Good Morning Everyone!
I've been meaning to post again, but have been very hectic at work. I thought I'd write a quick post today since we're having our first Snow Day of the year. (If you're wondering, I live in WNY.) The schools around here are all closed for the day. The weather is terrible. Seems like a great excuse to stay home and sip hot cocoa and snuggle with the family.
At any rate, taking a snow day is really no excuse to skip posting on the new 5-man instances that Blizz just added for us. Tuesday night, I ran Forge of Souls on heroic. Had never been there before, but got asked by a friend to tank it. GOOD TIMES! The instance server was a little laggy, but overall, it was a LOT of fun. We tried to get into the second instance, but were unable to because that instance server was down :(
Before I get too far into describing the instances themselves, let me first tell you that in order to be eligible to enter the second and third instances here, you need to do a quest chain.
The quest chain is...
1. Inside the Frozen Citadel
2. Echoes of Tortured Souls
3. The Pit of Saron
4. The Path to the Citadel
5. Deliverance from the Pit
6. Frostmourne
7. Wrath of the Lich King
It begins with either Apprentice Nelphi (Alliance) or Dark Ranger Vorel (Horde). I believe this information is still correct and I am reasonably sure that you find these NPC's in Dalaran. Coincidentally, the Alliance questgiver is located near the southern "Alliance" bank and the Horde questgiver is found near the northern "Horde" bank.
Before anyone goes and freaks out about this- the quests actually guide you through the instances themselves. The entire questline can be done on either heroic or normal mode AND you don't even have to leave the instance-chain at all during the completion of this quest chain.
(Loremasters: At this time, it doesn't seem like this counts toward your Loremaster goal. It will, however, count toward your 3000 Quests Complete.)
The Forge of Souls
This place is a tank's nightmare for sure. There are a lot of ranged trash mobs, making it very difficult for tanks to manage threat. When I tanked this, I was unable to find a spot to LoS these trash mobs to pull them together. I had to really pound on our primary target, then switch targets a lot to keep them on me (yes, that included running from mob to mob). Sometimes, these floating skulls come out of nowhere to play. They're a quick kill and do a little burst of AoE damage, but nothing too serious.
In The Forge Of Souls, there are two Bosses: Bronjahm and Devourer of Souls.
Bronjahm
This is a really cool fight. From a tank's perspective, this boss is...well...jittery. He seemed to move around a lot. There are three abilities I thought were worth mentioning here:
1. Magic's Bane: This inflicts a bit of damage to all players near the boss. I'm mentioning it because it's AoE damage. His shadow bolt isn't really too bad and it only hits ranged DPS or healers that steal aggro.
2. Corrupt Soul, Corrupted Soul Fragment, and Consume Soul: This is definitely worth knowing about. These three abilities chain together. He'll cast Corrupt Soul on a member of the party. Once he has cast it, a Corrupted Soul Shard will appear (looking like a pinkish-purple-ish cloud). If this shard is allowed to reach him, he will Consume Soul and heal himself. It makes the fight very long and frustrating if he's allowed to heal himself. So keep an eye out for this. The strategy we used for this: The party member whose soul was being corrupted moved to the opposite side of the chamber, creating maximum distance between the shard and Bronjahm. It seems that this shard can be destroyed, so you might want to have someone target and destroy it. I'm not sure if it can be snared. We didn't try. The tank needs to be aware of where this corrupted soul shard is and try to kite Bron away from it.
3. Soulstorm+Fear: When you get Bronjahm down to 30%, he'll teleport to the center of the chamber and begin to cast soulstorm and the fight enters phase 2. This is a swirling purple/pink death. When party members get caught in this, they are hit for between 1-3k per tick (closer to 1k on normal, just under 3k on heroic). You CAN escape it by running to the center of his chamber where he stands. Healers should keep everyone topped off for this phase because Bron will occasionally fear a party member, causing them to run out into the soulstorm. Another note about soulstorm- it slows movement by 50%, making it difficult to get back out of the swirling misery quickly.
Devourer of Souls
Just a quick note: You should turn on your sound for this fight. No, it doesn't help you fight him or make the fight any easier, but this boss's voice is Epic! This is the second and final boss of The Forge of Souls. Let's take a quick look at this boss fight.
1. Mirrored Soul: I'm not sure how many of you got to experience the Prince Tenris Mirkblood fight in Karazhan...but the Mirrored Soul reminds me of Blood Mirror. What happens is, Devourer targets one party member and channels a link with that person. The damage you do to Devourer will also be done to that linked party member- so it's really important to STOP DPS at that point.
