First Heroic: Sethekk Halls

Another request from a guildmate this week on our boards. He had completed all the lead-ins for his Epic Mount quest (Druid) and needed a run through Heroic Sethekk Halls to get it done. We didn't have a ton of options for guild members to bring on this as we have a bit of 'alt-itis' going on and only a handful of folks were keyed for the Auchindoun instances. The group ended up with myself, the Druid, our near-full-time Warrior MT, our uber-holy Paladin and... we waited. We have a couple more keyed folks, particularly a rogue which would have been nice to have, but after waiting nearly 30 minutes for someone to log on, we finally hit our /friends list and LFG. Found an Elemental Shaman and in we went.

(Nice touch with the new instance portal graphic on a Heroic, Blizzard.)

Overall the run went pretty well. I died on the *very* first pull when the leader didn't realize that the mobs could not be CC'd. Ran right over the trap, poked me in the face, and down I went. The first boss was actually a pushover, and I've remembered multiple wipes on him in non-heroic runs. You have to kill the adds in a heroic on this boss. Focus fire. Get 'em down. You'll be fine.

Trash clearing was going pretty well until we got to the 4-pulls in the second to last room before the final boss. (The room with the packs of non-elite birds.) Our first pull or two were OK, but we weren't completely sure of the abilities (added) of some of the mobs and we got wiped out by a chain-fearing mob (whose name I now forget). We changed plans a little and gave me a different trap mob and the next couple of pulls were fine. On the last pull in that room, we got unlucky with another fear, and ended up pulling in two more adds. Luckily (at least for me), I lived long enough to kill one and feign away from the rest, and that made the recovery pull easier. I think the rest of the trash clears went fine in Anzu's room. (Anzu is the summonable Raven god and Druid epic mount boss.)

Anzu really wasn't hard at all. He's mostly a tank-and-spank. The druid needs to keep HoTs on these statues (or something) in the room that summon 3 helpers which provide damage mitigation, AoE damage to the adds, and speed boosts. At 66% and 33% the boss self-banishes and summons a bunch of adds. We really didn't have a problem with the adds or the boss and he went down on the first try. Yay for our Druid friend!

Unfortunately, we lost our Holy Paladin after this fight. We tried to continue on to the last boss with a new Rogue, but I think we missed the Paladin's heals a bit or something. We tried the boss twice, but I had to log off. Thankfully, the group was able to pull in another friend and downed the boss after a couple more attempts.

"Props" to our Druid how is also an alchemist and was very appreciative of all the help he was getting. He passed out bunches of potions and elixirs at the start of the instance, several of which I actually saved for Kara runs, since I was worried about over-DPS'ing and pulling mobs off our tank, which I did on the first couple of pulls and learned my lesson. :)

TIP OF THE DAY #1: If you're a heroic group with only a Hunter for crowd control... DON'T BREAK TRAPS! Mages can just re-cast Polymorph. Priests can just re-cast Shackle. Warlock pets can re-cast Seduce. (I know these classes might only take one hit from some heroic mobs to be killed, but....) Hunters need to wait upwards of 30 seconds to re-trap. That time is a death sentence in a heroic. Pets cannot tank a mob for long, even with healing.

TIP OF THE DAY #2: If you're a hunter planning on progressing to Karazhan and/or heroic instances, get yourself at least 2 pieces of the Beast Lord set. That 4 second extra cushion may not seem like much, but it *really* helps. It was clearly noticeable by me in Sethekk last night and I was able to chain trap much more easily with a 20-second trap on a 26-second cooldown just by moving my position and giving that 6 second cushion for space.