HoR because everyone needs a sink holeFollow

Normally I oppose rant threads because it generates karma that wasn't really earned, it is really easy to ally people behind anger. However, I now see why they are popular.

Its not that hard, you just stand in the corner by Falwyn hide when the wave comes. Wait to the tank has aggro, then focus on the tanks target. Rinse and repeat, then nuke the boss while dispelling the debuffs.

No lie, we get into H Halls of Reflection. I am on my paladin healing (tank/healer).

Melee Dps: "10g says we don't even make it to the first boss."
Tank: "Stop beiing ******."
*Tanks begins fight first wave comes running to the corner*
*Tank drops group and we wipe. Range dps leaves*

I take a deep breath and re-queue us. A tank and dps join and we go again. Anyways we are trucking it in the corner, the new mage won't come into the corner and pulls aggro on the mage and rifleman. I burn alot time trying to keep him up while the tank gains aggro. Eventually I fall behind on group heals and another dps dies and eventually we wipe. The tank drops and the new range dps. I conclude I cannot heal HoR and I decide to change specs and queue as a tank.

Healer and dps join the group, the healer drops instantly. I facepalm and the group disbands.

The only time I remember this frustration is posting on trade chat for 45 minutes or more trying to find a capable group to do my Occulus achievement. Anyone run into this problem?

HoR seems to be the new "lets f^ck with people" instance.
It is as if people (Tank or Healer, or Tank/Healer friends-this is a red flag for me to get ready to drop) Q up for this, and wait for the "group is ready" message to cancel, Q up again, and repeat this for maybe 10min. Then decide to get in, and start and then leave the group. They must get omgenjoyment for them few sec they get to see everyone die before the instance kicks them out for not being in the group.

You are so funny! 300g repair-a-day makes you a comic genus!

And I'm not sure what is up with my battle group, but it is really hard to get a group to even finish Normal HoR.
1st 2 bosses, then everyone leaves..wtf is up with that?
The Tapestry Mantel I need drops in that chest..at the end of the dungeon people -.-

Tonight was great. Paladin Tank was praying for the shield to drop of the 2nd boss (normal HoR). Said I've only seen it once, everyone else said they have never seen it. I must be luck to groups, because it dropped again (neat looking shield).
Pally needs. So does the fury Warrior.
Warrior wins with a 99, then drops the group. Pally goes on a wtf-fest in chat...like the rest of us care, that warrior may also have a tank spec to and also needed it...so Paladin leaves.
Made me chuckle, but then I realized I had been logged on for 3hours only to be Qed for Normal HoR and each time (3 times) everyone left after 2nd boss...

Edited, Feb 16th 2010 9:32pm by Sandinmygum

The mages have to have line of sight to use flame strike. That's why people bunch in the corner. The whole idea is that it's an easy way to round all of the mobs up and for the tank to get relatively quick control over the situation and then you spread out right away to avoid AoE. The problem is, too many people don't understand line of sight. I had a tank while I was on my shaman and after a wipe that led me to suggest LoS, he stood in plain sight of the mobs as they spawned, just kinda sorta half behind the wall like some sneaky guy in an FPS trying to line up a shot. Or people who think LoS means tank only so they run out in plain sight of mobs that haven't been touched by the tank yet. All kinds of goodies.

I've cleared heroic HoR a couple of times on my shaman. I was never really all that enthusiastic about the new 5-mans to begin with but I decided that I'd rather run with guild only or not run it at all. And since it was usually faster for me to queue as a PUG dps to get my random daily out of the way than it was to wait on a full guild group to form, I would tend to be one of the first people to leave a bad heroic HoR group if it seemed that the issue was one of general ignorance rather than the occasional error or minor gear deficiency. If it weren't for the "free" EoF from the each of the quests involving the 5-mans, I wouldn't have run them at all except when they came up as the random heroic. I have nothing against them, but 5-man content just doesn't really excite me.

That's why you burn down the mage first, or at least second right after the priest. Or, as the good reverend Nefarian would say...



I finally got this instance as a random today. After my question of "Will we be fighting them out here or should we go hide in the corner?" I received no response, so we ended up hanging out in the middle. Which is why I was amazed that it went fairly well, though it helped that I had my roommate on "If you see a mage, deathgrip it" duty, which freed me up to do the same to the riflemen.

I prefer tanking right at the entrance. It involves a lot of running around, but I found it easier than tanking in the corner. If the healer stands in the wrong place one of the melee will regularly disable him while im tanking next to him. If they are going to be all over the place I'd rather I have chosen for them to be all over the place. Controlled chaos.


With that said... I love HoR. Its the only heroic in the game that hasn't been mind numbingly nerfed into complete and total mediocrity. I am by no means a super gamer or a hard core min/maxer... but heroics have been hit with so many nerfs over the last couple of patches that I've given up running more than one for the frost emblem. I've kept the majority of my conquest gear because most of the t9 are slight upgrades for most of my classes...some even downgrades when itemization is considered.

Going with the guild makes it even worse. Well oiled machine obliterating content. It should be easy at our point of gear, but not mind numbingly easy. In one run tanking on my druid we were running UK and my healer (a guildie) started falling asleep and forgetting to heal (literally). I never noticed.


