Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Wailing and Deadmines on 19

As I already posted, the first bosses of both Wailing Caverns and Deadmines were done by Golmeg on lvl 19. Now I continued the instances. My girlfriend cleared the parts that were done last time and I've continued.

Skum and Lord Serpentis were easy kills. Serpentis hits hard, but DoTs kill him while Health Funnel keeps the voidwalker up. Skum was a bad joke, the void left the battle with half HP without heals.

Mutanus on the other hand is an extremely hard kill. I died 6 times and ran out of the instance 8 times (if you jump down to the "river" and climb out on the other side, you can get away, as Mutanus makes a big circle on the bridge). This nice murlock is:
  • Shadow immune: no corruption, CoA, CoW, fear, sbolt
  • Chain-cast 15 sec long sleeps
  • The sleep is not broken by PvP trinket
  • Has a small range AoE fear, so you can't stand by his feet with Arcane Torrent ready
  • He hits the void so hard that funnel must be up in 60-75% of the time
Since there is no funnel while asleep, I had to find a way to avoid his sleep spell. The solution: there is a pillar next to the altar of Naralex (on the left of the picture, behind the damage meter). I was casting immolate, kept funnel up and whenever he started casting sleep, ran behind the pillar. There is debris behind the pillar, so it's easy to get stuck. And with no DoTs, my DPS is a joke. So he died very slowly, in 4:20:
It was way the hardest kill ever. But hey, for ilvl 26 loot, you must work hard. On the other hand, the repair cost is still managable:


After that, I went to Deadmines. My GF cleared it up to Mr Smite. After some trashpulls came Captain Greenskin with 2 elite adds and a parrot. Not so hard, fear the pirate, DoT the parrot, nuke the caster, after they died, kill the captain and finally the feared pirate.

Edwin vanCleef was a very hard kill. He starts with two elite adds, and summons two more. No way I could handle four adds alone. On the top of that, he hits very hard. I tried to burn him down but it's impossible. After repairs, I read the comments about him on WoWhead. The add summoning is counter-intuitive, it's not time-scripted, nor they walk around and attack as patrol. They spawn at 50% (actually phase-changes at percentages are common in WoW, but still very counter-intuitive to me). So the strat that finally worked:
  1. Pull with curse of weakness, sacrifice shield up
  2. Immediately focus-target one of the add and fear her with focus macro
  3. Turn the void from the boss to the other add.
  4. Burn that add down, keep the other feared.
  5. Turn the void to the remaining add
  6. Keep the void up with funnel, kill the add with dots, refresh CoW on vanCleef
  7. With only corruption on vanCleef, heal the void to full
  8. Life-tap until 10% HP
  9. Heal yourself with runecloth bandage to full
  10. While keeping the void full, DoT vanCleef to 50%
  11. When add comes, sacrifice shield up and continue from point 2 of this list
Since the comments were contradictory and I didn't want bad surprise with another pair of adds on 25%, I kept Mezzlos topped, so the fight was longer than it could be. Still, at the end I was up and he was down. And hey, my HPS was higher than my DPS! And some call warlock a pure DPS class.


After that I killed the Cook (no adds, no problem), who gave me a much needed new wand.

Deadmines, like most of the old instances have an atmosphere. You can be immersed to their story. It looks like a real pirate hideout and not like a mock setting around a platform for a boss just to get some emblems. I liked it much, just like wailing caverns, RFC and SFK. Goodbye lvl 18-19 scene:


I've leveled to 20 the next day to level engineering, but I did not equip my lvl 20 gear, you see the same gear on Armory that I used in the instances.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mutanus is no way that hard as you think.
1) He does not cast sleep when there is only 1 oponent left so when you get rid of your demon you are safe from sleep.
2) You can kite him without problems. He is not faster than 100% so if you use the bridge to jump down and get up on the other side. Than run in circle around and he just chases you while you get full mana & full HP as warlock. Cast few spells, jump down and continue.

I soloed him with shaman and druid using this tactics. I can imagine that his shadow immunity is pain in the ass for warlock.

Anonymous said...

I defintely know what you mean by atmosphere of the old instances. I remember running deadmines in beta. The story and feel of the instance is still great to this day.

Sad to see how current content has been watered down to zero trash. Come here and kill your easy mode bosses for loot.

Lite said...

I gotta say, your posts are making me want to solo low level instances again.

For the first time since I started reading your blog: Thanks ;)

WeAreTheAnon said...

Why did you chose a Blood Elf? Just for looks or because of a different reasoning? +5% damage done from your pet would have been more useful than an aoe silence imo, orcs look bulky but only a social would care.

I like those soloing posts, they're a nice cahnge (filler?) between the usual ones.

Keep it coming.

Pharod said...

Really cool series of posts. Was it possible 4 years ago to do this kind of soloing of instances? or were they tuned down with the expansions?

Strutt@Kil' Jaeden said...

Gev, So what’s the point of posting these "feats" about soloing and Dou these low level instances? You said you stay at gold cap and continue to make gold for the reason of this blog, So what would the reason of this be? Plus as it has already been posted you are using BoA gear which in a since is Epic gear at your level, BoA gear is better than any blue piece of your level if not for the next couple of levels. You say this is a challenge? So why do you feel the need to show off your feats and achievements to others?

Eaten by a Grue said...

I cannot believe the attitude of some of the posters above me. I am referring to the people who are unhappy with reading articles about soloing old world content.

Hey, Gevlon is not being paid to write this, and you are not paying to read it. If you want to read about economics today, you are free to write your own article. He owes you nothing.

csdx said...

I disagree about the whole old-instance nostalgia. I think sure they're pretty well done and atmospheric (part of that comes from just being so huge in the first place), but any of the newer dungeons offer the same as well.

