I'm half way through the guild's raiding week, the second spent in Uldaur. And I've got a few impressions.
Week 1 was pretty difficult. The guild managed to kill Flame Leviathan (yawn), Razorgore, Deconstructor, Iron Council, and Thorogrim (forgot his name already), and Ignis. 6/14. Of those, we managed to kill Razorgore, and Deconstructor before they were severely nerfed. And Ignis only after he was patched to not insta-gib the tanks.
Since that time, most of those bossess have had minor-to-major nerfs handed out to them. And this has certainly changed the flavor of those encounters. Our week 2 has certainly been easier...we killed all of the bosses we killed the first week on the first day, plus Aurilya (sp?)...and spent all of last night on Hodir (didn't get him), Freya (got her, but that fight is assy), and Thorim (we just had time for 3 pulls, and didn't really get to see the real encounter).
I have to say, after having gone farther into the instance...so far this is the best instance that Blizzard has released so far. The instance has a fairly cool atmosphere, and the trash/encounters really feel different from one another. And with the exception of Freya, most of the trash just isn't that long...assy maybe, but none of it takes very long to go through. And well spaced teleporters allow for getting through what is otherwise a massive area fairly quickly.
What I don't like is that most of the gear seems a bit...underwhelming so far. I don't like going into a new raid instance and DEing 70% of what was dropping...but this is exactly what was happening to us. I'm guessing that standard-mode gear is mostly 226, 226 gear which is at best mostly side-grades or not as well itimized. It's pretty annoying.
Flame Leviathan.
The first time we were in Uldaur, we 1-shotted FL. And that was with 3 vehicles locked out due to accidently starting the encounter early, and no one on a motorcycle understanding that they were supposed to be picking up the people that get lobbed onto the leviathan after taking out the turrets. On normal difficulty, this boss is a joke in every way. But, he's also a lot of fun.
Ignis the Igniter
This boss was a complete broken ass when he came out. Bugged to hell. Killing his adds didn't properly remove his damage buff. He had a tendency to melee attack the people we put into the slagpot. And he would randomly double-attack the tank, killing him instantly.
I'm not sure how some guilds got past that (though I know a few obviously did). But, Blizzard was pretty quick to fix some of this stuff. Plus they nerfed him to boot. We did not kill him the first night...our first kill on him came Monday before the reset and after most of the fixes/nerfs.
Now the encounter is pretty simple and no longer quite as punishing on the healers. I wouldn't say it's trivial, but it's nothing like it was.
Razorgore
This boss has a pretty simple, fun design. And when Uldaur origionally came out...a punishing enrage timer. We managed to beat him (barely), our second boss kill...but wow, it was by the skin of our teeth. By this point I had decided that Blizzard's description of difficulty was WAY off...Uldaur didn't feel like a step up in difficulty...it felt like 3 or 4. The encounter difficulty was really feeling more like the second half of black temple...IE not sunwell hard, but not easy either.
Of course, then they nerfed him by extending his enrage timer (which was honestly the only thing that made him difficult). They also reduced the spawning range of the drills, which is a nerf but a more welcome one. Those things were quite annoying spawning all over the place.
Deconstructor
At this point, my idea of what Uldaur was going to be had changed quite a bit. So I wasn't surprised that XT turned out to be as hard as he ended up being. Again, the encounter itself wasn't all that complex. DPS, DPS-heart, then AOE adds before they get to him. And run out when you get the nasty debuff. But his 6-minute enrage timer made this fight much harder than it would have been otherwise. With a 6-minute enrage timer, you had to execute it perfectly while stacking DPS.
This boss gave us the most trouble of the first four...I think we wiped 44 times to him over the course of a single night (our second night in Uldaur). But we got him...and then they nerfed the hell out of him the next day. The changes made to him, again, don't make the encounter trivial, but certainly provides a LOT more latitude on executing the encounter.
