Shaman: Soloing old instances for fun and profit - Page 2

KraxisSingular · 03/31/10, 8:50 AM

Going OOM when soloing as Enhancer should be pretty much impossible. SR alone will keep the mana well supplied, but if you use Mana Shield you should never drop below 30% mana between SR, even if you pop HW every single time there is a MW5.

Mana Shield will proc pretty much on the ICD.

Genoce · 03/31/10, 4:54 PM

Originally Posted by Globwush

ragnaros is still alive... i just dont get him

I personally wasted around 3 hours total trying to solo him with the normal pve spec, gear and glyphs, as i got him few times to around 100k hp. At some point i gave up, and respecced to 0/51/20. It basically made the fight trivial and I killed him on first try, as you can easily heal yourself to full while swimming in lava with a Healing Wave or a couple (-70% pushbacks and faster cast).

Save your Wolves to the adds (which come every 3 minutes or so); use them instantly after pull, and they will be up at the first wave of adds, and again up for second wave. Also, go double windfury (duh, immune to fire anyway), and do not forget fire res totem. Stoneclaw totem has 30 sec cd and the knockback comes every 25 sec, so you won't be able to use it on every knockback; try to save it for the panic situations if/when you get knockbacked with fairly low health. I never used Tidal Force, but it's a nice backup there anyway.

PS. I actually recorded the kill, but I haven't edited nor uploaded it yet... we'll see if I ever get enough energy to do that

Edit: I apparently failed with the spec, as i didn't notice that the Earth's Grasp also reduces the cooldown of Stoneclaw Totem by 30%. Get that and you can use glyphed Stoneclaw on every knockback :P

Mod Edit:

Just hopping back here to say that I finally got the Ragnaros kill edited and uploaded.
YouTube - Enha vs Ragnaros

I covered most of the tips on my original post... just as a reminder though, the biggest thing is having the correct spec. If anyone manages to do it with normal spec (and possibly record it), I'm happy to hear about it.

Maybe at some spot where you dont fly into the lava...?

rokshan · 03/31/10, 7:57 PM

I tried mc yesterday and killed all bosses in the first try until Golemagg.
I tried to finish him fast, but at about 20% i took just too much damage. Dropped in about 2 seconds from 100% to 0%. And I did 6,8k dps in this try.
I tried with wolves first, then Fireele, with Earth Elementar first, then wolves etc but nothing worked out too good.
So my question is, are there any tips besides killing him faster?

Genoce · 03/31/10, 9:21 PM

Originally Posted by rokshan

I tried mc yesterday and killed all bosses in the first try until Golemagg.
I tried to finish him fast, but at about 20% i took just too much damage. Dropped in about 2 seconds from 100% to 0%. And I did 6,8k dps in this try.
I tried with wolves first, then Fireele, with Earth Elementar first, then wolves etc but nothing worked out too good.
So my question is, are there any tips besides killing him faster?

I made a few tries as enha, always ended up dying to huge burst after my cooldowns were used. After 4 or 5 tries, I changed to resto (offspec) and killed him on first try... the kill took 25 minutes, but whatever

Illu · 04/01/10, 1:52 PM

I've found Mandokir to be easiest by just kiting him around the platform while his enrage goes off (Enhancement) and then it's a easy matter to finish him after that just by fighting normally.

Tiger is actually easier though as long as you just focus-frame or control the healer some other way by shocking her heals. the adds will not hit you for much - but this was with some resilience gear donned so I am not sure if it's different in straight up pve gear.

In any case, all of Zg is not that hard as long as you know how the bosses work from previous experience. The bat boss can be annoying if you have low spell hit, but I doubt many shamans suffer there. If you don't get the shock to land, she heals 40% or so.

As you can see my other character is a DK, and it's quite interesting the differences between the two. Shamans are just astounding at this sort of stuff as long as they can survive the damage, by far more efficient than my DK (who can take greater hits and thus do some things I cannot as shaman).

KraxisSingular · 04/02/10, 6:56 PM

Originally Posted by Illu

The bat boss can be annoying if you have low spell hit, but I doubt many shamans suffer there. If you don't get the shock to land, she heals 40% or so.

