Thanks for dragging me along for the ride - I was doing my best, but at 3 levels below everyone else, I felt like a stick in the mud 
When I was AOE grinding my pally with my wife (mage), I loved it when we would stumble upon endless founts of MoBs.
For example, when we were around level 23, we were grinding away at the dog-people (shadow-somethings… Fangore was one of them…damn work filters) and we hit a spot where a brute would respawn IMMEDIATELY after the previous one died. It took about 7 or 8 kills before I realized there was a problem.
It’s fun when you can survive. It can be very frustrating when you’re a squishy with no escape ability or OOM.
Regarding the Oc new goodies, you can hear me snickering from over here. I like Oc, even pre-nerf. I got Emerald Void the other day and want to start working on the other two Voids if I can convince a group to do it. But yeah, it’s a lil depressing to zone into Oc and then watch as a succession of people drop out. 
I thought they already did just today in addition to the jacked gear requirement, what with making sure that waves don’t spawn with either 2 mages or 2 mercs. Part of the difficulty, for me, is in identifying and clicking on that sneaky nameplate in all the chaos even with an /assist macro. It’s a boss fight that makes every prot war I’ve tried it with cry.
Note to self: Hack nameplates to embiggen.
Oh – my guild also took a peek at Lord Marrowgar, and man. That’s a lotta bad crap to NOT stand in right there. :eek: Crazy fun though – me and the guild pvp junkie were usually the last two people down. Is there a predictable pattern to the blue fire?
ETA another question: Sunday a bunch of us tried to continue a BWL lulz run, but we hit the door boss which I thought had been fixed. Anyone encountered that since the putative fixes were put in?
There’s also a Tuskarr and his son near the Great Lift up above the Tuskarr island–he sends you off on a chain that’s fairly extensive, and will take you to the little pirate island.
And right up above one of the vrykul towns near where you do the “kill X turkeys” achievement, there’s a small camp with two undead that will send you into the vrykul town for two or three quests.
Hey, I was in the same boat last week, feeling like I was being carried along. I hope you got some decent loot and xp out of it at least.
I hadn’t heard that–awesome!
Have you tried a /tar macro? I don’t remember the exact names, so you’d have to change those, but you could set it up as something like:
So that way by default it would target the priest, then each of the modifiers would in turn target that particular mob, if there is one. (You would hold that modifier while clicking or hitting the key for the macro button. So, say you put the macro in your 0 slot on your quickbar, hitting 0 or clicking the button while also holding down shift would target a Rifleman.)
I’ve had it go smoothly once. O. N. C. E.
Marrowgar is one of those fights that looks insane, until you take a deep breath and think about what you actually, personally, individually need to pay attention to. Mostly, it comes down to staying out of the fire, which is not too hard to do, since it’s laid out in thin lines that you can quickly strafe out of. (Make sure you strafe, though, and don’t back up, because the fire will keep going in a line.)
For DPS, it’s also about quick target-switching to burn down the bone spike things that trap people, for healers, it’s also about keeping the heals up on people who get spiked so they don’t die while the DPS breaks them out, and for the tanks it’s about stacking together in front of Marrowgar to split the damage and picking him up again after a WW phase.
Oh, and for DPS it’s also about not standing in front of the boss so they don’t get hit with the lash instead of the tanks, but not standing anywhere close to the boss’s face is pretty much Raid 101. DPS also need to hold off for a couple seconds after a WW phase to let the tanks pick MG back up and reposition him, since it’s a threat wipe, but again, that’s Raid 101.
The “pattern” to the fire is that during Ph1, he’ll shoot it at a random person, so if it’s coming at you, strafe. Ph2, he’ll shoot it out in an X pattern (like NW, NE, SW, and SE on a compass, IIRC). Again, just strafe. The bone spike thing will do damage (and maybe also spike?) anyone who’s in the LOS between him and his target, so people have to be sure to stay spread out. (He’ll try casting it on your tanks, too, but his frontal lash thing gives immunity to it, so your tanks will never get spiked.)
Side tip: The “fire” actually does Frost damage. If you can get some kind of Frost resistance aura going from a Pally or a Shammy, that’s very helpful.
Caveat: I’ve only had the chance to run this once, with some random guild who I’d been doing rep trash runs with earlier in the evening. I may have misremembered details, but I’m pretty sure everything’s accurate.
Eeeee-yup. Still haven’t finished that one.
Yup, that’s it in a nutshell. There were only two really difficult things about it at release, and both have been nerfed.
