So back when BC first came out I had a Hunter that I burned through BC with in anticipation of raiding. Gearing myself through Heroics and running some dungeons (Shadow Labyrinth, yuck) like 100 times for the Sonic Spear and found myself loving the experience. It was a challenge, a feat of Heroism to get througfh some of them without a death or tragedy of some kind and getting through a Heroic instance was sometimes tougher than a raid, as even when some raid geared groups would go in and do Slave Pens, Shattered Halls, Shadow Lab or Mechanar....they'd get destroyed. The dungeons in BC were tough, fun, challenging and required skill and experience with the dungeons and your character to get through.
Enter the Lich King, where all forms of CC are thrown by the wayside in favor of AoE tanking, which makes it a breeze to run through every instance in Northrend providing your tank is geared well enough and doesn't have his head so far up his butt that he can't remember to hit the taunt button when something gets away from him (or her), and your healer is equally capable and geared enough (or just not retarded).
So yesterday I get into a few groups with my Healing Druid, one in Auchenai Crypts, one in Mana Tombs and one in Sethekk Halls. Crypts was workable, not a breeze, but not pulling teeth either, tank was good enough to keep the guys off of me most of the time, but the DPS were overgeared for the place and were therefore requiring more healing than the tank...but I'm a good healer and kept everyone alive through the whole thing just fine and asked that the lead DPS wait like 3 seconds before blowing everything up and went fine.
Mana Tombs was a little worse with a stupid tank but smart DPS, so things went really slow, no wipes, but I kept grabbing threat because we weren't killing things fast enough and had to use quite a few Regrowths and multi stack Lifeblooms on top of Rejuv, Wildgrowth and Swiftmend to keep everyone topped off and the tank alive. I died once in a bad pull, but I was Soulstoned so it wasn't a big deal, Rez, Barkskin, NS+ HT the tank and then Tranquility to salvage the fight. No other issues.
Sethekk Halls was a distaster, 3 wipes, at the same pull because people don't understand Focus Firing a target down, 2 "tanks" in the group leads to me using Innervate every chance I can along with Mana Pots constantly. Unholy DK doesn't have pet ghoul on passive so he ends up pulling a 3rd group (after an already bad 2 group pull) and wipe us, second time the puller doesn't get the group pulled back far enough to prevent fear runners from aggroing other groups, I got a Rejuv off on the tank before he gets feared into a group and gets like 4 shotted in the course of 1 second by 10 mobs. Third time is essentially a repeat of the 2nd, with us lasting a bit longer before I pull aggro and die.
Is it just me or did WotLK spoil everyone into easy mode dungeons? Not that I mind really as farming Heroics for badges is pretty easy, but also makes it really easy for every ****** on the planet to get in full T9 in about 3 days with very little effort. Anyone else want a throwback to the old days where it actually took skill and a cohesive group to get through Heroics and not just a high enough average gearscore to blow through it? Not saying CC needs to return to the forefront like in BC, just add a little more tactics than "tank gets geared enough to take pounding from 100 guys, send in AoE and DPS them down, heal through damage and move on once everything dies."
Edit: Spelling
Edited, Feb 15th 2010 1:49pm by Katchii
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Running BC instances...a review...Follow
Katchii wrote:
getting through a Heroic instance was sometimes tougher than a raid, as even when some raid geared groups would go in and do Slave Pens, Shattered Halls, Shadow Lab or Mechanar....they'd get destroyed.
Katchii wrote:
Is it just me or did WotLK spoil everyone into easy mode dungeons?
Yes.
I was healing for a guildie the other day who had not tanked since BC. He was a bit cautious, taking his time before pulls, marking up kill orders, giving the dps cc assignments and such. We had picked up a couple pugs and I thought they were going to start whining about the speed, but they didn't (luckily for them, because we would have tossed them.)
After we finished the IC 5-man instances, we all agreed that it was an enjoyable, albeit slower run. The dps liked getting cc assignments, it gave them a sense of empowermant rather than just go all out on the mobs. While some of the pulls didn't really need the extra cc and planning, the group got into it and remarked how smooth it all went at the end. A couple even learned a few things about their class they didn't know, i.e. I told the mage to put on mage armor and ignore the debuff on the Forgemaster, a tip I picked up from the forums here. =)
Cmon Aethien, you know that's not a lie, what's with the eyeroll?... BC Heroics were brutal...but raid geared folks rarely did Heroics because farming Kara for badges was just easier... whatever, I did it once after being T4+ geared and we had a rough time, back when non SV Hunters couldn't be reliable CC (reliable being the operative word) as I was BM in BC, and so was just about every other Hunter out there excpet the what 5 SV Hunters and Caldone as Marks...
