Durnholde virgin

[SideLabel]

So I ventured with a rogue buddy of mine to the Caverns of Time for the first time last night with a PuG (yes, I can already feel the skepticism brewing) expceting to have a blast. With us we had a druid tank, a mage and another rogue. We ranged from 66-69 (I being the lowest level at 66). I was on healing duty as holy spec paladin. We get going and we wipe fairly fast. We jump down into the pit and the first pull we wipe. We wipe two more times before setting all the bombs. We wipe once getting Thrall out, then twice on the last boss. I was amazed at how easy the two first bosses were; they were cakewalk compared to the thrash mobs. The entire Thrall escape scenario was immensly fun and challenging, but one thing bothered me. Why on earth are the trash mobs hitting so damn hard? They were hitting me for 1.7k normal hits (I checked the combat log and 1.7k seemed to be the median). I'm wearing plate with 9k armor in healing gear for the love of... Seems a bit excessive for thrash mobs and it resulted in the tank having to get aggro off me really quickly when I got mobs running for me, and since it was a PuG I'm sure you all know how good the tank was at that.

On the whole I loved the instance. Getting Thrall out of there was immensily fun. I just don't ever want to try it on heroic...

[Ferenczys]

I have yet to complete that instance, despite hitting it twice now with two seperate groups. Both times the groups just sort of dissolved, the first because the tank up and left and the second because we ran out of time. Still, I learned a couple of things:

CC, as is the case with most dungeons in TBC, is king. The next time I'm going I'm definitely bringing a rogue and a mage. The rogue is especially useful because he can set almost all the bombs from stealth, avoiding the majority of the mobs before Drake comes waltzing in. Getting Thrall out was easier than I thought it would be, though he died the first time we tried because the mage DC'd.

Haven't gotten much further than that. Still, it's a fun instance, and I'm just as excited to see the other CoT runs.

[moopy]

On the whole I loved the instance. Getting Thrall out of there was immensily fun. I just don't ever want to try it on heroic...

Personally, I am afear'd of Black Morass heroic. I hear terrible things about it.

You can't always predict how things will scale in heroic, by the way. Heroic versions of lv 70 dungeons sometimes have less of a difficulty increase than heroic versions of lower-level dungeons. Compare heroic Mechanar with heroic Blood Furnace- the latter seems a lot nastier to me. It's mostly either a case of "suck it and see", or if you're not feeling adventurous, reading up a little.

[Aerath]

2 saps, 1 mage and a tank...

And you still had mobs running loose ?

//edit: Mind you, Heroic Durnholde -does- become a pain the rear from what I gathered, unless you avoid the patrols as much as possible.

[moopy]

2 saps, 1 mage and a tank...

And you still had mobs running loose ?

I've been in PUGs like that, with two mages, a trap and a sap, in shattered halls. Still the "tank" insisted that another mob was pet tanked. Explaining that an MM hunter pet can't tank forever with no heals seemed not to help. The warrior thought that tanking consisted of hitting a single mob until someone killed it, and completely ignored all other mobs, even if they were eating the healer. Progress was glacial at best.

In the end, the warrior got so angry with people asking him to tank more than one mob that he left in a huff. Not a problem, as one of the mages was my guild's MT, who was playing his girlfriend's toon. He jumped back on his tanking warrior (yes, he has two warriors, long story), returning the mage to its rightful owner (so she could nuke like crazy for us), and we then cleared the instance out. No crowd control, mass tanking and chain pulls. The PUG healer, a pretty decent healadin, had the time of his life and told us so. Hell of a contrast from the start.

A crummy tank can ruin your day, even with a lot of crowd control. Saps don't hold forever. A hunter can only retrap cleanly if there aren't mobs running all over stepping in the second trap. Mages polymorph very badly when dead.

