Return of Heroic Old Hillsbrad

It’s not quite so bad as I once thought.

The most difficult part of this instance is probably the differences between it and it in non-heroic mode.  Namely, the patrols around the prison camp area.  These consist of one Rifleman and one stealth-detecting hound that, upon being engaged, will spawn an additional two melee mobs.  The hound can be CC’d normally, but neither the Rifleman nor the spawned guardsmen can.

To exacerbate the potential difficulty those provide, they respawn in about 10-15 minutes.

In contrast, these patrols in normal mode do not spawn additional mobs, nor do they respawn at all (excepting the possible 2-hour “you’re taking too long!” respawn timer imposed on many instances).  They are also in different places.

So, to beat this instance!

Fly in as normal.  Clear the first guard outside, and the mobs under the two towers to either side of the entrance.  Clear the mobs guarding both sides of the bridge, and make your way to the stairs that take you to the prison camp area.

There is one patrol up here.  Take it out.  CC the dog (hibernate or polymorph) if you can.  No dps until your tank picks up all three of the other mobs (or all 4 if you don’t have cc for the dog).  Once all these mobs are down, you are on a timer.

Your next objective:  clear the 3 houses.  Pull them up the stairs to where you cleared the first patrol.  We killed the warder in each house first, CCing whatever else we could, with a priority on keeping the riflement CC’d as much as possible.  Note that the warders can dispel CC.  I wouldn’t recommend using sap…sheeps and traps preferable.  (Alternatively, the mobs don’t hit very hard, a prot paladin could likely hold all of them easily.  We had a druid.)

Don’t bother with the bombs just yet.  Once all three houses are down, wait for one patrol to walk by and pull it up the stairs, using the same method as above to kill em all.  Then, descend into the pit and get the other patrol.  You are now out of the way of the first timer and on a new one, that of the patrols down in the pit.  Take care of the bombs now, and then go under the bridge and get the final two houses.  Once all of the bombs are set, the houses will be ablaze, and the patrols are now irrelevant. 

Go take care of the first boss.  When he descends into the pit with you.  Other than hitting really hard, he’s something of a pushover.  Have ranged people not stand near each other, as when he leaves the tank during fear he will likely go attack someone else and whirlwind near them, potentially destroying multiple people at once.  So yeah, spread out.  Try to have a good way to deal with fears ready.

After that the instance is much the same as normal, except that Thrall seems stupider about breaking CC.

The final boss event is tough, however.  Being dragonkin, unless you have a druid, cc on them will be rough at best, given Thrall’s anti-hunter-trap nature.  Try to have your tank stand closest to where the mobs will be spawning as their initial aggro seems based on proximity.  Kill the caster mobs first, followed then by the melee mobs one-by-one.  This is tough, because the mobs will apply a debuff which increases damage taken and healing received by 50%…an effect you’d think would even itself out but doesn’t at all given the amount of damage that can be spread around here.

Something that we’d found helps is to let Thrall tank a mob.  He’s got enough health to survive a fairly decent beating, and can hold his own against one mob just fine.

The final boss himself isn’t a big deal.  Purge/dispel/steal his buff that eats your group’s buffs and beat him down normally.

Lastly, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, but Icy Veins + Bloodlust is freakin’ amazing.  Thank goodness for Salvation.

Yay for Epic Flight Form

Helped a pair of irl friends with level 70 druids get their epic flight form quests finished last night in Heroic Sethekk. We had planned on starting at 9, but ended up having to wait until 10:30 or so for our 5th to get home from work. From there, it went fairly rough. More crowd control would have been most handy, all we really had was a succubus which kept getting destroyed by things.

Warrior tanking on multiple mobs is so very precarious. For one thing, Thunderclap is not usable while the warrior is silenced, which makes very little sense to me. Also can’t taunt, which does make sense, but I’ve known about that. Also, if I end up getting stunned by one of the Talon Lords or whatever they’re called (they use “Talon of Justice“, lawl) before I’ve had the chance to use TC, well…things get even harder.

Our poor healing tree druid had very few hit points as well, so often a stray random charge from the birds would do her in instantly (as I was never quick enough on the intervene to take that attack).

