Dungeon Blather

[Koyasha]

Maraudon, much like most of the other huge dungeons back in the day, wasn't meant to be done all at once.  Each 'wing' was more like a separate dungeon, kinda like Dire Maul or the Burning Crusade 'winged' dungeons.  Except it was all part of the same place.  Not to mention if you look at the level spread it's clear it wasn't meant to be taken in one shot.  Purple and orange areas were meant to be done in the lower 40's, and then once you were high enough for the part beyond the falls, you would have obtained the scepter to allow you to skip the lower level areas and go straight to the upper-40's portion of the dungeon.

It's comparable to Blackrock Spire, which again is just one dungeon, but people behave as though it's two (there's really three 'sections' to Blackrock Spire).  Much like Maraudon, you needed to do Lower to gain access to Upper.  Maraudon was more refined (it came out later) splitting it into even more sections and making it easier to go to the specific part you needed to do.  It's just that in general, people wound up not doing the lower level areas of Maraudon at all, if it could possibly be avoided.

WUA, as far as old dungeons go, at 80 in purples you should be able to do up to the level 70 regular dungeons.  I'm not sure about heroics on a paladin, but I suspect most of them are doable unless there's very paladin-unfriendly mechanics.  However, tanking gear/spec may be needed - I do all my soloing old stuff in full tank gear and frost presence most of the time.  Heroic Magister's Terrace is pretty tough, but I've soloed it on my death knight, so I suspect two paladins can probably do it.  With a healer, there should be no issue whatsoever for two paladins of any spec to make it through any of the Burning Crusade dungeons, though.

[Soulflame]

Adding the healer will mostly trivialize Magisters, although you may have to be a little careful on mr energy boss.  Or not.  I doubt you'll be able to solo the entire place as ret.  I do know someone who soloed it as a prot paladin, but it did take a while, and he preferred to take a healer.

[Hindenburg]

Isn't the best way to spec prot, get some shields with spikes, and aggro the whole dungeon?

[WindupAtheist]

Thanks for the info. Yeah, it would probably be easier if one of us was prot. With a ret, a prot, and a holy the three of us could probably do all sorts of damage. But none of us have any tanking gear, or interest in tanking beyond this little powerleveling binge, which will end when she's caught up to us.

Random aside that doesn't deserve it's own thread: I'm working up my mining and holy shit, a stack of 20 thorium sells for 100g on the AH easy.

[Musashi]

Sweet Candy.

[Soulflame]

Thorium is rather painful to mine though, I've never found a good zone for it.  Either that, or I really have no patience for resource gathering without an epic flying mount.

[Hindenburg]

Winterspring, that place with the 60 elites. Have fun.

[WindupAtheist]

Yeah, nobody goes there because... fuck, who goes to Winterspring? But there's decent thorium and the elites keep away the level-appropriate miners.

[Malakili]

Adding the healer will mostly trivialize Magisters, although you may have to be a little careful on mr energy boss.  Or not.  I doubt you'll be able to solo the entire place as ret.  I do know someone who soloed it as a prot paladin, but it did take a while, and he preferred to take a healer.

A paladin in my guild managed to solo heroic Magister's as Ret, though I think he died a couple times.  He did complete it though, so it is possible.  His gear is quite excellent though, for whatever that is worth.

[Selby]

Yeah, nobody goes there because... fuck, who goes to Winterspring?

It's great questing for level appropriate people.  I can get from 54-58 on most of the Winterspring and Felwood quests.

[Ashamanchill]

Well that's it.  I have to officially stop running dungeons with anything other then guildies.  Tonight I attempted a Maruadon run with one of my alts.  Despite the fact that we were over leveled by quite a bit, we couldnt even come close to doing it.  It might have had something to do with the fact that our tank was a warrior using a grey stave, one of our mage deeps had twenty untrained talent points, and our healer was a priest who had never heard of flash heal, or heal for that matter as she had not visited a trainer since level one.   How do you even get to that level with only your starting skills.  How is the game even enjoyible at that gimped state?    Anyway, lesson learned, fuck groups on this alt.

Edit:  I didn't really know where to put this bitter rant so I crammed it in here.

[Oban]

Just FYI, but there is a known bug that sometimes shows talent points as being unused when inspecting others who have purchased the dual spec option.

Always good for a laugh though.