[dwarfenhelm]

after running durnhold with lots of cc and casters and having a nightmare i swapped around and went im my dps gear not tank gear. we pretty much gave up on cc with just helping thrall escape the mage picked a target and just sheeped it out of way. i just dps my way through mobs and we take out any wardens first then just help thrall out. this seems to work well. the only time i swap a sword for shield is on the 2nd and 3rd boss stages just to make the healers life a little easy

[Twoflower]

the patrols in heroic mode are insane. And so is the 1st boss who does 8k hits all the time. my guild agreed that you need 2 healers for the 1st boss in heroic.

i never finished the instance in heroic mode :(

[swaldman]

He jumped back on his tanking warrior (yes, he has two warriors, long story), returning the mage to its rightful owner (so she could nuke like crazy for us), and we then cleared the instance out. No crowd control, mass tanking and chain pulls. The PUG healer, a pretty decent healadin, had the time of his life and told us so. Hell of a contrast from the start.

*g* A shattered halls run where you sod the crowd control and just mass-tank and kill everything can be so much fun :-)

(am I the only person who actually *enjoys* the baby-suppression-rooms-bit, at least with a high-dps group?)

[Aerath]

A crummy tank can ruin your day, even with a lot of crowd control. Saps don't hold forever. A hunter can only retrap cleanly if there aren't mobs running all over stepping in the second trap. Mages polymorph very badly when dead.

I tend to be in luck here - I tank.
I occasionally let someone I trust do the job, so I can go kitty rawr dee pee ess, but doing it like this has the major advantage of never running around with a crap tank.

[rgirty]

When thrall is going leeroy i simply let him. We use him as the MT and pick up mobs as they peel away from him due to threat.

If you have a 4 pull and can't sap in time, but you have a hunter/mage simply poly/trap the target thrall isn't pounding on and that will give you three. Assist thrall until he kills his target, that leaves two. Take one of them with your group and let thrall OT the other.

We clear it on normal mode in about 45 minutes- 1 hr. I'm a priest tho, so I have the benefit of putting a renew on thrall that ticks for 700hp. Being a pally an occasional FoL should keep him going. I recommend killing your mob before he is finished with his so that you can mark/CC the next group as soon as thrall kills his.

I would also avoid fear kiting htese mobs, the one failure we had was when we thought it would be a good idea initially to fear the mobs so that we could dps one mob down before the others returned, thrall ran to some off the wall place and aggro'd them all. He went down before we could heal him and we had to start again - not fun.

[moopy]

I tend to be in luck here - I tank.
I occasionally let someone I trust do the job, so I can go kitty rawr dee pee ess, but doing it like this has the major advantage of never running around with a crap tank.

I can see me levelling a darn warrior, I've been exposed to so many single buttock tanks lately.

[Aerath]

Go druid instead - more fun.

[Schift]

Yeah, I'm a feral druid as well and I must say it's so good to be the tank. Between my brother (a healer/tank) and me (tank/dps) 5 man pugs are very very rarely a problem. I feel bad for my dps only char. friends who are always complaining of running with noob tanks (They play more than me and I can't always be there to tank for them).

It really changes your perception of pugs when you are the tank as opposed to the healer or dps. It doesn't make them great, but it makes them much more bearable a greater percentage of the time.

[Aerath]

It really changes your perception of pugs when you are the tank as opposed to the healer or dps. It doesn't make them great, but it makes them much more bearable a greater percentage of the time.

Pun intended ? :grin:

[coani]

cc?
fastest & easiest run through durnholde (normal) I've done was with pally tank + healer + 3 warlocks seed bombing the whole damned place.
<3

durnholde heroic however.. a serious nightmare. wont be back there for a while ;p

[Wintrow]

Yesterday a L70 bear took us through BRD. Or at least tried to... I was mainhealer at L52 and nearly every single time I healed ANYONE a mob would come running at me.

I could see my party members health, I could see the health of the mbos and see one not loosing health. I doubt, I heal at the last moment. BAM! Aggro. 1600 hp (in my healing gear) doesn't last long against those L56 Dwarves...

[Xmcdaniel]

I have yet to complete that instance, despite hitting it twice now with two seperate groups. Both times the groups just sort of dissolved, the first because the tank up and left and the second because we ran out of time. Still, I learned a couple of things:

CC, as is the case with most dungeons in TBC, is king. The next time I'm going I'm definitely bringing a rogue and a mage. The rogue is especially useful because he can set almost all the bombs from stealth, avoiding the majority of the mobs before Drake comes waltzing in. Getting Thrall out was easier than I thought it would be, though he died the first time we tried because the mage DC'd.

