Hey everybody, it’s been awhile since I did one of these posts, but I thought this made for a good idea with some debate potential.  I’m sure we all have boss fights that are memorable to us, and I’m going to take this opportunity to share mine.  This will encompass encounters in both old world WoW and post Burning Crusade WoW.  We’ll start it at the bottom with number five.

#5 Blackheart the Inciter, Shadow Labyrinth

I know a few of you out there my cringe at this choice.  A lot of people hate Blackheart, and for good reason.  His fight can be VERY, VERY chaotic.  Frankly, that’s one of the reasons I like it so much.  I think you’ll see as this post continues that I have an appreciation for unpredictable fights.  I get bored with the standard bosses where a single strat works every time.  I don’t just mean the tank and spank bosses, but any boss where when you’ve got it down, it becomes a trivial fight. 

With Blackheart, a little bad luck on the "Time for fun" mind control phases can wreak havoc on even the most polished five man team.  Maybe you have a rogue in the group, and during the MC phase he goes all out on your priest.  Ouch.  Maybe a lock in the group works the tank over in a bad way.  Maybe a hunter decides to unload on the kitty druid.  Who knows.  There are a lot of ways that things can go wrong, and this fight is ALWAYS at least a little crazy.  That’s why I like it so much.

#4 Zul’Farrak Stairs Event

Back to old world Azeroth for my fourth favorite boss fight.  If you’ve never seen this fight, I’ll try to give you a brief rundown.  Basically, you climb to the top of a troll Incan pyramid style thingy to free a few prisoners.  You then fight alongside these NPCs at the top of the stairs as you try to fend off wave after wave of mobs, culminating in a boss you have to take down.  This is another fight I note for its chaotic nature.  I like it when things are a little out of control, it keeps me on my toes.  If you’ve never done ZF in a level appropriate group, you are missing out. 

This event also includes a nice bit of story with a traitorous twist at the end.  Well worth the price of admission.  ZF can also be noted as a whole as both a quick and well-designed instance.

#3 Priestess Delrissa, Magisters’ Terrace

I told you I liked chaos, and the chaos explodes in this tough fight in MagT.  With this fight Blizzard attempted to create a PvP style fight, similar to Moroes in Kara and the Hex Lord fight in ZA.  Delrissa spawns with four cronies of different "classes" that you must take down.  The mix of classes in her crew has serious repercussions in terms of the fight’s difficulty.  The right group can make it cake, the wrong group can make it a headache.  It has a good level of challenge, which is one of the reasons I rank it so high.  There are nights we have one shot this encounter, and there are nights where it took us 5 or more attempts.

Another reason I am fond of this fight is because it is one of the few events in group play where I get to use ALL of my tools.  And I often have to use all of those tools to succeed.  I rarely use cyclone, but bust it out with impunity here.  If the rogue comes my way, he can make quick work of me, but a well-timed cyclone can shut him down in a hurry.  I also often spend this fight both healing and contributing where I can to DPS.  Sometimes the small amount of damage I can add makes all the difference.  The moral of the story is that everyone has to contribute whatever they can in this fight.  Blizzard did an excellent job of making Delrissa’s cronies VERY good at what they do, for AI at least. 

#2 Harbinger Skyriss, Arcatraz

This is a fight where everything works together very well.  It makes a ton of sense in terms of the overall instance "story arc".  It is also both challenging and entertaining.  I’m a big fan of Arcatraz overall, and I’m a little disappointed that people don’t run it more.  It can be a very long instance, and people generally like to stick to the quick and dirty ones when possible.

If you’ve never run this instance, do it now.  I’ll wait.  Millhouse Manastorm is what makes this fight memorable.  His one-liners during the fight really make it a far better experience.  The fight itself is interesting, but the addition of a funny little NPC gnome mage puts it over the top. My favorite line from Millhouse?  "Aaalllriiiight!! Who ordered up an extra large can of whoop-ass?"

Every time I get to the end of Arcatraz - and it’s not all that often - I wonder why people don’t run the instance more often.  Oh well. 

#1 Dire Maul Tribute Run

I know I know.  This isn’t 100% technically a "boss fight."  But I couldn’t let this one go.  If you joined the WoW craze after Burning Crusade, chances are you’ve never had the pleasure of doing a DM Tribute run.  Perhaps you’ve heard the old-timers wax nostalgic about this old world encounter.   

