Thursday (10 Dec) - Farming Heroics

Thursday (10 Dec) - Farming Heroics

Don't worry, martin, I'm certain the gods of WoW have some suitable punishment in line for Wild wresting a month's worth of loot in a single day.

Wild may have been the first in the family to try out the Dungeon Finder, but as erik mentioned in his post, it was DER who first used the random dungeon feature to do the daily dungeon quest. DER and JB opted to group up and try the random dungeon as a group. I suspect that the reason Wild's first use of the tool only required thirty seconds to get a group was because Wild is a healer. It would make sense that there would be plenty of DPS available to group with, and so all the tool needed was a tank and a healer to form the group. DER and JB are both DPS, so we had to wait a little longer to get a group. Like five minutes. I agree with erik, I love this tool!

The random Heroic dungeon chosen for us was Halls of Stone, a medium difficulty dungeon with four boss encounters. Now, I might be wrong here, but given the loot drops, which were under ilevel 200, we may have ended up in normal mode vice heroic. Heroic mode loot drops are all ilevel 200. If so that might have been a bug in the Dungeon Finder, or maybe it was a settings issue with the group leader. It's something I'll want to remember to check at the beginning of a run in the future.

In any event, the five of us had no trouble with the instance, downing Maiden of Grief (another lady giant I should perhaps add to the photo of those other "lovely" ladies), Krystallus, Tribunal of Ages, and Sjonnir the Ironshaper. With a decent group these battles can be won through sheer brute force rather than finesse, and that was our approach. No strategy on boss fights, just kill what comes and if we wipe then we'll talk about it. We didn't wipe. DER and JB were certainly the least geared in the group, and we laughed (with a little embarrassment) that the tank did more DPS than we did. JB claimed that it was because the tank was a paladin, not that we sucked. :-) But DER was fine, right around the magic 2k DPS mark, which is what we should be aiming to get to in Heroics, while JB came in, well - not so close to 2k.

I have to admit that JB is struggling a bit with things like targeting, and spell casting speed, and knowing when to use AoE spells and when not to. I am learning not only how to incorporate the finer details of elemental shaman DPS in a group, but at a more fundamental level I need to get comfortable with being a DPS player in general. I don't entirely trust my healer yet, and too many times JB stopped DPSing to heal herself. Just watching the tank's health drop causes a "heal him!" reflex. It's a deeply ingrained habit, courtesy of Wild. That's one reason why I've resisted making JB's alternate spec a healing spec, although that would be very nice to have at times. In HoS Thursday night our healer wanted to leave early. JB was asked if she had a healing spec, which she doesn't. The healer ended up staying. It would have been nice if JB could have helped out there, but at the same time if JB had a healing spec I believe that healing is all she would end up doing. So, JB will have to just keep learning and getting better at this killing thing.

After HoS we decided to go one more round and this time got Heroic Violet Hold as our random dungeon. We were definitely in heroic mode with this one as all the drops were ilevel 200. VH is a single room dungeon, and one of the easiest to do. There are a lot of trash mobs to kill, but the waves are spaced far enough apart that our group had to wait for new ones to spawn. There are two randomly chosen boss encounters and then the final battle with the dragon Cyanigosa. No problems at all. There were two mail armor spell power items that dropped, and JB picked up both of them (chest and shoulders) because they were mail and she was wearing cloth armor in those two slots. The shoulders were virtually identical, with a tiny advantage to the cloth piece, but I think she'll end up equiping the mail armor shoulders. A lot of JB's gear arrived by way of the Auction House, and it's kinda nice to be equipping gear that comes from the dungeons. The chest is an upgrade as it has two gem sockets. Too bad Philly can't yet make the highest end gems yet. Happy will have to open his wallet again.

Speaking of Philly, she's now a level 67 and considering making the jump from Outland to Northrend to continue her (slow) march to level 80. One reason for that is that she has reached a dead end with Jewelcrafting. The recipes we all most want are only available through completing special JC dailies that reward tokens that are used to buy those recipes.

That means Philly has to get into Dalaran, the main city in Northrend, in order to collect the daily quests. Philly anchored herself in Orgrimmar, and asked in trade chat for a warlock to port her to Dalaran. Philly was impatient, so she offered 20 gold (a sizable tip) for any warlock that had thirty seconds to spare. Philly had also cased the area and there were at least two level 80 warlocks hanging around. She hoped one was interested enough to send her on her way. One was. Philly paid the 20g in advance while I could see him start the spell to open a portal. A moment later Philly was in Dalaran.

Her first order of business was to head to the inn and choose Dalaran as her home hearth so that she can return without needing the help of a warlock. Then it was off to the JC shop, where there was an easy non-daily quest waiting for her. She quickly got her her first token. She then picked up the daily, which will take her into Howling Fjord, which she will get done later in the day. Still not sure if she will make Northrend her home for full time questing, though. There is one fairly significant issue - Philly will not be able to fly in Northrend for a long time. That would add a lot of time to her levelling. Something to think about.