Tonight I decided to solo Hellfire Ramparts with my hunter just for kicks and, of course, for the achievement.
As a solo player (I never tire of saying this, apparently), I had never done Hellfire Ramparts before. As a consequence, I didn't know what to expect but I knew it would be easy since this is the first Outland instance that awaits fresh players who arrive at Hellfire Peninsula.
To cut a long story short, as a level 80 this instance is a piece of cake. Not only is it very short (there are only 4 easy bosses) but the mobs can be AOE'd successfully. Furthermore, it is linear, meaning it doesn't branch like other instances so in this regard it is very noob-friendly.
If you hope to make gold by farming it, think again. I made less than 40 gold, even after I sold the 4 blue items that the bosses dropped.
If you haven't done this before, make sure you grab the Weaken the Ramparts quest given by NPCs at Honor Hold or Thrallmar. My mistake is that I forgot all about this quest and now I have to go back there if I want to complete it. A minor nuisance though, since the instance is so easy.
26 comments:
Soloing Ramparts is very very easy at level 80. I often run it for cloth, greens and blues. Cloth sells amazingly good (reputation). Greens and blues can be disenchanted and once again... disenchanted stuff sells like a hot cake.
I usually need 13-14 minutes to clear everything (mobs and bosses). Using a BM spec I can tank packs of mobs and just AOE them like a cool mage would do. It's nice to pracrice and master the "Aoe technique".
If you sell the cloth and sisenchant greens/blues it can be profitable, considering that you clear it in few minutes.
Did you try it in heroic mode?
did you unlock a hidden boss? ramps has 3 bosses i thought :P
i also run normal ramps and BF all the time on my 80 mage. a group of friends are always leveling each other's alts up.
i know you're a solo player.....but ramps/BF money is made in bringing someone along.
[1] sell a spot. when i'm running ramps for a friend, i'll typically sell some of the other spots to players in the zone. we usually don't have to look farther than the door into ramps to find someone. "/1 selling ramps runs, 3 spots left, 50g each". if you're running a friend who wears cloth, don't bring a PuG clothie, if your friend is in plate, don't bring a plate wearer, etc. that way there's no loot questions. this serves multiple purposes. first, it brings the average level player in the group down, from 70 [his 60 and my 80] to somewhere in the 60's, depending on how many you bring. this lower group level brings better exp to all involved. and it speeds up the entire run. see #2.
[2] you can AoE farm ramps or BF in 10-12 minutes if you don't have to stop and loot. always bring someone along, on free-for-all looting. you just get spammy with it, and never stop [except to drink/eat a mana strudel]. they loot away.
@ Hokie
Interesting idea. I for myself *love* farming instances. Never thought about "selling spots" lol. Isn't 50G per spot a little expensive for a leveling player, supposing it's not an alt? I mean 50G is good money and Ramps is very short.
I'm a level 80 hunter pretty good geared and as said above I clear the instance in 14 minutes (looting every corpse, so I lose some time). What's the ideal composition of a leveling party? Me (80) and what level range for other 4 members?
Tried a heroic run just to test the skills but it's VERY hard... some mobs can kill my pet in few seconds even if I'm BM + glyph specced for tank/heal... Ouch!!!
I like ramps. my wolf pet was up until lvl 79, the armored wolves from the groups just before hte first boss. They just looked fierce. Oh, and it can be solo'd at 75 if you are careful, though the second boss was trickier than the last for some odd reason for me. :) Very easy at 80 though, still in quest greens and a few blues!
@Dalaila ShadowsongEU I haven't tried it on Heroic. I just might. Maybe I can complete that quest to kill the bosses on heroic, what do you think?
@HokieJayBee that's a very good idea. My problem is that I don't feel like babysitting people. Sometimes when you help someone you get more than you bargained for. I do like to help people whenever I get the chance but occasionally there's this annoying person who sticks to me like shit to a dog's butt.
I counted the dragon and its rider as 2 bosses. Actually, the first boss (the one who patrols) was the hardest. It took my pet down to 60% or so. But of course, I had also pulled other mobs and was AOE-ing them all.
