05-19-2005, 09:41 AM
Which really isn't saying much. My highest level character is currently a level 42 undead mage on the pvp server Gorefiend. Mounted and all, woohoo. (Advent of level 40 and the mount has kind of drawn me away from Stormrage, where I had hoped to start tanking instances via the gnome warrior Smidgeon... but I guess that'll be for later.)
I've been through every horde-side instance I could reasonably survive in, from Ragefire Chasm, to Razorfen Downs, to the Scarlet Monastery Cathedral (repeatedly--curse you random warlock for rolling a 90 on the onlyWhitemane's Chapeau I've seen drop, and promptly leaving the party without a word.)
... Although I've never been to Gnomeregan. I'm not sure why.
Not a one of them are anything like it. It starts out fairly inconspicuos. There're some monsters, they're pretty weak. You fight the weak monsters, you move on to other weak monsters. (Sure they're elite. But I've been kind of burned out on the threat posed by your average elite when I started soloing them. Or duoing your above-average elite.)
It's when you take out the Lost Vikings (which prompted me to find a pair of white 'vendor' boots with +11 agility and +3 stamina on them. Thought those types of items were always green or better.), and clear out the weaker Troggs to find the coolest Indiana Jones reference ever... and out walks Ironaya. Now, according to Thottbot, Ironaya has no listed level. Same with several other bosses. Now, when you're on your first time through this place, and it's the first time you've seen this kind of phenomenon actually walking out and trying to kill you... it's pretty intimidating.
After the first 'OCRAP IT'S A SKULL WHAT AM I DOING HERE," seeing as I had no idea what kind of level or level of power I was heading up against through ANY of the instance, let alone the CRAZY BOSSES... she went down. Easily enough. She really lasted, though.
For reference, the party makeup was me, a 41 warlock I party with constantly, a 49 hunter guild-mate, a 44 rogue who I would likely accusing of buying gold off ebay and using it to deck himself out with everything a rogue could ever want, and a 39 shadow priest. No real tank, but fierce AoE, a pair of off-tank pets, a mail-clad damage soak, a sneaky guy with about 130 gold worth of really sharp blades... and the shield-happy, aggro-grabbing, low health, hand-made glass statue of a healer.
Anyway, once the Earthen and the golems started coming? It became interesting.
One memorable moment was our only real wipe up until the last boss, which we recovered from via soulstone. I think they were dwarves. I forget, exactly. Earthen and Dwarves do look a bit alike, and I don't rightly encounter either of them extensively. ... maybe they were even troggs, I dunno. Shoulda took a screenshot. I was paying attention to their healthbars and debuffs, to find the best target, back before I bothered to pick out certain ones for the slaughter by name before even engaging them.
Shadowforge Darkcasters I believe they were called. From the casters you find earlier in the game, and earlier in the instance, there was a certain standard to be upheld. And by that I mean that they pick an element, shoot you with it until they run out of mana or get silenced, then fall over quite cooperatively. Not so here. And, hopefully, not so in the future.
It was a bad pull to start off with--too many of them. Maybe three normal meleers, and two or three of the Darkcasters. But, like I said, I wasn't bothering with that. I didn't make the pull, and there was little I could do to fix it, other than making them die as fast as possible. The pet-wielders among us gathered as many of them onto their pets as they could, picked a target and let loose. Myself, I tabbed through them to find the one that had been whacked around a bit, and proceeded to nuking...
Until a wave of shadow bolts flew up and hit us; so far as I could see, one to each party member. Soon enough, another wave. And another. Round about 200 damage per shot. There was no where to scamper to avoid something shot directly at you, and it was tearing us up pretty bad. I picked one out and tried a counterspell... which pulled aggro. Pets really don't hold down so many mobs that well, yeah? And thus, mana burn. 500 damage. FIVE HUNDRED damage. I have about 1500 life. After taking a couple waves of shadow bolts (and resisting a couple), as well as the occasional bump and bruise from disgruntled meleer, this did not make me a happy panda. In fact I was suddenly a very ethereal panda staring at a crumpled little panda-corpse lying on the ground.
The healer fell moments after. And so did everyone else. After I quoted the mana burn out of my combat log, I recieved reports from the other casters of the group ranging from 600 to 800 damage in single, mana-searing blasts. Once our priest soulstone ressed and brought us all back up, there weren't many of the enemies left, so we promptly pulled and ripped apart every caster in record time.
