Today, I’m going to talk about kiting the Zombie Chow adds as a Retribution paladin  in 10 man Naxx.

Please remember it’s 10 man. My way would probably work in 25 man but I’d imagine the kiter would need a little extra help.

What for does the chow?

First, going to point out the abilities that Gluth and the Zombie Chows have that will effect the kiter.

First is Gluth’s Decimate, which reduces the health of everything and everyone to 5%. It’s used about every two minutes. This affects the Zombie Chows as well – that’s how you are able to kill them. Don’t bother dps’ing them until they get hit with Decimate.

The Zombie Chows themselves have ability they apply to whomever they hit. Infected Wound, which is applied on a melee hit, increases physical damage taken by the target by 100. This debuff is often bad news. Once you get too many of them, the damage is really felt.

Whom does the chow?

In my guild, the Chow kiting crew are Misty, the resident Resto Shaman and myself on Nyisa, my retpally. The kiter will need a dedicated healer, and it just so happens that a Resto Shaman can Frost Shock and drop Earth Bind. Frost Shocks are used if I’m not close to the Zombie Chow when it spawns, to slow it down so I can get to it faster.

To prepare for the fight, I get started early. Right after Grobbulus, I turn on Righteous Fury and switch to Seal of Command. With Righteous Fury up, this ensures once I hit something with Exorcism, Judgment, Divine Storm or Consecrate, the Zombie Chows are going to want to kill me. This is especially helpful because of how much the Zombie Chows like to run after the Tank Healer.

Also, with patch 3.0.8, Hand of Reckoning is also very helpful. Just make sure you hit it with something else afterwards, so it doesn’t go after a healer again.

Where comes the chow?

After you run through the pipe keeping to the right, and drop down you’ll notice 3 grates on the ground and the giant Zombie Dog Gluth.

Ignore the dog, you’re on chow duty. The tanks will take Gluth over to the exit door, but the chow kiters need to stay back by the grates.

The Zombie Chows spawn approximately every 10 seconds. I’ve only noticed them spawning from the middle grate, which makes it even easier on me to try and keep a consecrate down on the middle grate whenever possible. Misty also keeps an Earthbind Totem down towards the middle so they have a greater chance of being effected.

How one does the chow?

I kite the adds around the grates trying to gather them all up and as far back as possible for when the decimate hits. If they’re all grouped up tight and as far back as I can get them, it makes it super easy for our AoE to get them down quick and then back to DPS on Gluth.

For a visual reference, I kite them in an oval around the grates, never cutting through the middle. The hardest thing I tend to do is break my kite to go pick up an add that was out of range of my abilities. A Holy Wrath for the two second stun makes sure I don’t get made into dinner for the Zombie Chows.

I also try to save a Holy Wrath for right when the decimate hits to stun them all in place delaying their desire to become “Scooby Snacks” for Gluth.

Why for do the chow?

When the decimate does happen, they ignore you and slowly zombie shuffle towards Gluth. You wont be able to stop them with anything except AoEing them down. I normally let the AoE dps handle that and keep my eyes peeled for new Zombie Chows entering the fight. Continue to kite and prepare for the AoE when decimate hits till Gluth dies.

Tips ta chow chow?

A couple notes. You most likely will get hit by the Zombie Chows no matter how awesome you are, either by needing to break off to make sure you get a stray Chow back in the chow line or one spawning and bee lining for you instead of following your kite path.

As long as the wound debuff doesn’t reach 40 or more, your healer should have no problems healing you. If it is getting too high, see if you can avoid getting hit for a a while. Then when your debuff is about to fall off, Bubble and possibly Hand of Protection your healer. As soon as the debuff is off,  get out of the bubble so the Chows come back to you. If done properly, they won’t go very far and you’ll be super easy to heal again.

The reason I say run Command over Martyr/Blood is you don’t need to take more damage then necessary (unless your healer likes it that way).

Oh, and as soon as Gluth dies, make sure you turn of RF. Otherwise you’ll be laughed at after your first judgment rips aggro from the giants right after Gluth and you get splatted. (I have done this, it was funny.) (Ego note : funnier when you were faceplanted on the floor!)

Whom else can chow chow?

Now if you don’t have a Ret Paladin in your 10 man group to do this, the first question I have is “why not?” Ret Pallies are awesome!

I’ve read that Mages and Hunters and Warlocks can also kite the adds. Warlocks more so if they are spec’d for Shadowfury. Also, if you are running 3 tanks for whatever reason and one of them happens to be a Prot Paladin, they would also have a super easy time doing this.

If your kiter is having problems, you can often spare the DPS to have one extra person help kite. In fact, we started out with two kiters – playing it safe. I eventually told the Warlock “go DPS Gluth, I have this”. And that’s how we’ve been doing it ever since.

Hopefully this sheds some light on Zombie Chow kiting.

And now you can do da Chow Chow too!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 and is filed under DPSers, ~ Zasp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.