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.

Math is hard...

So... a guildmate is trying to hit revered with Thrallmar and asks for some help with a Shattered Halls run last night. I'm not really busy. Shattered Halls is not my favorite place. But... he's our guild's Holy Paladin and is basically awesome at his job... keeping me and *especially* my pet alive. Oh yeah... he heals the tank, too. :) He needs rep... we're going to go help him out. We fiddle around and finally find a 5th, a fairly well-geared Frost Mage from an allied guild. We've run with this guy a million times in Zul'Gurub and he's great and cool and will do awesome and not complain about occasional sheep breakage or anything else. We're all set. Warrior, Holy Paladin, Mage and 2 Hunters. This is *NOT* e-peen stroking, but more of a request for comment on whether this silly trinket -- [Romulo's Poison Vial] -- is worth continuing to use.

I was going to post the total damage image I cropped for the run, but there no real value in that, so here's my detail from the run:

Number 6 on that list is Romulo's Poison Vial damage. 2.2% of my damage? Really? For an epic trinket? When I rolled on that item, no one seemed to want it. The rogue in the run had already taken the fist weapon from the Big Bad Wolf -- I think it was that run -- so I rolled. Supposedly a good DPS trinket and does proc on both ranged and melee attacks. But is 15K damage for a run where I hit for over 900K really worth it? I guess I need to actually run the math, but "math is hard". The +Hit on the item is really nice, but I can pretty much max that out (at least for Kara bosses) with other trinkets and items. Unfortunately, the other trinkets that I have right now are all on the same cooldown for their "Use:" skill, which is why I've been using this and the [Core of Ar'kelos] as my primary trinket pair. (Yes... I know... it's green, but I don't seem to have better.)

I almost feel obligated to use the Vial because I rolled on it, but I did nearly as much *melee* damage during the run for cripe's sake as I did with this trinket. I guess 2% is 2%, but if I had another trinket -- now I forget what I have -- that boosted my +Crit, would that make up the difference? I guess it's time to get Excel or a calculator out and do the math. :P

8 Percent

Back into Karazhan last night and through the "soul destroying" trash.

(I love that quote. Thanks, Gerka!)

We decided to head to the Chess Event and collect our "free loot" first. In hindsight, this might not have been the best idea. Unfortunately, a duplicate pair of Fiend Slayer Boots dropped in addition to a pair of Shaman leggings. No Shaman in the group, though, so our long trip up to Chess ended with a bit of a letdown and resulted in 2 shards. I was almost convinced to take a second pair of the boots and socket them differently, but I couldn't bring myself to loot *another* purple. I don't gear-swap much at all anyway.

The Shade of Aran fight was definitely a learning experience. The first attempt went OK and we got him below 30%, but all the reading and video watching can only prepare you so much for a fight like that. We lost a person or two to Arcane Explosions and some to Blizzard, but the end result: Shade 1, EoC 0.

I think our second attempt went about the same. The third attempt was the best by far. I was having some issue with running away fast enough from the explosion, though, and died too early. Needing my DPS, the Druid was kind enough to blow his battle rez, but it still wasn't enough. We managed to pull him all the way down to 8%, but at that point, we had only 2 players left and once he sheeped them to drink, it was pretty much over. It healed them, but when they came out of the blast, they were too low on health and the druid was in cat form. Bummer.

On the final attempt, I was once again caught with my head up my rear end and was killed within the first minute by an explosion. I'm going to blame this on my old, decrepit PC. I seriously need to upgrade *something* until I can replace the rig. I just wasn't seeing the cast bar or the "pull" soon enough to get out of the way. Was very depressing and I felt like I let my guild down... a lot. I'm still pissed about it this morning and can't wait until next week and a chance to redeem myself.

The end result was Shade 4, EoC 0. The group did clear Maiden before I got on to "warm up" and we did Chess -- albeit without any real reward. Total of 6 bosses/events killed and one new one attempted. Next week, I think we're going to make a few more attempts at Aran or maybe even attempt to clear to him and hit him a few times on our first night. The trip to Chess -- and the interminable death run to Aran -- meant we could only make 4 attempts before the re-spawn got us and forced us to have to call the run.

