Skadi Dodi, he kills mah Party

He causes trouble, he kills everybody.

Heroic Pinnacle Sucks. We got stuck at Skadi last night, 5-6 wipes on him, before we decided that we needed to exploit him to beat him.

Spoilers to Follow.

Let me give out the basics of the Skadi fight:

He flies up in the air and is only able to be targeted by harpoons which spawn on 1 mob, every other wave (so, 1 in 4 mobs) that spawn and run towards the party every 20 seconds or so. Once the harpoons hit him 6-8 times, he will land, and you have to fight him. What this means you need to go through 13-16 waves of additional mobs before you can get him to come down.

The gauntlet that spawns is 14 mobs + 2 more every 20 seconds. The harpoons that you need to reach are at the far end of the hallway, so you need to go through those 14 additional mobs as well.

What are the problems with this encounter?
1) As a tank, its impossible for me to get and hold aggro.
Thunderclap isn't good enough to keep aggro off the healer who's having to constantly heal me because I'm tanking 6 mobs at once (to try to make headway into this gauntlet). Here's how it went: I am tanking 4 mobs, 2 more adds come running up, 1 is a harpooner, they both aggro on the healer, I thunderclap, I get netted, the harpooner than stands 5 yards from me and attacks the healer.

2) To farm all the harpoons (without resetting) takes a minimum of 4 minutes of me taking damage and of DPSers DPSing constantly, not getting out of combat. Yeah. That means out of mana time is coming. That's before you even engage the 400k hp boss!
Math Warning
The heroic mobs have about 30k hps each, so, 14*30 + 16*30 (for the harpoons) = 30*30 = 900,000 hp. So you're asking your dps to do 1.3 million damage without going oom. Without your healer going oom. Your 3 dps. Crazy.

3) If you bring single target dpsers, they are all but useless. No offense to you Rogues and Elemental shaman out there, but I'd hate to try that without at least 2 aoe-ers, the mobs just wouldn't be dying quick enough at non-over geared dps levels.

A bit about our group: Boomkin, Mage, Rogue, Warrior (me) and a Priest healer. All the DPS were running 1200-1500 dps.

So, what do you do instead of running the gauntlet?

Well, you exploit it.

You farm the harpoons one run, then reset the boss. Then you run past where he spawns, to where the initial gauntlet mobs start out, and restart the event. Promptly tanking all 14 mobs at once, and aoeing them down. Then you just shoot the harpoons at the boss when he's in range, Killing the adds as best as you can, and wait for him to land.

Yeah. You kill the boss by resetting him.

After another couple unlucky wipes (he resisted taunt, and smooshed the healer) we ended up calling it a night.

We are heroic geared as a group, but that gauntlet is ridiculous. Mobs that constantly net, and don't allow a tank to get/hold aggro are insane. Especially when they are constantly spawning.

A boss that requires you to farm his gauntlet, then reset him, then run past him so you don't have to run the gauntlet (you just have to tank 12 mobs at once).... ridiculous.

Pos's Pug Tips

Five simple rules I try to follow when I'm pugging:

1) Introduce myself. Let people know I'm awesome, and I'm a tank.
2) Ask to be leader of the group, and give a kill order/assignments to CC in the group (ie: Sheep will be moon, Mr Mageguy)
3) Pace. Pace is important. Probably the most important thing you can do as a tank. Make sure people aren't waiting constantly with full mana, and make sure you aren't pulling when everyone is at 20%.
4) Be nice. Be patient. Explain boss fights well, don't assume everyone knows every mechanic. I will ask if I've forgotten anything, because, well, sometimes even I am not perfect.
5) Make friends with good healers. Love them. Lots.

I'm bad at healing....

So, I'm a druid.

Androgynist.

A NELF Dr00d, who loves to go boomkin and KABLOOEY stuff. Like crazy.

I've always found that if I really try to get good at something in game, I can pull it off (well, except for melee dpsing, I just can't get myself to really try to get good at that... wow, what a sentence)

I've become good at tanking, and I was as solid a caster DPSer as my guild had pre-expansion -- even when I ran affliction instead of Destro.

But healing... I just can't get. I am going to keep giving it a try, but thus far, unless my tank is way overgeared, boss fights have been a scramble. Admittedly... well, I'm not resto spec'd. I'm pure Boomkin. I need to go more of a hybrid build and try this out.

My biggest problem?

I forget to heal myself. Yep.

Splat goes the dr00d!

Anyway, any helpful tips, addons, builds are more than welcome!

