ekaterinodar wrote:
*Sighs* Pretty sad they had to do this to get people to be less stupid. This instance is so easy. Clear to first boss. Kill boss. 3 dps drakes, 1 healer drake, 1 tank drake. Fly straight up to first big circular platform, kill, fly over to horseshoe center platform, clear around. fly to other circular platform directly across, kill, fly back to horseshoe, fly to top of arc, fly across to third platform. kill boss (don't stand in beam or in the squiggly lines!), up to first long platform, kill adds, fly to next one, kill adds, fly to third one, kill adds, fly to middle on either side of boss, kill boss (tank kite out of frost towards party and party moves with tank, hide behind INNER pillar when he teleports). Mount up, clear whelps on the side you're going to be tanking boss, DPS time stop boss when he enrages, run to opposite side as boss is facing when purple flashy orbs come out...and you're done.
Copy, paste it, print it out, duct tape it to your monitor. Its easy. So easy that I who have only done it five or six times have it memorized by heart step by step. Oy vey!
/end_wall_of_text
Easy instance, yeah, but somehow it always takes longer than any other instance and people always tend to fail more, regardless of how many times they've done it.
Personally, I don't care for the instance's difficulty. That's not the major reason I try to avoid that place like the plague. It's the entire idea behind the instance. To take all your hard-earned (lol) gear and make it absolutely redundant because you now have to spend the next 30 minutes on the back of a dragon. Fun the first few times, boring as crap afterwards. I know your gear affects the health of the dragons, but I gained something like 20k health from going nekkid to T9-equipped. 20k isn't a lot when you've got dragons hitting you for 10k or more. And that's the trash.
I hate the place because it becomes exponentially more difficult the less skilled players you're with. There's no over-gearing to save the day. You can't pop cooldowns and ride home solo. If one fails, the groups fails. Which is why I always pick the healer dragon (emerald). Not so much because I prefer healing, but because I know everyone else hates it. I mean, people barely have enough active synapses left firing to know that Temporal Rift and Martyr should be kept up as much as possible. I don't feel like putting my character's life (and a 10g repair bill) in their hands because I
know they can't handle applying a DoT and healing at the same time. Sure, sure, they may be able to juggle 10 hotkeys and cooldowns when raiding, but they can't spam two buttons, nuh-uh. Why? Because we're on a @#%^ing dragon! It's the same thing that happens in Trial of the Champion. Oh noes, I'm on a horse, what to do? And it's not that hard, is it? You have four buttons:
Attack
Ranged attack
Charge
Shield
Well, three attacks because let's face it, no one really uses the ranged anymore. It's all about charging everything until wipe or win. The encounter is about keeping your shield up while attacking the enemies. You get three kinds of attacks and one shield-button. And I still see people fail utterly. Charging in with no shield up. Trying to tank the mobs with the shield down and doing 700 damage with the melee attack. They have 300k health, you have 50k, what the hell were you planning?
My experience tells me that the moment you pull people away from their comfort zones, which most often is superior gear, but also familiarity and habits, you mess with their minds and the collective IQ drops like a rock. Healers know that when people start to die, you press Button A. Tanks know that in order to keep aggro, you spam Button B. DPS knows... well,
usually knows that to do as much damage as possible without pulling aggro, they just have to spam Button C. They all have a buffer in terms of gear that far outweighs the content they're fighting. It's like going to a bumpercar contest in a tank.
Pull that away from people and they freak out. They start to panic. No more buffer, no more comfort zone. You get the same stick as the other guy and you now have to rely on knowledge and skill to survive. Good luck. I mean, you can almost feel the developers' smirk as you think it through, right? We're talking about putting the same people that spend hours talking about rectal sortie in the trade chat in a place where they have to rely on their wits to make it through.
I saw fail a mile away. Apparently others do too.
That said, I love the place when I'm on guild runs. Mostly because the guild no longer contains any moronic @#%^s that can't tell left from right and wrong. If Oculus pops up as the random heroic, I check the temperature of the group with a short "Hey guys, anyone done this before?" If I get silence or "gogo" or anything else that might indicate that one or more individuals in the group lack a proper processing unit in the upper floor, I bail. I don't feel like spending 30 minutes just to wipe and have the group break up. Yeah, yeah, I know the new LFG thing made it easier to get a new member for just one boss, but even then, there's no guarantee you won't get another John Doh with an inadequate cooling unit.
Better safe than sorry, in my opinion.
Edited, Jan 6th 2010 12:19am by Mazra