Patient Priest: Zombie Trolls

In the mid-level 40's I've been getting either Maraudon:Inner or Zul'Farrak as a random dungeon. I think ZF is slightly lower level, but it has the potential to be more difficult because of the large numbers of mobs and more complex boss encounters.

Zul'Farrak is a temple complex located in the Tanaris desert. It's full of trolls, witch doctors and zombies, and also lots of scarabs. The trolls are mainly in groups of 3 or 4, with some casters which need to be pulled back. This is because the trolls run when they get low on health and have a chance to pull other groups or wandering patrols. The trolls drop healing totems, which I could easily take out with a single hit from my wand, and they also cast hex, even on the tank, which should be dispelled fast.

The basilisk boss, hidden in a cave in the hills, can be a little difficult, as he spawns mobs behind you, does stuns and drops a rooting totem. My favourite encounter though is the pyramid escape, where you kill the executioner, loot his key then free the prisioners in cages awaiting sacrifice. You then need to survive wave after wave of zombie trolls, keeping the prisioners alive, and finally make it to the bottom of the pyramid and face a priest boss. You can then talk to the prisoners, who instead of thanking you will turn on you and you need to fight them. The hardest part of this whole encounter is for the tank to pick up all the mobs. Its helps to have a paladin of course. However, with higher level groups I found that we could just aoe everything down faster than it could kill us. Also, holy nova is really good here, allowing me to add a little damage and keep the whole party topped up without worrying about pulling aggro. The other bosses in this instance are pretty much tank and spank.

I've had some good fun in this place - it gives lots of exp and you can skip some bosses if you want a fast run. I've also met some very good groups...

The first group I had was a bit scary, as I was low level and worried about the large numbers of mobs we'd be pulling. I had to remind the paladin tank to use his tanking buff again... I've got so used to checking for this that I've even accidentally told a warrior to turn righteous fury on and got laughed at. Luckily we had a mage in this group who was using some old school cc and sheeping the casters, making the groups much easier to handle. The pyramid encounter went well but I had to use fade a lot as the tank was having trouble getting aggro on all of them. In later levels, I found it's easy to just rush to the bottom and pull the mobs all at once so the tank can pull while they're still grouped up. This only works if you've got some high aoe dps though.

We unfortunately had another leecher in one group - entered the instance and immediately said "brb soz" and wasn't back 15 minutes later so I vote kicked him. In another group, there was someone who was doing the scarab quest and wanted to kill absolutely everything in the instance. It's all extra exp, so I don't really mind, but unfortunately we had a rather slow tank who seemed to take ages in-between pulls deciding what he was doing. The lack of pace was quite frustrating and a couple of times people suggested we could move a little faster, but everyone stayed polite. I had an unfortunate typo on the pyramid boss though. We killed the executioner and we were waiting for someone to start the event. Someone asked who looted the key (they need to open the cages and start things) and I saw it was the tank who had received it (let's call him Arnold). I meant to type "Arnold got it" but unfortunately it came out as "Arnold go tit" which I think raised a few eyebrows. I apologised and explained and we continuted moving.

We had one group with a tank who refused to tank, so the two hunters tanked it with their pets, which worked pretty well. In the next group we had a paladin tank who was in a mad rush and managed to pull half the instance and died. I made it to the exit though, then re-entered to rez everyone. He was sorry and friendly so we continued and it was actually a fast, smooth run after that. I noticed that there were some obviously experienced players who weren't using heirlooms, and I decided to ask why. It seems that people are rolling on new servers, or doing recruit a friend with a new account, so can't send heirlooms to their new characters.

There's some nice loot in this instance: I won a hat off the pyramid boss (finally a hat, yay), and I got a carrot trinket from one of the quests to help my mount speed a little.

In amongst all these Zul'Farrak groups I had a few more runs in Maruadon:Pristine Waters. This can be very fast because most people skip half the bosses. In that case it doesn't give good exp though, so I always ask people if they want to do the others, and show them where the bosses are. I finally persuaded a group to go and kill the goblin boss, who's hiding in a cave somewhere. You can get to him if you drop down after Princess, swim through the cave and just keep on following the tunnel. I also got to kill Celebras, who's in the middle of Maraudon and not included in any of the "random" sections, because one group entered and insisted on running backwards and killing everything. I tried to tell them they were going the wrong way, and we should do the "Pristine Waters" section instead of "Purple" but I couldn't get through to them. The just ignored me and kept pulling. Eventually I decided to leave, as it would take too long to do the whole of Maraudon, and the lower sections don't give me exp anymore anyway.

I've had some really good groups recently - people who were very skilled and very friendly. And most importantly, people who were very patient with the not so skilled. We had one warrior tank who was having many problems. He could only tank one mob at a time. We had a rather hungover shaman in the group, who tried giving the warrior advice, even pointing out that the warrior should use defensive stance (I guess he can tell what stance the warrior was in from the abilities he was using) but the warrior said nothing and continued. The shaman was very philosophical about the whole thing, even when the warrior needed on a dps ring off the last boss. He was obviously a veteran of some difficult groups. In another group, and epic dagger dropped - very rare, and everyone needed and there were no arguments. I eventually got very bored of the instance - I ran it 11 times in total, and completed it 9 times. In the final group we had a hunter who was leeching for the first 10 minutes then came back before we could kick him. When I asked where his pet was he said "in the stable". By this time though we'd almost finished so just killed the last boss and it was done.

I've downloaded a new addon, which is an extension of my recount damage meter. It records guessed absorbs as well as healing, and it suggests that currently 30% of my "heals" are shields absorbing damage. I wanted to figure this out because I was reading a forum disucssion about disc priests being discriminated against because people can't actually see the healing they're doing, and think they're slacking. I haven't had anyone complain about my healing yet, and I've even had a few compliments, but there's always some people who rely on meters more than opening their eyes or simply just giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Well that's all for Zul'Farrak and Maraudon! The next instance on the list is Sunken Temple - another place full of trolls. What have people got against trolls??