October 2008 Archives

• Barbers (locations) for new hair styles
• A new profession: Inscription
• Completely re-designed talents! Check patch notes and talent calculators for details (MMO Champion, Wowhead, Blizzard)

Saturnalia took on the 3.0 PTR today, in our usual 3-man grouping style. We are all 65, so we decided to do Underbog which was a little low for us, hopefully counteracting the fact that we all had UI brokenness due to the loss of settings and mods. It was really enlightening, and we can see that some things are likely to change. Here's how it went.

Levels: 63-64
Status: Blood Furnace full clear

Between this last week and our normal Saturday get-together we cleared Slave Pens and Underbog except for The Black Stalker. The final boss of Underbog had some horrible reset issues, resetting as soon as it had me (tank) in its beam. We'll figure that one out and give him another go.

Levels: 62-63
Status: Blood Furnace full clear

Well, Blood Furnace turns out to be a dungeon I'd avoided somehow, so it was all new to me. What struck me most was how gimicky the trash was. When you compare it to the old world, almost all old world 5-man dungeons had a mix of groups that you pulled, fought and killed and those groups that had a gimmick of some sort that made you have to switch up tactics, take out certain guys first or use your tanks in odd ways. Blood Furnace (and Ramparts) had almost nothing but gimmick groups. There's trash that stuns, silences, drops bombs ala Gnomeregan, knocks back, knocks down, charges and lots of stuff I imagine I'm forgetting. Broggok was probably the toughest boss fight, and he went down on our first try without even a glimmer of doubt about the outcome, but we wiped 2-3 times on trash.

Levels: 62
Status: Scholomance full clear
Milestones: none, really

We're 62 now, and so Scholomance isn't all that much of a challenge, even for 3. Still, it was on our list, and since we didn't get to it before now, we wanted to clear it out to be complete. It was a fun run. We did Rattlegore first, then we went down into Darkmaster Gandling's area and killed him before leaving via Jandice Barov, though we forgot to grab the chest after killing her, doh! Ras Frostwhisper was an interesting fight, though he went down too fast for it to be all that much of a challenge.

Levels: 61
Status: Ramparts, full clear
Milestones: Omor and Vazruden down

Our first Outlands instance (Hellfire Ramparts AKA Ramps) went smoothly. We had a fair amount of trouble with the Destroyers (as usual, trash is almost always harder than bosses), but for a group of three 61s, we kicked some serious orc ass. Of note were the flawless executions on Omor and Vazruden (pictured, right). We cleared them both on the first try with our newly specced Resto Shammy barely breaking a sweat keeping our crazy selves alive! Edit: our shammy tells me that he just made it look easy, and in reality, the last fight was very close.

Levels: 60-61
Status: Stratholme, full clear
Milestones: Barron down

Saturnalia finally finished clearing Stratholme. Not quite as large as BRD, but still a daunting instance, we did it in parts between mid-week and Saturday, finally killing the Baron after a slog through Strat undead late Saturday afternoon. The Baroness Anastari was the hardest fight. Her mind control was daunting to a group of 3 (makes me wonder how Time for Fun is going to go in Slabs). None the less, we took her down on the second attempt and mopped up the Baron on our first! Enjoy the screenshots!

Levels: 60
Status: Cleared Dire Maul west up to Prince and north up to Kromcrush
Milestones: Immol'thar down

In our second week of Dire Maul we cleared the west wing and almost all of the north wing. This was an interesting wall for us, since we just could not take down either Prince Tortheldrin or Captain Kromcrush. In the former case, it was entirely a matter of an agro-wipe. We tried to swap between our Paladin and Druid as tanks, but he agro-wipes so often that we just couldn't keep him off the healer, and taunt cooldowns were burned almost immediately. Kromcrush we probably could have beat, but it was a good 5 hours into our run (clearing is slower with 3), and we just didn't have the energy to give him a third try. He summons two adds and begins Retaliating, so you have to stop dpsing him and gain control over the adds. It's tricky, and someone was cleaving a lot, but it's certainly a paladin-friendly fight, so we should have gotten through it. Next time. We'll probably go back and do the tribute run at some point, but we might kill him just out of spite ;-)

Party: Chepi (heals,dps), Jazred (dps), Himalountain (tank, aoedps)
Levels: 59-60
Status: Cleared Dire Maul East
Milestones: Key to Dire Maul West/North

Note: This update is late. I was sick last week, so wasn't up to updating the site.

We've been looking forward to Dire Maul for a long while. Not, perhaps, as much as BRD, but I think part of that is that we've done the first part of DM west so many times for friends who need either the Warlock or Paladin mounts. Now, we have the chance to do the whole thing, and it was fun! Since I'm writing this a week later than usual, I can definitely say that DM east was by far the most fun we had in DM. Parts of DM west and north were lots of fun, but we enjoyed east far more overall.

We didn't take as many screenshots as we might usually, but I think our best to date was the screenshot of the three of us on Thornhoof's altar, so that makes up for a lot.

