Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - Printable Version

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Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - MongoJerry - 03-12-2005

[Image: lbrs_map.jpg]

THE ADVENTURES OF NERIAD -- FIVE PLAYER RUNNING LOWER BLACKROCK SPIRE

(Note to Lurkers: I will be posting these writeups on multiple forums. Hence, the tone of the opening paragraphs).

Hello, everyone! It's been a long time. For those of you who know me, it's good to be back. For those who don't know me, allow me to introduce myself. During the World of Warcraft closed beta, I wrote several journals describing the adventures of my night elf priestess, Neriad. I had a lot of fun writing them, and happily many people seemed to enjoy reading them. If you'd like to check them out here are some links, including links to tales of some oddball Diablo II characters I had created as well.

World of Warcraft Journals:

Deathknell (retail journal)
Hey! The King's Back!
The Great Masquerade! (The Stormwind Raid Event)
Onyxia
Lord Lakmaeran
Schooling Scholomance

Diablo II Journals:
Grizabella, the Fighter Mage
Gunter, the Barbarian Mage
Maldar, the Pacifist Hero
Irene, the Infirm

Catching everyone up on the story, Neriad is now an undead priestess playing on the PvP server, Tichondrius. At first, I had planned to detail her adventures as she leveled up, but I ran into two problems. First, real life ™ issues came up that restricted how much time I had to write. And second, writing up a character's adventures takes about twice as long as the actual adventures themselves. I had to skimp on the journaling, if I wanted to have any hope of getting to level 60 in any reasonable amount of time and see some of the high-end content I wanted to see. In hindsight, however, that was a bad idea, because I've ended up spending the majority of the last six weeks doing what almost everyone else who's been level capped for six weeks has been doing: raiding instances ad nauseam in tedious item runs with grossly overpowered raiding parties.

I tried organizing some five-player instance runs a few times, but most players spurned the idea. I've told people repeatedly that Scholomance, Stratholme, and lower Blackrock Spire were all designed for 5-player teams and that upper Blackrock Spire was designed for 10-player teams, but many people thought I was nuts to suggest such a thing, even though it's quite plain from the game design that this is the case. The whole idea of preventing players from getting quest credit for most instance quests while in a raid party was to encourage players to continue to play in 5-player teams and to give rewards to those players who chose not to zerg instances with overpowered raiding parties. Notice that the only quests in normal instances that can be completed in a raid are those in upper Blackrock Spire, the only section of a normal instance designed for teams with more than five players. The fact that you can get quest credit by leaving a raiding party temporarily is due to a gross flaw in the game code that will thankfully be fixed in the next patch.

What saddens me about this situation is that so many players have been missing some of the best and most fun aspects of the game. Most players in retail weren't in the closed beta, so they don't remember a time when there were no such things as raids and every instance had to be run in five player teams. They also don't remember how much fun playing the game can be when you are part of a small cohesive group that depends absolutely on the contributions of each individual for the survival of the whole.

And until last Thursday, I had forgotten, too.

[Image: lbrs_barov.jpg]

An Unlikely Beginning

It all started when a level 60 shaman named Eon asked on the Western Plaguelands general chat channel if some people would be willing to help him kill Weldon Barov, so he could complete the Last Barov quest. Weldon Barov himself typically takes a group of 3-4 players to kill (some people say you need a raiding party, but they're nuts), and it doesn't help that there's a major alliance flight path point right next to him at Chillwind Point (soon to be renamed Chillwind Camp). Tichondrius is a PvP server, and Alliance players seem to get a kick out of foiling the attempts of Horde players to complete this quest, so it helps to take along a couple extra people in case you get involved in a PvP battle at the same time.

It's often tough to form groups to complete outdoor quests, so I sympathized with Eon's plight. I happened to be turning in a quest in nearby Caer Darrow at the time, so I figured I'd take a small detour and help the guy out. Eon and I tried to kill Barov by ourselves, but even with fear kiting and other tricks, Barov absolutely destroyed us. Luckily, however, Eon's warrior friend Bort said he'd come help, and another random stranger in the area, a rogue named Saito, offered to help.

As we assembled on the hill across from the camp, however, an Alliance priestess spotted us and started doing the most bizarre thing. She inched forward, cast SW:Pain on random people in the party, and darted back next to Weldon Barov repeatedly. "Is this guy an idiot?" I asked as I dispelled each SW:Pain the moment after it appeared. The party collectively shrugged as Bort charged the priestess and everyone else ran forward to kill her in a few seconds. (Hint: Barov doesn't aggro until he's personally attacked). An Alliance hunter, who we had planned to leave alone, belatedly joined the battle and got summarily crushed as well. Oh, well. Red equals dead, right? Before any more Alliance players could show up on the scene, we attacked and killed Weldon Barov, and Eon looted the quest-related head.

Pleased with our successful adventure, Saito said that we should run an instance, suggesting perhaps lower Blackrock Spire (LBRS). Bort said he'd be up for that, and it sounded like there was some enthusiasm for the idea. Unfortunately, I had completed all the quests in LBRS, and the only thing I really needed from there was the Devout Belt. I didn't feel like raiding LBRS just for that. I said nothing, though, since I didn't want to spoil everyone else's enthusiasm. I figured I'd wait for them to start up a raid group and then bow out with the truthful excuse that I didn't want to raid something like LBRS. Then Saito said something that made me do a double take.

Saito: All we need now is a mage.

I stared at my computer screen, while my brain tried to process this statement. I could hardly believe it.

