Results tagged “Karazhan” from Bitter Roots

Every time I level a character to 70, I swear I'll never do it again.

Psh.

So now I have a level 70 warlock.  After an extremely "interesting" Shadow Lab run (three level 69s in there is kinda tough) and a little questing in Nagrand, Emelyn dinged her final ding (until the expansion).  Nax (Mega's druid) was just a little way ahead, and Taerlyx (Admosmori's prot pally) is just behind.  Although the patch is coming and it's removing Kara attument, we're still working on it together.

I put on my shiny frozen shadoweave set, hugged my felguard goodbye, and respec'd to affliction/destruction.  Oh my gosh it's fun.  You know when you're in a battleground, running along, and suddenly you're slowed and have a bazillion DoTs on you?  That's what I do now.  Muahahaha.

Hoping to start raiding with her soon.

As I've said before, I hate wiping because of random events.  I also hate wiping because of bugs.  It's different if you wipe because of a silly mistake (Let's not talk about our paladin wiping us at 1% on Prince because he accidently bubbled the tank) but when you wipe because of a bug... ugh.

We've been hit by this bug fairly reguarly in Karazhan.  And in different places, too.  It usually consists of "Oh look, where did that shade come from?  OH HOLY GOD MY FACE!"  It seems to consist of one of the shades from right up towards Netherspite's room pathing down, aggroing on somebody and then bringing all of his friends.  Usually every single shade between where you are, and where he should be.

This is the room before Illhoof.  We were finishing off the mobs there and the single shade came in, and I picked him up.  We killed him and one other before we wiped thanks to lots more (five in that picture, and we killed two and I think some wandered off before I got the screenshot).  Later on when we were heading to Netherspite, we were getting ready to pull the shades at the top of the ramp ... and there were only two there.  Proof that it's where the bugged ones come from.

WTF, Karazhan?

I tanked Kara for the second or third time last night.  We did well, we got pretty much everything down that we wanted to apart from Nightbane.

I found myself getting very frustrated when we couldn't do it.  I'd pick him up, get threat on as fast as I could, and he'd still turn around and one-shot a DPSer or healer or I'd take a few huge hits and die.  Now... I know it's not all my fault.  I know it's not my fault that people get feared, or that they stand in the charred earth for too long, or that they're out of range or LOS.

But somehow it feels like it.  As a main tank and de facto leader, it feels like I'm the one that keeps failing.  I don't get that so much on my healer, and I REALLY don't get it on my DPS.  It's strange how changing the group role can affect how I feel and how the fights go so much.

It's easy to see why there's often a lack of tanks (and healers), because it's a lot of pressure to get it right.  As a DPS class, you just have to watch your aggro, and that's about it.  Everything else is just you, if you die it's probably because you did something wrong and you typically don't take the whole raid with you (there are exceptions, of course).  As a tank... if you pull wrong, or you stand in the wrong place, or whatever - you can wipe the raid.  As a healer, if you're not quick enough on the heals or you stand in the wrong place - you can also wipe the raid. 

Yet another reason why I encourage people to play all the roles.  If you know the pressure that the tanks/healers are under, even if you decide that you can't do it yourself and stick to pewpewing, you're more likely to understand what's going on and not to point the finger when something goes wrong. 

So, last night we had a guild first.  I love those.  Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy.  One day you look back and go "remember the first time we downed him?"  It's a special kind of feeling, and I think it crosses over to the guild as a whole - not just the people who were there for it.

Netherspite!

This might not seem like a big deal to people who have been farming Kara for a while, but we've had months of "we're skipping Netherspite.  It's too technical.  Takes too long to explain.  We don't know how to do it."  We knuckled down this week, read the strats and watched the videos. 

Took us two tries.  And the first one only failed because I was trying to be fancier than I needed to be and danced with the tank beam.  We went in all prepared for multiple wipes, and we got him on the second try.  We had more trouble with Prince (three of our DPSers were melee and we had some bad infernals) than with him.  I actually swapped my warrior for my hunter for some more ranged damage.  Of course, my T4 token for the warrior/priest/druid dropped but I would have been rolling against half the group anyway. 

We went on to do Nightbane and Illhoof, to finish off Kara.  (Apart from the animal boss, but psh.)  Considering that our group was a little quirky - Warrior, Paladin, two priests and a resto druid, a warlock, two feral druids, a rogue and a hunter - it went surprisingly smoothly.  Illhoof we got down in one try, and he's the one that usually gives us some trouble.

I went to bed far too late and I think other people did too, but it was worth it. 

Yup, I'm saying it.  I think I'm sick of Kara.  While I do think that place is great, the bosses can be fun, the design is amazing... I'm sick of it.  I've been healing that place every week for months now.  Zzzzzz. 

