Azjol-Nerub: Undead Arachnophobia

Two things immediately come to mind with Azjol-Nerub: (1) it's short (we did it twice in 90 minutes, and that was going in cold, knowing nothing about the fights and dealing with a couple of near-wipes and one actual wipe; I reackon <30 minutes will be easily achieveable), (2) There's no trash loot at all (and Andro was so hoping to get some iceweb spidersilk for her tailoring). The general loot was fine though - ilevel 163 blues which are comparable with the Kara/ZA/Badge epics (though not quite good enough for Andro to upgrade with, so most of the clothy looty went to our priest, Aberas, who must've thought it was Christmas).

 As might be expected with the mix of Nerubian architechture and spiderwebs and eggs, its a moderately creepy instance. Walking on webs (when you can see the boss a "floor" or two below) is very disturbing, and there a couple of "will it take our weight" moments. Given its a quite small instance, Azjol-Nerub feels quite big, thanks in part to the scale of the architechture (and the mobs) but also a cavernous transition area between the second and third bosses that hints at a much larger Nerubian presence, which I take to either be part of the sister instance (Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom) or the planned-but-dropped Nerubian zone (mentioned in the A-N Wowwiki article). It was, however, bad form on Blizzard's part to have "invisible walls" in a couple of places, as well as some tricky to navigate slopes.

Our tictacs

The first boss, Krik'thir, is a wave-based fight wherein there are 3 groups of 3 mobs to fight, followed by the boss. Once you know what's going on its not a horrible fight, though some of the mobs seemed taunt-averse and took great pleasure in snacking on our priest. The boss himself has some aoe-able adds, but nothing too scary. He does cast webs though that either cocoon the target (which becomes attackable by friends to cut them loose) or else blinds multiple characters.

Boss 2, the giant Spider Hadronox, is more of a challenge though we got him/her(it?) on the first attempt thanks to a stroke of luck. In some regards its a similar fight to the first one, with 3 sets of mobs before the main boss, each group comprising a big beetle and two (non-elite?) associates. Hadronox itself is on a lower level and slowly makes its way up to the battle, fighting a horde of lesser beasties. We discovered (the hard way on our second time through) to let it eat all of these before engaging him (which may take a little while as he's sloth-like) else it'll heal when one dies (or when one of the party dies). Beyond that its a tank-and-spank, though particular care has to be taken with cleansing the poisons (which hurt like hell and heal the boss; iceblock works a charm at clearing it, though stoneform and the like may work too).

The final boss, Anub'arak the Traitor King (of Frozen Throne fame), is a phased fight and you spend part of the time fighting him, and part fighting his adds (mainly non-elites, but the odd elite). He casts an irritating swarm spell and thrusts spikes up at people when he's "hiding" underground, but essentially its a tank and spank.One thing to bear in mind with the fight is that the platform on which he stands is walled off from the rest of the instance by webs a few seconds after the fight begins and anyone outside can see in but can't engage Anub'Arak (but can be attacked by his adds). Make sure you're on the platform (the first time we fought him, only our tank and rogue were - the hunter, mage and priest were outside the platform. Cue dead melee associates).