test

<code></code>

Extreme Soloing – AQ 40 – The Prophet Skeram

I have ventured into AQ40 to attempt to see what could be resonably soloed. First up to even get into the actual temple, you need to get by the first boss in the raid instance – The Prophet Skeram.

This guy has a couple of abilities. One of the most annoying will not occur during a solo attempt – This guy formerly MC’ed people and that had to be contained by sheeps (not really any other workable cc back in those days, at least as not a reliable cc). Also, he did an arcane explosion when more than 4 people were in melee range – this will also not be a problem on a solo attempt.

What will be a problem on a solo attempt will be his earth shock ability. He will only cast this when somone is not actively meleeing him. However he will spawn 2 identical copies of himself and as there is only one of you the ones you are not meleeing will spam a 2k earth shock every second.

The first time I entered AQ40 on a solo attempt I learned that this ability would be the challenge. I have about 45k health on solo attempts (although I can self buff above 50k if neccessary). And each split lowered my health down almost the whole way. I could push thru the 75% health split with no cooldowns, however it was likely AD would proc. The 50% split would require a cooldown and the final split would be too much to overcome. I was able to push to the 3rd split at 25% health, but could not last thru it.

Enter my solution – Nature resistance. Like any good, long term, tank I have kept almost all of my resist sets. I have full Frost (level 80), Fire (level 70), and Nature (level 70) resist sets. I had a full Arcane resist set (level 70) but I got rid of most of it for bank space (and the fact that the only fight it ever came in handy on was the 2nd boss in magister’s terrace). I also have a few shadow resist pieces from BT (Neck and cloak). My nature set consist of the chest, helm , legs, and ring.  I also used the lesser flask of resistance and the druid buff drums.

This was a world of differnce. Even with the reduced tanking stats from the resist set, I was easily able to beat this boss without even using one cooldown. If you want to solo Skeram, get NR resist.

Extreme Soloing – Most of ZG – and a brief foray into old school ranged weapons!

Half of the bosses in ZG are boring to solo – the majority of the bosses are tank and spank. Snake, Panther and Spider involved no strategy, just dps the bosses when available. As long as you clear the room, Raptor is the same way, but with a fear. I have not done the edge of madness yet, (but I will – I want the full ZG Paladin set before it goes away in the expansion), but I hear that it also is primarily tank and spank.

For your viewing pleasure – one of the most unique bows in the game, which you most likely have never seen – The Hoodoo Hunting Bow. This drops from Wushoolay in the Edge of Madness. I have never seen one in game, which is a shame as it has one of the most unique skins of any ranged weapon.

Completely unrelated to ZG – this is an old drop from BWL – The Dragonbreath Hand Cannon. It is from Ebonroc in BWL. My god! ITs a gun shaped like a red dragon head with a mouth that opens to reveal the barrel! Where are these skin designs now?!?!?!?

And finally – Larvae of the Great Worm. This is from AQ40. I’d love to get my hunter some of these unusual skinned ranged weapons – today’s big guns just don’t have the flair of these old ones!

Extreme Soloing – ZG – High Priestess Jeklik – (BAT)

The bat boss…

This was the most difficult boss I faced in ZG all night. Why? Because paladins are one of the few classes without a short cooldown interrupt.

The boss starts in Bat form and occasionally summons some bats. I had to look this up as it went so fast I barely noticed it. That and the next part took so long I forgot about the first phase entirely.

At 50% the boss reverts to Troll form. In this form she has some Priest class abilities. Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay, Fear, and Greater Heal. As a prot paladin I could not get this guy down fast enough that a greater heal wouldn’t bring her up higher than before. Couple all of that with bat riders dropping fire onto the ground and this became very annoying very quickly.

Unfortunatly, that was the only quick thing about this. As the only interrupt that would effect this guy was my stun, and it was on a 40 second cooldown, I had only one hope. Stay alive until she had no mana. So that is exactly what I did. I threw up Seal of Light and Judged Light and waited while the boss cast her mana down to nothing. I had to keep kiting out of the fire bombs the bat riders were dropping.

So I had a lot of time on my hands to experiment. I learned that the Mind Flay this boss does is not a magic effect. It is a snare. Cleanse will not remove it but Hand of Freedom will. It will not only prevent the snare, but will cancel the cast. I also learned that Every Man for Himself will get you out of both the fear and the flay stopping its cast.

After 17 grueling minutes of this the boss finally dropped. Got a leet – Seal of the Gurubashi Berserker from this guy – always wanted one on my hunter at 60. Now it sells for gold!

Extreme Soloing – Ayamiss the Hunter

This one was a PITA.

Ayamiss is in the air until brought down by ranged attacks at 70% health. While in the air he targets you and puts a stackable debuff called Poison Stinger that does 25 nature damage every second. WOWWiki states that it stacks to 100. From my attempt I can tell you it at least goes to 160 (this is where I bubbled it off). For those keeping score thats 4000dps.