A good learning experience, I guess, but folks were pretty bummed out when we called it and started to log off.

We need to add a third Karazhan night, but that's another topic.

Now I'm scared...

My guild is getting pretty good at this Karazhan thing. :)

Two weeks ago, we had to do some swapping of characters to bring our DPS up to the point of having enough for The Curator's Astral Flares. This week, our "set" group just owned Curator. (We won't mention the three tries on Big Bad Wolf. :D)

Basically the same classes were present, but the flares were going down very quickly and we had no problem with the 10th of each wave and swapping DPS to the boss during his Evocations. DPS was so good, that we only saw two Evocations. (I know this is "normal" for seasoned Kara groups, but this is only our 3rd time even getting to Curator.) The speed the fight was going was weird enough that I had to yell out in TeamSpeak, "He's enraged... go all out!" I think a few others were as surprised as I was that we only saw two waves of flares.

So we managed to take out Moroes (1-shot), Opera (:cough:), and Curator (1-shot). We were up against our self-imposed time limit and lost a player, but we did decide to back-track quickly and take out Attumen to try to get a hunter alt a crossbow and also to clear the way to the blacksmith for repairs.

Tonight we will make our first attempt at Shade of Aran and collect our "free" Chess event loot. If we're able to, we may even poke our head in on The Prince and say "Hi".

Nifty new banner/signature tool is out there. Here's mine:

EDIT: Oh... almost forgot. Here's one to file under the "Good Deeds are Rewarded" folder. My guildmate was running Botanica. (I've been in there a bunch. Never got the drop(s) I wanted.) It's a Sunday afternoon. I'm normally not on, but the weather was crappy and the family was tired. He calls out that they're losing their DPS'er just before the last two bosses. I figure, "What the hell?". I'll help out a guildmate and help him finish off the instance. He was working on rep or looking for a drop or something. I didn't even care. It was 30 minutes at most and I could help out. We drop the "plant boss" with no problem and move on. Not even sure I looked at the loot. We get to Warp Splinter and he does down with very little trouble. Cleanest kill I've ever had on him, actually. What drops. You guessed it... [Beast Lord Cuirass]. While not an enormous upgrade, it does give me two pieces of the set, which gets me my trap bonus. I also had the mats lying around for a +6 to all Stats enchant and found some cheap but decent gems on the AH, and it pretty handily out-classes my previous chest piece. My luck continues with drops. It's really scaring me now.

Slow week...

Not much to report this week, but I do have a few things going on. Karazhan was a no go for me this week. The guild had to cancel one run for lack of numbers and on the second night, I ended up hanging out with my family. That's a good thing, but I've got a little Kara-withdrawal going on. My run of good luck with drops has got to end sometime soon -- it's so UNLIKE me -- but [Legacy] and the [Worgen Claw Necklace] have eluded me in Kara so far (of the bosses we've been clearing for a few weeks). Several others have gotten the necklace, and it's not a huge upgrade. Legacy is another matter. With either Savagery or the +35 Agility enchant, that's a monster weapon. Tough deal there, though, since it's a 1 in 3 shot to even get the right boss (The Crone) and then you have to hope she drops it. I've never actually *seen* the Wizard of Oz event, although the guild has done it once, I think.

In other Hunter news, I've been training up a scorpid, which seems to be the "flavor of the month" pet for hunters. BRK had a good write-up on why a few weeks ago, so I won't go into excruciating detail as to why everyone likes them. They're do for a nerf anyway, given the numbers some are seeing with them on boss fights, so I don't expect it to last.