Neriad: You're talking about a 5-player party?
Saito: Yeah
Neriad: Heck, yeah! I'm up for that!

I scanned my friends list for any mages whom I thought might be interested in something like this. It amazed me to have four players together in one spot who wanted to 5-man a high level instance, and I didn't want to let this opportunity pass me by. I smiled when I saw that Aixelsyd, a level 60 mage with whom I'd instanced many times, was on. He had read my writeup on 5-manning Scholomance during the beta and had told me that he wanted to go on a 5-man run of Scholomance with me sometime. I messaged him and asked him if he wanted to 5-man LBRS instead. After a pause, he said, "Sure," and the party was set.

[Image: lbrs_start.jpg]

Blackrock Spire is an instance that's really two dungeons with a common entranceway. To the left is the raid-level Upper Blackrock Spire (UBRS) that requires someone in the party to have a special key to open the door. To the right is Lower Blackrock Spire (LBRS), the 5-player instance where one can (after many runs) obtain the key to UBRS, where one can complete many quests, and where some very special loot can drop if one is lucky. That loot will be discussed as we go along.

Our party consisted of these five individuals:

Bort, Level 60 Warrior
Eon, Level 60 Shaman
Aixelsyd, Level 60 Mage
Saito, Level 60 Rogue
Neriad, Level 60 Priest

For a group that was formed largely spontaneously, you couldn't ask for a better mix of classes. I'll mostly stick with the story of this first run. However, after having this terrific experience with the first group, Saito and I managed to put together two more 5-player LBRS runs in the following days. The second group was composed of:

Goluf, Level 60 Warrior
Diest, Level 59 Warlock
Kevoom, Level 57 Mage
Saito, Level 60 Rogue
Neriad, Level 60 Priest

This was an interesting party in that we only had one healer, but with the warlock we had extra crowd control and extra dps. Unfortunately, the server crashed halfway through the run, but we had a good time anyway. The third group was back to the original class formulation:

Kalobos, Level 58 Warrior
Rai, Level 60 Shaman
Khadgars, Level 60 Mage
Saito, Level 60 Rogue
Neriad, Level 60 Priest

This group started late at night and wiped in the middle of the instance. It didn't help that our shaman didn't have any ankhs (warning: rant coming later), but we still could have recovered. It was so late in the evening, however, that we all decided to end the run early. What was amazing about this, though, was that there was no ill will among the party. When was the last time you heard the words, "Damn, that was the most fun I've had in a long time" after a party wipes and calls it a night?

Like I said, I'll mostly tell the story of the first party, but I'll throw in a few tidbits from the second two parties as appropriate. Also, I'll use some of the screenshots of the later two parties if I think they illustrate a point I'm making better than screenshots from the first run. So if I'm talking about the first party but you see a warlock doing something in the background of an image, that's why.

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - MongoJerry - 03-12-2005

[Image: lbrs2_lookingdown.jpg]

The Road to Highlord Omokk

After quickly dispatching the guards in the entryway, a party has two paths to choose from to get to LBRS. I have often thought it would be interesting to study the psychology and sociology of how habits, myths, and conventions are formed in on-line communities. (For example, how did the "Don't talk to the patrons in the bar!" myth form and spread?). In the beta, the convention was to go down the stairs, kill the two easy guards in like 15 seconds, and hang a right. In retail (on Tichondrius, at least), the convention is to go up the stairs and jump down from the ledge. This has the benefit of not requiring one to kill two easy mobs. On the other hand, it means that if something goes wrong on the next fight, all means of escape is cut off and emergency measures like fearing are not feasible. Oh, well. Most players never think anything is going to go wrong, so I guess people prefer to shave 15 seconds off their trip. If you do the jump down thing, make sure to kill the two roaming guards before engaging the mobs down the ramp (seen in the screenshot above) or else things can get messy.

The first task of the instance is to work one's way through groups of Blackrock orc guards to get to Highlord Omokk, an ogre warlord who is the first of three bosses Horde players must kill to complete the quest, The Warlord's Command, which is incidentally the first quest in a long quest chain that ends with Horde players getting their Onyxia key. The orc guards on the way to Omokk tend to come in two configurations. The first configuration can be seen in the screenshot above, where one can see a cluster of three elite orcs to the upper left and to the right of them, a cluster made of an elite Scarshield Raider who has two nonelite worg pets. Most of the time, the two clusters are close enough to each other that both clusters get pulled, meaning that you have to deal with six mobs at once -- four elites and two nonelites. However, on occasion they are far enough apart that they can be pulled separately.

The second configuration is a straight cluster of four elite mobs, and usually one of these mobs is a warlock, who can create a portal that summons an indefinite number of minions. It is important to always target and kill the warlocks first. Incidentally, hunting down and killing the warlocks in LBRS is important to player warlocks, since they drop both the book that teaches warlocks how to summon infernals and also these babies:

[Image: lbrs2_bracers.jpg]

So, how do you handle the orc mobs? Well, you can use the standard technique: sap one mob, sheep another, kill the warlock first (if applicable), then the worgs (if applicable) to get the nonelites out of the way, then any other free elites, then the sapped mob, and then the sheeped mob. It works, but things can sometimes get a little hairy on those six mob (4 elite + 2 nonelite) pulls if players make some mistakes. Also, there are a few groups (usually guarding a chest) of five elites, and while the standard technique can work against them if the party stays focused, there's a better way that uses Mind Control.