Iron Council
Hmmm...after some fairly difficult first bosses, the encounter difficulty in Uldaur dropped significantly with Iron Council. We one-shotted him, and didn't have much trouble doing it either. I don't think he was nerfed that much either before we got to him, so I was a bit surprised on how quick this guy went down.
Kologarm (or whatever his name is, I cannot remember)
The first time we fought this guy, we got him to 6%. Though in the end it took 5 kills to actually kill him. Honestly I like this encounter. It's one of the least complicated and easy to execute fights in Uldaur. The only thing that makes this fight difficult is the lack of room to manuever when dealing with eyebeam...especially in the 25 man version where you don't want to run it through the middle of everyone.
Again, this guy was nerfed. Not sure why because he was already pretty easy. Now he's even easier.
Auyrelia (or whatever else I can do to butcher her name)
We didn't get to do much with her the first week. The hardest part of this fight looks to be the pull...man she can wipe a raid FAST. Otherwise it's a fairly simple fight that tries to make it seem more hectic than it really is.
Tactics are simple. Stay together. After the fear group back together fast. Stay out of the black stuff. And kill the adds she spawns on a regular basis.
Hodir
Tried him last night. We weren't really set up for him, though we did manage to get him to 16% before went on to another boss. Our DPS was a LITTLE low on him, and unfortunately the healers were having a hard time keeping the boss alive.
Mostly I like this fight. And the animations in this fight are pretty cool. I would consider this a moderately difficult fight. Nothing too severe, but 36 million HP is a lot of health to burn through in 9 minutes (or 8?, I don't remember now).
Freya
Holy shit that's a lot of trash. And the actual fight itself is somewhat annoying. This is the first boss I don't really like in Uldaur. And I can't imagine how hectic it is going to be to do her in full hard mode. On the plus side, she did give me a nice pair of T8.5 legs...which I got!
Thorim
Didn't get to see much of this fight...just a little of the gauntlet. We'll be working on him and Hodir on Sunday...hopefully we'll get both of them down.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Hooray for Idle Postings!
I haven't posted on this blog since November. I'd like to say that it was because I've been too busy. But I have a confession to make...I just haven't been all that interested or had much to say.
In the WOW Front, patch 3.1 has come out and I took a first step into Uldaur last night. The first boss is/was a joke...we did everything wrong from what I could tell...had multiple people get locked out, and STILL managed to suceed easy enough. Past that, though, things got more difficult. The second boss was hitting like a truck, and after a Uldaur reset caused all the trash to respawn we went on to the second boss. The second boss, Razorgore, seems easy enough, but has a pretty agressive enrage timer. So, Flame Leviathan was our only kill of the night. And people were pretty happy that, at the very least, we weren't just steam rolling everything.
But, this points to what Blizzard has done wrong with Wrath. Now, compared to BC things are much better. But Blizzard made a major mistake making Naxx so easy and providing no clear alternative. Not only was Naxx a remake of an already-existing zone with well known tactics, but it was completely forgiving.
Now, IMO, that's a very good thing. Not only does Naxx serve as a very good introduction to raiding, it drives up interest and brings in new players. Unfortunately, there was no real alternative to Naxx for a hardcore guild to sink their teeth into. Naxx was on farm mode for those guilds the second week of Wrath. And there has been a serious sense of...what now? permeating the game. Uldaur has been viewed as the second coming, and certainly with 14 bosses, 11 hard mode alternatives, and a few other new features, there is more here for a guild to get into.
I think people are going to be a bit shocked by the difficulty shift from Naxx to Uldaur. Not that it seems -that- much harder, but Naxx was just SO easy that a lot of casuals are going to freak out. Of course, I think the intention is to have a better representation of difficulty: Uldaur 10 < Uldaur 25 < Uldaur 10 Hard Modes < Uldaur 25 Hard Modes. But we'll see.