The main tank was taking pretty significant damage (especially if only in 10-man gear) so if a healer got spiked and the DPS was even a little slow getting them out it was extremely easy to lose a tank, which made the fight pretty much over unless you got a really quick battle rez out. This has been nerfed by pretty significantly decreasing his melee damage output so the MT is not getting hit as hard.
The second big wipe-causer was the transition from Bone Storm to the tanking phase. He randomly targets raid members (4, I believe) to chase after with the whirlwind. If the last one is a healer, and you couldn’t have a hunter Misdirect or a Rogue TotT quick enough that healer was very likely to get one-shot. This has been nerfed by making the boss tauntable.
As for the fire, SfG nailed it - in Phase 1 it is a straight line targetted at someone in the raid. Just spread out and strafe sideways. In Phase 2 it is a giant X pattern. Just stand between the legs of the X. It moves pretty slowly, so really there isn’t much reason to get hit by it.
He’s a relatively easy, and I think fun, encounter now. Currently the raid-killers seem to be Deathwhisper and Saurfang (the gunship is pretty much a joke, but an awesome joke, IMO). With the incoming nerfs to Deathwhisper it seems likely that even PuGs will be able to get to Deathbringer Saurfang pretty reliably, even on 25-man.
All of the fights so far seem to have some nice hooks for adding hard-mode challenges to keep the hardcores interested. Hopefully more along the lines of the Ulduar ones than the ToC ones.
Can’t wait to check out the new bosses this weekend… 
Here’s what you want to do.
[spoiler]1.) Don’t panic when you see your “disguise failing” warning. That’s supposed to happen–don’t bother to reapply it, as the big trolls around the outside won’t aggro on you.
2.) When you get the “your thingie is glowing, use it!” message, select a troll and use the item to bring it under your control.
3.) Send the troll after the guy you want to kill as soon as he’s attackable. (If you still have your Scourge costume on, you’ll have to click it off, or you won’t be able to attack him, even with the pet.)
4.) Spam all of the controlled troll’s abilities as soon as they’re off CD, with the possible exception of the heal. Hold off on using that one for the first time until after you’ve taken some damage. After that, try to be strategic, but I woudn’t be surprised if you need it as soon as it’s up every time.
5.) Personally DPSing the boss is a very secondary concern to keeping yourself alive. Your troll can do most or all of the work himself; keep your own health topped off with healing spells/abilities, bubbles, potions, bandages–whatever you have.
6.) IIRC, the blight crystals are Nature damage, so Nature resist could be helpful here if you have an ability that way. (If you’re between troll pets, the boss will spam Shadowbolts at you, so Shadow resist would be good there.)
7.) Your biggest job will be staying out of the blight crystals that get tossed at you. As soon as you see a crystal heading over, start moving a bit. Don’t wait for it to actually hit the ground, or you’ll be taking damage the whole time you’re working to the outside of the orange puddle.
8.) Try to stay at the outer edge of the ring, so you have more room to move, keeping the area ahead of you clear from the orange puddles of death. Pick a spot and then just keep moving in one direction as he throws things at you. Ideally, the earlier puddles will then be gone by the time you get back around.
9.) When your first pet starts getting low on HP, pick another troll to control, but DON’T DO IT YET. It’s been reported that if you release a troll before it’s dead, it will turn around and aggro on you, meaning you have to deal with two elites beating you up until you can tame a new troll and then have it tank both. Be ready to tame the new troll as soon as the old one dies, though, because boss guy will be hitting you with Shadowbolts until your new troll hits him (this would probably be a good time to pop a cooldown to keep your health up).
10.) Lather, rinse, repeat until the boss is dead. If you’re hitting your pet’s abilities as soon as they’re off CD, and maybe throwing in a little extra damage yourself when you can spare it (from range, if at all possible, to give yourself more room to stay out of the orange puddles), you shouldn’t need more than two troll pets to kill him. Just keep in mind: your job is to **stay alive **while your pet troll does the majority of the work.[/spoiler]
Honestly, it’s not hard at all to solo. I’ve done it twice without difficulty. It’s pretty much like the exploding abomination quest or vehicle quests. [spoiler]You go onto the roof of the necropolis, your disguise fails, you get a message about how the Rod of Dominion or whatever it is begins to glow. You target one of the big trolls and activate the rod, which goes through a several second channel. It turns green to you and charges Drakuru. Start spamming the two attack abilities every time they finish cooling down, and make use of the healing ability. Never stop moving around in a circle, and stay out of the patches of green on the ground. The troll’s healing ability will keep you alive. When the troll dies to Drakuru, activate the rod on another troll and repeat. You should only need to take two trolls to do it.
