Stealth Runs

Love Fools

2010-02-10T08:35:00.001-08:00

For those of use fools that still haven't finished out achievement and gotten the 310% speed mount, we'll be suffering through Valentine's week in the WoW World as well as the real World.

Luckily Rill_OF_WE has written an updated article for getting this shiz done for 2010 over at WoWVault

http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Guides.Detail&id=305

Yes this blog is hanging by a lifedrip, as I have had other distractions in life take precedence over WoW, but it's still nice to see some people still visit it.

Even if i do get random chinese spammers in the comments section that are probably telling you to go get a virus or something.

Anyway Happy Valentine's Day

3.3 out!

2009-12-09T22:10:00.000-08:00

Well I've been pretty bad at keeping this blog updated, when I first started this blog it was because there was little information out there in regards to stealth running. I wanted to post information which was little known or non published out there for the masses.

Now when interesting news comes up, it's up on half a dozen sites already.

This is a good thing! It means an increase in the number of people sharing info, and hopefully an increase in the size of our community (meaning stealthers... well ok i mean druids :)

So 3.3 is out, as others have stated, wiseclipse is broken, squawk and awe is broken, in fact a whole bunch of things are broken.

People on the wow forums are bitching about log load screens and disconnects on the new 5 man instances.

And i've experienced the Onyxia being unkillable, she gets to 1 hp, doesn't come down for Phase 3 and laughs as the adds eventually overwhelm you (ok she doesn't laugh, but you get my meaning)

I forsee Blizz doing a lot of reboots this week as they try to fix problem.

Anzu soloed as Moonkin!

2009-11-09T22:14:00.000-08:00

Well I finally managed to get Anzu down as Moonkin spec, and I have to say it is a lot harder as Moonkin then Bear.

Seeing Morrid on the forums downing Anzu as Moonkin inspired me to try this again, and following some of the tips from Moomuerto I adjusted my strat and tried it again, finally I got Anzu down after over an hour of trying and 100g in repairs.

I tried again a couple days later, and it still took me a few attempts, but this time only 30 minutes and 50g repairs, hopefully I'll be able to one shot it soon enough.

Here are some things I have taken away from my many attempts as I tried different gear, and I tried between my 2 Moonkin specs (1 raid moonkin, the other is a restokin pvp spec)

Stand against the wall as Moomuerto said at the start, hot the falcon spirit totem to increase your dps, then thrown a regrowth and rejuv on yourself and go to town on Anzu.

I found i usually opened with a starfire, moonfire, faerie fire, and wrathed till eclipse. Then proc eclipse and Anzu should faze out as he reaches 66%.

Run across to the other side of the room, thrown hots on yourself and get ready for the birds, make sure you get into Moonkin form before the birds swarm you as you get your heavy armor and 15% damage reduction while stunned. Anzu occasionally stuns you while he's phased out, wait out the stun, then hurricane the birds down.

Unfortunately my raid spec I don't have gale winds so it takes me 2 x hurricane, to get them down, with them bashing on you it may reduce the effectiveness of your hurricane due to pushback so you may have to do this twice

I generally find it easy getting past this first phase, but because my raid spec has no mana regen talents, I need to pop my innervate at this point.

Anzu comes out of his phased mode when all birds are down or 1 minute passes.

I've found it to be effective if only a few birds remain up, and Anzu still has some time left in phased out mode to shift out and throw on your regrowth and rejuv hots, since the birds won't hit you for much and Anzu hits like a truck when your in caster.

Finish the birds then dps Anzu again, once again I find it all about proccing eclipse to get him down quickly before your hots run out, if you spend too much trying to kite and dot your just wasting valuable dps time and your heals won't keep up, I throw the moonfire up as i have both the moonfire idol and t9 bonus, if I didn't i would probably just wrath to proc starfire (or the other way around) as this brings him down fast.

Enter the last bird phase and kite over and heal up again, same strategy as before, when Anzu phases back in burn all your CD's and finish him off.

I usually save my DPS CD's because it's much more heart breaking to fail when he's at 10k HP, then at the start. Also they give you a bit of leeway if you do make a mistake heading into the last bird phase or don't get lucky procs for eclipse.

The trinkets I've found the most helpful are my 2 PVP trinkets, battlemaster's bravery and titan forged rune of audacity.

I save them for the last phase to get out of a stun and to give me that extra 3k life boost to finish him off.

Due to my raid spec I find mana an issue so I do use a mana pot on my non fail attempts (ok sometimes i take a pot and still fail :( )

If you find your falling behind heading into the bird phase, or eclipse just won't proc at the start and you know your losing the DPS race, you can kite out of the room to reset Anzu, this saves you a repair bill, and the long run back.

If your dying a lot, it is worth clearing out the adds in the first hallway, and in the middle of the first room as you enter the instance to increase your running back speed.

I don't bother hotting the totems besides the start as I find i just don't have the time (or mana)

Removing the curse is the most important aspect of this fight, not only does the curse do significant damage, but the GCD knockdown and mana it burns really set me back.

I was wearing 2 x T8 and 2 x T9 for my attempts with PVP off pieces and gear in my other slots to make me as tankie as possible without losing too much dps.

In the end i ran with around 21.5k HP, 2.6k SP in Moonkin.

Good luck!

Random Thoughts

2009-11-06T22:24:00.000-08:00

Since stealthruns are so rare with the current state of the game (rare for the lack of need for them now) I will start blogging about my random activities playing the game.

In wanting to write more, I will post about playing my druid in various aspects of the game, possibly my rogue, if I'm not too lazy to level him.

As a casual player, I don't have access to all the latest and greatest instances or loot, but that doesn't mean I don't want to maximise my character as much as possible.

I will attempt to post more, as I do enjoy writing for this blog, but I guess pigeon holing myself into a blog named stealthruns, I felt I had to write about stealthing instances.

I guess more consistant writing will (hopefully) garner me a stronger readership and improve my writing, and one day if stealthing does become an attractive option again, I will explore it.

Soloing Anzu as a Moonkin

2009-11-03T22:10:00.000-08:00

Morrid and Moomuerto on the official WoW forums claim to have soloed Anzu as a moonkin!

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677582412&sid=1

Hearing of these success's has inspired me to keep trying (yes I've been failing at this, although I've found a proper feral tank spec with average gear quite easy)

Morrid's stats are quite decent compared to the average chicken.
2753 spell power
26.31% crit
15.07% haste
21067 hp
24711 mana

He says he feels it is really important to keep the eagle totem up (the one that reduces dmg by 500)

Moomuerto has posted a short guide which I will copy here, since we know how the WoW forums like to eat posts

Moomuerto feels it's not necessary to use the totems.

Here's the way to do the fight as moonkin, although it might take some practice to get down.
1.) If you enter the room, the wall on the left is one i engaged him from. Stand as close to the wall as you can.
2.)throw a regrowth on the eagle and...hawk i think (not needed but helps) and then regrowth, rejuv yourself, moonkin form and charge up a starfire on him, dot him up and barkskin once he gets in melee range, he never put the curse on me in this first phase so just nuke him down with barkskin on until he shifts into his ghosty form.
3.) as soon as he shifts start running to the opposite wall of the room and hot yourself to full, shouldn't need much, be mindful of the curse while running as this is when he starts using it. Get ready for the birds.
4.) He will generally cast his long 5 second stun on you while youre at the opposite wall, wait for the stun before you hurricane the birds down. Also, dont hurricane the birds down until you see your barkskin will be off cooldown in around 10 seconds or so. Anzu will charge you as soon as they die.
5.) once the birds are dead, he will start running towards you from the opposite wall (where you first pulled him) now is the time to regrowth, rejuv, lifebloom yourself before he reaches you. make sure you are not casting if he puts the curse on you, cancel your cast and decurse yourself. 6.) now your barkskin should be up again so you should be able to nuke him with full hots on yourself. use treants / starfall / innervate if needed. The only thing different about this time is that he will randomly put the curse on you while you're casting wrath / starfire....its very important to be ready to cancel cast and decurse yourself because you will take too much damage otherwise. Nuke him down to a certain % and he will ghost form again... 7
.) repeat steps 3-6, kill and loot. Equipping a pvp trinket helps a lot for his 5 sec stun, especially when first learning how to solo this as a moonkin. I used mostly 226-232-245 pve gear.

The biggest challenge I've found when doing this is making sure you get the de-curse off in time, unfortunately I do get cursed during the first stage of the fight, and sometimes he puts it on you just before your cast gets off, also I'm probably getting old and losing a bit of reaction time, but i will endeavor.

3.2.2 is here

2009-09-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

3.2.2 went live last night and the changes for druids in the patch notes are

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

Druids
Talents
Balance
Moonkin Form: This form now also reduces the damage the druid takes while stunned by 15%.
Typhoon: The daze duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds.
Feral Combat
Infected Wounds: The debuff generated by this talent no longer stacks and instead causes the full effect with a single application.
Predatory Strikes: This talent now also causes the druid's finishing moves to provide a 7/13/20% chance per combo point to make the next Nature spell with a cast time below 10 seconds instant cast.

What this means for us.

For PVE it doesn't look like much of a different, the change to the talent infected wounds was a slight buff as it get's applied with 1 hit, now i haven't played much feral this expansion, but honestly, i expect this pretty much does nothing for PVE

For PVP however, although at first it looks like a buff (get's applied on 1 stack) the elite PVPers over at Arena Junkies have been calling it a nerf, 1 stack means it's easier to remove.

Ferals have received a huge PVP buff with predatory strikes this lets them cast an instant nature spell after a 5 point combo, instant HT and Regrowth for heals, and instant cyclones are already being called op and getting complained about. I remember back when T5 was around, and ferals would wear 2 piece for instant regrowths. Now it's a built in talent that will be extremely strong in PVP especially arena.

For PVE, i don't think it will be so game breaking, if a feral kitty has to heal themselves the raid is not really doing it's job, although it may help those kitties that like to solo things.

Regrowth over HT will give you a slighter increase in healing due to the catform giving a 20% buff to healing spells, so the ticks will hit for a greater amount.

For Moonkin, we had a buff to a Typhoon, all the talk of increased knockback, as far as i can tell, never came to fruition.

I guess all the complaints from various forums, about shortening the distance on Typhoon caused Blizz to rethink the change, keeping typhoon at 30 yards with a 15 yard knockback would of been extremely good.

It seems the final change that has hit live servers has been to increase the dazed portion to 6s from 3, this is obviously a PVP buff, although i guess it does help Moonkins that like to solo a few mobs (they'd be using root and cyclone on single mobs)

The change to 15% dmg reduction while stunned is nice, once again this is a PVP buff, and we'll see if these 2 changes alone are enough to fix moonkin pvp (doubtful)

Typhoon glyph change is a meh, i guess a buff is better than a nerf, but who actually uses this?

The Typhoon glyph is purely for PVE, since the knockback on typhoon is the most important aspect of this ability in PVP.

Serious raiding glyphs are moonfire, insect swarm and starfire

Although some people have been saying the starfall glyphs are viable now.

Arena Season 7 is here

2009-09-02T05:32:00.000-07:00

One of the easiest ways to gear up a noob casual like me is by collecting honor points and buying the latest available PVP gear.

I have friends that play this game that are even more noob then a casual like me, they like to do things on their own, they don't seem to enjoy the social aspect of the game (getting groups and making friends) and seem to be happy to just do quests and BG's, however they want the best gear...

So the best way for them to gear up is farm the honor system.

Since i always have to google gear requirements, i thought i would post a list of the gear and rating requirements for the current season.

It also appears the 213 level battlemaster trinkets have been removed from the vendors, not sure if this is an oversight or not, but i do know some of my friends who had been farming honor are bummed over this.

No Rating Requirements
Deadly Gloves 31,600 or 7,200 honor 200 arena
Deadly Chest 49,600 or 12,000 honor 350 arena
Deadly Shoulders 31,600 or 9,600 honor 275 arena
Deadly Pants 49,600 12,000 honor 350 arena
Deadly Hat 49,600 or 12,000 honor 350 arena

(other lists have the deadly off pieces but i didn't see them on my quick scout of the vendors)
Deadly Bracer
Deadly Belt
Deadly Boots
Deadly Neck
Deadly Ring
Deadly Cape 38,000 honor
Deadly Trinket 15300 honor
Furious Bracer 31,600 honor
Furious Belt 49,600 honor
Furious Boots 49,600
Furious Neck 38,0000 honor
Furious Ring 38,000 honor
Furious Cape 38,0000 honor
Furious Trinket 49,600 honor

Ratings Required
700+: Furious Relics 6400 honor 250 arena
800+: Furious Gloves 7200 honor 400 arena
900+: Furious Legs 12000 honor 700 arena
1000+: Furious Chest 12000 honor 700 arena
1100+: Furious Helm 12000 honor 700 arena
1200+: Relentless Bracer 39,400 (honor)
1250+: Relentless Belt 62,000 (honor)
1300+: Relentless Boots 62,000 (honor)
1350+: Furious Shoulders 9600 honor 550 arena
1400+: Relentless Gloves 1300 arena
1450+: Relentless Neck 47,400 (honor)
1500+: Relentless Ring 47,400 (honor)
1550+: Relentless Legs 2150 arena
1600+: Relentless Chest 2150 arena
1650+: Relentless Trinket 62,000 (honor)
1700+: Relentless Wands/Relics/etc 1150 arena
1750+: Relentless Cape 47,400 (honor)
1800+: Relentless Weapon - lvl245
1900+: Relentless Helm 2150 arena
2000+: Relentless Shoulders 1750 arena
2200+: Relentless Weapon - lvl258 35000 honor 1200 arena points
2300+: Relentless Tabard

Minimum Gear Required for Anzu

2009-08-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

Well its seems my blog gets the most hits for my Anzu posts, so i thought i would revisit it.