For right now, I've stuck with a cookie cutter FFB build 0/52/18. I did go ahead and purchase the dual spec option for my mage (and also my newly minted druid and DK). For my mage, I'm a more popular fire/arcane build, or possibly a full frost build used just for learning boss fights. Mana, which I was somewhat worried about, did not seem like much of an issue to me last night.
When Wrath came out, I didn't spend much time researching gear, nor was I very disciplined when it came to DKP purchases in the guild. This time I'm planning on being much more on top of things. Instead of making rash purchases, I'm going to be very specific about what gear I'm going to go for and which I won't.
In the WOW Front, patch 3.1 has come out and I took a first step into Uldaur last night. The first boss is/was a joke...we did everything wrong from what I could tell...had multiple people get locked out, and STILL managed to suceed easy enough. Past that, though, things got more difficult. The second boss was hitting like a truck, and after a Uldaur reset caused all the trash to respawn we went on to the second boss. The second boss, Razorgore, seems easy enough, but has a pretty agressive enrage timer. So, Flame Leviathan was our only kill of the night. And people were pretty happy that, at the very least, we weren't just steam rolling everything.
But, this points to what Blizzard has done wrong with Wrath. Now, compared to BC things are much better. But Blizzard made a major mistake making Naxx so easy and providing no clear alternative. Not only was Naxx a remake of an already-existing zone with well known tactics, but it was completely forgiving.
Now, IMO, that's a very good thing. Not only does Naxx serve as a very good introduction to raiding, it drives up interest and brings in new players. Unfortunately, there was no real alternative to Naxx for a hardcore guild to sink their teeth into. Naxx was on farm mode for those guilds the second week of Wrath. And there has been a serious sense of...what now? permeating the game. Uldaur has been viewed as the second coming, and certainly with 14 bosses, 11 hard mode alternatives, and a few other new features, there is more here for a guild to get into.
I think people are going to be a bit shocked by the difficulty shift from Naxx to Uldaur. Not that it seems -that- much harder, but Naxx was just SO easy that a lot of casuals are going to freak out. Of course, I think the intention is to have a better representation of difficulty: Uldaur 10 < Uldaur 25 < Uldaur 10 Hard Modes < Uldaur 25 Hard Modes. But we'll see.
For right now, I've stuck with a cookie cutter FFB build 0/52/18. I did go ahead and purchase the dual spec option for my mage (and also my newly minted druid and DK). For my mage, I'm a more popular fire/arcane build, or possibly a full frost build used just for learning boss fights. Mana, which I was somewhat worried about, did not seem like much of an issue to me last night.
When Wrath came out, I didn't spend much time researching gear, nor was I very disciplined when it came to DKP purchases in the guild. This time I'm planning on being much more on top of things. Instead of making rash purchases, I'm going to be very specific about what gear I'm going to go for and which I won't.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Frostfire
Sometime between 75 and 80 I switched to a Fire-based Frostfire build, the idea being to help us in questing and 2-3 man quests. Frostfire is a fairly interesting spell, which on the surface seems pretty subpar. On the surface, the spell doesn't seem that great--yay, a spell for fire/frost mage to use when their main nuke is worthless. It's in the details where Frostfire starts to get useful and interesting.
The trick with Frostfire is that it benefits from ALL effects that affect Frost AND Fire. So, for example, Frostfire can benefit from both Ice Shards (+100% to base Crit Damage), AND Ignite (40% Crit Damage dot). It can benefit from Frost Slow, and Freezes; AND Fire Stuns. And it benefits from +Hit, +Crit, and +damage bonuses from BOTH categories. This makes the build extremely interesting.
For leveling, I went with a mostly fire build. My Level 80 build looked pretty much like a strait 0/53/18 Fire build, with Ice Shards; and taking all Freezes, Stuns, and slowing effects I could. It was pretty effectively...with this build, if I crit I pretty much could kill the mob with 1-2 spells, long before it reached me. And if I didn't crit, I still had a 10% chance of a freeze, and an ADDITIONAL 10% chance of a stun hitting. In some cases, the mob would die before even managing to move from it's origional position; and the effect carries over fairly well into 5-mans. Plus, you still end up with Combustion, Dragons Breath, and Blast Wave for crowd control which is good enough for questing most of the time.
