One of our guild members is taking a sabbatical for a few months–he has a family, 50-hour/week job and is now starting classes in electrical engineering. But as his “swan song” he wanted to get an instance or two done over his last weekend.
On Friday night, three of us helped him finish up some Netherstorm quests (and cleaned up a couple ourselves). Saturday afternoon, we managed to get a group of 5 level 70s to head to Mana Tombs. It was the first visit for most of us; I think one, possibly two members had been in once, but hadn’t finished.
So, we all gathered ’round the summoning stone in Auchindoun, shared quests all around, and headed in. Our group consisted of a Prot Pally, Resto Druid, BM Hunter, and two Combat Dagger Rogues (including Kestrel). Obviously, MT should be a cakewalk for a group like this, and for the most part it was. But even with a more level-appropriate group (say around 64-65), I think we’d fare pretty darn well.
I’d have preferred a wee bit more discipline in our pulls, just for the practice in handling things with our particular group make-up, but otherwise, we worked well together. Of course, with two of us being Rogues, and most groups being 2-4, CC was easy. Even when saps broke early, or the pally got overzealous *grin* we managed adds just fine. In fact, we had several pulls where we had 4-6 very testy ephemerals trying to down us, which we handled just fine.
The only time we wiped was our first attempt at the Prince: We recognized his little glowball friends were categorized as “humanoid” so we tried the typical saps & traps. Guess what? Uh huh — immune. *frown* Of course, we should have had a back-up plan before the pull, instead of after the wipe. As it is, we had Prince down to around 15-20% before the last death, so we were pretty confident going in the second time. His little warp action is a PITA though–seemed he would do that every time I had 4 or 5 combo points up, so I’m chasing him to get in my envenom or eviscerate.
Then there was the wrap-up escort quest. We were caught unprepared on the second fight, and somehow I died–really, really fast. I had two of those voidwalker types beating on me, and I went from full health to dead in about 5 seconds. The Druid was ready to combat rez me, but I told her to hold off, as the tank was down to about 20%–if he died, he’d need the rez a lot more than I would. He didn’t, they finished the fight, and I got the rez. The rest was easy. Turns out I was out of LOS of the Druid when I died–even though it looked like I was in good shape.
All the drops were below our gear level (might have been one thing that was kept; I can’t recall for certain) but we know we want to get a more level-appropriate group in there for some of the gear.
All in all, a very fun couple hours. I really enjoyed the instance, even though it’s almost boring in its linearity, but for a level-appropriate group, it can be a great training ground. I am definitely looking forward to going back!
