Breakfast Topic: Soloing your way to a new ride
by Allison Robert 
Dec 27th 2008 at 8:00AM
As Elizabeth observed a few days ago, there are certain pleasures to being 80. Even if you haven't gotten a shiny drop from a raid or a heroic yet, or finished grinding your way to exalted with a Wrath faction, you have one thing that absolutely no one can take away from you: an ever-increasing chance to leave classic and Burning Crusade-level mobs swinging fruitlessly at the air, completely unable to hit you.Just writing that gives me a disturbingly evil smile, because one of the things I've enjoyed most since hitting 80 is soloing heroic Sethekk in pursuit of the Raven Lord mount. Hi there, Syth. Remember the days when you used to mop the floor with my furry ass? I do, and this dish of revenge is being served to you at the proper temperature, courtesy of the frigid Northrend climate. How does it feel to be killed just because you're on the way to something bigger?
I don't know that soloing heroics or raids is currently possible for most classes and specs, but I think the array of mounts to be gained from such ventures is a fairly big draw. A prot Warrior friend of mine has been able to continue her quest for the Zul'Gurub tiger mount without outside assistance, I've been after the giant chicken, and a Rogue buddy spend a portion of his week seeking like-minded players interested in farming Attumen's mount. As far as I know, there are four rare mounts (the tiger, the Swift Razzashi Raptor, the Fiery Warhorse's Reins, and the Deathcharger's Reins) that should be within players' capacity to solo or duo at this point, and you can add a fifth (Reins of the Raven Lord) if you're a Druid or can convince one to accompany you. The Ashes of Al'ar are still well outside the realm of soloing possibility -- and may be that way for a long time due to the mechanics of the Kael fight -- but then again, nobody knows just how overpowered Tier 9 is going to be yet.
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Instances, Expansions, Features, Humor, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Drew Dec 27th 2008 8:08AM
First?
NIce article- going to google solo techique right now. Think I will farm raptor too- reminds me of playing on Arena TR :P
Darxide Dec 27th 2008 10:05AM
nice idea, but its kinda down to gear and game mechanics. a few friends of mine and myself we trying to do the ogrilla attunment chain and found it nigh impossable to the part with the rings of fire.
finding 5 people was hard in its hay day, but now blades edge is more of a ghost town than darnassus.im just glad we were able to use hordies with us aswell, other wise the summoning would ahve been a nightmare.
on a lighter side note, it is more gear related though too, and after we see more content open up and better gear available, then naturely old content will be come laughable. im just worried that its more a case of time rather than soloablility. i mean, who wants to go through the 6 hours of kara and on your own too ?
Zarfay Dec 27th 2008 8:27AM
You're a furry?
Drakkenfyre Dec 27th 2008 9:40AM
He's a Druid.
aalk Dec 27th 2008 3:54PM
Same thing.
onetrueping Dec 27th 2008 5:00PM
Only if you are a close-minded 4chan refugee...
Zarfay Dec 27th 2008 8:18PM
@ Drakkenfyre
It was a joke
Only and idiot would think I was serious.
Chris Anthony Dec 27th 2008 11:26PM
Only an idiot would make the joke, so you're about even.
Zarfay Dec 28th 2008 1:40AM
ORLY? If it there are so many idiots in this discussion why are you adding to it?
onetrueping Dec 28th 2008 1:49AM
"Oh my, my blatant and slanderous attempt at making a joke at the expense of both an internet subculture and a WoW character class has backfired and earned me the ire of other posters! Perhaps by insulting the intelligence of both the bloggers and commenters who dared to respond negatively to my post will ingratiate them to me instead!"
Seriously, the "joke" as you put it was in bad taste, and well situated to, one way or the other, piss a lot of people off. If you didn't expect people to be irritated or worse at your so-called "joke," that makes you either a person of such simple thinking that they should be shielded from the outside world (perhaps in a padded cell), or someone with as little foresight as a drunk teenager who suddenly decides that stealing a car and driving it at high speeds down the wrong half of an interstate is a good idea.
Do everyone a favor and take your sense of humor out back and put it out of it's misery. It's engendering you nothing but pity, the way it limps around blindly and runs into the walls.
Zarfay Dec 28th 2008 1:55AM
"Perhaps by insulting the intelligence of both the bloggers and commenters who dared to respond negatively to my post will ingratiate them to me instead!"
Onetrueping thats exactly what you just did by insulting my intelligence and my humour, I was making a general statement whilst you make a personal attack upon me which is therefore malicious and not needed on a website like this so IMHO GTFO
onetrueping Dec 28th 2008 10:16AM
Yes, I deliberately set out to insult YOU. And ONLY you. As a direct reaction to your own BROAD insult to a LOT of people. I'm not the bigoted, hateful one, relatively speaking, I only don't like YOU rather than people I haven't met but only know as having played a particular class or belonging to a certain subculture.