However, the Anzu event was one-shotted. Awesome job by both druids keeping everyone decursed and all of the statues alive pretty much the whole time (from what I could tell). That was probably the easiest part of the instance for us.

Oh, for the record…

Prot Warrior Tank (me)
Feral Druid
Dest Warlock (also Marks Hunter; used the hunter for the Anzu fight and the pull right before the final boss for some more reliable CC)
Elem Shaman
Resto Druid

Lastly, the dual Ravenguard pulls were too much for me. We had the feral druid tank the primary dps target while I offtanked the other on those. Worked much much better for the Resto Druid’s HoTs to manage through.

Image from boards.clan-blackstar.org.

Escape from Durnholde Keep – Heroic Mode

The Daily Heroic yesterday was Old Hillsbrad. Now, we’d tried this once before (and thought I did a post on it, but apparently not) and our group was beaten up and kicked out. It was horrible.

Well, we went back in. Different group. The first time it was me healing, warrior tank, 2x marksman/survival hunters, and a feral druid. This time, it was me healing, druid tank, frost mage, ret paladin, and a feral druid. Using my previous knowledge of the instance, we did much better, but weren’t without our share of wipes. Whole run lasted 4-5 hours (but mostly because of people replacement reasons. Anyway.)

In normal mode, you have the Distraction portion of the instance. This is where you enter the keep and set bombs in all the buildings to set them ablaze and set the stage for Thrall’s sheep-breaking escape. The pulls here consist of 3-4 patrols (one humanoid melee or ranged mob, and one dog), and 5 buildings of 4 humanoids each. Each building pull will be comprised of a mix of 2h-wielding melee mobs, ranged hunter-like mobs (complete with scatter shot!) and wardens, melee caster mobs that fear and heal. The usual modus operandi here is to, from above, clear the patrols, and then move down and engage the buildings one-at-a-time, using whatever cc you have available. Once all of the bombs have been set, the buildings are set ablaze and the boss spawns by the stairway leading into the keep, and the group is set to engage him.

In heroic mode, there are very big differences. The first is in the patrols: they will always consist of a hunter-ish mob and a dog. Upon being aggro’d the humanoid will call out in alarm, spawning two “Reinforcements” – un-cc-able, un-kite-able mobs, fast-moving, hard-hitting mobs. And, these patrols respawn at a fast rate. We guess 10-15 minutes.

There are three of these patrols you need to worry about. One wanders near the stairway your group will use to access the lower level. Two others patrol the outside perimeter of said lower level. First order of business is to wait for the one to patrol near the stairs. Take it out. Then wait for the two patrols below to come near the stairs. Pull them up and take them out.

We did this by marking them initially for the ranged mob to be first dps and for our mage to sheep the dog. Initial chaos would brew with the reinforcements but would be put under control by our tank as quick as possible. Dps the ranged mob down to limit its scatter shotting, then focus fire the other two down, then kill the (sheeped) dog.

Then, because we knew we’d be getting respawns and our zone of safety was at the top of the stairs, instead of fighting each building pull in the pit we pulled them up. We’d have the first respawn from up there of course but better there where we had more visibility and space. It was just as we were fighting the last mob of the 2nd building that the first respawn happened…right on top of us. We noticed quickly, obviously, and went about fighting them as normal. The building pulls were not difficult, so my mana wasn’t by any means taxed.

So after that we cleared the last building, and tried to blitz over two the other two (which are semi-separated from the first three by a narrow corridor-like section of the pit which has a bridge over it…in normal mode there is a 4-pull of mobs here, but it is not there on heroic). While we were marking the first building pull, we see one of the patrols respawn. No problem, we’ll back away and fight it off. We were just about to pull it when we see a patrol coming from behind as well…profanities ensued, but quickly we took the mob from behind and pulled it to the stairs. The patrols thankfully move slowly so we had time to fight that one. After that we took out the other one. At this point, we’re in the pit, have just cleared the two pats…and this is where the fun starts.

