Further WoW Education
... some of it the hard way.
Went through Shattered Halls and Caverns of Time: Old Hillsbrad recently. Both were cake walks compared to previous times. Honestly, I was surprised and wondered when we'd gotten that much better. But suspicion of some "easy" mode having been set on the game would fade later.
Oh. My. God.
I'm not going to call it the most difficult dungeon I've done or anything. We wiped once, got back on our feet, and got through it the second time. But... it's not so much a dungeon as defending a point against wave after wave of continuous enemies. No chance to rest, and I'm still confused over not running out of mana. I think I would have liked to see a little more in the DPS department to help kill the constant stream of dragony things. Two tanks was less than ideal. But it did work. We did get through it. And, for once, my priest stayed in shadow form most of the time and left the healing to our paladin.
It was tense from my point of view as a shadow priest trying to keep Medivh from being mobbed by non-elite with the help of a warrior, but I suppose that's by design. It wasn't "horrible," but it didn't feel like much fun either. There's great potential there to die on the last boss (though the second seemed tougher) and have to go through everything again whereas in a normal dungeon most of what you've cleared stays clear.
A priest, a paladin, a hunter, a druid, a rogue, a warrior, and three mages walk into a raid instance...
Thus began our sampling of Karazhan. We were starting off one person short, and that's surely not good. In short order we found the undead horses present to pack quite a wallup - I think it was the second pull in which we somehow attracted the attention of a couple other beasties and lost some people. Halfway around to the first boss we got jumped from behind and there was more death involved. Unfortunately, it didn't get much better. Time constraints led to taking a break before a second attempt, but it didn't really get off the ground the second time around.
Lessons Learned:
- It's a pain in the tail to try to maintain Shackle Undead while being one of two healers. Addendum: The duration timer on the spell isn't that hard to watch, but it breaks early much of the time and that sucks.
- Trash mobs in various areas of Karazhan respawn until you've taken out their boss. I've read the respawn timer is something like 15 or 25 minutes. I'm not sure if anyone present was consciously aware of that at the time.
- Due to the above point, some measure of speed is required. From what I've seen elsewhere, raising/resting between pulls is a no-no as it takes too long. We, as a guild, need to work on moving faster through instances.
- Don't get too excited about elixirs and buffs. When you die, most of that wears off.
- Raiding really is a little harder/different than normal dungeoning.
I thought wrangling ten active guildmembers into going with time enough to accomplish anything would be the biggest challenge. It certainly is a challenge (we only got nine), but I see now there's definitely more to it than that. We need some work if we're going to succeed in there.
On another note, we may start to pick up roleplaying on Saturdays here in a couple weeks again, which means less time for computer games on the weekends, for better or worse.
Went through Shattered Halls and Caverns of Time: Old Hillsbrad recently. Both were cake walks compared to previous times. Honestly, I was surprised and wondered when we'd gotten that much better. But suspicion of some "easy" mode having been set on the game would fade later.
Oh. My. God.
I'm not going to call it the most difficult dungeon I've done or anything. We wiped once, got back on our feet, and got through it the second time. But... it's not so much a dungeon as defending a point against wave after wave of continuous enemies. No chance to rest, and I'm still confused over not running out of mana. I think I would have liked to see a little more in the DPS department to help kill the constant stream of dragony things. Two tanks was less than ideal. But it did work. We did get through it. And, for once, my priest stayed in shadow form most of the time and left the healing to our paladin.
It was tense from my point of view as a shadow priest trying to keep Medivh from being mobbed by non-elite with the help of a warrior, but I suppose that's by design. It wasn't "horrible," but it didn't feel like much fun either. There's great potential there to die on the last boss (though the second seemed tougher) and have to go through everything again whereas in a normal dungeon most of what you've cleared stays clear.
A priest, a paladin, a hunter, a druid, a rogue, a warrior, and three mages walk into a raid instance...
Thus began our sampling of Karazhan. We were starting off one person short, and that's surely not good. In short order we found the undead horses present to pack quite a wallup - I think it was the second pull in which we somehow attracted the attention of a couple other beasties and lost some people. Halfway around to the first boss we got jumped from behind and there was more death involved. Unfortunately, it didn't get much better. Time constraints led to taking a break before a second attempt, but it didn't really get off the ground the second time around.
Lessons Learned:
- It's a pain in the tail to try to maintain Shackle Undead while being one of two healers. Addendum: The duration timer on the spell isn't that hard to watch, but it breaks early much of the time and that sucks.
- Trash mobs in various areas of Karazhan respawn until you've taken out their boss. I've read the respawn timer is something like 15 or 25 minutes. I'm not sure if anyone present was consciously aware of that at the time.
- Due to the above point, some measure of speed is required. From what I've seen elsewhere, raising/resting between pulls is a no-no as it takes too long. We, as a guild, need to work on moving faster through instances.
- Don't get too excited about elixirs and buffs. When you die, most of that wears off.
- Raiding really is a little harder/different than normal dungeoning.
I thought wrangling ten active guildmembers into going with time enough to accomplish anything would be the biggest challenge. It certainly is a challenge (we only got nine), but I see now there's definitely more to it than that. We need some work if we're going to succeed in there.
On another note, we may start to pick up roleplaying on Saturdays here in a couple weeks again, which means less time for computer games on the weekends, for better or worse.
Compare to Guild Wars: Once it is dead, it stays dead. ;)
ReplyDeleteUnless you decide to duck into town or another zone (or someone calls you to the guild hall), in which case every single thing in the zone has respawned, potentially setting you back in progress of a multi-goal quest. <.< But as long as you stay in the zone, yes.
ReplyDeleteWhat time saturday? ;)
ReplyDeleteActually. In most dungeons, that holds true. In this particular instance it puts a challenge on the encounter. Instead of waltzing in, wasting time doing whatever between fights, you're put into a sense of urgency and action until you make it to the 'stage boss'. Defeating the related boss clears that 'floor'. Forever. Until you reset the place and do it all again from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteLast time I did old hillsbrad (last week actually), the tank was either stoned or just terrible. I think I tanked more mobs with my holy pally than he did. Thank god for my purple gear and concentration aura. Still, had fun even though it wasn't a challenge.
ReplyDeleteHeh. Not this Saturday. Usually Noon-1 until 6-7. Minus a few hours worth of multiplayer Magic. o.o;
ReplyDeleteI... don't even recall who was tanking. I guess the feral druid, but most of the fights when by so fast that it didn't matter is someone else drew aggro. In Black Morass, I ended up probably taking more hits than the warrior helping with the non-elites. Yay Power Word: Shield. 'course, I did get mobbed and die gruesomely once on our successful run through...
ReplyDelete