For all the whining I've heard, the Kara attunement wasn't that bad. Shadow Labyrinth was only tricky when clearing the room with Blackheart, Steamvault was brain blowing easy and Arcatraz I ended up loving. Black Morass was the only one I worried about because I was on add duty. That went extremely smooth as well, even though we had an extremely wonky group build - feral druid tank, balance druid in healie gear healing, shadow priest and fury/arms warrior on main DPS and marks hunter (me!) on adds.
I've found that Hunters can be very good at handling the adds in BM. I myself AM a Bear Tank, my wife is a Demo/Destro (Shadow Mage build) Warlock, my main melee DPS tends to be our resident combat dagger rogue (who has almost every pre-Kara instance memorized), and my favourite healer is still partially specced in Shadow, so I'm used to being in seemingly oddly balanced groups. Our guild leader is taking a Moonkin to Kara for Off Heal/DPS, though I won't be tanking it, owing to two prot warriors being favoured over me even though my stats are ever-so-slightly better. I'm in the DPS crew, which I guess is okay,except that I privately think I'm a better tank than I am a DPSer. I don't have enough DPS/AP to meet Kara reqs, and I'm not as comfortable measuring my response to someone else's mob. I tend to off-tank in cat form.
SLabs is good for me, even though I have trouble in bear form getting out of Murmur's sonic boom on time (I get to watch my health meter hit near the bottom more often than I'd like). I can never even remember the first boss's name, because I've never not one-shotted him. I personally like taking Blackheart down, too, even though he's a bit more work and a real endurance test particularly for the mana users. Vorpil gave me trouble the first two or three times I tried him (even after we started one-shotting him, I still felt like I was struggling with him), but now I own him regularly.
Steamvaults needs the right amount of DPS or the boss fights can quickly get out of control. I prefer clearing completely and using solid CC for those pulls, but DPS and good strategy makes up for a lot. I like running Steamvaults, which is fortunate, because I need to run it several more times for the bleeding Cenarion Expedition rep; need to get my paws on Earthwarden ASAP.
I don't know why, but Arcatraz comes easy to me. I could run that one several more times without a problem, even though there's really nothing left in it for me.
And Black Morass is a rush, which I don't usually go in for, but it's been pretty good to me. Had trouble with Temporus on the most recent run (aside from having the wrong DPSer on adds -- affliction lock -- someone pulled aggro off of me too quickly and we wiped and had to redo the whole run), but usually we go through pretty nicely. I'll run that one for guildies until they all get what they need from it. I think there's maybe one more piece in there for me, but I'm not too worried. The gear I want is in Heroics.
So, Marksman, huh? How much do you have in beast or survival? I know one hunter who is heavy Marks with just enough in his pet to keep the mobs off of him, one who went heavy Beast and tries to get his pet to tank my mobs on me, and one whose spec I'm not too sure about, but insists on using misdirect and traps for every single pull, no matter how much other CC I have.
I can't really speak about tanking Kara, since I have no knowledge of proper tanking math. From what I did pick up last night, a lot of the mobs I saw (in the areas around Maiden and Opera, as I subbed in after they had cleared Attumen and Moroes) aren't tauntable and some of the bosses are a real pain when it comes to crushing blows. Maiden was AWFUL for this, because she would stun everyone but the tank and then just murder him when the healer was KO'ed. This was with players already in epic gear from earlier runs too. So, if you can prove that you can squeeze out the warriors in terms of tanking skill and survivability, you might have a shot. Heck, our group had a bear tank and a prot warrior tank that switched off-tank and tank positions depending on the encounter.
In Slabs, I love Blackheart because the mind control part is always amusing... for me. Vorpil always seems to be a problem with either someone in a PuG trying to DPS the voidwalkers or wanting to kite Vorpil in a silly way. Murmur I had problems with once, but that was because we had a recently level 70 pally healing that wasn't ready for the fight. He found it overwhelming.
Steamvault is a blur. It's one I need to run more for rep and gear. Can't really talk about that too much. There was naga... and gnomes... and slaves with an odd aggro dump. That's the extent of my thoughts on it.
Arcatraz, I think, has the best payoff in terms of the "awe" factor with the bosses when you go through the first time. Murmur is impressive, Warlord Kalithresh was pretty boring and I haven't been to Shattered Halls yet, but the Warden Mellichar and Soccothrates/Dalliah events are simply fun!
There's something about Black Morass and even Old Hillsbrad that feels different then the other instances. Probably the timed factor and, like you said, the rush. The only problem I remember with it might be related to that Beast hunter who's pet likes to grab aggro/tank. I had my wolf's growl on for the adds so they would stay in range, but we got to Aeonus and suddenly the tank was freaking out she was having problems with holding aggro. I had forgotten to turn the wolf's growl off and it put him to the top of the threat list. Oops...
