Random Dungeons - 6/5/10

I did my random heroic dungeon on Brieonna and Brieanna as well as the random daily dungeon on Breeonna.

Brieonna's random daily heroic was Halls of Reflection. I got in right after they had taken down the first boss. I'm not sure why the healer left, seemed to be a pretty good group, but I healed the second set of waves and the second boss. If we make it through that I consider the rest a breeze, and it was.

Brieanna's random daily heroic turned out to be Trial of the Champion, a pretty easy one. I was getting some pretty bad lag spikes in there but we didn't have any problem getting it done. I am not sure if others were experiencing the lag spikes, no one said anything. We were having severe thunderstorms here and I think that had something to do with it.

Breeonna's random daily dungeon was Gundrak. This one can be a little tricky if you don't have the right Tank. Last night, for example, we didn't have the right Tank. We managed to make it almost to the last boss, to the guys riding the Rhino's right before you confront the last boss. These guys silence so it is a good idea to take them one at a time. Last night our Tank decided to round up all 3 and take them all at once. That was a bad idea because now there were 3 of them casting silence at the same time. I couldn't cast, I was silenced the entire time, the healer couldn't cast (heal), they were silenced the entire time, and the Shadow Priest couldn't cast, they were silenced the entire time. That left the Tank and a Rogue to take down 3 Rhino's and their handlers. Needless to say we wiped on that.

Our Tank today didn't make that mistake and we took them down one at a time. Then we took down the boss and completed my random daily dungeon.

I did a couple more dungeons and some questing in Sholazar Basin and reached level 77, only 3 more levels to go. Maybe I will be able to hit 80 this weekend, it is possible.

Random Dungeons - 6/3/10

I did some more random dungeons on Breeonna tonight as well as Brieonna's random heroic dungeon which was Azjol-Nerub.

Brieonna breezed through healing her dungeon and we didn't lose anyone until the end. One person died when the last boss did POUND while they were standing right in front of him. You would think that someone at level 80 in this dungeon on heroic would know better than to stand in front of the boss when he does POUND but evidently there are people out there who don't learn from their mistakes. Basically, unless you are the tank, or geared like one, POUND is going to one shot you. It happened to me once on Gomorra and I learned my lesson, it hasn't happened to me again on any of my toons in all the runs I have done since.

Breeonna also did one run through there tonight and it went smooth. Almost all of her dungeons went smooth tonight except one run through Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom where the healer wasn't quite up to speed. Even that run wasn't too bad though, I just kept my eyes open and healed myself when I needed to. I also did some questing in Zul'Drak and got her to level 76. Only 4 more levels to go now.

Breeonna - Level 75 Elemental Shaman

I got Breeonna to level 75 tonight. I did some questing and random dungeons to accomplish that.

As far as questing goes I moved from Dragonblight to Grizzly Hills, then into Zul'Drak, which is where I am questing now. I am getting better XP per quest in Zul'Drak than I was in Grizzly Hills or Dragonblight so that's a lot better.

I did my first run through Violet Hold tonight. It was nice to get into a different dungeon and I also got a nice pair of boots out of it too. Now, with a little more variety in dungeons to queue into, it is not so boring as it gets when you just run the same dungeon over and over.

I will keep questing in Zul'Drak, then move onto Sholazar Basin and eventually Icecrown.

Breeonna - Random Dungeons

I did some more random dungeons on Breeonna tonight and got her to level 74.

She is coming right along and it won't be long until I am 80 :). As usual I have been leading the groups I am in for DPS. Sometimes I lead by a lot, hundreds of thousands above the next highest person. I can't wait to hit 80, get geared, and see what kind of damage I can do.

I have been questing too, but I am at that point were I am towards the top level for the area so I am not getting great XP for the quests I am doing. I am still too low to go on to the next area so I am stuck there for a while I guess.

Random Dungeons - 5/29/10

I got in to do a few random dungeons on both Brieonna and Breeonna tonight.

I only did one on Brieonna, her daily heroic dungeon which was, Drak'Tharon Keep. We didn't have any problems although I almost lost the tank once when he pulled a boss and all the adds at once instead of getting the adds out of the way first. He really wasn't geared to do that big of a pull but we all survived although it was close when I got feared behind a wall and couldn't get out to get them back in LoS to heal.

Breeonna did her random daily dungeon too which was Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom. She also did a few more between quests. Actually I should say she did some quests between dungeons. When I am on her, as with all my toons, I am always in queue for a dungeon and I drop whatever I am doing when the queue pops and join up.

I didn't get another level in tonight so she is still level 73 but I will hopefully get another level in tomorrow. Right now she is at 7 days /played.

Breeonna - Level 73 Elemental Shaman

I got Breeonna to level 73 and am still at less than 7 days /played. I am still on track to hit 80 in less than 10 days /played I think.

