Every now and then I reminisce about Scholomance. I remember how it was a tricky place with some pulls that you could not afford to screw up. I remember the first pull down the stairs to the left and how that could wipe groups. We had to sheep this and sap that and seduce that and WATCH THE PAT! Wipe. Scholo was hard!
Then I run into someone who says it wasn't. They say it was easy. I get confused. Do I have reverse rose colored glasses, somehow remembering fondly how things were harder than they were? Is this just my latest and strangest strain of nostalgia?
Sometimes I run into contradictions in my memory. For example: hunters. Idiots, right? HUNTARDS! Let's look at Upper Blackrock Spire. The second boss (or third if you do the optional event) requires you to drop down a ledge. Pets follow, around a ramp that aggros a lot of mobs. An absent-minded warlock or hunter can easily wipe a group by leaving their pet out when they jump. They'd be told to dismiss their pet and often fail. The smart ones would use eyes of the beast and the stay command to move the pet off the jump and leave it there.
Somehow I don't remember too many problems with the last boss. The standard strat was to drag the boss away, a hunter kiting it all the way to the beast's room and keep it there as long as possible. Hunters seemed to have never done it before (they'd say they hadn't), but after only one or two attempts we'd have the boss down. I don't think it was an especially hard task and buying only a minute was about what we needed. But I can't imagine a boss now that we rely so heavily on a DPS class to survive. Am I just not remembering tons and tons of wipes? I'd expect I would, but I don't.
Is this all just another "back in my day" rant about how the community was so much better and we were awesome and you're all noobs these days?
P.S. Why do I not yet have a tag established for nostalgia? I'd expect that to be on half my posts!
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6 comments:
That Scholo stair pull WAS a test of a group's focus. We would regularly pull adds and it became a test of which player knew how to deal with the (almost not) unexpected.
As for UBRS... I don't remember pets having an issue with the ledge before Rend, but that makes no sense. Of course, I was running as a Warlock and all but required to have my Imp out. Since Imps can't pull adds while Phase Shifted I guess I never had to worry about it.
Drakk, though, is a funny thing. When I first started doing UBRS runs we didn't use the kite strat. We used a tank on Drakk, a tank on add #1, and a Warlock (me) to fear add #2. Once #1 died, everyone switched to #2. Easy sauce.
I remember the first time someone insisted we have a hunter kite Drakk and being somewhat confused. I have no idea when the kite strat became the "standard", but it certainly wasn't how we started. :)
I don't remember scholo ever being that hard. But then, I usually ran with a five man group that could read each others minds.
UBRS, on the other hand, was the bane of my existence. I think the problem on my server was that all the warriors rolled the class after watching Conan the Barbarian, they were always specced fury and wore rogue gear. Despite being a paladin, I kept a Drac's Deflector with me at all times because I knew good and well I'd have to off tank in there.
It also caused one of the most awesome moments ever of my lvl 60 career, when the hunter we brought wound up being a chinese farmer. So we had a frost mage buddy of mine kite Drak. It's a feat I only saw pulled off once, but he'll always reign in my mind as the most amazing mage ever.
Scholo was hard especially PRE-nerf. I think most people forget that there were two versions of Scholo (and other dungeons such as LBRS) back in vanilla WoW. The original launch versions were horrendous nightmares full of roaming pats and infinite trash packs. Then blizz went around and nerfed the amount of mobs in the dungeons which significantly lowered the challenge.
Ya I'll echo Jason's comment. Pre-nerf Baron runs and Scholo were incredibly difficult, there were so many mobs and they were tightly packed together. It took so long to kill all the trash that wiping meant you almost always had to deal with respawns.
The only time people really bothered doing them with only 5 ppl is if they really wanted the quest rewards (the staff from the baron's head was a godly thing). Eventually 8 man runs were the norm (1 of each class for when set peices drop).
It was only after they nerfed them and placed the 5 man maximum on the instances that they became easy.
When the first of us hit 80 Baroness in Strath was one of the hardest encounters in the game. She could chain possess ppl never giving you a chance to dps her, and you actually killed the possessed ppl quickly dwindling your group. She destroyed 15man groups quite easily.
I think your rose colored glasses are working fine. Rememeber that era lasted 2 years. 5 manning with MC/ZG geared people was not the same as 20 mannning when dire maul did not yet exist.
I think my very first UBRS run we tried to sleep a dragom with a druid but he complained that they had a innate resist to nature. I know on that or a later run, I "tanked" one on my shaman. But the hunter strat came later. I did later to do it on my hunter alt and it was very easy, I nubbed it up once because I thought i had lost aggro, but got told you wont lose aggro just keep running and it worked every time after.
@Dorgol: Now that you mention it, I have some memory of fearing an add; though I believe it was more as a way to buy a few seconds here and there than a long-term CC.
@Jarrod: Heh, my shaman also carried a shield at all times. Though I might have not been off-tanking as much as "pulling aggro like a noob."
@Jason: I remember freaking out: "This place is crazy and now you're only letting us bring 5 people!?"
@Anonymous: I was always happy when I'd wipe out my party as a pre-nerf shaman.
@Ngita: I'd forgotten about that. Even if they were in MC gear, now we're in the equivalent on BWL+.
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