imp Concentration Aura will help a /lot/ with Malacrass. If you're OTing eagles, get Imp RF.
Notes: For my raiding build, I've actually stopped taking Divine Illumination, because I just never run out of mana if I'm using potions. If you're lowish on the requirements, I'd keep it. ZA is -very- healing intensive.

[b]Paladin: Protection[/u]
Armour: 14k
Health: 14k (R: As much as possible without losing uncrush/uncrit)
Talents: Don't neglect Spell Warding, there's lots of spell damage. Make sure you've got everything available for survivability (parry from Ret, etc).
Notes: You absolutely must be crush/crit immune. Period. +spell hit is very important as well, along with Expertise (talent, and if you can get it on gear then great)

Priest: Shadow
Mana: 8k
+damage: 850
Talents: Max your spell hit (+16% after talents/gear), make sure you've got everything that can buff the group damage-wise (5/5 SWeaving and Misery)
Notes: Be very, very careful about aggro, especially if using VE. Your raid /cannot/ afford to have the tanks lose aggro, fights need to stay controlled in ZA.

[Efluvious]

yeah...I forgot about this. I updated the thread with your comments logros and will finish this off.

[Logros]

Had forgotten about this one, adding Enhancement info

AP: 1200
Crit: 27%
Hit: 75
Health: 7k
Mana: 5k
Talents: The usual.

Note that these are all unbuffed.

Really should have an epic main-hand (86+DPS, 2.6 or slower), and preferably epic OH. There should be no more than a few blues left in your gear, preferably full Kara/crafted epics.

[Guest]

I've a couple thoughts, Re: Healing priest requirements...
The recommendation of 20% holy crit seems really high to me. While paladins have a great deal of +crit on their gear, priests have very little. Off hand, I can think of one piece of healing cloth with crit - there's more, but not much. As such, my crit is around 11%, including the 5% talent. For ZA, I wouldn't worry about crit at all as a healing priest, and instead focus on regen (in the form of mp5 and spirit), +healing, and stamina (there is unavoidable aoe damage in a -lot- of those fights, and we're freaking squishy to begin with).

[Eruadan]

Any word or Ideas on the requirements for a DPS hunter?

[Guest]

Just something that I've noticed about this thing that you were talking about a pally tank haveing a disadvantage I really don't agree with that While pallys may have slightly lower health if im not mistaken their prot tree talents provide more natural damage migation that the warriors prot tree which is more about boosting agro production I mean imp Rightous fury poof you have +6% physical damage migation I doun't know exactly how much armor you would need to cover that at 70 but I'm pretty sure its alot then they can boost their stam by 10% and they have the spell warding talent which I can't remember how much %age that gives you.

[Eruadan]

Just something that I've noticed about this thing that you were talking about a pally tank haveing a disadvantage I really don't agree with that While pallys may have slightly lower health if im not mistaken their prot tree talents provide more natural damage migation that the warriors prot tree which is more about boosting agro production I mean imp Rightous fury poof you have +6% physical damage migation I doun't know exactly how much armor you would need to cover that at 70 but I'm pretty sure its alot then they can boost their stam by 10% and they have the spell warding talent which I can't remember how much %age that gives you.

Just a question, arent all or most of paladin abilities mana dependant? Warriors can go on and on, but when a paladin runs out of mana, they cant do very much. I may be wrong, just commenting with my limited knowledge.

[Guest]

Yes Paladin moves are mana dependant but there are ways to get around that Like mana regen buffs,Enchants, haveing a shadow priest, Judgeing seal of wisdom after you have an ample hold on agro and such can make the paladin a great endurence tanking class.

[Guest]

Just a question, arent all or most of paladin abilities mana dependant? Warriors can go on and on, but when a paladin runs out of mana, they cant do very much. I may be wrong, just commenting with my limited knowledge.

Paladin tanks' threat generation is mana dependent, but their survivability is largely independent of it. In a lot of ways, even though a paladin's "rage" bar is blue, it works similar to a warriors. The basic idea being "the more damage I take, the better my threat generation will be."

Paladin tanks regain mana from effective healing they receive. So when they take damage, that allows their healers to replenish both their life and their mana bars. Generally, for a paladin who isn't overgeared for the instance, this makes mana a non-consideration because most of the time they get enough mana back from healing to make up for their abilities.

This is also why you hear of over-geared tanks taking off armor so that they can take more damage. For warriors, its so they can generate enough rage to use their threat abilities. For pallies, its so they can take enough damage to get healed.

In the end, warriors can't go on and on any more than paladin can. Both tanks need healing and both tanks need to be smacked around in order to generate the threat they need. Paladin have an advantage in large pulls not only because of their AoE but also because their threat generation is "front-loaded" (their rage bar starts at full).