So far the build has worked pretty well. Frostfire is HEAVILY dependant on crit rate, and that's the main issue I have with it right now. My crit rating has tanked at 80, down 18% almost, and that's mostly just a stat-drop; I haven't made that back anywhere else. Of course, I haven't really gotten much in the way of 80 gear yet so things will only go up from here.
With that in mind, Frostfire has still proven useful and viable. With a crit rate of 25%, I'm hitting on average 2300-2600 on a non-crit; 6.5k on a crit + 40%. In 5-mans I'm generally hitting 7-8k on crits. That's not bad, seeing how right now Fireball's biggest benefit right now would be 500 points more non-crit damage and 2k less crits.
Of course, my Frostfire build is still more for questing than anything else. And I haven't picked up the Glyphs that will help yet--namely Frostfire Glyph, and Molten Armor Glyph. Those 2 will help significantly.
There is another Frostfire build option that I'm considering, one that is more of a true hybrid elemental spec. That has some definite advantages right now--in 5 man it ensures a higher base crit rating, and allows for more crits in general; with the loss of instant-pyroblasts and other useful fire stats. I might be trying that build out soon, and if I do I'll post something about it here.
The trick with Frostfire is that it benefits from ALL effects that affect Frost AND Fire. So, for example, Frostfire can benefit from both Ice Shards (+100% to base Crit Damage), AND Ignite (40% Crit Damage dot). It can benefit from Frost Slow, and Freezes; AND Fire Stuns. And it benefits from +Hit, +Crit, and +damage bonuses from BOTH categories. This makes the build extremely interesting.
For leveling, I went with a mostly fire build. My Level 80 build looked pretty much like a strait 0/53/18 Fire build, with Ice Shards; and taking all Freezes, Stuns, and slowing effects I could. It was pretty effectively...with this build, if I crit I pretty much could kill the mob with 1-2 spells, long before it reached me. And if I didn't crit, I still had a 10% chance of a freeze, and an ADDITIONAL 10% chance of a stun hitting. In some cases, the mob would die before even managing to move from it's origional position; and the effect carries over fairly well into 5-mans. Plus, you still end up with Combustion, Dragons Breath, and Blast Wave for crowd control which is good enough for questing most of the time.
So far the build has worked pretty well. Frostfire is HEAVILY dependant on crit rate, and that's the main issue I have with it right now. My crit rating has tanked at 80, down 18% almost, and that's mostly just a stat-drop; I haven't made that back anywhere else. Of course, I haven't really gotten much in the way of 80 gear yet so things will only go up from here.
With that in mind, Frostfire has still proven useful and viable. With a crit rate of 25%, I'm hitting on average 2300-2600 on a non-crit; 6.5k on a crit + 40%. In 5-mans I'm generally hitting 7-8k on crits. That's not bad, seeing how right now Fireball's biggest benefit right now would be 500 points more non-crit damage and 2k less crits.
Of course, my Frostfire build is still more for questing than anything else. And I haven't picked up the Glyphs that will help yet--namely Frostfire Glyph, and Molten Armor Glyph. Those 2 will help significantly.
There is another Frostfire build option that I'm considering, one that is more of a true hybrid elemental spec. That has some definite advantages right now--in 5 man it ensures a higher base crit rating, and allows for more crits in general; with the loss of instant-pyroblasts and other useful fire stats. I might be trying that build out soon, and if I do I'll post something about it here.
Level 80 Post Mortem
I have a confession to make. I had fully planned on blogging on my experiences to 80 in Northrend, but it simply didn't happen. There are a few reasons for this. One is simply laziness. The other, however, is the fast pace and relatively mechanical way in which I leveled to 80 which just made it less fun to write about.
