shrug
I’ve been exalted on all my toons on all of the tabard factions for so long that memory fails apparently.
Well. That was painful, but I’ve finally completed Heroic HoR. Came in as a random, into a group that had already had their tank drop out after a wipe; probably had four more people drop out for various reasons and had to wait 10 minutes for a guy who joined up with res sickness to get over it; we probably wiped about 5 times in total, partially because I did a terrible job of dealing with the ranged attackers. I’m a little too used to the relatively brain-dead types that will stay put if you death grip or silence-pull them into short range.
Anyway, after the wipeathon on the gauntlet portion, we decided to do the dps race the easy way, by letting the lich king walk on by us while we killed the spawns from behind him. I wonder if/when Blizzard is going to fix that; there will be much QQing when they do. (We probably could have done it the fair way without much difficulty; we had about 14k total dps for that part of the instance).
ETA: I’m pretty sure it took us longer to get through HoR than it took the Burning Dogs alt group to clear Stratholme.
I actually can’t wait for the day when they fix that - I hate cheesing it out. I hope they stealth buff it too - no warnings on the boards. I just like to image all the groups standing over there in apparent safety… the Lich King starts to walk past, turns around, lets out an evil laugh (maybe with an “I seee yooooou” emote) and one-shots everyone.
Although the real fix is probably even simpler - have the spawned mobs target Jaina first instead of flying back towards the group.
If the lich king ever gets to the Faction Chick he one-shots the entire zone anyway, and she only advances away from him when you’ve killed all the undead. There’s no difference in time limit between going ahead or behind him, all it does is somewhat change up the order in which the adds engage you, and not really in a good way, in my view. I’m honestly not sure why people bother; I suppose feeling like you’re cheating is a sufficient substitute for actually cheating 
Didn’t realize that; still, not having to worry about getting keeeled by his advancing icy aura thing is a big bonus. (And getting the abominations right from the get-go is also a plus, since they’re the things that take the longest to burn down.)
Really, tabard rep is one of the brightest ideas they had for Wrath dungeons.
1.) Making creative, non-exploitative use of game mechanics isn’t cheating, it’s being smart. IMO and IME, if this weren’t a strategy that they wanted people to discover and make use of (a) they wouldn’t have put that little spit of land there to begin with, and (b) they would have hotfixed the mechanic out of the game by now. I mean, if you want to deliberately make things harder for yourself, why not play with both hands tied behind your back and a pencil in your mouth?
2.) Staying behind the LK means that you will always have a comfortable distance between him and you, and you’ll never have to worry about one of your groupmates getting hit with the aura because they didn’t move fast enough.
Wait wait wait wait.
I’ve done HoR only twice, because the random DF has a hard-on for putting me in Halls of Lightning every time. Both times after engaging the Lich King we ran ahead of him, stopped at the ice walls and burned down the mobs while whatshername clears the path. Actually this didn’t seem to be the most difficult part of the instance (in my experience of doing it exactly twice and only once on heroic).
So kindly please explain this “cheat” of which you all speak.
When you first run out the door, there’s a little peninsula to the side (your left as you go through the door). If you run up on that, your Faction Person of the Female Persuasion will run on ahead, and the LK will follow her. You’ll be safely out of the way of the LK’s aura while he passes by. Then, you can run back down on the road after he starts spawning adds, and follow behind him instead of running ahead of him.
Immediately after you leave his “chamber” there is a little ice ledge on the left edge of the path. You can get your whole group over on the ledge and the Lich King will just mosey on past. When he summons adds they leap/run back towards your group and you just follow the Lich King at a safe distance burning down the adds.
Like SFG pointed out it doesn’t really change the DPS requirements, but it removes the “OMG HERE HE COMES” stresses and makes it seem quite a bit easier.
You’re right though, after finishing the first event this part is really quite simple even done the way (IMO) it was intended.
The first time I successfully tanked a group through the gauntlet part, we had a great healer and I was on my tank game, so that went smoothly, but our dps was a bit shaky and we wiped over and over again trying to deal with the waves - we’d get to the second-last wave and the Lich King would run over us.
But it’s breaks realism/suspense of disbelief SO egregiously, even in a game where monsters don’t notice you until you’re ten feet away from them; the Lich King just walks right by? All his monsters who are trying to capture the Female Faction Person turn around and jump behind the LK to attack her bodyguards? AARGH.
