Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Stealth farming Enchant Boots - Dexterity recipe

If you’re an enchanter, and a stealther, and you want to farm for the +12 agi feet enchant you can!

Go into crypts in normal mode, stealth up to the stairs of the first boss Shirrak the Dead Watcher, so far so good right!

Well as we all know some patches way back they made his aura also unstealth us (:( blizzard)
Wait until the boss paths into the back position, the upstairs area you will see on each side of the boss there are 2 walls sticking out, stealth past the wall and stealth into the area between the 2 walls into the corner, you will be unstealthed bythe boss aura, due to the boss level, and your level (I'm assuming your 70 here, and if your not you will have a hell of a time killing the skellies that drop the enchant) you won't get agro!

Wait till the boss paths to the forward position, you can now restealth and walk into the skellie room. (Raging Skeletons)
Each group consists of approximately 4 skellies, if you bring a friend this is much easier, if your on your own, then good luck!

Rogues can sap 1, blind 1, kill 1 vanish etc

Druids can attempt to burst 1 down, barkskin heal etc.

I found doing this solo can suck, because if you kill a skellie, don’t get the chance to loot and die, sometimes when you run back from the graveyard it puts you in a brand new instance!

Good luck! the drop rate has sucked for me :(

(on a sidenote, i have heard of a mage solo farming this before, but that was so long ago, i don't know if it was nerfed)

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

2 manning Sethek for profit (fun)

Well I used to 2 man Sethek a while ago when large prismatic shard prices were still at a premium, I guess it's not that profitable to do so now with void shatter recipe coming into place, and being on no cooldown no less, however, for the sake of people that like challenges, I thought 2 manning Sethek was something fun, especially 2 manning in Heroic.
I guess the title is a bit misleading, although we do 2 man Ikiss, we do skip the first boss Darkweaver Sith, and totally ignore the druid boss Anzu.

I'll start with normal.

Of course the better geared you are the easier this will be, and I don't advise people in greens trying this unless you like banging your head against a wall for hours.

You will need at least 1 druid for heals, and the other stealther can be a druid dps class or a rogue.

Stealth up to the first boss room (Darkweaver Sith), if you have a druid and a rogue, get the rogue to run in first, this will pull the boss, the druid should rush past to the other side and go through the entrance, when the druid is safely past the room, the rogue should vanish then also exit the opposite entrance.
If you have 2 druids doing this, one of you must suicide.One druid should pull the boss while the other safely runs past to the other side, they can go through the door then hide behind the door jam on the right, once that druid is through, the druid that pulled can also run through the door and hide in the door jam on the left, of course the boss will kill the druid here, then run back to reset.
Once the boss has reset, it is safe for the other druid to come out to rez.

Stealth all the way up to the last bosses room.

I've found this easier to do with a druid tank then a rogue tank, as a druid has the tools to taunt back, however, the rogue I tried this with was not very geared at the time, and then we were still able to down the boss.

This bosses physical damage is not as high as other bosses, most of his damage comes from the arcane aoe bolts.

If your druid is geared enough, they might be able to do this in cat form.

The healer should stay in human form.

The tank should open up and start dpsing the boss, Ikiss will sheep the 2nd highest threat target on the table, which will of course be the healer.

The healer should stay sheeped in order to get a free heal and conserve mana, hots should be running on the tank, so it really shouldn’t be an issue. Of course in those "oh shit" situations shift out and heal, but in general, stay sheeped.

Another technique is to play the los game when Ikiss tries to sheep you, generally you will have Ikiss in an FF frame mod so you know when he is casting, sheep takes 1.5s for him to cast so when you see him cast it duck behind a pillar, he will stop, when u duck out again, he will start to cast on you again.

Why is doing this good? Well he will constantly be trying to cast on you, so he won't be dpsing the tank at all. If you can do this consistently well, you will have long bouts of Ikiss not doing much of anything at all. Of course when you pop out from the pillar you can throw an instant hot on your tank if needed.

When Ikiss does his AoE remember this is an agro wipe, so try not to heal, and if the rogue has hots on him hew may lose agro.
This is the main problem I had running this with a rogue, sometimes he would lose agro, and I would end up heal/tank/kiting which is highly inefficient as the rogue would be sheeped for a lot of the time. Yes it would still be doable as long as I had mana, but essentially I would keep kiting between 2 pillars hotting myself, while the rogue would dps as much as possible in between sheeps. A druid would be able to taunt back in bear form.