First, our tank has to switch computers…well, go home, really. As in drive. It’s not far, will take about 15 minutes, which everyone is ok with. Then we find out our cat druid doesn’t have very long as he’s gotta get up early. Ok, we’ll go as far as we can and try to replace. Which we do…we complete the rest of the pit and take out the first boss just fine when the tank returns (nothing special about him really, just hits much harder than in normal). We go up to free Thrall…nothing special about the pulls leading to the basement, same as the buildings really. There is no patrol in the actual fort like there is in normal, so that made things easier. Once we get to the basement we decide to do the replacement of the druid for a bm hunter.

Run allllll the way out to summon. Run alll the way back. Ok, let’s go. Set Thrall on his way…the groups we fight are not bad, especially considering the hurried chain-pull nature of that event where Thrall doesn’t wait for you.

All well and good, we get to the 2nd boss, explain briefly while the boss is doing his “…after I’ve had my fun!” speech. We start the fight…aaaand the mage disconnects. Wipe!

We run back, and he’s still not back…so, phooey. Our Ret paladin also confesses he has to sleep. Ok. We find some replacements. Ret paladin replaced by pvp-spec mace rogue, mage replaced by enhancement shaman, and our hunter switches to his fire mage for sheeping (he admitted trapping was difficult due to resists). Long story short, more running aaaaall the way up that tunnel and back to summon people.

This group goes well for a bit. Owns that 2nd boss. Of note, we found that the consecrate was doing 750 damage per tick, so we made sure to stay out of that. Made healing a lot easier lemme tell ya. Dropped…something we sharded. I can’t remember what.

So anyway, on to the last part of the instance. Very similar to the way it goes on normal, but we cheated and didn’t follow Thrall into any of the buildings, opting to stay outside and fight in the open. Works well. This is all ezmode compared to the patrol respawn section.

Ok, get up to where Thrall talks to Taretha. This is where the instance takes a turn for the even worse. The final boss fight starts right after you talk to Taretha, Epoch Hunter /yelling stuff at Thrall.

This last part of the instance is painful. Ok, when Thrall comes outside, they engage in a little bit of chit-chat, and then you fight the waves of Infinite Dragonkin. Two waves of three and a final of four.

The first two waves are two melee mobs and a caster. SOP is to kill the caster first, then deal with the melee mobs.

Huge complication: a debuff is applied (not sure by what or how) that increases damage taken by 50% and healing received by 50%. Doens’t sound too bad, should balance itself out, aye? Well, my big heal takes two seconds to cast, and…well, the tank died before one could land. The casters do 6k shadowbolts with that debuff on, coupled with some nice damage from the melee mobs, and there was just nothing I could do in such a short span of time. Though, getting a 3.9k crit Flash of Light is pretty neat <_<

So after that wipe, the rogue has to go. Falling asleep at the keyboard. Our last resort. we call in a guildie warlock…get to the stone, summon her in, aaaaand she hasn’t done Old Hillsbrad normal so isn’t honored to pick up the key. Back out to summon in her druid. Back into the instance.

And we finally get it, on our last available try. (You can only fail to win so many times in heroic (and maybe in normal mode as well, but I don’t recall the last time I failed in there).) We tried having our new druid use hibernate, but that proved too difficult and unwieldy as Thrall would often break them or the loose add would kill someone. And the problem with the mobs destroying the tank before I could heal was still happening.

So on our winning attempt, we had both druids tank to spread out the damage. Worked to great effect, since both of them did not have the debuff. After the final wave. the boss was easy as pie. No real change from normal mode.

Started at 10 pm, done at somewhere between 2 and 3 am. Went through something like 8-10 people trying to get it done, too. Good thing I don’t have to work until 11 am.

/edit: And hi again, to Meg, who stopped by to say hello just as we were getting ready to start Thrall on his course for the first time.

Business as usual

SectionNine is doing quite well so far in Season 3. Went 7-3 our first week (would have been 8-2 but we lost a game to my noobishness…I was healing the wrong target… /blush), and are 3-1 so far this week. If we can maintain an average 7-3 we’ll be back to our 1600+ soon enough. And with the showing I’m seeing (we’re at a much more decent position stam/res wise) we might see 1800 here in S3. The resilience effects are much more visible, as I’ve already seen my teammates withstand some pretty heavy beatings that have allowed me to work on LoSing warlocks and mages much more effectively.

