Being a Hero

I must say, my stance on heroics right now is one of slight resentment. Although that’s probably because I’m only really interested in running one because it drops a great item that will help me in my quest to become hit capped before my guild starts raiding in January. The particular item in question is Mark of the War Prisoner and it drops from Cyanigosa, the last boss in Violet Hold heroic. This is a great little trinket to have, and it’s very valuable for only a blue item, and very diserable for any caster. So far my quest in the acquisition of this trinket has been nothing short of a nightmare. What annoys me about Violet Hold is that you don’t know what 2 bosses you’ll face before you reach Cyanigosa, and if you wipe, you have to start all over again. That means doing each boss again, but not getting any new drops or badges, although you do get rep (woopdy doo).

I think I’ve faced all of the bosses by now and I must say that I’ve had the worst experiences with Zuramat the Obliterater (the void guy) and Xevozz (the ethereal). Both can be pretty tough bosses, and the harder they are, the more chance you’ll have at wiping, and the less you’ll be motivated to try again. As soon as you start the event to kick off mob spawns, you get saved to the instance. One time I joined a pug for it and someone had already been saved to it because they started the event but didn’t go past the 3rd mob pack. And it was a very good geared group that wouldn’t have had any problems in my opinion. But everyone ended up getting saved to it and couldn’t do anything. The toon responsible wasn’t aware of how you get saved to the instance and I must say, neither was I. So that was rather unfortunate and didn’t ‘arf annoy me.

Read on!

Still, I like to remain positive and try to maintain that it’ll always be something on my to do list until I obtain it. Because today I finally completed my Loremaster of Northrend achievement with the help of 3 guildies which I’m incredibly grateful for. I still have a couple of normal quests to do and then I’ll be all done with Northrend quests. In 1 month of Wrath’s release. I guess I must be hardcore. But what a ride, the zones are great, Icecrown and Storm Peaks in particular are spectacular in their design and some of the quests are superb in their dynamic and originality. This phasing technology is really clever and seemless in how it works, but a problem I had with it was when it came to completing these last few group quests in Icecrown. The phasing technology means that only players who are on or who have completed the quests can actually see you and the mobs when in the same vicinity. Which made it quite difficult to find people who were also on the quests.

Back to heroics. Loken. I believe Blizzard said he’s the hardest heroic boss there is. I beg to differ. Depending on your tactic I think he’s actually very easy. Whenever I’ve run him, my group will just stay huddled around his feet and take the AoE blast. This basically makes it a dps race, kill him before too many die from continuous AoE blasts. I think once you get 3 or 4 blasts, you’re going to run into problems. But personally I’m somewhat fed up of that place, the trash leading up to Loken hasn’t been very kind to me in the past and I ran it several times to help a paladin get the Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver which does look pretty badass.

But what I do think is the hardest boss encounter, in my experience, is the first boss in Azjol-Nerub. I don’t know what it is with that boss, if it’s bugged perhaps, but it just seems like there are so many things that can go wrong. And I’m not really talking about abilities the mobs do, I’m talking about things which will seem to pull the boss or other packs before you intend to. Of the many times I’ve run it, things seem to be going as smooth as they can, and then suddenly, another pack or the boss will just waltz over to you, for no reason at all. The individual packs themselves can sometimes be quite tough but if you’re on the ball you can get through it, you just need to watch out for each other. But sometimes I’m just left completely confused as to what caused the extra packs to come running at me and my group. I’ve generally just tried to do it through gritted teeth. The last boss is a lot of fun however.

What are your experiences? What boss (or bosses) have you found particularly challenging? I have a feeling that most people have a pretty easy time with Azjol-Nerub and Violet Hold – sods law strikes again.