2. Unleash Souls: Sorry kids, there's nothing you can do about this one. These little ghosties can't be targeted and can't be damaged. He summons a metric fluffton of these things. They don't do much damage one on one, but if you have 5 or more slapping you around- it begins to take a heavy toll. If you notice you're taking a bunch of damage, make sure you run away from these guys. Healers shouldn't have too much trouble handling this damage.
3. Wailing Souls: This...can be very bad. This does between 3-6k damage (the lower end being on Normal Mode, the higher end being on Heroic). The boss will shoot what I can only describe as "sweep of death" move. It spans 90 degrees and doesn't seem to have a range limit on it. The direction of the "Sweep" is random and sometimes will go clockwise, sometimes counter clockwise. The entire party NEEDS to avoid taking this damage. It ticks about every .4 or .5 seconds, meaning that you take almost 10k damage per second. Seems like a pretty valid reason to avoid this. It's hard to explain this spell and how to avoid it. This is one of those "once you see it, you'll get it" kind of moves.
Pit of Saron
The next instance in the chain is the Pit of Saron. This place is pretty easy. There's nothing really extremely difficult you'll face as far as the first groups of trash here. A little AoE damage and "Blinding Dirt" (a brief disorientation effect that appears to be able to be dispelled and seems to mainly affect ranged dps and healers).
You'll face four bosses...
1. Forgemaster Garfrost: This fight reminded me a lot of the Sapphiron fight from the Frostwrym Lair in Naxxramas. The first thing to know is that this boss will be constantly hitting your party with Permafrost- an aura that ticks for 200 Frost damage to all party members within his line of sight every 2 seconds. It also slaps on a stacking debuff that increases the frost damage you take by 10% for 3 seconds. Fun, right? To go right along with that he does something called Chilling Wave which inflicts ~2k to everyone in front of him and has a beefy 65 yard range. Tanks really need to keep this guy turned away from the party. He also has a thundering stomp stun/knockback specifically designed to annoy melee dps and tanks. Yay...
I didn't specifically notice this during my few times facing him, but he also has something called Deep Freeze that slows the effected target's movement speed by 50% and inflicts about 4-5k damage when the spell expires. This lasts about 15 seconds. Healers need to be watching out for this. With the Aura ticking away, this spell could bring a party member pretty close to death, if not kill them.
And now for the part that was very reminiscent of Sapphiron...During the fight, Garfrost will throw a huge Saronite Boulder at a random party member. This CAN and SHOULD be avoided. If you have a mod like Deadly Boss Mods, I believe it lets you know that he's targeted on you and is about to heave a rock at you. You should see a shadow forming on the ground- Move! It does a decent amount of damage ~4k and should really try to be avoided. If, for no other reason, than you love your healer and you want to make life easier for them. In my experience, he will throw two of these saronite boulders...and then he'll run to one of the forges nearby to cast "Forge Frostborn Mace". He will cast this at 66% and 33% health, so keep an eye on his health bar and you'll know when this is incoming. What you need to do, is get behind one of the saronite boulders in order to hide from this blast. It will probably kill anyone who doesn't get out of LoS, so definitely make sure you're moving your tail when he bounces to his forge. Also, he has two forges he can run to, so make sure you're on the correct side of the boulder.
Overall, it's a pretty easy fight. Just don't get hit by rocks and make sure you're hiding in the right spot. You'll be good to go!
2. Ick & Krick: This fight is...well it's a bit of a pain, but it's still fun! When you engage Ick, you'll see that Krick is riding around on his back...the lazy little...Anyway...This is a "poison" heavy fight. This boss will cast Pustulant Flesh on a target which hits pretty hard initially and ticks for a nice chunk of damage every 5 seconds. Healers will need to heal through this. He also will randomly drop threat and chase a random party member for 12 seconds. He's never chased me, and I've only healed this fight, so I've not really had the time to watch this pursuit so carefully. According to what I've read, this slows his movement by 50% and also increases damage by 50% on normal, 100% on heroic.
He will also throw patches of Toxic Waste on the ground that inflicts damage as long as the person stands in it. It's a bright green patch on the ground, easy to see and easier to get out of. We're all smart cookies, so we don't stand in strange colored patches on the ground, right? *whistles innocently*
Alright, now for the real nitty gritty. He will cast a Poison Cloud or Poison Nova. This is NOT like Slad'ran's poison nova. There's no "tick" damage here. This is one nasty, nasty spell. On normal mode, this will hit all party members in range for 12,000 HP. Yeah, and heroic? 30k. He emotes when he's about to cast this ability, so you need to get as far away as you safely can (without pulling adds into the fray). Deadly Boss Mods really helps here. The key to survival? GET OUT OF MELEE RANGE...QUICKLY!
