So … maybe somebody can explain what happened when my mage got Azjol-Nerub as her first random heroic yesterday. Well, I know what happened — two wipes and three total deaths for me on the Watchers before Krik’thir the Gatewatcher — but I’d like to figure out why. I’ve done that instance several times on my paladin and this was the second attempt on my mage, and I was seeing things I’d never seen before.
Basic problem from my perspective: I seemed to be the most appetizing target for the Watchers and their buddies. I don’t know if this was because the tank(s) sucked or not, because I spent most of the time dead.
I zoned into the instance, went through the whole “everybody buff” routine, and off we went. We burned through the trash in the tunnel on our way to Krik’thir with no problems. We got to Krik’thir’s chamber, and I sat down to drink so that I’d be at full mana before starting the fight. Except the tank pulled the first Watcher right when I sat down. Okay, fine, I’ll just continue drinking until I’m full and give the tank plenty of time to establish threat. So by the time I finished drinking and started casting, the tank had had a good 10+ seconds to establish threat. Then my Flamestrike went off under the trio of spiders … and they immediately abandoned the tank and ran over and flattened me, killing me pretty much instantly - the healer didn’t even have time to react.
Now, I don’t know if that was just complete tank fail or not, because while I lay there as a corpse (forgetting for a moment that once the first group is pulled, the other groups follow automatically, so there would likely be no rez forthcoming), I watched both the tank and the healer getting repeatedly webbed into immobility - something I don’t recall ever seeing before on that fight. But it’s possible that the tank had gotten webbed (I couldn’t see her) right before my spell went off.
Anyway, I released and ran back, entered the instance, sat down to eat and drink, and then started back down the tunnel. I didn’t make it even halfway down the tunnel, because a lone spider (one of the Watchers’ sidekicks) came racing up the tunnel at warp-speed, killed me again, and ran back down. Basically, the rest of the group had wiped by that time and I was the only target left. Also, the rest of the group reported that the tank quit in the middle of it. I assume she got pissed at being repeatedly webbed up.
So we got a new tank and tried again. And again, as soon as my first spell went off the spiders abandoned the tank to run over and slaughter me. This time the group wiped before I could even release - more webs on the tank and healer.
The new tank quit, then the healer quit, leaving just the three DPS. We discussed amongst ourselves and decided to say “screw it”.
Man, what is the deal with me and Friday night random heroics? Honestly, though, this didn’t feel like incompetence - it felt like the fight was glitching. Everybody in the group outgeared* me — I was the only one with a GS under 4k, and the first tank’s GS was more than 1k higher than mine — so I was completely baffled as to how I kept pulling threat off the tank with a single spell that didn’t even crit. Like I said, I’d done that fight once before on my mage with no issues.
I went on to do ToC and VH without any problems.
- I know there are limits to the importance of GearScore, but as DPS I’ve gotten in the habit of at least checking the tank’s GS to see if I over- or under-gear him, mainly because if I outgear the tank I know to be more careful with my DPS so that I (hopefully) don’t pull threat off him. Though at least on my paladin, pulling threat off the tank doesn’t mean instant death.
