I’ve found on my hard-drive stories about my father’s adventures in WoW. Most of them in Russian (to check them – click on the RU flag in menu), but also there is this one in English:
This story happened 2008, 6-th of February (dates are calculated according to human’s calendar)
Trorn was 12-th level (!), the group consisted of 4 (!) members and team mates were mostly very new to instances and Dead Mines particularly… Therefore you wouldn’t be surprised probably when will know more details.
This is how Trorn told this story himselves: “The group consisted of
… the following characters:
- A hunter 17, group lead. Knew very little about what instances are and what is Dead Mines for. Well, in any case it is better to be a noob in Dead Mines at 17-th level then at 50-th lvl in Zulfarrak – I used to see such guys. So it is Ok: everybody are starting instances and if this is Deadmines the you are Ok.
- Paladin 18 lvl. I particularly asked him to be off-healer. He showed nothing special and didn’t heal anybody as well.
- A shaman 16 lvl. This character knew the Dead Mines and other instance-related things. Healed himself and even me couple of times (what whould you expect from the 12-th level priest in Dead Mines?).
- A rogue 17. Didn’t visit Dead Mines with us since went AFK just after he joined the group.
-
Priest 12-th level – Trorn- it’s me. Just got this level couple of minutes ago at that moment.
Before Paladin 18 lvl had joined the group I said that that we need a tank.
…and had got a very natural answer: Pow – the rogue – will be a tank. Pow has a good DPS and therefore he’ll be a tank.
Well, I was a member of this group and therefore I wanted to perform this run as successful as it can be.
After all Dead Mines is the place where you are learning instance’s ABC, why don’t we start now?
And I spent couple of minutes explaining what the tank is.
Shammy /w me that this makes no sense and people are learning only from their own experience.
Anyway I don’t think I wasted time on these explanations.
As to Dead Mines themselves, we were so-so.
Two were new to instances and a priest of 12-th level…
You got the point.
We were wiped in the room where the second mini-boss Sneed lives (the one who drops Taskmaster Axe) The reason of the wipe was very natural: we were aggro-ed the mini-boss while running across the corners of the room fighting trash mobs.
My personal death looked very simple: I’ve got an aggro after one of Lesser Heal. At that moment both Fade and Power Word: Shield were both in cooldown. According to the classical recommendations I run toward the tank (at that moment I decided that the pet is the most tankable character in the group) but in one hit I was stunned and then in two or three hits I was died.
Anyway, we definitely were unable to pass downstairs after (in the the smelting room).
Personally I had got an amazing impression from this run.
-
At first the mana pool at this level is definitely not enough to heal fine in Dead Mines, therefore after each fight I had to sit and drink (fortunately I had got enough Ice Cold Milk)….
-
Another point was that at 12-th level you have only two healing spells: Improved Renew (of level 2) andLesser Heal. That Lesser Heal is slightly stronger then Improved Renew … but much longer (2 seconds caset time) at the same time.
-
In addition that “3 second rule” also played against my attempts to keep the team and myself alive.
-
Yet one point was that the hunter prefered to melee instead of shoting. I tried to explain him that this makes my job almost impossible: I had to heal him, shaman and a pet at the same time. The pet did the tanking job best of all in that group, BTW. If he’ll be shooting I will have one patient less and our chances will be better. He rejected all these reasons because he had “an uber green 2-hand weapon and will do more dps in melee”. This is very common mistake from hunters at low level as I can see.
-
Power Word: Shield happened to be extremely useful at that time. I used it very often to save a time for so long casting “lesser heal”. Fortunately we had no tank-warrior. Spam warrior with “Power Word: Shield” is extremely bad style of healing, I learned this long time ago.
-
And the last but not least. Being of level 12 for Dead Mines mobs I had a really huge aggro distance. Couple of times mobs passed all the group to reach me (all the time I stayed back). Fortunately at level 12 priests already have Fade. Otherwise I would hardly reach even the very first miniboss.
Long ago and with another character (at that time protected warrior 20 lvl) I completed Dead Mines with a team of four mates including priest of 14 level.
As I remember, that group contained of 4 mates with the following characteristics:
- Protected warrior level 20
- my friend (shaman 25),
- Another shaman of level 20
- A priest of 14 (!) level
We’ve managed to complete all the instance without any death.
Now, after this experience with Trorn I understand that that run was outstanding one.
That priest of level 14 was really very good but it worth to mention that the whole team that time was very experienced.