In fact, though we lost that game, we would have won had I had the correct target. It was us (Combat Rogue/BM Hunter/Holy Paladin) against them (?? Warlock/Frost Mage/Resto Shaman). Early fighting took place on the bridge as usual. I trinketed out of a sheep (which actually ended up being a trinketing out of a Death Coil, because as I was hitting the trinket I was Death Coil’d, which broke the sheep for me), and then HoJ’d the warlock to prevent an early fear, and repositioned myself. Got a couple heals off before the warlock set himself to me again, so I jumped off the bridge to dodge a fear. Warlock did not give chase, instead switching to the hunter alongside the mage. Meanwhile our hunter and rogue are giving the shaman some serious pressure. (Hunter has 13k hp btw.)

I get back up on the bridge, and set to healing the hunter…but have the rogue targetted. I didn’t notice this until the hunter died (I remember assuming that the hunter must just have been taking some heavy damage and that my heals were being eaten away by shadow/frostbolts). Shaman fell shortly after, but now we had a CC-fest against the rogue and I…I became the dps target, and couldn’t heal myself safely under the looming threat of a counterspell. I think I managed to dodge the CS, but the accompanying silence killed me anyway as I wasn’t able to keep myself topped off and keep the rogue unsheeped at the same time. Rogue did almost get the mage after that, but didn’t have the cooldown resources left to salvage the game.

Had I just not been a noob, we would have had ‘em. Ah well.

Speaking of salvaging though, Heroic Ramparts yesterday…party consisted of Luthehza (my dps warrior), our warrior tank, survival hunter, fire mage, and resto shaman. We clear without any major problems (except for an accidental large pull before the first boss) up to the second boss. We take him on. I am assigned to add duties because we seem to remember them not hitting very hard.

Well, I went about it, and WHAM, get crit for 2k. I didn’t last long, obviously, and am simoultaneously killed and whipped up into the air and tossed off the platform. I didn’t get to see much else…people set about dying, but had gotten the boss to 10%…shaman self-resses, does what she can to heal the tank, and dies again presumably to adds (again, I can’t see anything but health bars at this point). I dunno what AP (our tank, Angrypeon) did, Shield Wall maybe, but he basically took that boss from 10 to 0% pretty much by himself. It was awesome. Then he died too. lol.

Back on the subject of arenas, there was a much better display of our team last week I just remembered. The setup this time was us (Mace Rogue/MS Mace Warrior/Holy Paladin) against them (?? Warlock/MS Axe Warrior/Holy Paladin). The mace rogue in question here is our squishiest team member, having not been with us nearly as long. He’s been the hardest to keep up, but is good at CC and keeping himself alive in many cases.

Well not this time. Locked down by something I wasn’t able to save the rogue, who bit it after that. So, me+warrior against paladin+warrior+lock. Sound grim? I thought so. Warrior kills the lock. Ok, teams even. Enemy paladin runs out of mana at some point. Woot. We win.

I may not have gotten the team matchups right, it may have been something other than a warrior/warlock/paladin we were against. There was definitely a warlock though. And we won despite being behind in the beginning like that. Fun times.

The Difficulty of Heroics

To preface, yes, Heroics are by and large more difficult than their non-heroic equivalents. It wouldn’t make much sense for them to be easier.

However, there seems to be a feeling that you need raiding gear to be successful in these heroic instances. I will admit you should probably have gear that is mostly blue, and epics from Karazhan certainly won’t hurt your sucess, but the heroics are not that hard. As long as your tank has at least 13k hp and 490 defense (or 17k hp and 415 defense for a druid), your healer has about 900 +healing, and your dps/cc components are fairly sound, you shouldn’t have any (/edit: serious) trouble clearing a heroic. At these lower numbers, you might run into some hairy situations (such as having to spam big heals on your tank or deal with some of your squishier dps getting one-shot).