His Excellency Aethien wrote:
Katchii wrote:
getting through a Heroic instance was sometimes tougher than a raid, as even when some raid geared groups would go in and do Slave Pens, Shattered Halls, Shadow Lab or Mechanar....they'd get destroyed.
I think he meant, SV, SH, SLabs and Arc. As SP and Mech were super easy. I could run SP in my sleep by the end of tBC, Earthwarden baby.
SLabs was hard if you couldn't pull or if the group wasn't able to not pull additional packs in a few spots. SH sucked as a bear tank. Just plain old sucked. Arc wasn't to bad once you did it a few times, Mech was for sure cake and I don't recall Bot being to hard, just long.
I didn't really get out of T4 back then.
Hellbanned
idiggory wrote:
Drinking at home. But I could probably stand to get laid.
I was just going by my memory as a BM Hunter, and I only ever did any of those maybe twice, total. All that aside though, I really only remember how bad the groups were in normal instances of Shattered Halls, Steam Vaults and SLabs...Mech sucked on the polarity boss, but Slave Pens was really only bad at that first pull outside of the first tunnel with the 2 pats and the group off to the right.
Anyway, once you knew what you were doing and knew how to perform in a 5 man set-up, anything would be pretty easy, but the BC Heroics are extremely unforgiving especially on the trash which to be fair was the real challenge of most of teh dungeons, whereas in WotLK the trash is exactly what it says it is, trash.
I just thought that the stark contrast between BC dungeons and WotLK dungeons was strange, and I really only noticed it after playing through it as a healer teh second time around...playing/ seeing different perspectives really teaches you things, I always new that but hadn't noticed it so profoundly before.
Anyway, once you knew what you were doing and knew how to perform in a 5 man set-up, anything would be pretty easy, but the BC Heroics are extremely unforgiving especially on the trash which to be fair was the real challenge of most of teh dungeons, whereas in WotLK the trash is exactly what it says it is, trash.
I just thought that the stark contrast between BC dungeons and WotLK dungeons was strange, and I really only noticed it after playing through it as a healer teh second time around...playing/ seeing different perspectives really teaches you things, I always new that but hadn't noticed it so profoundly before.
Only Arcatraz and Shattered Halls were annoying, mainly Arcatraz.
They weren't hard, and certainly not harder than Karazhan.
Which, lets be honest, wasn't particularly hard.
Not that that changes anything about the fact that Karazhan was a brilliantly designed raid.
Magister's Terrace was also hard, but it's not like that was brutal either.
And it was released much later into BC.
I'm sorry, but if you're looking back at BC heroics as being brutal, unforgiving or hard then you're wearing pink glasses.
And I wasn't a hardcore raider back then, I only got halfway through T6 and raided with scrub guilds.
While it's true that you actually had to do something for BC heroics, it's more that Wrath heroics only require you to spam your AoE for the entire instance.
They weren't hard, and certainly not harder than Karazhan.
Which, lets be honest, wasn't particularly hard.
Not that that changes anything about the fact that Karazhan was a brilliantly designed raid.
Magister's Terrace was also hard, but it's not like that was brutal either.
And it was released much later into BC.
I'm sorry, but if you're looking back at BC heroics as being brutal, unforgiving or hard then you're wearing pink glasses.
And I wasn't a hardcore raider back then, I only got halfway through T6 and raided with scrub guilds.
While it's true that you actually had to do something for BC heroics, it's more that Wrath heroics only require you to spam your AoE for the entire instance.
Slave Pens had a few hard pulls.
If you jump skipped in pens (and made it because you weren't too busy licking the window) right after rockmar (think thats the boss, giant lobster guy) the pulls there could get pretty damn dicey if you didn't have the right CC.
I miss those days because I would literally sit there healing and say "Man... I wish I could root indoors."
If you jump skipped in pens (and made it because you weren't too busy licking the window) right after rockmar (think thats the boss, giant lobster guy) the pulls there could get pretty damn dicey if you didn't have the right CC.
I miss those days because I would literally sit there healing and say "Man... I wish I could root indoors."
It's really ironic, they open up CC to be more accessible to the masses and then forget to design the dungeons to really require the CC in the first place.
I second that Norellicus.
Doing a BC Heroic with a PuG, usually ended in disaster, going in with people you raided with on a regular basis ended in victory, WotLK PuGs are commonplace, even on raids, the difficulty of the trash mobs, nuances of the boss fights and skill of the player just aren't what they were in BC.
WotLK came out and made CC available to all the classes, and I have yet to ever use my Chains of Ice on my DK except when doing PvP or a particularly difficult elite for fun and need to Bandage up a bit.
CC is dead in dungeons, haven't raided at all so I can't attest to that. CC was what you lived and died by in Vanilla and BC, just wish that CC classes (which is bascially any DPS class...mage, hunter, rogue, DK sort of, priest, warlock) had to actually play with ALL of their class skills to get through a dungeon rather than just the ones that did the most damage.