Basically, the deal is that you get a level 70 Scorpid *but* you down-rank the Scorpid Poison skill you put on it. (Silithus scorpids have this one, for the record.) Instead of putting Rank 5, which does a little more damage, but has an 8 second duration and a 4 second recast time, you put Rank 4, which also has a 4 second recast but a *10* second duration. The poison also stacks up to 5 times. The advantage of the 10 second timer is that the pet can actually miss once, but not have the stacking effect go away. They'd have to miss twice in a row to lose the stack. The other thing about the poison is that it gets a bonus based on attack power trinkets and skills *at the time of the first hit*. So what the "big boys" do is send in the scorpid without Scorpid Poison on auto-cast, hit all the trinkets and skills they can hit to boost their AP, *then* turn on the poison and let it start to stack. If you can keep your pet with enough focus and don't need to use Growl or other skills, the pet can get the stack up to 5 and keep in there. This means the poison is proc'ing for 300-400 damage per second (with decent trinkets, buffs, etc.). Provided you can keep the pet alive and he/she/it doesn't miss twice in a row applying the poison, you can keep that damage up indefinitely. I have yet to try it on a boss fight (forgot last night in Black Morass), but it's supposedly pretty impressive. I have tried it on regular mobs, and it's fine, but requires a lot of micro-management. Not sure I'm up for it.

(Well... that was longer than intended.)

In Warlock news, I continue to plug away at the mats for the rest of my Frozen Shadoweave set. I've actually done much of the Primal water farming on Annai as I was working on getting the scorpid up to snuff, so it's been sort of a two-birds-with-one-stone approach. I can do my dailies up in Skettis, too. The Primals are actually going quickly, but the timer on the Shadowcloth is going to be the sticking point. I may have to check the AH and start making the other special cloths and trading them. It's a long haul, but since my warlock is not really getting in on the Karazhan runs yet, it's not horribly important. I'll keep at it. :)

Curator... Dead! Check Mate!

This is a couple of days late, but my guild managed to down both The Curator and fight our way to the Chess event on Monday night. Yay for us!

We had cleared Moroes, Opera, and Maiden on Sunday and that left us a quick kill of Attumen and then into the side door for our run to The Curator. Attumen went down like the sissy he's become and we regrouped (a few people swapping alts for mains) at the back door. The trash to Curator was downed pretty quickly, and we made our first attempt.

We were doing significantly better on this attempt than in the previous week and were keeping up with the flares pretty well. We were still marginal on DPS, though. Our shadow priest was complaining that his big hitting spells had too much cast time and his DoTs not enough time to run. We got to the 4th Evocation or so, and started to have healers running low or out of mana and it resulted in a wipe. An "improved wipe", but still no sparklies.

A couple of members decided to swap characters. Our shadow priest went to his hunter and our holy paladin went to his shaman. This appeared to make all the difference. The extra hunter DPS on the flares -- and the pet -- allowed us to down the flares in that magical 8-9 second window and we were able to put the 10th one down in time to get DPS on The Curator during Evocation. The shaman has those great totems and nice chain healing ability to keep up with flare damage. On the first Evocation, we dropped him to about 66% -- right on schedule -- and went back to killing flares. Most of what we'd read/heard indicated that he should drop somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd Evocation. Second Evocation went well, too. No deaths to this point and he was down around 35%. Back to flares and we continued to time these well. On the 3rd Evocate, we really poured it on, and got him below the enrage point before he came out. Yay... no more flares and just DPS the snot out of him. He went down. No one in our group did. We went from smashing our faces into him a week ago, to smashing his face with no deaths. Cheers for us!


As luck would have it, [Garona's Signet Ring] and the Paladin/Rogue/Shaman T4 Glove token dropped. Our holy paladin was bummed out, having missed the drop since he swapped characters, but at least he was on his Shaman. The protection paladin won the roll anyway, and -- as luck would have it -- I won the roll on the ring. Uh oh... that's two epics in two nights. Should I have not rolled? My assumption was that since everyone from "night one" had gotten either an item or a purple shard and that the loot was "reset". After further discussion this week in our guild forums, no one seemed upset with me and it was a fairly nice upgrade from the blue ring I was sporting.