Mind Control, you ask? Doesn't that take the priest out of the action? That's worthless, you say. And you'd be right, if one uses what I call the Weak Mind Control method.

The Weak Mind Control Method: The WMC method involves mind controlling a mob after a mob group has been pulled. Effectively, the method treats Mind Control like any other crowd control skill in that it reduces the number of enemy mobs attacking your party by one. Mind Control has an advantage over other crowd control skills in that the priest can now use the controlled mob to attack the other enemy mobs, but since the priest can't cast any spells while controlling the mob, the party also effectively loses its priest for the duration of the spell. When priests do this, the usual response from partymates is, "Just heal!" Warrior tanks don't mind tanking an extra mob if it means knowing that the priest will be actively engaged in healing him or her. Because of this, new priests quickly learn the mantra that "Mind Control is worthless" in group instance play, and they rarely use it for more than humorous purposes. But there's a much more powerful way to use Mind Control.

[Image: lbrs2_mindcontrolwarush.jpg]

The Mind Control Pull: Mind Control is far more powerful if it's used during the initial pull. In this case, the other mobs will attack the controlled mob rather than the party, allowing the priest to crowd control multiple mobs at once. In the screenshot above, for example, Mind Control is being used to crowd control not one but five mobs. (I'm not counting the sapped orc on the right). What's more, all of the damage dealt by the enemy mobs is being directed at their own teammate, and mobs often start fights by using their most powerful attacks. (e.g. One of the orcs above is firing his arcane missiles at the controlled mob).

After the priest mind controls a mob, the party's mage should sheep one of the other elite mobs. This both keeps the controlled mob from dying too quickly and also makes it so that the party has less to deal with in the unfortunate case that Mind Control breaks early. Then, mobs who are attacking the controlled mob should be pealed off one at a time and killed. A good tank will have no difficulty tanking single mobs at a time, and if the party has a secondary healer to provide an occasional heal, so much the better. After all the free mobs are killed, the party can then kill the sapped, controlled and sheeped mobs one at a time.

Incidentally, if you let a controlled mob get killed by its mob teammates, it won't drop any loot. So, I usually release a mob with a sliver of life left and then Mind Blast it to finish it off. Also, Mind Control causes a huge amount of aggro, so if Mind Control releases early, the previously controlled mob needs to be taunted by the group's warrior or sheeped to get it off the priest.

By the way, in the top righthand corner of the screenshot above, you can see a trogg walking around. His name's Warosh, and he asks adventurers to help recapture his mojo by killing Highlord Omokk, placing his head on a pike, sticking the pike in a tribute pile later in the instance, and killing the ogre boss, Urok Doomhowl, who has Warosh's mojo. It's a very difficult event, and I'd like to attempt to five-man it at some point. However, all of the members of our party had already completed the quest in previous raids, so we ended up skipping it.

[Image: lbrs2_action.jpg]

You can see the pikes for the Urok Doomhowl quest lying against the wall in the background in the screenshot above. (I love this action screenshot).

[Image: lbrs2_ogre1.jpg]

With a little bit of luck, skill, deception, and brute force, our party made our way through the orc parties to the ogre section of the instance. This area is actually comparatively easy, since the ogres come in groups of only two or three. Sap, sheep, and kill. No sweat.

[Image: lbrs2_ogre2.jpg]

The only thing to watch out for here is that after the initial ogre guards, you'll come to a narrow stone bridge. At this point, someone in the party will likely yell, "DON'T FIGHT ON THE BRIDGE!!!!" The ogres have the ability to knock players back, and if you get knocked off the bridge, it's a long way down.

In a bit of foreshadowing of things to come, you can see a group of spiders in the upper left part of the screenshot above and another group of ogres standing above the doorway. Being able to play at the more leisurely pace of a 5-man group has given me a better chance to look around and appreciate the architecture of the dungeon and see how the instance wraps around on itself three-dimensionally. Although we can see the spiders right there, they come much later in the journey, and the ogres you see above the entranceway are actually guarding the tribute pile near the end of the instance where one can summon Urok Doomhowl. There are lots of places to jump to skip portions of the instance, but most of those tricks are beyond the scope of this journal which is detailing the adventures of a group who actually wanted to run the entire instance. I'll leave the details of most of those tricks for someone else to describe.

[Image: lbrs2_mindcontrologre.jpg]

Past the stone bridge is Highlord Omokk's chamber. Here, I mind controlled one of the ogre guards. There was no tactical reason to do this, but I was having fun. When you mind control an ogre, your camera angle shifts so high up that even taurens look tiny.

[Image: lbrs2_omokk.jpg]

At the end of the chamber lies Omokk himself, along with his two bodyguards. The obvious tactic is to sap and sheep the two bodyguards, and kill Omokk. However, we instead sapped one bodyguard and mind controlled the other. Omokk hits hard, so I let him and the bodyguard duke it out until the bodyguard had a sliver of life left. Then I released the bodyguard, killed him with a Mind Blast, and the party proceeded to attack Omokk. When it comes to Mind Control, give a priestess an inch, and she'll take a mile.

Omokk himself hits hard and knocks players back, but the fight isn't difficult.

[Image: lbrs2_belt.jpg]

Omokk ended up dropping the Belt of Valor, which we practically had to force our warrior, Bort, to take. He kept saying he had a better belt and that the Valor set bonuses aren't that great. And we kept telling him that he might end up getting the rest of the set someday and that maybe the set will get better in a later patch. He hemmed and hawed, and we finally had to tell him, "Bort, just take the damn belt, will you?" "Well, ok." Sheesh.

