Posts with tag solo

As an obsessive a big fan of battle pets, I was looking forward to everything patch 5.3 had to offer. Tons of battle pet changes, and the slew of new pets for the Raiding With Leashes II: Attunement Edition all had me especially excited. I zipped through The Eye and Serpentshrine Cavern hunting for the new pets, and emerged victorious with one. Huzzah! But on my way to Karazhan, I realized I'd need to solo the Chess Event to get to Prince Malchezaar, who also drops a pet.

I wiped a few times, but things turned around once I read through an excellent Chess Event soloing guide from WoW blogger Tikari of Tikari's Tricks of the Trade.

Keep in mind that even with a great plan, the Chess Event is still plagued with RNG issues. But knowing what to expect will hopefully keep your rage at bay.

Tikari lays out a simple set of moves -- with diagrams -- and priorities to give your king the best chance of surviving, which is the main goal. The event was nerfed to increase the delay between enemy moves, but keep a few tips in mind.

• Move your king, and queen if you can, out of the fire immediately. Fire isn't a buff!
• Attack the enemy king with your queen, using the Rain of Fire/Poison Cloud ability. Be sure to target the enemy king with the queen's main attack.
• The Clerics seem to heal the enemy king more than I remember, but I kept them distracted with other pieces.
• Medivh doesn't cheat as quickly as he did before, so you'll have time for about four moves before he does so the first time around. Be sure to at least give your king, ideally your queen as well, space to move. I was able to win in the end by moving backward out of fire, drawing the enemy king into it.

Good luck and be sure to check out Tikari's guide for all the details!

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I've already done some Raiding with Leashes vanilla raid posts. The next logical step would be Burning Crusade soloing, but I've tried and failed to make a glorified loot list more interesting to read, since BC content tends to be more "walk in and win" nowadays than an actual soloing contest.

So, while I wrangle out an adventure in tiers four to six, I will talk about killing dragons solo as a warlock in order to grab dragon mounts.

I'm not talking about dragons that require friends by your side to complete: e.g., Deathwing's two dragon mounts, Ultraxion's mount, completing a dragonstick, or Al'Akir's dragon drop. Al'Akir has actually been soloed before by a warlock, but you'll need friends in order to clear his genie council first. I'm talking dragons you can go beat up by yourself.

A great video is making the rounds right now of an exceptional player using some unintended consequences to solo multiple bosses in Mogu'shan Vaults -- and as a protection-specced paladin no less! He apparently downed Stone Guard, Feng, and Elegon before Blizzard caught wind of the escapade. You can see a video of the Elegon kill above.

How he pulled this off was by taking advantage of a series of design choices that Blizzard made, combining them all into a hilarious example of the law of unintended consequences in action.

To reach a decent item level, the paladin equipped various bind on equip rares that drop in Mists zones which all had a required character level of only 80. And because he was only level 80, he was avoiding the combat ratings drop-offs for levels 81 and 86 that a normal character wearing those pieces would be subjected too. This would allow him to get an insane amount of secondary stats like haste (I've seen that he had 95%!) and mastery (88%, apparently).

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill harvests all the songbells ever in the search for more Imperial Silk, but slaughtering masses of Horde NPCs for reputation also works.

Patch 5.1 introduced pets to the vanilla-era raids. Patch 4.3 introduced transmogrification, which brought old raids back. Before that, some players would solo or duo old raids just for the challenge giggles. Every new expansion has raised the level cap and opened another expansion to soloing.

Whether you're soloing for a look, for improved familiarity with your spell toolbox, or for bragging rights, warlock is definitely a great class to jump into soloing old raids. At level 90, even before you're decked out in tier 14, most of the Wrath of the Lich King raids are fairly easy. But let's start with the basics -- speccing and playstyle.

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At this point in WoW's evolution, we've become somewhat accustomed to reports of gutsy solo boss kills. However tricky to pull off, most of those accomplishments involve content from a previous expansion and rely on the particular skill sets of a determined death knight or paladin. But soloing current raid content, let alone current heroic raid content? Not so much.

So when shadow priest Shantál of Al'akir (EU) recently pulled off an eye-popping kill of heroic Alysrazor, the WoW community sat up and took notice. With a painstakingly developed strategy that carried him outside the flame wall and exposed him to increased damage, Shantál picked his way around each road block in the encounter to achieve a uniquely remarkable victory.

Proving once again that anything is possible with creative use of game mechanics,Shantál on Al'akir (EU) has successfully soloed the heroic version of the Alysrazor encounter. I've done some soloing myself in the past, and I can say that this is one of the most impressive individual feats I've seen, especially from a non-tank class. To my knowledge, this is the first heroic tier 12 encounter to be soloed, period.

