Just as I have said, I cannot stay up late during the week. Now I feel like my eyes have swollen to sizeable tennis balls, my brain resists all attempts to get a decent thought out of there (twenty typos corrected from the last 7 words) and all in all I'd much rather be sleeping than working.
The culprit to this was last nights Three Stooges session: the three went where ever they could to be undergeared, underpowered and undermanned. In short, where ever the challenge lies to three casual newbies.
We had thought about taking on the Old World raid instances before they are made void: this is a project we will follow through before Cataclysm. I'm sure of that. But yesterday a devil whispered to us. Take on the ICC 5-mans...
I didn't have to lure my brothers to it. As our mains are all capped now, it should have been pretty straightforward thing to do. But there is always this "but" when we are considered. The "but" in this case was that none of us was too familiar with the instance. Förgelös had never even visited ICC, I had run Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron twice, never got to Halls of Reflection, and Bishop had been there once on a run which had been a disaster.
So the bosses and encounters were completely unknown to us as a group. Add to that the Mutilate-build of Förgelös, who still wears more or less blue/green gear, and you have the soup we were swimming in.
I had high hopes that we could down Brohnjahm, not much more due to our lacking dps. And situational awareness of a shortsighted procupine would prevent us from achieving anything more.
The trash proved that we had the potential: no problems to keep the aggro and downing them in succession. The biggest problem was for the rogue (Förgelös) to stay out of the harms way and stay alive: I think he got himself killed once or twice before we got to Brohnjahm.
Ah, king of souls... First of all, we had to figure out how the encounter works. We spent at least the first 5 minutes to figure out that I had to kite him away from the shattered souls and the others could do their best to kill them while I was backing away from the boss along the rim of the disco ballroom. The Soulstorm proved to be even worse due to the fears cast, causing us lose unnecessary amounts of health while running through the storm, twice each time.
But... Rest in pieces, Brohnjam! We did it on the first try, and quite frankly I didn't believe it at first. One of the most exhilarating experiences at level cap I've taken part to.
After that boss, the trash becomes even easier, and we found our way to the Devourer of Souls. I remembered that this boss was tricky, but I didn't remember why.
First of all, Bishopgeorge, our resident healer, announced he was out of drinks and potions... so no mana refreshes within the combat. "Just try to stay alive when I go OOM" was all he could give us.
Second, Förgelös doesn't seem to have any kind of DBM type assist, so he misses most of the cues of the harm, like the pools on the ground and the soul light which really kills if you stand in it.
"Don't look into the light!" was the best advice I could give.
The first one was a wipe, clear, sound and solid wipe. Out of bad planning and not knowing the encounter. Something started to stirr in my mind as I was thinking what happened, but nothing tangible. Second try was another wipe, this time we got considerably farther, even though our healer decided to take a sunbath... And third was because both the healer and dps decided to make closer acquaintance with the dead.
Fourth was the epitaph of our running against unmeasurable odds. In the heat of the fight, Bishop DC'd and... announced that the battery in his mouse had just ran out. Both Förgelös and I were laughing silly due to this, causing...
Wipe four.
Obviously we got all pumped up by this, because we did it on the fifth try!
Out the bad air, in with the good.
Pit of Saron was another kind of beast. Forgemaster Garfrost went down on the second try, even though Bishop tried to even out the situation by DCing again. He didn't succeed.
Ick and Krick is an optional encounter which really measures -or as in our case, teaches- the value of movement and situational awareness to the newly dinged solo levelling beasts. Or it should at least do that. I decided it was time to bang our heads against that wall, as there was a certain lack in the quality of following the cues on the ground among our threesome.
I cut the long story short by these recaps:
- Förgelös dies in Toxic Waste. Bishop slips and we wipe.
- Bishop dies in the explosions. We wipe.
- Förgelös gets chased by Ick. He runs to Ick and keeps on beating him. We wipe.
- I get chased and run too far. The encounter resets even though Bishop lands several Holy Smites on Ick.
- I charge on Ick, Förgelös starts to whack Ick... and Bishop DC's just before the charge. Wipe.
Our (Laiskajaakko and Förgelös) gear was already red, the clock was around midnight and we had already exceeded our expectations for the evening so we called it a night.
Where Gevlon runs his Undergeared, we run Undermanned!
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