The 3-Man Guide to Blackrock Depths (BRD) is intended for World of Warcraft groups that want to follow in the footsteps of Saturnalia,
doing old-world content at appropriate level. If you're 70 then you can
probably solo BRD (depending on class and spec), but if you're a group
of 3 with an average party level of around 55, you can still do it if
you know how. This guide will teach you.
Party: Chepi (heals,dps), Jazred (dps), Himalountain (tank, aoedps)
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.
Party: Chepi (heals,dps), Jazred (dps), Himalountain (tank, aoedps)
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!
Party: Chepi (heals,dps), Jazred (dps), Himalountain (tank, aoedps)
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
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.
This month, most of our time was spent in Blackrock Depths (BRD), which is easily the largest 5-man instance in the game. We attacked the dungeon in three stages, focusing first on getting the key that is needed for much of the zone and then pushing through to the last boss in two parts. This is really how the dungeon was meant to be approached, and the fact that there's so much negative talk about BRD is a direct result of the fact that people try to do the entire dungeon in one push. Blizzard's reaction this has been the creation of dungeons whose wings not only have a progression in terms of keys, but in terms of levels. This keeps players from pushing to go back to, for example, Ramparts when they are of a level to do Blood Furnace. It's sad, in a way, and if you run BRD the way it was meant to be run, it's an amazingly cool dungeon!
Party: Chepi (heals,dps), Jazred (dps), Himalountain (tank, aoedps)
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! ;-)
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).
Party: Chepi (heals,dps), Jazred (dps), Himalountain (tank, loltankdps)
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:
Party: Chepi (heals,dps), Jazred (dps), Himalountain (tank, loltankdps)
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!
