Lance Berg
2007-07-10 12:27:42 UTC
Flush with excitement at our recent gaining of access to the Elemental
Planes, a fellow guild SK went to the Plane of Water, needing one more
drop to complete his gate neck quest. Couldn't solo it, so he was
calling out for any guildmates looking to play around in there and see
if it could be managed.
Well I answered the call... so there we were, two SK, no slower, no
healer, no CC, no DPS... some would say no real tank either.
We buffed up as best we could, pets and all, and then I pulled one of
the pair of mobs at the entrance. Got both. Perhaps with some work we
could have split them, but instead we each took one on. This was a
rough fight, potions were consumed and we managed to my target down, but
my buddy had the other one on him and was running real low on HP. He
FD'd, I managed to finish it off with the help of his pet and mine, we
both ended the fight at under 10% HP and OOM...
After we'd med up a bit, both our pets announced they were no longer
shielding us... love that they serve as little added HP packs as well as
some DPS.
After medding up a bit, I pulled another mob, this went much better. On
a single mob, we were able to ping pong back and forth so we were both
taking about half the damage, and with Bond and some judicious
lifetapping, plus substantial lifetap proccing, we ended the fight at
around 80% each. Oh, my buddy also has a weapon which procs a 10%
slow... ok, that probably wasn't a big factor.
A warrior buddy added in, and I pulled again. This was actually harder,
as the warrior took aggro and held it. Yeah, he had a larger HP pool
and took less damage due to better AC and so on... but this meant that
the two SK's weren't actually healing any damage when the lifetaps procs
were going off, the only healing going on was the warrior chugging a
potion, his own (pathetic) lifetap proc (I say pathetic because I have
FOUR to his one, and his doesn't have crit healing AA behind it going
off half the time), and the two SK casting Zeefer's Bite for 200 or
sometimes 400 points each. Also worrying was the fact that he couldn't
FD when his HP got low... we were near a zone line, but that wasn't too
reassuring.
On the next pull, we did some ping ponging again. When we could arrange
for all three to take some damage, things went much better. It was
tricky convincing the warrior to let up on aggro control, but the
principle reason you want ONE person taking all the damage is for the
convenience of the healer... since we didn't have one, sharing around
worked far better.
We added a third, lower level, SK in to the mix, but didn't let him get
hit much; he'd have been more of a rag doll in the face of these mobs.
Then we got a little more conventional, adding a low level shaman.
Shaman buffs, plus landing a real slow, plus shaman healing... well the
shaman was running LOM every pull. Eventually we convinced her to just
slow, to be as sparing on the healing as possible, that we SK would
handle that part. That strategy made the difference between sitting
down between pulls, and constant streaming.
Later we added a druid, and went more conventional with real heals, but
by now we'd firmly settled on tank pingpong, and the SK heal stream
continued to be a significant factor. 90% of that, on my part, was just
procs, I tried not to spend much mana because I was relying on Pact of
Hate plus my MR gear as my only mana regen.
This turned out to be a pretty good strategy, and we'll probably end up
trying it in other places... and I'll put even more AA points into my
lifetap proccing plan.
Berg, 68 SK, Combine
Planes, a fellow guild SK went to the Plane of Water, needing one more
drop to complete his gate neck quest. Couldn't solo it, so he was
calling out for any guildmates looking to play around in there and see
if it could be managed.
Well I answered the call... so there we were, two SK, no slower, no
healer, no CC, no DPS... some would say no real tank either.
We buffed up as best we could, pets and all, and then I pulled one of
the pair of mobs at the entrance. Got both. Perhaps with some work we
could have split them, but instead we each took one on. This was a
rough fight, potions were consumed and we managed to my target down, but
my buddy had the other one on him and was running real low on HP. He
FD'd, I managed to finish it off with the help of his pet and mine, we
both ended the fight at under 10% HP and OOM...
After we'd med up a bit, both our pets announced they were no longer
shielding us... love that they serve as little added HP packs as well as
some DPS.
After medding up a bit, I pulled another mob, this went much better. On
a single mob, we were able to ping pong back and forth so we were both
taking about half the damage, and with Bond and some judicious
lifetapping, plus substantial lifetap proccing, we ended the fight at
around 80% each. Oh, my buddy also has a weapon which procs a 10%
slow... ok, that probably wasn't a big factor.
A warrior buddy added in, and I pulled again. This was actually harder,
as the warrior took aggro and held it. Yeah, he had a larger HP pool
and took less damage due to better AC and so on... but this meant that
the two SK's weren't actually healing any damage when the lifetaps procs
were going off, the only healing going on was the warrior chugging a
potion, his own (pathetic) lifetap proc (I say pathetic because I have
FOUR to his one, and his doesn't have crit healing AA behind it going
off half the time), and the two SK casting Zeefer's Bite for 200 or
sometimes 400 points each. Also worrying was the fact that he couldn't
FD when his HP got low... we were near a zone line, but that wasn't too
reassuring.
On the next pull, we did some ping ponging again. When we could arrange
for all three to take some damage, things went much better. It was
tricky convincing the warrior to let up on aggro control, but the
principle reason you want ONE person taking all the damage is for the
convenience of the healer... since we didn't have one, sharing around
worked far better.
We added a third, lower level, SK in to the mix, but didn't let him get
hit much; he'd have been more of a rag doll in the face of these mobs.
Then we got a little more conventional, adding a low level shaman.
Shaman buffs, plus landing a real slow, plus shaman healing... well the
shaman was running LOM every pull. Eventually we convinced her to just
slow, to be as sparing on the healing as possible, that we SK would
handle that part. That strategy made the difference between sitting
down between pulls, and constant streaming.
Later we added a druid, and went more conventional with real heals, but
by now we'd firmly settled on tank pingpong, and the SK heal stream
continued to be a significant factor. 90% of that, on my part, was just
procs, I tried not to spend much mana because I was relying on Pact of
Hate plus my MR gear as my only mana regen.
This turned out to be a pretty good strategy, and we'll probably end up
trying it in other places... and I'll put even more AA points into my
lifetap proccing plan.
Berg, 68 SK, Combine