Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire

[Drasca]

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. 
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The only times a warlock is not effective is when interrupet by constant attacks and dead. That's it.

Seriously, I've used life tap when my health was below 30-40%. I'm the one usually giving our priest drinks.

If I'm not under attack, I can self-bandage, lifetap, life drain, run around and cast instants, direct my pet to pickup aggro against priest, self or mage. My warlock is non-stop.

I still ask for drinks from mage though. However. . . warlocks have a synergistic relationship with mages. (Mage + WL ftw btw). Trade hconjured healthstone for conjured water. Curse of element/shadow increase damage. Soulstone the Priest. What's not to like? Poly, seduce, burn, fear off caster. Healthstone saves life... or extends life. Lots of "Oh snap" boons.

I keep and ask for drinks because its more time efficient to eat and drink at the same time, especially if I'm freshly rez'ed. I have dark pact, so I can do the following skill order: Lifetap twice, just enough to summon imp, dark pact to drain imp of mana, which is enough to buff, conjure stone, or summon a new pet. At this point I'm back to very low health. Its eat and drink time, because everyone's doing it, but I have my pets summoned.

Warlock mana drinking is still a necessary downtime reducer. A warlock cannot be "full" by lifetap and dark pact alone, and sitting down to just eat or just drink is a waste for warlocks. Best to empty both health and mana first with lifetap, and eat/drink for increased overall regen. No point to eat and not drink. If that low on health, ask for a heal, consume a healthstone, or bandage up. Why lifetap to full mana bar, when overall downtime is reduced?

My typical inventory overhead is a minimum of two stacks of drinks and two stacks of food (did I mention I'm a cook too?), plus 2-3 stacks of bandages of various types, and their associated clothes. While not space efficient, it is time efficient. I cannot imagine this not lasting through several hours, my equipped items will long poop out before my supplies do.

Asking Mage for conjured water just make's everyone's lives easier, especially if you're the priest. Faster mana gain, buffs back faster and more often, heals back, mana topped off, the works. Don't hestitate to politely ask for water!

As for shamans not carrying ankhs... soulstone reinc rez sick bug stinks. However having two warlocks in the party = almost never ever completely wipe, if you rotate the soulstone castings on a priest. Shaman self-reincarnate should be wipe prevention, but it also causes durability loss, which just stinks too.

As a warlock, I'm considering buying a stack of ankhs to carry just so shamans have no excuse to wipe if my soulstones run out. They can only do it once every hour iirc, but should be used. Maybe that new engineering pop up repair vendor item willl become crucial. Maybe backup equipment. I have some myself.

Some of the behaviour here seems foreign to me, because its the norm on our server. I've played with priests who MC boss bodyguards all the time. I tend to unsummon/sac my current pet and enslave enemy demons in middle of mobs too.

Demon suddenly enslaved in middle of large mob = distracted mob, and one less enemy to deal with---although my demons generally survive to turn on me. However, they've almost always turned while my group is resting and ready to take on a singular elite demon. Possibly less loot if the enslaved demon is killed while under my control, but the safety factor is astronomical. Very fun to do in Maraudon--and I imagine Jadenyr fortress when I get to it.

The groups shouted in Ogrimmar all seem to want 5 man groups, not giant raids. My guild as well. . . and on the power leveling note: Karnage, one of our most experienced players, made a character go from 1-20 in 4 hours. Sick.

[MongoJerry]

The groups shouted in Ogrimmar all seem to want 5 man groups, not giant raids.

Your sidebar info says your warlock is level 48. You'll hit the raids when you're level capped and want to run Stratholme, Scholomance, and Blackrock Spire.

[Treesh]

Thank you, warlocks for proving my point that warlocks are still highly effective and shouldn't need to ask for non-conjured drinks from the priest. It's good to know that I wasn't off on my perception of warlocks and mana usage basing things off of how my baby warlocks' mana is.

I still ask for drinks from mage though. However. . . warlocks have a synergistic relationship with mages. (Mage + WL ftw btw). Trade hconjured healthstone for conjured water. Curse of element/shadow increase damage. Soulstone the Priest. What's not to like? Poly, seduce, burn, fear off caster. Healthstone saves life... or extends life. Lots of "Oh snap" boons.[right][snapback]70780[/snapback][/right]

The warlock/mage combo is pretty deadly and very difficult to kill. Or at least in most cases GG and I have run into and my warlocks aren't even big enough for soulstones. ;) Healthstones, bandages, pots (GG's mage is an alchemist), minions, all the fun things I can do with health/mana/minion health interchanges; we're very effective and fun. If anyone has a friend they regularly play with (and enjoys playing that type of character), they should form a warlock/mage duo and just tear things up.