Doing a BC Heroic with a PuG, usually ended in disaster, going in with people you raided with on a regular basis ended in victory, WotLK PuGs are commonplace, even on raids, the difficulty of the trash mobs, nuances of the boss fights and skill of the player just aren't what they were in BC.
WotLK came out and made CC available to all the classes, and I have yet to ever use my Chains of Ice on my DK except when doing PvP or a particularly difficult elite for fun and need to Bandage up a bit.
CC is dead in dungeons, haven't raided at all so I can't attest to that. CC was what you lived and died by in Vanilla and BC, just wish that CC classes (which is bascially any DPS class...mage, hunter, rogue, DK sort of, priest, warlock) had to actually play with ALL of their class skills to get through a dungeon rather than just the ones that did the most damage.
Our small guild runs instances and our tank takes her time and marks up assignments and cc targets, which we make use of. Our runs may take a little longer than the average pug run, but they are a lot more successful, too (on normal that is, heroic runs are another story).
I just need to convince them to try forge of souls so we can progress through the ICC 5-man instances as a guild.
Speaking of ICC 5-man instances...
Last night I signed up for a normal pug run and got forge of souls. The warrior tank had 22k health buffed. I caught up to the group just before the first boss. The boss went down no problem. After we divide up loot we lose our DK dps. We pick up another one, though, and continue slogging through. We get to the wraith guys before the final boss and tank goes one way and dps goes another...we get 2 wraiths and wipe. We regroup and I notice the tank only has 15k health now. I inquire as to what gives and he says his gear is shot. /facepalm He was going to tank devourer of souls with broken gear and 15k health? I ask the DK to switch to frost presence and try tanking...we wipe and the group breaks up after that.
Some days I wonder if the 2 emblems are worth the trouble.
I just need to convince them to try forge of souls so we can progress through the ICC 5-man instances as a guild.
Speaking of ICC 5-man instances...
Last night I signed up for a normal pug run and got forge of souls. The warrior tank had 22k health buffed. I caught up to the group just before the first boss. The boss went down no problem. After we divide up loot we lose our DK dps. We pick up another one, though, and continue slogging through. We get to the wraith guys before the final boss and tank goes one way and dps goes another...we get 2 wraiths and wipe. We regroup and I notice the tank only has 15k health now. I inquire as to what gives and he says his gear is shot. /facepalm He was going to tank devourer of souls with broken gear and 15k health? I ask the DK to switch to frost presence and try tanking...we wipe and the group breaks up after that.
Some days I wonder if the 2 emblems are worth the trouble.
Arex wrote:
Slave Pens had a few hard pulls.
Besides CC, the intricacies of pulls is what I remember most from BC. Rooms full of patrols and roaming mobs, and trying not to grab half the room if you aggro'd a caster who stayed put. But once you got a tank who new the pulls, things went remarkably easier.
But ya, enter WotLK, more mobs are stationary, and those that patrol seem to be spread out more. Though I did like that one point in PoS when you get ambushed by the little guys jumping off the ledge. That took me by surprise the first time. :D
That monster in the mirror, he just might be you. -Grover
I was supposed to be a guild tank but lack of playtime on my part and other guys who wanted it more than me kicked me out of the spot, so I have some pretty good tanking gear (def capped, 30k health) gems and enchants, now I DPS with my DK and do about 5k DPS =D just letting you know I have experience with lvl 80 content.
If I see a tank with less than 25k Health, especially in the new 5 mans's I either offer to tank, vote to kick, or just leave. Even a newly dinged 80, in quest greens and blues with some instance drops that are geared for tanking, that have taken the time and money to properly gem and enchant their gear should have more than 25k health, buffed or not. Anything less than that is just a testament to desperation and either laziness, stupidity or just lack of information.
Back to BC instances though, I think protein nailed it, it's not that some of the places in BC were really that tough, it's just that the instances and pulls were laid out in such a way that made finesse and control over what you're fighting paramount for success. WotLK just run and gun and hope everyone is geared enough to handle it.
Edited, Feb 16th 2010 1:28pm by Katchii
If I see a tank with less than 25k Health, especially in the new 5 mans's I either offer to tank, vote to kick, or just leave. Even a newly dinged 80, in quest greens and blues with some instance drops that are geared for tanking, that have taken the time and money to properly gem and enchant their gear should have more than 25k health, buffed or not. Anything less than that is just a testament to desperation and either laziness, stupidity or just lack of information.
Back to BC instances though, I think protein nailed it, it's not that some of the places in BC were really that tough, it's just that the instances and pulls were laid out in such a way that made finesse and control over what you're fighting paramount for success. WotLK just run and gun and hope everyone is geared enough to handle it.
