Monday, November 26, 2007

Pug Tales - Assignment Heroic Steamvault

Another one from "PuG Tales Files". Sometimes depending on the group a Heroic assignment can seem a bit like one of those Mission Impossible assignment. I grew up loving watching that show. Funny they had a group of 5 people too on a impossible mission. Well Galo the brave knight you are your assignment if you choose to accept it is to Heroic Steamvault for the Daily Heroic Dungeon & Dungeon Quest. Was a bit busy with work so had to try and do it one day later.

One day later it seems I was the only person on server at the time trying to run Heroic Steamvault. So asked in my guild and one the Priest healers and Warlock was in and wanting to improve their gear so cool got a brave Tank, Healer a DPS just need more solid DPS with good CC. Couldn't find anyone else so tried LFG for the other two. Picked up a Rogue I somewhat knew around that had solid gear. Tried to get a mage for some time in LFG but couldn't find one or any other DPS to do a Heroic SV run so we eventually settled on a Hunter that offered to go that said he had as good a gear as he can get in 5 man. OK, awesome that sound great, lets roll.

The Rogue and I (Protec Paladin/Tank) was properly geared for Heroics. The guild Priest was undergeared a bit and barely had +1K healing. Warlock had decent gear it seems as it looked good. The Hunter I took for his word that said he had good gear for Heroics which turned out he didn't in the end. I've run regular Steamvault a lot, so I know the place and have even ran it under 40 mins on regular. On Heroics the mobs again hit solid hard around 3-4K a hit and 2-3k for the casters on spell hits and nature damage... thats rough. First few pulls mobs took a while to die, healer struggled on heals and I was tanking 2+ mobs at once. So we tried to skip killing the first bog lord there at entrance, seemed good idea turned out to be bad idea on Heroics.

The first group of five with the 2 casters, I marked and Rogue tried to sap one the casters because they all cast fear like crazy and somehow Rogue got detected and next thing all mobs come running siren cast fear and I got feared right into the bog lord at the entrance... wipe. We recovered kill the bog lord at entrance and back to the group of 5. Somewhere after that we wiped again for some crazy reason. Cleared up some trash. On the second 5 mob pull going to the second boss by the tunnel we pull, things didn't get trapped and no sap for CC and I ended up tanking 3 melee mobs at one plus casters damage again... we wipe. We rezz, we pull again and somehow I can't figure how the bog lord all the way from the complete other side of the room runs over and whack me and the group..... we wipe. We're not even half way yet to 1st boss and I'm loosing lots of armor durability on plate armor. I had to hearth out for repairs at 8% armor.. ouch (was 15g repair)!! On return we kill the bog lord over on other side of room to leave no loose ends for mobs (Lesson here). We wipe at least 2 more times to the boss to make it short.

On first boss Threspia, told group to watch out for the double lightning clouds she does at once in Heroic mode. I was mobile the whole fight as she summoned a double sets of lightnings and while I was watching and trying to evade lightning clouds the group was dead.... we wipe. Time like these you need guts of steel to be a tank. We run back and rezz again this time we got her down during which she did 3 double lightning clouds over course of fight once after each other. I was running from spot to spot to evade them, but we got her down though. 1 Badge of Justice and could barely remember what she dropped. Its was just satisfying to know she was dead.

On way to second boss Hunter had to log and we replaced him with a Mage friend. Things went smooth after that, no wipes. Tip: Even learned a short cut to second boss area. After tunnel jump into water channel on your right and swim around and then turn left at the opening and you come up ramp on other side where the one Naga patrols with the other slaves working. We down the Naga groups quickly and head over to boss Steamrigger. We AoE the gnomes easily. On Heroics Steamrigger is on a 5 min timer to kill and lots more gnomes show up to repair him fast and constantly. The Rogue cleared up the gnomes as they showed up and we just pumped all out everything for DPS on Steamrigger while poping a few mana pots as I kept up Judgement of Crusader. We got him down in about exactly 3 mins the time it took for my Avenging Wrath to come off of cooldown. Another Badge of Justice and can't remember what dropped, but someone got it. Two Bosses down one more to go!

Getting to last boss from there was much easier with the Mage on board. Clearing up the guard patrol mobs we avoided before swimming around the water channel to second boss was easier from this direction (Tip). Was much easier to pull them toward us coming from 2nd boss direction vs risk been feared into the other group of 5 on other side of room. We easily cleared up to the last boss room. At the last boss room I mark, Rogue sapped siren caster, I pull, Mage sheep and I tank the rest. Sap breaks and siren caster fears us into the 5 mob group on other side of boss room...... we wipe. Uhh sucks!!. If its one thing you learn in Heroics is cover your tracks with mobs because you may just regret not killing them where you left them. Good CC is very important especially when your dealing with mobs that fear and fear allot. I always Hammer of Justice the caster on casting before its complete and silence them with Arcane Torrent on casting before its complete always worked great. Sometime just the luck of the dice.