The later encounters followed suit, though not so spectacularly. The enemies hit impressively hard, came in numbers hard to manage and generally did all they could to mess with whatever we were trying to do.
It was scary. Required actual teamwork, and was still difficult! The earlier instances, in the off-chance I could find a group worth its salt, we'd rip them all apart with ease, even if under the generally accepted 'safe' levels. And in the usual symptoms of a pickup group, I'd have four other people trying to solo near me, and just kinda pull it off out of sheer force anyway. It was like Blizzard had suddenly decided to stack the odds against the players, instead of just slapping together a group of enemies to fall over at the sight of the combined might of a few bored players.
The last boss I will not even go into. Suffice it to say, the giant, hammer-swinging toad of a boss pulled a zerg rush on us and barely came out ahead even still. But, now that I know how he works, I will return in the near future and make sure his head leaves his body. Same with the rest of the instance. I know the threats now, and no what can be done about them. I didn't earlier tonight and still came out ahead most of the time.
Also, some of you may remember a topic I created a good distance into the past, lamenting the complete lack of coherency in any and all full parties trying to actually accomplish anything... The problem has solved itself quite handily, starting with the Scarlet Monastery.
Earlier on you could find a good player in a party, but there was no guarantee he'd stick around. Maybe he'd stop playing that character? Maybe he'd play night and day and end up twenty levels over you? Maybe he'll succumb to the influences of Your Average Player and suddenly become one with the 'omgwtflol'ing mass?
But by the mid to late thirties, and maybe early fourties, the character's role is fleshed out, and that of the player. The occasional warrior will suddenly and inexplicably find his Sunder Armor key. Maybe a mage will learn that blinking in random directions in territory inhabited by hostiles is a bad thing. Maybe a rogue will learn that finding a good tank and doing a bit less damage will increase his life expectancy. And some number of all of them will have realized that you WILL have to rely on the people you meet on the way, and that it'd be best to let your fellow team-mates get their fair share of loot, fun, and camaraderie, with a minimum of whining, loot-whoring, and l33t-d00ding. And of course that a player is more likely to stick with such an established character instead of just disappearing at random. There are still bad apples, obviously, but enough of the good to ignore them, generally.
And... I'm done. This went on far too long. As proof of this I would like to state that as I started this post I put in the DVD O Brother Where Art Thou, which is one of my favorites. The end credits are now rolling. :( It's almost 5 AM, and I'm a nerd.
I've been through every horde-side instance I could reasonably survive in, from Ragefire Chasm, to Razorfen Downs, to the Scarlet Monastery Cathedral (repeatedly--curse you random warlock for rolling a 90 on the onlyWhitemane's Chapeau I've seen drop, and promptly leaving the party without a word.)
... Although I've never been to Gnomeregan. I'm not sure why.
Not a one of them are anything like it. It starts out fairly inconspicuos. There're some monsters, they're pretty weak. You fight the weak monsters, you move on to other weak monsters. (Sure they're elite. But I've been kind of burned out on the threat posed by your average elite when I started soloing them. Or duoing your above-average elite.)
It's when you take out the Lost Vikings (which prompted me to find a pair of white 'vendor' boots with +11 agility and +3 stamina on them. Thought those types of items were always green or better.), and clear out the weaker Troggs to find the coolest Indiana Jones reference ever... and out walks Ironaya. Now, according to Thottbot, Ironaya has no listed level. Same with several other bosses. Now, when you're on your first time through this place, and it's the first time you've seen this kind of phenomenon actually walking out and trying to kill you... it's pretty intimidating.
After the first 'OCRAP IT'S A SKULL WHAT AM I DOING HERE," seeing as I had no idea what kind of level or level of power I was heading up against through ANY of the instance, let alone the CRAZY BOSSES... she went down. Easily enough. She really lasted, though.
For reference, the party makeup was me, a 41 warlock I party with constantly, a 49 hunter guild-mate, a 44 rogue who I would likely accusing of buying gold off ebay and using it to deck himself out with everything a rogue could ever want, and a 39 shadow priest. No real tank, but fierce AoE, a pair of off-tank pets, a mail-clad damage soak, a sneaky guy with about 130 gold worth of really sharp blades... and the shield-happy, aggro-grabbing, low health, hand-made glass statue of a healer.
Anyway, once the Earthen and the golems started coming? It became interesting.
