Lore:

At some point in the timeline of Cataclysm the Dragon Aspects realized that they probably weren’t going to beat Deathwing without the help of 10-25 random Azerothean citizens and the help of the Dragon Soul, the all powerful weapon that grants Deathwing his power.

But how do we get that Dragon Soul? I mean, it’s not like we can just waltz in and steal it while he’s asleep and smoking a hookah. That game got cancelled. The only reasonable alternative? TIME TRAVEL! So head back into the caverns of time and into a horrible future where Deathwing had already unleashed the Dragon Soul and killed everybody and figure out where (or when) we can pick it up.

Degree of Difficulty: Easy

There is very little trash in the instance. It is designed to be very short with minimal interaction outside of the bosses. just pull them pack by pack and dispatch of what little resistance you will face.

You will ultimately face three bosses out of a possible five depending on which portals appear during your run. Four of the bosses may or may not appear, the fifth always will In the Red Dragonshrine, you’ll find the Echo of Baine Bloodhoof. The former Tauren Chieftain does a powerful mace attack, will cast a totem that can knock players off platforms and into the lava (the totem can be thrown back at him, however) and will start to sink platforms as the fight goes on. In the Azure Dragonshrine you’ll find the Echo of Jaina Proudmoore, who will cast a lot of magic attacks at the tank and several ground attacks which can be pretty easily avoided.

The Ruby Dragonshrine houses the Echo of Sylvanas Windrunner, who does reasonably boring attacks other than Call of the Highborne, which traps the group in a circle around her. DPS down one of the adds and run through the hole that makes in the circle to avoid the damage spike. She will do this one final time as she dies for around 300,000 damage. In the Emerald Dragonshrine is the Echo of Tyrande Whisperwind. Chase her moonbeam around the room and then avoid her area attack. Near the end of the fight, she will cast Tears of Elune which will rapidly kill the group unless you finish her off quickly.

The final (and only assured) fight is in the Bronze Dragonshrine against Murozond, an aspect of Nozdormu (think about it, you’ll get it). He is mostly a gear check for players, and not terribly difficult. One player will get an “Hourglass” item. Murozond will cast a lot of AoE which will eventually kill everybody in the room. If your tank, healer, or enough DPS die however, clicking the hourglass will fully restore the group, reset any cooldowns, and clear up the AoE, but will not heal Murozond. You can use this up to five times, ensuring any decently geared group will eventually kill him.

Special Features:

Again, there is only one version of this instance, classified as Heroic. It is unique in that the order and versions of boss fights in the instance is entirely random, a gimmick that had been used before for only one fight in an instance. This is the first Cataclysm instance that does not offer a buff for party members with Archaeology skill.

Recommended for Levels: (Heroic)

No doubt that End Times is a really cool instance, from the moment you step into an entirely ruined Dragonblight to the fight against Murozond, everything about the dungeon is really well done, and as an introduction to Cataclysm’s final story and series of instances, it’s refreshingly easy.

So for both those looking at getting into Cataclysm end-game raiding (most of the gear you can get here is at least comparative to Cataclysm’s mid-tier raid gear) and those who are just looking at hanging out in the vicinity of end-game content, this is an excellent instance and well worth the relatively short amount of time it takes to experience it.

Lore:

Oh, those crazy trolls. They’re like the…uh…trolls of World of Warcraft. Anyway, for as much trouble as the Zalandar tribe have been causing at Zul’Aman, it would’ve been pretty easy to forget about where the rest of the jungle troll loas were buried

Anyway, last time we were here we banished the avatar of Hakkar the Soulflayer (that doesn’t sound like a guy we want running around Azeroth), but as these things tend to happen, the trolls figured out a new way to raise Hakkar, and sure enough they moved back into Zul’Gurub pretty much uncontested to do it. Damn it, you guys, whose job was it to keep them out?

Degree of Difficulty: Hard

Some of the trash packs early in the instance provide a moderate amount of difficulty, but shouldn’t prove much challenge for even the most modestly coherent groups. There are a lot of ritual cauldrons around the zone which provide you with a temporary damage bonus or immunity to special attacks which make clearing much quicker.

The first set of bosses aren’t terribly difficult. Venoxis has a few poison abilities, one an AoE that scatters around and is easy to avoid, an interruptable DoT, in phase one, a chain DoT between two players, a mass AoE and cone (in Phase 2), and a final AoE in Phase 3 before he stuns himself. Mandokir is back along with his trusty mount Oghan, and he still gets more powerful the more kills he gets (and killed players still are automatically rezed). He has one massive attack (Decapitate), can resurrect his mount, an avoidable AoE, and a health drain.

High Priestess Kilnara replaces Arlokk, casting mostly shadow damage in phase one with a hard DoT a few cone attacks and one massive AoE. Phase two is primarily a dance involving taking out the tiger adds and then killing her panther form while avoiding the cave in AoEs. Zanzil leaves a trail of fire and casts a massive AoE that will cause damage unless you use the poison cauldron, as well as summoning troll adds (freeze them with the blue cauldron and DPS them down), and summoning a pack of zombies which can be AoE’d using the red cauldron. Another raidy-style boss fight.

The final boss battle is split into two major phases. In the first, you fight the priest Jin’do by himself. He will occasionally produce anti-magic bubbles on the ground, stack in them to avoid his chain shadow attack. Eventually, he’ll give up on this tactic and attack Hakkar. In this phase you must avoid the ground attacks and DPS down the adds and kite the troll spirits into slamming into the chain ends so that you can destroy them and end the fight. Two DPS should be assigned specifically to keeping the adds away from the rest of the group.

Special Features:

The big ones of course, are the raptor and panther mounts (available from Mandokir and Kilnara respectively). At around 1% drop rate they are more likely to drop than their counterparts from the old Zul’Gurub raid, but not by much.

If a member of the group has 225 or higher Archeology, an optional boss fight can be started inside the instance. The Cache of Madness spawns of four different bosses, Gri’lek (an undead Dire Troll), Renetak (a ghost rogue with Vanish), Hazza’rah (another ghost who summons “nightmares” that will kill players on touch, but move veeeery slowly), and Wushoolay (AoE based lightning attacks). None are very hard.

It, like Zul’Aman, is only available at heroic difficulty to players who have low-raid tier gear scores. Using a Troll Tablet on the voodoo pile at the start of the instance gives the group a small group of raptor hatchlings which occasionally attack your target.

Recommended for Levels: 85 (Heroic)

Again, it’s very large for a standard instance because the design was copied pretty much wholesale from the old raid, making it something of a chore to run through. But there’s definitely a high nostalgia factor for players who ran the Vanilla version of the instance a million times to get their Zalandari shoulder enchants.

As a whole, I think Zul’Aman gets a slight edge over ZG in terms of being a more exciting and engaging instance experience, but Zul’Gurub is slightly easier. They’re both worth doing if even once (probably more due to the presence of the two mounts), but otherwise it won’t do much to prepare you for Mists of Pandaria content, which is what the focus is right now.