This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Warlord Zon'ozz in Dragon Soul. It is mostly targeted to DPS who desire to have a short but detailed overview of what is expected of them during that fight.

This guide applies to patch 4.3 of World of Warcraft.

The Warlord Zon'ozz encounter will prove quite easy and fun for DPS players. It is comprised of two alternating phases, the first of which will present some simple movement and positioning challenges, while the second is merely a burn phase.

While this boss is not exactly a DPS check, the higher the raid's DPS is, the easier the boss is to defeat.

1. Overview of the Fight↑top

Zon'ozz is a relatively simple encounter made up of two alternating phases. Your raid's actions will determine when the boss enters the second phase in the cycle:

• The Ping Pong Phase, during which the raid must bounce a purple Ball (a damage-immune enemy NPC) between themselves, by blocking its traveling path, before finally hitting the boss with it.
• The Black Phase, which lasts 30 seconds, is triggered whenever Zon'ozz is touched by the Ball. During this phase, the raid must stack together and DPS Zon'ozz.

This alternation of phases continues until Warlord Zon'ozz is dead.

The damage done on Zon'ozz will keep increasing as the fight goes on (each bounce that the Ball makes causes Zon'ozz to take 5% increased damage when the Ball hits him). Therefore, you should keep your important cooldowns for the end of the fight.

2. Ping Pong Phase↑top

During the Ping Pong Phase, the raid will be split into a Ranged group and a Melee group. The ranged group will stand some way behind the boss, while the Melee group will stack right behind the boss. Simply stand in your designated group.

After Zon'ozz spawns the Ball (Void of the Unmaking), your raid must bounce this Ball back and forth between the Ranged group and Melee group (by standing in its path, which will cause the Ball to bounce back and travel in the opposite direction). Each time the Ball bounces off a player, it deals a high amount of damage split among players within a small radius, so players should not attempt to bounce the Ball by themselves.

After enough bounces have been performed, your raid will leader call for the Melee group to move out of the way of the boss, causing the Ball to hit him instead, triggering the Black Phase.

In LFR difficulty, it it easier if the Ball is bounced between the Ranged group and the tank (who faces the boss at a slight angle from the Ranged group), while the Melee can simply spend the entire phase DPSing the boss from behind.

Make sure that you are never in front of the boss, as he performs a very damaging frontal cone attack.

3. The Black Phase↑top

During the Black Phase, the boss will deal high raid-wide damage. You should stack in melee range (to facilitate healing) and burn the boss. This phase is a good time for using DPS cooldowns as you will be stationary for its entire duration.

4. Heroic Mode↑top

The heroic mode version of Warlord Zon'ozz only presents one change that concerns you as a DPS player. During the Black Phase, a number of attackable tentacles will spawn, dealing massive amounts of damage to the raid.

Your task is to DPS down and kill these tentacles, in order of priority, based on your role (ranged or melee DPS), in the most efficient way:

• Melee DPS should focus on the Flails of Go'rath, after which they should switch to the Claws of Go'rath (at least one of the Claws will be tanked on top of the boss, so classes with cleaving attacks can benefit from this);
• Ranged DPS should focus on the Eyes of Go'rath, which are farther away from the boss.

Your raid leader will provice you with specific assignments for which tentacles to kill. For example, if your raid is heavy on melee DPS, some melee players will have to help on the Eyes.