The druid mount is considered to be one of the most exclusive mounts due to the fact you need a druid to farm it, and it looks so different from everything else.

Since a lot of people are doing this on their alt druids they don't have the greatest gear, so they are wondering what the minimum gear requirement is. My friend who has a feral druid with 36k hp was laughing at how easy this is, i myself found this difficult when i started soloing this, I only have about 25k hp in bear.

I've been playing mainly Moonkin in WOTLK and some Resto, so i've attempted to do Anzu as a Moonkin, and although my gear isn't great it's not the worst either, and i found it really really hard.

Feral has 2 specs now and i've been playing with feral kitty as my offspec, however i found i just didn't have the dps in cat and i didn't have the survivability in bear to do this.

So just to be able to solo Anzu i've respecced as a feral bear, i took all the tanking talents and things that would reduce damage, i've found heals in feral gear are absolute crap, and against Anzu, you don't want to shift out of bear that much as you can get stunned shifting and take damage in caster form.

So how much gear do you need? Well my bear tank is only in a few purples, 3 from PVP a few from instances, but then i am also wearing blue items from questing, and even a trinket from TBC.

All up i have 25k HP, 20000 armour, and 6k attack power. And i would say this is probably around the minimum limit at what you would want your stats to be.

I still advocate clearing the last boss Ikiss first while your learning this, as stealthing through the back door will make it much quicker after wipes, also clearing mobs from the Ikiss's room reduces the risk of getting feared into another group of mobs.

Fighting Ikiss as feral is quite easy, just go in as cat and dps him quickly until he does his AoE, run behind a pillar heal up and rinse and repeat.

Clearing out the mobs is a bit tougher, make sure you throw 2 hots on yourself, sleep the bird, go bear then use your CD's and burst as many mobs down as possible, you want to focus fire if possible as burning a mob down reduces the incoming damage, swipe just doesn't do enough damage to get the groups down in time before they beat the crap out of you.

On the larger groups you may want to wait for your savage roar cooldown.

On Anzu, hot yourself then just go in and tank him, i find improved leader of the pack is enough to keep you healed up going into the first bird phase.

When the birds drop you can just AoE swipe them down, if you have AP trinkets you may want to activate these.

I always find this the breaking point of if you can do this or not, Anzu pops out of his phaze after a set amount of time, so you need to get the birds down as quickly as possible having Anzu on you as well as a bunch of birds just puts you behind further.

Once the birds are down you will be back on Anzu again, you will need to get up to full health before the next bird phase, there are a few ways to do this, use a pot, a healthstone, bear heal.

DPS Anzu down until he phazes out again, if you really need a heal, as soon as he phazes out walk away and try to get a regrowth off on yourself (i've had him hit before when he's phazed out... go figure), just be careful as there's been a few times he drops a stun on me as i shift out, or he debuffs you so you take damage on casts anyway. I try not to shift if possible so i use trinkets for maximum survivability.

Take out the second round of birds, and if you can survive that with enough HP, you should be able to finish Anzu off.

Just a few tips that have worked for me.

I save barkskin for the birds phase to reduce dmg.

I use trinkets for survivability

I use the eng trinket Noise Machine, i know it doesn't help my dps at all, but the fight takes me about 6 minutes, so it will proc 5-6 times saving me 5500-6600 worth of damage.

I use the TBC trinket Argussian Compass which drops from the Black Stalker in Heroic Underbog, yes it's an old trinket, but i can activate it during the bird phase to save me 1150 damage each time.

I find getting to the bird phase is relatively easy, it's surviving the bird phase with enough HP that was causing me problems.

If you have the Bear Heal Glyph, it will also give you 20% more from a pot.

Take a pot and hit up a Warlock for a healthstone, they are on different cooldowns.

You can pot and healthstone in bear form.

This is just a guide to help you if your in crap gear, this fight becomes relatively easy once you gear up.

Yes i have crap crap feral gear, this is my off off spec.

Good luck with the mount dropping! I've done this over 100 times and haven't seen it once yet.

Not Children's Week...

2009-08-11T20:18:00.001-07:00

Well having a matron in Dalaran telling me to adopt an orphan is not children's week....

After not doing any of the special event achievements ever, i'd finally decided to attempt to do the ones from last week. I thought it was children's week, after all why else would you tote an orphan around town and show them the sites, but after logging a ticket and saying, why the hell is making my totem caps flags in PVP and showing them the sites not getting me achievements, they replied, because your and idiot and it's not chicldrens week. Ok they didn't say idiot, but i can say that's what they were thinking...

Good luck to all of you that actually do all your achievements for your mount!

Children's Week!

2009-08-06T22:52:00.000-07:00

Well it's Children's Week, i must admit i've never been that hot on the World Events, doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff, e.g. getting achievements has never really appealed to me, after all, it doesn't improve my character, doesn't get me better gear, make my character stronger, or give me extra abilities that would help my poor game skills.

But... achievements that give you extra items i'd actually use? I'm up for that, so finally after thinking about getting a 310% flying mount i had to look up how to actually get one.

Let's see the options.
Top 0.5% PVP Arena
Top raiding achievements
Holiday Achievement

Hmm as a casual gamer it doesn't seem like i have many options. So Children's week started up this week, and i thought, well i have some new friends playing, why not do some crappy achievements with them. So we started the Children's Week quest line and took little orphan Annie on a tour of Azeroth and completed the quests.

Before completing the last quest and taking little orphan Annie back to the orphanage, i tried to do a couple of the achievements. Well the easy ones, like have orphan out while hearthing, i did it, no achievement, my friend did it no achievement, so i figured we'd have to finish the quest line and get one of the permanent pets before doing it.

So maybe i'm dumb, ignorant or naive or all of the above. Handed my quest back, got a new pet that is NOT an orphan, and this dude won't let me do achievements either.

So i'm guessing the quests are a bit bugged, i've heard you can get another orphan from Shattrah, i may try that out, but a 1 year quest line to get a flying mount? And can you imagine if the achievements bug out and you have to wait for one more year.....

Riding Skills in 3.2!!

2009-08-06T07:59:00.000-07:00

Well i finally got my rogue to level 60 last weekend, I'd heard riding skills were going to be cheaper in 3.2, how cheap? Well 50g down from 600g, a significant saving and something i was wiling to wait 2 days for, after all it's probably taken me a year to get my rogue to level 60 so what's to more days!

What the exciting news was, is that flying mounts are now available for level 60's. They flying training was 600g and the mount was about 50g.

So where to buy mounts and skills? Well if your 60, i would say you've made your way over into TBC already.

Alliance can purchase the epic ground mount riding skill from the Honor Hold trainer, as well as the flying skills and mount. I thought i would have to hotfoot it back to Elwynn forrest for the riding skills but with the player base now not even wanting to spend 10g on repairs let alone 10 minutes to travel, Blizz have made picking up the riding stuff more convenient.

Nerf to Stealth Detection items

2009-07-21T22:57:00.001-07:00

Well i'm about 2 months late, but better late than never right?

Whole bunch of stealth detection items have been nerfed as they have been deemed to OP for PVP.

Here's the link
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17163476972&sid=1

Here's a copy of the post from Bornakk

We recently made some changes to items that grant stealth detection. We felt these items provided a necessary advantage in competitive PVP and forced players to use lower level equipment even when more powerful items were available to them. This item can no longer be used in the Arena:
Ultra-Spectropic Detection GogglesWe have removed stealth detection from the following items:
All epic engineering gogglesWe have reduced the stealth detection of the following items:
Catseye Ultra Goggles
Blood Guard's Dragonhide Gauntlets
Marshal's Dragonhide Gauntlets
Knight-Lieutenant's Dragonhide Gloves
General's Dragonhide Gloves
Bloodvine Lens
Knight-Lieutenant's Dragonhide Grips
Blood Guard's Dragonhide Grips
The Night WatchmanAll of these changes are already active and the tooltips will be updated with the next minor patch.

The Casual Gamer

2009-07-05T23:04:00.000-07:00

Well WoW has been out a long time, and the longer we play it the more you can see how the game is being catered more for the casual gamer as opposed to the hard core.

Back in the day when MMO's first came out, they were pretty hard core, my guildies tell me of epic war stories in the day's of playing EQ (Everquest) and camping mobs for 10 hours, 2 hour ghost runs to pick up your body only to die as soon as you rez and the list goes on.

Well Blizzard must be doing something right as the number of WoW subscribers is still over 12 million people.

So why the change?

Hardcore gamers are said to make up less than 5% of the population, which means the majority of subscribers are casual gamers. Hardcore gamers are on for longer hours which means they are using up Blizz's resources on their servers, hardcore gamers pay the same amount as the casual gamer, see where this is going?

If you were running a business, which gamer would you want to have as the majority of your customers?

Because of this, the game has been catered more for the casual gamer, now more than ever. Although i myself am a casual gamer (hence the lack of posts these last few months) I consider myself a "hardcore" casual gamer, that is i don't want the content so easy it's a breeze through.

It seems in the days of post WOTLK the game has become too dumbed down. I applauded Blizz when they brought in the badge system in TBC they made high quality items available for the casual player, they were not as good as the top tier items from raiding, but they were good, and they took a while to obtain.

Instances were hard in TBC, you had to use the right mix of CC, tanking and healing to finish an instance, and it still took 1.5 hrs. Heroic mode felt impossible at first! Even with experienced guildies in Karazan gear, i remember a heroic slave pens taking 5 hours! The game was a challenge and fun! The casual gamer could get good gear but it took time.

Then WOTLK came, i did my first instance, and the entire instance was multi mob tank and spank, i hit 80 and was scared to go into my first heroic as i was still in purple 70 gear with quest blues, yet it was easy! It was more of the same multi mob tank and spank. The game had been dumbed down to the point where it felt too easy...

Due to the ease of instances and multi mob tanking and spanking, i didn't even attempt stealth runs, i mentally noted mobs before a boss, and it seems they had taken out the need for stealth running, 2 groups of mobs before a boss that could easily be tanked with no cc... this helped me lose interest in running instances and pretty soon i was just running BG's for some gear. Back in those days i had no chance at soloing the old instances, being a moonkin spec with average gear, i wasn't willing to respec every other week.

Although the game is still a dumbed down version of it's former self, a few things have changed. 3.1 has introduced multi specs and new gear. Making it easier for the casual gamer to gear up, and go do some "fun" stuff.

"Fun" stuff being, i've heard of people attempting to solo old 40 man instances like MC and AQ.

Or solo mount farming in old instances like ZG or Magister's terrace.

I'm looking forward to getting some better gear, having a second spec that's good for soloing (or duoing) and having a look at old instances i haven't been to for years.

I know there are a lot of new players in the game, and it's also a great opportunity for them to look at some old content that helped make this game so popular.

OMG WTF I BEEN HAXORED!

2009-02-16T19:00:00.000-08:00

I'm going to talk about a topic that can unfortunately affect any one of us, and that is how to recover a hacked account.

Shortly after getting home from my trip i found my account had been hacked. It's depressing to try and logon and receive a message your account has been banned, and for those of us that it happens to for the first time, it can be frustrating and a bit bewildering.

I've heard of other people being hacked, and had guildies been hacked, but in the back of my mind, i've always have the thought, i'm careful and it won't be me. With the proliferation of kiddie scripts, and "how to" guides, hacked accounts are becoming more and more common.

At first i was pretty depressed, the quickest recovery i had heard of was 2 weeks, and that person lost all of his gold and most of his gear and Blizz weren't able to recover it! I've heard of nightmare stories of people not being able to recover accounts at all! And thinking of how many hours we put into this game, you do get emotional attachments to your characters. Enough to make people just plain quit.

Now i enjoy this game a lot, and i was considering what would i do if my account was not recoverable, i enjoy the Druid class very much (much more than my rogue, hence my rogue is still in the 50's....) But would it be time to reroll?

So of course when i was at work, i was very productive, and looked up how to recover my account.

Some of the help topics on this out there on the net are unfortuantely outdated or just not correct.

