Monday (5 Jan) - Rockin' The Gulch

Monday (5 Jan) - Rockin' The Gulch

Wild is doing his best to keep grinding away at the random dungeon daily. On Monday if was the Halls of Lightning (HoL). Our group had no trouble and we pounded through there pretty fast. Wild's moonkin DPS was a pedestrian 2.1k compared to the other two DPSers 2.9k (mage) and 4.5k (DK), but Wild broke 3k on the boss fights and isn't particularly worried about it. The players for the random dungeon runs run the gamut from "just turned 80" to top tier raiders, so it's difficult to make comparisons in a thirty minute run.

After getting his two frost emblems for HoL, Wild decided it was time to make his second HoR run. The Halls of Reflection is a five man dungeon in the new Icecrown Citadel. If you'll recall (and Wild can't forget), Wild completed all three of the new five mans (HoR, plus the Forge of Souls and the Pit of Saron), but failed to turn in the final quest from HoR. Since the npc that the quest is turned in to only appears at the conclusion of HoR, Wild had no way to turn in the quest without running HoR again.

So here was Wild, back again at the start of HoR. Note that the IC five mans are not pushovers. They award much better gear than the heroics (ilevel 232 vs i200) and are considerably tougher. HoR has a very challenging beginning, and a very exciting and fun ending. Our group's healer was a shaman who was in HoR for the first time. From the party chat it looked like the group had three players from the same guild, which included the shaman. When asked what was the best way to heal the first part of the battle, the group leader told the shaman "spam the hell out of chain heal." Wild hoped that would be enough.

The front half of the fight consists of weathering ten waves of mobs. The waves are arrayed around a circular area and it's possible to aggro more than one wave if players are not careful. There are two bosses to deal with during the waves as well. What groups usually do is gather in one of the alcoves off the main room and force each wave to come find us, and then the mobs are fought in the alcove. That's what we tried.

Wild's DPS approach for multiple mobs is to DoT up incoming hostiles until the tank had gotten hold of them, and then channel Hurricane, Wild's best AoE spell. Once mobs start to fall, Wild can pick up and help kill the stragglers that survived or avoided the AoE, keying on what the tank was targeting.

We got about halfway through the waves when our melee rogue chased a mob out into the main room and aggroed additional mobs. Things got really hairy, and the heals stopped coming, and Wild had to break out of moonkin to self-heal. That's when I noticed that three players had already died. It was a wipe.

Fortunately, the dead waves stayed dead, so we did not have to start from scratch on our second try. On that second try, we did pretty well until the very end. The eighth wave took longer to bring down than the others, and the ninth wave arrived before we had finished off the 8th. While the group was capable enough to handle the extra wave, the trouble was that these mobs ran at and aggroed on everybody but the tank. Wild had two mobs in his face and had to single target them to survive instead of being able to AoE. Wild brought down one of the them, and got a quick peek around. The shaman was dead, and the rest of us were dangerously low on health. Wild dropped out of moonkin and started healing. Wild healed himself first, fending off the mob on me at the same time, and then got the tank healthy. The tank gathered up the remaining mobs as Wild healed up one of the DPSers, but I wasn't in time for the rogue, who died. But things were back in hand again, and Wild helped bring down the last of the mobs.

There was a bit of a lull, and I think we forgot there was still more to come. Wild rezzed the two dead players, and popped a couple of heals on them as they sat down to drink and buff up. Both were still under half health, though (and the shaman would later say he had only 30% mana), when another wave descended on us. But we managed to stuff that wave even gimped as we we were, finishing off the first part of the fight.

For the second half of the fight the npc Sylvanas joined us, and we got a sudden visit from the Lich King himself. The advice Sylvanas gives us was the same Wild got on his first run of HoR: "Run!"

On that first HoR run, the strategy was essentially to keep running and stay out of range of the Lich King, who could and would single shot kill any one of us that got into range of him. The Lich King would call down groups of mobs to slow us down, which we would kill on the run.

The group leader offered another strategy for this run. As Sylvanas leads us on our merry escape, instead of following her, we peeled off to the left and basically hid from the Lich King. There was a moment where I think we all held our breath, when the Lich King walked past our position. If he sees us we're all dead, Wild thought. But he didn't, choosing instead to chase after Sylvanas, who kept moving as well.

Once the Lich King was well past us, we followed along behind him. The Lich King still spawned mobs, and we tackled them from behind the Lich King, which took a lot of pressure off of worrying about the Lich King catching up with us. At the end of the chase Sylvanas broke down a final barrier and we escaped as falling rocks blocked the Lich King. Wild barely made it through before the rocks blocked the way, but one player got stuck behind them. With the Lich King. The group leader told the panicked rogue not to worry. Sure enough, the Lich King despawned and the rock barrier crumbled so the rogue could join us.

I have to agree that the follow strategy is the better strat. But I wouldn't give up that first HoR and the thrill of being chased by the Lich King for anything.

An ilevel 232 ring, [Oath of Empress Zoe], dropped. Wild and the shaman rolled need on it - and Wild won it. It's a DPS/crit ring, so it helps Wild more on the moonkin side, but with more +int and mp5 than one of Wild's other rings, it was an upgrade to Wild's healing as well.

At the end a ship waits for us, with a portal back to Dalaran. Wild made sure not to make the same mistake he made last time, which was to get on the ship and take the portal. Wild waited about a minute on the landing, while some in the group talked about staying together for another random run. Sylvanas then appeared on the landing, and Wild got his quest completed. The group broke up and we were done.

The take from the HoR run was - a new ring, two frost emblems from the quest, and three triumph emblems for completing HoR. Wild's DPS was around 3.1k for most of the run, 2nd in the group, with a lot of AoE going on.

Monday night it was time for some pvp action. Ando the druid healer and EZ the orc shaman teamed up for a long and exciting evening of Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin action. We had hoped Lao could join us, but she didn't make it.

Both EZ and Ando were level 20, so we were at the cannon fodder stage of the 20-29 bracket. There is a certain freedom from worry when you are that low on the totem pole - nobody expects much from you, and if you do manage to light up and kill a few allies, it's a lot of fun to dance on their corpse for letting a level 20 beat them.

We had a huge run of good luck in WSG, playing for hours and racking up five wins against just one loss. We also split two AB battles, winning one and losing one, for an overall 6-2 record on the evening. In between it was training time. Ando and EZ dueled each other many times, working on our techniques. Since both of us could heal, the duels often came down to who could manage mana better. I think we were pretty evenly matched gear and stat wise, which meant that the better pvper, Ando, usually won. EZ got in some good practice, learned a few new tricks from Ando, and it was a lot of fun.

Both of us DINGED! to level 21.