Asking Mage for conjured water just make's everyone's lives easier, especially if you're the priest. Faster mana gain, buffs back faster and more often, heals back, mana topped off, the works. Don't hestitate to politely ask for water! [right][snapback]70780[/snapback][/right]

I don't ask them for water because most of the mages I group with always offer water to the party right away. :D If they don't offer, they're usually twits who end up doing something stupid and try to wipe the whole group shortly after we first set out. They get two chances to show they aren't twits after they don't offer water to the non-mage casters in the group at the beginning. If they don't straighten up and play well, they get booted. I've got a long enough list of good people that I can group with; I don't have to put up with the twits.

[Drasca]

I don't ask them for water because most of the mages I group with always offer water to the party right away.  :D If they don't offer, they're usually twits [right][snapback]70805[/snapback][/right]

Hehehe. The good players I play with are in a few categories:

A) They aren't aware how healthstones are created. i.e., ithey don't know it is a replenishable supply in-field.
B) They are too polite to ask.
C) They gently ask for healthstones after rough battles.

As there's no way for me to know if they have or have used one, I gently ask who needs one. Sometimes mages ask if we've run out of conjured water, sometimes they forget. Sometimes I forget myself I have healthstones and enough shards to make them!

So I play it safe.

oh, and for MongoJerry... my server's mixed when it comes to BRD, strat, etc places. Some kids are still newbies, but a lot of the 60's want to do 5 man runs for LBRD, and places whenever it is possible to 5 man run. MC... uh is just insane raids. No getting around that.

My orc warlock profile needs updating too. Its 53 now.. in striking distance of playing with my 56-60 guildmates.

[MongoJerry]

ITSY BITSY SPIDERS

So I was helping to organize a ten player Stratholme Scarlet Bastion ("SM Strat") run the other night, and our group was having trouble finding a mage or warlock to join the party. All the high level mages and warlocks were either already in instance runs or were about to log off for the night. (Just stick with me here for a minute). We had a nine player party and while we kept getting requests to join the run from rogues and hunters to fill the tenth slot, the party kept holding out for a mage. After ten minutes of futile attempts to get a mage, I told everybody that if we got another rogue or hunter, we'd have more than enough firepower for the run. We'd miss out on the mage's polymorph, but our rogues had improved sap, so we could get by crowd controlwise.

But the very idea of going into Stratholme without a mage was inconceivable to several members of the party. I was called a noob for even suggesting such a thing, since it was well known to these players that you had to have a mage when you go into Stratholme. After all, as a rogue in the party asked:

RandomRogue: Without a mage, how do we kill the little skeletons?
(pause)
Neriad: You stab them.

How did we get here? How did we get to the point where players think the only way one can kill nonelite mobs is to hit them with area-of-effect attacks? It is as if nonelite mobs were invulnerable to direct damage attacks. Take the situation with the above Stratholme group as an example. The mobs on the streets of Stratholme come in clusters of three elite mobs with six nonelite mobs. In our ten player party, two elites could be shackled and one elite tanked. That would leave nine players free to kill just six nonelite skeletons. If these skeletons were out in the Eastern Plaguelands, this RandomRogue fellow would think little of killing them, but because they're in an instance, they suddenly and miraculously can only be killed by mages. It's a ludicrous idea and yet it's an idea believed by way too many people in the general player population.

I've given this a lot of thought, and I think I know the chain of events that caused this belief to become so widespread.

• In the beta, when Blizzard first introduced instances with mob groups made of a mix of elite and nonelites, some mages realized, "Hey! If I aoe here, my dps will be huge!"<>
  
• Then the aggressive item farmer/achiever types realized, "Hey! If we brought along a couple of mages and warlocks, we could aoe the mother out of these guys and blow through this instance!"<>
  
• The general player population found out about all the phat loot that the aggressive item farmers got, found out that the farmers used aoe attacks to do it, and so started imitating the item farmers' techniques (often missing out on some key details), including always inviting mages into parties to aoe.<>
  
• Newer players got told simply, "AoE the little guys, kill the elites," without any explanation of why or when this was a good idea.<>
  
• These instructions got solidified into dogma, so that players now think that only AoE attacks should be used to kill nonelite mobs.<>
  [st]The problem I have with this mentality is that it frequently contradicts my own well tested system of dealing with groups of normal mobs:
  
  1. Crowd control as many elites as you can.<>
     
  2. Kill any mobs that summon additional mobs.<>
     
  3. Kill all nonelite mobs. (Some players don't understand this, but it's simple. Nonelite mobs die fast, so you reduce the mob damage output quickly this way. Additionally, you reduce the shear number of mobs involved in the fight, making the fight less chaotic and more easily controlled).<>
     
  4. Kill all uncontrolled elites.<>
     
  5. Kill all crowd controlled elites one at a time.<>
     [st](Note: Boss fights have to be taken on a case-by-case basis, since no set rule works in every situation. Sometimes you'll want to kill the minions first and leave the boss for last, and other times you'll want to focus on the boss first).
     
