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.

Really Bad Pit of Saron Run 7/10/10

I did a run through Heroic Pit of Saron today on my Shaman, Breeonna, and it was a pretty bad run.

First off we went from the entrance right to Forgemaster Garfrost, skipping all the trash mobs which have a chance to drop Battered Hilt. Battered Hilt goes for around 10,000 gold on my server or you can keep it and do the quest to get a nice weapon. Either way, it is worth killing a few trash mobs on the chance it could drop. Anyway we went right to Forgemaster Garfrost and that was where we had our first wipe. We did manage to bring him down on our second attempt. That was wipe number 1.

Did I mention we had 3 Deathknights in the group? One was the Tank. Don't even get me going on DK Tanks. We managed to kill all the mobs up to Krick and Ick then wiped again on him. Wipe number 2. I used up my resurrect on that one so we didn't have to run all the way back. We got him down on our second attempt after kicking the Healer from our group. I personally didn't think he was doing too bad, it is a hard instance to heal.

We had our next wipe on the mobs on the way up to the tunnel. The DK "Tank" made the decision we were going to run up there and get by the first 2 sets of mobs, that hardly ever works and it didn't work this time either. Usually what ends up happening is you have at least 2 sets of mobs attacking you instead of fighting just one. This time was no exception. That was wipe number 3.

We finally made it up to the tunnel and started the run to the mid point. We rounded up all the mobs in the first half, dodged the falling ice and got to mid point. That was when the Healer DC'd. Wipe number 4.

We got another healer, a Paladin, and he thought it was pretty funny we wiped in the tunnel. We made the run to mid tunnel again, rounding up all the mobs and dodging the falling ice. The Tank almost died at that point but we managed to kill everything and started the run to the end of the tunnel, rounding up all the mobs and dodging the falling ice. The Tank died before we got there. The Paladin said "I can't heal you when you're running, you have to stop". You DO NOT stop in the tunnel because of the falling ice and the fact you have mobs attacking you. Fail Healer combined with a DK "Tank" = wipe number 5.

At that point the Healer left, the Tank left and one of the DPS left, leaving me and another DPS. He said he knew a Tank so we invited him and requeued. It only took a few seconds to get another healer and DPS and we were on our way through the tunnel again. We ran up to the mid point, rounding up all the mobs and dodging the falling ice. We killed all the mobs there, then ran to the end, rounding up the rest of the mobs and dodging the falling ice, and killed those too.

After that all we had to do was kill Scourgelord Tyrannus which, believe it or not, went pretty smooth. Of course we only had 2 people from the original group and a Warrior Tank so we basically had a much better group. The DPS that was in it from the start got the Axe he was after so it worked out well for him which was good. All I was doing was running a dungeon, there was nothing in there I needed and the only thing I wanted was a chance at a Battered Hilt.

That was my last dungeon of the day needless to say. It wasn't even my random daily dungeon, I did that earlier, it was just a random for me.