Posts with tag solo

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.

Tribunalx sent us this great video about something that's fallen out of fashion lately: Hunter soloing. Back in the day, when Mend Pet was still affected by plus healing (back when there was plus healing), Hunters would routinely take down Azuregos by themselves, but they've since had to sit on the sidelines while other classes stepped into the solo arena. But now, with Mend Pet and Bestial Wrath glyphs, a Hunter stacking Stamina in PvP gear, the new version of Deterrence, and pets with their own Tenacity talents, Hunter soloing is possible yet again.

As Tribunalx says in the video, it's not really easy, and there's a lot you have to keep track of (and Hunters definitely aren't the only class that can do this -- there's probably a Paladin soloing UK and/or a Death Knight out there as well). But it is definitely possible, as you can see above. Maybe we're experiencing a renaissance of Hunter solo possibilities -- next up, The Nexus? Good luck with the Ormorok gauntlet.

The Argent Tournament has been overshadowed quite a bit by Ulduar in patch 3.1, it hasn't been talked about a whole lot since the first thrill of finding out it was actually there in Icecrown. Since that rush a whole lot of things have changed with the Tournament, but beyond the dedicated few, I have my doubts it was receiving as much testing as it needed. That's probably why Kisirani has put out a call for focused testing on the Argent Tournament, asking for as much feedback as you can supply.

Kisirani's thread on the official forums lays out a few things: First, a lot has changed since the early PTR. This means that if you only did the quests in the first week or two of the Tournament, you should try them again before submitting feedback. If you've never been to the Tournament before, Jean Pierre Poulain awaits you on Krasus' Landing in Dalaran. He'll send you out there for free. If you want to do it yourself, the Tournament is just north of Sindragosa's Fall.

We heard a ton of news about the incoming dual spec feature last week, and for the most part, players were pretty thrilled -- besides the fact that we're finally getting the option to have two specs at once, we're also getting the much-awaited ability to preview our specs before they're saved, and the official Itemrack functionality that we've heard about for so long. But there was one thing Ghostcrawler said last week that hasn't sat well with many players: that we'd need to be max level before training for the dual spec feature.

For many players, the main reason they wanted dual spec was to be able to switch between "leveling" and "grouping" specs, and obviously if you're already max level, you won't have much need for a leveling spec any more (more likely you'd be switching between "solo" and "raid" or "PvP" specs). Ghostcrawler's stated reason for requiring a max level was that they didn't want lower level players to be confused by having access to more than one talent spec too early, but as Zarhym says, Cvarto makes a good point: if a player uses only one spec for 80 levels and then gets the dual spec feature, he/she may not have enough experience with different specs to have any clue about how to choose another one.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

What? Me lace a post title with jealousy? I would never do that! Never ever! Okay, okay, maybe there's some jealousy there. Can you blame me? Screw purps, I want me some orange. Orange is where it's at, cat.

erogroth asked...

I have a question about legendary items. Do we know what Legendary items are planned for WotLK? Are there currently any in the game? If not what are planned for the future or can we speculate? It sounds like Ashbringer will not be a item that a player will be able to get. Is that true? Also, what about upgrade quest for old world legendary items. It seems like so much work went into getting them (Thunderfury anyone?) that it seems a shame that they are worthless.

Sure, getting together with 40 of your best friends and leading an epic raid on the alternate faction's capitol city can be fun, but I have to say that there's fun to be had doing things all by yourself, too. Some classes were soloing Onyxia at level 70 -- and it seems like just about everyone can solo her at or near level 80. (For those thinking of trying this yourself -- it's good fun and not a bad amount of gold for the effort.) Zul'Gurub and Ahn'Qiraj (the 20-man wing, at least) have both been cleared (mostly) by a lone player. Karazhan has been cleared with a group of 3 -- though in our post-Wrath world, I'd imagine that everything save Netherspite could be easily managed with less. (And at some point even Netherspite is bound to be overcome by brute force.)

To solo or not to solo, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Hunters (who sometimes seem to think they have a monopoly on soloing content) or to take arms against a sea of dragons (dragons, elementals, demons -- we're not picky), and by opposing, earn epic (albeit under-level) loot. So, tell us, what have you soloed lately?

First we had a Druid do it, then a Pally, and then after Wrath Hunters and Death Knights got into the mix, and now it seems anybody with a pulse and a level 80 can solo the old 40-man boss Onyxia. Here's video of an Elemental Shaman taking the dragon down (Skitlash of the guild Unrelenting on Aman'thul), and we've even heard of a Disc Priest doing the deed (I believe that way back, when the Druid first downed Ony solo, a Priest, we thought on the podcast, was the least likely class to do it).

But time has proven us wrong. Does any of this mean anything? Probably not -- while it's certainly an achievement for these guys, the old bosses will only get easier as time goes on (until, of course, Blizzard decides to break out some Heroic versions of these instances), and the once-feared Onyxia will only become more and more of a punching bag. Grats to everyone who's been able to solo the old lady of raiding, but at this point, if a Disc Priest can do it, anyone can.