Also, though, the gear drops could use upgrades. Granted, there are some pieces that drop in heroics that are great for certain classes and specs, but (especially for clothies), armor drops will be somewhat lacking in power compared to the difficulty. While you are guaranteed an epic drop at the end as well as some high-quality blues, all of the bosses are dropping loot on par with the non-heroic 5-mans. The blues in heroics should be scaled up to above item level 115, perhaps 120, but with the same “Requires Level 70″ tag.

In fact, I’d like to see upgrades to the “heroic sets,” that is, the Doomplate, Devastation, Wastewalker, and Mana-Etched sets. Tune them just a little higher, and make maybe 2/5 pieces of each set epic. Maybe the chestpiece and gloves.

Moral of the story, if you will, is that the heroics are not as hard as people are making them out to be. If you gear yourself enough in the non-heroic 5-mans (which you should be as you’re running them for your heroic keys anyway), I won’t say they’ll be a breeze but you can do it. I am however in agreement that the gear drops are a bit lackluster.

Reputation/Faction Grinding

I’ve noticed a certain amount of dissension in guild chat towards the concept of heroics and faction grinding in instances. Seems guaranteed now that when someone says “Anyone want to do a heroic?” someone replies “boo, heroics.” Which is kind of funny in and of itself because it’s like they’re saying they don’t enjoy or even disdain deeds of heroism. But I digress.

It seems they just don’t want to do the instances. I can see that as being boring, but these are the same people that are at least somewhat intrigued by raiding. Which is often the same as instancing, only harder. This leads me to believe we have reward-driven guild members. And that maybe they don’t see the rewards available in faction grinding.

Being a paladin, I can benefit from all sorts of gear, be it melee dps, spell damage, tanking, or healing stuff. Thus it suited me well to do all these instances repeatedly. I was in all blues shortly after getting to 70. It doesn’t hurt that I do enjoy running instances however, even in a PuG.

But, for a more narrow or specialized class, such as a rogue or a mage, you have to know what you’re going for. After doing the quests for the various factions not in the associated instance(s), it often will not take more than a few extra runs of said instance(s) to get to revered. It’s exalted that takes a lot of time. Cenarion Expedition and The Keepers of Time, for example, should only require 2-3 runs of Steamvault and Black Morass (respectively) to achieve revered status after doing the quests for those factions. (And there are only a couple quests for the Keepers of Time…the last of which for finishing Black Morass awards you with a whopping 8000 reputation points.)

So anyway, what other rewards, besides now being able to run the heroics, are available?

Well for one thing, there are the various head enchants. Cenarion Expedition’s head enchant adds an additional 34 attack power and 16 hit rating to your head item. Thrallmar/Honor Hold will offer you one that adds 35 healing and 7 mana per 5 sec. The one for Keepers of Time will net you 17 defense and 16 dodge rating (or vice versa, I can’t remember heh). These are awesome, and you’re holding yourself back by not getting them!

Also, there are various other items you can get without having to worry about drops! [Xi'ri's Gift] is a reward from getting to revered with the Sha’tar, and Thallmar/Honor Hold will offer you the [Ancestral Band]. Granted I can only really remember healing-related items, but there are plenty of others! I seem to remember Lower City offering mail hunter/shaman leggings, and Thrallmar/Honor Hold has a hunter-ish polearm of some kind. And you can get these by going for other items in those instances!

And lastly, let’s not forget…heroics may be tough, but you can get epic-quality items from them! I recommend downloading the AtlasLoot add-on (you can get it from curse-gaming.com) and seeing what’s out there for you before passing swift judgement upon faction grinding.

Lastly, the game is of course not necessarily about the gear rewards, it’s about having fun. Don’t let the taste of blues and purples soil your demeanor. Nor should you go for these things if you’re not having fun getting them. But success in the end-game can be somewhat dependent on your character’s gear, so if you have some opportunity to improve it you should consider taking it!

No more heroism

And I’m done with heroics for now. [Necklace of Eternal Hope] out of the way. Again, decided that with the Tier 4 Helm well within reach, I didn’t need to go for the 50 badges I’d need for [Helmet of the Steadfast Champion]. So instead of letting the badges I had rot, I picked up the one last real upgrade I felt like going for. (The trinket is nice, but I do think I prefer the ones I have: [Shiffar's Nexus-Horn] and [Scarab of the Infinite Cycle]. Honestly not sure about when I’m going to replace these, looking at the trinkets available in the future.)