I did some quests and some random dungeons tonight. I didn't have much luck in the dungeons, I was in three groups and in all three of them the tank and healer ended up leaving. In two of them we waited around and got another tank and healer and one of the groups ended up falling apart.

In the first group that fell apart the healer, who wasn't that good at all, was really mouthy. They said if they didn't need to stop and drink mana then neither should I. That is about a 5 year old's mentality because I am casting all the time and they cast once in awhile. They also said they didn't need the DPS to get through the instance. That right there shows how either stupid or inexperienced they were, DPS is what gets the job done, it is what makes the group. Without DPS you are going nowhere.

Anyway we, the DPS, ended up kicking the failtard Priest which happened to be a friend of the Tank so he left too, good riddance to them both. After that we got a tank and healer in who were capable and got the instance done.

In the second group first the healer left because they just couldn't do the job, then the tank left because he was squishy and, I think, knew he was out of his league. Then the other two DPS left which left only me, so I requeued and did a couple quests while I was waiting.

In the third group the healer fell and died then left group. The Tank left right after that but we were able to get an 80 Paladin Tank one of the people in the group knew. We got a new healer right after that. The healer made the comment it was a little boring because he didn't have to heal the tank so the tank took all his armor off so the healer would have something to do lol. It was interesting after that but the healer managed to keep him alive although he didn't have any spare time to complain about being bored.

I will continue to do a combination of quests and randoms to get to 80 as fast as I can. One thing I have noticed about these dungeons is they do not drop a lot of caster mail gear. Most of the mail they drop has attack power instead of spell power and the stuff that does have spell power is either plate, cloth or leather. Oh well, sooner or later I will get some pieces. I did regear from gear I got off the auction house when I hit 73 and my DPS really shot up. In the last dungeon I was in I was at the top of the DPS list and did over 600,000 more damage than the next highest person. That is quite a bit, it was almost double what they did.

Breeonna - Level 72 Elemental Shaman

I got Breeonna to level 72 tonight doing a combination of quests and dungeons.

I did a couple runs through Utgarde Keep and didn't have any problem tonight. One of the times I entered they were at the last boss and someone obviously left. They were all dead so I guess they were having some problems. We didn't have any problem when we tried it though, we got him down pretty quick and easy.

I am doing a pretty steady 1.5k+ DPS, to as high as 1.9k+ DPS, on my shaman now, I usually lead the DPS in every dungeon group I am in regardless of the level of the other players. I can't believe how easy it is to get high DPS out of it. I was doing around 1.1k+ then I upgraded some gear from the auction house and it jumped another 400+. DPS stands for Damage Per Second so 400+ DPS is a nice little chunk to go up all at once.

Brieonna - Level 80 Holy Priest

I got Brieonna to level 80 last night (Saturday). Now starts the long process of gearing her. I am doing random heroics for that. I get drops and also badges for gear. When I hit 80 my gearscore was around 2700, I have been able to bring it up to over 3800 since then.

I ran The Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection on normal with a guildie tonight and got a nice staff and wand out of them. I only have one of my BoA pieces now, a trinket and that will get replaced soon. That will be nice, no more sharing the trinkets with my Shaman, sending them back and forth.

I got a couple pieces of gear with badges today and might be able to get a couple more tomorrow.

Halls of Reflection (Dungeon)

I did 9 runs through the Halls of Reflection on normal mode tonight, helping a guildie who was trying to get the shield to drop off the second boss. We also did one run through Trial of the Champion due to a mis-queue.

I ended up dying twice in Halls of Reflection mostly due to the healer not being able to keep up. Halls of Reflection is the hardest of the 5 man dungeons. As such, even in normal mode, you need to have a pretty geared group that has an idea what they are doing. In one of the groups we had a rogue with a gearscore under 3,000. He didn't last long. Very few of the people in there were well geared. I was one of the best geared ones on Gomorra with a gearscore around 5100. You don't need a gearscore that high to do normal HoR, that is more the gearscore for heroic HoR.

The way HoR works is, you get 4 waves of 5 or 6 mobs each, then a boss, 4 more waves and a boss. There is no time between waves, one ends the other starts. There is no time between the last wave and the boss. There is 30 or 45 seconds I think between the first boss and the next set of waves. The second boss is the one that drops the shield we were after. He dropped everything but that.

If you make it through the first 2 bosses, there is a mob you need to kill then you have to escape from the Lich King. He moves really slow and sets up 4 barriers as you are running away. He sends out mobs each time he sets up a barrier and when you have defeated them the barrier drops only to be replaced by another one a little farther on.

When you finally make it to the end it turns out to be a dead end and it looks like you are going to have to fight the Lich King. At the last minute an airship appears and fires rockets into the cave you just came out of and collapses it on top of the Lich King. That is it, party over. You board the airship, check the chest for loot and you are done.

