Weekend (22 Jan) - Dungeon Drums and Twilight Fancies

Weekend (22 Jan) - Dungeon Drums and Twilight Fancies

JB lived and breathed Cata dungeons over the weekend. On Friday night she swept through five normal dungeons, building up enough justice points for her first T12 (i378) pair of gloves. Adding that piece of gear moved her up to an i351 gear score.

The dungeon runs were mostly forgettable, particularly since the "randomness" factor seemed to be stuck on just two dungeons - the Lost City and Halls of Origination (HOO). JB did get Grim Batol once, though. The final dungeon of the night put JB in a dungeon already in progress. The group had apparently wiped and either lost or kicked one of the DPS. That DPSer must have been particularly bad, since the others never got above 7.8k DPS. JB banged out 10.9k dps, beating even the tank, who was not one of the over-geared ones JB often sees.

The next time JB went to select a random dungeon she noticed an extra option that hadn't been there before. The Hour of Twilight Heroic Dungeons now showed as available to JB. JB wasn't quite ready to try the patch 4.3 dungeons, and was a little surprised JB was eligible to sign up for them. Sometime this weekend, though, she's going to give it a whirl. The worst that can happen is the group will kick her out.

Saturday - Saturday was more of the same. JB maxed out her dungeon runs for the week, a feat Wild has never come close to achieving (JB sticks her tongue out at Wild). The normal dungeons and their i333 gear have no treasures left for JB, but the justice points are still quite valuable.

Sunday - Heroic End Time

End Time is the first of three dungeons in Hour of Twilight. Technically, JB does not have the minimum gear level (i353) required for these dungeons. JB's equipped gear score is i351. BUT - the dungeon finder only looks at overall gear, which in JB's case means that her set of i377 pvp healing gear will get JB into these dungeons, even though she won't be using any of that gear. Hey, I don't make the rules.

Even though she can get into the dungeons, JB still worried about her hit and expertise ratings, since they were not optimized and meant JB's attacks could miss, be deflected, blocked, parried, etc. JB made one concession to her DPS gear, swapping out a +234 agi trinket for a +252 hit trinket, and hoped that it would be good enough.

Wild tried to give JB some advice about the dungeon, but Wild had only run the dungeon once and that was six weeks ago. JB pretty much had to learn the dungeon all on her own, as Wild's own memory drew a complete blank.

When the portal opened JB found herself in a dark cavern with groups of mobs in every direction. There were only two of us at the portal exit. Two others were at opposite ends of where we were, and the fifth, our healer, was dead. For what seemed like more than five minutes, we meandered around, none of us sure what we supposed to do or where we should be. JB wanted to rally with the tank, but the dang tank wouldn't stay put. Trying to catch him got JB killed when I didn't edge far enough away from a group of mobs. The good news out of that is that the healer came around to rezz JB and the rest of the group rallied around her. Finally, we were all together.

Wild remembered that he only had to kill two of the "Echo's" bosses. Wild's memory is suspect, though. The first boss, Echo of Baine, is on a rocky platform in the middle of a lava lake. JB didn't know that the rest of the group had to fan out on two other islands of rock, as those islands sometimes broke up. JB, being melee, simply stuck to the tank, going wherever he went when we had to change islands. I guess Baine also throws a spear that has to be hurled back at him. Again, JB was clinging to the tank and it was the ranged that had to deal with the spear.

Remember that these bosses are Heroic, not the wimpy elites in normal dungeons, and even deadlier than the cata heroic bosses, too. JB and the other DPSers had to whale on Baine for quite a bit of time before we finally sent his echo back into the past where it belonged.

After killing Baine, we moved back to the portal and took it to Echo of Jaina. Well, JB knew nothing about this fight - she could have used a grounding totem to help reduce damage, there are mobs that can cause trouble, and she Blinks (teleports) around the area frequently. The teleporting was really all that JB saw. Jaina is a giant, and JB didn't get to see much other than her sizable rump. Flarecore embers should be detonated around the room, but JB was ignorant of that as well. No matter, we brought her down.

The third boss is Sylvanas. I read the strategy for this boss, and, ya know, I think Wild was right. JB could not have fought Sylvanas; JB should have witnessed some part of that fight, but nothing sounded familiar. The same went for the Tyrande fight - JB didn't see this fight, either.

Ok, so Wild was right about ony two of four bosses showed up. But, making JB admit she was wrong is probably going to come back to haunt Wild.

The final boss is Murozond. Basically, time rewinds itself whenever someone in the group uses the Hourglass. JB died twice, and both times reappeared in full health and all her spells off cooldown and ready to go. The number of times the Hourglass can be used is limited, though, so one can't die TOO many times. Murozond eventually died.

The dungeon was not as bad as JB had feared, and with fewer mob groups to deal with JB's targeting and positioning were in better shape as well. As for JB's dps, she finished last, not counting the healer. Her 10.6k DPS was consistent with what she has been getting in the other dungeons, so she was pleased that she kept up against nastier bosses and despite an almost 8% miss rate on her melee attacks. The other three did 18.1 dps, 14.0 dps (tank), and 13.2 dps.

It was a lot of fun. The only down side was that the End Time dungeon loot drops really suck for shaman. She did get one i378 drop - gloves. Sigh. JB spent 1650 JPs to get the i378 Tier 12 gloves, which she was wearing. So JB got no loot she could use.