My experiences taught me to ultra-nuke her when at 50%. Pop wolves+BL and fire ele, then pound her into the ground. Even if a heal gets through, and it might given most people gear around having the 3% raid spellhit, your doggies and fire ele will last long enough to make it trivial.

Entheogenist · 04/07/10, 6:48 PM

Enhancement: I wanted to try a Northrend instance to see if it would grant some better loot to level my enchanting profession so I tried The Nexus and found it to be quite do-able. No special tricks; I think enhancement shamans were made for this sorta thing. The only change I made was to add the fire nova glyph to help with mobs. Atleast for this place I don't think it was all too beneficial. Magma and the normal fire nova cleaned up trash nicely.

Despite the fact that it did not take all too long, all in all I don't think it was worth the effort loot wise. I only had ONE green drop and a single blue from each boss. I'm going to try Utgarde next, but my assumption is that instance soloing will only be beneficial in heroic modes. I doubt it will be possible to try a northrend heroic until gear and higher levels arrives from Cat.

Airraid · 04/19/10, 3:17 AM

Originally Posted by Skajin

Attumen:

Trash packs have to be killed. Most pulls are only 1 or 2 mobs though and thus really easy. The last two packs are 4 and 5 mobs. The 4 pull is doable if you nuke the stable hands fast and use Thunderstorm to buy some time. For the 5 pull you should use Fire Elemental.

Attumen himself was pretty easy (first time I tried soloing him). I saved Earth Elemental till Attumen spawned, but it never pulled aggro on him so I had to spam heal myself constantly. Yet, it was pretty easy to heal myself while debuffed and dps midnight otherwise. Might be easier to just start with elemental up and hope it grabs the initial aggro on attumen.
Phase 3 was also very easy, just alternate healing and dps.

A follow up on this from my experience soloing as elemental: after the trash is cleared (and you must kill it all as it's linked to him; i.e. any unkilled trash will aggro when you engage Midnight) you open up on Midnight with a FS + LvB and drop your Earth Elemental. Focus it immediately (so you can watch it's HP easily) then proceed to hit Midnight one or two times until he pushes under 95% and Attumen spawns. Your EE should pick Attumen pretty quickly and it's important not to use CL for the next 20 seconds or so - you want to make sure he doesn't peel off your EE and melee you; just stick to LB + LvB for single target damage on Midnight until EE has a big enough threat lead and you can bring CL back in to the rotation. From there onwards it's pretty smooth sailing, stop to heal yourself or your EE if either fall under 70% health then get back to hitting Midnight. It took me about a minute to bring Midnight down to 25% this way when they merge, and from there on it's pretty smooth sailing. Just keep yourself alive and bring him down gradually. I've only done it the once as I was lucky enough to have the mount drop on my first kill, but I have no doubt that with the above strat it's very easily repeated.

Memento · 05/01/10, 7:07 AM

My strategy for soloing Mandokir is slightly different than the ones presented here. I was discussing this in guild today and decided to post it here in case anyone else wants to try for the mount that never drops.

First of all, kill everything in the area. This includes the patrolling Berserker that comes in as he can mean the difference between getting a kill and getting complicated. Not only will this mean you can be feared without serious repercussion there is a chance you can pick up [Razzashi Hatchling] as well for some extra gold. Make the pull as normal - kill the priest and wait for the Bloodlord to come down to you. First of all kill the mount. This will enrage the boss temporaily - be ready for it. Pop Shamanistic rage to deal with the first hit you will take from this, and break out Earth Elemental to soak. Use wind shear on cooldown to redirect aggro to your elemental - while the boss is not taunt immune, he will still switch back to you quickly if you aren't areful. Once he has aggro pop wolves and hero and go crazy Broadway style. Note that the wolves here are not for healing - make sure that before the fight you have made a macro to cast a MW5 Healing Wave on your Elemental. He will get knocked down otherwise.

