Random Dungeons and Daily's

I haven't been playing a lot lately but I do try to get on every day to do my daily cooking, for the Chef's Award's, and at least one heroic. I haven't been in one of the new heroic's that opened with the last patch yet. I hear they take quite awhile to finish, are like a 5 man raid and just haven't felt like dealing with that now.

So I do my daily cooking for the awards and get in one or two heroics. I have seen a lot of people quitting and groups falling apart lately. I am not sure what the reason is behind that. Well one of them I can understand. I was in a Grim Batol heroic yesterday and we were wiping on 50% of the trash pulls. That doesn't bode well for the rest of the dungeon as it is the hardest original Cata heroic. That group fell apart and I was kind of relieved. I did a total of six heroics yesterday and GB did come up again but we finished it that time.

I have done all the heroics at least once in the last week and some of them many times. Aside from people quitting, rage or otherwise, I had good groups for the most part, one of the exceptions being the group I was with in GB.

I have been doing well on dps on Wranngar lately and hit 16.7k in one of the dungeons, a personal best so far. That was on a boss fight when I pop everything. I usually average 11-13k overall for a run depending on buffs and the group. I have almost all the cooking recipes on Wranngar now and will be able to start working on getting Gomorra all the recipes next. My Hunter Brieanna already has all the Cata recipes.

Random Daily Heroic: Stonecore - 4/23/11

Today Wranngar's random daily heroic was Stonecore. If you can make it past the first boss in this one you have it made.

We had a good group today and making it past the first boss, Corborus, was not a problem although the healer did die. The thing you have to watch out for on this boss is when he is underground. He travels around and comes to the surface in random spots that you will see as a dust cloud on the ground. Standing in that cloud, or even too close to it, is instant death. That is how the healer died. Fortunately the healer died during the bosses second time underground so we were able to finish him off when he surfaced without any problem.

From there we cleared some more trash and got to the next boss, the dragon Slabhide. This boss is pretty easy as long as you keep your eyes open and your wits about you. Make sure to get behind a column when he does his crystal barrage, don't stand in any lava or dark spots and you have it made. We took this boss down easily.

A little more trash and we were at the third boss, Ozruk. The secret is to tank this boss facing the wall in the tunnel he is in. Just take him back and forth, side to side so when he does his ground slam it goes into the wall. After that make sure you put a DoT on him when he has the blue glow around him and get away when he does shatter if you are melee. We wiped once on this one but that was not too bad considering it was the tanks first time tanking him.

Some more light trash got us to the last boss in this dungeon, High Priestess Azil. There are a few things you have to do here, stay out of the gravity wells, interrupt her force grip and don't stand in, or near, any dust on the ground. We got her down with ease.

That completed my random daily heroic and I collected my 70 Valor Points. I didn't win the Chaos Orb but I did go on to run 5 more random heroics in which I won 2 orbs total.

Posted on A World of Warcraft Blog 4/24/11

Random Daily Heroic's 4/6/11 - 4/7/11

My random daily heroic's for the last couple days, on my Druid Wranngar, were Lost City of the Tol'vir and Grim Batol.

There was a time when I used to think that Grim Batol was all but impossible, but now that groups are better geared it is not too bad with the exception of the third boss, Dragha Shadowburner. Dragha Shadowburner is still pretty tough on heroic difficulty. The main reason for this is the dragon breath attack he does while he is mounted on the dragon. He usually does this attack while he also has a fire elemental summoned and it is hard to get out of the dragon's breath and kill the elemental at the same time. If the elemental gets to someone it kills them in one shot when it explodes. It will also kill anyone standing near them. I have been killed quite a few times from going after the fire elemental to kill it only to have the person it is attached to stand there and let it run right up to them. We also had a Mage in our group today that ran up to the fire elemental when it was attached to him instead of running away. Not sure what that was about as a Mage is a ranged fighter. I think the hardest part of this boss strat is to get people to run from the fire elemental when it is attached to them. You would think it is just plain common sense to run from it but it seems very few people have common sense any more. If a group is going to fall apart in this dungeon, this boss is usually where it is going to happen.

Lost City of the Tol'vir is one of the easiest heroic's in my opinion. We usually breeze through that one without any major problems as long as the healer is somewhat decently geared. The last two bosses in Lost City can be a mana drain on a healer so it is best if they have good mana and good regen. I don't mind seeing this one come up for my daily at all, I look at it as an easy 70 valor points.

I am a little bit closer to getting a piece of valor gear and will keep plugging away every day for my valor points.

Random Heroic Dungeons 5/21/10

I spent the night doing random heroic dungeons on Brieonna tonight. I still need to upgrade my 232 shoulders and hood to the 245 items, then I will have gone about as far as I can with triumph badges.

I had a couple groups I bailed on, the people were undergeared and there was no sense sticking around, they were not going to finish the instance. One or two undergeared people in a group isn't bad, you can usually do a run no problem, but when you get more than that you just don't have the DPS to take the bosses down.

I was in one group where we had a Druid tank. There was also a Paladin in that group that was pulling before the tank could, or pulling more after the tank pulled. I warned them and they said "maybe you haven't noticed I'm a tank", to which I replied "you're not the tank in this group, the Druid is". I told them if they pulled again I wasn't going to heal them. I guess they didn't believe me because they pulled again, so I let them die. They got the it after that and didn't pull anymore.

I really don't care if people want to kick me from groups like that, my primary job is to keep ONE tank alive, then me, then the DPS. Having two people pulling puts everyone at risk of a wipe.

Random Heroic Dungeons 5/18/10

I have been doing a lot of random heroic dungeons on Brieonna to get gear drops and badges to buy gear. That is coming along pretty well. Since Sunday, when my gearscore was less than 2900, I have managed to bring it up to 4672 between drops and gear I have purchased using the badges. I only need 2 more pieces to get the Epic achievement, feet and waist.

I did a few dungeons with a friend of mine, Arkantose, tonight. That went really well, his gearscore is right around 6000 and he was tanking. For the most part I was able to heal him using just HoT's, he really didn't need a lot of heals anyway.

We ended up doing Trial of the Champion, Halls of Lightning, The Forge of Souls, where I got a nice neck piece, and Culling of Stratholme all in heroic mode. The runs were fast and a tank and healer queuing together is pretty much an instant queue so the queues went really fast.

I had one bad group in Azjol-Nerub. They weren't really bad players, they were just really poorly geared. It's not too bad to get one or two poorly geared players in a group, but every once in awhile you get a whole group of them and this was one of those times. There were 2 under 3000 gearscore, another under 3500 and the tank only had a gearscore of 3700. We made it all the way to the last boss without any deaths, some pretty spectacular healing on my part if I do say so myself, but there just wasn't enough DPS to take the last boss down. And every time he did Pound it would kill the 2 lowest geared players, one shot them, so then we were down to the tank, one DPS and the healer, just not enough. I finally bailed on that group, I could have completed 2 instances in the time I was in there.

I am pretty confident I will have my gearscore over 5000 by this weekend.