So i will share with you my experience, so if unfortuantely it does ever happen to you, at least you will have some idea of what to expect.

Most accounts are compromised by the following ways.

A friend who's got your account details and has just decided to sell you out.
A Trojan on your computer that's keylogging your account details.
A Trojan on a computer you've played WoW on (Netcafe, friends house)
A hacker that has gotten into your email and been able to get your password from there

First off if you find your account is compromised, make sure it's not your email account that was compromised, otherwise once you recover your account, it will be hacked again.

Log onto the Blizzard website http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/ and reset your password from a computer that is not compromised! (Very important to know the answer to your secret question)

If your account has been banned in the duration it was hacked, you will need to get Blizz to unban your account, thankfully in today's day and age, Blizz are now accepting electronic submissions (in the past they only accepted faxes and snail mail)

To unban your account you will need to download a form
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/WoW/other/Account-Recovery.pdf, fill it out, and also scan some form of ID (drivers license being the popular choice)
The email submission must be under 3mb, and the scan must be clear enough for them to read it.

Email the submission to wowaccountrecovery@blizzard.com

You will receive an email from Blizzard resetting your password.

So now you can log into your account, and see how much damage the hacker has done.
Most hacking is done by thieves who are mainly after gold so they can on sell it for real cash. So after logging on, of course i found all my characters naked, well almost naked, surprisingly, the hacker must of been in a hurry, as he left me 50g, and missed 1 bag with some blue gear in it in the bank. If your character is an enchanter (as mine is) the hacker will DE all your BOP items, as shards are still worth a bit of gold.

Luckily none of my characters were transferred across servers (at least i haven't noticed yet since i only have one main) hackers do this to sell gold across different realms.

Once i had my account back (it only took them 1 day to unban my account, and this was done over the weekend, great job Blizz!) i logged a call with a GM, admittedly the GM took a while to respond about 4-6 hours, and honestly there's not a lot you can do with a semi naked character (luckily i had some PVP gear that could neither be DE'd or sold).

Once the GM responded to my ticket, he referred my ticket to a "character specialist" and it only took Blizz less than 1 day to restore the majority of my stuff. The majority being all of my gear, i was short on a lot of consumables like pots and water, and missing gold and enchanting dust.
I was quite happy with the turnaround time, my character was once again "playable". The restore of gold took a little longer, i received an email about 2 days later saying they had finished their investigation and restored 90g.... i was :( since i had over 8k gold.

I wrote them an email politely asking them to investigate further and to investigate if i could get my enchanting dust back, as i had a lot, then a couple days after that i received another email stating they had returned a lot more gold and enchanting dust.

I was very happy with the service i received and the speed of the turnaround, approximately 1 week, i pretty much had everything back to normal, i was still missing some miscellansous consumables like pots, buff food, but that was very minor in relation to everything i got back, so i was one happy camper.

Now i understand not everryone is going to have as smooth an experience as me, and although i was frustrated i did remain calm throughout the whole affair, after all it's not Blizz's fault my account got comprosmised, and i'm sure screaming or swearing at a GM is not going to get you very far.

So moving forward, what can be done to protect your account?

Well i must admit for me, i'm still not sure how i was compromised, but i can put it down to one of 2 things. I was in a netcafe recently when i went on my holiday and played WoW, so it might of been compromised there, my home computer was being a little strange when i got back, so it might of gotten a trojan.

I've since reinstalled my entire OS, and have also installed a Virus Scanner (supposedly most of the WoW trojans are easily caught by a decent up to date Virus Scanner) and i've also installed a personal firewall, Sunbelt offer a free firewall that's easy to use.

I've also been lucky enough to receive a gift of a Blizzard authenticator off a good friend who sent me one from Europe after hearing my woes (ones purchased in the Europe store work with US servers, so i'm pretty sure the authenticator's are not region specific) and for the price of $6.50 USD i would say it's a very cheap investment to protect your character. What's a Blizzard Authenticator you ask? It's a small electronic token that you can hang off your keychain, you press a button, it flashes up a number, that you need to input when you log onto your WoW account, the downside is, if you lose your token, you will need to contact Blizz to get back into your account, the upside is, it provides a lot more protection. (similiar to VPN tokens from work, or some banks have tokens to login to your online banking account)

Blizzard Authenticator FAQ
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/24660.

Make sure you keep your OS up to date with the latest patches (Microsoft make it very easy to update your PC, not sure about Mac or Linux)

Don't share your password!

Only download mods from reputable sites, manually extract the zips into the addon folders and check for .exe files

Stay Safe!

Stealthing Elders in Northrend Dungeons

2009-01-28T22:21:00.000-08:00

I know i said my next post would be about recovering hacked accounts, but i saw an interesting thread on stealthing to the Elders in Northrend Dungeons. I thought i should get this info up sooner rather than later, since Lunar festival is only on for a short amount of time, and people are working through their achievements.

It seems a bunch of Druids are stealthing to the Elders in the Northrend Dungeons, I'm sure if Druids can do this Rogues should be able to as well.

I'm too lazy to do achievements, so i probably won't be attempting this, but there is a forum topic about this on the official WoW forums.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14637453802&sid=1

Here's a summary, as we all know how forum threads can be eaten by the internet.

Drak'Tharon Keep
From all reports, it looks easily stealthable to the Elder

Halls of Stone
Reports say this is also an easily stealthable instance to the Elder

Nexus
Some people say you must kill the first mob as he see's through stealth, however it has been reported you can just throw out a trusty Sooth Animal and be able to stealth past.

Utgarde Keep
2 sets of mobs near the flame walls must be cleared, each set is a group of 3, when these mobs are cleared, you can stealth on to the Elder.

Azjol Nerub
The first boss must be killed in order to get to the Elder. Some people have claimed to solo this, but you may want to do this in a group.

Utgarde Pinnacle
Reports say a full group is needed for this instance.

Gundrak
Must be compeleted in Heroic Mode in order to get to the Elder. Moorabi the Mammoth boss must be killed, if Moorabi is dead you can stealth your way past the Gorlok mobs to the Elder

Just remember, if someone has cleaned out these instances in heroic, you can borrow that empty instance and get to the Elders fairly easily, just remember, you'll get yourself locked into that instance.

Nitro Boosts nerfed in 3.0.8

2009-01-21T22:21:00.000-08:00

Hi All

Well it's been a little while since i've written, being able to travel away for Christmas and New Years is a nice thing, although it has cut into my WoW time.

Well the topic i have been thinking of writing about for the last while is how the WoTLK expansion has affected stealth runs, well not just stealth runs but gameplay as well due to the way current content has changed.

However, shortly after returning home from my holidays my account was hacked, so i've been on a short hiatus, and my next article will be about what to do in that horrible situation you wouldn't wish against your worst WoW ganker (well you probably would)

In the meantime i just wanted to say 3.0.8 was released last Tuesday, and the Engineering tinker Nitro Boosts has been stealth nerfed!

To be honest i'm not sure why people say it was "stealth" nerfed, nerfed yes, stealth nerfed well it depends on your definition of the term.

People say there was no mention in the patch notes that this item was nerfed, however i've known about this before the patch as it has been reported on other sites and forums.

The nitro boosts tinker before the patch gave you 150% speed for 5 seconds, with a cooldown of 5 minutes. With a possible backfire of throwing you high up into the air, and possibly falling to your death.

The nerf has reduced the 150% speed boost to 2 seconds, however the cooldown has been reported to have been lowered 3 minutes (even though the tooltip still says 5 minutes.) People that have used this extensively after the patch have said that they may have removed the backfire, as noone has been shot up like a rocket yet.

I must admit the first time i played with these, i was pleasantly surprised at the distance that could be attained in 5 seconds, however after playing with these after the 3.0.8 patch, i feel the reduction in boost time is a pretty big nerf. I think 3 seconds would of been a lot fairer.

As it is now a 2 second 150% speed boost with a 3 min cd, i think this tinker is still useable, Druids/Rogues, chaining a sprint/dash after using this item for a quick flag escape or for chasing down prey down could mean the different in a PvP battle. Being the first to tag that NPC for farming or questing can also be useful.

It's also been reported that the use of this item no longer breaks stealth. I haven't had the chance to test this myself, but it may be helpful for a Rogue/Druid sneaking up on their opponents trying to avoid that aoe blast, or just getting yourself through a stealth run quicker.

Season 5 is here

2008-12-18T20:11:00.000-08:00

For all you Rogues and Druids that have banked up honor points, Season 5 is finally here! Officially it started on Dec 16th, and i can see a flurry of people on my server putting teams together.

I enjoy the PVP aspect of the game and have a bunch of points saved, but the questions is, what is the first thing i buy?! We're all worried that what we buy with our valuable points will be obsoleted way to quickly, and why the heck are there 3 different sets of PVP armor?!

Well first off, i would say from a PVP perspective you can't go wrong with buying the new PVP trinket, in my case the Medallion of the Alliance but i'm sure some of you will be purchasing the Horde one.

After that you need to decide how badly do you want the PVP gear and if your willing to wait, 3 sets of PVP gear were released

Savage Gladiator - blue pvp set
Hateful Gladiator - epic pvp set
Deadly Gladiator - even better epic pvp set

I would really advise skipping the blue set altogether, the Deadly Gladiator pieces require personal ratings to purchase while the Hateful pieces do not. If your good in the arena and you find getting a good rating comes easily, you'll probably end up skipping the Hateful set, if your an average player, you will probably need to start buying Hateful pieces to be able to get some sort of rating that will let you purchase the low end pieces.

Arena is a great alternative to PVE for gearing up, even if your losing 10 games a week you'll still some epics.

Soloing Anzu as a Druid with any spec and gear

2008-12-17T00:52:00.000-08:00

Jitsuk at elitepvpers.de has found an easy way for a druid of any spec and gear to solo Anzu for the mount.

Here is the original article
http://www.elitepvpers.de/forum/wow-guides-templates/192023-guide-get-raven-lords-mount-easily-solo-druid.html

He says his method is an exploit, so i urge people trying this to beware the consequences.

First off you must be able to summon Anzu, and he says you must be 80 (not really sure why this would be the case)

Stealth through to Anzu's room, of course the first boss can see through stealth, so if you stealth around the edges he won't be able to detect you due to the level different. I've also heard Night Elves can run straight through to the other side aggroing the boss, once you get through the doorway Night Elves can Shadowmeld to drop agro, similiar to the way Rogues used to vanish back in TBC.

(Note if you find you die often attempting Anzu or clearing the room, you may want to kill the final boss Ikiss as that locks you into the instance and opens the back door shortcut into the final boss's room)

In Anzu's room you need to clear enough trash to not get agro when fighting Anzu.
He recommends clearing the pack on the left hand side of the room, pull the mobs behind the crypt in order to LoS other pats and mobs.

When your ready summon Anzu, and stand next to the crypt on the south west side of the room, just in range of the Eagle Spirit but out of range of Anzu. The Eagle Spirit is the bird to the east.
When you summon Anzu for some reason he doesn't engage and just sits there, you must keep HoTs on the Eagle Spirit at all times, the Eagle Spirit will do 300 damage a second to Anzu, and when Anzu gets really low you must finish him with one spell, (i'm guessing winding up a starfire would be the safest) If you don't finish him with your spell and the Eagle Spirit does suppposedly Anzu is unlootable.

If you mess up and miss HoTs or dps Anzu, supposedly he agroes and all his birds come out and and he tries to the wipe the floor with you.

Since the Eagle spirit only does 300 dmg a second and Anzu has 236k HP, this will take a while.
So good luck in getting your Druid mount, the drop rate has been reported as being 1%

Resto Druid Solos Anzu

2008-12-12T01:51:00.000-08:00

Well i've only been 80 for a few days now, so i'm slowly making my way into groups and running heroics. I've not yet started stealthing instances yet, as i want to see what the actual instances look like. When i run an instance, i always take mental notes if the instance looks stealthable or not, i guess it's a habit of doing so many stealth runs in TBC and Vanilla WoW.

But this post is not about stealthing, well i guess it could be, as Druids would most likely be stealthing to Anzu for farming the mount.

As you know, many Feral Druids are already solo farming Anzu, which makes sense, as i think Feral is out best soloing spec. Non mana dps, which means you can dps forever, shifting into Bear for extra tankiness or Kitty for extra dps, being a feral you'll naturally have lots of dodge to have a lot of damage avoidance, and with talents you can even improve your healing power slightly. With the changes coming in, Ferals will very soon be shifting for a very cheap cost to mana, that with free heals from ILOTP means ferals have a lot going for them in soloing.

Not all of us Druids are Feral though, there is a smattering of Resto's and Balance Druids out there, and we're also interested in that ooh so sexy epeen Druid mount.

Well i'm happy to say that Resto's are now claiming to have solo'd Anzu, i'm not sure of their gear level, but i'd be guessing they're at least geared with the new heroic goodies, supposedly the strat is to keep themselves healed while hotting the Eagle totem (it does 300 dmg per second while hotted) so although this could take a while, a few resto Druids are claiming to have done it.