     The trouble with using the AoE-only tactic for killing nonelites is that you're basically trying to do steps three and four at once, and you end up spreading your damage over many mobs at once, letting the mobs live longer and deal more damage than they ordinarily would have. Worse, a good portion of the mob damage will be directed at the mage, who as I often tell people, is made of paper mache. If you don't have enough AoE power in the party, at best you end up with an exhausted mage and priest who have to drink for a full minute after each battle, slowing down a raid party. Other times, you end up with dead mages. At worst, you end up with a dead mage, priest, and then a full party wipe.
     
     
     
     Enough general chit-chat. How do you kill the spiders in Lower Blackrock Spire? Most of the spider clusters come with two large elite Spiders and five nonelite Spiderlings. When you kill the elite Spiders, five additional Spiderlings spawn out of its body. (Blizzard caved, so in the upcoming patch, only four Spiderlings will spawn when the Spiders die). In addition, the elite Spiders can cast a short range area-of-effect spell called Crystalize that stuns players for eight seconds. Crystalize can be dispelled by priests, however, so it's important for priests to try to stay out of range of the elite Spiders so that they themselves don't get Crystalized when other partymembers do.
     
     The standard tactic is to have the mage sheep pull one of the elite spiders and then have the party's warrior tank the other elite spider. (If you have a druid in the party, he or she can also sleep one of the elite spiders. If you have a mage and a druid or two mages or two druids in the party, obviously these fights are easy). What your party does from here to kill the non-elite spiders depends on your party's configuration.
     
     The AoE-only technique: If your party has two or more mages and/or warlocks, then go for it. Blast away. If you additionally have a shaman dropping fire totems or a hunter throwing up a volley, even better. You have my blessing to AoE the mother out of everything. In this case, it doesn't make much sense to have other members of the party killing the nonelites, because by the time, say, a rogue gets two swings in, all the nonelites will be dead. You might as well save some time and have the non-AoEers start killing the elite Spider the warrior is tanking. The AoEers should remember that there are three waves of little Spiderlings coming and conserve mana accordingly, however.
     
     If your party has only one mage or warlock, however, the AoE-only tactic is a terrible idea and so many parties -- raid parties even! -- get wiped or partially wiped here, because they insist on using this tactic even though they don't have enough AoE power to make it work. Examples of things that can go wrong are (seen them, done them):
     • Five spiderlings can deliver a lot of damage, and after eating through the PW:Shield (Note to non-priests: A priest shield is not an invulnerability shield. After about 1k damage is taken, it's gone and can't be recast for 15 seconds), the spiders can get some lucky crits and take a mage down faster than a priest can Flash Heal. Any lag on the priest's part can also be an issue, since you have a razorthin margin of error.<>
       
     • The other partymembers can sometimes (especially in raid parties) kill the elite Spider faster than a mage can kill the nonelite spiderlings. Five additional spiderlings jump out of the corpse and get hit by the mage's arcane explosion. 10 spiderlings hitting the mage = dead mage.<>
       
     • A mage can run out of mana before finishing off the second set of spiderlings. A spiderling with 10% life hits just as hard as a spiderling with 100% life. Five spiders hitting a mage and not dying themselves = dead mage.<>
       
     • The priest can run out of mana. It takes a lot of mana to keep a mage alive through all that pounding.<>
       
     • The warrior and others can get Cystalized by the elite Spider, and then the Spider can rush to attack the priest. The priest dispels Cystalize on the warrior and Fades. Oh, yeah, the mage hasn't been healed during this time. Dead mage.<>
       [st]At this point, I'm expecting a barrage of "Hey, I'm a mage and me and my buddy so-n-so-priest managed to kill the spiders without dying." Yes, I'm sure you're awesome. With great effort and practice, I'm sure you can make the AoE-only tactic sort of work. But the point of all of this discussion is that by using the AoE-only method when your party doesn't have enough AoE power, you give yourselves far less room for error and end up placing yourselves in way more danger than necessary. There's a much better way, and it's simply what everyone should have been doing all along.
       