I'm 41 marks, 14 beast and 4 survival. Uh, the extra one in survival was an accident I never corrected. It was originally a PVP build I pieced together back when I was farming marks for my epic mount, because I wanted the aimed and silencing shots and I wanted my pet to have some function, even if it was small. Oh, and I liked Hawk Eye and wanted it. I kept it because I discovered that silencing shot was great for kiting and trapping casters in instance runs. My only beef with it is that Marks requires an insane amount of attack power in order to do damage. 2000 is suggested for Kara and I'm about 60 short of that with my self buffs (but not my pots), but I need to get my Cenarion Expedition head enchant thingie and proper enchants on my gloves and boots still. Mana's a bitch, though.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 09:13 am (UTC)Lee.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 01:44 pm (UTC)For all the whining I've heard, the Kara attunement wasn't that bad. Shadow Labyrinth was only tricky when clearing the room with Blackheart, Steamvault was brain blowing easy and Arcatraz I ended up loving. Black Morass was the only one I worried about because I was on add duty. That went extremely smooth as well, even though we had an extremely wonky group build - feral druid tank, balance druid in healie gear healing, shadow priest and fury/arms warrior on main DPS and marks hunter (me!) on adds.
I may have been lucky.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-05 06:57 pm (UTC)SLabs is good for me, even though I have trouble in bear form getting out of Murmur's sonic boom on time (I get to watch my health meter hit near the bottom more often than I'd like). I can never even remember the first boss's name, because I've never not one-shotted him. I personally like taking Blackheart down, too, even though he's a bit more work and a real endurance test particularly for the mana users. Vorpil gave me trouble the first two or three times I tried him (even after we started one-shotting him, I still felt like I was struggling with him), but now I own him regularly.
Steamvaults needs the right amount of DPS or the boss fights can quickly get out of control. I prefer clearing completely and using solid CC for those pulls, but DPS and good strategy makes up for a lot. I like running Steamvaults, which is fortunate, because I need to run it several more times for the bleeding Cenarion Expedition rep; need to get my paws on Earthwarden ASAP.
I don't know why, but Arcatraz comes easy to me. I could run that one several more times without a problem, even though there's really nothing left in it for me.
And Black Morass is a rush, which I don't usually go in for, but it's been pretty good to me. Had trouble with Temporus on the most recent run (aside from having the wrong DPSer on adds -- affliction lock -- someone pulled aggro off of me too quickly and we wiped and had to redo the whole run), but usually we go through pretty nicely. I'll run that one for guildies until they all get what they need from it. I think there's maybe one more piece in there for me, but I'm not too worried. The gear I want is in Heroics.
So, Marksman, huh? How much do you have in beast or survival? I know one hunter who is heavy Marks with just enough in his pet to keep the mobs off of him, one who went heavy Beast and tries to get his pet to tank my mobs on me, and one whose spec I'm not too sure about, but insists on using misdirect and traps for every single pull, no matter how much other CC I have.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-05 08:46 pm (UTC)In Slabs, I love Blackheart because the mind control part is always amusing... for me. Vorpil always seems to be a problem with either someone in a PuG trying to DPS the voidwalkers or wanting to kite Vorpil in a silly way. Murmur I had problems with once, but that was because we had a recently level 70 pally healing that wasn't ready for the fight. He found it overwhelming.
Steamvault is a blur. It's one I need to run more for rep and gear. Can't really talk about that too much. There was naga... and gnomes... and slaves with an odd aggro dump. That's the extent of my thoughts on it.
Arcatraz, I think, has the best payoff in terms of the "awe" factor with the bosses when you go through the first time. Murmur is impressive, Warlord Kalithresh was pretty boring and I haven't been to Shattered Halls yet, but the Warden Mellichar and Soccothrates/Dalliah events are simply fun!
There's something about Black Morass and even Old Hillsbrad that feels different then the other instances. Probably the timed factor and, like you said, the rush. The only problem I remember with it might be related to that Beast hunter who's pet likes to grab aggro/tank. I had my wolf's growl on for the adds so they would stay in range, but we got to Aeonus and suddenly the tank was freaking out she was having problems with holding aggro. I had forgotten to turn the wolf's growl off and it put him to the top of the threat list. Oops...
I'm 41 marks, 14 beast and 4 survival. Uh, the extra one in survival was an accident I never corrected. It was originally a PVP build I pieced together back when I was farming marks for my epic mount, because I wanted the aimed and silencing shots and I wanted my pet to have some function, even if it was small. Oh, and I liked Hawk Eye and wanted it. I kept it because I discovered that silencing shot was great for kiting and trapping casters in instance runs. My only beef with it is that Marks requires an insane amount of attack power in order to do damage. 2000 is suggested for Kara and I'm about 60 short of that with my self buffs (but not my pots), but I need to get my Cenarion Expedition head enchant thingie and proper enchants on my gloves and boots still. Mana's a bitch, though.