Only one problem, because the totem does the majority of the damage, Anzu becomes unlootable....

I'd say a resto Druid that is able to balance their dps with the Eagle totems DPS will be able to down Anzu and loot him soon enough, it's still early days of Wrath and we're only just gearing up now.

Now i'm just waiting for a Balance Druid to claim doing this, i'm keen to give it a go myself, but my gear is still quite lacking.

Mages Mirror Image knocking Rogues and Druids out of stealth

2008-12-10T21:19:00.000-08:00

Well a few months back we had all that fuss about starfall taking stealthers out of stealth.

Seems we have the same situation again, but this time with Mages Mirror Image.

Is this a bug? Well people reckon it is, but only time will tell until (if) Blizz fix this.

So why is this so bad compared to other Mages AoE that can knock us stealthers out of stealth, supposedly the range of this is huge, at least with a Mages AoE search for a stealther, they can only choose a localised area to try to catch us, Mirror Image (like Starfall) seems to out us in a very large area. Rogues have complained of been outed from 50 yards away, i haven't tested this myself, but even if it's outing us at a 30 yard radius, that is a big unfair advantage they have against us.

Anzu soloable for mount

2008-12-07T21:51:00.000-08:00

Since i'm not yet 80, and have been working on leveling i haven't had the chance to do any stealth runs in Wrath, i'm almost 80, and keen to start stealth running again and soloing some old instances.

People have been soloing, Ony, ZG and the old Heroics.

One boss i'm particularly keen to try is Anzu, as of patch 3.0.2 it's been reported the mount still drops and Feral Druids are able to solo him.

I have grown quite fond of my old cat mount, but with the new stables feature, i think it's time to add some more mounts to the collection.

No more FAP for Ferals!! Reduction in Druid armor!

2008-11-25T22:04:00.001-08:00

Well i must admit, when i hear the word FAP i have a laugh, as it has been known to mean other things. In this case i am referring to Feral Attack Power, Blizz is changing the way Feral Druids use weaps, instead of FAP they will have Druid Feral attack power (AP) scale based on the DPS of the item.

Link here
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/12891010295-upcoming-feral-changes-part-ii.html

Also in this post it mentions Bears will lose armor, now i've heard this news before, but i guess i haven't written about it yet.

Blizz has stated that Bears will no longer get the multiplier for bonus armor items such as weaps, trinkets, rings, necks and cloaks. The multiplier will only affect cloth and leather items.

Blizz are compenstating Ferals by improving the Survival of the Fittest Talent to increase armor contribution from items by 22%/33%/66% making it quite similiar to the current armor bonus.

Is this a good thing? Well i think it depends on how they implement these multiplier bonuses to Tree and Moonkin form, will Moonkin and Tree get multiplier bonuses from these items? I haven't seen a post stating it either way yet.

In general, i think it's a good thing as it does give Bears more options in what tanking trinkets, rings, cloaks and weaps to use (although i haven't seen an armor necklace yet)

Since vanilla WoW tank Druids have been pigeonholed into using certain items (The Warden Staff springs to mind), those Druids that mistakenly didn't choose Mark of Tyranny back when doing Blackrock Spire quests kicked themselves for years when wanting to maximise their tanking abilities until new trinkets came out in TBC.

This change will give Bear Tanks a lot more options when choosing tanking gear.

With Blizz trying to balance the stats between all the classes, i'm sure this will eventually work out, but as with all changes that are made, there will be teething problems.

Ony and ZG Soloable at 80!

2008-11-25T07:41:00.000-08:00

OK not exactly stealth running material, but since i'm not 80 yet and haven't had the chance to stealth the new instances and write up guides, i thought it would be useful to post news for Druids and Rogues, obviously since my main is a Druid my posts will probably have a Druid bias, but i am working on my Rogue (albeit a lot slower then i would like)

Found an interesting post on the official WoW forums by a level 80 Feral Druid that has managed to Solo Onyxia easily, 12 minutes of work netted him 177g + T2 epics and blues.

Original Post
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12890945951&sid=1

I know how the official WoW forums likes to swallow posts so i will summarise.

He's downed the following bosses in ZG

Raptor
Snake
Tiger
Panther
Spider
Hakaar

(Been a long time since i did ZG myself, so i can't remember if all these are correct)

And he's downed Onyxia in Cat form.

For Ony he uses mangle a lot, phase 2, he goes bear and swipes, then back to cat in phase 3.

I'm looking forward to 80 myself, i also like to do ~~stupid~~ fun stuff.

More AoE for Rogues and Kitties

2008-11-25T07:12:00.000-08:00

With the increased amount of AoE needed in current instances, Blizz has thrown Rogues and Kitties a bone by increasing their AoE abilities.

Rogues will no longer have a CD for Fan of Knives (currently 10 seconds), and they're re-doing the way damage is calculated to make it a little more effective.

Kitties will be given a new swipe ability as a base ability.

Here's the link to the Blue post in the official WoW forums.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12891294995&sid=1

(coming in a minor content patch if your too lazy to click on the link, should be on the PTR soonish)

I'm not sure how useful these abilities will be in leveling. (If your not 80 yet)

Druid Balance specs have been given amazing AoE in WOTLK, i'm a slow quester myself, and i've heard the first Druid to hit 80 actually did a ton of AoE farming, from what i read some people that AoE level say they can clear 250-350k per hour of XP unrested.

I decided to give it a go myself in Dragonblight for an hour and only managed to do about 400k WITH RESTED. Not too horrible (and definitely faster than my questing abilities) but still not as high as i would of liked.

So for those that don't know the numbers, for me (and a few people i've spoken to) it takes us about 7 hours of played time to do a level, with my the AoE grind (provided i have rested XP) i should be able to clear a level in about 3-4 hours.

At the moment it's about 1.5 million XP per level, mind you i'm only level 74 still (i know i know hurry up and get to 80 so i can post some guides)

I doubt Kitty swipe will be as effective as Moonkin (and possibly) Resto grinding, but Fan of Knives definitely looks like it may have some prospects, i'll have to work on my Rogue some more to know for sure.

New Stealth Enchant

2008-11-19T12:15:00.000-08:00

WOTLK has introduced a new stealth enchant into our stealthing arsenal

Enchant Cloak - Shadow Armor
5 sec cast
Tools:

Runed Titanium Rod
Reagents:
Infinite Dust (20), Greater Cosmic Essence (12), Abyss Crystal
Permanently enchant a cloak to increase stealth slightly and Agility by 10. Requires a level 60 or higher item.

The recipe is sold by Vanessa Sellers in Dalaran and you need to be a level 440 enchanter to cast it.

Unfortunately i can't dig up any info on the effectiveness of the stealth portion of the enchant, but i would assume it to be no powerful then the classic Enchant Cloak - Stealth

For most stealthers we use a low level BOE cloak that we swap out when it's time to fight.

Unless the stealth portion of this enchant is better then the existing enchant i don't see many stealthers taking this option since this enchant looks expensive (at least at the time being)

This enchant looks more suitable to PVPers who need the extra edge in getting the jump over their competition.

For the raiding min/maxers i would expect them to get Enchant Cloak - Major Agility or Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed over this one

Night Elves still have increased stealth

2008-11-17T20:58:00.000-08:00

Well the Shadowmeld tooltip no longers states it increases a Night Elf's stealth level, because it doesn't. This led me to believe that Night Elves lost their increased stealth racial. (I was wrong)

What Blizz has done is they've taken the increased stealth out of the shadowmeld racial and given it a new Night Elf racial name Elusiveness.

Elusiveness
Reduces the chance enemies have to detect you while Shadowmelded or Stealthed.

This is a passive effect that works anytime you are stealthed, prowled or shadowmelded.

As before it gives you +5 stealth levels (that's 1 character level) of stealth and this change was introduced in 3.0.2

(so pretty much nothing has changed)

Boots of Displacement no longer available :(

2008-11-16T21:41:00.000-08:00

Well with 3.0.2 came the new Naxx, unfortunately this means old Naxx has been removed and with it the best stealthing boots in the game are no longer available :(

People who are already the proud owners of a pair of Boots of Displacement will be able to wear them around proudly like a kid wearing a pair of mint Air Jordans

I only had a very few chances to run Naxx myself, so was never able to pick up a pair which is dissapointing.

Rogues don't have to worry as much Darkmantle Boots (a rogue only item) are still available and also provide the same stealth level.

The rest of us will have to stick with our +5 stealth booties (Boots of Displacement and Darkmantle boots both give +8 stealth)

Wrath of the Lich King Live!

2008-11-15T21:28:00.001-08:00

As i'm sure you all know by now, Wrath of the Lich King is now live!!

It's only been 2 days yet there are already lvl 80 characters on my realm and Deathknights in the 70's!

I can see a lot of people have come back to the game as my server has queues of over 2 hours during peak times :(

I've been slow with the levelling myself, only having just dinged 71 after 2 days, but i did get the opportunity to run Utgarde Keep (unfortuantely not stealthed)

It was very easy, as i'm sure it's built for people in greens, and i was able to heal it as a balance spec. Our group had some decently geared people.

On the plus side, when i run an instance i always look at the stealth side of things, and I would say from the layout it looks easy enough to stealth.

Of course only time will tell, as i didn't check if any of the mobs had stealth seeing abilities.

Enjoy the expansion, i'm keen to get to 80 and start stealth running again, but i admit i suck at quests, so it could be a little while before i get some new guides up.

Shadowmeld in World PVP

2008-11-12T06:16:00.000-08:00

As an Alliance Druid I'm quite enjoying the new Shadowmeld, I never really realised how much I ate/drank Shadowmelded, until after the patch came out and Shadowmeld always cancelled my drinking. So since it's nerfed my Shadowmeld drinking I have to learn to take advantage of new ways it can be used.

Getting used to using the new Shadowmeld in combat has been a bit slow for me, having a new utility ability is very cool, but sometimes I just forget to take advantage of it.

So reading various forums, someone mentioned they could make 500g an hour AoE farming the Blood Elves at the Ruins of Karabor, I didn't believe this, but I wanted to check it out anyway.

So I went their and started AoE farming with Starfall and Hurricanes to see what I could do. This is the first time I had been AoE farming, as previously this was not so efficient before the 3.0.2 patch. I found I could pull a lot of mobs, and just Hurricane them all down, with the mana recovery nerf I did have to spend some time drinking, but I was doing this more for curiousity sake then any belief I was gonna make a ton of gold out of it.

The posts I read, another Moonkin Druid said he could pull 8 mobs at a time, in semi decent PVP gear myself, I found I was pulling a lot more mobs than that and easily mowing them down, I'd get to 50% health or less and no mana, so I would have to drink back up again.

During one of my AoE's a Horde Pally rode by, I was wary, so I targeted him to see what he was doing, and sure enough, he started attacking me, he was probably undergeared, or a noob, (or possibly not ret, but what pally in their right mind wouldn't be ret right now!) because I didn't die in 3 hits and I had about 5-6 mobs still wacking on me.

As a typical reaction I Cycloned the Pally first then started to kite away with mobs on me, weighing up my options I remembered to Shadowmeld, and sure enough I lost the mobs aggro, the funny thing is, they started towards the Pally who was Cycloned. I'm not sure if it was because he was the only other player there, or if when he came at me he did an AoE attack that did some damage to them. Before the Pally came out of the Cyclone I started charging up a Starfire, of course this took me back out of Shadowmeld, but the mobs stayed on the Pally, my Starfire hit the Pally, and the mobs beat on him some more.

After killing the Pally, I did what all rightously vengeful farmers do, I went and hid in the corner and started drinking/eating to restore my HP and Mana, the Pally quickly rez'd and tried to gank me while I was having my meal, I ran and accidently aggroed some mobs, so with some NPC's and a Horde Pally chasing my ass I Shadowmelded again, and once again the mobs went straight for the Pally.

I thought Shadowmeld was meant to restore agro when you came out of it, so I'm not sure if this is a broken mechanic, or just the way it works when your farming solo, but it was definitely fun training mobs onto the Horde Pally.

Hunters and Rogues have probably enjoyed being able to do this since release, but for the rest of us Night Elves the fun is just beginning, I wonder if this will get nerfed.

Overall I spent about an hour at the Ruins of Karabor and probably made less than 30g, I got some gold, some trash, and a bunch of Sunfury Signets and a couple of Arcane Tomes, in the old days when Signets and Tomes were worth something this might have been a good farm spot, but now, well let's be honest, 30g an hour sux. Sure I probably spent half of that time playing with a Pally, but still 60g an hour sux.

Shadowmeld OP or not OP?

2008-11-10T07:51:00.001-08:00

For many years, Night Elves have lauded shadowmeld as being the worst racial in the game. I admit, as a NE Druid I have drooled over having a Tauren warstomp, or an Undeads will of the forsaken or in recent times a Humans perception has been called OP (Over Powered) as Arena's popularity (and gear)increased.

