Friday, March 28, 2008

Heroic Auchenai Crypts

Auchindon
Heroic Auchenai Crypts
requires lower city rep honored - Auchenai Key

I have to say, this instance has been stealth nerfed for stealth runs quite a few times, I don’t meticulously read the patch notes each time but I don’t remember reading about these changes anywhere, the changes are obvious to people that have been stealthing this instance for the past year.

Stealth up to the bridge before the first boss, the stealth up to this point is quite easy, and there will be a few chests and mines on the way, some of the mining nodes are minable without aggroing any mobs.

Before you go onto the bridge, you can go off to the side and up on the ledge, you can safely unstealth here to gear up, buff, eat consumables etc.

The bridge itself has 1 patrol that paces up and down it, it is best not to follow the patrol, but to go past them when they are walking towards you, this is because the bridge has invisible ghosts “Raging Souls” that pop you out of stealth, they look like little balls of energy, if one ever pops you out of stealth run from it, they explode with an aoe that does a huge knock back that will likely knock you off the bridge.

Since you walked past the pat, you should have enough room to get some distance from the Raging Souls without aggroing any mobs on the bridge. Once the Raging Soul explodes you will be out of combat and can easily re-stealth.

If you can’t get distance from the raging soul, try to put your back to the wall, facing another wall, so that if you get blown forward or back you won’t get blown off the bridge, I’ve been blown off the bridge sideways before, so it’s safest to get distance if possible.
The best way to stealth across the bridge is to stealth up the side, you can walk on the rail on some parts, but be careful, because you can fall over the side.

Once you are almost over the bridge, you will come to 2 mobs that are stationary at the end, wait near them (preferably on the rail), for the boss to pat back, the boss will generally path between 2 positions, a front and back position.

Shirrak the Dead Watcher has an aura that affects players, it is best to wait till he paths to the back position, the boss’s debuff increases casting time by 2,3,4 times. It also causes stealthers to pop out of stealth, although strangely enough it doesn’t unstealth shadowmeld.

I know previously some groups would stealth to the bosses side of the bridge to destealth and buff up, i know this was a safe place, but i have seen certain chars agro the boss by just being there, i think there might be some kind of glitch with this, so better to be safe and buff gear on the other side.

This boss is made for druid healers, honestly I don’t know how other casters do it, as druids can spam instant heals, while priests, shammies and pallies bread and butter heals are 1.5s casts which end up taking 6s.

The main concern on this fight is the aoe fire dmg, during the fight you will see the boss target someone, then throw down a flare where that target is standing, all players must get away from this flare as it blows up after a few seconds and does a large aoe fire dmg, the range is quite far, so the further back the players run the safer it is.

Bite debuff, the boss also does a bite debuff that I’ve seen stack up to 7 times, if melee get 3-4 debuff they should really back off from the boss so the debuff can go, the healer has a hard enough time on this fight as it is.

If the tank receives over 4 bites, it becomes impossible for a solo healer to heal the tank, the tank should try to back off and kite the boss to the other side so the debuff can hopefully drop off.

This boss is 2 mannable, so it honestly shouldn’t be that hard.

Stealthing to the last boss (Exarch Maladaar) you will come across a room full of skeletons, this room drops the +12 agi enchant to boots, the safest way to get past this room is stealthing along the sides (left as you enter the room) but it is possible to stealth straight across. The enchant also drops in normal mode, so if your farming the enchant it would be easier to do this in normal.

The cavern where the last boss is located, the safest route is straight down the middle past the coffin, be careful of the skellies, as this is the place most people agro.

If you agro and can’t vanish run towards the boss, you will see 2 piles of bones on either side of him, try to die just on the other side of the pile of bones, as it is possible to be jumped from this position, if you just miss the bones, it may still be possible to battle rez you from a safe place.

Stealthing past the bones and up the side to the ledge you can unstealth to gear up, buff, use consumables etc.

Once buffed the players can safely stealth behind the boss, it is advisable to fight the boss pretty much where he is.

All players (including healer and ranged (moonkins) should fight close to the boss.)

The boss does an aoe blind, if the healer is not in range of this blind, the boss will agro the healer if everyone else is blinded.

The healer and ranged dps eat the blinds to avoid agro.

Also if melee shadows attack the healer, it makes it easier for melee dps to peel them off.

When shadows of players spawn, all dps should kill the shadows asap, they can do a lot of dmg if left unchecked and the player who they are a shadow off gets a healing or dmg debuff .

At 25% the boss spawns an avatar, the tank should get agro on the avatar as well, shadows should stop spawning at this point, but should still be killed as a priority, if any are still standing when avatar comes out.