       The AoE-plus method: The AoE-plus method simply says that after sheeping and establishing the tanking on the elites, it is everyone's job to kill the nonelites. This is true whether you are killing spiderlings in LBRS or skeletons on the streets of Stratholme. The party's mage is welcome to AoE to his or her heart's content. However, the other members of the party should kill the nonelites as well. This tactic takes an enormous amount of pressure off the party's mage and priest and benefits the party in many ways. First, the spiderlings simply die faster. Second, when other members of the party (e.g. the rogue and shaman in my group) deal direct damage to individual spiderlings, they'll pull aggro off the mage, reducing the pounding the mage receives and also spreading out the damage being dealt to the party. This allows the priest to effectively use his or her group healing spell, Prayer of Healing, the most powerful and mana efficient healing spell at a priest's disposal when three or more players need healing.
       
       Third, since the mage isn't being pounded on by five mobs at once, the party's priest has more flexibility about choosing who to heal and what to do. The priest can heal the tank or take a few moments to remove Crystalize from partymembers, for example, without worrying that the mage will die in the process. Finally, having everyone kill the nonelites saves both the mage's and priest's mana, so they'll both have something left when the third set of spiderlings pop out.
       
       
       
       That's it. That's all there is to it. I know that some of you were hoping to learn a secret tactic like, "If you jump on this rock, you can blast the spiders without taking any damage." I'm sorry to disappoint you. "Kill the nonelites first" is all I got for you. And guess what? Our party made it through all seven spider fights without a single death or even any scary near-death moments.
       
       After the first cluster of spiders, you'll run into the spider boss, Mother Smolderweb. She's a quest boss who'll poison you with the Mother's Milk that will periodically cast a web to root either you or one of your partymembers for a few seconds. The quest, given in Burning Steppes, is to return to the questgiver while still poisoned and let the NPC "milk" you. (The poison lasts two hours, as I recall). The problem is that no partymembers in their right minds will let you actually keep this poison on you for the remainder of the run. Pretty much the only practical way to complete this quest is to hearth out of the instance, fly to the NPC in Flame Crest, let the NPC milk you, ride back to Blackrock Spire, and then have a warlock summon you back to your party -- that is, if your party hasn't booted you from the party out of exasperation. The reward is only some cash, and there's no followup. This quest is only for the most severe questaholics. For everyone else, there are anti-venom sacs that drop off the spiderlings that will cure the poison.
       
       There's also a rare spider miniboss that sometimes spawns here, but I've only seen him a couple of times and didn't see him on these trips.
       
       
       
       After Mother Smolderweb comes a solitary patrol Spider that can be pulled individually. Then, you walk on some large iron support beams (seen in the screenshot above). There's a group of spiders on the left as you walk along the beams, and you can easily walk past them by keeping to right side of the path. Unfortunately, our shaman during the third run didn't do this and ended up pulling the whole spider group while a couple of us were already getting ready for the pull in front of us. Before we could turn around and come back, it was too late, and we had our final wipe (recall that this was the shaman who didn't carry ankhs with him). Actually, we almost pulled it off anyway, and looking back on it, I think there might have been enough room to have used fear kiting. Oh, well. Hindsight's 20-20.
       
       In addition, the server crashed right as the second group got to the spider lair, so everything from here on out is describing what happened during the first run.
       
       
       
       Yet more spiders. Another quest from Flame Crest, in the Burning Steppes, asks you to collect spider eggs from the egg sacs you see all around the lair. Sometimes spiderlings will jump out when you open the egg sacks, so be ready whenever someone opens a sac. Most of the time, it's only a couple of spiderlings that jump out, but I saw five jump out of an egg sac one time, so be careful.
       
       
       
       Between the dead spiders and spiderlings, things get a little messy after a fight.
       
       
       
       After a couple more fights, we started to see the end. In the screenshot above, you can see the bridge into Omokk's chamber, guarded by a respawned ogre. One more group of spiders to go.
       
       
       
       Done. I think the feelings of the party can be best expressed in this witty and immortal exchange:
       
       Eon: finally :D
       Aixelsyd: yeah no kidding
       
       
       UP NEXT: Bugs, Quartermasters, and Dogs, oh my!

[Drasca]

I second the 'throw yourselves into fight' tactic before AoE. Much much better for entire party to throw some aggro onto themselves to edge time before they're pulled to the AoE caster.

Best hybrid tactic truly is disable npcs, zerg / regular engage selves into fray for aggro attraction, focus fire, then AoE from casters after some aggro's attracted. . . or AoE might not even be necessary by that point. Non-elites are simply dead. The more enemies engaged at once by multiple alliance, the better.