But how bad was it? Thinking back at the multiple way's it's been used, shadowmeld was never THAT bad to begin with.

Hunter's (ab)used shadowmeld with aimed shot (you used to come out of shadowmeld when the spell was cast, now you come out of shadowmeld when you start casting the spell)

There was the get out of combat, drink and shadowmeld to hide while pvping.
This was especially popular with Night Elf Hunters that could drop out of combat anytime with , fall dead, eat/drink, shadowmeld.

Night Elves could hide at the start of Arena, some would sit in the starting area, while others would quickly run behind a pillar, or up on the bridge and meld, giving the appearance of 2 stealthers.

So admittedly, while shadowmeld was not as bad as Night Elves have complained about, many Night Elves definitely had race envy.

So what does the new shadowmeld do?

Shadowmeld (Racial)
Instant cast
Activate to slip into the shadows, reducing the chance for enemies to detect your presence. Lasts until cancelled or upon moving. Any threat is restored versus enemies still in combat upon cancellation of this effect.

And why are people complaining about it all of a sudden?

Well first let's compare the negatives about the new shadowmeld compared to the old one.

It no longer says it gives +1 level of stealth on the tooltip, so i will assume they took this out, although i've seen a few people comment that it still does (out of ignorance i guess)

Can no longer eat/drink then shadowmeld

2 minute CD

Ok, now for the positives

Can shadowmeld while in combat

Drops threat while melded

Although there are only 2 positives, they far outweigh the negatives, especially for us stealthers. As of patch 3.0.2 kitties can now eat then stealth! (rogues already knew they could do this)

Shadowmeld is like an additional vanish for rogues, taking them out of combat allowing them to stealth, and is like a vanish for druids.

If a Night Elf tank makes a bad pull, he can quickly meld to drop agro.

It lets Night Elf healers drop agro long enough for the tank to pick up the loose mob.

And for those Night Elves with instant broomstick mounts from Halloween, you can shadowmeld (drop combat) instant broomstick and get the hell out of their.

Pretty slick when most of us weren't expecting a racial change.

There are now a lot of people crying nerf! (seems like their is a lot of cry babies in this game) we'll see how Blizz handles it.

Starfall Nerfed against stealthers!

2008-11-06T01:36:00.000-08:00

Well for the PVPers out there, most stealthers will rejoice (only the moonkins may cry) as Starfall has been nerfed.

WTH is Starfall some people may be asking?

Starfall is a 51 point talent in the druid balance tree.

Starfall
Instant cast
30 yd range 35% of base mana
You summon a flurry of stars from the sky on all targets within 30 yards of the caster, each doing X Arcane damage, and an additional Y Arcane damage to all nearby targets within 5 yards. Maximum 20 stars. Lasts 10 sec.

With talents some druids had extended the range of this spell to 36 yards.

Why was it so good?

Well in PVP, this spell hit stealthed characters, and arena being such a popular part of the game, it was very easy for a druid to stealth to the centre and pop starfall. Arena's being so small, you were bound to pull stealthers out of stealth, and vanish wouldn't help as the effect lasted 10 seconds and could easily pull them back out of stealth again.

A lot of crying went on in the WoW forums, and finally after the patch last Tuesday Starfall was stealth nerfed! (forgive the pun) i didn't read anything in the patch notes about the changes to starfall, but various people have posted about the change.

I guess this is as official as it gets with a blue response

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12368278145&sid=1

So it can still possiblly get a druid or rogue out of stealth if they're standing next to a non stealthed character, but overall, a lot of people are saying starfall is absolute trash now.

Here's a link to the QQ posts on starfall, before and after

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12065154945&sid=1&pageNo=1

3.0.2 is here

2008-10-17T07:53:00.000-07:00

Well as i'm sure you all know by now, the latest patch 3.0.2 is here, the prelude to Wrath of the Lich King which should be out in less than a month.

The changes to the game are wide and sweeping, and i don't remember the game play feeling so different when vanilla WoW went to TBC.

Ret Paladins once known as Loladins are absolute BS now, with crits coming out left right and centre, so powerful that Blizz nerfed them within days of release and people are still complaining they are too powerful.

Obviously your not here to read about the sweeping changes in the game, just how they affect stealthing, i've played with my druid a little, but haven't taken the opportunity to do any stealth running yet, from playing, looking at the patch notes, chatting to friends and checking out other more informative websites, here are the immediate changes i can see that will affect stealth running.

Huge changes to damage!!

Seems that either the mobs have been toned down, or all the DPS has been tuned way to high for current content, my friend a feral druid soloed all of Sethek Halls in normal mode, not just the bosses, but doing the 5 pulls, he didn't have to shift out and heal at all, just smacked all the mobs around in bear.

Besides the huge damage changes

Druids

Druids and Shaman can now use items while shapeshifted.
This will help Kitties and Bears eat HP pots and Health Stones while in form

Entangling Roots: Can now be used indoors.
Real CC Besides just SAP and blind will make multi pulls even easier

Feral Swiftness: The movement speed buff can now be used indoors.
Faster stealthing for ferals

Nature's Grasp (Balance): Can now be used and can proc indoors. This is now a base ability at level 11 and has a 100% chance to proc.
Might help a druid that accidently agroes

New Spell: Revive - Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat. (Ranks 1-7 added)
This is a huge change!! most of our rez's were through Battle Rez's and jumpers, this gives druids a real rez, less graveyard running

Soothe Animal can now be used on Dragonkin as well as Beasts.
People may laugh about this spell, but us stealthers know it's power on beasts

Soothe Animal is now instant cast.
Well this won't really affect the run but i thought i'd mention it.

Rogues

Elusiveness (Subtlety) moved to Tier 3, now reduces cooldown of Vanish and Blind by 30/60 sec and Cloak of Shadows by 15/30 sec.
Let's rogues screw up a little more with their safety net vanish on a shorter CD

Evasion, Sprint and Vanish cooldowns reduced to 3 min.
Quicker to stealth to bosses, and more changes to speed up, also gives the chance to vanish more often

Master of Deception (Subtlety) reduced to 3 ranks.
Bout time they thinned this talent down on par with druids

Disarm Trap range increased to 20 yards, cast time reduced, now requires stealth.
Sounds good, although to be honest, i can't remember much opportunity to do this in a stealth run, maybe in future instances

Pick Lock and Disarm Trap no longer require Thieve's Tools.
Less crap to carry around is a good thing

Vanish no longer requires the reagent Flash Powder.
Same reason as the one above, bags just get full!

Night Elves
Shadowmeld
Shadowmade seems amazingly strong now, being able to shadowmeld while in combat and it getting rid of your agro until you come out of shadowmeld.

One melded you can wait to get out of combat then restealth, unfortunately it now has a 2 minute CD, doesn't give you +1 level of stealth anymore, and you can no longer eat and drink while melded

I'm sure there's quite a few other things that will affect runs, and who knows how much of a nerf bat Blizz may swing to try and level the playing field, all i can say is can't wait for Wotlk new instances to learn to stealth :)

p.s. Bobo it's time to come back

Stealthing Heroic Slave Pens with a Hunter

2008-10-14T23:03:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of doing a Heroic Slave Pens stealth run with a hunter in the group.

It was pretty cool to watch, and he was able to run up to the bosses a lot quicker than i thought, he fell dead a lot less times than i thought he would, and being a Night Elf hunter, he was able to shadowmeld in some places to wait for pats to walk past.

Since we had a rogue in the group, it made it a little quicker as a rogue can sap some mobs for him to run past, however without the rogue, the hunter could easily kite some mobs away with his pet, and run past and fall dead.

I wasn't at all surprised when my friend offered to bring his hunter, as i have done a partial stealth run with a hunter years ago (LBRS) and if you've seen the Hunter VS World video's you know Hunters are op! (Hunter solo's Heroic SP)

So here's the basics of how he did it.

When you enter Heroic SP, you see the bogstrocks path around the pool, wait till they run past and run up the other side, pause a moment to see where the other pack of bogstrocks is, and then you can run up the right hand side behind the cages, you should be able to shadowmeld behind them until the slave handler paths past.

Run into the tunnel there wil be 2 Coilfang Champions that patrol, run up to them and fall dead, wait till they path past, then run to the end of tunnel.

We sapped the Coilfang Slavehandler that paths on his own, waited for the patrol of Coilfang Champion and 2 Coilfang Enchantress's to path away, then ran up to them and fall dead.

Run to the right, watch the patrols, and you should be able to shadowmeld and wait for a patrol to path away.

Run along the waters edge towards the 2 Coilfang Champions and wait for the druid tank to pull. Our hunter said he can run past here, just get his pet to kite them away, but as with our normal stealth runs we kill these mobs, just in case someone dies or screws up the jump, so they can stealth back later.

Getting to the first boss (Mennu the Betrayer) is easy enough, just wait for the pats to path away, and the hunter can safely run under the bridge.

Once the first boss is pulled, he's pretty cake as you know.

Getting up to the second boss is easy (Rokmarr the Crackler), the hunter runs up the bridge, waits to see which side the pats are on, and runs up the other side. If you have 2 rogues, you can sap both Coilfang Observers, if you have one, the hunter has to run up and fall dead until they pass.

Once up to the top of the bridge, just wait for the 2 pats (Coilfang Champions i think) to path to the other side and drop down the gap.

Jump to the side the second boss is on, and he's cake.

Getting to the third boss Quag was a little harder, the hunter jumped back into the water to avoid the bogs near the second boss, and ran all the way into the tunnel up past the first boss again, this time he jumped down the other way (used to be the normal way) a rogue sapped the Coilfang Champion and the hunter could run past.

The hunter runs along the waters edge up to the first group that usually consists of a mix of different Coilfang mobs. We had our rogue sap the Coilfang Observer and a druid slept the beast.

Our hunter easily ran in between the gap to the side with the cages, we're it's safe for him to run up to the ramp that goes into the cave.

Now our hunter used his pet to kite a group of mobs into the water, as the mobs pathed away, the hunter used this to his advantage and ran into the cave, a quick fall dead in the case in front of the last group of Coilfang Mobs, means he only has to get past the 2 groups of bogstroks to get to Quagg.

Timing the pathing of the Bogstrokks was easier than expected, he ran up, shadowmelded near the edge of the pool behind the cages and then was able to run up the side of the pool towards the back of the cave.

It was a lot of fun doing a stealth run with a slightly different group makeup.

Given WoTLK is just around the corner and the 3.0.2 patch is tonight, it should shake things up a bit, druid rez's, new shadowmeld abilities should make stealth running slightly more interesting in the very very near future.

Perception Nerf

2008-09-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

It's time for all non human rogues and druids to rejoice, perception was nerfed big time in WOTLK.

news here

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9658356014&sid=2000&pageNo=5#97

Human
- Perception: changed to a passive, now grants one character level of passive stealth detection

Well this sux big time for humans, 1 passive level increase of stealth detection is like 5 points, while perception gives 50 points of stealth detection.

I wear an eng hat sometimes when i arena, and honestly, that 5 points it gives me does squat most of the time....

So my druid rejoices, but the human rogue i'm leveling is going to cry herself to sleep knowing that she will only have a short time of the godly ability of perception before it get's nerfed to the ground.

Well WOTLK will bring much more interesting changes, so who knows how the balance of things will change.

Stealthing Heroic Hellfire Ramparts

2008-08-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

Well it's about time i posted this guide, had it written for a long time, but been a bit lazy to polish it and post, still unpolished, but i thought it better to post, then just sit on my hard disk.

Definitely a tough one, and only for people that like a challenge.

Heroic Hellfire Ramparts

Hellfire Ramparts is definitely a challenge in stealthing, it is probably one of the hardest heroic instances I have stealthed through.

I think I spent about 8 hours in this instance over 2 separate occasions stealthing to the final boss, yes I know, 8 hours with no bosses down, I could of done it normally 8 times over, but the game has hit a point where no new content is coming out until Wotlk, so we're always looking for challenges.

The first 3 mobs in the instance should be taken out, the pat on the bridge (Bonechewer Ravener) can see through stealth, so in order to take him out safely we gotta kill the 2 Bonechewer Hungerers guarding the bridge.

Once past the bridge, stealth to the left, stick to the wall and stealth past the barrels, crates and other obstacles, you will see a patrol, 2 dogs and a orc (Shattered Hand Warhound and Bonchewer Ravenger). It's easier if you mark them up, so you can see them through the crates you are stealthing past.

Wait till the patrol is pathing away, then stealth up, you will come to a corner in the wall, wait there until the patrol stealths back past you towards the entrance, a dog may pause here for a while, but he will eventually wander off.

If you stick to the left side, you should easily stealth past the stealth detection dogs that are parked on the right wall.