Once all the shadows are down, the dps should concentrate on the boss, while the tank tanks the boss and avatar.

Once the boss is down, the avatar should drop fairly easily

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Professions

Professions are able to help stealth running in different ways

Jewel Crafting
Being able to make the BOP Stealth Trinkets
Black Panther Figurine
Black Pearl Panther
Can give you an additional +8 stealth points total!
Considering MoD gives you 3 points a point and Druid talent gives you 5 points a talent point, this could give you that extra stealth you need to not agro mobs.


Enchanting
It’s always good to have at least 1 stealthrunner able to DE drops for enchanting mats, also enchanting is also useful for farming runs, my preferred way of farming for gold is farming bosses for prismatics and selling them on the AH, rather than fighting the hordes of people farming elemental plateu.

Herbing
A few of the instances have herbing inside, not sure if you can get anything special insde the instances, but I’ve seen a few stealthers grab some herbs

Mining
Same as herbing a few of the instances have mining nodes inside, some are minable without pulling mobs, others are not. I think 1-2 of the bosses are minable

Engineer
Probably one of the better professions for stealth running, giving extra utility to the group.
Goblin Jumpers XL – there’s been a few times the druids have wiped, leaving the rogue to rez one of the Druids, these are a godsend (when they work) they also give druids an additional rez
Goblin Jumpers – not as good as the XL version

Bombs – give you slightly more aoe ability with a possible stun since you won’t have any real aoe classes on the run
Mote Extractor – probably only useful in SV, but you can get a few more motes if you have a hat that lets you see the invisible gas clouds

Transporters – lately it seems that getting to the instance and getting everyone there takes longer than the runs themselves, having a transporter may help you get to the instance faster, but honestly probably not.

TIP – the CD on jumpers is on the person not on the jumpers, if you have another engineer in group who doesn’t own a pair of jumpers, and your jumpers are on CD, you can pass your jumpers to the other eng, and they can try jumping the dead player.

Leatherworking
Definitely more useful before they announced Nethers were going BOE in 2.4, I used to farm with a rogue solely for the purpose of farming him nethers.
Leatherworkers had it good being able to make patches, with nethers going BOE in 2.4 every man and his dog rolls for them now.
Being able to make nightscape boots can be an advantage if you have a new stealther in the group and there are none on AH, but honestly forsight and stocking up on boots when they’re available cheaply gives you the same advantage.

Blacksmithing
Specific to stealth running? I can’t think of anything

Tailoring
Similar to LW in that farming for nethers used to be really easy, with 2.4 changes looming, again, everyone rolls for these now.

Skinning
Skinning bosses such as the Beast used to be an advantage, but in the new world, I’m not sure skinning has such an impact.

Stealthing, items and consumables

So i'm going to assume if your reading this and you know what stealth is (prowl for druids, but i've never heard a druid refer to it as prowl) so i'm going to go through stealthing, items, consumables and talents that will help you in your stealth runs.

It's surprising the number of players who think they are good at stealthing, and die horribly trying to get to a boss, i've also seen a number of stealth runs fail miserably because the healer has no stealth talents (feral instinct), no stealth items and never makes it to a boss. Every death means a delay, depending on the instance, a death run can take 5+ minutes thus slowing the stealth run down by a fair amount.

Stealth increases by 5 points per lvl, at level 70 a player will have 350 stealth points.

Although some instances are easily stealthable without any stealth items, i would say some are probably impossible without stealth items, stealth items such as gear and pots increase your stealth level, and thus decrease the chance mobs will have of detecting you. Here is a list of what can improve your stealth.

Race
Night Elf (Shadowmeld) +5 stealth

If your a Night Elf (which all alliance druids are) you will have +5 to your stealth lvl

Talents
Rogues
Master of Deception (MoD)
+3 stealth per point, total 15 ponts

Druids
Feral Instinct
+5 per point, total 15 points

Enchants
Enchant Cloak Stealth +5 points
It's quite common for stealthers to enchant a low lvl non BOE, BOP cloak so they can lend it to new stealthers etc

Gear
Boots
+5 Nightscape Boots
+5 Whisperwalk Boots
+5 The Masters Treads
+5 Silent Strider Knee Boots
+8 Darkmantle boots (Rogue only)
+8 Boots of Displacemement

Trinkets (JC Only)
+3 Figurine - black panther (once upong a time just before TBC was released this was purchasable for about 40s from a vendor, unfortunately now it is JC only)
+5 Figurine - nightseye panther (JC Only)

Consumables
+8 Stealth of the Stalker
+30 Sneaking Potion

Other items/gear that can greatly assist in stealthrunning

Speed Increases
Anything that increases your stealthing speed is of great assistance to speeding up your run, and gives you safety in stealthing away or around pats in the instance.