Ask yourself... which is worse?
Colfer Dec 27th 2008 8:32AM
been farming baron for his mount. so far ive been able to kill him in a little more then 6 minutes, farming him for a hour or two each day. but the 6 minutes does not count the running back and resetting of the instance. planning on getting it as soon as possible.
Nathanyel Dec 27th 2008 8:37AM
How do you clear Anzu's room enough to pull him safely? Especially the large group in front of Ikiss (killing him first seems to be a good idea to have his room to kite/avoid fear-adds)
I admit I didn't try it with Primal Tenacity talented yet.
Debesun Dec 27th 2008 10:35AM
When you enter Anzu's room there is a coffin to your left. is that to LoS the groups. You'll find either groups with a Talon lord or a Kaliri. (spelling?)
Entangle the Talon Lord and pop Berserk and and barkskin and go nuts. kill the Prophets first as they fear and leave the Shaman to last.
If it's a kaliri group then entangle the Shaman and hibernate the bird. Never be afraid to use you CD's otherwise it will mean certain death.
I first did this as a cat spec in heroic and normal instance blues so it is certainly doable but you need to use everything to your advantage. If you stealthed you're way to Anzu without killing other bosses (you can run around the wall on the first boss to avoid him) the Heroic instance will reset if you die and can be very frustrating if you died on Anzu.
Do NOT be afraid to wait 3 minutes in between pulls for your CD such as berserk and regeneration. Also remember to use Natures Grasp if a entangled mob gets free and you need some breathing room.
And lets not speak of the trickery needed to Anzu.
Sorry if it looked hasty. Might be in the middle of a Heroic but i can't ignore a druid in need. :P
Debesun Dec 27th 2008 10:39AM
Oh! and with pulling them back to the coffin thingy you won't need to take on the group just before the last boss as they also don't aggro when you begin Anzu.
Mattimus Dec 27th 2008 8:41AM
I tried to solo the Tiger boss in ZG as a level 80 Prot Paladin...
Between the 5-second silences every 2 seconds, and the fact that you have to kill all three of those guys at the same time, I found it quite impossible. My only spell interrupt is on a 60 second CD (I did not spec to reduce it), and naturally when I'm silenced, the only thing I can do is Hammer of the Righteous (I have no idea why Shield of the Righteous isn't off the spell school if Hammer is).
I went at it for a good 20 or so minutes until I gave up. They couldn't kill me, but kept me silenced most of the time so I couldn't kill them. I've since kept myself exclusively to trying for the Raptor.
I can't imagine trying to solo Attumen though, and I say that because I haven't tried. Entry-level raid though he may be, he's still a raid boss, and there's still a good bit of trash to clear to get to him.
Aubrecia Dec 27th 2008 6:45PM
Tiger boss isn't soloable at all for me -- but of course, I'm a balance druid, so I'm only a few levels above clothies in how well I take damage. A prot paladin friend and I have been two-manning the hydra boss for the Polymorph: Turtle book, but we haven't yet been able to two-man the tiger boss without some form of real healer. My offheals just aren't good enough, and I can't do enough healing and dps at the same time to get all of them down.
The silences are also things devised by a vengeful man with a longing to see casters forced out of their element. Every two seconds, either I'm getting silenced or the pally is; it makes joint offheals and dps very difficult as a caster spec.
I believe we're going to try five-manning Kara at some point soon in the future. We have been two- or three-manning Anzu, though, for those exact same reins; they can't go without me, since I'm the druid in the crew :)
vexis58 Dec 27th 2008 9:26PM
"We haven't yet been able to two-man the tiger boss without some form of real healer. My offheals just aren't good enough, and I can't do enough healing and dps at the same time to get all of them down."
My prot paladin friend and my boomkin didn't find it very difficult. The only hard part is holding off and NOT killing them. Sometimes one will accidentally die before the other two are at low enough health, and that just makes it all take longer.
I just keep spamming Starfire on whichever one of the three has more health, and eventually they're all below 10% and I can just hurricane the rest of the way down. The second phase is easy street.
We did this the first time when we had only been 80 for a day or two, so we weren't even very well geared. My prot pally friend wasn't taking much damage, so offhealing was not much of a challenge. You might have to go into bear form if your tank gets stunned and they come after you -- and you might need to innervate yourself at some point during the fight, spamming starfire for so long takes a lot of mana.
Aubrecia Dec 28th 2008 12:35AM
Yeah, it's mostly the stuns and the silences every 2 seconds that are killing us. What's the worst is when the pally gets stunned immediately followed by blind, because then I'm pretty much doomed.
I may have been going at it wrong, though -- I was just hurricaning at the start and starfire-ing from then on. Doing it the other way might be a good plan. It also helps that our gear now (or, at least, my gear) is much better than the last time we tried it.