Sunday Night (9 Jan) - Random Dungeons

Sunday Night (9 Jan) - Random Dungeons

Wild logged in Sunday night around 8pm and got an almost immediate whisper from Bd. "Wanna help gear up guildies with some random dungeons?" Absolutely.

The plan was for Bd to tank, Wild to heal, and to grab three guildie DPSers who needed gear. One of the three had not visiting the dungeon entrances yet (which is required before the dungeon finder recognize you), so Wild and Bd traveled to each dungeon and then summoned the guildie to the entrance of each one. That was easier that trying to tell him how to find each dungeon entrance on his own, and it saved time. Our preference was to do one of the three level 85 dungeons as the gear is better, but we also had to do a random pick in order to get the daily JPs, which Wild definitely wanted. The "random" dungeon finder is not very random, and refused to give us a level 85 dungeon despite tinkering with it for several minutes. In fact, it insisted on giving us a dungeon that the one guildie hadn't discovered yet. Only when he had visited every dungeon entrance were we able to get anything at all from dungeon finder. And even then we still had to make do with a lower level dungeon for our random - The Vortex Pinnacle (VP). This is an 82-84 level dungeon that drops i316 gear. Wild has experience (if one run each counts as experience) in five of the seven dungeons in Cata. VP was not one of them. Wild does have a relic on his gear list that would be an upgrade if it dropped.

Bd figured we could pound through this one pretty fast, and once the random was complete we could cherry pick the dungeons we wanted to do after that. Despite not knowing the bosses, Wild did just fine. Wild's mana regen is high enough that, at least for normal mode, I rarely dropped below 80% mana.

Wild did get a little ribbing when a stationary tornado was used to transport us to another area of the dungeon. Wild forgot to clicky-clicky on the thing when I jumped into the tornado, and instead of being swept up to where the rest of the group was headed, I wound up back at the entrance to the dungeon. At least it doesn't kill you when you screw that up. Wild had to endure the ribbing the whole walk back to them and a second jump into the tornado.

We reached the final boss, Asaad. Everything was going just peachy keen when something happened and three of us died instantly, including Wild. The tank survived, and an enhancement shaman. One of the dead players released, rezzed and tried to rejoin the fight, but he was killed again each time he tried. Wild stayed dead and watched as the two remaining guildies fought - an beat - Asaad. Nice!

So, what went wrong? Several times during the fight Asaad casts Supremacy of the Storm. Those caught in it are instantly killed. How to avoid it? Just before Asaad casts it, he lays a grounding field for himself since apparently Storm would kill him, too, without that protection. Players have to get inside the grounding field with Asaad to avoid dying. It's a little thing. But, like, important, ya know? ;-)

After VP we decided to head into Halls of Origination (HOO). Wild has done this one once before, and was familiar enough with it to feel fairly comfortable. This is a level 85 dungeon that drops i333 gear. HOO has a cape Wild hopes will drop.

HOO is a long dungeon. There are seven bosses. That's at least two too many bosses, according to Wild, for a dungeon. There is also a rather endless train of trash mobs to get to those bosses as well. Wild wasn't really complaining, though. Every kill meant more ER rep since Wild was wearing his ER tabard. Bd chatted while we worked through the trash mobs. He mentioned that the group he ran HOO with the night before wiped several times on the last two bosses. Both require the DPS to really be on the ball, and at least modestly challenging for a healer. Again, however, there really wasn't any problems with mana regen. Where Wild felt frustrated, though, was spell casting speed. The transition from WotLK style healing and Cata healing is still in progress for Wild. Players have huge health pools now, and Wild's spells seem too small for how long it takes to cast them. Nourish is the most used spell, and the most hated. It's mana cheap, but it's a slow cast, and seems to barely bump up the target's health. Healing Touch (HT) is better, but the mana cost is very high. Wild will likely start mixing in more HTs on those normal runs. They'll likely be essential in Heroics - and with the ramp up in damage in Heroics, Wild's nice mana regen will probably not be good enough. Another thing that uses up Wild's mana and time is debuffing. In a five man dungeon the healer is generally expected to be the debuffer. Since Cata added magic debuffs to Wild's curse and poison debuffs, I seem to be debuffing people almost constantly. In normal mode dungeons Wild could afford to let a debuff tick a few times if I was busy healing, but I don't know how critical that will become in Heroics.

For this group, however, the only player who had trouble was the shaman. He died three times, I believe, when he got himself into trouble Wild couldn't extricate him from. We downed every boss, including the last two, on our first attempts.

We did Grim Batol after that, another level 85, i333 gear dungeon. Wild has done this one before, too, where we get to ride camels for one of the boss fights. Wild has two items on his list he hoped would drop in GB. The run went smoothly and we completed it with no trouble.

Wild was pleased with the amount of rep he earned for Earthen Ring. Wild started the evening at 5756/12000 and ended it at 9021/12000. Another three runs in level 85 dungeons should get Wild to Revered - and access to two i346 items (legs and ring).

Now, how did Wild do with dungeon drops? Pretty well, although the best pieces eluded him. Wild won the [Solar Wind Cape] from HOO, which is the same i333 that Wild currently has, but has better stats. Wild also won the relic [Captured Lightning], which also was not an ilvl upgrade (both old and new are i316) but which is a minor stat upgrade. The other two dungeon pieces (chest and trinket) are in Grim Batol, but they didn't drop.

Wild's gear level inched up again, to i333.