Remember, I’m a paladin. I have very limited ranged capability. I am convinced that a prot pally is not capable of downing this guy. Why? Ayamiss stays over 20 yards away in the air. There is one damage ability that reaches this far that a prot pally has – Exorcism. Lets just say that with it’s cooldown. Not really viable when you don’t have seal/judgement of light healing available and a mana pool of around 5-6k. So I went holy.

As Holy I have an increased range judgement as well as Holy Shock. One problem. Holy shock only has an offensive range of 20 yards. Not enough. So there I was dpsing Ayamiss down with Judgement and Exorcism and healing myself up. Every so often the boss summons adds but concecration was enough to kill them.

After about 6-7 minutes I was able to get the guy down. It took less than a minute to kill him in this phase. Even as holy this guy is a pushover on the ground. Some classes will find this guy a lot easier. As a paladin I’m convinced only a holy paladin will have the staying power to get defeat this boss. Ret and prot just don’t have the ranged abilities combined with the healing needed.

As usual, the loot was junk – Loot – but as usual I got a few skill books that sell for 10G each

Extreme Soloing – TRASH – Flesh Hunter in AQ20

Trash! – You’re covering trash?!?!? – Yes I need to cover this trash because you cannot solo this guy down with melee attacks.

Can’t do it. It’s not going to happen.

Why? He doesn’t hit that hard…

This guy has a special ability – Consume – the ooze actually eats you. If you are in melee range it sucks you into its body and does 10% of your total health every second  for 15 seconds. Divine shield breaks you out of it. Once. Every Man for Himself didn’t work. Hand of Freedom didn’t work. I didn’t die to bosses in AQ20 – I died to trash. I wasn’t ready for this.

But the guy will do a ranged attack if you are at range. So you don’t need to be in melee range with him. So you need to use ranged attacks.

But I’m a Paladin – I have a very limited ranged arsenal. So I went holy for this – that’s right – I changed specs for trash. Holy shock – extended range judgement – hasted exorcism – they gave me the firepower to take him down.

If you plan on soloing AQ 20 be prepaired to deal with these guys, or get adept at avoiding them. They can be found around Buru’s pool.

Extreme Soloing – Buru the Gorger

Buru was a more difficult fight.

The gimmick of this fight is you need to kite the boss on top of the eggs around the pool of water which is his “room”. Once on top of the eggs you kill the egg and it does some damage to him. This is the only way to hurt this boss until he is at 20%.

However he has a stacking bleed that he does when he catches up to you (in this fight its pretty much constant as there is no one else there) and when you kill an egg it does damage to you as well. Also an add spawns when an egg dies, although this is beneficial for BoS mana regen.

For this fight I had to be careful with my life. I put up Seal of Light as well as judged light on the eggs. Once I had to cast Lay on Hands on myself, but that was late in the fight so I had a lot of time to play with. This should be doable with signifigantly worse gear.

This was my first real challenge in AQ, but I still wasn’t worried about dying.

Updates

Quick updates –

1. Nothing new raid wise in my guild – we’ve downed nothing new in 25 ICC. However, I did get in on our heroic 10-progression group and helped them down Heroic Dreamwalker in my healing set. Got Portal Jockey as well.

2. In freelance news I managed to get an invite to another guilds Ulduar 25 run in progress and joined them on the Freya Hard Mode fight. Once again dusting off the little used holy set I managed to get the achievement – Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood – 25. Was great to be in a raid with people with some excellent awareness. However, I managed to die about halfway thru the attempt myself…(I’m normally a tank and that may be one of the most difficult awareness fights in the game – not the time to bust out a little used spec.)

3. In my extreme soloing project I cleared out ZG yesterday (minus Jindo and with once again…no mounts) – reports to follow.

Extreme Soloing -General Rejaxx

This fight requires virtually no explanation. You talk to an NPC and he starts the encounter. Waves of adds run at you with a sub-bos – you kill them. They all do something differnet, but none of them are that threatening at level 80. Also, if you are Friendly with Cenarion Circle – you get 200 hp per three second as well as a haste and AP buff from one of the NPC’s.

For the waves I threw up Seal of Command and burned them down. I took a little damage but the buff healed it right up. If I didn’t have it I’d have just cast a flash of light between waves.

After a few waves you get to General Rejaxx – He seems a bit more difficult due to a mechanic that reduces your health in half. This occurs when he does his knockback. However as I judged light on the General combined with the buff, I healed very quickly and was never in real danger. Dead boss – Looted

Extreme Soloing – Kurinnaxx

The first boss of AQ20 – Kurinnaxx wasn’t all that difficult after I learned his trick.

His melee hits did virtually nothing to me. He has a “Mortal Wound” debuff that reduces healing by 10% and stacks 10 times, but I never required healing.

The only difficult part to this encounter is his “Sandtrap” ability – He puts a trap at your feet that reduces hit by 75% and prevents you from casting spells.  My solution – kiting. Keep moving him in a circle and the trap will never trigger on you. Repeat for a few minutes – Loot.