We Made it Through a Ring of Fire

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t quest or do raids/dungeons/instances with a guild or anything. I have only partially pugged Deadmines once, and that’s the extent of my real “real group” type playing in WoW. It’s normally just me & Kattastrophe.

This has ZERO effect on the simple/regular quests (actually it makes them easier since most quests are doable solo; they become MUCH easier in a duo. However, this arrangement makes it impossible to really be able to do instances, dungeons or raids, at least not until we level up a bunch. Often this has been where we are ~10 levels above the top recommended level.

At level 67, we decided to try Hellfire: Ramparts (aka “ramps” ) which is a 60-62 level, 5 man dungeon. Kattastrophe had been walked through it once by a level 80, so she knew a *little*, but we were essentially walking in blind. (she did remember which guys to pull first though) For the first two guys, we just ran in & killed them: (Watchkeeper Gargolmar and Omor the Unscarred)

Before the “final” Boss and we then watched a youtube vid of the fight so we had an idea of what to expect. It was tough, but we made it through!!! We didn’t even wipe! (we did come close on one occasion where we pulled too many trash mobs, but that was it) Vazruden & Nazan was an interesting, tough fight.

YUSS!!!

Nazan the Dead

A few days later, at level 68, we decided to give Bloodfurnace, (a 61-63 level, 5 man dungeon) a try. This was a *slightly* different story. For starters, many of the mobs are SIGNIFICANTLY tougher. The damnable Shadowmoon Technicians in particular are nasty if you aren’t prepared. They plant bombs under your feet that do 1,800 damage. YOUCH!!! We wiped once when we pulled two of them and a Fel Orc. We didn’t know about the bombs, so we just stood still and fought. And died. Once I read the battle text and saw the bomb planting bit, and read up on them, we came up with a simple strategy: I pull and gain aggro, Kattastrophe THEN plants her totems, then I just sort of kite them around. The only time they got REALLY tough was when you were in a confined place and couldn’t run. BOOM! was the result of that. (and if it’s only 1, we can easily survive/heal through it)

The Bosses were a bit more challenging as well. (actually the first Boss, “The Maker” wasn’t that bad at all, and with a little preparation, the last one, Keli’dan the Breaker, wasn’t either) But the middle boss, Broggok, was a bit of a pain.
We read up on him, the progression of the fight and the mobs involved. The sources we read said that all the pre-Boss mobs were regulars with a couple elites thrown in. Nope. They are ALL elites. We found this out the hard way when we were trying to save mana and not be too aggressive, and we got wiped with the first group.

So, we wiped twice, but got through Bloodfire furnace a two-some!

WAHOO!!!

Kel'idan the not so tough...

I can say I’m a bit proud of doing that. We weren’t really very over-leveled (in fact we got exp for all the fights) and only having 2 meant it was a LOT tougher, since we each had to dual purpose our fight: I had to tank and DPS, and Kattastrophe had to DPS and heal. And it worked out well!

Then we found out that we could then run the Heroic level. We grabbed the needed key, and headed over, with our newly dinged level 69 toons.

Ouch.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

Our first attempt, I tried to pull just a walker. We got him AND two guards. We were dead within 5 seconds.

Our second attempt, we avoided the walker, and just tried to pull the guards; with me using Repentance to stun one, while we focused on killing the other. The only problem was that we miscued. I stunned one, and then Kat attacked him, breaking the stun. We died very shortly after that.

Our third attempt, we did what we wanted: stun one, and focus on the other one. It was going ok, except that the guy is WAY tough and has a boatload of health. It got a LOT worse when Kat somehow ended up with aggro, and the guy focused on her. I cast Hand of Reckoning (which is usually enough to regain aggro and deal some damage at the same time - also, I have Righteous Fury on all the time) It had no effect, and by the time I can click Righteous defense, she's dead. Now I'm 1 v 1 with this guy, and it's no contest; I die while he still has ~30% health, even though I bubbled and laid hands. I never even thought to bubble Kat because it just happened so fast. WIPE.

Only later did I find out that the Heroic mode is INTENDED for 5 level 70, geared players.

We have since dinged level 70, but I don’t think we’ll be heading back any time soon. We’ve got Northrend on our plates, as well as saving gold for epic flight, grinding rep to get a cool epic flying mount (Netherwing Drake) and just plain levelling up.