Once you get this down pat it's fairly easy to kill Ikiss, and claim your 2 LPS.

When I was doing this frequently with a well geared feral druid I was able to do a run from start to end in 10 minutes, meaning I could do this 5 times an hour which is the instance limit, at the time it was not bad making 5 lps each per hour with some occasional other random drops and gold.

We found this so fun we decided to attempt Heroic Sethek!

And honestly we didn't find it that much harder.
I haven't tried heroic mode with anything other than a feral druid tanking, but I'm sure it's possible with a well geared rogue.

In normal mode the druid could tank the boss in cat in dps gear, in Heroic, we found the boss hits slightly harder so I had him tank in bear form wearing his dps gear.
It takes a little longer that normal, but of course you get better drops!

Monday, June 16, 2008

Heroic Black Morass

Heroic Black Morass

Well let's be honest, there's absolutely no need to stealth Heroic Blacm Morass (H-BM), you might get away with clearing slightly less critters, but the time it takes you to stealth to the middle you may as well have ridden over on your mount.
I remember when this instance was considered hard, but as all the new easier to obtain badge gear, arena gear and pvp gear becomes available, this instance has become relatively easy.

So why include this instance in a stealth run blog? Well I'll assume people that are stealth running have their normal druid/rogue stealth run group, and let's be honest, you can only do Coilfang for X amount of time before it becomes boring, so this is just an alternative to your regular badge farming.
In the old days, people would always look for a "frost" mage, or whatever class, since they say clearing adds is difficult, these days, I saw it's entirely possible and easy to do it with a rogue druid group.

Because this instance is scripted, a rogue druid group doesn't actually make this instance faster, it takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.

I guess the role most people ask is who will be clearing the adds, and I'd just like to give you a rundown from my experience.

Playing as a moonkin, I've done adds, and I have to say it was easy, I was a little bit nervous going into it, but I read from laserchickens blog (laserchicken.blogspot.com) blog, that he'd done adds before and he has a small guide on it (http://laserchicken.blogspot.com/2007/12/handling-adds-in-black-morass-as.html), it had been a long time since I had done black morass, after all I ran it as a tank and healer many times to get exalted to get my trinket (which I no longer use) so after reading laser chickens entry as add clearer, I thought it would be interesting, also the fact that there is a chance at a 6dmg/6sta gem as well as the normal badge farm made it more appealing, and I did need a change from running the normal popular stealth instances.

As a moonkin with 1200 spell damage (1200 sp dmg sounds high, but its relatively easy to get now since the majority of my gear is s1 + s3 arena, pvp honor items, some badge gear and crafted gear), the adds are easy, sit yourself in between the portal and the shield, adds that comes out only have approximately 5-6k hp, since they're running for the shield and not you, this gives you ample time to open with a starfire, followed by a moonfire, then 2-3 wraths and they're down.

The dragonlings that come in 3's go down with a moonfire and insect swarm.
The only ones that you have to watch are the assasins, as they have a bit more hp and hit harder, I ususually open with a starfire, moonfire, root, then wind up another starfire and wraths.

Adds go down quick, so the majority of time I ignore using insect swarm, sometimes I ignore using moonfire, but moonfire can crit, and also proc's my trinket.

I found the adds so easy, I never had to bring treants out (which I thought I might need as a backup plan) I was also able to throw some dps at the portal bosses making it highly efficient for a moonkin to clear adds, of course the rest of the group does the classic, tank and spank the Rift Lords so it was quite easy.

So if you don't have a moonkin can you still do this? Absolutely.

I ran an instance, where for some reason the rogue wouldn't stop attacking the adds, I let him do this, and helped on the bosses, now of course the rogue is not the most efficient class for doing this, but I was surprised at how well he was able to do it, he had absolutely no troubles in the majority of portals, but towards the end, he needed a bit of help cleaning up when we got each boss down, also the healer needs to watch the rogue as he is not as self sufficient as a druid for doing this.

The rogue was dressed in Kara level gear with a couple of honor and arena items thrown in, I'm not talking about SSC + level but gear that casuals can easily get nowadays.
I'm sure an equally geared feral druid would be able to do the same, requiring the occasional heal and maybe a little help at the end of each portal.