Highlord Omokk had been vanquished, and it was now time to tackle the Smolderthorn trolls and kill their leader, War Master Voone. And, oh yes, it was time to search for that elusive Devout Belt.

UP NEXT: Neriad and the Quest for the Holy Belt

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - TotoGuy - 03-12-2005

Oh boy, I've been hoping to see more of these journals, that's how I ended up in this forum. Keep it up!~
Wish I could join one of those, but alas, I'm both short on free time and on the EU servers. At least you write them in a way one could imagine being there himself :D

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - Treesh - 03-12-2005

Love the writeups Mongo. Thanks

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - Munkay - 03-12-2005

I don't even own WoW or have the time to play it. But to echo Treesh, your write-ups are exceptional. Keep it up :). I'm a huge fan.

Cheers,

Munk

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - MongoJerry - 03-13-2005

[Image: lbrs3_bijou.jpg]

NERIAD AND THE QUEST FOR THE HOLY BELT

After killing Highlord Omokk, the party left his chamber, returned to the area where we had previously defeated most of the blackrock orc guards, and jumped down into a crevice in the center of the room. It's not strictly necessary to do this, since there's a nice gentle ramp off to the side that leads to Tazz'Alaor, the troll section of LBRS. However, if you're not planning to clear most of Tazz'Alaor, you can skip some mob groups this way. Plus, it involves jumping, which is fun (always a plus). Our party planned to clear most of Tazz'Alaor in a search for the elusive Devout Belt, but we jumped into the crevice out of habit.

In the crevice hides Bijou, a goblin NPC working both as a spy for the Horde and an operative for Kibler's Exotic Pets. She tells adventurers that she had been doing some reconnaissance the previous night but had stumbled on a trip wire that set off an alarm. She had to stash her recon gear, along with her notes, and run for it. Now, she asks adventurers to find her belongings, so she can make a full report to the Horde of what she has found and also, I imagine, get information back to Kibler's Exotic Pets incorporated.

[Image: lbrs3_rampfight.jpg]

A small entryway in the wall of the crevice opens to a ramp that leads down into the heart of Tazz'Alaor. Most of the trolls come in clusters of four, although a few groups have five members. Fights are generally straightforward here, but adventurers should be wary of wandering patrols who can turn a straightforward fight into a party wipe very quickly. The screenshot above was obviously taken during the second run, when there was a warlock in the party. I thought it was a nice illustration of three crowd control skills -- sap, polymorph, and seduce -- working together.

There are two troll bosses in Tazz'Alaor. Up the ramp across from the party in the screenshot above is a kind of lounge or bar area, and in a side room there stands Shadow Hunter Vosh'gajin, who is involved in a weaponsmith quest but for most people is considered a loot boss who drops good items for hunters and rogues. Down the ramp and through the archway you can see in the upper left part of the screenshot is War Master Voone, who is one of the objectives of the Horde quest, Warlord's Command, and who also sometimes drops one of the gems for the key to UBRS. Like most groups, we decided to do the downstairs area first.

[Image: lbrs3_showspatrols.jpg]

As you go down the ramp, you'll come to a "T" intersection. If you turn right to face the archway to War Master Voone, you'll see a scene similar to the one shown above. A cluster of four trolls waits for you at the bottom of the ramp, and several berserker wanderers pass by the cluster far too closely. If you pull at the wrong time, you can end up pulling a wanderer, and even if you pull well, when sap or sheep breaks, the mob can end up pulling a wanderer then as well. That's what happened to our first party, and while we didn't wipe, we had a much tougher fight than we had to and experienced a couple of deaths. The second and third groups did something that was much smarter. We killed the patrols first.

[Image: lbrs3_killingpatrols.jpg]

Instead of going down the right ramp at the "T" intersection, we went down the left ramp, which is free of trolls. We could then pull the patrollers from this safe location without any fear of pulling any large mob clusters.

[Image: lbrs3_killingpatrols2.jpg]

All of the wanderers and patrollers could be single or duo pulled, and we made short work of them.

[Image: lbrs3_killingpatrols3.jpg]

This technique didn't cost us much time, since we would have had to have killed the patrols eventually anyway. With all of the wanderers and patrols taken out, the fights with the larger clusters reverted to being straightforward again.

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - MongoJerry - 03-13-2005

[Image: lbrs3_typicalfight.jpg]

Once through the archway, we still had a couple more guard groups to kill, and one of the random unnamed trolls dropped this little thing:

[Image: lbrs3_krolblade.jpg]

Saito, our rogue, was ecstatic when he won the roll for the Krol Blade, one of the best swords a rogue can have in the game. We had a big celebration when he equipped it and showed it off. There's a theory that better loot drops in 5-man groups than in raid groups. I doubt that that's true, but that Krol Blade drop sure made me wonder if there's something to the idea.

[Image: lbrs3_voone.jpg]

After killing the guards, it was time to take on War Master Voone. There aren't any special tactics to this fight. He just hits hard. The fight is a matter of hoping the group can kill Voone before the priest's mana runs out from spamming Flash Heals on the tank. Incidentally, in the screenshot above, Neriad is standing on the Important Blackrock Documents, which are necessary to obtain for the Warlord's Command quest. The documents can spawn on the ground near any of the three major bosses -- Omokk, Voone, or Wyrmthalak. If someone picks up the documents, they will respawn, but they might not respawn in the same place. For example, if a partymember picked up these documents by Voone, the documents could respawn again right there or back in Omokk's chamber or up ahead in Wyrmthalak's chamber. Most groups typically /random to decide who gets to pick up a certain set of documents just in case the group doesn't pass by another set later on.