@ Darth
Heroic mode is quite hard if you're not very well geared. Elites will hit your pet for a lot of damage and it will die fast. I managed to clear the path to the 1st boss but it was a pain... :(
i haven't done a solo heroic outlands run on my mage, because i haven't been back "for the challenge" as much as i've been back for helping friends out.
now i have to! tonight i'll try ramps. :)
my friends and i just always help each other through the leveling process and "boost" each other until northrend. gevlon wouldn't like it, but we do just to save time. soooo, since i'm in outland on hellfire anyways, heading into ramps, we decided to try and make some money out of it.
@Dalaila - yes, 50g is a little much for a first time through, leveling player. i'm looking typically for other people there, alts, looking for that same boost. in which case 50g rolls in without question. if someone says, "wow, 50g? i don't have that, can i come just for exp, i won't loot anything", i'm not a total miser a$$hole. i'll typically run them for <25g and still give them the loot if they're the only class that can benefit. :) usually what we'll do when we have a full group [me + friend, +3 PuGs] is i'll master loot the bosses and give the loot to the best class. everyone can keep their greens to sell/DE and cloth since they paid the 50g. it makes is smoother to just charge a higher up front cost and not stress about loot along the way.
leading us to:
@Darth - yes, it can be like babysitting sometimes....when it becomes babysitting i'm not shy to boot and ignore. i'll trade them the 50g back if it's early in the instance. i'm a pretty efficient guy. give me the 50g. stand behind me the whole time. loot away. enjoy. the type of customer i'm looking for, the alt, the richer player who clearly has higher level toons - knows what's going on in a boost and isn't a problem usually. that's why i set the threshold typically at 50g. it filters for me and gets me a certain type of customer.
@Dalaila again - the best leveling party is just one that is proper for the zone/instance. you want to get the average level of the group down as low as possible to get the most exp for your friend. for ramps/BF, i'm looking for me, my friend(58-63) and then 3 other toons not above 63. as for make-up, the last one i was running was a friend's shammy. so we took anyone but hunters. i ran one group through ramps 4 times [yes, 200g from each of the 3 pugs :)] because it was perfect for drops. shammy, rogue, pally, priest.
when my friends hit 64 it's time for UnderBog but that's much slower going. my mage can spam ramps/BF in his sleep. underbog is a slower, more scientific pull for his cloth armor. i still try and sell those runs but's it's slimmer pickings. i wasn't kidding when i said we can typically fill a sold-out-PuG group of people just standing at the door into ramps, presumably waiting for that 80 to walk by.
underbog is phenomenal money for the friend's alts too though, at least on my server those sanguine hybiscus go for 8-10g each for achievement people who want to lazily level their sporeggar rep. a typical UB run is 15-20 of those puppies :)
I had some problems finding people for 40G (Ramps) but if I spam "25G for newcomers" everyone will tell "I'm not an alt!" :)
I want to try more, I love clearing lower level instances!
if you love it, anything is profit :)
i'm on a very, very crowded server and have just found that 50g is a good even threshold. it's an old server [one of the first 10 WoW servers ever] so there's old money. higher end accounts with many alts. your server results will vary :)
as for the "i'm not an alt!" ---- make sure none of them are wearing the BoA shoulders/weapon/trinket!
Found some people spamming 25G... But more than that resulted in whispers like "LOL, YOU'RE CRAZY MATE... NOOB". They will start hating me :P
TBH, 50G for a level 60 to complete that instance isn't bad at all. In fact, if I could find a high level to take me through such a dungeon while leveling, I would take the offer in a heartbeat. Just think about it: loads of XP, the chance to complete some nice quests with possibly some blue rewards, plus a very good chance to get some nice blue drops. Those are definitely worth 50G in my book.
I agree, maybe it's just my server that's populated by poor people... sigh. I'll try more, I love it :P
Ramps is popular choice for boosting cause lets face it, If you're the 80, the other 4 will be death knights and they should have been able to gather at least 50 gold.