Talents
Rogues
Fleet Footed or Camoflage, 3% speed increase per talent point topping out at 15% (does not stack with enchants)

Rogues can sprint in stealth
SAP (help you and other members in your group to get past difficult humanoid mobs)
Distract (help you get past harder mobs)

Druids
Increases speed by % only when outdoors, since most instances are indoors, it probably won't affect your runs that much
Druids can dash in stealth
Soothe Animal - surprisingly this ability which i'm sure the majority of druids finds totally useless, is actually quite helpful to get past difficult to stealth past beasts.


Enchants
8% Minor Speed
8% Boar's Speed
8% Fleet Footed

Gems
Meta Gem
8% (does not stack with Enchant)

Other Items

Goblin Jumper Cables XL - it's always a help if someone dies and you can use jumps on them as an alternative to a druids Battle Res
Gnomish Jumper Cables
Gnomish Cloaking Device - an absolute gem to get past hard spots unfortunately stealth seeing mobs can see through this and when you come out of invis your out of stealth, the CD is 1 hour.
Twisting Nether - Collected from the darkmoon fair, gives you a 10% self rez chance, however make sure you run into a spot you can safely self rez, if you accidently agro

Get Naked!

I would say it's advisable for the majority of stealthers to get naked at the start of the instance, even if your a pro stealther yourself an "accident" from one of your stealth buddies could train a bunch of mobs on you, less repair bills = more profit!

Of course rogues confident in their ability to vanish can get by just as well with gear on, but remember vanish has a CD.

There is no need to get entirely naked, just take off the durability items, if your bags are full, just remember that weapons and epics cost more to repair then the lesser quality items, i highly recommend a mod like itemrack, wardrobe or something similiar to easily get changed into your stealthing suit.

Non Dura items are
Neck
Cloak
off hand
relic
trinkets
rings

If you wear higher stam items in these slots, this gives you a chance to be able to die in a safe corner to be rez'd.

If you don't have a pair of stealth boots, it's advisable to get a pair of nightscape boots (these should be quite cheap from the AH) with the minor speed enchant to help you in your runs.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Heroic Sethekk Halls

Auchindon
Heroic Sethekk Halls
requires lower city rep honored - Auchenai Key


Sethekk Halls seems to be the most popular stealth run, or at least the most well known. When I ask new Druids or Rogues to come on a stealth run, they all seem to expect to be doing Sethekk.

This was probably because it was a popular instance to farm for nethers before it was nerfed. Due to its close location to Shattrah, the fact it was relatively quick to stealth to the last boss, close graveyard, no clearing needed and only needing 3 stealthers, made it an easy farming instance.

Blizz caught on to the amount this instance was being farmed and nerfed it by giving the first boss Darkweaver Syth the “stealth seeing eye” meaning you had to engage the first boss rather then just stealthing past him, I use the word “engage”, as rogues and druids have found a way to get past him without actually downing him. It is still possible farm Talon King Ikiss for nethers with as few as 2 druids, I’m still waiting for gear to reach the level where he will be soloable, with the way gear upgrades have been going, I wouldn’t be surprised if this happens sooner rather than later.

This is one of the harder instances to stealth through, with a couple of bottlenecks where it is common for stealthers to agro mobs, I highly recommend some stealth gear for this, but I have seen rogues make it through with no MoD and no stealth gear (although they get vanish and distract) Druids with less than 365 stealth points may need a helping hand.

Stealthing up to the first boss the first bottleneck seems to always be the 2 guards in the first big room, the best way I have found to get past is to go behind the guard on the right, stick to the wall edge closer towards him, and if he turns towards you, wait till he turns back then slip past.

Stealthing from the next room into the corridor, watch out for the bird pat, I advise marking this bird pat with a symbol as he flies into the first boss room where you will be setting up.

When stealthing into the first bosses room (Darkweaver Syth), you must be careful as the boss can see through stealth, do not past the concrete slab that has candelabras on it, as soon as you stealth inside the doorway of the room, go to the side, wait for the bird pat to pass then u can quickly destealth and eat/drink and gear up, NE’s can shadowmeld and this is enough for the bird to path past, although he may stop for a second.

If you can't safely setup here, get 1 rogue to agro the boss, while the group runs into the room on the side, once in the room, the rogue can vanish safely near the room then stealth in, if the rogue is not able to vanish near the room, then they can vanish into the far room or at the back entrance safely, and wait for the fight to start before joining in.