Voone doesn't usually drop very much lootwise (the blue throwing axes he frequently drops are a kind of running joke), but he does sometimes drop the Gemstone of Smolderthorn which is used to make the key to UBRS and he can also drop the Beaststalker's Gloves.

[Image: lbrs3_shadowpriest.jpg]

After killing Voone, we proceeded to wander the ground floor of Tazz'Alaor, laying waste to any troll groups with Shadow Priests in them. No belt dropped. In the process, we cleared our way to a locked mithril bound chest, but our rogue's lockpicking skill wasn't high enough to pick the lock. What is it with rogues who don't have their lockpicking skilled up? I mean, why do they think we take them into instances? Sheesh.

[Image: lbrs3_voshroom.jpg]

Upstairs, killed a couple of mob groups in the lounge, and hung a left up a ramp into the side room where Shadow Hunter Vosh'gajin resides. The four trolls in front are linked, so we sapped and sheeped the right side trolls and pulled the two on the left side.

[Image: lbrs3_saitofrog.jpg]

And in the middle of the battle, Vosh'gajin and her two shadow priest bodyguards aggroed and quickly wiped the party. No one in the party saw what happened, although we were pretty sure that it wasn't a wandering sheep, as the sheep wasn't nearly close enough to have caused the aggro. Our best guess was that one of the sapped or sheeped mobs was an axethrower, who after breaking from control, proceeded to back away to start throwing his throwing axes. Whatever the cause, we learned our lesson: Pull that group of four trolls far back to the ramp at the entrance to the room. Eon, our shaman, self rezed and resurrected the party.

[Image: lbrs3_continue.jpg]

Currently, when shamans self-rez, they experience resurrection sickness for ten minutes (this will thankfully be removed in the next patch). We didn't want to take on Vosh'gajin shorthanded, so we went back to the lounge area and proceeded to kill all the groups there with Shadow Priests in them. No Devout Belt dropped. Only two more shadow priests were left: Vosh'gajin's bodyguards.

[Image: lbrs3_voshfrog.jpg]

After Eon's resurrection sickness wore off, we went back into Vosh'gajin's chambers, pulled the surviving forward troll guards back to the room's entrance ramp, and killed them. We then sapped and sheeped the two shadow priest bodyguards and focused on killing Vosh'gajin herself. The biggest thing to watch out for when fighting Vosh'gajin is that she has an area-of-effect frog polymorph ability (I want that spell). She can turn everyone within a certain radius into a frog, and she can attack you while you're a frog without breaking the polymorph. Incidentally, the normal troll shadow priests can also frog individual players, so if you don't crowd control those two bodyguards, you're going to have people being frogged left and right.

Countering Vosh'gajin's frogging spell is easy, though, because the spell's area-of-effect has a limited range -- I'm guessing something on the order of 10-15 yards. As long as the party's priest stands well back in the fight, he or she can quickly dispel the polymorph on the other party members, and Vosh'gajin can be defeated easily. On the first two runs, Vosh'gajin dropped a nice bow and crossbow, respectively, and on the final run, Saito finally got his Shadowcraft Gloves.

[Image: lbrs3_voshgloves.jpg]

We finished off the two shadow priest bodyguards, the only remaining shadow priests in the instance, and I waited with baited breath for the results of their drops.

No belt. No Devout Belt dropped during the other two runs, either. I got my Devout robes on my first UBRS run, so I guess this is the universe's way of evening things out. Oh, well. I'll get the belt eventually. And if you're on Tichondrius, want to do a 5-player run of LBRS, and are willing to kill all the troll shadow priests in the instance, look me up.

[Image: lbrs3_spiders.jpg]

Inside Vosh'Gajin's room, Eon pointed out an ominous sight. An open window overlooks the spider lair, and our group was fast approaching it. Just outside the lounge area of Tazz'Alaor, we jumped from a ledge to a safe spot where the Firebrand orcs hang out. Doing this let us skip about ten troll and orc groups, and after spending all that time killing trolls, I think we all felt it was time to push ahead a bit.

UP NEXT: Firebrand Orcs and the Epic Mage Drop

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - iyguy - 03-13-2005

MongoJerry,Mar 12 2005, 12:52 AM Wrote:It didn't help that our shaman didn't have any ankhs (warning: rant coming later)

Did he forget to restock on ankhs or did he never use them? Not that there's any excuse for a high level shaman not to have ankhs at all times, but I actually met a level 52 a few weeks ago who told me he hadn't even purchased reincarnation because "you still get resucitation sickness when a warlock puts soulstone on you." :blink:

Edit: Forgot to add, thanks for the great write-up. I'm eagerly awaiting to read how the rest of your journey unfolds.

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - Treesh - 03-13-2005

iyguy,Mar 13 2005, 08:45 AM Wrote:Did he forget to restock on ankhs or did he never use them?  Not that there's any excuse for a high level shaman not to have ankhs at all times, but I actually met a level 52 a few weeks ago who told me he hadn't even purchased reincarnation because "you still get resucitation sickness when a warlock puts soulstone on you."  :blink:

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There's a bug right now where if a shaman dies and has reincarnation and has ankhs and is soulstoned by a warlock, the reincarnation kicks in rather than the soulstone so you'll burn the ankh, get the res sickness, and the soulstone will be taken off of you as well. Most shaman get around this by still carrying ankhs, but if they're with a warlock, they pass their ankhs to someone else in the party. In the next patch, reincarnation will not cause res sickness in order to address this problem.