I'm not saying I didn't have fun leveling. In fact it was a blast. But the process in which I did it (duoing with another mage), and the pace made it hard to keep track of everything without taking notes and that would have slowed me down significantly.
In the end, I made 80 in 11 days...1 day longer than Burning Crusade where it took 10 days to get to 70. However, 3 of those days I didn't even log in, so by game time we were significantly faster this time through. For those counting, we did Borean Tundra - Dragon Blight - Howling Fjord - Grizzily Hills, the Basin, and hit 70 in Zul Drak. We aren't actually done yet...we won't be 'done' until we've completed all of the zones...so we still have Storm Peaks and Icecrown to go but those we will do a bit later.
During the questing I only replaced one piece of gear--a epic trinket with a simple green trinket that has 44 INT and 55 Spell Power. There were a couple of other pieces I kept as well, including a back-piece which is clearly better than what I'm currently wearing but am not b/c I would loose too much crit. There might be a few more options in the final two zones, but I'm not sure about that yet.
Of course, I've now moved on to 5-mans and hopefully 10 mans will be an option soon. Naxx is certainly a starter zone, which IMO is a good thing. My guild has already run 2 runs (I was not one of the 'chosen' few that got to go--like all guilds this one has an 'in crowd' and I, being relatively new, am NOT in that category. Not a big deal, b/c 25- man is still where it is at, but it still shows some of the more obvious flaws in the guild structure that could come back to haunt them. It certainly hurt my first guild--caused it to crash and burn, so we'll see.
I'm not saying I didn't have fun leveling. In fact it was a blast. But the process in which I did it (duoing with another mage), and the pace made it hard to keep track of everything without taking notes and that would have slowed me down significantly.
In the end, I made 80 in 11 days...1 day longer than Burning Crusade where it took 10 days to get to 70. However, 3 of those days I didn't even log in, so by game time we were significantly faster this time through. For those counting, we did Borean Tundra - Dragon Blight - Howling Fjord - Grizzily Hills, the Basin, and hit 70 in Zul Drak. We aren't actually done yet...we won't be 'done' until we've completed all of the zones...so we still have Storm Peaks and Icecrown to go but those we will do a bit later.
During the questing I only replaced one piece of gear--a epic trinket with a simple green trinket that has 44 INT and 55 Spell Power. There were a couple of other pieces I kept as well, including a back-piece which is clearly better than what I'm currently wearing but am not b/c I would loose too much crit. There might be a few more options in the final two zones, but I'm not sure about that yet.
Of course, I've now moved on to 5-mans and hopefully 10 mans will be an option soon. Naxx is certainly a starter zone, which IMO is a good thing. My guild has already run 2 runs (I was not one of the 'chosen' few that got to go--like all guilds this one has an 'in crowd' and I, being relatively new, am NOT in that category. Not a big deal, b/c 25- man is still where it is at, but it still shows some of the more obvious flaws in the guild structure that could come back to haunt them. It certainly hurt my first guild--caused it to crash and burn, so we'll see.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Wrath Day 1
Well color me surprised. I really expected for the servers to be a horrible mess last night, but instead they were rock solid stable. There were very few lag issues even though the server was packed full for much of the night. Considering how unstable the servers have been lately, this was a big improvement and because of that I'm probably going to take off early today to get a little bit of extra leveling in again.
Yesterday was a different experience for me than BC. Though I wasn't in the BC beta, I knew people that were and I had seen enough of the area to know what to do and where to go for the start. With Wrath, I had no clue at all. The first thing I did, of course, was to port to Stormwind and take the first boat to Northrend. I was wanting to go to Howling Fjord, but ended up in the Tundra.
The first thing I noticed was that the zone looked...fantastic, yet more normal seeming than most anything in Outlands. There was also less re-use of old building designs...the main castle there was different than the 300 different WOW castles I've visited. The Inn was different.