We did a full clear for the first time last night, took us about 5 hours with a few breaks.  By "full clear" I mean Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera, Curator, Shade, Illhoof, Chess, Prince.  Nightbane still whupped us but I think we were all just tired by then.  It was a good run and a sort of catharsis for me.  I've been getting very frustrated at some of the aspects of running raids in my guild and it was something I needed.

I'm bored now, though.  I'm going to continue running Kara for a little while longer on my warrior to get her ready to tank in the 25-mans, but I think my healer is about done.  However, I've been looking at some boss fights and I think we're ready to move on.  Mags isn't really that hard, and Void Reaver looks like we'll be able to do it. 

I was going over the strats with Mega last night and getting all enthusiastic about it.  It's a good sign.

I think it's something we need as a guild, too.  We have the problem where people come in, run Kara with us for a little while until they get gear and get trained up and then they move on to a guild that's already in the 25-man places to do the same thing.  It means that there's ten or so loyal people who just end up spinning their wheels in Kara because we don't have enough to move on.  We're at a stage where we have 25 people with good enough gear and skills right now (last week we had three seperate groups down Prince, and we've seen him go down a couple of times this week) so I want to strike while the iron is hot.

Big bugger, ain't he?  There's a picture of me tanking Prince for the first time.  Well, technically the third time (The first time I accidently pulled him before we were ready, second time I got an infernal dropped a bit too close).  Now that was a scary fight, especially in stage 2.  My health was going up and down like a kangaroo in the mating season.  It was scarier than when I heal it.  Not to mention that I nearly wet myself when we misdirect-pulled him and I saw him thundering towards me.  EEK.

I found Shade of Aran a lot harder to tank than to heal.  I couldn't see what was going on nearly as much as when I'm bouncing around the edge like a deranged chipmunk on the Shade Carousel.  Like the magnetic pull thing he does, the last time he did it I didn't even notice, I was too busy watching my cooldowns.  Getting thrown up in the air was kinda fun, though.  Thank goodness for a recently popped shield wall.

I did some exploring in Karazhan yesterday too.  I'd never been up the stairs behind Attumen before.  It's an alternate route to Moroes, but I don't think it would be worth it unless you were going in just to go to him and no further, because you'd still have to clear all the stuff between him and Opera/Maiden.

I did find some cool stuff back there though, like a locked door marked "Sergeant's Quarters" and a Sergeant-At-Arms Bennett (For anyone who doesn't know, Bennett is my RL surname). 

I love running around Kara when it's cleared.  If you've not tried it, you should.  Once you get past the library it can be a pain, because Illhoof and Netherspite's stuff respawns if you don't clear them.  Even just looking at the architecture between the front door and the library is worth it, though.  It's amazingly well designed.

So, last night I main tanked in Karazhan for the first time.  It was one of the scariest things I've ever done in WoW.  During the pulls to Attumen, my hands were shaking.  It took me until Moroes to calm down and start enjoying it.  I've been to Kara X amount of times, but mostly as a healer and occasionally a DPS, so I just don't know it from the front, so to speak.  It also helped that I had great healers and damage-dealers backing me up, and my co-raid leader was in there to help me with the marking.

I do have to say ... Tanking Curator was far easier than damaging or healing in that fight.  All I had to do was stand in one place and generate hate.  It was very nice not to have to worry about the flares.

Personally, I think that the more roles you can play in a game, the better you become at it.  I'd reccommend anyone to try tanking or healing if all they've done is DPS, just because it gives you such a different scope on WoW.  I find that because I've tanked, I watch my aggro.  Because I've healed, I watch my line of sight.  Because I've damaged/crowd controlled, I know where to pull things to.  Being a different role in a group situation is almost like you're playing a different game.

Here we go again

You'd think that the Violet Eye

Would go in by now.

Animal bosses

Really not worth the time

It takes to get here.

The guy and his horse

What I want to know is if

The hay catches fire?

Now to the ballroom

Our tanks are all getting drunk

Oops they made a mess.

Now to repentence

And the Maiden of Virtue

Trapped with sex demons.

Time to see what show

We keep all our fingers crossed

R&J AGAIN.

Time for the giants.

Debuff!  Run up the stairs!  Run-

Oh well.  Back door time.

Curator.  Gear check.

This guy certainly has flare.

Sorry.  Evocate!

Through the library.

How do the wyrms read the books

When they have no hands?

Shade of Aran time.

Run around the carousel.

STOP MOVING.  Run back.

Killrek.  Killrek.  Chains.

Don't forget the AOE.

Oh yeah, and the boss.

Go to sleep for trash.

Wait a second.  Why are there-

OH MY GOD THE SHADES!

Chess event.  Okay.

If we wipe here then we fail.

Why am I the pawn?

Now we go to Prince.

Infernal on the tank.  Crap.

Yes, that was the nova.

Big flaming dragon.

When he lands don't do a thing

Except run away.

Netherspite for last.

Don't cross the streams or it's bad.

That sounds familiar.