[Merusk]

If they're new players, it's entirely possible they didn't know to spend the talent points as they may have decided early on all those stupid ! tips were annoying and turned them off.  By the time you get your first point at 10 you wouldn't have any way outside of someone else telling you about it.    I had a friend when I first started who didn't know there were multiple tabs on the talent page.  He asked me around level 20, "What is this I keep hearing about Fire mages? How do I become one of those?"  He'd been speccing only into Arcane because that was the first page that came up. Also try to remember how much Arcane really, REALLY sucked 4 years ago.  He was very frustrated with the class and about to quit.   Embarrassment ensued.

The narrative I'd go with for the person who hadn't trained is this.  They were a new person to online games, dragged in by a friend and told "Just install Quest Helper and turn in/ kill what it tells you to do.  Get quests from guys with ! and don't bother reading them, it will only slow you down."   This means they never read that level 2 quest about training or the response from the trainer that says, "Hey, come here every few levels and learn new spells, dummy."

I can't imagine having made it to 40 without quitting in frustration, though.  That level 1 smite would have gotten them killed far more often than they'd have ever killed a mob. I think that person was full of shit and didn't want to heal. 

[Koyasha]

Yeah, I can sort of see it with a melee class and a really stupid player, but I don't think it would even be possible to level a caster type without training spells, you'd just get to a point where you cannot kill anything that gives exp before it kills you.

[Ashamanchill]

Yeah, I'm not even sure why I posted that, except for the grinding frustration I felt at the time .  I slept on it and I realized it wasn't even that big a deal.  Everyone has groups like that.  They were all in the same guild, and were probably RL friends who were just new to the game, no problem.  The priest may well have been joking around with me, but I totally believe the mage had all those unspent talents, he came in just beneath my pet on the dps meter.

[SurfD]

Adding the healer will mostly trivialize Magisters, although you may have to be a little careful on mr energy boss.  Or not.  I doubt you'll be able to solo the entire place as ret.  I do know someone who soloed it as a prot paladin, but it did take a while, and he preferred to take a healer.

A paladin in my guild managed to solo heroic Magister's as Ret, though I think he died a couple times.  He did complete it though, so it is possible.  His gear is quite excellent though, for whatever that is worth.

As an aside, I have begun experimenting with what i can solo as a feral druid (full naxx 10 / 25 Tank / Dps gear).

So far, my list includes:
Onyxia
All of Zul'Gurub
Attumen and Maiden in Kara (Morose keeps whooping my ass, so I can't try anything further)
Heroic Magisters Terrace

Going to mess around with some bosses in AQ 20 and MC sometime later this week to see if they are doable.

[Merusk]

MC you shouldn't have a problem on.  One of my guildies had the whole place cleared solo as a warrior and only needed help on Ragnaros due to his "Nobody in melee range, I blow you all up" + knock back mechanics.

AQ20 you'll need some nature resist gear for the prophet.  The guy on the DK forums who's been doing all the old stuff tried it without and said he couldn't do it without and will go back later to give it a shot again when he has some.

Is Moros' bleed what's getting you in Kara?

[Koyasha]

Prophet is AQ40.  AQ20 is easily doable except for two bosses (and some of the trash).  The ooze mobs will mean certain death if you try to fight them, because they can engulf you and do >100% of your HP while you can do nothing, so they're unsoloable.  Fortunately they're also easily avoidable, unless you try to kill Buru the Gorger.  That's why I've never killed Buru myself, because there's one static ooze in his pit and one that paths into the pit.

Ayamiss has an air phase where she's completely immune to anything but ranged.  At the same time, she puts out considerable damage through sprays of poison, so as far as I can tell Ayamiss is totally unsoloable.  Maybe some kind of hybrid druid build that can do magic DPS and switch to Feral, plus has enough mana and regen to heal themselves on top of that, but other than that I don't see any class being capable of soloing Ayamiss.

The rest of the bosses are easy solos, so you can take out Kurinaxx, Rajaxx, Moam, and Ossirian.  Ossirian is a pain for several reasons though, not the least of which is the anubisaths in his room.  They randomly have either Plague or Meteor. If they have Meteor, prepare for the pain.  Alone, since there's no one else around to spread the damage to, the meteors will be doing ~12k damage.  There's not much of a cooldown on this ability, they just have to decide to use it.  Sometimes they'll use it once before you kill them.  Other times they just decide to use it two or three times in relatively short order.  However, if you can solo Attumen and Maiden, you shouldn't have a major problem with the Anbisaths, they'll just be a really annoying part of clearing the room so you can kill Ossirian.

