Last Friday I pulled out Tomakan and dialed up Wailing Caverns. I knew I wanted to take care of it before it disappeared from my radar, and I didn’t feel like trooping through The Barrens to get to the entrance when I was a much higher level.
I’ve been in Wailing Caverns exactly twice; like most Old World instances, I get lost pretty darned easily in it.* I know what we have to do, but I don’t know where all the bosses are.
That’s what the tank is for, right?
Well, as soon as we got going, the tank admitted he wasn’t sure where everything was, but he was determined to wander around to find everything. I had time to kill and I wanted the achievement, so I was fine with that.
We managed to find the first boss and downed him just in time to discover that our Gnome Warlock was rolling Need on all items. “What are you doing?” the priest asked. “You can’t use that axe at all.”
“I have a friend who will pay good gold,” he replied.
“You noob,” the tank said. “You can’t trade a ‘Bind on Pickup’ item.”
On the next item that dropped, the Lock rolled Need again. The Priest protested, and the Lock replied with a weak “but I could use that!”
“Okay,” the tank said, “everybody rolls Need from now on, then it’s the same as Greed.”
The Lock didn’t like that, and began to forge ahead of the group.
Shortly afterward, the tank had to drop and he was replaced by another tank, this one a Gnome Warrior. He ported in, and immediately ran to the next trash mob and pulled. At the same time, another mob swarmed over the Lock and the Hunter.
“Holy crap!” cried the Priest.
I’d have said something, but I was kind of busy spamming heals all over the place. I was literally running back and forth between two sets of mobs trying to keep everyone upright. I’m still not sure how I managed that one.
That finished, the Priest and Lock were out of mana. The tank, oblivious to it all, bounded forward to the next trash mob. “Wait!” I shouted.
Too late. The tank had already pulled.
I ended up having to do a bit of DPS to cover for the lack of caster support, but the mob eventually went down.
“Yes?” the tank asked.
“The casters need to drink.”
“Oh,” he said, bounding around the entire area.
“What the hell happened back there?” I whispered to the Priest.
“The idiot Lock pulled at the same time as the tank,” she whispered back. “He needs to stop doing that.”
“If he does that again he’s gone.”
Sure enough, the Lock ran ahead of the group and pulled the next trash. “Dammit!” the tank cried.
I began mashing the “Vote to Kick” option, but the Lock was moving so quickly there wasn’t enough time between the next couple of mobs for us to officially hold a vote. When it finally stuck, the Lock immediately dropped group.
A huge sigh of relief went up from the group when a well behaved Gnome Mage ported in and we continued our run.
There was one final misstep where we had to double back and get one final boss, but compared to the first twenty minutes, the last half an hour was a walk in the park.
When I was relating the tale to Souldat, who was on with his Warrior at the time, he replied, “A lot of people seem to think they can act exactly the same way as if they’re an 80 running an instance.”
I couldn’t agree more.
*Shadowfang Keep, by contrast, is a straight shot. After having gone through there for the first time as a Draenei on Sunday, I wonder why on earth the Alliance would even want these Worgen in the first place. Maybe the Horde could trade the Goblins for the Worgen.
"Maybe the Horde could trade the Goblins for the Worgen." No way!! We need a tiny class. Blood Elves were our daintiest class, but nothing compared to the vertically-challenged nature of gnomes and dwarves! Though I do find the Worgen and Draenei models somewhat similar... with the backwards knee and all.
ReplyDeleteAnd I totally agree with you guys about leveling toons running dungeons as if they were doing a heroic in ICC gear! Or group members who think they can just %@#& off and do whatever they want, regardless of how it affects the rest of the group. My husband is leveling his first healer, and had to let a dps know that if he continued to pull mobs, he would not be healed. The dps said some not-so-nice things to him (which he laughed off), and continued to pull packs. Well my husband refused to heal him, and after almost dying, the dps apologized for the things he said and stopped pulling groups before the tank. My husband thanked him for the apology, but still did not heal him the entire run.
Exactly. Fail-pug takes on a whole new meaning at low levels, especially with people used to playing overpowered. I know it's extremely rare to see someone drink in Heroic Northrend 5-mans, but the concept of mana management is something that needs to be relearned in the low level instances.
ReplyDeleteCrowd control is another thing; in most of the Heroic Northrend 5-mans, an average group can handle a couple of packs at once if they're ready for them. However, that goes out the window in the low level dungeons; you need to learn when and where to pull, and how to keep mobs from overwhelming you.
This is the reason I'm looking forward to cataclysm where, hopefully, CC will be required in dungeons again. It brought a whole new level of excitement to the game. A sap breaks early, or a sheep gets hit. People were required to develop skills that the average player from BC and on do not have.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how well a heroic magister's terrace or a dire maul north tribute run would go if they were level 80 dungeons (nothing beats the /dance in the ogre disguise suit).
Honestly, I'd love that sort of thing. Heroic Shadowfang and Deadmines is great and all, but I figure it would be simpler to retune the Heroic BC instances for 80 or 83 and slip them into the queue. When you first walk into The Mechanar and all hell breaks loose with multiple mobs coming at you, that takes some serious crowd control.
ReplyDeleteNow that I think about it, I've suggested this idea before on Achtung Panzercow: to prevent OP romps through a heroic instance, have the server determine the capability of a group based on gear --like the barriers to getting into the ICC 5-man instances-- and adjust the level/health/attacks of the mobs and bosses accordingly.