For you post-BC babies, here’s the rundown on the "Tribute Run."  Basically, the tribute run consists of running through Dire Maul North without killing any bosses but the king himself.  You need to use several tricks to accomplish this, including fixing a huge frost trap to freeze one boss, and creating and then donning an Ogre suit to fool another.  If you successfully ran the instance without killing anyone but the king, you received the Gordok Tribute (hence the name), a chest with a high quality reward for each boss you did NOT kill.  The other bonus is that you could then go back and talk to the bosses you did not kill (as after killing the King you are named the new King, and all the ogres become friendly) to receive some nice buffs. 

I ran this many, many times in the days before BC, as for me it was the most fun to be had at level 60.  The loot was pretty darn good, too.  I nearly always logged on with the same phrase in guild chat, "Anyone up for a Tribute run?"

Conclusion

One of the interesting things about this list is that when I started to rank my favorite fights, it was all BC bosses.  I suppose it was a product of recent familiarity more than anything.  As I spent more time, however, I started to remember the old world instance fights that I loved so much.  In the end, I probably could have done a separate list for Azeroth and BC.

There are probably a few repeating themes in my selections.  Uniqueness of the encounter, difficulty and predictability.  All of those are important to me.  I’ve played this game for over 4 years now, and I like encounters that "mix things up" a bit.  If it was all about loot and progression, I would have quit long, long ago.

Very briefly, here are a few that missed the cut.  Kael’Thas in MagT, VanCleef in The Deadmines and the married couple in Arcatraz.  Kael almost made the grade based on the difficulty and chaotic nature of the fight.  VC was in the running for nostalgia, as he was the first boss I had the pleasure of taking down.  The Married couple (Dalliah and Soccothrates) in Arc almost made it based on their funny quips, my favorite being from Soccothrates when the group pulls Dalliah, "Have you come to kill Dalliah? Can I watch?"

That’s all for now.  I’d love to hear what some of YOUR favorite boss fights are and why.  Perhaps in the future I’ll address raid bosses.

That was the scene last night.  Some of you have been to ZA, some of you haven’t.  If you haven’t, that’s what it looks like just before the pull of Zul’jin, the last boss in Zul’Aman. 

If you recall, I wrote about ZA a few months back.  If you don’t want to go back and read, basically what that post addressed is the difficulty of ZA in comparison to Karazhan.  When ZA was first announced, a lot of people thought it would be a case of linear progression, you finish Kara a few times, then move on to ZA.

They were wrong.  As it turns out, ZA is just flat-out too difficult for a Kara geared group.  I suppose I should pull back on that a little, as it is POSSIBLE with a Kara geared group, it would just be incredibly frustrating and filled with wipes. 

So what is it that makes ZA so tough in comparison to Kara?  Well, first the trash is a LOT tougher to deal with.  There are a couple parts in the instance where you have to run through a "gauntlet", and it can be very difficult to get through.  There are times you have to deal with wave after wave of mobs, and you can easily get overwhelmed.  In Kara, everything is quite easily controlled.  You position the raid in one spot that is safe, and the tank pulls back to you.  Easy cheesy.  It’s not that easy in ZA.  The one very nice thing about ZA trash is there is a lot less of it overall.

So what about the bosses?  The boss fights in ZA are on par with a lot of what I’ve seen in T5 content.  Some of them last almost as long, too.  Sure, the bear boss is easy enough to deal with, and once you learn a couple of tricks the Eagle boss is pretty straightforward as well.  But then you start getting into bosses like the Dragonhawk or Malacrass, and the whole game changes.  You need strength in your group all around for these fights, and a solid plan of action.  This is not your mother’s tank and spank Prince fight.

So, all that stuff aside, is ZA fun?  You’re darn skippy it is.  When I wrote the above linked article, I was just barely getting out of Kara myself.  ZA still seemed like a waste of time for me, as the times I went I died over and over and over again.  To trash.

Now, things are a little different.  I’ve seen a great deal of T5 and T6, I’ve geared up significantly, and now the challenges of ZA have paled somewhat.  I can pump out a lot more healing, and take at least one or two more hits before I go down.  PTD’s all growed up since he first set foot in ZA, and much of the group I was in was T5+ equipped as well.

Now when I look at the instance, I see the kind of challenge I get in T6 content for a 10 man group.  Kara is a snoozefest nowadays, which is why I do stuff like try to solo heal the place.  Besides the healthy challenge, there are some very nice drops I could use.

So how did we do last night?  Well, we got to Zul’jin, but didn’t take him down.  Myself and the other 2 healers were fairly new to the place, so overall we did well.  We only took two shots at ZJ since we were already past the raid time when we got to him.  That Eagle phase of his is nasty, I’ll say that much.

As far as the timer thing, we only managed the first.  We wiped on the trash leading to the Eagle boss as we didn’t have a Pally tank.  Our Pally healer had to try to deal with all the birdies, and he went down.  On the second attempt at that gauntlet the same pally healer died again, but towards the end and we made it through.  Then he had to release and run back, and he got lost on the way.  So no second timer for us. 