Remember, although it's nice for the shield to be 100%, it really doesn't have to be, as long as you get the last boss down before the shield hits 0%, so if you need to, you can always let the shield tank for you.

So the general strategy is of course to have 1 person on adds, 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 other dps, helping on the portal bosses.

Clear each portal, the first boss Chrono Lord Deja is relatively easy, just a tank and spank fight, just watch out for his aoe.

With the second boss Temporus, this strategy seems the most popular depending on the groups gear level.
Because Temporus stacks healing debuffs, you really want to kill him as soon as possible.

Have all dps zerg the boss, and ignore adds, let the shield tank adds for the duration of this fight, if the tank has a dodge trinket (i.e. badge of tenacity, moroes pocket watch) they should save this for when they get so many healing debuffs they cannot get healed anymore)

Try not to pull the boss to far from the portal or he will leash back and his hp can reset.

Once the boss is down, everyone should rush over to kill adds quickly, if your groups dps is a bit low, you can also have someone use a Chrono-beacon]to summon a dragon to clear adds while you do the boss. Make sure you summon the dragon closer to the shield or Temporus can dispel him.

The general strategy we see nowadays with the Chrono Beacons is to pop them on the Rift Lords on the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th portals to ease into the final boss.

Aeonus
When the final boss shows up if everyone is not at full hp or mana yet, don't pull the boss, let the shield tank, it's perfectly capable of holding off for a period of time, you will be able to see a counter at the top of the screen that tells you what percentage strength the shield is at.

Once everyone is up to full go to work on the boss, he is relatively easy to take down, just make sure your tank has full hots at all time to live through the time stop, but besides that he shouldn't be considered hard anymore.

So there you have it, an additional 3 badges for 30 minutes work, sure it's not as efficient as Coilfang Resevoir or some of the other stealthable instances, but it's fun to do something slightly different, and it drops a few good gems

Glinting Fire Opal +5agi/+4hit
Glowing Tanazite +6sp dmg/+6sta
Glimmering Fire Opal +5parry/+4def (ok this is probably crap for druids/rogues)

Sunday, June 15, 2008

When you just have too many friends!

When i started stealth running again, i would just add the regular rogues and druids i would run with onto my friends list, that way when i wanted to do a run i could do a quick check to see who was on. With wow being out for quite a few years now, everyone man and his dog has alts (well except me) so then i was adding all the alts to my friends list.

Adding all the stealthers, there alts to my friends list with my normal friends i found i just didn't have enough space.

I even started adding names to notepad, to look up decent stealthers when i wanted to do a run, but really, that just sucked.

So I started a channel, called it stealthruns and invited all stealthers, to join the channel when they were on, either on their stealth chars or their alts, now the channel is regularly filled and we just ask in there to organise runs.

Pretty simple i know, and it may be obvious to some, but, it might not be obvious to others.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Heroic Magisters Terrace

When Magisters Terrace first came out i was quite excited, it was a new instance to sink our stealth teeth into, we stealthed through normal to attune, then ran Heroic mode in stealth, 4 hours later we were still stuck on the 3rd boss....

It was tough, and we ended up calling it a night coming up to hour 5.

After some practice, we've managed to get this to under 1 hour for a run, but i'm sure we can get it going faster than that. Since some of my older stealthers have gone on a hiatus (come back bob!) I haven't run it much, if at all for a while, H MGT is not an instance i want to take new stealthers too, and after they have some experience, they really need to be on the better side of gear and playskill to do this instance.

Stealthing through Magisters Terrace is easy enough, however working out the strats for the fights without a mage, took a little time. I highly recommend taking geared characters with 10k hp for the 3rd boss Priestess Delrissa.

Well to start with, i'll say the easiest way to finish this instance, is to make sure you have an easy setup on the third boss, some people consider this cheating, but then some people consider stealth run cheating as well.

Since your all bound by the 5 instance per hour lockout, the best thing to do is to get everyone to go into the instance seperately, the person with the best group makeup on Delrissa starts the invites.

So whats the best group makeup? Pretty much anything without the Naga MS warrior, he's a real headache.

So how do you check? Stealth into the instance, and turn on nameplates, you will see that the entrance you actually stealth over the third bosses area on the bridge, check which friends Delrissa has with her, and something without the Naga is good, of course if you don't want to do it this way, you can kill the third boss with the Warrior, but it just makes it that much harder.