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - MongoJerry - 03-13-2005

Treesh,Mar 13 2005, 08:22 AM Wrote:In the next patch, reincarnation will not cause res sickness in order to address this problem.

I imagine that they're really taking this out, because it was downright stupid to make a five player party wait around for ten minutes before they could get moving again. In raids, a shaman with rez sickness can just sit back and heal a little, but in a 5-player group, losing a player for ten minutes is really crippling. I'm surprised that they're taking rez sickness out altogether, though, since I can imagine some exploits coming out of it. I would've been happy if they had just reduced the time to like two minutes or something.

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - iyguy - 03-13-2005

Yup. I'm aware of this issue, and as you mention, there's an easy work-around, which is why I found it mind boggling that he didn't have the skill.

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - MongoJerry - 03-14-2005

[Image: lbrs4_start.jpg]

THE FIREBRAND ORCS

Just outside the door to the troll lounge is a ledge where one can jump down to a safe corner that connects two corridors filled with Firebrand orcs. The worst that can happen when you jump down is that you might land on a solitary orc patroller who passes through there. Not a big deal. By doing this, we ended up skipping about eight to ten orc and troll groups. (None of the troll groups contained shadow priests -- I checked). Like I said before, after spending all that time clearing all those trolls in Tazz'Alaor, our group was ready to skip ahead a little bit.

Firebrand orcs come in clusters of varying numbers under their little red huts. The clusters are close to one another, the orcs run when they're low on health, and some orcs wander between the groups. In the screenshot above, for example, a Firebrand Invoker is leaving a group and wandering over to another group. After spending some time with the second group, the Invoker will return back to the first one. One of the many things that can go wrong in this room is that a sapped or sheeped mob could break, aggro a wanderer who is halfway along toward returning who in turn yells and aggros the full cluster of 3-4 orcs the wanderer had just been visiting with.

When talking about this corridor, I feel like I'm caught in a bind. I neither want to oversell nor undersell the danger. Most of the time, you're dealing with three or four orcs, and the fights are straightforward. Although the orcs here hit harder than the ones upstairs, this is hardly an "OMG! We're gonna die!" place. However, it is a place where Things Go Wrong ™. Pulls can go wrong, crowd control can go wrong, runners can get away, and people can accidentally back into mob groups behind them. The bottom line is that the primary danger here is the danger of getting adds. As long as players are somewhat careful, however, there's no reason for a wipe to occur here.

I don't have any magical tricks for dealing with orcs here other than what most players do regularly. However, here are some reminders and tips anyway:

Watch for wanderers when pulling.<>
Rogues, when sapping, try to sap a mob far enough away from other mob groups such that if/when you lose stealth, it doesn't aggro a second mob group. Vanish, obviously, if a second group does aggro. You probably know all this already.<>
Mages, don't sheep pull. Instead, pull the mob and then sheep. You don't want a sheep to wander into a second group of orcs.<>
Pull mobs as far back as possible, so that runners have further to go before they can get help.<>
The majority of orcs here are spellcasters, so they need to be counterspelled, silenced, shocked, or otherwise interrupted to get them to come to you.<>
Use all means necessary to slow down and/or prevent runners.

<>
Priests, the biggest danger of the Firebrand orcs is a nasty debuff that increases the fire damage taken by the target (I believe the darkweavers cast it) combined with the invokers' fire attacks. The debuff can be dispelled, but it's easy to skimp on debuffing when one is concentrating on quickly healing partymembers. The trouble is that the debuff gets cast a lot, and the it stacks, even though it just looks like one icon next to the person's picture. One time, I moused over the debuff icon on someone and saw that it was increasing fire damage by 1000 points per hit. Ouch. You have to try to get rid of those debuffs as quickly as possible -- especially the ones on the main tank who'll be taking most of the pounding from the fire attacks.<>
[st]

The first LBRS party made it through the corridor unscathed, but both the second and third parties wiped here. (Diest's guildmates at the Amazon Basin should appreciate this screenshot, as there's a running gag among them that Diest causes all wipes. I don't recall what specifically caused this wipe, but I'm sure he must have done something). The second party recovered via a warlock's soulstone. The third party should have recovered via our shaman self resurrecting and then resurrecting the party. However, our shaman was "flat out of ankhs," the reagent shamans must carry with them to be able to self rez, so we ended up having to release and run back to the instance. The front of the instance had respawned. However, after killing about five mob groups near the entrance, we were able to find a spot where we could jump down and get back to where we had died.

<RANT>

What is it with shamans not carrying ankhs on them? I swear it's an epidemic. It's to the point where some players playing other classes carry ankhs on them just in case their parties' shamans don't have any at the start of an instance run. Heck, I actually saw a Molten Core raid stopped dead in its tracks, because three shamans didn't carry ankhs on them. The shaman self resurrection ability is an incredibly powerful group recovery tool, and that any high level shamans wouldn't have ankhs on them for an instance run is unfathomable. The question should not be, "Do you have ankhs on you?" It should be, "Why aren't you carrying 20 ankh's on you?" I mean, I always start with twenty Sacred Candles so I can buff people with Prayer of Fortitude during a run, and after a run is over, I always stop off at the reagent vendor to restock my supply. Why can't shamans do the same type of thing? And don't give me this warlock-soulstone-resurrection-sickness-bug boloney either, because the rare times you are partied with a warlock, you'll usually be with a priest who'll be the one who's soulstoned anyway, and if push comes to shove, you can hand your ankhs to a partymember for safekeeping.

