ShadowLabyrinth
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Have any of you tried...
One of the things I simultaneously love and dread about my guild on Malfurion is that we have a lot of slightly demented, creative, think for yourself types. Case in point is Vish, who often main tanks for runs when I'm healing on my shammy. The other day, in Shadow Labyrinth, before we got to Blackheart the Inciter the following paraphrased conversation took place."Hey, if we don't clear this room, do these guys come when you engage Blackheart?""Yes they do.""You've seen them come?""No, but WoWWiki says...""So you don't really know that they'll all come."He had me there. I'd never actually seen it. Ten seconds later, however, I did see it when he told the party to wait in Ambassador Hellmaw's room while he ran up and engaged the Inciter. Turns out that puts the whole party in combat even if they are hiding very far away, so I made use of my handy Astral Recall spell while everyone else died a gruesome but informative death. This made me wonder: have you ever disregarded the various guides, sources and general body of common knowledge about an instance and gone in cold? Have you ever tried something just to see what happens for yourself? I don't think we should run around seeing what that level with the skull on it does all the time, but as long as everyone in the party is okay with it, sometimes it's fun to experiment in game. It's like Mister Wizard, only he usually didn't end up having to run back to his body afterwards. Usually.
A few tips for starting Heroics
Most players by now that started rolling to 70 when the expansion hit are probably either just starting or in the middle of running their first few Heroic dungeons. I fall into that group-- my guild has had a few folks running Heroics for a while, but the majority of us are just now starting to pick up the Revered rep needed in the different factions to make running Heroics a regular possibility. So here's a few tips I've picked up just in the past few weeks or so about how to get started running the most challenging 5mans in the game. Please feel free to add your own below.-Easiest Heroic: in general, you're going to want to start in the Slave Pens. I've heard good things about Underbog and Old Hillsbrad (Ramparts is comparably easy as well, especially if you've got your FR gear on), but really I've found that Slave Pens is a good indicator of whether your group is ready for Heroics or not, and it seems like Cenarion rep is pretty easy to come by, so you've got lots of keyed folks to choose from.-Best place to get badges: Heroic Mechanar. Even the Gatekeeper minibosses, who don't give good loot in the normal instance, will drop Badges for you in Heroic, which means that if you skate through this place in under an hour, you're earning five badges in that time.-In Heroics, it's not the bosses you have to worry about, it's the trash. Trash hits hard (really hard), so there's no room for error (read: letting the mobs go after clothies). If you don't have the standard CC you need (and you should-- heroic groups are best when every class type is well-represented), then fear is your friend, because in most heroics two hits are enough to cause a wipe.
Instance Spreadsheet offers overview of swirly portals in Outland
Ryianne of Stormrage has assembled this freakin' terrific spreadsheet of all the Outlands instances, a must-have close at hand for anyone like me who considers running instances the most fun part of the game. Want to know where the Shadow Labyrinth is, or what level Blood Furnace is, or what rep is given in the Underbog (both regular and Heroic runs)? It's all here.Ryianne hasn't added one thing a lot of players might want-- exactly how to get attuned to the instances that need attuning. That info has been floating around, though, and it's definitely out there if you need it (my guild is holding a Karazhan attunement drive lately, trying to push our latent 70s to get the key so we can start downing stuff in there). Ryianne also says she's still working on it, so if you have more to add (like the fact that it's Thrallmar rep for Horde in the first three instances), let her know.But it is cool to see, in a "big picture" sense, all the different options available when someone says "Let's run something." With the expansion, Blizzard has really paid a lot of great service to the 5man instances (not just in size and quantity, but in variety and skill), and nowhere is that more apparent than in a large overview like this.
