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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Random Heroic: Azjol-Nerub


Azjol-Nerub is my 6th random heroic and my 7 heroic post-patch 3.3. What's funny or strange is that the PUG tool picked this dungeon twice for me in the same night. The first time, I found myself at the entrance and the rest of my group wasn't in sight, not even on the map. They were probably at the end of the dungeon. I asked them where they were and they didn't respond so I dropped out since I wanted to experience the entire instance.

When I queued again later for the random dungeon I found myself inside the same one but with the whole group at the entrance. Maybe that's the way the tool works though.

This was another short dungeon, taking only about 30 minutes. The final boss, Anub'arak, was very interesting. The tank quickly filled me in with what I'm supposed to do for this fight. Truth is, if you don't know it, chances are you will die. In fact one of your group just did, but we did fine without him. And here's why.

You start fighting the boss. DPS DPS DPS. At one point he burrows into the ground and some of his buddies show up. There are a couple of elites which the tank handles. Meanwhile you keep DPS-ing the elites but as soon as some non-elite spiders show up, quickly take them down. Then switch back to the elites. During this time you will see the ground crack at random locations. If it happens below you, move at once. If you don't move, huge spikes will shoot up from the ground, impaling you for massive damage. I believe that's what killed our group member.

Once the elites are down, the boss surfaces and everybody resumes DPS on him. He does the same sequence 2 more times before he dies. This was a very cool fight for me, in which I had to pay attention to several things at once and I also had to stay on my toes and be prepared to move at any instant.

Here are the 3 achievements that I got in this heroic:

Hadronox Denied
Azjol-Nerub
Heroic Azjol-Nerub


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe you will try tanking or healing in dungeons at some point. Tanking is not as hard as it looks. At the beginning you can quelle to one familiar non-heroic instance and try out. Of course, need to read tanking guides first. I was afraid at first, but now i feel ok as tank. Healing still scares me, too much responsibility:D

Rades said...

You got Hadronox Denied on your first time through? Congrats, that's not an easy one to get!

HokieJayBee said...

looks like someone needs to change the blog title!

wow alone (except i love this new random dungeon group finder thingy and i'm digging all these new unexplored places and achievements)

Alex Keeny said...

I doubt the ground spike killed the group member; most of the damage is from the fall, so it's a percentage of their full life. You only die there if you weren't full health.

What kills the most people is standing in front of the boss. He does a frontal cone attack called pound that will one-shot a non-tank. It does have a cast time, so a tank can avoid it too, but that's usually a non-issue since it's rarely even half the tank's health. The DPS, on the other hand should always be behind the target, for parry related reasons.

When I'm on my resto shaman, I don't sweat it when anyone dies to that, it was their own stupidity, no failure of mine (I even usually warn the group).

Darth Solo said...

@Anonymous I could try tanking with my paladin. After all, he has a tanking spec. Thing is, I just want to focus on my hunter. Don't wanna waste time on the other characters. They are mostly for professions.

@Rades believe me I don't know what we did in there. We just killed the bastard. The achievement was a nice bonus :)

@HokieJayBee no, but don't you see? Now I have an even bigger incentive to play alone. It's not like I shun any kind of interaction with other people. I love grouping... but without any strings attached.

@Alex Keeny well... it's good to know. Thanks for explaining this. In the heat of the battle I assumed the spikes killed him. At any rate, I believe the guy was in very bad gear, he was mostly tagging along.