I'd say it's probably easier to do this instance with 2-3 rogues, sap just makes it that much easier.

So start the group and stealth up to the first bosses room, just outside the room you can unstealth and gear up drink etc.

There are a few groups inside, but they are easier enough to take out, sap 2-3, use cyclones effectively, and it shouldn't be an issue.

Selin Fireheart

Now of course make sure everyone is inside the room for this boss fight. Many people say it's like the final boss in SV, kill the crystals when he goes to them, but i've found for our stealthing groups we just zerg the boss.

The boss is easy enough and i'm sure you won't have an issue.

After you kill this boss, you must clear the worms in the next bosses room, we frequently have stupid deaths here as rogues start blade flurrying, and we all know druids aren't the best multi mob tanks.

As long as the dps focus fires, agro shouldn't be a problem, as generally the dps will kill a worm before it does significant damage, and the healer can keep up.

What i've seen some of our better tanks do is barkskin, aoe hurricane to get some initial agro on all the mobs before going into bear, this works well to stop initial healing agro.

Of course if you have a moonkin in the group, just get them to tank this bit, just make sure the healer knows, as i've had many excited ferals just start aoeing out of nowhere and be dead before i can get a regrowth off.

Vexallus

Vexallus summons balls of energy, these must be killed asap, assign rogues to kill them first, after killing 3 (and getting 3 debuffs) they should cloak of shadows the debuffs off them or it could become too much for the healer to handle.

When Vex reaches 10% he overloads and starts doing all sorts of damage, the dps should save there cooldowns for overload.

This boss isn't really that tough, and if a more detailed post is needed i'll do a more complete guide in the future.

Stealth up to the third boss, Priestess Delrissa and friends, this is really like an arena match and i always find it easier if people suit up in PVP gear, or at least in gear that gives them much more hp then the sometimes glass canons 7k hp i find some of my dps wearing.

A little clearing is needed in this room, we usually just clear out the front section and pull Delrissa and her friends into the front garden, of course some of her friends do fear, so if you choose to be safe you may want to clear the entire room.

Well the strats on this boss can differ, but here's the way we find the best to do this with an all stealth team.

I pretty much run this with 2 rogues, but 3 would be great for the saps.

We always take down the Priestess first as her heals can get out of hand, if the Naga warrior is there, we take him out 2nd, rogues usually blind there sap target to give more time to focus fire.

Hmm just thinking about the differnet combinations is giving me a headache, and i'm sure could be a post in itself.

If the Naga warrior is up, i get 1 druid to keep him cc'd, while priestess is being burst down, they can easily do this without taking much damage opening with a pounce stun, followed up by a maim, cyclone, cyclone feral charge etc.

Try to take out the pets early, they have little hp and can shell out some decent damage if left alone, besides that cc as much as possible, and try not to get feared into any uncleared groups.

Once you can get 1-2 guys down quickly, the rest should be easy to take down as they come out of sap since you'll be 5 vs 3ing them.

Kael'thas Sunstrider

Is the last boss, after a little clearing we get to his room.

I've found the best tactic with a stealth team is as follows.

4 DPS zerg the boss, the healer keeps everyone topped up and kites the phoenix, the boss should go down to 50% around the time the phoenix dies, the DPS should kill the egg straight away, then your into an easy phase 2.

Of course the dps and tank need to have decent gear, it doesnt have to be amazing gear, just decent, the tank has to be able to hold agro from the dps and the healer has to know how to kite, heal and not panic with a big fat bird chasing him around.

The rogues have to kick when Kael does his pyroblast, and of course everyone has to get out of his flamestrike.

At 50% the dps should fly near the door for easy healing and to get away from the bubbles in gravity lapse.

Heroic Magister's Terrace has some really great gear, and if you get a regular group, you should try to put this on your regular stealth run list.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Underbog Chest Removed

Well a favourite of my stealthers was the first chest in Underbog, it was very easy to open with 2 people, without having to kill any mobs.

If you having trouble remembering where it was, it was next to the water, in between the water and tree just as you came around the corner from the entrance.

Unfortunately this chest was removed, as the week before it was removed i had found a way to solo farm it.

So for old times sake i'll post the strat.

