More Dungeons

I have been doing a lot of Dungeons on Breeonna, as a matter of fact that is about all I have been doing. I have been exploring what is left of Azeroth between dungeons.

I did find something amusing in Lakeshire last night. Apparently they have bare knuckle fights in the basement of the Inn there. Last night was a dwarf against a human. There were a lot of people there just watching the fight and cheering on their favorite.

I had one Halls of Reflection last night that I didn't finish. That was the first one in a long time that I didn't finish. It was a Heroic and we died 4 times before everyone bailed. The problem seemed to be the healer not being able to keep up. But then again the whole group had some problems. We wiped for the first time on the second boss, Marwyn, in the first part. When we came back from that the tank ran to the other side as soon as the spirits came out. I thought that was a little weird but I thought maybe he had a plan. He didn't. He thought we would only have to fight the last boss and not the waves of mobs. That cost us another wipe.
Finally we got everyone on the same page but still couldn't bring down the boss in 2 more tries, that is when everyone bailed.

I had a few more dungeons that were pretty interesting. I do a lot of random dungeons because the normal randoms queue in half the time a heroic does. That way I have less wait and more play. In normal randoms you get a lot of people that are under geared and inexperienced. I learned my lesson on healing, it is usually easier to heal a heroic that it is a normal because the people in the heroic are usually more experienced. Another problem with the normals is I end up queuing into Oculus, Culling of Stratholme and Trial of the Champion a lot because a lot of the players are under 80 and those are the only ones they can get into.

Random Dungeons 11/22/10

I have been pretty busy lately. I gave up doing my daily's because they nerfed the gold payout, and started doing dungeons instead.

I have done most of the dungeons on Breeonna and have been getting her some better gear with Justice Points in the process.

When I first enter a dungeon, first and second fights, my DPS is really poor. Usually less than 3k. Then I find my groove and it starts climbing, up to as high as 6k. That is about as high as I ever get on Breeonna but she is slowly creeping up as I get better gear on her.

In the past few days I have done every heroic dungeon at least twice, some a lot more. I just got out of a heroic Halls of Reflection that went really well. I remember when a chill would go down my spine when I would queue into it. Now I look forward to it. If you have a good group it is a cakewalk like it was today. If you have a poor group, and I have been in many, it can be pretty rough. I remember starting a lot of them I never got to finish because people bailed. I got a couple achievements on Breeonna who apparently didn't have them.

I was in a pretty funny Trial of the Champion yesterday. The Tank was a Paladin in blues and greens and had 20k HP. Did I mention it was heroic ToC? That was interesting, there were a couple wipes, and a lot of the Tank dying which would leave the tanking to me and a Rouge. But we got through it. Normally I would have bailed but the Tank and Rogue informed us at the start that the tank was a fresh 80 looking to get geared so I figured I would stick around and help out. The Priest that was healing ninja'd the Tank neck piece that dropped for some reason. It was STR and STA, not usually what a Priest is looking for in a neck. I think he did it just to be a jerk.

I stayed with them for another random which turned out to be Violet Hold. He had a lot better time in there and got a nice set of leggings. I have been seeing some new drops from these old bosses lately, ever since the last big patch as a matter of fact. I got a new shield for Breeonna the other day in Pit of Saron that I had never seen drop before. It is a pretty nice caster shield.

The bottom line is I make more gold doing random heroics than I do with my daily's now that they nerfed the payout.

Random Dungeons 11/18/10

I did some dungeons today for the first time in quite awhile. Seeing that the daily quest gold got nerfed already, I decided I could make more gold doing dungeons.

I did Nexus as my random daily heroic on Brieanna and then got Gundrak for my next random heroic. Both of them went really smooth. We had a good group in Nexus and tore through there without any problem. Being the Hunter I made sure I dismissed my pet before jumping off anything. I have been in more bad situations in Nexus, and other dungeons, because the Hunter doesn't dismiss their pet before jumping and the pet takes the long way around, aggroing everything along the way. We had no problem at all with the Bosses but I couldn't skin Keristrasza at then end. It said it required 455 skinning skill, I have 450. I am pretty sure I have skinned that Boss many times before but, oh well, times are changing.

Gundrak went smooth too. When we went to kill Eck the Ferocious I couldn't get through the entrance for some reason, I don't know why. After everyone else came back from that we finished up the rest with no problems.

I didn't do any heroics on Brieonna because it has been so long since I did any healing. That, the fact that they took away some of my stuff, and just being out of practice had me doing normal dungeons on her. My random daily dungeon on her was Utgarde Pinnacle. This was actually the first dungeon I did today which got me going on them. I didn't do too bad considering. I lost one person by the time it was over. That was a combination of line of sight, lag and being out of practice. Usually when I am healing I try to keep an eye on everyone and not let anyone get out of my sight. Well, I let someone get out of my sight and by the time I could get them back in sight and get a cast off it was too late for them. We finished up though without any more problems after that, I paid a little more attention.