According to Shantál, many hours were spent "figuring out the tactics, pushing DPS to the limit, and not going crazy after dozens of near kills." For a full strategy explanation, check out the thread on MMO-Champion.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's comes from out of the darkness to bask in your loving adoration. Fox is weak versus Bubble Lead.

To be fair, it's incredibly easy to get bored with current content. Sure, things like the Molten Front and Firelands are fun and exciting for a while, but several months later when you find yourself running the same content over and over ... well.

I'm always looking for new and different things to do with my shadow priest. Last year, when I started getting bored with Icecrown Citadel, I started running heroic Magisters' Terrace solo, farming it for all sorts of goodies inside that I never wound up getting when the content was relevant. It turns out that soloing that stuff was a lot of fun, and judging by the emails I got after, a lot of you agreed with me.

Some of you have been pressuring me to update that article for Cataclysm. Obviously, a lot has changed. Mainly, we've gotten stronger, but we've also got a few new tools at our disposal. Soloing Magisters' Terrace is old news. This time around, we're going to solo some more intimidating content: Wrath heroics and BC raids.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

There is nothing better than sharing a common interest with friends, but what happens when you find yourself alone in Azeroth for long period of time? You and your friends used to spend hours playing together, raiding or simply sharing idle banter in private messages or even the dreaded trade chat. But lately, it seems that you are the only person playing. Your friends, for a multitude of reasons, simply can't find the time to play anymore. Now you're alone in a big world with no one to talk to and nothing to take the edge off the quest grinding. So what do you do?

Guilds: a toon's best friend Whether it's on a RP, PvP, normal or mixed server, a guild can keep you entertained and chatting throughout that hard grind to 80. When you find yourself stranded in an area where there isn't another living soul in sight, it's always good to know that one /g away is a group of people who will, more often than not, love to hear how things are going, both in game and out. It's a warming feeling to see that the minute you log on, another person is there to greet you with a friendly "Hey, _____."

General and trade chat If a guild is not your thing, it's always nice to take a few minutes between quests to sit in a capital city and share in some banter with your fellow players. General chat is full of other players discussing either the game itself, movies, music or a multitude of other topics. Even trade chat can be fun if you keep up with the latest internet memes, though after a period of time, it came become annoying.

End -of-expansion ennui. It's inevitable.

• You're bored as hell with all the Northrend stuff you've been running every day for the last one-and-a-half years.
• It's a new challenge that requires you to approach World of Warcraft in an entirely different way than you're used to.
• You probably don't have the all the 5-man BC achievements if you started your character after fall of 2008.
• You can farm a lot of valuable enchanting materials, find some rare trade skills, items and pets, and walk away with a solid chunk of gold, besides.
• Best of all, doing stuff alone means that you can tell the GearScore elitists where to shove it.

Interested? Rock. Follow me after the break, and let's figure a way to get this done.

15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, from the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

DKs are OP -- there, we said it. Now then, we can move on with our discussion of ... well, of an OP death knight. This particular DK, however, brings more to the plate than the sheer muscle of his class. Raegwyn of EU Zuluhed-H brings a wealth of raiding experience, class skill and game savvy to bear in his continuing campaign to conquer as many bosses and instances of WoW as possible, completely solo.

We get a lot of "check me out soloing X" videos submitted here at WoW.com, but Raegwyn caught our eye with his video of a solo kill of Al'ar from Burning Crusade's 25-man Tempest Keep instance The Eye. He's made masterful headway in heroic Pit of Saron and most recently polished off an instance that still catches level-appropriate groups off guard: heroic Ahn'Kahet. We talked to this Austrian death machine about why gear is nice but timing is everything when it comes to taking down bosses on your own.

I have to confess something. I'm a sucker for hearing stories about someone playing their Hunter in offbeat ways. What do I mean? Well, take for example that fabled Hunter Tank Gweryc.

Last week I got a great tip from Darth Solo over at WoW Alone about another offbeat Hunter idea. Seems Darth is a fan of solo play. At first I thought as you that this probably isn't completely original. We Hunters tend to just run with our pets anyways. But something kept nagging me to go check out WoW Alone and see just what Darth was doing.

Turns out he's put a lot of thought into how to get the most out of your World of Warcraft experience without having to worry about the drama associated with PUGs or even some guilds.

Of course I would be the first to admit that this kind of play style isn't for me. But if you want to find ways of enjoying your Hunter, getting loot all the while avoiding the drama associated with PUGs. Go check out his Hunter Solo Guides for gear, glyphs, and suggested specs for the Solo Hunter.