The second thing I noticed was just how dense everything was, and the large number of people wandering the area just enhanced that effect. The starting town isn't really all that big, but it still took a while to find the crafting trainers and starting quests. I was waiting for my partner to log in, but at the same time I did want to look around and see what I could see, so I started doing some of the initial quests right outside of town, talking to everyone and trying to get used to everything was.
The next thing I noticed was the quests. At least in the Tundra, there seemed to be a lot of quests involving 'kill this specific single mob who only spawns at one place and everyone needs'. These types of quests were rather rare in BC, but there were at least 7 or 8 we ran across last night; and 4 right at the very beginning. These quests were just an excersize in frustration--15-20 guys all waing for one guy to spawn, AOEs flying everywhere, and it was just a big pain in the ass.
After doing some solo quests, I figured that I should avoid getting too far ahead so I just started traveling around; collecting discovery xps and playing tourist. The Tundra is a large zone, with large vistas and very spectacular views. It is also very dense, and haphazard--the zone just seems to be a random mishmash of random terrain types; which robs the zone of some of it's flavor. The Tundra itself is beautiful when viewed at a distance; you can see a LONG way in the zone and therefore seems more worldly and real--or at least it would if it wasn't so random. Still, it's pretty and there is a TON of stuff to do in the zone.
While exploring I then got a chance to go to Utgarde Keep. I got summoned there, and the second I got there you could see the striking difference between the Fjord and the Tundra. While the Tundra is pretty--the Fjord is spectacular. And Utgarde Keep is stunning in it's size and color. The first 5-man there is pretty short (the first time we did it we took about 40 minutes, the second time 20). For a zone so short it seems relatively big though.
The first boss is a necromancer-like elf. He's pretty easy to kill; the only trick to him is that he spawns 4 undead adds that you have to kill which will keep being resummoned until he's dead. The second encounter is a pair of bosses, a warrior and a mage. This is a bit more serious of a fight--the mage hits relatively hard, but can be locked down pretty easily. The last boss is easy. He's only major ability is a massive short-range attack that the tank has to avoid; and in his second phase an annoying whirling blade that the tank needs to avoid.
We did the zone twice, had 1 or two deaths, no wipes; and the instance went very smooth. As a mage I got to spell steal some nifty stuff--including a fire AOE, and a damage shield; and the trash last far longer than anything in BC now allowing me to actually get some spells in.
After that, my friend was ready and in game, so we started questing for real. We caught up with the quests that I had done, and the one's near the mine which I hadn't done but he had started while I was in the Keep. Then we started hitting other parts of the zone. To be fair, we were kinda all over the place when it came to leveling--jumping from quest area to area; not always finishing everything before moving on. This was partially due to a bit of 'wow, look what is over here!' mentality, but also due to the fact that certain quest areas were so overwhelmed that there was no point messing with them.
I managed to hit 71, barely, by the end of the night. Tom didn't get so far--he made it to a little over half way to 71...those two Utgarde Runs must have really packed in some additional XP. So far I've liked the DEHTA quests, but otherwise there hasn't been any quest lines that have really stood out as interesting to me. Most of the quests have so far seen fairly simple, and to date no quest rewards have even APPROACHED being interesting to me. The Utgarde rewards were only slightly better--but still weren't worth it.
Today, I'm hoping we can finish out the Tundra and move on to the next zone. If possible I'd like to get 73 today--or at least get close to 73. I'm definitely going to need to start farming for crafting materials too--Enchanting is going slowly (I only got 379 last night), and tailoring is going just as slowly (380). There just hasn't been a lot of drops relating to materials yet, so we'll have to see where it goes today.
Yesterday was a different experience for me than BC. Though I wasn't in the BC beta, I knew people that were and I had seen enough of the area to know what to do and where to go for the start. With Wrath, I had no clue at all. The first thing I did, of course, was to port to Stormwind and take the first boat to Northrend. I was wanting to go to Howling Fjord, but ended up in the Tundra.