Continue stealthing up the left side, you will see a wagon of sorts and some crates stacked up. Jump on these to get past the mobs and when your past it stay in the corner until the patrol passes (wait where the chain of the wagon is against the wall), when the patrol passes (heading towards the entrance) you can stealth over to the right wall, behind the fire, watch out for the single orc pat (Bonechewer Ravenger) that has stealth detect, he wanders around and sometimes stops at an anvil for some hammer action.

Stick to the right wall and stealth past the little tent looking structures, you will see a couple of dogs and a orc near a camp fire.

You should be directly behind one of these dogs, and you will see on the far side 2 stealth detection dogs and an orc.

There is space in between these 2 different sets of mobs, that looks like it might possibly be stealthable.

It is! Kind of!

This is where I spent most of my time wiping, each wipe will take about 5+ minutes to get back to this point, so you can see, we had many attempts.

Timing is everything, if you sit and wait you will notice 2 orcs that patrol on their own, it's best to mark these 2 guys up to see them path easily.

You must wait till both of these orcs are in a good position to stealth past, whether they're both on the far right, or if one is on the far right and one has stealthed over to the far left.

For Druids, with your back as close to the wall as possible, unstealth wait 10 seconds and use a soothe animal on the closest dog (near the fire) restealth quickly, and now you should be able to stealth through the gap of 2 groups of dogs, of course being slightly closer to the soothed dog, this may take some practice to gauge the range.

For Rogue, you should be able to do a distract to get past these dogs, of course rogues also have the advantage of vanish as well.

When you get past the dogs, you have to be careful of the stealth detect mobs on the right hand side, I find it much safer to stealth closer to the normal mobs to the left.

(Now for people having an impossible time of getting past this bit, an easier out, is to all gather at the chain of the wagon, wait for all the stealth pats to path away, then take out the 1 orc and dogs on the left and quickly restealth)

Stealth past the boss, and into the entrance of the staircase.

Here you can take out the 2 guards of the staircase, and wait for the boss to path back to fight him in the doorway.

I found stealthing up to the second boss quite easy, but I do know of fellow stealthers that have a bit of trouble with the timing of the stealth detect dog patrol.

Wait until the dog patrol stealths past the entrance to the second boss room, you should easily be able to stealth past the guards and into the room.

You can stealth past the 2 orc casters that are at the end of the hallway, to the far side of the room, be careful not to drop off the edge, that sends you out of the instance.

Kill boss

Stealth back over to the last boss.

Again I've found some of my stealthers have troubles doing this, if they agro the dogs, get them to run up the ramp a small ways as that is a safely rezzable area.

To stealth past them, wait till the patrol dogs walk past the entrance to the 2nd boss, and follow them as they wander up to the 3rd bosses ramp.

Make sure you don't follow too closely and don't walk that close to the dogs on the right.

As the patrol turns left you should be able to slip in between them and the dogs that are stationary on the right.

Set off the event by killing the 2 guards at the bottom of the ramp.

Kill the boss and grab your badges.

Stealthing Arena - moonkin/rogue

2008-08-05T09:50:00.001-07:00

Well i admit, i've been pretty lame lately with no blog entries, and this entry won't be much different as i haven't been doing many stealth runs lately.

I've tried exploration of Kara, but it was tough with only 3 of us, and we didn't spend that long, admittedly i haven't posted my Heroic Ramps guide yet, but with real life getting in the way, when i'm home i just want to relax, and play WoW.

I just wanted to direct your attention to one of the best (ok it's probably the best i've seen) arena vid of a stealth team that consists of a moonkin and a rogue, that's right folks a full moonkin and not a restokin.

The video is called Azoth imbalanced, and i highly recommend digging around for the commentary version.

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=74925

He gives commentary on high rated arena games vs various teams, and if your just starting out, or just want to improve your moonkin/rogue team, this video is pretty awesome.

On the other hand, for those that are interested, i have started leveling a rogue, finally hit level 30 (after months and months) and it's really tough getting a stealth team together for Scarlet Monastry (hard to get the right level chars that is), actually it's hard to get any group together to do the low level instances unless your getting your friends lvl 70 along

Stealth Detection

2008-07-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

There are a list of items that help detect stealth, why is this relevant? To be honest, not so sure, but this is a stealth blog, and stealth wise, honestly, how many things are there to ramble about? Sure sure i know i haven't finished all the Heroic instances in stealth, but honestly not many are left, i have an almost complete Heroic Ramparts guide, which is was a real ..beach.. to learn.

Ok, so there are a bunch of items that can help you detect stealth (on the off chance you want to detect some stealthy mobs) and some of these are even useable in Arena. So at least you know what you may be up against, and of course, all this stuff is useable for world pvp.

p.s. yes i'm too lazy to learn how to do all the stuff to make nice tables and stuff

Engineering Hats! (well head gear)

Annihilator Holo-Gogs ------------ detection 5
Bloodvine Lens ------------------- detection 10
Catseye Ultra Goggles ------------ detection 18
Deathblow X11 Goggles ----------- detection 5
Destruction Holo-gogs ------------ detection 5
Furious Gizmatic Goggles --------- detection 5
Gadgetstorm Goggles ------------- detection 5
Hard Khorium Goggles ------------ detection 5
Hyper-Magnified Moon Specs ----- detection 5
Hyper-Vision Goggles ------------- detection 30
Justicebringer 2000 Specs -------- detection 5
Justicebringer 3000 Specs -------- detection 5
Lightning Etched Specs ------------ detection 5
Living Replicator Specs ------------ detection 5
Magnified Moon Specs -------------- detection 5
Mayhem Projection Goggles -------- detection 5
Powerheal 4000 Lens -------------- detection 5
Powerheal 9000 Lens -------------- detection 5
Primal-Attuned Goggles ------------ detection 5
Quad Deathblow X44 Goggles ------- detection 5
Surestrike Goggles v2.0 ------------- detection 5
Surestrike Goggles v3.0 ------------- detection 5
Tankatronic Goggles ---------------- detection 5
Wonderheal XT40 Shades ----------- detection 5
Wonderheal XT68 Shades ----------- detection 5

Other hats
The Night Watchman ---------------- detection 10

Consumables
Catseye Elixir ------------------------ detection 10
Distilled Stalker Sight ---------------- detection 15
Elixir of the Searching Eye ------------ detection 15

Gloves
Blood Guard's Dragonhide Grips ------ detection 10
General's Dragonhide Gloves ---------- detection 10
Knight-Liutenant's Dragonhide Grips -- detection 10
Marshal's Dragonhide Gauntlets ------- detection 10

Talents
Rogues
Heigtened Senses (rank 1) ------------- detection3
Heightened Senses (rank 2) ------------ detection 6

Hunters
Track Hidden -------------------------- detection 30
Flare (this takes stealthers out of stealth)

Warlocks
Felhunter's Paranoia ------------------- detection 30

Humans
Perception ----------------------------- detection 50

Arena
power-up (pretty lame name, but that's the only official name i can see, not sure on the detection amount)

10 Druid Kara

2008-07-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

Well once people have all the heroics stealthed, it's obvious the next step is some of the 10 man raids. Although i haven't attempted this yet, it's amazing what youtube has on it, on it, it features some video's of a 10 druid karazan!

So yes it's possible, here are some links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_s_sZSpbTE

Hmm this says its a 10 druid China WoW server, but it looks more like a music clip!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2S7aRq7m0U

From the EU Server Shattered Hand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGhB5JSS-l0

One day i'll learn how to stick video's in my blog (i'm sure it's not hard, i'm just a bit lazy as you can see from the number of posts lately)

Epic Gems in Heroics

2008-07-01T00:35:00.000-07:00

The majority of people I stealth run with nowadays, are doing it purely for the badges, after all you can buy great gear with them, but a lot of people that raid are also farming badges for gems, 15 badges = 1 epic gem.

Gems being available for badges has dropped the prices of epic gems considerably, even so Epic Gems still cost a bunch of gold on my server, ranging from 300-700g.

One change they did put into place in patch 2.4 which I am taking full advantage of, was changing the epic gem drops in heroics to non unique.

As an avid stealthier I was keen to run those heroics that dropped epic gems, after all I was mainly doing it for the badge farm why not do heroics that would drop me a useful gem as well, by the time patch 2.4 rolled around I had over 30 epic gems ready to use.

Here's a list of epic gems from all heroic instances

Auchindoun
Auchenai Crypts
Champion’s Fire Opal +5 Str/+4 Def RY
Potent Fire Opal +6 sp dmg/+4 sp crit RY
Seer’s Chrysoprase +4 Int/+5 spi YB

Mana-Tombs
Enscribed Fire Opal +5str/+4 crit RY
Glistening Fire Opal +4 agi/+5 def RY
Timeless Chrysoprase +5 int/+6 sta YB

Sethekk Halls
Blessed Tanzanite +11 heal/+4 sp dmg/+6 sta RB
Pristine Fire Opal +10 ap/+4 hit RY
Stalwart Fire Opal +5 def/+4 dodge RY

Coilfang Reservoir
The Slave Pens
Respendant Fire Opal +5 str/+4 res RY
Royal Tanzanite +11 heal/+4 sp dmg/+2mp5 RB
Vivid Chrysophrase +5 sp hit/+6 sta YB

The Steamvault
Infused Fire Opal +6sp dmg/+4 int RY
Shifting Tanzanite +5agi/+6 sta RB
Sundered Chrysoprase +5 crit/+2mp5 YB

The Underbog
Lambent Chrysoprase +5 spell hit/2mp5 YB
Radiant Chrysoprase +5 spell crit/+5 sp pen YB
Spendid Fire Opal +5 parry/+4 res RY

Hellfire Citadel
The Blood Furnace
Beaming Fire Opal +5 dodge/+4 res RY
Fluorescent Tanzanite +6 sp dmg/+4 spi RB
Jagged Chrysoprase +6 sta/+5 crit YB

Hellfire Ramparts
Effulgent Chrysoprase +5 def/+2mp5 YB
Iridescent Fire Opal +11 heal/ +4 sp dmg/+4 sp crit RY
Steady Chrysoprase +6 sta/+5 res YB

The Shattered Halls
Luminour Fire Opal +11 Healing/+4 sp dmg/+4 int RY
Polished Chrysoprase +6 sta/+5 sp crit YB
Soverign Tanzanite +5 str/+6 sta RB

Tempest Keep
The Arcatraz

Deadly Fire Opal +8 ap/+5 crit RY
Durable Fire Opal +11 heal/+4 sp dmg/+4 res RY
Nimble Fire Opal +5 dodge/+4 hit RY

The Botanica
Brutal Tanzanite +10 ap/+6 sta RB
Imperial Tanzanite +5 spi/+9 heal/+3 sp dmg RB
Myserious Fire Opal +6 sp dmg/ +5 sp pen RY

The Mechanar
Assasin’s Fire Opal +6 crit/+5 dodge RY
Defenders Tanzanite +5 parry/6 sta RB
Shining Fire Opal +6 sp dmg/+5 sp hit RY

Happy Farming!

Stealth farming Enchant Boots - Dexterity recipe

2008-06-24T08:46:00.000-07:00

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)

2 manning Sethek for profit (fun)

2008-06-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

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!

Heroic Black Morass

2008-06-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

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)

When you just have too many friends!

2008-06-15T09:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Heroic Magisters Terrace

2008-06-12T05:45:00.000-07:00

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.

Underbog Chest Removed

2008-06-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

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 :(

Heroic Steamvault! (minor update)

2008-06-03T04:44:00.000-07:00

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

Solo Onyxia

2008-05-27T07:01:00.000-07:00

Well i know my blog is meant to be about stealth running, but for me stealth running started because i wanted to do things solo or in small groups with other druids and rogues. Since i came across this video of a druid soloing Onyxia of course i found it interesting.

In my endeavor to blog more frequently, i thought it best if i post more often small bits of information, rather than trying to finish an instance guide or some such.

So i came across this video today, i have not had the chance to watch it yet, but it's no surprise it was done by the World Famous Serennia (Self proclaimed best warrior in the world) on a druid.

It's interesting to see that our characters have progressed to the point where it's possible to solo 40 man instances from level 60 content. As someone who enjoys challenges and attempting to solo content or at least doing it in small groups i found this post fascinating. A fellow stealth runner suggested to 2 man Onyxia a few months back as the gold farming from this is meant to be quite lucrative.

I'm sure when WoTLK comes out many of us old timers will go back to attempt older content, I know many people have already gone back and soloed level 60 content, the surprising thing nowadays is some level 70's have already been able to solo Heroic instances.

Here's the links to the post.

from the WoW forums
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=6762238991&sid=1

I will paste the contents of the post below, as we all know the internet loves to swallow links.

