No Love For Arena

We were feeling really good after downing Hodir, so we marched on over to Thorim. It was really cool that he tried to remember you from the quest chain in Storm Peaks. Then Sif showed up and ruined the show. Thing is, I thought Sif was dead? The fight starts with Thorim above you. You clear the first room with a Jormungar and some Hordies, then half your raid heads to the hallway to fight their way to Thorim while the rest of your raid stays in the Arena.

I was the Tank in the Arena. Mobs constantly come out of the stands and engage you. Some are elites, some are non-elites.

At first, I had everyone stack up on me and laid out a Consecrate. I don’t know what’s happened by Consecrate isn’t the threat magnet it used to be. We discovered one of the mobs Whirlwinded. That made stacking up sort of a bad idea.

We went with me in the center and the others spread out around me. The first couple of elites that spawned, I’d handle okay, and they would go down quick. Then all these non-elites would spawn, and it got harder and harder to find and target the Elites.

I knew what I needed, a Targeting Macro. I opened up my macro that I had used in Tempest Keep (to pick up Embers of A’lar) and Mount Hyjal (to pick up Towering Infernals on Antheron) and even in Black Temple (to pick up the mobs on Akama and Council). I added a new line at the top to pickup the Whirlwind dudes. I was feeling pretty confident as we pulled again.
One spawned and I hit my macro and Hand of Reckoning. “Invalid Target.” What?!?! I try again. “Invalid Target.” I looked around. I had targeted one of the ones still IN THE STANDS. Meanwhile, the one of the ground was destroying the raid.

After a half dozen failed attempts I switched places with my Death Knight so he could get a feel for what was going on. DPS liked the Death Grip mechanic. I have no way as a Paladin to make the mob move to where I want them. I have to taunt or Avenger’s Shield or Exorcism and wait for the mob to come to me.

Unfortunately, our Death Knight got overrun just about the same point I had.

WTB Tips on Thorim’s Arena, pst.

We decided to move over to Freya. It took us a minute to figure out the Plant trash. You have to pull the big one away from the little ones or your DPS goes way down.

Freya uses a similar Hard Mode dynamic to Sarth. She has mini-bosses with her. Kill them for easy mode and leave them up for Hard mode. We dispatched the first one, but not before our DPS discovered it had a Thorns on steroids.

It was getting late and we still had a ton of trash to clear. We were informed by Guild Chat that the Alliance had actually won Wintergrasp. This happens maybe 3 times a week on Altar of Storms. We quickly jetted over.

We dispatched Archavon quickly. He not much more than a trash mob anymore.

Then we fought Emalon. The new Deadly Boss Mobs was trying to mark the one add we had to kill. We also had a couple of people with assist trying to mark it. In the confusion our transitions were slow and we died.

We decided to just let DBM do it. We had plenty of DPS. That worked much better and we ended the night with a kill.

Comments

Adlib said…
I hear ya on the Sif thing.

So do you know what happened between our characters doing Storm Peaks quests, supposedly helping most of these bosses only for them to end up fighting us in Ulduar? Like how is Hodir a boss when we've gained rep with his sons? I've watched all the videos about the patch that Blizz put out, and I've done all the quests, but there seems to be a disconnect somewhere in there.
Honors Code said…
Thorim was the one we helped in Storm Peaks and did all the quests for that eventually sent us to the Sons of Hodir. Hodir and Thorim had something of a falling out over the *supposed I guess now* death of Sif at the hands of Loken.

When we do the quest at the center of the zone it takes us to each Temple. Hodir's, Freya's, Mirmiron, and Thorim. All are abondoned. Some show signs of battle, at one the Mechognomes are fighting each other.

We figured it was all Loken's doing in his great betrayal. Now we know he was a pawn, a pawn of Yogg Saron!
Sherry said…
Wow, I havn't reached thorim yet, but I saw that sif is related to the hard mode of thorim. Do you think sif could be an illusion of Yogg? Or perhaps mind controlled by Yogg.

So far when my guild does Emalon, all we get are furious pieces >_< but dbm certainly made this weeks Emalon much easier!
Michael Green said…
The arena is a bit hectic. We actually tried the spreading out thing first. Our healers just got owned by the mobs coming out of the stands with healer agro though. So we all grouped up in the center. And to tell the truth it was so chaotic over the next few minutes that I couldnt tell you who got hit by what whirlwind but I know that everyone survived. I was just tab targeting a lot. And when I saw a name plate with a gold dragon I either hammered them or threw a shield or taunted. Righteous Defense and concecration kept most of them in check. I dont know if it was more my tanking or more just having good DPS with me but we downed him the first time we tried grouping in the center. The good thing is that once Thorim drops down into the arena he's a piece of cake. The debuff where he reduces your Defense by 200 is no fun, but thats what the other tank is for.

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