The first thing I noticed was that the zone looked...fantastic, yet more normal seeming than most anything in Outlands. There was also less re-use of old building designs...the main castle there was different than the 300 different WOW castles I've visited. The Inn was different.
The second thing I noticed was just how dense everything was, and the large number of people wandering the area just enhanced that effect. The starting town isn't really all that big, but it still took a while to find the crafting trainers and starting quests. I was waiting for my partner to log in, but at the same time I did want to look around and see what I could see, so I started doing some of the initial quests right outside of town, talking to everyone and trying to get used to everything was.
The next thing I noticed was the quests. At least in the Tundra, there seemed to be a lot of quests involving 'kill this specific single mob who only spawns at one place and everyone needs'. These types of quests were rather rare in BC, but there were at least 7 or 8 we ran across last night; and 4 right at the very beginning. These quests were just an excersize in frustration--15-20 guys all waing for one guy to spawn, AOEs flying everywhere, and it was just a big pain in the ass.
After doing some solo quests, I figured that I should avoid getting too far ahead so I just started traveling around; collecting discovery xps and playing tourist. The Tundra is a large zone, with large vistas and very spectacular views. It is also very dense, and haphazard--the zone just seems to be a random mishmash of random terrain types; which robs the zone of some of it's flavor. The Tundra itself is beautiful when viewed at a distance; you can see a LONG way in the zone and therefore seems more worldly and real--or at least it would if it wasn't so random. Still, it's pretty and there is a TON of stuff to do in the zone.
While exploring I then got a chance to go to Utgarde Keep. I got summoned there, and the second I got there you could see the striking difference between the Fjord and the Tundra. While the Tundra is pretty--the Fjord is spectacular. And Utgarde Keep is stunning in it's size and color. The first 5-man there is pretty short (the first time we did it we took about 40 minutes, the second time 20). For a zone so short it seems relatively big though.
The first boss is a necromancer-like elf. He's pretty easy to kill; the only trick to him is that he spawns 4 undead adds that you have to kill which will keep being resummoned until he's dead. The second encounter is a pair of bosses, a warrior and a mage. This is a bit more serious of a fight--the mage hits relatively hard, but can be locked down pretty easily. The last boss is easy. He's only major ability is a massive short-range attack that the tank has to avoid; and in his second phase an annoying whirling blade that the tank needs to avoid.
We did the zone twice, had 1 or two deaths, no wipes; and the instance went very smooth. As a mage I got to spell steal some nifty stuff--including a fire AOE, and a damage shield; and the trash last far longer than anything in BC now allowing me to actually get some spells in.
After that, my friend was ready and in game, so we started questing for real. We caught up with the quests that I had done, and the one's near the mine which I hadn't done but he had started while I was in the Keep. Then we started hitting other parts of the zone. To be fair, we were kinda all over the place when it came to leveling--jumping from quest area to area; not always finishing everything before moving on. This was partially due to a bit of 'wow, look what is over here!' mentality, but also due to the fact that certain quest areas were so overwhelmed that there was no point messing with them.
I managed to hit 71, barely, by the end of the night. Tom didn't get so far--he made it to a little over half way to 71...those two Utgarde Runs must have really packed in some additional XP. So far I've liked the DEHTA quests, but otherwise there hasn't been any quest lines that have really stood out as interesting to me. Most of the quests have so far seen fairly simple, and to date no quest rewards have even APPROACHED being interesting to me. The Utgarde rewards were only slightly better--but still weren't worth it.
Today, I'm hoping we can finish out the Tundra and move on to the next zone. If possible I'd like to get 73 today--or at least get close to 73. I'm definitely going to need to start farming for crafting materials too--Enchanting is going slowly (I only got 379 last night), and tailoring is going just as slowly (380). There just hasn't been a lot of drops relating to materials yet, so we'll have to see where it goes today.
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