Oh well.  At least the first timer netted me the Life-step Belt.  And with that I said my final goodbyes to the Windhawk set.  The belt was the last piece I was still wearing.  Into the bank it goes, where if I ever decide to try out a Moonkin spec I will regem it for that.  I also managed to pick up that froggy pet.

Still, we did make our way all the way to Zul’jin, which is pretty good considering all the healers were basically new.  That Malacrass is one bad mutha.  If you haven’t seen the fight, just think of a Moroes fight on steroids. 

One other note is that I managed to crest 4 million in overall healing.  That’s a lot of HOTs, man!  I don’t know if I’ve hit 4 million before, but here’s a screeny to prove it. (My recount is in the lower right)

In all, it was a very fun night.  I like a good challenge, and ZA provided that, with some good rewards.  While I don’t see a Bear mount in my future, I can see myself running this quite a few more times before Wrath hits.  There are still some very nice items I’d like to see, and at my gear level it’s a little more fun than Kara.  If anything, I think I’ve perhaps proven my previous post to be true:  ZA is basically a 10-man for bored T5 and T6 raiding guilds.  I just wish Blizzard had told us that in the first place.

I’ve been strictly resto spec’d for a long time.  The vast majority of my time as a level 70 Druid has been spent as a healer.  I enjoy healing, I consider myself a strong asset in raids, and I will always be a healer first.

Last night, however, I switched sides, at least for a day or so.  Through my days of raiding, when I saw the first 5 bosses in SSC over and over again, and farmed Kara many times for badges, I made a point to pick up any cat or bear gear that would have been sharded otherwise.  I hate to see a purple go to waste.  So over time, I have gathered a fairly respectable, albeit imperfect, set of gear for tanking.  I have the Heavy Clefthoof set, of course, and I also have some very nice epics to fill things out.  Heck, I have the best tanking weapon for a Bear in the game, I may as well put it to use sometime, right?

I do still have some issues.  I obviously haven’t concentrated much on slots, I’ve just picked up stuff that dropped.  I’m presently sporting a DPS helm and shoulders, and a green pair of bracers.  So I have some spots to fill.  Last night, I was half tempted to pick up the nice badge tanking bracers, but luckily remembered the whole point of going feral.

Farming for badges.

It seems, at least on my server, that the hardest class to get a hold of for heroics is a tank.  We seem to have more than enough healers willing to do the job, and of course more than enough DPSers, we just don’t have all that many tanks. 

So, I figure, why not?

I headed to Darn, picked up all my tanking pieces from the bank, and hit the druid trainer.  My cost to respec had bottomed out to 15g, so no big deal.  (I will have to respec again on Saturday for BT, however.)  I carefully chose my talents, and ended up with 0/47/14 or something like that.  I’m pretty sure I hit all the key talents for tanking, and threw in the DPS talents as well.

I put on all my bear gear, and took a look at my stats.

• 11.4k Health (A little low, but should be doable for a lot of easier heroics with a good healer methinks - this is completely unbuffed, though, I didn’t even have Mark up.)
• 20,800 some armor
• 20.33% Dodge
• 417 Defense (Yay!  No crits!  This is one thing I reworked the gems a bit to achieve.)
• 1600ish Attack Power

Not bad.  I spent the next half hour or so setting up a tanking bar, as it had been a LONG time since I tanked. 

By the time I was done, though, I was yawning.  It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to tank a heroic for the first time fairly tired.  I had stayed up later than usual to watch the Bears get beat by the Chiefs, and then to watch the So You Think You Can Dance finale.  Yes, I’m a sports nerd, and a lot of other nerds rolled into one.  My name is PTD, and I am a gaming nerd, blogging nerd, sports nerd (go Cubs and Bears!), reality TV nerd (especially Gordon Ramsay) and a Bowling nerd.  Beat that!  Oh, and if you ever want to get pwned on the lanes, give me a ring.

Anyhow, I elected not to try to get anything going, but logged off in Shatt with the SP daily heroic saved.  I plan to start with either that or Ramparts.  SP has classically been known as the "easiest" heroic, but I think I might prefer to do Ramps first, as I have a more solid understanding of how all the pulls work.  Hopefully tonight I get a shot at my first tanked heroic, and I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.  Who knows, maybe I’ll love it and finally be everything my class could be.  A Tank, Healer or DPS, whatever you need, for any situation.

Next I’ll have to look at my DPS gear overall.  I know I have a nice epic chest from SSC!

