After a two-month hiatus, I returned to the game last night. Thankfully, there were no patches to download, or addons to update. Everything worked the way it’s supposed to.
I queued for a random heroic while heading to an armor merchant to repair. After about 3 minutes, our group was ready. To my dismay, it was Halls of Reflection.
Halls of Reflection
The instance itself is interesting, and when you’re fortunate enough to be grouped with a solid party, it’s a lot of fun. Conversely, just one bad player can make the dungeon a miserable failure.
Our group consisted of a druid tank with about 41k buffed HP, a hunter, mage, and paladin for dps. The highest DPS player, the paladin, was hitting about 3200 DPS with the lowest at about 2900. My memory told me to be worried but the spectacular play of the group taught me otherwise. They were fabulous.
We went with the LoS method, which requires everyone but the tank to tuck themselves around the corner so that, if/when they pull aggro, the enemies will have to run through the tank to get to them. The strategy works well most of the time but eventually the party will have to move from the corner and the tank will need to have secured aggro on the ranged mobs by that time.
There were a few scares which were all caused by me getting stunned at bad times (as opposed to the good times to be stunned?). Guardian Spirit saved the group at least once.
No upgrades dropped for me, but the tank got a decent weapon. I got the satisfaction of enjoying a challenge with a great group of players.
My next random run was Halls of Lightning.
Halls of Lightning
Upon entering the instance it was clear that it would be an easy run. The tank, who’s name was Onetokill, was a paladin with 50k health. The DPS was pumping out an average of 5500 DPS. They were all part of the same guild (Reckless Abandon). There wasn’t a single challenge throughout the entire run, and Loken was killed in 20 seconds.
Pit of Saron
PoS is another challenging instance that requires a half-competent party. The party consisted of a warrior with 42k health, a shadow priest, and two hunters. Once again, luck was on my side. Everyone was polite and could play their class well.
Garfrost was easier than I remember. Either he was nerfed, or our team did a great job getting behind boulders to remove debuff stacks. Hint: If everyone is topped off and you have the global cooldown to spare, you can and should remove stacks with Dispel Magic. It makes the most sense to do this for the tank and melee DPS, since they’ll generally have a further run to hide behind boulders.
Krick and Ick were a joke. I’ve yet to see a party wipe on this boss. If you move away when they go into “Pursuit” phase, keep moving when they lay bombs, move out of slimy puddles, and move away from poison nova then there’s no reason for anyone besides the tank to take damage.
The trash that leads to the gauntlet tunnel is widely regarded as the most difficult part of the instance. I agree. They are spread apart, making it difficult for the tank to establish aggro, and the casters destroy whatever they hit.
The gauntlet was annoying, but we made it without a problem. In fact, one of our hunters disconnected before the cave, so we were forced to 4-man the cave and Tyrannus.
Once again, no gear upgrades for me, but it was another successful and enjoyable run. It feels good to be back.
