Patient Priest: Sinking...

The Patient Priest has been playing in Sunken Temple, which proved a frustrating experience. I think I'd just like to move on and put it behind me - especially the incident where I unwittingly persuaded my party to commit suicide..... I still wince when I think about that one.

My priest is now approaching level 50 and Outlands is on the horizon. However, as eager as I am to progress to BC content, with it's better gear and xp, I'm still interested in running as many of Azeroth's dungeons as I can. I don't have much experience of the level 50-60 dungeons as I started playing WoW during BC, so with my first chars I just pushed on to join my guildies in Outlands.

Having now tried to run them on my priest I can say that it was unfortunately the worst part of the dungeon levelling so far, and would even recommend that players do plenty of quests in the level 50's and get to the Outlands dungeons as these are more suitable for the levelling player. I do like the high level Azeroth dungeons - I think they're interesting and fun, and certainly have an "epic" feel to them - but they are long, very long, difficult and complicated, and if you're just there for the xp then you might not have the patience for them.

I remember when I did Sunken Temple with my first ever character (a warlock), and it seemed like a really tough, high level instance. I was nervous going in there. However, on my priest at level 47, it wasn't very tough to heal. The mobs went down pretty easily, but the dungeon is still long and labyrithine, and it requires a dedicated group to complete it. The worst thing about this instance is the run back from the graveyard. It's long and underwater and most people don't know the way. In the five runs that I did, not a single person made it back from the graveyard - they either waited for a rez or quit. Even if you do make it inside, it's a maze in there. On one attempt, the group was in progress when I arrived. I was running up and down staircases trying to find them, but there seemed to be mobs in every direction. In this situation, the only thing you can do is get the others to teleport out and re-enter, then start from the beginning. If the group splits up, you will quickly lose each other, as it's hard to tell from the mini-map just which level you're on. Thankfully Blizzard now improved things by making new group members zone in where the party leader is standing - great idea.

Here's how I recommend you approach Sunken Temple:
The basic route is to run up the staircase ahead and to the left, then complete a circuit of the mini-bosses around the top tier. Jump down into the main room, kill everything in there (so it doesn't aggro when you engage the boss) then kill the Troll Prophet, then the Dragon Eranikus - and you're done and you'll get your bag! There's another few bosses to kill, but these need to be summoned, and it's complicated so no-one bothered.

Some things to note - the dragonkin cast "sleep" which can be dispelled, and it's dangerous when it gets cast on the healer. The Prophet boss uses a mind control, which can't be dispelled, so be ready to use crowd control.

The first group I had ran around aimlessly for a while, killed the odd patrol as we went round and round in circles. The tank was inexperienced and didn't know what he was doing (no Righteous Fury again, despite me asking him several times to use it) and he eventually quit without saying anything. The group then fell apart.

The second group had more success - there was only the last boss left and we succeeded in finding him and killing him. I then told the group that there was another boss downstairs, and as the group was in a killing mood we went to the hole in the central room, and one by one they jumped down, with me assuring them this was the way... obviously I was talking out of my backside as they each fell to their deaths. I was genuinely mortified, and offered to levitate down there and rez them - this would mean a trip to the AH to get reagents though (I now have the glyph) but they told me not to worry about it and excused themselves and left.... I can't believe how nice they were but I guess they saw it wasn't deliberate. I've now done some reading and found that the correct way to get to this boss is to take the staircase immediately on your right at the entrance, which leads to the stone statues that you use to summon the extra boss.

I then had two more successful runs, the only hiccups being a warlock that frequently attemped suicide via Lifetap and a wipe on the troll boss due to not clearing enough and aggro'ing lots of mobs, which then came rushing at us. The tank couldn't pick them up as he was mc'd. Thankfully our 2 mages survived and expertly kited everything to death. The paladin tank rezzed me and the other dps so we didn't have to corpse run.

My final run failed, as half of them were already dead when I arrived. They asked me to run to them and rez them, but I couldn't get past the respawns at the start. People started quitting and I eventually gave up.

I think Sunken Temple is a really great dungeon, but it shows the change in philosphy that Blizzard has had. It's just not made to be completed by a group of people who are short on time and patience. If you have a strong group who've been here before, it'll get you a lot of xp and it's fun. If you arrive in the dungeon and no-one knows the way, prepare yourself for a long journey. Now some people might like this - it's fun to explore and it's a challenge to solve the mysteries of the Temple, but when most eyes are on getting to level 80 asap, I think there's few people who will stop to spend much time here.