Oh yes. And let's not forget about the Explosive Barrage. Krick (riding on Ick's back) will summon exploding orbs. They look like a Death Knight's Anti-Magic Bubble, but don't stand in it...or you'll die. This is an 18 second nightmare for caster dps and healers. You have to constantly move away from the purple orbs, or ultimately, they will explode and kill you. The damage "can" be healed through, but you're just better off moving. The tank should be kiting this guy around a little bit anyway to avoid the poisons on the ground. Yeah...good times. More poisons to worry about...Thanks Blizz...
Once you've defeated Ick, Krick and the Forgemaster, you're going to head up this hill of...well hell. The first two trash groups when you head up the hill the the infamous cave cast a disease on party members that's miserable to heal through. Not sure if it can be dispelled, but you should try. It...is...awful. At any rate, there are 2 groups of five as you ascend the hill. There will be five skeletons and a caster in the middle. There's AoE Damage and that horrid disease to heal through. Also note that most mobs in this entire set of instances hit hard...REALLY...hard...
You'll now face a set of four skeletons with two casters behind them. Keep an eye on the ground. A small blue rune-circle will appear on the ground. Don't stand in it. Actually, get as far away from it as you can. I'm not sure exactly what the spell is called, but they'll hit you with Chains of Ice (think Death Knight's Chains of Ice here) and it inflicts a BOATLOAD of damage. Get away from them on these trash mobs. If you're tanking this and you see the blue circles, book it. These mobs hit hard enough, and you definitely don't want to get hit by anything else that can really hurt you. You'll face two groups of these (if I remember correctly...)
After you down them, you'll find yourself at the mouth of a cave. As you enter the cave, you're going to fight a bunch of mobs during your run. It's tank and spank. Let the tank get aggro on them and own'em! However, we all know Blizz won't just let it be THAT easy. No. As you're fighting your way through this cave, you're going to find that the ceiling will cave in on your party. Big, blue rune-circles form on the ground. This is where the ice chunks will fall. Get outside of that circle and you'll be safe. The circle will disappear and you'll see what looks like snow falling from the ceiling where the circle just was and then BOOM! Big blocks of ice will crash from the ceiling. As long as you keep moving and are aware of your surroundings, you'll be fine in here.
When you get outside of the cave, you'll find Scourgelord Tyrannus and Rimefang. This fight seems pretty easy, at least in my experience on both heroic and regular.
3. Scourgelord Tyrannus and Rimefang: There are only a few things that really stand out about this boss fight. It's pretty straight forward "tank'n'spank", however there are a few items worth noting. First, on heroic, this boss has over 1 million HP. Yeah, that's a pretty sizable health pool. It doesn't seem like a really huge deal, however.
Some abilities worth noting:
- Overlord's Brand: A random member of the party will be "branded" by Tyrannus, causing all of the damage that player does to Tyrannus to hit the tank as well. If you have gotten branded, make sure to slow up on DPS a bit so that you don't make your healer hate you. Simple enough? Yeah, not really. All healing done by the branded party member will be amplified and applied to Tyrannus. It's not like you can STOP healing your tank and your party, but this is worth noting in case your party members are barking about him healing himself. Heh, you can blame the trees for his healing.../facepalm.
- Unholy Power- increases HIS damage by 75% but also slows him down by 50%. I imagine you can probably run away from this as a tank, but I haven't been able to find a duration for this spell...meaning...if he casts it at 50% HP and your tank runs...and the spell never fades...well...your tank's going to get some exercise, eh? Healers really just need to be prepared.
During this fight, players will see themselves targeted and marked by "Mark of Rimefang". This will create a mark on the ground that Rimefang will blast with Hoarfrost. This deals 4k-7k damage on normal and 7k-11k damage on heroic to all party members within 8 yards of the "point of impact" and also stuns them for 5 seconds. So, it's really important to move quickly. Also, Rimefang will throw Icy Blast constantly throughout the fight. It deals nearly the same damage as Hoarfrost, but doesn't seem to have the stun effect. It also creates a patch of tick-damage, movement-impairing yuck. If you love your healer, don't stand in this please. :-)
That pretty much covers Pit of Saron. If I've missed anything, I'm sorry. I'll tweak this post a bit here and there as I learn more, or I'll post solid strategies as I learn them.
Your next adventure will lead you into The Halls of Reflection...
Halls of Reflection
If you like Lore, you'll probably really enjoy this set of instances, especially this last instance. I'm not going to post any spoilers, I promise. But if you're a Lore geek like I am, the opening scene in this instance is great!
The Halls of Reflection begins with a gauntlet style nightmare. Yes, it's a nightmare. There are a lot of different strategies out there already, but I'll post the only one that I've gotten successfully through (even if it WAS after multiple attempts).
