Too Many Wipes in Heroic Steam Vaults
Illustra responded to a PUG needing a Warlock for heroic Steam Vaults. I did get a Primal Nether out of it, but that’s probably the only good thing I have to say…dying six times in what is basically a pretty straightforward heroic instance isn’t my idea of a good time.
The group consisted of myself (70 Warlock), Thundazz (70 protection Paladin) of MidKnights, Babusska (70 resto Shaman) of Digital Gathering, Sryanna (70 Mage) of MidKnights, and Torture (70 Shaman) of MidKnights. In my opinion, for a really smooth ride through Steam Vaults, you need at least two forms of reliable crowd control.
The first wipe came on the tricky corner pull, where the four naga mobs are pulled around the corner into the tunnel, while making sure the patrolling elementals group doesn’t get aggro. Apparently the tank didn’t have some macro in place, and ended up never tanking skull. This meant a silence got placed on the healer. Despite Warlock power, I couldn’t save everyone through this.
By the time we made it to the first boss, most of the group had died at least twice. Luckily I was present to banish one of the adds from the first boss. The fight with Hydromancer Thespia went well (and by well, I mean everyone was alive at the end of the fight). Hydromancer Thespia dropped the Scintillating Coral Band (needed on by Thundazz). At this point, we had a roster substitution. Artemax (70 Hunter) of Empyrean came in to replace Sryanna, who had somewhere else to be. Losing a Mage and gaining a Hunter is a notch down on the “reliable crowd control” scale…so I think we all had more reason to be skeptical about this group’s chance at success.
As we cleared the few naga in the tunnel full of slaves, we unbelievably died on the third pull from the second boss. On this pull, two nagas and one slave should be brought down pretty quickly. Skull went to the slave, the Hunter was given a naga to trap, and the paladin tank should presumably pick up skull and cross. The problem is, the Hunter’s playstyle is “drop trap first, pull mob to it” and the tank’s playstyle is “I’ll drop consecrate wherever I feel like it”, and it’s obvious what happened. A lot of the cause for wipes on this run was the tank’s consecration blowing out our crowd control.
The fight with the second boss was flawless. We seemed to be having a classic case of one-shotting bosses, and wiping on every other trash pull. Mekgineer Steamrigger dropped the Recoilless Rocket Ripper X-54 (not sure who picked this up).
We cleared towards the final boss, but not without problems. Along the way, there were several deaths, and we would have a full wipe on the first pull through the open doorway leading into the final room. Not sure is line-of-sight issues on the ramp played a part, but the careless consecration or bad trap placement cause a melee naga to clock the casters in one shot. About this time, Torture had to take off (only 3 pulls left!). He was replaced by Lumar (another 70 Hunter) of MidKnights. With two Hunters in the group able to lay down traps, the final two trash pulls were flawless. That would have helped us throughout the instance.
We put one shot on Warlord Kalithresh. Warlord Kalithresh dropped a Primal Nether (won by Illustra), the Sash of Serpentra (needed by Babusska), the Beast Lord Leggings (needed by Lumar), the Wrathtide Longbow (needed by Lumar), and a Shifting Tanzanite (needed by Thundazz). All in all, I made a small profit (considering what a nether is worth), but the run was poorly executed (Illustra died six times, and wasn’t the leader in the deaths category) and consequently took much more time than necessary.
The damage output was the following:
- Illustra was at 25% (404 dps)
- Torture was at 22% (510 dps)
- Artemax was at 15% (414 dps)
- Sryanna was at 13% (572 dps)
- Thundazz was at 13% (200 dps)
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