On Warlord Kalithresh what I know on Heroic mode is he hit a whole lot harder (Yeap!) and the tanks heal him for a heck of a lot more than regular mode and he has allot more health at 200+K. Thats a lot of health! And indeed he slam hit you pretty damn hard no joke! The undergeared Priest struggled to heal the entire time and we paid the price for that.... too late on heal...I die we wipe. On 2nd try.... I run up to boss in about 5 seconds or so I die...we wipe. Disappointing there really! 3rd try DPS seem to be taking a while to kill tanks, we get him a little less than 50% and boss gotten so strong from healing from his tank he was hitting really hard healer couldn't keep me up... we wipe. You think you have headaches as DPS, try been a tank! Yeah a lot of people would of quit by now I imagine for sure and given up. Healer went aft for a few mins seem like forever to feed his dog while we wait on him at the boss. Mage friend had to go to another instance run with his guild friends. So the Rogue had another Rogue friend and we invited him in.

We made another attempt at boss Warlord Kalithresh. I buff up again with everything and Wizzard Oil, that means I been through 4 sets of Elixir now on the boss alone. I AS, drop SoR, Judge Crusader and kept it up the entire time for max damage and just popped mana pots when I could. As soon as I hit him we just moved him to the tanks to destroy them quickly and then stayed mobile moving him quickly to the next tanks and we just pumped out lots of DPS. Long fight it seemed. We down the boss finally. Mission Accomplished thank goodness!! I was glad that fight was over at that point. Another Badge of Justice. For loot he dropped 2 pieces of plate one piece some Gauntlet of the Bold and some Epic Amber Bands and some Nether and a few other things. I just picked them all up all the plate. Healer picked up a Vermillion Robe he needed a upgrade for him. I left Instance with less than 20% armor durability for another full repair. It's not fun to admit we wiped that many times, that's the most I've ever had in one run but its Heroic mode also. But that's just how this group run went, it happened.

On Daily Dungeon Quest turn in for both quest got my other 2 Badges of Justice for 5 and not too soon after that picked up my Libram of Repentance which I was soo glad to finally pickup. Later Armory the Hunter after the run that we had, he was wearing level 60-68 level gear, barely just slightly Honored with CE and not a single piece gear with any enchant, almost every single socketed gear piece he had was ungemed as well, imagine that also. You can take many lesson from that run if you can see it all in between, it cost you no repair cost or frustration. However when things go well there is hardly anything to learn. When things does not go so well you learn from all the mistakes made from people being undergeared & unprepared, undergeared for healing, lack of very good CC. Your determination will indeed get tested here. I called it a night after that. Epic Heroic PuG Tales.

4 comments:

Alex - aka Firelight said...

I really feel your pain when it comes to tanking that instance...

I was prot before i switched to ret for raiding, and that instance caused me to pretty much give up tanking for good one time i was there. You described what was pretty much exactly what happened to a group i went there with...

That first room can be a real pain in the bum!

Anonymous said...

Galo.. From an earlier posting, you mentioned using an "avoidence macro" to figure your uncrushability.. Could you post that for us/me so I can see how close I am getting?

thanks man .. and good post... If you did not post about dieing from time to time, we'd think you were passing as god like... < snicker >..

Ardent Defender said...

Yeah sure thing will post that macro a little later when I can get in WoW. Its currently down at the moment.

These days usually only die in Heroics. But yes you do die time to time. Few people like to admit they ever die. However i'm of the mind that lessons are learned in failure and others that can learn from it as well.

Anonymous said...

Ahh Galo...feel your pain.
Nothing worse than pugging a heroic now that the rep is down to "honoured" and having people without at least dungeon blues.

I preferred having the grind to get rep for heroics, it made them a sort of end game goal, not just something else you can try. And it decked people out in at least their dungeon set.

I have done heroic SV myself, and had no real issues (apart from the boglords being able to stealth detect from a mile away). We used the same water path you mentioned, and one shot all the bosses.

We also had a warlock, banishing the elementels in the packs helps, and on the first boss banishing one of the ads (you didn't say whether you did or not - I assume you did). Good old locks are handy here as they can banish and succy.

We have a macro that says "tanks now DPS!" over raid warning we hit as soon as the final boss emotes. Its important the DPS understands they need to get the tanks down. If not he crits for a huge amount!

Sounds like a better healer may have helped you a lot, you really cant gimp on heals in a heroic.

If you cant sap a target (and you have to tank 2), have the rogue rotate stuns on the main kill target. This helps slow it down from damaging you as much.

Other than that it sounds like a bit of a nightmare pug! At least you did your best and got the last boss down.

I had a similar incident with a horribly geared hunter called in for dps on a guild run (we had to pug one slot). Not pretty!

In our guild we have set requirements to come on heroic runs for each class. If you don't meet the requirements, you aren't allowed to come, posted on the forums, and checked by officers. This way we guarantee success. (e.g. minumum + heal required, mana pool, hp etc etc).