Has anyone stopped to look around in the Halls of Lightning, or bothered listening to what Bronzebeard had to say? If anything Blizzard's gotten better with time, maybe you can now go back to some of the old BC instances and appreciate them now that you're not constantly running them for loot. When Cataclysm comes out maybe people will actually look around the instances from this one.

Joar said...

I recently did a run back through Deadmines myself recently and it has definitely made me want to go back and run through some of those old instances again. I'm enjoying the new posts!

Strutt@Kil' Jaeden said...

@ Eaten by a Grue
I’m still trying to find where I typed I’m unhappy? maybe you can quote it to me? I’m simply asking/debating his claim to be SO non social yet does these things.

He is making it sound as if he is doing something spectacular. As I said in different comment, When they main tanked Hodir Hard mode with a hunters turtle... that was a feat. What he is doing is something that has been done countless times way before wrath came out.

Knowing this is Gev's blog I also know he may post WTF he wants, but being a blog I can comment on WTF I want, whether he decides to delete the comments are another story.

Dorgol said...

@Strutt - the point that these are challenging encounters. It doesn't matter that people have been doing them for years, because the challenge is personal.

Personally, I'm not impressed with the "hunter pet tanked Hodir hardmode". As a healer a hunter pet just means I have to spam bigger heals more often. As a DPS a hunter pet means I have to give the pet a bigger threat list. There's no "skill" there that I'm not already doing in a normal kill.

No, I'm more impressed by Gevlon's own blue-Ulduar - and even his soloing of low level instances - than I am of a pet tank.

Strutt said...

@ Dorgol
The main point of the comment/post was to question Gev's social behavior and hopfully get an answer.

Also as a Healer with you spamming bigger heals that means you have to manage your mana a hell of alot more, DPS have to threat watch ALOT more than if they had a regular tank, as your pet only has 1 taunt max on a longer CD. witch is a skill in its self. As well as these things since it is a pet alot of Spells/skills will not work on it making it more of a challenge.

Also, you said yourself these challenges are personal to each of us, As the reason me thinking a pet tanking Hodir Hard mode is a challenge.

Plus im a Hunter =D

N said...

Pet-tanking Hodir hard isn't ridiculously hard. You just stack Stam gear, maintain mend Pet, and let your healers do the rest.

Unless you kite the boss around with a pet tank? If so, yeah, that'd be rough, since you'd basically have to spam follow/attack while constantly moving yourself.

The Gnome of Zurich said...

How did you keep yourself up versus all that health funnelling? in your VC parse it shows you healing almost 10k with health funnel, which should cost you around 5-6k, but only 2k with first aid. Even assuming no lifetaps, that's gotta be a least 2k more health than you have, and if you lifetap at all, there's more.

Where did the rest of your own health come from?

Gevlon said...

@Gnome: the main self-heal was mentioned both on the screenshot and in the article. The others are potion and herbalism heal.

The Gnome of Zurich said...

That still didn't make sense to me, so I did the math for health funnel. Even though I run a low level warlock, I haven't really tried to solo instances or such and went affliction and tend to do my own tanking since I get self-healing dots.

I didn't realize how much of a difference it makes, especially at 19 with health funnel lvl 1, to have BoA gear and the demo talent, in terms of amount healed as a multiple of the health cost. I was thinking it cost something like 1/2 of the amount healed, but it looks like with your gear and talents it's only around 12%, so the bandages did heal you for more than the HF cost. Maybe I should try demo.

Strutt said...

@ Nick S.
Actually, its alittle more than that, but ill just link it http://bigredrhino.forumotion.com/pet-feats-and-walkthroughs-f7/feat-hodir-25-mt-t94.htm
Has a video as well of it. The pet had about 50k Health... Most tanks cant even touch that.

Enjoy

tego said...

@ Strutt

actually most bears i know are above 50k at this point, and even my mostly 232 geared pally tank will hit 48k (one or 2 245 pieces, and others sitting at 226 and 219) so, 50k isn't impossible.

Brent said...

@Strut:

Almost every tank I see in 25 ToC and 25 ToGC are 50-53k.

Then again, "most" tanks don't do 25 ToC/GC.

So I see your point.

Nils said...

I rarely agree with you, Gevlon.


Deadmines, like most of the old instances have an atmosphere. You can be immersed to their story. It looks like a real pirate hideout and not like a mock setting around a platform for a boss just to get some emblems.


Here, I absolutely agree.
That hits the nail on the head.

tego said...

brent you have a point, being a tank and doing toc and togc 10 I guess my view is a little skewed

Unknown said...

61k bear :D

But yeah, at least 50k is standard for most classes, and since we're talking Ulduar hardmodes we can also rule out 'most tanks' not raiding ToC/ToGC

The point of the posts, which he wrote about before, is that this is the only challenge/fun left for him. So he writes about it.

Repaxan said...

Have you tried soloing higher level content? Reading your comments about Mutanus reminded me of solo killing Maiden in Kara, on my hunter.

Brent said...

Personally I enjoy his Soloing arc. Reminds me of Legacy. I remember the first time two manning strat as an Orc Shaman and my cousins Undead Warrior at 60 in mostly dungeon 1/MC gear. We were trying so hard to get that mount... and even harder to get my cousin the barons sword.

The only time I've ever seen the sword drop was in a normal 5 man group, never have seen the mount. And now with the orcha mount the barons is just "plain".

Victor Praxedes said...

like Gevon said, old instances have a much attractive and well done atmosphere. i just love to do WC and RFK, you get so immersed in the "Serpent/Mutantpig(?)" universe. it's awesome.