Archive for February, 2009
I mentioned to my guild master and the main guild tank (another feral druid) that I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at some tanking.
I’d only ever tried tanking once on my druid, around level 73 having just respecced from Moonkin to feral. I had no understanding of what I was doing and it was a mess. That put me off tanking for quite a while (I got some good natured ribbing from my guildies over my tanking abilities - or lack of them - for quite some time).
However, I figured with all i’ve learnt since then that it was time to try again.
My plan was to break myself in gently with a couple of normal instance runs just to get used to it and learn the ropes.
Instead our guild master suggest we try Utgarde keep heroic and see how it goes, and if I do well we can go on to try gun’drak, the heroic of the day.
I was nervous and headed off to respecc. A straight 60 points in feral and 11 in resto later and it was back to Dalaran. I swapped out a couple of glyphs for more bear form suitable ones, settling for growl, mangle and maul (if i remember rightly).
My hp felt a bit low. I had only 25-26k when I was in the instance. I’ve hit as much as 30k with buffs but not in last nights group which consisted of a fire mage, ret pally, rogue, resto druid and of course myself.
I was pleasantly surprised when we completed Utgarde keep with no wipes whatsoever. I was nervous approaching each boss – especially the last, but it all went well.
My aggro generation was fine and the healer was able to keep me topped up so the guild was quite happy for me to tank Gun’Drak.
(We had been in there the night before with our main tank and struggled with the Snake boss. Without much AOE the snakes wrapped key players up until we got it all worked out).
So I pull the snake boss the first time and run for it. I get poison bolted a couple of times on the way up and was low on health by the time I get up the stairs. The healer pulls aggro healing me and we wipe. It did not bode well.
I pull the boss the second time, manage to run up the stairs with no major health loss, and get aggro on the boss at the top.
We have the extra aoe of a mage in the group this time, so when the snake adds arrive they are no problem, nobody gets wrapped up and the boss dies really quickly. Pleasantly surprised, I was now certain we could cope with the other
bosses.
I wiped once on the elemental boss – he’s a big stone statue with elementals round him. When you start the fight the elementals all go in to him.
It’s a tank and spank for a while. At certain points he becomes immune and a large elemental comes out of him and you have to taunt it, and then kite it round to
avoid these pools of purple water that do shed loads of damage. At certain points he drops aggro and Surges on to one
of the group. The first time I failed to taunt on every surge (thinking he would charge them, then return) , the healer died, then a dps and we wiped.
The second time I knew to taunt and it all went perfectly and the boss died.
I didn’t have any problems with the next boss Eck (That is one ugly brute).
No problems on the boss that turns into a mammoth. We did try interrupting the transform but he snuck one in towards the end.
We wiped once on the last boss, after he wiped out our healer in one hit, but downed him the second time.
There was one near wipe that I directly attribute to my lack of experience pulling groups, but I learnt from it and will try not to make the same mistake again.
So all in all I’m quite pleased with my performance. I need to improve stamina wise, but as it was only my second attempt at druid tanking ever,
my first attempt at tanking at max level and with it being heroics as well, I feel I did alright (I had envisaged a horrible wipe fest and being banned from tanking ever again 
)
Most importantly, it was fun and I’ll be looking forward to tanking in the future.
February 26th, 2009
I’ve seen a lot of references to the side entrance to Stratholme.
I’ve even mentioned it a fair bit in my posts about boosting in Stratholme but I thought it would be better to write a brief post giving the exact coordinates.
The side entrance to stratholme is located at 42,20.
You will have to have the key for this entrance (obtained by killing the boss that drops it in stratholme, so you will have to have done 1 run via the normal entrance to obtain this).
February 25th, 2009
Yesterday I rolled a couple of rogues for my kids to play on.
The idea being to level them up as quickly as possible so we can all battleground together, all of us stealthing around and surprising unsuspecting enemies.
Given that I have RAF enabled still I decided that I would start boosting this team, and to try out boosting an alliance team in Shadowfang instead of deadmines.
As an experiment it was a roaring success. While deadmines is nice and handy for stormwind It is a sprawling instance filled with many non elites, and occasional annoying patrols that can wipe your lowbies before you notice. It also has a bit of a run from the instance exit round to the instance entrance.
It does have some nice twink drops, but these rogues aren’t going to hang around at 19. (I’ve done twinks before and grew bored of it very rapidly).
My kids quested their nightelf rogues together to level 10, i brought a mage across and portalled them to ironforge, then swapped to my druid for the long run up to shadowfang keep.
Half an hour later (and a brief stop off in southshore to set their hearthstones) we got to SFK.
Until about 16-17 the second you step in the lowbies will be targetted by a werewolf and wolf companion so be prepared.
I ran through in cat form killing everything to the jail and got the prisoner to unlock the gates to the courtyard.
I would highly recommend stationing your lowbies at this doorway (not on the stairs). It is beyond aggro range but when you bring mobs back to close to the stairs still yields XP.
I switch to bear form and run down the stairs and up the ramp to the right.
Through the various rooms, aggroing everything until I see the stairs that lead down to the barons dining room.
I run down those stairs aggro everything in the dining room and back out in to the courtyard, picking up any stragglers I missed initially. If health is dropping at all I pop frenzied regeneration.
I bring everything over to the bottom of the stairs and swipe the mobs down.
This one pull alone is enough to get most of a level (sometimes a whole level) on the lowbies.
Initially I would then have the lowbies follow me and work my way to the end of the instance, killing in cat form.
It’s then a quick run back to the instance entrance a reset and back in again.
The only reason I continue to complete the instance is to avoid the 5 instances per hour reset limit.
TIP: If you have RAF when you get your alliance team to SFK create a level 1 character on either the veteran or RAF’ed account and summon the level 1 to SFK. This character will do nothing but summon any future teams to this instance (knocking a half hour off of travel time). Do this when you are boosting through scarlet monastery and startholme as well.
At about 17 I started just doing the initial loop, running out and resetting. (I stuffed up and hit the reset limit so had to go on another account and boost with a 72 paladin instead - luckily they dinged 20 as i killed in the courtyard).
So as far as I am concerned Shadowfang keep is a far better instance for boosting your lowbies with when compared to deadmines.
As it is also on your way to Scarlet monastery you may as well level there even if you are alliance.
February 19th, 2009
Ever since patch 3.08 hit I’ve been meaning to go and train Feral Cat Swipe. It was on my todo list and yet I never seemed to bother, I questioned whether I would ever really use it, and wondered if it would make any difference.
I’ve been doing pretty well on the damage meter in the guild heroic runs but as just about everyone has some kind of AOE I tend to fall behind on trash and pick up a lot of damage on bosses.
So on Friday night I decided to train swipe and get summoned back for our Heroic Nexus run.
A wonderful thing happened. I jumped up to 1st place on the damage meter for a while. For the rest of the run the 1st-4th positions were changing constantly.
The end run had my damage meter reporting me in 2nd place and someone elses reporting them in 2nd place.
A further run through heroic violet hold saw me in 1st place
I particularly love it when I’ve got berserk up.
I pick one of the mobs, put a bleed effect on and a mangle, then savage roar with the combo points. I might do one swipe if i have enough energy left, then hit berserk and spam swipe for all it’s worth.
What a great ability, great ability. I ‘ll be trying it when I boost alts through scarlet monastery.
February 4th, 2009