Shattered Halls

During my usual nightly reading, I happened to wander over to the Armory to look through my achievements lists. I've been trying to solo many of the older dungeons and instances I didn't do way back when. There is an underlying method to this madness though. Only a small part involves just seeing game content I missed, the larger part has to do with beginning to learn my off-spec feral bear tank.


The over-all plan isn't really set in stone, since I am making efforts to learn as much as possible on my own, within my playstyle. Perhaps not the best approach since there really is a ton of information available across the nets on how to be a good/great tank. And yes, I have read much of it for it will have it's usefulness over time. But reading 'how to' and actually 'doing' whatever, remains two very different worlds.

My approach for now is to just let Sol jump into the instance with his main balance spec. After all, it is the stronger spec atm and he does handle it fairly well enough. Sol don't do any pre-fight research on these instances since he is level-capped and most likely able to just walk through them anyway. He takes his time in doing so though, making sure he does total clears, no missed trash or skipping about. Everything and every mob has it's value in knowledge gained. He always does multiple mob pulls and works the crowd for the experience. Getting to know who all comes along with the initial target pull and what is needed to keep the crowd in a decent AoE zone placement so he don't inadvertantly pull a bunch more. Which has happened a time or two :)

Then there's the learning part of how to bring the casters into the crowd so the AoE reaches them as well. This usually involves moving the crowd to them. Casters are so reluctant towards movement. ( I can't imagine why) Kind of a strange thing here...first he pulls the crowd towards him to seperate them from additional mobs. But then he may have to take the crowd back closer to the wayward casters. So additional care is needed in the decision of wheather or not to include all or part of the casters, maybe let one or two wait until the main crowd is down. Which means, he has to be able to take damage from them. Just something else to keep in mind when considering how his bear will deal with these situations.

I think my point here is, in having Sol boomkin the instance first, this is my way of researching the fight and developing some stratagies. He gets to know the layout of the instance and the trash progression towards each boss. He learns about zones which are safe to openly nuke in, and where he needs to be extra aware of possible adds. He gets a feel for each boss and their abilities. He also learns when his magic spells are about worthless. (thank Elune for shapeshift!)

All this brings Sol back to the post title, Shattered Halls. You may have been wondering how that fit in. Well, yesterday Sol did the quest line for the key to the Halls, and of coarse, jumped right in. What a mess that turned out to be! Very different from all the other instances he's solo'ed. Sol actually bit the dusty floor several times, ok, maybe 8 or 10 times, lost count. Stubborn though, kept at it until completed, and forked over the 50 gold for repairs. Sol did really enjoy the instance though. Lots of different trash abilities, mobs a bit closer knit to each other along with other surprise packages. Each death he endured brung about several minutes of comptemplation of how to proceed. It would seem to Sol that Shattered Halls required much more thought than any of the other instances he's done. This is all good. He will use this as a personal benchmark when he actually starts tanking for a group. It'll be a while yet, but as far as I can see, Outland isn't overly affected from the Cataclysm, rather stable. So when he's ready for groups, Shattered Halls will serve the purpose quite nicely.

Soloing Instances

Being level capped for the moment, I like back-tracking a bit and going into previous instances solo. Although I usually have some sort of reason to do so, sometimes it's just for the experience and maybe an achievement. Today was one of those days where I had sorta kinda had a plan. Kara. Never been there and wanted to give it a go. I needed a key though, so it was off to Shattrath to run the key fragments quest chain. No problem, could'nt be any worse than most quest lines.


The first two fragments were easy enough to get, even though I had to run a seperate instance to get a key for the instance to get the first fragment. Minor side-track, but easily done. The second fragment was even easier, did'nt have to kill a single thing til I opened the arcane jar. (good stealth kitty) So far...so good. The problem came with the third fragment though. Turns out it was hidden within Tempest Keep, raid group required for entrance. *insert unsavory words of choice here* I solo things. It is a personal accomplishment I look forward to. The last thing I want to do is to attempt getting a group together for one lousy key fragment. I don't need the boss kills, I can live without the achievement, I just want the damn key fragment.

This is where I have strong disagreement with Blizzard's ways. It is my belief that if a level capped player wishes to solo older instances, Blizzard should not stand in their way of doing or attempting to do so, by requiring them to be in a group. Sure, make them run quest lines for keys and such. Or even add some odd quest to the line-up to allow a solo player to enter. These are 'old world' instances, pre-Wrath. I fail to see why a level capped player should be stopped from attempting to solo such instances. Yes, I know that there are ways around this nuisance, but finding someone willing to group long enough just to get you in to solo is next to impossible, at least on my server. Perhaps this is just the price I have to pay for soloing 80 levels with Sol. Perhaps I'll just have to bite the bullet and come into the reality that there are just some things past that I will not be able to experience.

What do you think of this? Should a level capped player be able to enter instances pre-Wrath solo? These are all old content, not really useable at level cap, (unless you pass it on to an alt maybe), so does it really make any difference to require a group?

Oh well, that's my little rant for the week. With Kara out of the picture for now, I'm off to try something else. I really do need to spend some time practicing my off-spec tanking, solo at first of coarse. Wouldn't want to get anybody else killed in the process :) Still need to get back into WG also and build up some sort tanking gear set. Hmmmm...bag space for extra set of gear to carry. /shrugs That's another story for another time.