Rockstar Versus Heroic, Take Two
Rockstar’s first foray into a heroic instance (at the request of guild mates) didn’t go so well…heroic Underbog ate him up. But hey, that was two weeks ago. This time Rockstar returned, not to heroic Underbog, but to heroic Slave Pens. (And I’ll be sure to cut my teeth here in a PUG, saving myself from guild embarrassment.) This PUG comprised of myself (70 protection Warrior), Reznroth (70 Rogue) of Learn To PvP, Supernewb (70 Mage) of Fury, Tullus (70 holy Priest) of Apex of War, and Starskey (70 Hunter) of Wisdom.
Tullus in his healing gear can probably generate a good deal of threat, and my task was to make sure I had aggro and he did not. On the second trash pull, I failed at doing that, and Tullus was killed. That’s the thing with heroics; there isn’t much room for error. With the way that mobs hit on cloth, one hit can take a healer out of action. So no mistakes allowed. Well, we would die a few more times along the way.
After that incident, we did well clearing through to the first boss…confidence was building at this point. Of course, we skipped as many pulls as possible. The Coilfang Defenders ended up being a pretty good fight. I had to get a couple of hits on cross and ended up having to stun him as he went after our Priest, but I had been saving the stun for exactly that moment.
Pulling Mennu the Betrayer was clean, and I kept aggro at all times. The group burned him down quickly, and Mennu the Betrayer dropped Mennu’s Scaled Leggings (needed by Reznroth). Mennu represents Rockstar’s first downed boss in a heroic dungeon. We continued clearing towards the second boss. All of these pulls were actually flawless.
I tanked Rokmar the Crackler near the farthest point in his path, not intentionally, but just because my run speed is slow. It didn’t really matter. Just as with the Mennu fight, I held Rokmar’s aggro for the duration of the fight. Tully was able to keep me healed pretty easily (at least that’s my view), despite the nature of Rokmar’s debuff. Rokmar applies the Griveous Wound debuff, which deals periodic damage indefinitely…until that player has been fully healed. This means overheals help in this fight! Rokmar the Crackler dropped a Vivid Chrysoprase (needed by Supernewb) and the Ironscale War Cloak (needed by Rockstar). At the moment, I can’t sacrifice the defense on my current cloak, but maybe in the future I can make use of this when the defense on my other pieces improves.
The next few groups of mobs would cause many wipes. Initially the group elected to skip the large pull in the center of the cavern. We circled around the perimeter of the cavern and prepared to fight the 4-pull on the near side of the ramp. A resisted frost trap led to a full wipe on the group. The second attempt was not much better…a errant fear caused one of us to run into the optional pull we skipped, and resulted in another full wipe of the group. Before we wiped again, we decided to clear the center.
We cleared the center group, and the near-side group on the ramp we had troubles with earlier. We skipped the optional far-side group on the ramp, and went after the four-pull that patrols the final corridor. When we engaged them, I used Demoralizing Shout by habit. Even as I pressed the key I knew my mistake…at least two, maybe three slaves aggroed to me, and I was getting whacked. Everyone but the Mage had to run back…no idea how the Mage survived the fight.
We were able to clear the final trash pull, but Naturalist Bite died during the fight…we would remain unbuffed for the fight with Quagmirran. On the first attempt fighting Quagmirran, the Rogue ended up positioning himself out of line of sight from the Priest…the ramp leading underwater is a tricky place to stand. I should have had Quagmirran turned a bit quicker, I like to position him facing a ninety-degree angle away from the group. Because we didn’t have the Rogue’s DPS on the boss, we ended up running out of healer mana, and died with the boss at under ten percent health.
Take two, no problems. Quagmirran was quickly DPSed down, since everyone was alive…Quagmiran dropped a Primal Nether (needed by Tullus), the Boots of Blasphemy (taken by Supernewb), the Band of Ursol (taken by Starskey), the Shackles of Quagmirran (taken by Reznroth), and a Resplendent Fire Opal (needed by Rockstar). A fair run overall, considering the difficulty, but I made a lot of mistakes, and have plenty to work on for future runs…need to watch the use of shouts in the Coilfang dungeons.