For rogues, you have to be an engineer, or have something that can be thrown at least 35 yards. (decapitator maybe?)
For druids, it's a lot easier if you have nature's reach, or of course you can also have some kind of engineering or other item.

Stealth all the way past the first boss, and circle above where the chest used to be.

If you stand on the edge, you could moonfire, or rocket launcher one of the mobs guarding the chest.

Let them run all the way up to you, and when they almost reach you, drop down, and run into the water (avoid the fishies) Being in the water for a short period of time will drop you out of combat, then you could go loot the chest.

Of course sometimes the chest could be locked, and your still limited to 5 instances per hour.

Unfortunately this was nerfed in the same week i found it, so i didn't get to run it very often, and now never again :(

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Heroic Steamvault! (minor update)

I have a minor update to the Heroic SV guide, it's minor but it does allow you to skip 2 sets of mobs, and of course, stealth running is about skipping as much content as possible to clear bosses!

The mobs skipped are the ones before the 2nd boss Mekgineer Steamrigger, rather than clear them, you can stealth over to the left side as you cover over the bridge, in the area there is a water mote (probably only engineers will notice this)

Easily done, i'm reposting the whole guide since i am in blog format, and i can't just update the old strat and write (New) next to the post like you'd see on a normal strategy site.

In the endeavor for badge gear the Coilfang instances have become the most popular as we can really speed run through them, our record for H SV is just under 15 minutes and this was before we skipped those 2 groups of mobs before the 2nd boss.

We've also been able to 4 man the last boss Warlord Kalithresh so as our gear improves our runs become easier.

Here's the slightly updated H SV guide


Heroic Steamvault

Coilfang Reservoir
requires Cenarion Expedition honored - Reservoir Key

Stealth to the first boss (Hydromancer Thespia) be aware that the Bog Giants in here have stealth detection, on the ramp outside her room, clear the patrol, it consists of 2 Coilfang Sirens and a Coilfang Warrior. I find it safest to Sap 1 Siren and the Warrior first, sap them a little more then halfway up the ramp as the Sirens can fear. Burst down the first Siren quickly making use of stunlocks and do the same on the 2nd Siren, finally killing off the Warrior.

Hydromancer Thespia is not a difficult fight, the main thing the group has to be aware of is getting out of her lightning cloud as it does a large amount of damage.

Hydromancer Thespia has 2 elemental adds, its best to mark the adds, have the tank get agro and the dps burst down one add then the other, the healer can also cyclone the 2nd add (after the tank gets some agro on it) to reduce the amount of damage, with a decent group I find the first add goes down quickly and can pick up the 2nd add just after it comes out of cyclone.

As long as the DPS know to get out of the lightning clouds asap (you can see them forming over your head before they start doing dmg) then the fight is easy. Remember to click on the console after the boss is down. DPS can then stealth to the 2nd boss, or swim.

There are 2 groups of gnomes before the 2nd boss, you can safely stealth past both groups and to the left side of the bridge, usually you will see a water mote floating around this area. The boss can safely be pulled to this area without pulling the 2 groups of gnomes.

Mekgineer Steamrigger has 4 gnome adds at the start. We usually assign all DPS to help kill the gnome adds at the start, once the adds are down, we assign one dpser to kill the additional adds that come out (usually the most geared rogue) leaving the rest of the dps to focus on the boss, if your DPS assigned to adds is not geared enough, have a 2nd DPSer give him support if needed. The boss doesn’t do a lot of damage, the main thing is managing the adds and making sure they don’t heal the boss. Remember to click on the console when the boss is down.

Warlord Kalithresh is the final boss in Steam Vaults and there is no need to clear out the adds in his room. Stealth to the back of the room, here you can safely eat/drink/buff. Remember in this fight to DPS the fish tanks as soon as they are up, a lot of guides say he enrages after 10 seconds of channeling from the tanks, but I’ve seen him turn red many times from the first second, not sure if this is a change, a bug, or he’s just turning red and not enraged, I also know if he does enrage, and the healer and tank have decent gear, the healer can keep the tank up. Warlord Kalithresh needs to be DPS’d down quite quickly, from experience there are 3 fish tanks he can go to without any problems, so the tank will need to position himself closer to those fishtanks, so the boss doesn’t go wandering off to a fishtank with mobs, I have had him go to a 4th fish tank without aggroing other mobs in the room before, but I would advise to dps him down as fast as possible