Thursday, October 9

2-manning the Oculus, almost.

My Girlfriend and me both managed to get into the Beta and when earlier this week it was possible to copy premade level 80's, we went instance scouting aswell.
One of the instances we ended up in was The Oculus, a level 80 instance for 5-man groups.
Most of the scouts was about finding the entrance and then take a glimps inside but with this one we took a different approuch.

For those who don't know the instance, it's an instance which takes place on floating rings in the air guarded by dragons. The idea is that after clearing some of these rings you get some mounts on which combat will take place from that point on, what role you have depends on the dragon you choose as it's actually the dragons doing the work. (a concept which is used at many places in Northrend, giving you controll over a sort of siegeweapon.. i've seen tank-like vehicles, little robot-men but also big stone giants where the player would be sitting on it's shoulder "driving" it)

My GF had a Deathknight with Frost spec (which is the tank spec) and myself had a Restoration Shaman. Both decked out in PvP gear, Blue armor+weapons apart from the shoes which were epic... trinkets, neck and rings epic aswell. So nothing too shocking but not half bad either.
Now i know what to do with my toon, a few new mechanics and spells wouldn't stop me there (eventho i missed my nice healing setup quite a bit) but for my GF most of the skills where new. She had little idea what spells to use in what order and which would be best used when. So we spend quite some time figuring out the possible combination of spells and which would be used on what type of mob.
The first single level 79 elite mob didn't take much effort, the next pack of 6 non-elite mobs weren't much of an issue aswell although we had to figure out which AE a Deathknight had when i as a healer was eating frostbolts aswell. Nothing that i couldn't heal through but it's not how it is supposed to be handled.
The groups slowly became bigger; 1 elite caster + 6 non-elites, 2 elite melee, 2 elite melee + 1 elite caster and slowly we gained more controll as we figured out more and more how to keep aggro of the healer and reduce damage on the tank.
At the last few packs a heal now and then together with Earth Shield was enough to keep the tank up and i even had time to throw in some bolts aswell.

We took the portal at the end of that ring expecting to go to the next level but we got transported to a round platform and stood eye to eye with the first boss; Drakos, which looked like a Drakkisath (UBRS) who not had enough air on birth or got stuck in the freezer when trying to grab him some TV snacks.
The plan was simple; you kill it, i'll heal! Not knowing the tactics (couldn't find it on mmo-champion or wowhead either) we had no idea if he would be possible with 2 man.
So we just started it and it was pretty straightforward; he spawned bomb-like things who went about random then exploded like the first Mechanar boss and now and then he would do an AE damage/knockback which was easily healed through. The idea of this boss thusfar was; get max range to stay away from the bombs but not too close to the edge so a knockback can make you go basejumping.
And then it happened.... everything stood still! Big server crash or something.... after 5minutes or so we got back into action but it was just a minute or so and the we stood still once again. After 15mins of waiting again we gave up and logged out, seemed the instance servers were having major issues.
But when looking back at the boss-fight (had plenty of time while looking at the still) i figured we could have taken him. The boss was down 7% of his health while i as a healer wasn't even down 3% with all my tricks still up if things should go worse. (Heroism, Mana Tide, Elementals, Mana pots)
Now there were a few cages there but targeting the NPC's inside but they were friendly so i expect them to have a task after we kill that boss, sadly enough i won't know till next time we try.... And who knows what surprises Drakos had still in store for us later that fight.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

so you two manned the first boss in a lvl 80 5 man instance, in blues and a few purples? Surely Blizzard with change that...

Wow Panda said...

OH you lucky xxxx.... I was not even able to get a beta invite for some reason!!! I want to see the new content!!

The good news for me is that I am extremely busy right now, so if I was invited to beta I will be even busier.

Anonymous said...

you mentioned trying to find the entrance ... can you add to that ? Where IS the entrance !?