All in all I had a pretty good time doing that, it is just too bad the shield didn't drop for the guildie that was after it.

The Pit of Saron (Dungeon)

The Pit of Saron is the second Dungeon in the attunement process for the Halls of Reflection.

Brieanna did some runs through this Dungeon today. I ran it a few times on normal to get familiar with it, then ran through it on heroic. After that I ran through it a couple more times on normal. We had one wipe, due to a healer not being able to keep up. The weird thing about that is it happened on a normal run, not heroic. I would think if we were going to wipe it would have been on the heroic run. Anyway a message box popped up saying we were voting to remove the healer from the group, yes or no. I felt really bad about it but clicked yes and he was removed. We got another healer in and finished without a problem. We were on the last boss when that happened.

This Dungeon, as the name suggests, in in a pit, a quarry. There are 3 main bosses you have to defeat along with a bunch of other mobs. Forgemaster Garfrost is the first boss you have to defeat. You fight some elite trash mobs to get to him. This guy throws a lot of frost spells and Saronite boulders at you and has one frost spell that stacks. You can get rid of the stacking frost spell by running behind a rock that is there and letting the timer on it run out. He runs over at various times and makes new weapons during the fight also. Deadly Boss Mobs for Dungeons is a must have when running instances. It goes are far as telling you he is going to throw the boulder at you, move.

After fighting some more elite trash mobs you come to Krick and Ick. This is a Gnome riding on the back of a Plague Eruptor. This guy has a few tricks up his sleeve including Toxic Waste, Mighty Kick, Pursuit and Pursuit Confusion, when Krick confuses Ick by changing his mind too often, along with a few others. Basically you need to keep moving and running around while fighting this boss.

The last boss you are going to meet up with, after fighting more trash mobs and running up a tunnel that is collapsing, is Scourgelord Tyrannus. When you are running up the tunnel to get to him there are giant chunks of ice falling from the ceiling. You can see where these are going to land from circles that show up on the ground, similar to the circle for an AoE, just avoid those areas. You will also encounter mobs on the way, run with them until you get to a disc in the floor about half way up, you will know it when you see it. That is a "safe zone", nothing will fall on that. That is where you kill the mobs you picked up on the way up to that point. You can heal up there after the fight, then make the run to the end of the tunnel. Kill the rest of the mobs you picked up right at the opening to the tunnel. If you out of the tunnel you will aggro the last boss.

Now you are at the last boss, Scourgelord Tyrannus. He is mounted on his Frostbrood Wyrm, Rimefang. He gives a big speech then dismounts to fight. Rimefang also gets involved in the fight with Icy Blast and a couple other spells. Scourgelord Tyrannus has a few tricks of his own, one of which is Overlords Brand. Basically when you have the brand on you don't do any damage or healing as the damage will all go directly to his target and all healing will heal him. That lasts about 10 seconds or so, not sure on the time, hard to judge time when you are fighting. Once he is down you are done. You will receive any achievements and rewards, emblems and such, at that time. Completing this completed my attunement process for the Halls of Reflection.

All in all this is a pretty fun Dungeon and I will run it a few more times as there is a gun that drops on normal this is slightly better than what I have right now.

Forge of Souls 3/10/10

Brieanna did her first WotLK instance tonight. She did The Forge of Souls 5 man. She did it in normal mode 3 times and heroic mode one time. I usually don't do instances at all, but I want to get Brieanna a better main weapon and this is the only way I am going to be able to do it without an 1800 arena rating in 3's or 5's.

The Forge of Souls is the first dungeon in the attunement process for Halls of Reflection, the second one is Pit of Saron which I did later.

I got a group for The Forge of Souls using the dungeon finder system and made out pretty well. The people I was grouped with had obviously done it before, it was a fast moving group. We pretty much tore right through there without any problems. I didn't really notice a difference in challenge between normal and heroic, but the loot was better in heroic. I am in full PvP gear and nothing dropped that was even close to being better than, or even equal to, what I was wearing. The last boss you kill in The Forge of Souls is Devourer of Souls pictured here. He is a pretty strange looking mob and puts up a pretty good fight. I use Deadly Boss Mobs for PvP and activated the dungeon mode before I started. It is very helpful, it tells you when to get out of the way and when to run, it tells you when the boss is getting ready to launch and attack and on who.

The item I am after in Halls of Reflection is the Orca-Hunter's Harpoon. That would be a significant improvement over the weapon I have now.

I had a really good time and am looking at other dungeons to do now. I was put off by dungeons way back on Gomorra. All the groups I would get into would dissolve before we even got close to the end and I figured what's the sense if you have to run a dungeon 10 times just to get through it once. I guess times have changed. I will have more detailed posts in the future with a run through of this dungeon, including boss names, after a couple more runs.