In the room, party members can safely destealth, buff eat and drink.
In heroic mode I’ve done this boss with as few as 3 stealthers gear levels being
Bear tank – 30k ac 16khp
Rogue geared up to Kara level
Healer with 1800 heal

The boss summons adds when he is at approximately 90% 50% 30% health.

The tank should pull the boss away from the front entrance as the bird pat will be pathing there, and we dont want him to join the fight, the boss hits relatively softly, so is easy to heal through until he summons his elementals.

DPS should focus fire on the elementals and kill the first 2 waves, when the 3rd wave is summoned, DPS should focus fire on the boss as he goes down relatively quickly after the 3rd summon.

Stealthing up to the last boss (Talon King Ikiss) the next bottleneck for stealthers is the group of birds. I swear they’ve slightly repositioned the birds on the left since last year so I find the best way to get past is by stealthing along the right. Even with +stealth gear some stealthers find it tough to get past, if you find your having a bit of trouble getting past this bottleneck get a rogue to distract, the bird on the middle right seems to cause the most problems.

As a druid I have found it much easier to get past by using “sooth animal” that’s right I’ve actually found a consistent use for “sooth animal” you can safely destealth between the bird flock and the guards at the door, wait about 8 seconds (for your stealth cd) then cast soothe animal on the middle bird on the right closest to the cliff. Soothe animal takes 1.5 seconds to cast and lasts for 15 seconds. Remember soothe animal can sometimes be resisted and if this happens it would agro the entire flock, although this hasn’t happened to me yet.

Stealth through Anzu's room to the last boss, the last set of mobs before the boss go to the right, and try to jump on the side of the wall as you stealth past, sometimes I find this mob can agro, if he does, run around to the corner of the room and die on the mound of bones, as others in your party can safely destealth here to jump or BR you.

Stealth into the exit, in here you can safely regear, buff, drink etc.

Talon King Ikiss is not a hard boss, I’ve managed to 2 man him without much problems before.

The tank should tank towards the back of the room, use the back pillars to avoid his arcane explosion, as using the front pillars you may accidently agro the mobs there.

Talon King Ikiss’s physical dmg on the tank should not put too much of a strain on the healer, he does an arcane volley that hits all party members even through los for about 1500 dmg, the main damage you have to watch out for is his Arcane Explosion, he will generally blink before he does this and start casting, as soon as he blinks, run behind the pillar as this AoE is losable. He also puts a slow on party members, so if he blinks and you are slowed druids remember you can shift out of slows and rogues have a few tricks with Cloak of Shadows, improved sprint, gnomes can use escape artist.

Once the boss casts Arcane Explosion, this acts as an agro wipe, so the tank should make sure he picks up agro on the boss, and the dps should wait until the tank regains agro.

Ikiss will also occasionally sheep the 2nd target on the agro list, this gives the target a heal, this shouldn’t be an issue if the healer is sheeped as they can shift out of it, or due to hot healing, the hots should be able to cover until the sheep wears off.

Once Ikiss is dead the back door will open, giving a quick run to the exit, it also gives easier access to Anzu’s room in case of wipe while doing Anzu.

To be able to summon Anzu a druid must be on or completed their swift flight form quest.

Anzu's room must be cleared in order to do this boss, profit wise for a stealth run, the time is probably not worth it, but if your farming the mount, or trying to complete the druid quest, a party of rogues/druids can definitely do this.

It is recommended you kill the group of mobs in Ikiss’s room, and use Ikiss’s room to pull the rest of the mobs into to kill.

A few of the mob’s in Anzu’s room fear, so pulling each group into Anzu’s room cuts down on the chance of being feared into another group of mobs.

For the pulls sap 2 targets and get the tank to sleep the bird, so if the bird comes out of sleep he will go for the tank rather than the healer.

After the room is clear you can summon Anzu, the healer should have some macro’s made to target the statues and cast rank 1 rejuv on them, keeping the statues rejuved gives extra buffs to the party.

Macro’s as follows

/target Eagle Spirit/cast Rejuvenation(Rank 1)/targetlasttarget

/target Hawk Spirit/cast Rejuvenation(Rank 1)/targetlasttarget

/target Falcon Spirit/cast Rejuvenation(Rank 1)/targetlasttarget

Anzu is generally a tank and spank fight, at 66% and 33% he will banish himself and a flock of birds will fly out which must be dps’d asap, once the birds are down or after 1 minute Anzu will unbanish and the tank and spank continues.

Anzu should be done with a full group, even clearing Anzu’s room is a headaches and because of the multi mob pulls I really wouldn’t want to do it without 2 rogues.

If you’re lucky the mount will drop! I feel it’s one of the coolest looking mounts in the game, but be aware the drop rate is really low 1-2% and you will be rolling against 4 others if it does.