I question how anyone can clear all of Molten Core solo - there's two fights I just can't see happening.  Sulfuron Harbinger, who has four adds that crossheal each other unless you pull one away from the other four and kill it separately, and Golemagg the Incinerator, who has an unavoidable Magma Splash that does 50 damage and reduces armor by 250, and stacks to 50, causing it to eventually do 2500 damage per tick and reduce armor by 12500.  If someone has done them completely solo, I'd love to know how.

[Phred]

Just FYI, but there is a known bug that sometimes shows talent points as being unused when inspecting others who have purchased the dual spec option.

Always good for a laugh though.

I wonder if that is what happened to my druid. Afrer the patch that added dual spec, he showed as having no talents used or available, but his talents still worked (still had mangle etc) dispite it not showing up on talents. I petitioned and the gm reset my talents and it fixed it up.

[Rasix]

Well that's it.  I have to officially stop running dungeons with anything other then guildies.  Tonight I attempted a Maruadon run with one of my alts.  Despite the fact that we were over leveled by quite a bit, we couldnt even come close to doing it.  It might have had something to do with the fact that our tank was a warrior using a grey stave, one of our mage deeps had twenty untrained talent points, and our healer was a priest who had never heard of flash heal, or heal for that matter as she had not visited a trainer since level one.   How do you even get to that level with only your starting skills.  How is the game even enjoyible at that gimped state?    Anyway, lesson learned, fuck groups on this alt.

Edit:  I didn't really know where to put this bitter rant so I crammed it in here.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=16300.0

I don't group on alts (unless being ran through something) before I get to the current expansion set of dungeons and rarely even then.  The most annoying part right now of leveling my warlock has been people asking for groups for content they're far too low for.  The level spread in these zones can be quite large, but it seems like Outland and Northrend has people thinking that they're entitled to finish zones off all at once.

[Ingmar]

I question how anyone can clear all of Molten Core solo - there's two fights I just can't see happening.  Sulfuron Harbinger, who has four adds that crossheal each other unless you pull one away from the other four and kill it separately, and Golemagg the Incinerator, who has an unavoidable Magma Splash that does 50 damage and reduces armor by 250, and stacks to 50, causing it to eventually do 2500 damage per tick and reduce armor by 12500.  If someone has done them completely solo, I'd love to know how.

The Sulfuron adds run out of mana relatively fast (~10 min or so) so something like a protection paladin can solo this fairly easily since it can cleanse the SW:P and such that gets thrown out. Similarly paladins can bubble the splash stacks on Golemagg off. I've also read about DKs killing Golemagg that just beat him down before it gets that bad.

[SurfD]

MC you shouldn't have a problem on.  One of my guildies had the whole place cleared solo as a warrior and only needed help on Ragnaros due to his "Nobody in melee range, I blow you all up" + knock back mechanics.

AQ20 you'll need some nature resist gear for the prophet.  The guy on the DK forums who's been doing all the old stuff tried it without and said he couldn't do it without and will go back later to give it a shot again when he has some.

Is Moros' bleed what's getting you in Kara?

My problem with moros is that by time i have managed to burn through the adds, i am out of cooldowns to keep myself alive on the Boss himself.

[Vash]

I'm not sure whether it's coincidence or what, but I've caught wind of several rather impressive solo feats recently.

The most notable were:

Rogue soloing Onyxia

Prot Paladin soloing all of the BWL bosses after Vael

Warlock soloing MC

[Koyasha]

I've wanted to try a BWL solo myself.  Although getting a group to help take down Vael and then leave you to do the rest alone would be a major hang-up for me.  As a death knight I would never be able to do Chromaggus, though, since I have no way to get rid of at least two of the curses and would therefore be transformed into a drakonid.  My paladin could probably do it though.

AQ40 is one I've never been able to crack cause I'm not well enough equipped to take out the Prophet Skeram.  I discovered the last time I was there that C'thun is bugged as all get-out these days, too.  The red beam extends both in front AND behind him, and once you're past that phase the stomach has some weird bugs or something too, because several times I died but my logs registered nothing, no damage or even a message stating I died, I was just suddenly dead.  Had a decent sized group and didn't kill him mostly because of odd things like that.

[Merusk]

MC you shouldn't have a problem on.  One of my guildies had the whole place cleared solo as a warrior and only needed help on Ragnaros due to his "Nobody in melee range, I blow you all up" + knock back mechanics.

AQ20 you'll need some nature resist gear for the prophet.  The guy on the DK forums who's been doing all the old stuff tried it without and said he couldn't do it without and will go back later to give it a shot again when he has some.

