Soling Stratholme (and other old world instances).Follow

I would like to solo Strat and maybe some other 60 instances on my holy Pala (with Kara entry standard gear), and was wondering what my tactics should be. Do I wear my healing/spell damage gear and hack away with sword and board, or should I wear my dps gear and a 2H weapon and pretend I'm a warrior?

I tried to solo when I just hit 70 and failed miserably, but have better gear now :)

I'd be grateful if someone could share their experiences.

Thanks in advance!

Well, I guess I don't understand the 2H & Ret gear unless you are re-speccing. If you are re-speccing to Ret, then obviously you want the 2H and Ret gear.

If you are Holy spec, then 2H + Ret gear = less DPS. 1H + shield actually hits for more damage and kills faster and is more mana efficient and keeps you alive longer and.......ok, too many "and"s....but all are true.

Holy spec puts out a ton of spell damage DPS. 2H + Ret gear = white damage. Not a good mix.

Now, for your gear - as long as you have a full plate Holy set, then you should be ok in that. Since you are pre-Kara geared, then you may have some non-plate. If so, ditch the non-plate items for plate items. You want armor to mitigate damage as much as possible.

As Tinyknight mentioned, the Living Side wil have runners. You can still use the 1H + shield. Just make sure to use your Judgement of Justice to hold them in place when their health is low. Then, stun when they are about to heal. With those tactics, you won't have to worry about runners. The mobs are high enough level where your main targets will die much faster (as opposed to the ones being hit by consecration), so you don't have to worry about 6 mobs running at once. Of course, that is assuming that you take on one group at a time.

Other than that, you should have a blast. It's a fun challenge. I did it as Holy spec in pre-Kara gear. It took a while, but was a lot of fun. Just be very careful with your pulls. Getting adds are pretty much the only thing you have to worry about.

I've soloed Strat up to Balnazzar. As prot, the initial sections were simple - basically just AOE them to death while topping yourself off with SoL/JoW - but the human section became far trickier. Firstly, mobs there healed themselves, which meant I basically had to wait until they ran out of mana, and then they fled, meaning I had to catch up to them to avoid being swamped. I eventually used some creative sneaking techniques to avoid most of them while inside the chapel; this was necessary because mobs on the inside have mana burn and silence. Pulling more than two of them is basically game over. Balnazzar himself was hard. The fight actually lasted about 15 minutes because I ended up stuck on about 15% health and no mana trying to whittle him down with white damage.

The undead side is even harder; the crypt fiends can web you, which stops you moving and silences you, there are bucketloads of casters in the mix who you can't pull properly and who deal large amounts of damage, and patrolling abominations have a tendency to chuck you every which way. So the best strategy with the dead half is just to avoid most fights by hugging the walls and try to knock out the bosses on the steps of the ziggurats. I didn't actually manage to take down Rivendare, because he has this ridiculous damage-dealing aura and summons skeletons to heal himself. That doesn't go well with a tankadin.

Otherwise, bring stacks of mana potions, use a 1hander and a shield, spam Consecrate and heal yourself. Using a 2hander is unadvisable, because people will be attacking you in every fight and you want to take as little damage as possible. And the payoff isn't great, because the pulls are large and trying to take them out one guy at a time is slower than just AOE.

Just wanted to say that I took the advice here and soloed Living Strat all the way to Balanazzar, who went down after a long fight( I did have to use a mana pot). I just used my healing gear with a little extra spell damage and didn't have any great problems. What about the Baron on the dead side, is he soloable or would I be pushing my luck a bit on that one?