Posted by Serennia, guild V A N Q U I S H on the Cho'gall server

0. [Video] Onyxia solo'd by a resto druid 05/25/2008 02:03:09 PM PDT

Hybrid resto spec, no FR gear, different strat than Ted, oh my: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=76343 My WCM description:
Q u o t e:As the movie title indicates, this is a video showing what most thought to be as impossible: Soloing Onyxia. Before watching it, please keep in mind that the feat is not anywhere as easy as most might think. In fact, our group of 3 was the one to set the record for the lowest amount of people to kill Onyxia before Burning Crusade started. That video can be found here if you're interested in reminiscing:

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=34385

The record was not broken until a paladin and warlock eventually 2-manned her months after BC came out. Knowing this, I recently found myself plagued with boredome bewteen raiding offdays and arena monotony, so I sought out the challenge to break the 2-man record, and thus, I present this video.

I was attempting this for a bit now (long before Ted from EU released his solo attempt) playing as a guildmate's restoration druid, thinking it would be a fairly straight-forward fight; however, it was far from it. I had to form the perfect gear outfit to sustain the healing, the perfect strategy for phase two and three, and of course, the perfect execution to make it all happen. Thus, after finishing Sunwell one night, I decided to give it another shot and it turns out all I needed was one shot.

As anyone that has ever done Onyxia with a low amount of people knows, there is a bug in the encounter that existed even pre-BC that causes one of her warder patrols to aggro during the second phase if she happens to be flying over the south end of her lair at the same time that the patrol is there. To combat this bug, and to allow a guildmate to spectate, I brought in a hunter from our guild that would immediately suicide at the start and remain dead unless this bug happened to occur. In the event that the warder would aggro, I would combat rez him so that he would help kill the warder, and then immediately die again without any further assistance in the fight. Most would agree that this is still considered a solo feat despite having to do this to combat Blizzard's design flaw.

If you watched Ted's solo attempt movie, he states that fire resistance gear and certain talents/strategies are required, which as you can see from this, that it is not. The only real requirement to do this is to make sure you have -5.6% crit reduction, which is around 226 resilience. This should hopefully encourage other people seeking a challenge to attempt a solo Onyxia. Ted also stated in his movie description the following:

"If this never gets patched - and chances are good it never will - then this is as close as you will ever get to see One Man vs Onyxia - pre WotLK"

Well Ted, this one is for you! As usual, I highly recommend downloading the full, high-quality, version rather than streaming it for better immersion. That said, I hope everyone enjoys it and all feedback is welcome.

Please note that I am aware of the "barkskin" typo in the movie and there is also one part where it loops for a few seconds to a previous point during phase one out of a mistake in editing. Time stamps and game clock can be used to establish legitimacy if it were needed for some reason. I also didn't realize I was using the wrong weapon oil until Phase 3 :(

Talents and gear used (unbuffed stats):
35/0/26
233 resilience
557 mp5 not casting, 277 while casting
2172 healing

-Serennia of VANQUISH
http://www.vqguild.net/

Shout outs to the original 3-man crew for setting the pre-bc record and still showing that you're among the best this game has to offer:

Malican of Dissonance on Ner'zhul server
Tsuaxesis of Deus Vox on Laughing Skull server

And to my arena partner that will never let me forget how bad PvE is:

Neilyo of Merciless on Tichondrius server

Spec used: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0xzrdicsxhZZAVczcq

All feedback/criticism welcome here, etc. Enjoy.

Heroic Blood Furnace

2008-05-09T10:18:00.000-07:00

Blood Furnace
Hellfire Citadel
Requires Thrallmar or Honor Hold reputation honored – Flamewrought key

It is possible to stealth all the way up to the first boss The Maker, just be careful when you go up that first large flight of stairs, as there are a few stealthed adds on them, they don’t have stealth detect, and I have almost walked through one before, but he didn’t agro.

The Maker

In the first boss’s room, be careful of the group (2 mobs) that patrol around the room, they have stealth detect, and it is possible to agro them if your not careful with your positioning on the first boss.

Stealth all the way to the gate, and be as close to the gate as possible when you pull the boss.

He is not hard, his most nasty spell is mind control, so be ready to cc the mind controlled player (blind or cyclone) as they can do more burst damage then the boss.

I know there are a few video’s of people soloing the first boss, so that should indicate how hard he is.

Broggok

Unfortunately Broggok’s room must be cleared, Broggok is not hard himself, but the event can be tough for a non geared group.

4 waves of 4 Orcs come out and with blinds being on a 3 minute cooldown and cyclone being too short to be used as a reliable CC we used the following strat.

The tank will pick up 3 Orcs, we’ve found 3 to be our sweet spot in terms of the tank being able to grab agro, and in terms of how much damage the healer can heal through, I’m sure highly skilled/geared tanks/healers will be able to pick up all 4 Orcs, but in our case, we found that 3 Orcs, is about the number we want the tank and healer to deal with.

1 of the DPS will be assigned as the offtank/kiter, if you have 3 rogues as DPS, you may need to assign a rotation as I’m not sure how easy it would be for a rogue to kite/tank without all their CD’s

The tank will pick up the 3 Orcs and tank them in the middle of the room, he will mark up one for DPS, so you can burn down the Orcs as quickly as possible, the off tank will pick up one Orc, (feral or high ac moonkin) if the healer or off tanks are not geared enough the kiting method may have to be used. Generally the off tank is not as geared as the main tank, so it can be wise to burn down the off tanks add first, this gives the main tank time to pick up agro on the 3 Orcs, the rogues can stunlock down a Orc, to put less strain on the healer.

Kiting method

If the off tank is not geared enough, or there are 3 rogues, rather than tanking the extra mob, the DPS can kite the mob.

As the cage opens, the DPS will pull a mob from range, (I’m assuming that a rogues ranged weap should do enough damage to pull the mob)

Pull from range, and kite to the end of the hall, when the mob gets close cyclone/stun/blind the mob then sprint to the other side, movement augementing effects can help in the kite, dash, sprint, shadowstep, feral charge, boot enchant etc.

When sprinting to the end of the room Broggok is on, if you get to close, he can bug and come through the closed door (we’ve had this happen a few times  )

If possible the healer should throw some hots on the kiter as he runs past.

If it’s a rogue doing the kiting and they really need their CD’s (blind) then you may have to use a rotation.

When Broggok comes out, he really is not hard, just get out of the poison gas, if you finish the last group down the far side of the room, it will give you the opportunity to Battle Rez, any dead dps.

Keli’dan the Breaker

Mark up the kill order on the Warlocks surrounding Keli’dan, sap the last few in the kill order (depending on how many rogues you have) then focus fire them down one by one.

Once the locks are dead, it’s the typical tank and spank like you would normally do this boss. Just remember to run out after he sucks you in, this boss is cake, compared to doing the 2nd boss event with a rogue/druid group.

Heroic Botanica

2008-05-06T08:11:00.001-07:00

Heroic Botanica
Tempest Keep
Requires Sha’tar honored – Warpforged Key

Although it is possible to stealth all the way to the final boss with only 2 stealth level bonus, the walk is long, and I’ve seen many stealthers dismally fail at stealthing.

This instance is definitely not for impatient stealthers, but for those of you who like a stealth challenge, or are actually clearing out Auchindon and Coilfang instances and need new places to stealth then this could be the challenge your looking for.

You definitely need stealth modifiers for this instance, whether it be by talent points or gear, as I said before I have lead a moonkin druid to the final boss before, and all he had was a cloak I lent him and him being a night elf (+10 stealth bonus) he did wipe once or twice, but he got there in the end.

I have however seen other stealthers with the same level of stealth points and not able to make it past the first doorway….

I honestly highly doubt they were doing anything wrong, as its not that hard to try to stealth right down the middle, but he had no luck whatsoever, seemed those mobs just liked him too much. I’ve seen a few mobs be a bit glitchy and like certain chars, even though they have the same stealth levels as someone who can get past easily.

Stealthing Botanica is challenging as there are a few patrols in tight area’s, once you get up to the first boss, stealthing to the end should be easy.

Of course if you have a rogue in the group helping sap and distract, this can make a stealth nightmare a smooth run.

Stealth up to the first boss Commander Sarannis, wait till she paths all the way out to the end of the bridge and talks to one of the NPC’s

Now that she’s off to the side, you can stealth past easily to the other end of the bridge, here you can gear up, buff quickly and drink before she paths back. Night Elfs, can also shadowmeld here safely in the corner.

Now I have to admit, I’ve only run this with a decently geared group, Kara level gear or above, with some stealthers with a couple pieces of S3 gear or a few pieces of the latest badge gear.

We’ve always been able to just burn her down asap without giving her the chance to summon her adds. I’ve had restokins able to heal through this with no deaths, and a tree druid with just under 1500 heals able to heal this with no problems.

Once again I think it comes down to the dps, but if you’ve been clearing out Coilfang Resevoir instances regularly (since it only take about an hour to do all 3), you should have collected enough badges for your group to get some decent badge gear.

Stealth up to the second boss High Botanist Freywinn

The mobs on the end of the bridge must be cleared, just be careful there is a pat that patrols a little close.

With a mixture of saps, and tanking the mobs at the end of the bridge are quite easy to take down, as with Botanist, do her like you would do her on a non stealth run, DPS her, when she turns into a tree, pull the saplings to the side and dps them down.

Once again just be careful there is a pat that will patrol closely, so make sure you don’t accidently pull it when your doing the boss.

Stealth up to Thorngrin, unfortunately, the stealth groups I have been with haven’t wanted to put in the effort to do him, since doing him here is just like doing him in a non stealth run, pulling pats, then doing the boss.

When stealthing past Thorngrin’s area be careful, there are 2 stealthed patrols, I find sticking closer to the right wall to be safer, of course if you have humans in the group with perception, or rogues with talent points to detect stealthers, they should lead the way.

Since Laj and Warp Splinter are so close to each other, we usually do Warp Splinter first, if we accidently wipe to Laj, group is generally to lazy to stealth all that way again for 1 badge.

At Warp Splinter, clear the tree mobs on both sides, I’m not sure what it is about boomkins, or just druids that see a group of mobs, but they just want to AoE with hurricane.

I’ve seen ferals pop out and just start hurricaning, and then get overrun by the mobs, as the healer wasn’t ready for it, it’s safest to focus fire the mobs down with the tank getting agro, or if a moonkin is going to do this, let the healer know before hand.

The easiest way to kill Warp Splinter is to have the tank, tank the boss just before the end of the path, healers and ranged dps should stand near the entrance just over the bridge, this gives them the chance to reset just in case something goes wrong, healers and ranged dps, should be at max range, so they don’t get the AoE stun. Standing close to the entrance means the treants, will not do much damage as they have further to run and most will get blown away to heal the boss before they even reach the heaer/ranged position.

Rogues should apply the MS type debuff woud poison, so Warp Splinter will get less benefit from the heals.

The group should have decent dps, and focus fire on the boss and ignore the treants, with a decent geared group Warp Splinter will go down fairly quick.

Now clear Laj’s room, assign 2 dps to the lasher type mobs, and have them dps the lashers asap, the switch to Laj when lashers are down.

It’s easiest to tank Laj where he stands, so there is no chasing around if he teleports.

I did this in a non stealth run recently, and it took 1hr 15 mins, which I would say is an average time, as I had guildies also doing a non stealth run, and they did it in about this time, and bunch of them are T6 geared.

In a stealth group, unpracticed in this instance, it took us 40 minutes to down 4 out of 5 bosses. Mind you I’ve been in here with new stealthers that have taken that amount of time to just stealth to the end.

Heroic Steamvault

2008-04-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

Heroic Steamvault

Coilfang Reservoir

requires Cenarion Expedition honored - Reservoir Key

Heroic Steamvault can be a little bit of a gear check as the last boss Warlord Kalithresh
must be finished within 3 tanks, however as far as gear goes, Kara standard is fine, since most servers are quite progressed now, this really shouldn’t be an issue being so late into Season 3 Arena, Season 1 Arena gear being available for honor and there being so many badge rewards available now, however I do know there are lots of people with alts, it was only last week I attempted a pug MGT (non heroic) and had people in majority greens…

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 than 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 things 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 to clear before you can pull the 2nd boss, but they should be quite easy to take down.

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 as I said earlier this fight can be a bit of a gear check, but we have managed to do this with 4 stealthers before, but a lot of my regular stealth runners have better than Kara gear.

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 many times turn red 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 boss 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.

Heroic Underbog

2008-04-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

Heroic Underbog
Coilfang Reservoir
requires Cenarion Expedition honored - Reservoir Key

Stealth to the first boss (Hungarfen), the difficulty in stealthing in Underbog is there are a lot of mobs that path around, the best way is to stealth beside the water (do not step into the water as the fish have stealth detection) and up the ramp, in between the 2 guards and to the back corner near the bridge.

Hungarfen can be pulled to the back without agroing the 2 guards, however the tank must be careful when positioning the boss during the fight to avoid mushroom dmg, and to not go to close to agro the guards.

At 15%-20% Hungarfen shields himself with a a wall of roots, causing all melee attacks to heal Hungarfen of 5% of his maximum health, so melee should back off until the wall comes off.