Once you have popped heroism and taken a serious crack at the boss you need to watch carefully three things: the health of your Elemental, the timer on your elemental and the timer left on your wolves. If your elemental dies early, you should have healed it quicker. If your elemental timer runs out before the boss is dead you should have dps'd harder. If your elemental dies but you have a few seconds left on your wolves and the boss is close to death, push and hope.

My gear is pretty good at the moment - I raid resto but have reached a point where Frost badges are no longer good for upgrades and I can spend them on my offspec. Good luck!

Mylandah · 05/04/10, 3:03 AM

Sometimes attunemen does not attack and lets you deal with Midnight alone. Even not using CL has Attunemen stick on you so I just Fire Ele off the pull (LB, CL, FlmS, EM LVB - takes about 20% chunk off before it reaches you). If both are on you healing is a lot of the time just renewing Shock, Tstorm, LvB etc). Hero during P1 since its more damage intesnsive. Gear level 232+ should be able to just brute force it this way.

Blightlenox · 05/08/10, 9:14 PM

After reading this I was curious and decided to go to MC on my shaman. She's Enhance btw.
I was able to kill Golemagg only by going resto.
Rag was actually easier than I had imagined. By accident I found a decent way to solo him.

I forgot that when Rag hits you your MH takes durability faster than normal so my MH broke about 10 secs into the fight. The only weapon I had to replace it with in my bags was my Lockjaw healing weapon. So I started MHing the healing weapon and put WF on it and already had Earthliving on my OH dps weapon. The dmg was slower than normal, but I was easily able to heal myself when I got knocked back. I tried to alternate my Elementals and my wolves on the boss when he was up so that he wouldn't keep nuking me when I was out of range from the knockback.
I also found a good place to position myself so that I would get knocked back and land on top of that pillar that was almost right behind the shaman from the video right above this post. So I wouldn't take too much fall dmg.
I didn't have to respec or anything. I used a generic enhance spec.
I think that the healing Weapon+Earthliving on my OH made the difference.

Give it a try. It was fairly easy this way for me.

Edit: Forgot to link my shaman's armory. Zarinia

Shirak · 05/09/10, 3:58 AM

I, too, read this and wanted to give it a try.
Decided to go to Molten Core first. Taking on two giants was no problem, nor was any other trash mob, even two core hounds. My problem came with the core hound packs in Mag's cavern. I simply could not get them down, no matter what. Decided to call it a day when I was at 20% durability.
Does anyone have any idea what to do here?

Went to ZG afterwards, and that was a breeze. Only had two wipes. Spider boss, due to a bad pull (the spiders can come very close to the speaker), and Gahz'ranka, where I found out the hard way that the correct way to do it would be in the water so I didn't suffer any fall damage.
Bloodlord was the only challenge, but I used the tactic to fight him at the top, and changed between wolves and earth elemental.
Tiger boss was easier than I thought. Brought down the tigers, and then got his adds down to ~10% before starting on him.
What I thought would be a problem was paying attention to the heals, but I believe I only interrupted two, they simply did not heal for much so there wasn't a problem out-DPS'ing it.

Next up will be AQ20 at some point tonight.

Aeolian · 05/09/10, 6:33 PM

The Core Hound packs aren't too bad... use Magma Totem and Fire Nova to do most of it, single target the higher ones. Just make sure you don't have any that are way higher than the rest. Do not pull another pack until the first disappears. You can also skip all of the packs along the left wall, just make sure you pull Magmadar up against the far end of the cavern and have tremor down.

Vulcanasm · 05/14/10, 7:09 PM

I'm surprised there aren't more Karazhan posts. I solo Attumen for a shot at the mount most Tuesday evenings, and I soloed through Shade of Aran repeatedly for reputation. Soloing gear is usually what's in my armory profile:

The World of Warcraft Armory - Coulomb @ Uther - Profile

If that link shows some other gear than a weird mix of PVP and PVE, I use 4pc t10 PVE, one PVE trinket, and the rest PVP gear.

