A couple of days after my epic failure to secure epics, the opportunity presented itself to run a random with one of our guild tanks. I gamely joined in, as did one of our resident hunters and the rolling random die put us in Grim Batol. I'd been itching to get some of my own back so it was with glee that I delved once more into the depths...
Grim Batol is an ancient dwarven fortress, now gone to ruin. It is home to numerous dark iron dwarves, minions of the Twilight Hammer, and dragonkin a-plenty. The bridges connecting areas have crumbled and rubble blocks other passageways. Visually, it's an incredibly interesting zone.
After clearing the first few groups of trash, you encounter a number of red dragons that have been netted. Free them and you get to play a mini-game of "make the next hour of your life easier". Seriously, you fly on the dragon as it takes you on an aerial path all the way to the end boss and back. While airborne, you can (and should) use the dragon's flame breath liberally to soften up as many groups of foes as you can. Killing them outright is a bonus, but will take several strikes. You only get once chance at this, so make those shots count. The mobs that have been wounded by the party's initial assault will not heal those wounds.
Upon dropping you back off, the fun begins in earnest and having a mage (even a short, ill-tempered one with a penchant for fishing and puns) is very helpful for sheep pulling and general control. Although mages can't sheep the dragonkin, almost all of the trash packs contain at least one humanoid caster.
The first boss encountered is General Umbriss and, for ranged, he isn't that complex. Shoot, shoot, shoot...when it looks like he's going to charge you, get the hell out of the way. Veterans of Trial of the Crusader will recognize the "charge mechanic" from Icehowl. Otherwise the tank is the one taking the brunt of this one, with a heavy bleed stack and a mana-intensive healer fight. Who am I kidding-- ALL of the bosses are mana-intensive fights! :)
You'll work your way through the 'streets', which are reminiscent of Ironforge cleaning trash until you get to the next challenge: the Forgemaster. This guy sucks.
He's a huge ettin that causes cave-ins that need to be avoided ("get out of the fire, get out of the fire") and will periodically choose a weapon and get powers and abilities that tie in. Swords = tank had better blow cooldowns, because he's about to get barraged with OMG damage, Mace = slow but needs to be kited and he'll impale a party member and carry him around a bit (as the victim takes 9k damage a second), and a Shield. My first encounter with him was on heroic, where the strategy guides simply said "If he grabs his shield first", just reset the encounter and try again. Shield gives him effectively invulnerability from the front...which isn't so bad. On heroic, it ALSO comes with a 180 degree frontal cone of fire doing 18k damage a second that reaches the ranged party members. Suffice it to say there's an awful lot of running. Fortunately, when you wipe on this guy, those dragons at the start of the instance will drop you off very close to him for the next try.
We had the utter misfortune of getting a bad healer in our regular run and had, by this point, wiped a couple of times to the first boss and a couple of times before the forgemaster fell. Heck, when we finally killed the guy, the only ones still standing were myself and another DPS. When we wiped against an easy trash pull, the healer dropped in shame seconds before the tank called him out on it. Fortunately, we were able to pick up a guild healer quickly and after Giggitygoo joined us, things ran a -lot- smoother.
The next boss is optional as you can scootch around him without drawing aggro if you're in a hurry just to finish, but we weren't in the mood to pass up on more loot.
With a quarter of the health of the other bosses, Drahga Shadowburner looks like a wimp. Nothing could be further from the truth. Throughout the fight, he summons fire elemental adds that 'lock' onto a random player if the add gets to the player, there is a massive aoe explosion. (On the heroic run, I got nailed by one for 150k damage.) It is imperative these guys go down fast. When the boss gets low on health, he jumps off a ledge, only to be caught by his dragon ally and from the dragon's back he continues his assault. Now you've got to burn down the dragon's health.
Mr. Dragon is a little different from most dragons: he has a 180 degree cone attack, drops patches of BAD on the floor, but doesn't get a tail swipe. To top it off, Drahga continues to summon his bomb minions throughout this phase. Once the dragon is down, you have to finish off Drahga's last few health before claiming victory.
Only a little trash remains before reaching the big bad: Erudax. This guy is definitely raid-worthy. His main 'specials' include 'Shadow Gale' which roots one person and makes the entire floor except for one small spot around the rooted person a Death Trap. He'll knock the tank around for 60k, then slap a debuff on him to increase damage horrifically, so the tank must kite while the healer run heals with him. On top of this, there are adds to contend with that MUST be taken down when they appear. Otherwise, they hatch black dragon eggs that litter the room and the party goes into a world of hurt quickly.
When Erudax fell, I cheered at the monitor. It's good practice for the heroic and I feel a lot more confident about it now.
The RNG hated me for the run-- everything that dropped was chain, leather, or plate. Honestly, I wasn't broken up about it. At the time the only things I needed that were level i333 were trinkets and a wand.
Perhaps some other day.
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