One memorable moment was our only real wipe up until the last boss, which we recovered from via soulstone. I think they were dwarves. I forget, exactly. Earthen and Dwarves do look a bit alike, and I don't rightly encounter either of them extensively. ... maybe they were even troggs, I dunno. Shoulda took a screenshot. I was paying attention to their healthbars and debuffs, to find the best target, back before I bothered to pick out certain ones for the slaughter by name before even engaging them.
Shadowforge Darkcasters I believe they were called. From the casters you find earlier in the game, and earlier in the instance, there was a certain standard to be upheld. And by that I mean that they pick an element, shoot you with it until they run out of mana or get silenced, then fall over quite cooperatively. Not so here. And, hopefully, not so in the future.
It was a bad pull to start off with--too many of them. Maybe three normal meleers, and two or three of the Darkcasters. But, like I said, I wasn't bothering with that. I didn't make the pull, and there was little I could do to fix it, other than making them die as fast as possible. The pet-wielders among us gathered as many of them onto their pets as they could, picked a target and let loose. Myself, I tabbed through them to find the one that had been whacked around a bit, and proceeded to nuking...
Until a wave of shadow bolts flew up and hit us; so far as I could see, one to each party member. Soon enough, another wave. And another. Round about 200 damage per shot. There was no where to scamper to avoid something shot directly at you, and it was tearing us up pretty bad. I picked one out and tried a counterspell... which pulled aggro. Pets really don't hold down so many mobs that well, yeah? And thus, mana burn. 500 damage. FIVE HUNDRED damage. I have about 1500 life. After taking a couple waves of shadow bolts (and resisting a couple), as well as the occasional bump and bruise from disgruntled meleer, this did not make me a happy panda. In fact I was suddenly a very ethereal panda staring at a crumpled little panda-corpse lying on the ground.
The healer fell moments after. And so did everyone else. After I quoted the mana burn out of my combat log, I recieved reports from the other casters of the group ranging from 600 to 800 damage in single, mana-searing blasts. Once our priest soulstone ressed and brought us all back up, there weren't many of the enemies left, so we promptly pulled and ripped apart every caster in record time.
The later encounters followed suit, though not so spectacularly. The enemies hit impressively hard, came in numbers hard to manage and generally did all they could to mess with whatever we were trying to do.
It was scary. Required actual teamwork, and was still difficult! The earlier instances, in the off-chance I could find a group worth its salt, we'd rip them all apart with ease, even if under the generally accepted 'safe' levels. And in the usual symptoms of a pickup group, I'd have four other people trying to solo near me, and just kinda pull it off out of sheer force anyway. It was like Blizzard had suddenly decided to stack the odds against the players, instead of just slapping together a group of enemies to fall over at the sight of the combined might of a few bored players.
The last boss I will not even go into. Suffice it to say, the giant, hammer-swinging toad of a boss pulled a zerg rush on us and barely came out ahead even still. But, now that I know how he works, I will return in the near future and make sure his head leaves his body. Same with the rest of the instance. I know the threats now, and no what can be done about them. I didn't earlier tonight and still came out ahead most of the time.
Also, some of you may remember a topic I created a good distance into the past, lamenting the complete lack of coherency in any and all full parties trying to actually accomplish anything... The problem has solved itself quite handily, starting with the Scarlet Monastery.
Earlier on you could find a good player in a party, but there was no guarantee he'd stick around. Maybe he'd stop playing that character? Maybe he'd play night and day and end up twenty levels over you? Maybe he'll succumb to the influences of Your Average Player and suddenly become one with the 'omgwtflol'ing mass?
But by the mid to late thirties, and maybe early fourties, the character's role is fleshed out, and that of the player. The occasional warrior will suddenly and inexplicably find his Sunder Armor key. Maybe a mage will learn that blinking in random directions in territory inhabited by hostiles is a bad thing. Maybe a rogue will learn that finding a good tank and doing a bit less damage will increase his life expectancy. And some number of all of them will have realized that you WILL have to rely on the people you meet on the way, and that it'd be best to let your fellow team-mates get their fair share of loot, fun, and camaraderie, with a minimum of whining, loot-whoring, and l33t-d00ding. And of course that a player is more likely to stick with such an established character instead of just disappearing at random. There are still bad apples, obviously, but enough of the good to ignore them, generally.
And... I'm done. This went on far too long. As proof of this I would like to state that as I started this post I put in the DVD O Brother Where Art Thou, which is one of my favorites. The end credits are now rolling. :( It's almost 5 AM, and I'm a nerd.