</RANT>

Thank-you, I feel better. Now, where was I? Oh, yes, lower Blackrock Spire. The corridor opens into a larger room. There's a handful of wanderers and patrollers here that should be carefully picked off (e.g. the wanderer that our rogue, Saito, is going to pull in the screenshot above when she comes back toward us), but luckily you can skip the large group of orcs on the right. Most groups pull the group on the left and squeeze around to the left, being careful not to aggro the larger group on the right. If you do this, just make sure not to accidentally back into that group while fighting mobs up ahead.

At the other end of this room, one comes to the end of the Firebrand orcs and the start of the spider lair. There are five orcs spread across the path here, but in fact they are split into two clusters that can be pulled separately. The insidious part of this battle is that if people get too enthusiastic about pulling mobs, they can end up backing right into that great glob of orcs that the party had skipped just a moment ago. Sap, sheep, and kill here, and don't get too carried away with making a deep pull.

Normally after this fight, a party would be done with Firebrand orcs, but Aixelsyd had a special request. He asked us to kill the Firebrand Pyromancers who hang out in a small alcove that can be seen to the right in the screenshot above.

In this alcove, there are three clusters of three orcs, and each cluster has a pyromancer in it. The front two clusters are so close to each other that they come together, making the first pull a six mob pull. (I have an untested theory, however, that if you sap the orc in the first cluster that's closest to the second cluster, then maybe the second cluster won't get the "yell" and won't aggro). It's a tough fight. After sapping and sheeping, winning is mostly a matter of keeping one's cool and always assisting so that everyone is attacking and killing the same mob at once. The potential reward for killing the pyromancers, though, is definitely worth the effort if you are a mage specializing in tailoring.

Thottbot lists a recipe drop rate of 3.3% per pyromancer, while Allakhazam lists a drop rate of about 1%. We're dealing with low number statistics here, so those two numbers are comparable. Considering you get three chances per run, that's a pretty decent drop rate for an epic recipe. Also, remember how the party in the third run was able to jump down to the area with the Firebrand Orcs after its wipe after only killing a few mob groups at the start of the instance? Well, if a mage had some friends who were willing to help him or her, that recipe looks eminently farmable. It's certainly more farmable than the comparable priest and warlock recipes which only drop off Balnazzar and Darkmaster Gandling, respectively.

But luckily for Aixelsyd, he didn't have to repeatedly farm the pyromancers, because the recipe dropped for him off the first pyromancer we killed. So that was the second epic item (if you want to call the recipe itself an epic item) that had dropped during our run. Our party was feeling pretty good at this point.

All we had to do now was kill a few spiders.

UP NEXT: Spiders

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - MongoJerry - 03-14-2005

iyguy,Mar 13 2005, 04:51 PM Wrote:Yup.  I'm aware of this issue, and as you mention, there's an easy work-around, which is why I found it mind boggling that he didn't have the skill.

He had the skill. He just didn't have the ankhs.

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - Tal - 03-14-2005

MongoJerry,Mar 14 2005, 06:35 AM Wrote:He had the skill.  He just didn't have the ankhs.
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O.o I am constantly amazed by the number of folks who come completely unprepared for a long instance. The other night our run on Black Rock Depths was paused because the hunter in the group was down to 185 rounds of ammo. On another occassion in a random grouping I had to give the stack of 20 drinks I had to the warlock because she had left town without any and there was no mage in teh party. She was not happy that I only had Moonberry juice and asked our priest for a stack of Morning Glory Dew - he flat out refused. ;)

What was funny was a paladin who joined the Lurkers on a Sunken Temple run. He asked me if I was current on all skills. I indicated I was. He asked if I had Divine Intervention. I said I did. He asked if I had the reagent for DI. I said I did. He then whispered me twice more asking if I had the reagent. I replied each time that I did. Right before the fight with the Shade of Eranikus he traded a reagent to me. ;) Guess he didn't believe me that I had it on me. :D

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - Treesh - 03-14-2005

Tal,Mar 14 2005, 08:22 AM Wrote:O.o I am constantly amazed by the number of folks who come completely unprepared for a long instance. The other night our run on Black Rock Depths was paused because the hunter in the group was down to 185 rounds of ammo. On another occassion in a random grouping I had to give the stack of 20 drinks I had to the warlock because she had left town without any and there was no mage in teh party. She was not happy that I only had Moonberry juice and asked our priest for a stack of Morning Glory Dew - he flat out refused. ;)
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There was once where I forgot to have mana pots on my priest when doing an instance. I had drinks, but no mana pots and discovered it after a somewhat hairy fight. As soon as I mentioned that I had forgot to take them out of the bank, both the mage and the warlock gave me some. It definitely burned into my mind to remember to get them out of the bank before an instance. Most of the time I don't run with them because the size of mana pot that I can use right now just doesn't give me much mana compared to my mana pool. It's a drop in the bucket, but will give me enough for a bit more healing. I generally don't carry them around during normal questing (I do have them if we're doing elite quests) because it's usually just GG and I questing and if things are so bad that I completely run out of mana healing just him and he's still taking damage that renew and the occasional flash heal can't keep up with when I'm out of mana, it's time to run anyway.

