Hello! And Heroic Halls of Stone

Posolutely invited me to guest blog here, and while I don't have much to write about in WoW, occasionally I do feel the need to vent or chatter about specific events in the game.

First off... this is me --

Neshura. Dwarf, hunter, beastmaster, always and forever. I have a gorilla named Daffodil and a dino named Petunia. My pets are always named after either flowers or horrifying diseases. With that out of the way....

Tonight, we ran another heroic, new to me: Halls of Stone. Now I've only been to Halls of Stone on regular once before. This seemed just a touch more difficult. For one thing, the tank hadn't been there. Not Posolutely, but our guild's other tank, Balendin. I pounced on Balendin the moment he logged in and berated him til he agreed to come along. "But I haven't done heroic Halls of Stone!" Haha... "Neither have I! Neither has the healer! It'll be fun!"

I wouldn't say that I lied, as I was fully expecting that it would be fun.

IT.

WAS.

NOT.

We wiped at least 15 times if not more. We one-shotted the big rock boss, the Gruul's lookalike who does the shatter. The other bosses though.... ouch. 

Maiden put us all to sleep and then killed us, over and over. We finally got her down with just a few people still standing. Balendin worked the hokey-pokey trick of jumping into the black circles to get the dot that would cancel the sleep spell, and after he got the hang of it, it was just enough to get us through that boss.

At the Tribunal, I stood on the stairs and dropped frost traps to pull mobs into consecrates, but we still died. Wave after wave of angry short dudes pummeled me and Petunia -- we died a good bit, even though Bale was tanking and Iceravens was offtanking. Around the fifth or sixth try, we all died--again--right at the end of the last wave. The mobs went straight for Brann Bronzebeard, but he somehow managed to pull off his "computer hacking" and they despawned before they ever touched him. So, we finished that boss AND got the achievement -- even though everyone was dead. 

Our pug warlock had to leave at that point, so we headed out to summon a guildie mage. Aaaand... died in the respawns. Complete wipe.

We cleared the mobs, and headed for the last boss. Spell-stealing the lightning shield made a HUGE difference. The adds weren't easy, they had about 26k+ health each, but with a mage and a hunter both on add duty, we one-shotted the final boss.

It took about two hours, and it felt like it was twice as long. But we all learned the fights pretty well from doing them over and over. I do prefer the shorter instances offered by wrath -- a slog in Burning Crusade was a 3 or 4 hour affair. I can survive a 2 hour slog, but after that point, my eyes start to go crossed from too much time at the computer.

I was starting to feel like I was doing pretty well on getting starter-geared for raiding, until heroic Halls of Stone. Now, I feel like a n00b all over again. No loot for me tonight, but some loot for guildies, so yay.

Now, it's time to go do my evening meditation on "Why Do I Always Forget To Put Petunia Back on Passive".

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.

The shortening of instances....

Is it just me, or are the instances shorter than they used to be?

The Nexus is the longest one I've encountered so far and its still very easily runnable in under an hour without pushing too hard. Heck, they even have a mechanism during one wing that makes you keep moving (the little flowers respawning)

Personally, I love it. I love being able to log on, find a group, get to the instance, and run it in under an hour.

Trash is less important. Its not as torturous, as unforgiving as it was in places like Shattered Halls, Shadow Labs and Steam Vaults -- if your tank didn't know how or where to pull it was royally difficult.

I don't find that to be the case this time. And... I am enjoying it much more. Its made things more social for me, and less stressful as a tank.

Admittedly, I'm still over geared, I wonder what its like for the less-geared tanking population....

So... Positive or negative?