Haven't gotten much further than that. Still, it's a fun instance, and I'm just as excited to see the other CoT runs.

So we mages ARE useful in groups still? I keep hearing a lot of crying about mages being broken on the official forums, and it's nice to see that he made a difference other than being a water/buff vendor (which I think is total crap anyway).

[Naedea]

So we mages ARE useful in groups still? I keep hearing a lot of crying about mages being broken on the official forums, and it's nice to see that he made a difference other than being a water/buff vendor (which I think is total crap anyway).
The less overpowered the group is for the content, the more useful a mage is.

[Lobothomy]

So we mages ARE useful in groups still? I keep hearing a lot of crying about mages being broken on the official forums, and it's nice to see that he made a difference other than being a water/buff vendor (which I think is total crap anyway).


Are you kidding me? Heafty dps + cc + buffs + menu of the day...

Bring it!

[Telmar]

cc?
fastest & easiest run through durnholde (normal) I've done was with pally tank + healer + 3 warlocks seed bombing the whole damned place.
<3

durnholde heroic however.. a serious nightmare. wont be back there for a while ;p

Heroic isnt too bad, just take a mage and a decent healer and you're set. The only hard bit is the cleaving mobs in the buildings at the end.

[moopy]

Go druid instead - more fun.

I don't want a druid, though. I have a priest and a shammy, and the druid would just get railroaded into healing too. No, a warrior- who can block (yay!), and for whom the itemisation is almost insultingly obvious, is the way forward here. My server is drowning in feral druids right now, all seeking spots in raid groups.

[Telmar]

I wish ours was :(

We had to coerce one of our hybrid resto/ferals into going full feral so that we had another STRONG BAER tank.

[kodeeak]

Personally, I am afear'd of Black Morass heroic. I hear terrible things about it.
just completed it for the first time Monday.. mage, shadowpriest, holy priest, bear tank, elemental shammy... it was my 15th attempt. Portal trash was twice as much work for me with help from the sp and shammy. shammy had to off heal quite a bit.. mp5 is crucial.

[Telmar]

15th, jeeeeees.

We got it on our second go, with rogue, warr, paladin, warlock, shadow priest. Was really touch and go in places though.

[murderousmic]

Just ran it for the second time last night. The first time I ran it we one-shotted with ease with 66-68's, everyone in the pug doing their jobs.

Lst night we wiped twice with 4 70's and me a 68 hunter. Someone wasn't doing their job right and I think the rogue was afk most of the time. The warrior was running with two swords and couldn't hold aggro for more than 1 second. We cleared it but my pet had to offtank a lot, thank god for the new mend pet.

It is one of the most fun instances and quests I have done yet. Still I will not be going back. Those mobs do hit freaking hard. And then afterwards, you're stranded out in Tanaris.

[Telmar]

On normal mode its one of the most fun instances I've done.

On heroic mode, I'd put it on a difficulty level on par with a fight like Voidreaver but 5 man tbh. Its just THAT hard...

[swaldman]

Just ran it for the second time last night. The first time I ran it we one-shotted with ease with 66-68's, everyone in the pug doing their jobs.

Murderousmic, I think the guys above you were talking about doing it on Heroic. I'm guessing you're not :wink:

Although gratz for beating it with a sub-70 PuG, that is quite an achievement in itself.

[murderousmic]

Murderousmic, I think the guys above you were talking about doing it on Heroic. I'm guessing you're not :wink:

Although gratz for beating it with a sub-70 PuG, that is quite an achievement in itself.

OP wasn't talking heroic and either was I.

[kodeeak]

15th, jeeeeees.
yeah, we had terrible class balance each time, most of my guildies are in college and the last few weeks it's been dead as can be with people in transit/summer jobs kicking in.

and we came close a few times and we'd lose one person and have no battle rez and that was the end of it.

[browolf]

5 times i been to durnholde. the one time it actually got done was the one time i forgot to pick up the quest. The most frequent reason for failing/giving up is before the dragon, the 4 mobs u get, there's a caster off to the left that doesnt rush in. if that one gets ignored it wastes the healer with shadow bolts or something guaranteed.