Picking Up Heroic Blood Furnace
Last night I joined a group for heroic Blood Furnace. That happened to be yesterday’s daily heroic dungeon quest. Some of the guys from Eternal Force were in the group, plus a tank that they had picked up. I was asked in because the mage had apparently gotten frustrated with the number of wipes they’d had. The first boss was already down. It was already late, and the Hunter needs a lot more Badges of Justice, so I jumped at the chance.
The group was led by Slampig (70 protection Warrior) of Spiritus Mundi. The Eternal Force crew consisted of Amrys (70 enhancement Shaman), Glowfoot (70 Warlock), and Aldahar (70 holy Paladin). Kruenor (70 marksmanship Hunter) of Apex of War rounded out the crew.
The group was clearing the room in which the second boss would be engaged. I was secretly hoping they’d gotten past this point, because the four waves of mobs leading into the second boss can be pretty annoying. The mage, whoever he was, had probably given up hope. The pulls to clear the room were pretty crisply and efficiently done. I had a few chances to showcase my trapping.
We began the event, and I was able to pull one away for trapping immediately. I use a macro to target the tank’s target and sent my pet after it. Unfortunately, he must have been tabbing through targets to get threat on each of the mobs…and at that moment he had my trap targeted (he was safely out of range), and I ended up breaking my trap with my pet. It took me a moment to get my mob back under control in a new trap, but I felt like I’d already broken my rhythm…Aldahar ended up throwing a heal my way, which should have been unnecessary, had I been more patient.
The strange thing was how well Slampig was able to retain aggro on all the mobs. On each of the successive three waves I was unable to drag away a target. I used all my best threat moves, including the high rank Distracting Shot and a pair of Arcane shots. Finally, I had to give up and just DPS the tank target. Slampig’s threat rotations are really impressive. With his ability to hold the 3-4 mobs on each wave, and our DPS, we had no problems with those pulls.
We engaged Broggok. I was hoping Slampig would do a little more kiting, because my pet attacks the boss from behind, and poor Stryker (my pet Ravager) ended up being in the rings of poison that Broggok leaves on the ground. I was able to misdirect to Slampig early and we went all out. I threw a few heals to Stryker, but he did die midway through the fight. Broggok dropped the Virtue Bearer’s Vambracers (disenchanted) and a Jagged Chrysoprase (taken by Aldahar).
The demon pulls weren’t a huge deal. Luckily we had Glowfoot along to banish one. Everytime we dropped the first demon and prepared for the second one to be released, I noticed the second demon was focused on Aldahar. Aldahar stepped back a few paces to allow the tank to pickup the released demon…and I dropped a frost trap right in front of Aldahar. I think I saved him from taking a big hit at least twice in this fashion, as we cleared our way to the final boss.
We would ultimately require four attempts to down the final boss, thereby completing our heroic quest for the day. But it shouldn’t have gone that way, not with our group makeup.
Slampig pulled the warlock adds around the corner, as we were all familiar with. As four of the five adds came to approach him, I would pick off the last with a scatter shot (to stun him in place), and then drop him into an ice trap. I tried to explain the logic of this to the group, but they wouldn’t listen to me until the fourth attempt. When the final add is killed, the boss is freed and we must rush in to engage him. Until that point however, we can heal up, wait for mana to come up, and rage for the Warrior continues to build, because we are still in combat. But these guys were just immediately breaking the trap and killing the add.
Our failures on the first three attempts were due to a variety of factors. Amrys is often too slow to run out, and when she does, she often runs out too far and can’t get back in time for maximum DPS. It didn’t help that the Vent server was being flaky again and garbling the voice messages. On the second attempt, I spent a second too long trying to get the Magtheridon’s Rage buff from the green vent, got caught in the polygons of the vent, and died on one of Keli’dan’s Blast Waves. On the third attempt, the party was at half health when they destroyed my trap target and ran in. A little piece of me died. As a tactician and as a Hunter, I’m furious to relinquish any tactical advantage in combat…I was seriously annoyed here.
The fourth attempt they waited on breaking the trap. Ironically enough, the group was at nearly full health and no one was debuffed with Mark of Shadow. Aldahar must have been especially good at removing this buff on the fourth attempt. We ran in and engaged Keli’dan the Breaker, and dropped him like a rock. Keli’dan the Breaker dropped a Primal Nether, the Eaglecrest Warboots, the Leggings of the Unrepentant, and the Robe of Effervescent Light. Everything was sharded.
All in all, it was a successful pickup run, but we could have died a few less times. I made a few mistakes with the ice trap, which is pretty rare for me.
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