Sethekk also has a number of mines, I know one of these is minable with a low risk of aggroing mobs, and that’s the one in the first room, usually I will ask the miners to leave it till the end when we stealth out. There is also one chest that can appear in the first room, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the risk/reward for the pull.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Stealth, gear, consumables and talents

So i'm going to assume if your reading this and you know what stealth is (prowl for druids, but i've never heard a druid refer to it as prowl) so i'm going to go through stealthing, gear, consumables and talents that will help you in your stealth runs.

It's surprising the number of players who think they are good at stealthing, and die horribly trying to get to a boss, i've also seen a number of stealth runs fail miserably because the healer has no stealth talents (feral instinct) and no stealth items so never makes it to a boss. Every death means a delay, depending on the instance, a death run can take 5+ minutes thus slowing the stealth run down by a fair amount.

Stealth increases by 5 points per lvl, at level 70 a player will have 350 stealth points.
Although some instances are easily stealthable without any stealth items, i would say some are probably impossible without stealth items, stealth items such as gear and pots increase your stealth level, and thus decrease the chance mobs will have of detecting you. Here is a list of what can improve your stealth.

Race
Night Elf (Shadowmeld) +5 stealth
If your a Night Elf (which all alliance druids are) you will have +5 to your stealth lvl

Talents
Rogues
Master of Deception (MoD) +3 stealth per point, total 15 ponts

Druids
Feral Instinct+5 per point, total 15 points

Enchants
Enchant Cloak Stealth +5 points
It's quite common for stealthers to enchant a low lvl non BOE, BOP cloak so they can lend it to new stealthers etc

Gear
Boots
+5 Nightscape Boots
+5 Whisperwalk Boots
+5 The Masters Treads
+5 Silent Strider Knee Boots
+8 Darkmantle boots (Rogue only)
+8 Boots of Displacemement

Trinkets (JC Only)
+3 Figurine - black pearl panther (once upong a time just before TBC was released this was purchasable for about 40s from a vendor, unfortunately now it is JC only)
+5 Figurine - nightseye panther (JC Only)

Consumables
+8 Stealth of the Stalker
+30 Sneaking Potion

Other items/gear that can greatly assist in stealthrunning

Speed Increases
Anything that increases your stealthing speed is of great assistance to speeding up your run, and gives you safety in stealthing away or around pats in the instance.

Talents
Rogues
Fleet Footed or Camoflage, 3% speed increase per talent point topping out at 15% (does not stack with enchants)
Rogues can sprint in stealth
SAP (help you and other members in your group to get past difficult humanoid mobs)
Distract

Druids
Feral Swiftness - increases speed by 15/30% only when outdoors, since most instances are indoors, it probably won't affect your runs that much Druids can dash in stealth
Soothe Animal - surprisingly this ability which i'm sure the majority of druids finds totally useless, is actually quite helpful to get past difficult to stealth past beasts.

Enchants
8% Minor Speed
8% Boar's Speed
8% Fleet Footed

Gems
Meta Gem
8% Swift Starfire Diamond (does not stack with Enchant)
8% Swift Windfire Diamond (does not stack with Enchant)

Other Items
Goblin Jumper Cables XL - it's always a help if someone dies and you can use jumps on them as an alternative to a druids Battle Res
Goblin Jumper Cables - a lower success rate then the XL version
Gnomish Cloaking Device - great to get past hard spots unfortunately stealth seeing mobs can see through this and when you come out of invis your out of stealth, the CD is 1 hour.
Darkmoon Card Twisting Nether - Collected from the darkmoon fair portals deck, gives you a 10% self rez chance, however make sure you run into a spot you can safely self rez, if you accidently agro

Get Naked!

I would say it's advisable for the majority of stealthers to get naked at the start of the instance, even if your a pro stealther yourself an "accident" from one of your stealth buddies could train a bunch of mobs on you, less repair bills = more profit!
Of course rogues confident in their ability to vanish can get by just as well with gear on, but remember vanish has a CD.

There is no need to get entirely naked, just take off the durability items, if your bags are full, just remember that weapons and epics cost more to repair then the lesser quality items, i highly recommend a mod like itemrack, wardrobe or something similiar to easily get changed into your stealthing suit.

Non Dura items are
Neck
Cloak
off hand
relic
trinkets
rings

If you wear higher stam items in these slots, this gives you a chance to be able to die in a safe corner to be rez'd.

If you don't have a pair of stealth boots, it's advisable to get a pair of nightscape boots (these should be quite cheap from the AH) with the minor speed enchant to help you in your runs.