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Patch 3.3 PTR: Pit of Saron healing impressions

Our group was undermanned when we walked into Arthas' slave pits. There were four of us: A warrior, a priest , a paladin, and a shaman. The Pit of Saron is where he keeps the Alliance and Horde prisoners for general slave labor. For a Saronite pit, there doesn't seem to be a ton of actual Saronite around. I suppose the prisoners must have mined them all out. Anyway, if you don't want to spoil yourself you should pass on this post. Although if you've come this far, it's too late.

We started out on a normal setting first just to assess the general difficulty of the place. Again, there were only three of us. But to help even the odds, we had fully geared tier 9.5 characters.

By the way, remember those annoying axe spinning things back in Black Temple? Well they're back! Thankfully these swords aren't as brutal as the weapons that two shot clothies back inside Illidan's sanctum.

Forgemaster Garfrost: Stacking frost debuff which increases the amount of damage your party takes from frost damage. He also likes to toss huge chunks of Saronite at people. The amount of frost damage that ticks is no serious threat to raid geared players. It might be a bit of a problem for healers in blues. Don't even bother dispelling that stuff either as it stacks up incredibly fast. If my stacks were getting too high, I'd hide behind the large Saronite chunks and get out of line of sight of the boss. Poor Garfrost tires to sharpen his weapon a few times to no avail.

Krick and Ick: It's mini-Grobbulus! I'm not sure if he's finished or not. Simply avoid the puddles of poison he drops and you're home free. Of course, certain players liked to stand in them for whatever reason. They're healable with no difficulties either.

The final stretch involved our crew charging through a tunnel that dropped shards of ice from the ceiling. Seems like someone drew a page from Hodir's playbook to design these tunnels. Rossi was flying through the tunnel and I had a hard time keeping up. His health was slowly dropping and he showed no signs of stopping. I decided to draw from my old days of Unreal Tournament fragging and stood still on a frost rune while waiting for a shard to drop on me. A quick shield and a prayer went up before the rune disappeared and a chunk of ice fell which shot me forward far enough to catch up to Rossi. It wasn't exactly a rocket jump, but it worked all the same! I managed to save Rossi from imminent death.

Well, okay maybe it wasn't so imminent. Still, it's not a bad way to travel!


Scourgelord Tyrannus: It's like Ramparts all over again! Tyrannus jumps off his mount and started engaging us while his mount flew around in the air and started shooting balls of frost at the party from up high. Make sure you stand apart from other players to avoid it.

After that, we ran out and toggled it on heroic just to see how it was. We only had time to do the first boss. It did not feel all that stressing on heroic. The encounter felt slightly longer but it was more than bearable. I'm certainly going to try all of these bosses again on heroic at some point. All in all, the heroic version of the first boss does not feel properly tuned at this point. It'll be a fun instance to plow through when it's all ready.

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