As many guilds/groups find... the trash leading into the Chess Event area is -- as my guildmate put it -- "soul destroying". There were a few complaints but we managed to get through it. We suffered one wipe very near the end when line-of-sight got us through a doorway. Other than taking a lot of time and our raid leader losing his notes on the mobs and their charms, things went well albeit slowly. On a Monday night with The Curator down, no one was willing to give up until we got our "free loot" at Chess.

The Chess Event took us two tries while everyone figured out how to move and fight, but the second time was easy, even if Medivh did cheat... twice? The chest was opened and wouldn't you know it... more hunter loot. The [Fiend Slayer Boots] and [Ring of Recurrence] dropped. I was sure the other hunter in the group was going to roll on the boots, but as the timer ticked down for disenchant, the other guy indicated that he had better boots in his PVP reward item. I rolled. I was still wearing -- on-and-off -- either a blue or a green pair, and these were clearly an upgrade, even un-enchanted and un-socketed. Holy cow! Three epics in two nights.


I was tired and feeling a little guilty the next morning, but after 'splaining myself in our guild forums, no one seemed fazed. I have nearly perfect attendance for raid nights and since I'm gearing up and growing DPS, there's no reason for items to be DE'd. So... I'm up to 6 Karazhan epics and really noticing the improved damage output. I still have to get gems and enchants on the boots and enchant my spear (still trying to decide whether to enchant my [Sonic Spear] or my Thrallmar rep one).

Anyone out there with thoughts? :)

I think my guildmates are getting mad...

Not really... but am I hearing a few more, "Damn, more hunter loot" comments over TeamSpeak. Last week, I was along for my first (guild second) completion of the Opera event in Karazhan. We downed Romulo and Julianne and I ended up with [Romulo's Poison Vial]. Still deciding whether it's worth the trinket slot, but no one else seemed to want it and I didn't want to see it DE'd. We use a simple /roll system, so no DKP to be spent. The guild would rather see the same person get 5 items a run (if they're upgrades) than see things turned into shards, so it's all good.

This week, we had another good run. Dropped Moroes on the first attempt. My lag was horrible, and my framerates not much better for some reason (too many addons?), and I died about 30 seconds into the fight. Not even sure what killed me as I never saw it. Thankfully, I had done my trap duty before I took a dirt nap, so....

On we went to Opera, and got the Big Bad Wolf for the first time. People seemed a bit unprepared for the Little Red Riding Hoof (LRRH) debuff, so we had 2 wipes, but managed to get him down on the third attempt, albeit with only half of us still standing.

Quick Hunter Tips:

1. You can Feign Death when you get the LRRH debuff. Trick is to stay "dead" until it wears off. It can also be resisted, so pay attention.
2. The same person can get the LRRH debuff twice in a row. As a hunter, if this happens to you, you'd better run, because your Feign cooldown will not be up.
3. (General Tip) Don't rub against the walls or the props. It will slow you down and may let him catch and eat you.

Back to our story. So we resurrect everyone and loot the wolf and [Big Bad Wolf's Paw] *and* [Beastmaw Pauldrons] drop.


Thankfully it wasn't the [Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle] and the shoulders, or I think I would have been excommunicated. I took the shoulders and the rogues fought over the paw. It's not a dedicated Hunter item, but could be an upgrade for some with a decent off-hand. I don't really like dual-wielding (yet). When they release the +20 Agility enchant, I might change my mind, but right now I think the RAP and general stats you get from the 2-handers -- particularly polearms -- are much better than dual wielding.

We were running out of time for the night, so we backtracked to Maiden and killed her for fun, although she did get us once too. :) (Unlucky bit that. Our priest got hit with Holy Fire *just* at the wrong moment.) Amazing how hard that fight seemed just a month ago, and now that we've gotten the dance down, she's almost what I would consider "farm" status.

Tonight, we're going to tackle Attumen quickly for access to the blacksmith and then smash our faces against the Curator for another 90 minutes or so. :)