It gives you maybe a couple seconds more DPS time, but it’s also a big psychological help, so your group doesn’t have him breathing down your necks, so to speak. When people really feel they’re under pressure, they freak out, shut down, and make mistakes they wouldn’t otherwise make.
ETA:
I’m surprised you can make it through an instance at all, what with the bosses attacking the tanks instead of the healers.
Yeah, well, there you go. I’d actually love to see a game with a mechanic less kludgey than “threat” for making sense of the tank/range/heals roles, but I can live with it.
I don’t know about anyone else, but heroics are a chore that I do becase I can get frost badges, not because I particularly enjoy them. So anything that gets me done with my daily random faster is a big win. I’d have no problem using the HoR trick if it got me out of there quicker.
I get plenty of challenging content in raids, so I don’t really need or care about heroics being challenging.
I just leveled up my first character to 50! (Well, 51, actually). It’s been hardish, because I really only play until one of my friends is signed on, since he’s the one who recruited me, and we still get the awesome XP bonuses if we do turn ins together. I’m kinda waiting for 55, because I’d like to be able to train up to do something in the legion (my friend’s in Eitrigg, not Cairne; my character in the guild is a low-level priest. Also? I hate playing priests. I love my 'lock. My BE pallie–the only other one I’ve gotten to 20+) is pretty fun, too. Though my lock started stinking for longevity a few dings back, and I don’t understand why.
I’m wondering what kind of DPS I should be pulling at that level. Though I’ve mostly been doing quests, and haven’t done any instances (when you only know one person, running 5 man is dicey).
Definitely, and then after the wipe you smack yourself and realize you could have hit a cooldown that you forgot about and everyone would have lived.
I’d be interested in trying a game like that. I think WoW is a little too far down the line to change the way it works now.
Same here, I log in, do my daily heroic and then sit around and maybe do some other dailies or help out a guild member etc. HoR was a real challenge and I liked the pressure during that last phase. But after running it more than a few times, it’s like just die already so we can get our phat lootz!
It’s physically impossible. A truly smart enemy will always go for the vulnerable support class. If you want to keep the strict separation of roles into tank/DPS/heals, you have to use some kind of threat mechanic.
And I’m right with you, tacoloco. Anything I can do to make the job easier–whether in Heroics or in end-game raiding–I do. One of the things I’m currently frustrated by is the strategy my new guild uses for Twin Valks. It’s way harder than it needs to be (a retarded version of the door strat, where the only people in the door are the tanks), and the RL won’t even try the strat I sent him (what I’m used to using, and completely faceroll), because he “wants to make people think.” :rolleyes: Yes, please, let’s wipe at least once every time, wasting our time and adding to our repair bills (which you might have covered by the guild, but as an Initiate, I don’t), when we could be zipping through this old content and moving on to spend more time on stuff that’s naturally challenging and rewarding without forcing it by willingly handicapping ourselves.
Grats! Do you have TBC yet? You’ll need to get that *and *Wrath to make a DK once you hit 55, don’t forget.
Use the new LFG feature (“I” on your keyboard is the shortcut)! It’s available as soon as you hit 15, which obviously you can use now. At the lower levels, you might have to wait in the queue for a while, but just keep questing until your group is assembled–you can port straight to the dungeon, and when you’re done, it will port you straight back where you came from (so make sure you run to an empty/safe spot and don’t stand where you just killed something, or you might end up standing on a respawn).
You get an extra bonus item, cash, and XP if you do random dungeons, but if there’s a place you have quests for, you can select only that one (or those ones).
I’ve seen it done in other genres, generally turn-based games with zone-of-control type rules (which are dumb in their own ways); it obviously wouldn’t work in an MMO because, hello, latency issues.
Still, I’m okay with threat mechanics even though they’re horribly anti-intuitive because otherwise you wouldn’t have a game; the HoR easy-mode annoys me because there’s no reason it HAS to be that way; they could have just left out that ledge and kept the whole “chase” atmosphere.
My point is, you can’t have the classes balanced the way they are without some kind of crutch, or the enemy will one-shot your healer and then burn through the rest of the group.
1.) It’s not easy mode, just easier mode.
2.) Arthas is still going after Jaina/Sylvanas. The chase is still there–you’ll all still die if he makes it to the wall before you can kill the adds.
3.) Why the hell would he care about you? You’re nobody. Jaina used to be his best friend/love, and Sylvanas is one of his most powerful enemies.