@ Dalaila: What faction do you play?
@ Frogi
Alliance
I just ran a guy thru stocks for 10g a run for 5 quick runs. I think I like this whole escort service when you aren't dealing with idiots.
I usually run around as Survival for raids, farming and everything else, but I also created a Beastmaster build that relies heavily on pet stamina and survivability (using a Ferocity pet of course). I do not have a second gear set for the BM build, and I primarily set it up for BC heroics and Zul Gurub (still need some reputation for several BC factions as well as Zandalar Tribe).
Haven't really tested it yet (just created it yesterday), but I already went to Caverns of Time Hillsbrad heroic and tried out Don Carlos (the guy who patrols the road and drops a nice Spanish hat on heroic). It was much easier than I thought, he went down without any problems. Didn't have to feign death, only used misdirection twice. I could never bring him down as a Survival hunter, but then again I didn't work on him too much.
Pet is running around with about 14k hp, that's not really much but I hope it's OK for further BC heroics. Mend Pet ticks for about 2.2k (Glyph of Mending is a must for such a build), so it was very easy to keep him up all the time.
I can't wait to try out Hellfire Ramparts on heroic!
@ Celebrandil
Heroic version of any dungeon is MUCH more difficult. You can do it but you need *GOOD* gear. It will not be fast as you will have to carefully pull mobs.
In Ramparts the wolves can bring your pet to 0 health in few seconds as they got a powerful bleeding effect. I managed to reach the first boss but it was a bit slow... and I'm nax10/25 geared.
Overall the normal version is better because it takes few minutes. Heroics are slow.
Yep the wolves were even a pain in the ass for a friend of mine who plays a 80 tank. I might be skipping some trash if it's too painful, i.e. trash that spams nasty things like Mortal Strikes or bleed effects, etc. On the other hand if the bleed effect is dispellable I might just spam Mend Pet and do some auto shots. ;-)
It will probably involve offtanking a mob by myself by Deterrence, Disengange and traps if the groups are too large. I'm geared mostly in Naxx 25 and Ulduar 25.
Unfortunately normal dungeons usually don't earn reputation, except Shattered Halls and Shadow Labyrinth. God I really hate these two. :-(
Reputation comes from normal runs too. Ramps at least.
@ Dalaila: Ah cool, I used to play there with guild called Death or Mau Mau, went back to Horde though.
Don't know if you guys know but theres a Hunter called TribunalX that managed to solo UK, might be worth checking his gear and site for anyone looking to seriously solo old raids/instances. He's got a nice vblog on youtube too thats worth subscribing to.
Thanks guys! You've just convinced me not to attempt any heroic dungeon on my own!
If you're revered, you cannot get reputation in Ramparts anymore. That only works until honored. You need to do heroics, or Shattered Halls which still gives rep even on normal.
Anyway I've tried heroic Ramparts yesterday and it wasn't too much fun. It worked pretty well until after the first boss when I came upon a trash mob that literally tore apart my pet after a few seconds. The dogs were not a problem, I just nuked them down and feigned death.
Heroic Furnace was a total nightmare, I only came up to the second group of trash (those that are summoning an imp). These groups do extreme damage (3k per hit) that just couldn't be healed through anymore.
So I went to normal Shattered Halls and gathered reputation there. Normal mode is sooo much easier, sometimes the pet doesn't need any heal at all, even in larger trash groups. ^^
Is there any point in solo-ing these on heroic, apart from the achievement? I mean, at 80 the gear is useless anyway. I would assume the rewards are the same in the end.
My husband (Protection Pally) and I (Balance Druid) have cleared normal ramps many times while waiting for NR instances/raids. We tried the heroic version but it was like a snail sliding travelling though in peanut butter or even tar! We usually pull the entire instance (minus the last 2 bosses plus a few adds near the 1ft boss) and aoe them down near the entrance. Normal UK was easier and more profitable than heroic ramps - but the 1st boss gave us an interesting fight (ice tomb) + adds.
Duo-ing with someone very close (especially complimentary classes) is a lot better than just solo-ing everything.
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