Edited, Feb 16th 2010 1:28pm by Katchii
I third that Norellicus.
As for SP, I ran it daily on heroic, it was easy once you knew what to do and who to CC. Of I was there a lot as I needed the rep for Earthwarden so that was a factor.
I also remember doing this; LF 1 healer 1 CC H whatever. Actually asking for a CC class and not a DPS in LFG. That would be laughed at today.
As for SP, I ran it daily on heroic, it was easy once you knew what to do and who to CC. Of I was there a lot as I needed the rep for Earthwarden so that was a factor.
I also remember doing this; LF 1 healer 1 CC H whatever. Actually asking for a CC class and not a DPS in LFG. That would be laughed at today.
Hellbanned
idiggory wrote:
Drinking at home. But I could probably stand to get laid.
I have yet to see any CC techniques applied in pug (normal) runs in Wotlk dungeons. What's worse is when the dps don't focus fire, get aggro, get creamed, and then either a) blame the tank, b) blame me (the healer), or c) blame both the tank and the healer and then drop the group.
Then you get occasions like last night's normal pug dungeon, which turned out to be Utgarde Pinnacle. The pally tank had 49k health and barely got scratched even when tanking 4 mobs at a time. She was only in there to get the elder for the holiday achievement. Made my life easy as a healer let me tell you.
Then you get occasions like last night's normal pug dungeon, which turned out to be Utgarde Pinnacle. The pally tank had 49k health and barely got scratched even when tanking 4 mobs at a time. She was only in there to get the elder for the holiday achievement. Made my life easy as a healer let me tell you.
You guys are forgetting a couple of instances: -
Heroic Black Morass & Heroic Durnholde.
Before these were nerfed they were tough. I managed to get into a group with a mate and his guildies who were all in the top guild on the server at the time and we scraped through Heroic BM (after having to run back from a wipe!). At the time, I hadn't heard of anyone else I knew having got through. The trash on Durnholde was brutal as well. We got through the "setting the bomb" phases by having the hunter misdirect to his pet who was a fair way away and having me waiting in stealth to quickly set the bombs then try and get out before the mobs got back - it usually meant I took one for the team each time. And don't get me started on the 2nd half - an escort with little time to drink & bandage between tough pulls where a wipe meant having to start the escort again!
Certainly these were much easier after a few nerfs (as were a lot of the heroics) but they were certainly very tough early on!
Heroic Black Morass & Heroic Durnholde.
Before these were nerfed they were tough. I managed to get into a group with a mate and his guildies who were all in the top guild on the server at the time and we scraped through Heroic BM (after having to run back from a wipe!). At the time, I hadn't heard of anyone else I knew having got through. The trash on Durnholde was brutal as well. We got through the "setting the bomb" phases by having the hunter misdirect to his pet who was a fair way away and having me waiting in stealth to quickly set the bombs then try and get out before the mobs got back - it usually meant I took one for the team each time. And don't get me started on the 2nd half - an escort with little time to drink & bandage between tough pulls where a wipe meant having to start the escort again!
Certainly these were much easier after a few nerfs (as were a lot of the heroics) but they were certainly very tough early on!
OOOO good call Friar, forgot all about Black Morass....I ran that thing so many times on normal to get that stupid Hourglass.....
Durnholde was also tough at the escort, Heroic was...aggravating, to say the least. So many pulls in so short a time even made CC difficult, only time we ever got all the way through it was with a T5 geared Pally tank and Druid Healer.
I remember Steamvaults being especially difficult, but also fun and rewarding. Nothing quite like a 5 pull going off without a hitch when everyone in the group knows what to do. Hooray for BM Hunters being able to solo casters! I could effectively take out 2 guys for the entire fight, trap one caster while I took care of the other and then kill the iced one while everyone else takes out the heavy hitting melee, worked out really well and was super fun for me. Only worked with good DPS though.
Anyway, I look back on BC with fond memories and just wish some newer instances would force people to play like we had to in BC.
Durnholde was also tough at the escort, Heroic was...aggravating, to say the least. So many pulls in so short a time even made CC difficult, only time we ever got all the way through it was with a T5 geared Pally tank and Druid Healer.
I remember Steamvaults being especially difficult, but also fun and rewarding. Nothing quite like a 5 pull going off without a hitch when everyone in the group knows what to do. Hooray for BM Hunters being able to solo casters! I could effectively take out 2 guys for the entire fight, trap one caster while I took care of the other and then kill the iced one while everyone else takes out the heavy hitting melee, worked out really well and was super fun for me. Only worked with good DPS though.
Anyway, I look back on BC with fond memories and just wish some newer instances would force people to play like we had to in BC.
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