That being said, I love H. HoR. I want to be challenged. Big whoop if you get a few fail groups. You need to know your groups limits. If its obvious they aren't going anywhere that's where you quit, bite the 15 minute deserter penalty, and re-queue.



Majority of fail problems occur when people are too stubborn or too oblivious to judge whether or not the group is viable to clear content. Don't be jump ship happy (you come across as an elitist jerk and often are proven later to have been wrong)...but don't subject yourself to an hour of wipes when you could have taken yourself out of queue (30 minutes total including the time to get back in as a DPS) and been placed in a new group that could clear it.

I still say bring a CC class or two with you, and just tank it in the middle. It makes things almost laughable, and gives you that old-school feeling again.

But I've yet to run into a PuG that wants to CC during it.

I believe CC was an old wooden ship...

Oddly enough, I finally ran into a group that was old school enough to know what CC meant. I got HoR on my DK a few days ago as my random, and, of course, got that sinking feeling.


Priest healer ( Disc, I love Discipline Priests ) pally tank, Hunter, myself, and Mage. Tank immediately says for me to DG all caster/ranged mobs into him, told me not to worry, he'd get them off me. Priest and Hunter confer briefly on what mobs to shackle/trap, and off we go.


We blew through the first set of waves at, to me, a astonishing rate. First boss is whacked upside the head as well. This was probably one of the smoothest, most efficient runs I've done in any of the ICC 5 mans, it was like clockwork.


We get to the running gauntlet, pally is doing an outstanding job, in fact, I'd have to say, everyone was just on their game. Last wall, and we run into a bit of trouble; Hunter and Mage are getting clobbered, I'm trying to off tank two Abominations, and the Priest is in trouble. Pally DI's the Mage, pulls the mobs off the Hunter, and some how rescues the Priest as well, leaving me; with 2 very upset mobs pounding me. My health is dropping, Arthas is really close, and I think it might be a wipe. Again, to my astonishment, Mage uses blastwave, dazing the abom's, pally tosses a few FoL's my way, Priest gets a shield on me, and we amazingly pull it off.


We actually cheered when we made it to the ship. Very exciting run, and it was hard, but everyone used ALL of their abilities, something you don't see much anymore. Personally, I miss using CC, and various class mechanics.

When the new dungeons came out, we breezed through them pretty easily, being raid geared. Then, suddenly there is this new LoS strat, and the groups I went with (mostly guild groups) started wiping. Not just 'oops, let's try again' wiping, but wiping for so long that we gave up. Never mind a pug, no damned way! Not long ago I was in stratfu's IRC and a well-known mage and I were both griping about the alcove strat. Bah.

Anyway, I had quit going on ICC trio runs because of that fight, and because I really suck at getting my stacks off on that Frost boss. That was a month or so ago I guess, that I'd decided I wasn't gonna do them anymore.

Fastforward to this week: I really needed to gear up my shaman for ICC25, so I was running non-stop heroics on him. Was in vent with some guildies who were doing the trio, hoping for certain pieces of gear + hilt. I say "***** that, I'm not doing those dungeons anymore," and what's the first dungeon I get in the random queue? H HoR. uggggg. Okay, fine, I'll give it a try and see. Mind you, even though I have chain heals and seem to do pretty well in most 5mans, I'm not a very confident healer, so I'm pretty nervous about it. So the first thing I see in party chat is "okay, let's try this again." Not a good sign. But, oh well, let's see what happens. We get in the corner (hatesssssss it, can't see anything!), and the waves start coming. The spriest keeps getting out and getting aggro first, at which point it was suggested that I let him die by 2 other members of the group. Well, 1, I don't normally just let folks die, and 2, it's not so easy to do that using chain heals (but I do decide to make him last on my priority list, since what he's doing might wipe us all). But he does die, despite my attempts to keep him alive. I try to res him as soon as we have a milisecond out of combat, but he's already released and has been locked behind the gate lol? I figure it's probably a wipe, especially after having wiped on it so many times with 5 people. But we keep going, and it's actually working pretty well, this alcove strat that I hate so much. Boss dies, whew, okay, that's half way. I die on wave 8, but luckily I can ankh and my Swiftness is up, so we keep going and win! OMG! I was even yelling on vent and people were gratsing me! :)

Does this mean I wanna do it again? Nope, but it made me feel pretty good as a healer, and it proved once again that I have good PuG luck. :) But, really, I think it takes a pretty good tank and dps to do it, and I understand why people don't want to. If you can skip it and wait a few minutes to get another one, it's better than paying a ton in repair bills just to run a heroic. That's why you run into this problem. I still am amazed at how much more it takes to repair mail than cloth, so there's no way I'd wipe on any heroic a ton of times.

The group makeup can change the odds of success in here alot, even moreso if they do/do not know how to play their classes well.

Even so, occasional crap happens: healer gets stunlocked/iceblocked at wrong time, a dps gets ganked by 3 at once, etc.

You -could- call it "bad luck"... or call it poor skills by the tank/dps on doing what they're supposed to do. *hint*(controlling the mobs)

Try to time using tanking cooldowns and trinkets around the mercs being on you. Kidney shot is pretty nasty, but if people are ccing and everything is going to plan the healer should be in a position to spam heal you through it.

There are some amazing drops there too, 2 handed dps weapons, tanking weapons and a very nice caster offhand.