Certain warlock synergies would allow non-stop casting of even the most expensive AoE (my own build involves master summoner for pop up sacrfice AoE, and I'd imagine soul linked warlocks can take an extreme beating while AoE'ing before poofing), but even this has its limits. My warlock could not solo-AoE all the non-elites in Zul farak. It would have been much better to simply release prisoners and let them die halfway, and then AoE. Pulling too many onto the caster = dead caster. Sacrifice is much more powerful than PW:Shield, and seemed to stack, but was still not enough.

[Gurnsey]

An awesome read!

One question: maybe it sounds longer in the telling than the actual experience, but it seems like your trips into this instance were marathon runs - is there any feeling of weariness at some point where it's just too much, or does the changing mobs and strategies in the different parts of the dungeon keep everything fresh?

My biggest instance experience so far has only been Wailing Caverns in a group of 4. That was about as much of the same-old as I could take as the mobs and tactics throughout are pretty much the same:

1) Don't let the druids run far enough to call reinforcements.
2) Interrupt or Tremor-Totem before they can put party members to sleep.

The brief breaks of the Big Gnarly Plant-Dude (can't remember the name off the top of my head) and the final Waking waves o'critters were nice, but pretty short.

[MongoJerry]

One question:&nbsp; maybe it sounds longer in the telling than the actual experience, but it seems like your trips into this instance were marathon runs - is there any feeling of weariness at some point where it's just too much, or does the changing mobs and strategies in the different parts of the dungeon keep everything fresh?

Hmmm... well, I think clearing out most of the troll area slowed things down quite a bit, so people got a little tired then. All told, the trip took three hours and forty-five minutes, so yeah, it's a good long trip compared to the raid zergs that most high level players are used to. On the other hand, when you're playing in a five player group, every member's contribution is important and therefore every fight is intense. After each fight, there's a feeling of accomplishment. I think that's what keeps things fresh.

[Watto44]

Hehe. I find it interesting that you have to convince people to use a tactic in an instance that they have probably used through out their entire solo "career". "Stun the tank, squash the squishies" sound familiar to anyone? Another indication of how normally sane people go a little "strange" when the word instance/elite is mentioned.

Great reading Mongo, and very helpful to those who haven't reached the high levels yet - it's always nice to get into good habits early. :D Look forward to the rest of the tale.

[lemekim]

RandomRogue: Without a mage, how do we kill the little skeletons?
(pause)
Neriad: You stab them.

Do you think he might have meant the little skeletons that come after Ramstein? If you had a shaman though you probably could still deal with those (or a stock of Holy Water) and with critter spawns in gated areas.

[MongoJerry]

Do you think he might have meant the little skeletons that come after Ramstein? If you had a shaman though you probably could still deal with those (or a stock of Holy Water) and with critter spawns in gated areas.

This was a Scarlet Bastian run, not a Baron run, so no.

[Magicbag]

Our Mind Control pulls work just a bit differently than yours. We try to minimize the beating the MC'd mob takes by making sure that only 3 or less others are beating on him. If there's more, sheep or sap until you're down to 3v1 or less. Then MC the most dangerous foe. The party then proceeds to assist the MC'd target on the next most dangerous mob. With luck and practice you can almost always ensure 2 dead mobs before the pull really starts.

After, you can use sheep to handle one. So even with a 5 pull, you're looking at 1 full mob, one breaking sap soon, and finally the sheep. Still managable for a 5 man.
-MB

[MongoJerry]

Our Mind Control pulls work just a bit differently than yours.&nbsp; We try to minimize the beating the MC'd mob takes by making sure that only 3 or less others are beating on him.&nbsp; If there's more, sheep or sap until you're down to 3v1 or less.&nbsp; Then MC the most dangerous foe.&nbsp; The party then proceeds to assist the MC'd target on the next most dangerous mob.&nbsp; With luck and practice you can almost always ensure 2 dead mobs before the pull really starts.

After, you can use sheep to handle one.&nbsp; So even with a 5 pull, you're looking at 1 full mob, one breaking sap soon, and finally the sheep.&nbsp; Still managable for a 5 man.

OK... I'm not sure where the part that's different comes in.

[Boutros]

UP NEXT: Bugs, Quartermasters, and Dogs, oh my!
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Oh really?

By the way, I know this level 60 warrior on Tich that would like to do a 5 man LBRS run for the Warlord's Command quest. He's one a hell of a nice guy, too.

[MongoJerry]

Oh really?

Graduate E&M take-home midterm takes priority -- both preparation for it and now taking it. The ending will come eventually, when I have the time.

[Boutros]

Graduate E&M take-home midterm takes priority -- both preparation for it and now taking it.&nbsp; The ending will come eventually, when I have the time.
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Ugh, now I understand. Undergrad E&M was enough for me. I never want to see another Legendre Polynomial as long as I live.