Well, I’ve spent a good deal of time lately mostly ignoring my main.  Things had slowed down in my guild, and I wasn’t raiding regularly as I was missing out on the signups.  I spent some time working on my Hunter, who is now reasonably geared in mostly T4 level epics.  I tell ya one thing, he sure can blow through his dailies much faster than my T5 level Resto Druid.  Sometimes I wonder if I should level HIM when Wrath hits.  But, that’s neither here nor there.

I’ve also gotten my Shadow Priest up to 62, and also worked on his trade skills.  He has tailoring at around 365 and his enchanting is up to about 320.  Two very nice trades to have, and I’m glad I picked them up.

But, as you surely know, I was in Black Temple Saturday night.  It’s time to start working on my main again.

One of the reasons he had fallen by the wayside a bit is that he’s more and more difficult to improve.  It seems the further you go in terms of gear, the more difficult it is to reach that next level.  Well, now that I’m officially in T6 content, the time to refocus is here.

For starters, I’m looking at all the badge gear that’s available, to try and find the best bang for my buck.  The healing leather chest is a nice upgrade, but not game-changing.  There is a nice ring, along with a decent pair of gloves, but neither screams out to me.  I already have the awesome pants that are available.

For pure, huge upgrade, there is really only one choice:  The Gavel of Naaru Blessings. I’ve been carrying the Shard of the Virtuous for, like, ever. I just can’t seem to get lucky with any of the other drops, like off the Prince for instance. I also have not taken Lady V down, and she carried a nice healy mace. I think I finally realized that the Gavel is just the way to go.

It’s high time I start farming badges.  It’s going to take some time to get to 150, though, and I hope I can stick with the program.  I’m sitting at 56 as of now, and the last two days have made sure to do the heroic daily.

The good thing about that is that yesterday it happened to be Shattered Halls.  I’ve never finished SH.  I  have actually only TRIED once — it was long ago, it was a pug, and we didn’t get past the gauntlet.  So it was nice to see content I hadn’t seen before, and I also made sure to pick up the quests there as well.  I still needed the Honor Hold revered head enchant, and I’ve needed it for a long time.  I just haven’t had the heart to beg for heroic HH instance runs.  Heart be damned, I’m going to be begging.

Well-geared Resto Druid LFG — anything that gives badges!

No, I haven’t seen Dark Knight yet, though I’m itching to.  Ledger just looks great as the Joker, much more frightening than the Jack Nicholson version from 1989.

Anyhow…

I don’t know about your server, but over on Whisperwind we seem to be having a bit of a tank crisis.  Take a gander at the LFG channel, and chances are you’ll see multiple groups just looking for one last piece to start a run - a tank.

Let’s face it, good tanks are hard to come by.  It’s a tough enough job running with people you know, it much be semi-nightmaric to try to tank a PUG run.  I don’t even want to get into what a Warrior’s repair bill looks like after a heroic PUG.  Ugh.

Also, in my guild one of our main tanks took a vacation for about 2 weeks and we were short a very important piece.  (Zhen, you’ve got some nerve!)  One of our other main tanks has been suffering from on again off again burnout, which doesn’t help.  Because of all that it’s been difficult to get even guild runs off the ground.

Well, I’ve been considering the unthinkable.  Respecing.  If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you’ll know that I leveled feral all the way, and spent a good 3-4 months when I hit 70 as a feral druid.  Well, I was a little afraid of trying to lead runs at the time, so I was always vying for DPS spots in instances.  That proved to be quite difficult, and my guild was also running a little low on healers.  So it was that Pummra was reborn as a resto druid.

I took to healing like a fish to water (more on that later) and haven’t looked back.  I enjoy my role as a healer, and I’ve come a long way in terms of gear and skill.  In my good healer gear, I’m sitting at about 1900 +heal - not a huge number, but more than adequate for T5 and everything below that.  Since I’ve raided SSC, Kara and Heroics so much, I’ve also slowly been amassing tanking and DPS gear.

I didn’t know how far I had come in that respect until the other night.  I knew I was close to a really good tanking set, but I didn’t know how close.  When I put everything on, I was at 10.2k health, 18k+ armor and 418 defense.  And that’s resto spec’d.  I had kicked around the idea of trying to tank again before, but I just got a couple more recent upgrades to push me over that magical 415 defense number.  I have some fantastic pieces, like the Wildfury Greatstaff from SSC.

So should I take the plunge? I very well might, and even offered to OT Kara Friday night if necessary. I don’t like the idea of paying for respecs all the time, as I still plan to raid as a healer, but I’ll live with it. I’m no longer intimidated by leading or marking on runs, so expect to see Pummra’s Big Bear Butt soon!