FACT: It doesn't matter as long as the boss dies

If you read World of Matticus, then you may have stumbled on one of Wyn's recent posts. Basicly, as you can probobly guess by his title (which mine is paroding), he points out taking an additude to not put out 100% in a raid or basicly any lazy/greedy behavior is NOT justified by eventually killing the boss. Now, to a degree, I agree with him as he puts up some pretty strong evidence. Increased repair costs, increase costs for pots (and damn that shit ain't cheap), takes longer than necessery, and possibly most important, increased stress on a ton of people that really didn't need it. Also, the vibe I'm getting is that he is talking about mainly content that's on "farm", but I guess it could be applied to progression bosses.

Update: Changed to Wyn to give credit where credit is due.

Now, I don't have the raiding perspective that he does. At least, not anymore, that time has passed over 2 years ago.

That said, I don't agree with his myth, but I am also looking at it from a different perspective.

1st. I'm not raiding

2nd. I am not grouped with anyone but myself.

3rd. All costs in any mats are entirely my own.

4th. I want to do it because I want to say that I can do it

5th. Of course, phat loot. When it drops of course.

Case in point, now that I'm 64 I decided to give Underbog a whirl to the end. Hungarfen dropped without a problem this time, giving me this useless thing.The pulls to Ghaz'an were a pain but doable. I wiped the first attempt of Ghaz'an, but I got him the second time. I got myself the Talisman of Tenacity for my tank, so it's all good. Unfortunately, I skinned it before I took a pic because I wasn't paying attention.

Now, everything was going smoothly untill I met up with this guy. Boy, was this fight a pain. I thought he was going to be a pushover, but no, I wiped easily a dozen times or more. I wiped so much I had to stop, repair my armor, and come back only to wipe some more. Let me tell you, corpse runs to this instance suck almost as much as BRD.

The key problem I had was after his freeze trap. See, I would have everyone on follow to keep them within the 8 yard raidius so I don't have to worry about ranged attacks. After his freeze trap, mabye 2-3 seconds after, he punts you a fair ways back. The punt itself wasn't the problem, it was that I wasn't getting any heals after it and that was killing me.

Then it dawned on me, my guys were on follow, and when I got punted, they followed, stopping any heals or dps, and often they got stuck behind a mushroom, forcing them to run in place. Yeah, I slapped my head in shame after that realization. The very next try I kept the guys just outside his alcove, and tanked him against the wall. No problems whatsoever. Once he was down the bear was a pushover. Sadly, for all that work, he dropped some POS that got sharded.

The last boss, The Black Stalker, was equally hard. His levatate ability is what messed me up the most, moving people around so they got hit by his chain lightning. This fight all came down to positioning. I ended up having the priest just inside his cavern, with the mages in front, everyone spread out. I tanked him near where he would reset. He didn't really hit hard, it's just that the fight was awkward. Fortunately, if you run out of his room, he resets, so I didn't do many corpse runs, but I probobly wiped just as many times as with Musel'ek. This time I got me the Pauldrons of Brute Force for my main, which is all good.

While I was there, I found the Slave pens and gave it a whirl. Overall, it was definitly easier to progress through than Underbog. Mennu was a cinch. Seriously, I am astounded by how easy he was. Just walk him in a circle to get out of range of his totems. Sadly, another sharded item.



Next was Rokmar the Crackler, and again, easy fight. The trick is to fight him at absolute max range. I stood at the limits of my priests healing, and I was between the boss and my team. His AOE attack never hit anyone but Caine. Again, I got a fairly lackluster Runed Fungalcap, another item to be sharded.



And, that's as far as I progressed. By this time it was almost 12:20am, and I had started at 7:30pmish. I did reach Quagmirran, but the NPC that provides the nature buff (which I badly need) died when the naga came after his release. Quagmirran beat me down pretty bad pretty quick, and I was too tired to continue.

So, this isn't exactly the fastest way to level, but the satasfaction of making that boss kill is all worth it. Of course, if the content was on farm I probobly would be pissed.

Anyays, I'm off to Nagrand and Terrekor for quests to try to level as soon as I can before I attempt any more dungeons. My mages are respec'd again, this time with the typical 3 min mage build (PoM, Arcane Power, and Pyroblast), with more talents into arcane for more damage. In short, each mage has roughly 400 +spell damage now and when i pop my cooldowns, I do the damage of roughly 4 equally spec'd mages. Does wonders for the would be ganker.