The gauntlet is set up like this: Four waves - Boss - Four Waves - Boss. The mobs that come at you in each of the waves will vary. Some are melee style, and easy pickups for the tank. Others are ranged and have hunter, mage and priest abilities...definitely a bit harder for the tanks to pick up.
The strategy that was used during the only successful heroic attempt we made at this was as follows:
If you look at a map of the instance, there is a large circular room with a long hallway directly across from the entrance to the instance, and two smaller rooms on the right and left side. What we did was this:
We started the event and all party members ran to the room on the right. The tank (a paladin) stood in the doorway of the room while the rest of us tucked behind the edge of the doorway. This gave the tank a bit more of an opportunity to pick up the trash mobs. It was still a rough go and it took us about 5 attempts to get through it. The mage style mobs cast flame strike quite often, there are some fears by the trash mobs, there are poisons involved...it's messy. This is by far the toughest of the three instances.
FALRIC
After the first four waves, Falric will come "alive" to fight your group. If your party has camped out in the eastern-most "cubby", then you'll have a few seconds before he reaches the group to get ready.
This fight is fun, but you definitely want to dispel his debuffs when you can. He'll cast a debuff called Hopelessness ~ Reduces all damage and healing done by players by 20%. He also casts a magic effect on the party called "Impending Despair" which can be cleansed. If it ISN'T cleansed, however, it will cause the affected person to become "Despair Stricken" and be stunned for 6 seconds. Yikes!
Healers- keep your party's health topped off. We've all experienced the hell of Confessor Paletress in Trial of the Champion, right? Well, Blizzard seems to like this new Fear+Damage combination. Falric will cast Defiling Horror. This is NOT a fear, however and tremor totems don't work. This is a horrify effect. All party members will be sent fleeing for 4 seconds, taking ~4k damage every second. He also has a fancy gift for the tank called "Quivering Strike" which inflicts a nice slam of damage and also decreases the tank's chance to dodge for 5 seconds.
All in all, this fight isn't too bad. Healers just need to be on the ball here. After you fight Falric, you'll experience four more waves of trash mobs and then...
Marwyn
Marwyn uses Obliterate, which can inflict 26k physical damage, but is mitigated by armor. Even if a tank has 75% damage reduction by armor, this strike alone is going to hit for almost 7k. It's not terrible, but if someone pulls aggro from the tank and gets hit with this...yeah...
He also casts a Well of Corruption that causes Corrupted Touch to stack on anyone inside the well. It increases shadow damage taken by 75%. If you can get away from the well, you should. Also, Corrupted Flesh reduces the target's maximum health by 50% for 8 seconds. If this lands on your tank and he's hit with an Obliterate, well things can get a little messy, hmm? I don't remember this fight being too terrible.
Another exciting feature Marwyn has: He will cast a spell called Shared Suffering on a party member. This inflicts ~6k shadow damage every 3 seconds and this lasts for 12 seconds. If you dispel this, it splits the remaining damage between the rest of the party members. Just something to note about this magic effect.
After you defeat Marwyn, you'll head down the long hallway directly across from the entrance. When you get to the end, talk to Jaina and START RUNNING!
THE LICH KING
The Lich King, (final Boss of this instance), will be chasing behind you. You need to make your way up a pathway to escape him...however, Walls will spawn, blocking your path. You need to turn and fight waves of scourge that spawn behind you while Jaina works on breaking the wall down. High DPS is really important here. You want to get the scourge down as quickly as possible, as that seems to trigger Jaina finally breaking the wall down for you. Continue in this manner until Jaina tells you to run for the opening at the end of the pathway and escape to freedom....Oh, wait though...the Lich King himself has followed you up to the end of that path, and Jaina announces that you've reached a dead end. You'll have to turn and face him.
You'll have to turn...and face...The Lich King himself!
Good luck to all of you happy adventurers out there! This instance, on normal mode drops wonderful ilvl 219 gear, and on heroic I believe drops ilvl232 (?) gear. It's a lot of fun and so far (with the exception of the Halls of Reflection Gauntlet) is one of my absolute favorite instances that Blizzard has ever released! It's challenging and fun and really packs a lot of lore into a quick instance. Once you've finished the quest chain, you'll be able to queue for any of the instances, and you won't have to run them back to back like you might have to the first time. So, Good luck to all and enjoy your new "phat lewtz"!
Well the journey is finally over. What an amazing journey it was, too! If you're wondering, Yes...I finally completed Loremaster this morning. Honestly, I was a little sad that the journey ended. Loremaster of Old World (Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms) was sort of rough...but Outlands and Northrend was amazing!
