A Study Of N00bs

[KiloVictor]

One specific example that sticks out in my mind is the Weldon Barov fight in Scholo.  Especially considering that you play horde and do not have turn undead how would you approach this fight without any CC?  Between Barov's aura and three mobs (with only 5 PCs and any pets they may have) they can deal out significant damage and don't die particularly quickly.  Not knowing too much about Shamans I will assume that your warrior can take Barov and Shaman can off-tank one of his guards.  That leaves a pet (or two in rare cases) and 2 dps classes to try to kill the other guard before moving along.  They then have to proceed to down the other guard and Barov while the healer attempts to keep them all alive without going OOM (might not have to heal the shammy as much).  I'm not saying that this isn't doable; but I am saying that I certainly wouldn't want to have to try it.  You could always try to have a pet and the shammy draw the two guards away and have everyone else try to burn down Barov before they die; but that is arguably not beating the encounter.  Being able to shackle one of the guards serves to lessen damage taken, help with focus fire, and ultimately shorten the battle (and you can keep that guard shackled as long as you have to if you need to regen to kill him).  As I said; if you really want to try this with a druid healer go ahead; but I'd much prefer a priest myself.
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I might be misunderstanding, but are you talking about Lord Alexei Barov? Undead dude with an unholy aura that pulses for shadow damage? Has two Risen Warrior-ish bodyguards that come with him? Has The Deed to Caer Darrow sitting on a crypt beside him?

If that's the encounter, it's pretty straightforward with a druid or shammy healer. The guards can be prox pulled, so you get one pull of two Risen Warriors (might be Protectors or Guardians, not sure which) and then a pull of Alexei + one guard. It's a pretty straightforward task to offtank one in each pull. With a priest in the party, the encounter is absolutely trivial: substitute shackle for offtank and voila!

I've been lucky, I've played a lot with a hunter that really understands the aggro mechanism and how to use it to reduce the number of mobs in any given encounter. One of the things that we've concluded is that Blizzard has indeed made it very possible for you to tackle most instances without the "holy trinity" of classes that was apparently required in games like EQ. This encounter is a good example of that - at first blush, it seems impossible without a priest. But a warrior or hunter that knows how to pull can reduce it to something that's very beatable without a priest. Kudos to Blizzard for making a really good design decision there.

Sadly, the vast majority of players on my server haven't figured this out yet, and insist on having a priest for 5-man trips to Scholo/Strat/BRS. I feel sorry for the high-level druids that I know because most of them are built out as healers and do a damn fine job of it, but still have trouble getting anything other than secondary healer roles in instances.

Kv

PS - Looking at thottbot to double-check names, I noticed that Blizz seems to have a bit of a continuity problem with this quest line. Questgivers Alexi Barov (Horde) and Weldon Barov (Alliance) send you off to kill a bunch of other Barovs, including Lord Alexei Barov. Perhaps one of Alexei/Alexi should have been named Vladimir? It would be a lot easier to keep straight. :)