Oh yeah, and all the troll’s abilities are just over your action bars on the right side, if you haven’t been able to find them. Same place the abom’s abilities appear for the exploding abom quest.[/spoiler]
ETA: Damn you, woman!
Another hint: If you have a high-level friend (preferably level 80), they can group with you, fly in the air above the place in question, and drop down after the event starts, to help you. Because of the nature of the event, it’s not immediately obvious that someone not on the quest can help in this fashion.
Yeah, I understand how to do it — I made several attempts, interspersed with reading about it on different sites. My problem is that I have an extremely difficult time trying to keep moving while simultaneously hitting my minion’s abilities. That, and the one time I survived long enough for my first minion to die, Drakuru 2-shotted me (from full health to dead) while I was trying to tame the second minion.
OTOH, I think I may have been lvl 77-78 the last time I tried it. That was some time ago, and now at lvl 80 and with better gear I may have better luck.
Unless you were standing in a Blight Crystal pool, that shouldn’t have happened. His Shadowbolts hurt, but not that badly. You’re meant to have enough time to get another troll under your control.
Actually, IIRC, by default they would be on the left or in the center.
Moohoohahaha.
If you’re an exlusive mouse-mover, the default pet ability bar keybinds are Ctrl + a number, starting with 1 on the left. (So Ctrl+1 would be Attack for most pets.) If you’d rather click the abilities, you shouldn’t have to move *too *much, that you couldn’t get to a clean patch of ground long enough to click whatever just came off CD. I don’t think anything’s on just the GCD–IIRC, everything has at least a few seconds’ cooldown.
This is your Pally, right? IIRC you have a PvP Prot spec–that should be good for minimizing incoming damage, since I think your main spec is Ret and not Holy. You can still toss heals on yourself, and throw up a Shadow Resistance Aura in between trolls when you’re taming the new one. You can either leave that up the whole time, or have Conc Aura up when the troll is fighting, to make it easier to heal yourself while taking damage. Pop a cooldown when you’re picking up a new troll after the first one dies–you even have Lay on Hands if you really need it, and there’s no way that the boss will be able to kill you from full HP to dead in the two seconds it takes to get the new troll.
I just did this one at-level on my Mage, and if her squishy ass can make it through, a Paladin (in Plate with lots of heals, bubbles, and other damage-mitigators) should definitely be able to do it, especially at 80. Just remember to stay at the outside of the ring–don’t hang around in the middle trying to hit the boss, because you’ll get too much goo underneath you too quickly.
I ran H Occulus last night with an excellent group…the tank and healer were the ones that actually stayed while the other 2 DPS kept revolving around different players coming in and out…we actually ran the trash and waited for 2 stable DPSers to join us before we took out the first boss. We were actually begging the DPSers to stay…we actually had a great tank and healer lined up! Once we got set, we told everyone that we were going for the Ruby Void achievement and then went on to annihilate everything else in our path…I kept spamming Temporal Rift with an occasional Time Stop while the others were spamming their main attack. With Eregos (sp?), I was the only survivor though with 8k left on my amber drake…but just missed the timed achievement. Now I just need that and the Amber Void achievement.
I’d go on tonight, but payroll is priority right now.
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brb makin macro n rearrangin bars
Thanks for the extensive notes SFG and Jas09! They’ll be useful whenever I can convince my guildies to take another run at him. Probably not soon as we still haven’t headed back into Uld or TOTC, though – need to remind RL to stick those on the calendar.
Burning Dog Legion classic dungeon run tonight - either LBRS, Statholme or Scholomance. My only familiarity with Strat is the Cavern of Time version, but how different could it be?
For those of you familiar with these instances - how are they in terms of length? Can we do them at level in less than two hours?
Strat is really long. I’m not sure I did it in under 2 hours soloing with my 80, and I’d expect a more-or-less at-level run to be significantly longer. It does divide somewhat naturally into two parts, though - go in, do the Scarlet Crusade part, then go just far enough in to get the key to the back half, and come back in the back door some other day and kill baron what’s-his-face.
Scholo isn’t bad. I’d expect an hour at most. Stratholme…well, you know how there’s a general 30-minute timer on CoS? Strat has a similar 45-minute timer for half the instance.
Strat at level takes for-freaking-ever. At 80, it depends utterly on class, my rather undergeared pally can burn through it probably 15 minutes or so, my better geared lock takes closer to an hour.
Scholo I’ve never done with out at least one person in the group being in their high 60s, so I can’t say.