Is Moros' bleed what's getting you in Kara?

My problem with moros is that by time i have managed to burn through the adds, i am out of cooldowns to keep myself alive on the Boss himself.

I can see where that'd be a problem.  DKs just get to toss up AOtD and eat the adds, then use Death Strike to work through the bleed.

My bad on AQ20.. I kept thinking "25-man" for raid size.

[SurfD]

It also largely depends on which of the adds you get.  If I get the Paladin healer add instead of the priest, I pretty much say screw it, cause even if i get her low, she bubbles herself and i have to waste more precious seconds to kill her, which screws me over even more.

[SurfD]

AQ40 is one I've never been able to crack cause I'm not well enough equipped to take out the Prophet Skeram.  I discovered the last time I was there that C'thun is bugged as all get-out these days, too.  The red beam extends both in front AND behind him, and once you're past that phase the stomach has some weird bugs or something too, because several times I died but my logs registered nothing, no damage or even a message stating I died, I was just suddenly dead.  Had a decent sized group and didn't kill him mostly because of odd things like that.

C'thun has been bugged for a LONG time.  The red beam thing is always funny.  Last time i was in there with an Achievement pug, we specificly told the Mele Dps classes, "don't hug the back of the Giant Eye when it does the Red beam of death, cause the beam clips a little behind the center and will kill you".  We said this about 10 times before we started the fight.  6 people STILL managed to get instagibbed by the beam because they were too busy backstabbing or whatever to pay attention.

The stomach also has issues.  Biggest one for me is that occasionally, the stomach acid does 10x more damage per stack then it should.  It should tick for about 200 or 300 per application of the stack.  Sometimes however, you get in there, and the first tick of damage hits you for 3000, then the next stack hits for 6k.  If that happens, you basicly make a beeline to the exit port thing or die in very short order.

[Chimpy]

The acid debuff doesn't disappear after death either anymore (at least the last time I was in there). If you are on your way out of the stomach and die landing, if someone rezzes you you die to the ticks.

It was quite funny actually, as we kept rezzing the guy and he kept dying until he finally said "Fuck it" and corpse ran.

[WindupAtheist]

BC five-mans are, on the whole, pretty boring and terrible.

[Rasix]

BC five-mans are, on the whole, pretty boring and terrible.

Yep.  I only really liked either CoT instance. The rest varied from tolerable (Tempest Keep instances) to pure, unrestrained torture (Auchindoun instances). Some were just too long with too much stupid trash while others were just brutal (on heroic) unless you were completely over-geared or had multiple crowd control options.

This was a major reason my stints playing in BC were pretty short.

[Sheepherder]

It could be worse.  My options for an ISP are satellite or dial-up, both of which effectively precluded tanking before 3.0.  Which meant I probably finished a dozen heroics before the Wrath pre-patch.  Then I tanked a Kara.

[WindupAtheist]

Yeah, if the BC CoT instances didn't require level 66 to enter, I'd have had her in there from the moment she hit Outland. They're pretty cool. Auchindoun is indeed some bullshit though, even in "lol 80" stompfest mode. The art design and lore alone piss me off. Those bird guys all fucking sound like the Chicken Lady.

Going 45 to 58 via endless Scholo runs with the occasional LBRS/UBRS/BRD mixed in never felt anywhere NEAR as tedious as 62-66 in the BC dungeons.

(Chicken Lady is marginally NSFW)

[Paelos]

BC had moments of brilliance with the Caverns stuff, and that carried forward to my current favorite dungeon in Wrath. They really did things well there in terms of offering players quick fights if they wanted them, and scaling gear to content that negated a lot of time-wasting crap. They took the BM design into VH and it's been very successful for example. Players like dungeons that last less than 30 minutes. It's been proven. It works. RUN WITH IT.

[Gobbeldygook]

They took the BM design into VH and it's been very successful for example. Players like dungeons that last less than 30 minutes. It's been proven. It works. RUN WITH IT.

Real take away message: People do whatever is easiest.  Despite so many people calling them their favorites, the COT Heroics were some of the least-run heroics even post 2.4 because they were brutally unforgiving of PUGs - especially Old Hillsbrad.

[Paelos]

Of course people want short and easy in 5 man content. They also want chances of random long term "OMG MAYBE" rewards like mounts. People will keep running things if they are under 40 minutes and they don't have a bunch of annoying trash that will screw up the noobs they have with them. They'll do it over and over for a mount too.