Levels: 51-52
Status: Completed Sunken Temple
Milestones: First Avatar of Hakkar kill and full clear of ST

This was our first full clear of Sunken Temple and it was worth the work. Great loot, great fights and lots of fun! The best part, by far, was the Hakkar fight in which we got a little bit confused. Our healer didn't realize that you dropped out of combat between waves. Things got much easier when he found that out! ;-)

Saturday, June 28, 2008: Maraudon, Sunken Temple

Party: Chepi (heals,dps), Jazred (dps), Himalountain (tank, loltankdps)
Levels: 48-50
Status: Cleared the rest of Maraudon (skipped Orange) and tried out Sunken Temple
Milestones: First kills for Princess, Tinkerer, Rotgrip

This was our first full clear of purple side and Princess's area in Maraudon, taking out every boss outside of the Orange side (which we've cleared multiple times previously). The Princess fight is fun and hard, but well worth doing. WoWHead suggestions of using potions of nature protection were spot-on and made the healing much more reasonable (running out of her AoE is not easy, even strafing).

Levels: 45-46
Status: Cleared ZF
Milestones: ZF

This Saturday, we were unable to make it to an instance, so we went into ZF mid-week. This was a really fun run, and we cleared the instance. Being around level 45, we were not twinked, not aided by a high-level player, not a full group (3 as usual) and not even sweating when we left! One of the key things we had to do in order to progress through the hunters that polymorph was to fire up our Shaman's grounding totem. That made those encounters nearly trivial.

Some hints for others:

• Always take the lower level mobs out first in this zone
• Don't back up around a corner ;-)

Levels: 40-43
Status: Cleared (Uldaman, SM:C), Trash (ZF)
Milestones: Fastest SM run yet: cleared Cathedral in under 45 minutes.

This was a leveling week. We re-ran Uldaman and Scarlet Monastery and then tried out ZF for the first time. Zul'Farrak has entrance trash that varies between 43 and 45 with most mobs being 44 and 45. This was just a bit too much for us. We were able to move through them, but because they were between 2 and 4 levels above us, the fights took a long time, and agro management was very difficult. The first boss (not counting the easy one with all the bugs) wipes us, so we vowed to come back soon and give him what-for!

• Razorfen Downs (RFD) - full clear, good loot!
• Scarlet Monastery (SM) including Graveyard, Library, Armory and Cathedral - we did all of these except Cathedral before their recommended levels, and with only 3 people... they were challenging, but quite doable. Full clears on all of them, though we waited until high 30s to clear Cathedral after wiping in the low-mid 30s.
• Gnomeregan - full clear, but annoying as sin. We did this when we were actually right about the correct level and we had only 3. It was challenging, but re-pops suck ;-)
• Razorfen Kraul (RFK) - full clear, 3 people, very nice loot. What order you do things in really makes a difference, here. We didn't get any of the optional bosses any of the times we went.
• Blackfathom Deeps (BFD) - Lots of fun at just about the right level with 3, full clear. We did this dungeon a few times, and it was well worth it every time.
• Deadmines - Did this a bit over level with tree, mostly because we put it off due to it being inconvenient to get to from Horde areas.
• Shadowfang Keep - This is a great instance and we did it with three and four at an appropriate level.
• Wailing Caverns (WC) - I'm not fond of this instance, if only for the fact that no one has their full suite of abilities yet, and it's a long, slow slog if you're appropriate level and not twinked out. That said, we did this with 4 and later 3 players and it was a lot of fun. A bit too hard for 3 when you don't have key abilities yet, but still workable.
• Ragefire Chasm (RFC) - An easy instance that we cleared with 3 or 4, I can't recall.

Note: This article was originally published on the AJS.COM wiki, and was intended as humor. In reality a 3-man instance group doesn't typically need a DKP system ;-)

Saturnalia DKP is a DKP system introduced by the guild, Saturnalia of Norgannon. The system is similar to Zero-sum DKP systems, in that it involves a fixed amount of DKP being assigned to all party members and no lower-limit for DKP required to bid.

For folks who are looking to do old-world dungeons with appropriate-level toons, here are some tips:

The Paladin

You can do these instances without a Paladin, but I don't recommend it past about level 35. Once you start to get into Scarlet Monastery, Razorfen Downs and Uldaman, you really start to see the number of 4+ pull encounters ramp up. While you can bring CC and do it that way, it's just tedious. Why not dps everything down at once? Prior to 40 a Paladin doesn't even need to be specced prot to tank. Just use a shield on a retadin (edit: or holyadin -- Chepi) and you'll be fine. If you have a really good healer, you can even use a 2-hander!

Flexibility

There are some classes (Mage, Rogue, etc.) that fill a very specific role, regardless of their spec. They're dpsers with some utility. These are useful classes to have when you're forming a 10+ man raid, but in lower level instances, you really want classes that can play at least two different roles. A Shaman, Druid, Shadow Priest, Paladin or Arms/Fury Warrior can all do at least two things fairly well and three of those classes can fill just about any role. At the very least, bring someone whose main role is dps, but who can throw a heal when needed (Shaman, Ret Paladin, Shadow Priest or Feral/Balance Druid).