DETAIL
Attumen: The 5 pack of trash right before him is almost as hard as the boss. Pull Midnight. Once Attumen appears, pop wolves, fire elemental, Bloodlust, then burn until they form Voltron. Keep using Twin Howl and Stoneclaw Totem to keep Attumen away. In p2, the fight is common sense: Stoneclaw for shield, MW for self heals, etc. A PVP trinket really helps, in case you eat a knockdown while under half health. You can easily OOM from Intangible Presence if careless, and Grounding Totem won't eat it; time Shamanistic Rage accordingly. If you can't get through p1, try using Earth Elemental and save MW procs for Chain Heal centered on it. (Midnight barely tickles)

Moroes: Cake walk. Pop wolves and Bloodlust early, then blow up adds one by one. You should have no trouble. I don't even use an elemental...

Maiden of Virtue: Your fingers will hurt from the button jam, and it's good practice for not using MW early. Otherwise this is so straightforward that I'd call it the easiest solo fight here. Grounding Totem eats her Holy Fire. Hey, beats dailies.

Romulo and Julianne: Decent practice spamming Purge and Wind Shear. I'm not sure what more there is to say. They have very little health, so the hardest part is not actually blowing Julianne up early. Save your wolves for P3, obviously. Keep using Grounding Totem and Wind Shear to deal with Julianne's DoT and heal, respectively. Trinket the stun if below half health.

Wizard of Oz: Simplest kill order is Roar, Tinhead, Dorothee, Strawman. Toto will die on his own due to incidental/cleave damage. Keep a tremor totem down for Roar's fearbombs. Flame shock the scarecrow when it's up. Kill order barely matters, honestly, you're just bursting things down one by one. If there's any trouble, try an Earth Elemental, use MW procs to Chain Heal it, and peel them off one by one. You don't need Grounding Totem or resist totems for this one, it's easier to nuke. (The Crone won't be up for more than 20 seconds, so I doubt you need my tips there)

(I've never had to fight the Big Bad Wolf)

The Curator: Blow up the sparks. Burning the boss will eventually get you overwhelmed, even in gear like mine. It isn't a bad idea to use Grounding Totem to eat a Hateful Bolt. You won't resist all of them, and the surprise burst in P3 can wreck you. Save cooldowns for his 15% Enrage; Wolves plus Shamanistic Rage plus Bloodlust at that point, and then he's yours.

Shade of Aran: This fight is straightforward and easy until he summons elementals. At that point you want an Earth Elemental and spirit wolves, and you need them tanking as many as you can in case you get a bad combination (e.g. elemental during Flame Wreath). The wolves can (barely) kill 2-3 elementals themselves. Burn them when you can. (If you feel the need to lock a school out, just pick one)

I have nothing major to add about ZG or MC, though I've soloed parts of both. The mount bosses are cake as Enh, though maybe that's my gear. Here's one alternate strategy; what I do for High Priest Thekal is identical to what's been discussed already.

Bloodlord Mandokir: It's not that hard to fight him in the usual place. Start with an Earth Elemental to deal with the raptor so you don't eat sunders. Pop wolves and bloodlust. After the first fear, assuming you don't get feared in identical directions, Mandokir will be on you, Ohgan on your elemental. If not, keep peeling him off and keep them apart. You have two minutes to blow him up before you start eating sunders. The occasional MW heal on the elemental helps a lot.

My questions:
1. The only part of ZG that gives me trouble are the trash packs before Hakkar. Channeled mindflay stun = ow. How to deal with that solo? Can those packs be skipped?

2. MC, I can't figure out how to deal with Geddon (even with Water Shield, I run oom and die to Ceiling Boss), or Sulfuron Harbinger. For the latter, how do you deal with his healers? They blow up my elemental and heal too fast for my burst.

Stopokingme · 05/15/10, 8:09 AM

Originally Posted by Vulcanasm

1. The only part of ZG that gives me trouble are the trash packs before Hakkar. Channeled mindflay stun = ow. How to deal with that solo? Can those packs be skipped?

Yes, they're easy to skip, just make sure you fight Hakkar at that little temple structure he's in front of. The packs path up to him. Hakkar is rather simple, just make sure to not have any pets out, including totems, else he'll mindcontrol you and reset back to full health.