My next random daily on Brieonna was Trial of the Champion which I got into already in progress. I lost one in there too. It was phase 3 of the Black Knight and too many people were taking damage at once. That's where being out of practice really hurt, normally I have no problem in there. This is why I decided to do normal dungeons on her instead of jumping right back into heroics.

My last random daily dungeon on Brieonna was The Forge of Souls. I almost bailed as soon as I queued in, I didn't think I was up to that one yet. If it was Halls of Reflection or the Pit of Saron I would have bailed, but I decided to stick it out and see what happened. We had no problem at all. It was a smooth textbook run. We had a good tank and a good group, not that there was anything wrong with the other groups. That was about all the stress I could take on Brieonna for one day so I switched over to Breeonna to do a few.

I only did randoms on Breeonna and my random daily was Forge of Souls again. We had another good group and tore through there pretty smoothly. I then proceeded to do the Pit of Saron, Halls of Reflection and Utgarde Pinnacle. We had no problems in any of those although one person died in UP. At least I wasn't healing it :). I noticed it takes about twice as long, twice as many harpoon shots, to get Skadi the Ruthless down in UP than it did the last time I was in there. The first time around I thought he was bugged but them second time took just as long.

The nice thing about Brieonna is she queues in a minute or less usually. There is no waiting for queues on her. On Brieanna and Breeonna it took about 10-12 minutes to queue in. I want to get back in Dungeon shape so I won't be lost when Cata gets here as I am going to have to regear everyone.

Gundrak - Random Daily Dungeon 9/19/10

I got on Breeonna for a little while today and did a couple dungeons. The first one I was in was Utgarde Pinnacle.

We were doing great until we got to Skadi the Ruthless. We took him down no problem but 3 of the people there must have been after the mount he drops. One of them was the healer. They left as soon as we attacked the next set of mobs, so there were only 2 of us left. Needless to say that didn't go well. I hate assholes like that, ones that leave in the middle of a fight with no warning. Anyway the group broke up and we didn't finish that one.

The next one I was in was Gundrak. We had a good group and had no problems although the Priest did get killed by the fish while swimming over to the center island. We rezzed him and finished without any problems. That got my random daily heroic out of the way. I am going to try to play more going forward.

Brieonna - Level 77 Holy Priest

I got Brieonna to level 77 tonight, only 3 more levels to go. The good news is I might be healing a raid next week with my guild. It will be my first raid on any of my toons. Good healers are in high demand. Once I get a few raid achievements under my belt I will be able to do a lot more raiding.

I have hit crits as high as 14k on heals and that was when I was still level 76 so I am getting there. My HoT's are ticking over 1400 every 3 seconds now and I was able to heal a Druid tank through one of the bosses in Gundrak tonight using only HoT's. That was a good tank though, there are some tanks that I have to throw everything but a medic at just to keep alive. Healing a tank like that is exhausting.

My top priority now will be getting geared. I need to start looking at gear with mana regeneration (MP5) on it so I don't run out during long fights, or with tanks that are in a hurry and don't give me time to drink. I had my share of those tonight.

I should be 80 this weekend and I can start doing random heroics to get badges for gear. Hopefully I will be able to get a few pieces of gear before the raid on Wednesday.

Heroic Gundrak (Dungeon)

I did the heroic daily dungeon on Brieanna today which turned out to be Gundrak.

Gundrak (also known as Gun'Drak) is the capital of the ice troll nation of Zul'Drak in eastern Northrend. The Drakkari tribe rule Zul'Drak from here, constantly battling the mighty forces of the Scourge.

Gundrak is an instance which contains the final boss for the ice trolls. This instance will show the Ice Trolls in all their glory, and teach us why they have been so successful against the Scourge. The story that emerges in the completely constructed zone, Zul'Drak, and the instance at the end of that zone, Gundrak, is that the trolls worship various animal Gods, like the rest of the troll races. They have began sacrificing to these gods to give them the power to fight the Scourge. The whole zone is recognizable as Troll, but with a twist to it that is true to the ice troll culture.

I did this with 4 other people I grouped with from my server, which meant we only had one person from the dungeon finder in our group. It went pretty smooth, it was a really fast run. We did all the bosses so I could get the achievement for it.

The bosses we took down are:

• Slad'ran
• Drakkari Colossus
• Moorabi
• Gal'darah
• Eck the Ferocious (heroic only).
  

There are two entrances to Gundrak, one to the north and one to the south. The northern entrance has the summoning stone outside. The first boss you will have to fight when going in through the north is Slad’ran. If you go in through the southern entrance, the first boss you will fight is Moorabi, the mammoth boss. Each entrance will take you down to the main circle. There are three bosses around the main circle, each one representing an aspect. There are roughly 2-4 pulls between bosses. Once you kill all three bosses and activate their altars, a bridge will swing into place in the middle of the circle (behind Drakkari the Colossus), allowing you to pass over the central altar. After fighting a few trash mobs, you meet Gal'darah, a rhino aspect, and the presumed leader of Gundrak. You can get to the center circle by jumping into the water and swimming to the stair case or using the stairs behind Drakkari. The fish in the water will attack you but will not follow you onto the land. Some of the mobs do an AoE knock back, so be careful when fighting near ledges.