Lastly, I am going to be sad when I have to replace my [Cassock of the Loyal] and have to go back to wearing pants…plate kilts for the win. Ah well. :)

Item Quality

So, I have a concern. It mostly pertains to the heroic instances, and the badge system, and these items they are calling “epics”. Allow me to illustrate with two items:

Headdress of the Tides
Head
Mail
530 Armor
+30 Stamina
+35 Intellect
Equip: Increases healing done by spells and effects by up to 73.
Equip: Restores 9 mana per 5 sec.

Helmet of the Steadfast Champion
Head
Plate
1129 Armor
+36 Stamina
+24 Intellect
Meta Socket
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: 2 mana per 5 sec.
Equip: Increases healing done by spells and effects by up to 70.
Equip: Restores 10 mana per 5 sec.

Zerei is currently the owner of the mail helm above. Ignoring the stats and relying on assumption, I decided I would farm the 50 badges required for the new plate helm above offered at the Naaru vendor of badge turnin things. Then, later, I actually looked at the stats on both items. I thought to myself, “Wow, that plate helm doesn’t appear to be much of an upgrade!” Lo and behold, through the magic of Thottbot, the concept of the Item Level.

Item level is something I have taken to indicate the overall quality of an item. I have read that when Blizzard creates an item, it has a “budget”; everything they add to that item has some pre-defined value, and these values (from the stats the item adds to) add up to create a benchmark. A level 65 rare item should have less value than a level 70 rare item. In general, items of higher quality have a higher budget, and thus better stats. Where I think you can see this best is in the Item Level concept. I think there are add-ons you can install that will show you this value in-game, but I usually just look the items up individualy on thottbot. Here’s what I’ve found:

Just about all rare items that say “Requires Level 70″ are Item Level 115. Some items that require level 68 are the same. These are good items that you would generally get in order to gear up for raiding. You would think that items that have the same level requirement label, but are of epic quality, would have a higher item level. This is sadly often not the case.

In the above example between the two helms, the mail item is your standard level 70 blue, and has an item level of 115. The epic helm illustrated below it which requires 50 badges of justice is item level 110. Does that strike anyone else as bizarre?

Now, it is entirely possible that I am somewhat mistaken, maybe the item level label on an epic is weighed differently than it is for rare items. But again, looking at the stats, you might not think so.

See, the reason I used the item level to compare the two items is because they are of different armor types. In most cases, if you were comparing items of the same armor type, you could just look at the armor value and determine which is the “better item” based on budget (a plate item with 1000 armor should be equally as valuable as another plate item with the same amount of armor…the same goes for shields, and weapon dps (notice how almost all level 70 blue weapons have 71.7 dps?)). However, since the above items were indeed of different armor types, I used the item level on both to better scrutinize them.

If we back away from these two items and look more closely at the plate helm and other plate helms of similar armor value, we find that maybe indeed epics are weighed differently.

If you take a look at all rare and epic plate helms with +healing on them, and sort them by item level, the plate helm above is on the bottom of the list. Above it are the Battlegrounds pvp rewards, level 70 blues of item level 115. However, looking at the armor values, we see that the armor values of the pvp rewards are below 1000 (946, to be exact). Are these items worse or better than the heroic reward? They appear to be fairly similar, but it is difficult to judge them as they have different stats (the pvp rewards have spell crit and resilience, as opposed to the heroic reward’s mana/5).

Back to the comparison of the items above, yeah, the plate one has sockets, one of which is a meta socket. Put some decent gems in there, and you get +8 spell crit and a chance to restore mana on spellcast. I dunno, it just seems like all the heroics I’d have to run (looking at at least 8 through Mechanar) don’t justify the end result.

In other news, it’s AV weekend, and I hope to save up about 4k honor to buy the Veteran’s Ornamented Belt to finally upgrade my level 65 BoE blue someone sent me back when I was a wee little level 24 paladin. I definitely got some use out of the thing, but looking at the item levels, I think my choice is clear :)