That said, I still will not ask for drinks. I keep, at minimum, a stack of 20 drinks on me at all time. I don't drink often (love HoTs and DoTs for mana conservation), but when I do need to drink, I need to drink. I won't turn down free water from mages, but I don't ask for it either. It's nicer to burn to the free drinks than the drinks that drop throughout the world (haven't had to buy a drink yet except for quests and the Stormrage party ;) ) so I don't turn down the free drinks.

And when I'm a priest with no mage in the party, I am really not going to give up my found drinks to a warlock. They can still be effective even with low mana. They aren't as effective as they could be of course, but they can still contribute to the party with low mana thanks to their minions and DoTs. I'm pretty much a waste as a priest and really slow the whole party down if I can't drink when I'm low on/out of mana, mages are as well.

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - Artega - 03-14-2005

Most warlocks shouldn't have issues with running low on MP.

Between Drain Mana, Life Tap, and Dark Pact (if you're Affliction, of course), there isn't much need for drinks.

Using my imp as a portable mana battery, I pretty much never drink. I'll sometimes need to eat if it was a long battle (and had to use Life Tap frequently), but very rarely do I need to drink.

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - Arnath - 03-14-2005

MongoJerry,Mar 14 2005, 05:34 AM Wrote:[*]Rogues, when sapping, try to sap a mob far enough away from other mob groups such that if/when you lose stealth, it doesn't aggro a second mob group.  Vanish, obviously, if a second group does aggro.  You probably know all this already.

When you say "if/when you lose stealth," I assume that the rogue in your group had Improved Sap. I haven't reached the level for BRD or any of the really painful instances with my rogue, but I was wondering how useful/vital you thought Improved Sap was, particularly in those instances. I've been considering getting it but would have to drop some talents I rather like in the process.

Arnath

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - bonemage - 03-14-2005

Tal,Mar 14 2005, 07:22 AM Wrote:O.o I am constantly amazed by the number of folks who come completely unprepared for a long instance. The other night our run on Black Rock Depths was paused because the hunter in the group was down to 185 rounds of ammo. On another occassion in a random grouping I had to give the stack of 20 drinks I had to the warlock because she had left town without any and there was no mage in teh party. She was not happy that I only had Moonberry juice and asked our priest for a stack of Morning Glory Dew - he flat out refused. ;)
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We've gone quite a bit off topic here, but this is important enough and already been brought up that I feel the need to address it.

I find it really odd that the warlock was so desperate for drinks. With a bit of coodernation/communication, a warlock's mana can be restored by a heal from the healer. A warlock just needs to use life tap several times to convert life to mana, and then receive a heal. It's very mana effecient as a few hundred mana from healer translates into 1500-2000+ life for warlock, and for a warlock, life=mana, so it really equals 1500-2000 mana for the warlock. With talent points (improved life tap), it's better than a 1 for 1 trade (20% if all of 2 talent points are spent, it's a tier 2 affliction talent).

A secondary healer (in our party it's vor_lord's pally) is perfect for this between fights. It takes less time, and the mana expended by the healer is likely recovered entirely by spirit while walking to next fight. I've heard rumors of warlocks that don't use life tap, and it could be compared to warlocks not using pets, or mages not using conjured water. A warlocks demon armor increases life regen, so a full life bar and low mana is a waste. Perhaps this warlock is one of those that doesn't use life tap much, which is baffling...

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - MongoJerry - 03-14-2005

Arnath,Mar 14 2005, 01:23 PM Wrote:When you say "if/when you lose stealth," I assume that the rogue in your group had Improved Sap. I haven't reached the level for BRD or any of the really painful instances with my rogue, but I was wondering how useful/vital you thought Improved Sap was, particularly in those instances. I've been considering getting it but would have to drop some talents I rather like in the process.

Yeah, Saito has Improved Sap, which still has a 10% chance to break stealth, so one still has to be careful. The high level rogue community on Tichondrius at least seems to be split evenly on whether to have Improved Sap or not. From my point of view, it seems like a "must have" talent for any high level rogue, but I'm a priest, so I tend to think defensively. I understand that to get Improved Sap, one must sacrifice a lot of talents that one could have been used to improve one's offense. Many rogues have the attitude that "my role in the party is to kill things as fast as possible," so they consider getting things like IS as waste of talent points.

I think there's also a difference in whether you are used to zerging instances in overpowered raiding parties or if you are playing in smaller teams. In the faster moving raiding parties, there's little time or chance for subtlety, and offence offence offence is the name of the game. However, in a 5-player party, being able to safely sap is very important.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you can't sap while having improved sap, but IS makes things easier. For one thing, it can mean that multiple mobs can be sapped if there are multiple rogues in the party. Second, the tank can pull the mobs and get the initial aggro rather than having all the initial aggro on the rogue. Third, IS makes it so that someone can MC pull effectively (see above). Fourth, sometimes mob clusters are spaced close enough to one another that if you lose stealth on a sap, you'll attract mobs who would otherwise not have come (i.e. your aggro radius is larger than the mob yell radius). Fifth, it's just less hectic on your healer and party to not have this emergency moment at the start of every fight where you have to protect your rogue. It's so much easier to have the nice controled pulls that IS allows.

Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire - playingtokrush - 03-15-2005

bonemage,Mar 14 2005, 02:45 PM Wrote:A warlocks demon armor increases life regen

It should be noted that the health regeneration bonus from demon skin/armor is relatively minor after the first few levels.