Stealth across the bridge and over to the next bridge.

You will see a bog giant at the bottom of the bridge, 2 pats on the bridge and 2 stealth detection guards at the entrance.

At the bottom tank the bog giant, right on the edge, so that you don’t accidently pull agro off the bridge or the other bog giant that paths, kill the 2 pats on the bridge, then kill the 2 guards.

Stealth up to the circular platform where the second boss Ghaz’an, paths around, the tank puts his back to the wall and tanks the boss, the melee should dps Ghaz’an on his side and not at his tail, as his tail lashes out and can kick you off the platform, which usually means death, as the fishes get to you.

Ranged and healders should try to stand at max range, to avoid tail lashing, Ghaz’an also does a poison AoE, so ranged DPS should make sure they are in heal range.

Stealth all the way up to the last boss (The Black Stalker) and to the back tunnel near the exit, it is safe to unstealth and buff here. (skip Swamplord Musel’ek for now)

Get all dps to focus on the boss and ignore the adds, the healer should be able to heal through all the damage, and the boss should drop quite quickly.

The only thing to be wary of is if the healer gets levitated out of boss range, otherwise, the boss can be zerged. Healer should also remember to heal himself heavily as they will get healing agro from the pats.

The safest way to do Swamplord Musel’ek is to clear the 2 Underbog Lords on the way back.

When you fight Swamplord Musel’ek, make sure you put your backs to the walls, as the bear can do a knockback, that can knock you into the insect mobs.

The 2 basic strategies on this boss are as follows.

zerg the boss down, and have your healer heal through bear dmg.
have one of the dps pull agro on the bear, and pull him back towards the last bosses room, when Swamlord gets low, pull the bear back to be finished off by the group.

Heroic Slave Pens

2008-04-17T07:02:00.000-07:00

Heroic Slave Pens is actually one of the easiest Heroic Stealth Runs i've come across, this instance can easily be 5 manned in 15 mins with a decent geared group (kara + gear) i've also 2 manned this instance with another druid in 30 mins, and i know there is a video floating around somewhere of a rogue/druid 2 manning it. Rogue/Druids op? I don't think so when i've seen vids of Warlocks soloing the entire instance....

It's the best instance to cut your teeth on stealth running, and stealth gear/points is not such a big issue here.

Heroic Slave Pens
Coilfang Reservoir
requires Cenarion Expedition honored - Reservoir Key

Heroic Slave Pens is currently the easiest heroic instance to stealth run in the WoW, this instance requires no stealth modifiers to be able to stealth through, and the bosses are relatively easy.

Stealthing through this instance is quite easy, stealth all the way up to the tunnel that leads to the first boss, the entrance to the tunnel is protected by the 2 Coilfang Defenders that have stealth detection.

Stealth to the very right of them close to the ledge by the water, and stealth to the wall.

In this spot, players can destealth eat/drink, buff up, and gear up for the fight.

The healer should jump onto the ledge, so he will be out of melee range of the Coilfang Defenders

The tank will pull the Defenders and pick up agro on one, the second Defender will very quickly get healer agro and evade bug, not being able to go up onto the ledge the second Defender will sit there waiting for the healer to jump down.

Once the first Defender is down, the healer can heal the party to full, before the group engages the second Defender, if the tank is not able to taunt the Defender out of being evade bugged the healer should stack hots on himself, go bear and jump down, the warrior will immediately agro the druid, even in bear the warrior hits hard (approxaimtely 4k per hit depending on gear) so the tank must pick up the warrior quickly, if the warrior resists the taunt, the tank can bash or aoe taunt the target, the healer can also bash the target to give the tank more time to pick the warrior up, or a rogue can stun the target. If rogues pick up agro they can evasion tank the Defender until the tank picks him up.

Once these mobs are down, it is an easy stealth run into the tunnel, stealth under the bridge you will see a wall that slopes up. Party members can unstealth here and drink/buff.

Mennu the Betrayer

The tank stealths up the ramp, and pulls the boss, then jumps down into the empty area next to the ramp, the boss should path down without pulling any mobs.

The healer can sit on the side of the wall and heal from their, the DPS should focus on the boss and kill all totems (especially the healing one) he drops except for the corrupted totems.

The corrupted totems do an AoE damage when destroyed early, or they blow up on a timer, when a corrupted totem is dropped, the tank should pull the boss over away from the totem, the open space next to the ramp is fairly large, so the tank should be able to move the boss away from the totem without aggroing any extra mobs. Melee DPS should follow suit and make sure they are not in AoE range.

The tank can single target the totems to hit them.
DPS can single target the totems
The healer can single target the totems and rank 1 moonfire them

This is not a heal intense fight, but can be long if the healing totem is not destroyed asap.

Stealth up the ramp , you will see a patrol go across the T section, go the opposite way to the mobs and stealth up the side of the bridge, you will pass a patrol of 2 Coilfang (Observers or Champions I can’t remember which) they can be quite easily stealhed past even with no stealth modifiers, at the top of the bridge you will see 2 Coilfang Defenders with stealth detection, wait till they start pathing away, and you can stealth up and drop down the side of the bridge to the larger bridge below. When you drop down you will receive fall damage, so make sure you have enough hp to survive the jump.

After you drop down, go along the bridge towards the boss Rokmarr, and then u can do the "wall jump" to the ledge. On the ledge stealth around the corner, to the end, here you can safely destealth, buff, eat and drink.

Once buffed, the tank can go around the corner and pull the boss around the corner, no other mobs should agro.

Rokmarr the Crackler is basically a tank and spank fight, he does an aoe poison that is not directional, so facing him away from the healers doesn’t make any difference.
The main concern, is he drops a bleed debuff (Grievous wound) on the tank that does 900 physical damage every 2 seconds and can only be removed by healing the tank to full.

He enrages at 20% increasing his damage and attack speed.
I’ve found this fairly easy to heal through as long as you keep a 3 stack lifebloom on the tank, depending on your gear level, this is enough to keep you tank fully topped off, and removes the grievous wound bleed, almost as quickly as it is applied. Less geared healers should keep a 3 stack lifebloom and rejuv on the tank at all times, and be able to swiftmend out of the grievous wound bleed if the hots can’t keep up.

Lifeblooming dps in between keeping lifebloom and rejuv hots on the tank should be enough to keep the entire party up.

When stealthing to the last boss, be careful of the 2 Coilfang Defenders as they have stealth detection, stealth into the tunnel, once at the end of the tunnel, wait for the group of rokmar lobsters to path to the tunnel entrance, and when they path off, stealth to the boss along the right wall, following the wall you should be able to stealth all the way to the boss at the back of the cave, it is safer to stay out of the water.

Once at the back wall, you can safely unstealth, and buff.

Quagmirran

The tank should agro the boss on the side or back of the pool, the healer should be behind or off to the side of the boss.

Melee DPS should make sure they dps behind Quagmirran as he uses a few frontal AoE type attacks.
The healer and ranged DPS should be off to the side.

Occasionally Quag will turn around and do a frontal AoE attack (Acid Geyser) that the tank can taunt back, the Geyser does high damage so the healer should be prepared.

Besides this Quag does a non directional poison AoE dot, that can be healed through with multiple hots.

Heroic Mana Tombs

2008-04-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

Sorry been a bit slow with the updates, i will try to post more often, now that 2.4 is out, there have been some changes to stealthing instances, with various nerfs/buffs.

Not sure why i accidently double posted an article, but i will clean it up at a later date.

Here's a guide to stealthing Heroic Mana Tombs, i will follow up in the coming weeks with Coilfang Resevoir instances.

Happy Stealthing

Heroic Mana Tombs
Auchindon
requires lower city rep honored - Auchenai Key

Mana Tombs gives Consortium rep, so if your still not exalted yet and getting your free gems, this is a great instance to farm.

The first boss Pandemonius is linked to every pat in the entire room, so the entire room must be cleared in order to kill him, it’s not often (or ever) that I’ve stealth run this guy, since it’s only a couple of group clears from the entrance to get into the room, it’s probably just as easy doing this guy in normal. Generally it’s seen by stealth groups as too much work for too little reward, so he is usually skipped.

The second boss Tavarok is pullable without pulling any mobs near him, he does physical dmg and an aoe ranged stun, he doesn’t hit particularly hard, and I have 2 manned this boss quite easily with a Kara level geared tank.
Stealthing to this boss is quite easy, and I have seen many stealthers reach him with just 2 +stealth gear pieces (cloak enchant and boots, which I would say is essential for anyone that does stealth runs)

Get the tank to pull him toward the rocky wall, and have the healer and ranged dps stand at max range, this is a fairly simple tank and spank fight.

Stealthing to the final boss room can get a little tricky with some of the groups of mobs in the hallways, stealthers without the additional talent points may need 2 rogues to help escort them through with distracts and saps.

If one person dies on the way to the final room, they can run back to the first room, die and get a battle rez up to the exit ledge.

Yor is a summonable boss, following a quest chain in Netherstorm. In the last room you will see one of those big pink/purple sphere’s (chambers) that can be opened by a key holder (key being Shaffar's Stasis Chamber Key or The Eye of Haramad).

Stealth up to the side of the room on the ledge next to the chamber, only 1 group of mana leaches needs to be pulled, pull them up to the ledge and take them down.

Yor’s chamber can be opened by a keyholder, have the tank pull the boss up to the side on the ledge, and he’s fairly easy to tank and spank down.

Unfortunately Nexus Prince Shaffar is also linked to every mob in the room, so the mobs must be cleared before engaging the Prince.

Be careful when killing the Nexus Terrors, they do an AoE fear, we normally start by pulling a Nexus Terror that pats in the middle to where we killed Yor, and burn him down quick.

We then stealth over to the pile of bones on the left side as you enter the room, and start pulling the groups of mobs to fight in the corner there.

The clear is not difficult with a decent group, just set up your saps and blinds, and you shouldn’t have any problems.

Nexus Prince Shaffar has three Ethereal Beacons surrounding him, get the beacons down asap, beacons spawn approximately every 10 seconds and they should be taken down asap or they turn into apprentices. If they turn into apprentices, the apprentice will be at full HP so DPS the apprentice down asap.

When doing Nexus Prince Shaffar we set up in the corridor behind him, and pull him in, this gives a tigher space for melee dps to switch from DPSing prince to DPSing adds
It’s a fairly intense fight with lots of people taking damage, so the healer has to be on their toes.

Heroic Auchenai Crypts

2008-03-28T04:10:00.001-07:00

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

Professions

2008-03-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

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.

Heroic Sethekk Halls

2008-03-08T16:59:00.000-08:00

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.

Stealth, gear, consumables and talents

2008-03-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

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.

Who Can Stealth Run?

2008-02-08T21:57:00.000-08:00

Well unlike a conventional blog where I just dump out a general mish mash of thoughts I’ll try to post a relevant topic to stealth running in each entry, although at times I will stray and follow the normal blog format, I’m hoping I can make available enough strategy info, that if popular, at a later date I can change to one concise site, so you don’t have to go delving through the blog format.

So who can stealth run? You may think that’s obvious, Druids and Rogues, are the main stealth runners in “World of Warcraft” but I have heard of Mage’s and Hunter’s doing stealth runs for particular items.

I’ve heard of Mage’s farming enchants in instances by popping invisibility, running to a safe spot, waiting for the cool down then popping invisibility again and so forth.

I’ve also heard of hunters doing the same, running, falling dead, waiting for cool down then doing it again, as efficient as druids and rogues? I don’t think so, but it gives them the opportunity to solo content they would not normaly be able to solo.

This guide will mainly be sticking with the conventional stealthers of druid and rogue, but if I see something interesting relating to other classes don’t be surprised if share that with you.

Why Stealth Run?

2008-02-08T21:25:00.000-08:00

Many people ask, why do a stealth run over a normal run, here are the reasons.

Quicker
Alternative to the normal instance grind
Easier to farm certain items
Can do it in smaller groups
Fun!

I’ve also met quite a few people that don’t like stealth runs as they think they end up taking as long or longer than a normal run. This can be true, just as it can be true you get a nub group that can’t finish an instance. A smooth stealth run, with experienced runners will go quicker then a normal run, but one misstep, and someone that has to do a graveyard run, can indeed drag out the time it takes to finish the instance.

Welcome!

2008-02-07T21:49:00.001-08:00

Hi, as the blog name suggests this blog is dedicated as a guide for stealthing your way through the World of Warcraft.

I know stealth running is popular, but it's one of those sub cultures that the people that do it love it and the people that don't, don't really know much about it.
Searching on the net there is no central repository of information that gives guidance on how to stealth instances or quests, yet there are many posts asking on the WoW official forums "what instances are stealthable?" and there are a lot of youtube video's out of druids/rogues stealthing various instances.

As an experienced stealth runner myself, i would like to share this knowledge with you, and hopefully learn a few tricks along the way to help you get started in stealth runs.