No, I won't be going full-tree. I want to be able to heal and still dps when I solo (which is most of the time).

Tag... I'm it?

Well, there's this thing... going around... where I'm supposed to comment on my commenters... on my blog.

I haven't had many, it always surprises me when I get randoms posting on here, and I love it.

I suppose I need more informative posts to get people interested. Aside from my guildmates, my first commenter was Frijona over at Blog of Corruption

Anyway... pants off dance off.

Pos = 80, ready for heroics, and just lost his last level 70 purple when I bought a new belt off the AH. The one with frost resistance. I couldn't pass up an extra 1k hps after gemming any longer.

Abs is closing in on 75, and loving aoe grinding. At the rate I'm playing him, he may be 80 before even hitting Dragonblight. All I do is log on and fill instance groups to dps :)

Andro is 70, just hangin out and will start leveling soon enough. I don't know if I'll stay boomkin or go hybrid spec so I can heal instances...

Quick Warlocking thoughts...

I spec'd into Felguard/Siphon Life for leveling purposes. Everyone laughs at me, but I am great at casting my 3 instants and running around in circles staying at full health killing 8 mobs at once while felguard puts out 250 dps and kills them off.

Its the most fun I have grinding levels. I used to do it with Felhunter or Succubus, but with Felguard its even more teh awesome.

I've had people come up, stop, watch me, and send me tells afterward "Uh, how are you not dying?"

When you're regening health a tick and you're good at running in circles so you don't get constantly beat by melee, you really have a good bit of survivability.

The one place where this spec doesn't shine is vs large amounts of casters (but what Warlock spec does shine against 3+ casters?)

Against lower level mobs (I'm 72, now, I'm talking 68-69 mobs), I only use Siphon Life and Corruption.

Keeping soul link up also helps a lot.

Things to know....

I love Halls of Lightning. Its simply a beautiful zone. You should pull to the right there, not the left when you come in, so if people want to take the short cut out, they can, without dying -- although killing two paladins... totally awesome.

Dear DPS,
I know you love to top the damage meters, but really, let me hit the mob first. I'm the tank. Having to blow my taunt every pull isn't exactly nice for me.

Dear Warlocks,
I know you love to cast Seed of Corruption. I love casting it too. You need to cast it on multiple mobs. Not just chain cast it on the Skull. I'm sorry to say, thats why you keep getting aggro, I can't do 12k worth of aggro on 4 mobs in 10 seconds. I'm sorry. It doesn't make me a bad tank. It makes you a bad warlock for doing 0 damage to the primary target.

Dear Healers,
Don't cast your big heal on me before I hit shockwave. Please. Thunderclap + Shockwave and I should have enough threat to keep the mobs off you. I'm running at 25k health, so even at 50% I have as much health as you do.

Personal Update....

Personal update:

About to ding 80. I've put off instancing for a bit, and pounded out quests like mad. I went Titans Grip for about 5 hours. Died more times in 5 hours than I did in the previous 3 levels (not including instance wipes... of course). More than 3 mobs and I was dead, pretty much. As Prot, if I can't get at least 3 mobs its not worth it to me.

Engineering is now 425 or so. Really want to cap that, and get my new goggles, and my new tanking gun. Gotta spend time flying and mining... like crazy.

Smelting titansteel is netting me 100-200g pure profit every day (above the cost of mats) and since I'm farming the mats, its a pure 400g per day. I do need to save up 3 bars I think, though, for my gun.

And soloing elites? Not happening as TG. I was getting owned by elites 6 levels below me... where as Prot, I can solo most up to 1 or 2 levels under me (without blowing cool downs, pots, etc)

Things I need to personally improve upon:
-Using Heroic Strike more - more and more while I aoe tank in instances I end up rage capping myself
-Using the enrage -> health thing more often when soloing
-Figuring out when its okay for my dps to aoe (I usually say, 2nd thunder clap and I have aggro locked in), and when its not. Its a tough balancing act when you have a ret-pally (massive single target dps) and a mage (massive aoe threat) to keep enough threat on both the main target and the group of mobs.
-Keeping my shouts up. I always suck at this.
-Putting vigilance up on someone in instances

I should ding tonight. There will also be a post about what gear to go after to hit the defense cap (540 defense skill is needed, which I believe is 688 defense value). Gotta get uncrittable. I figure I'm gonna research it, may as well post it for you all to enjoy! ;)

Also, with block value being valuable now, defense is also a much more viable mitigation stat.

Okay, any instance guide you would like written up next?