Last night Reversion and I decided to see how badly nerfed Firelands was by taking our less geared alts, some guildies, and some trade chat pugs in. We had Reversion’s other druid tank who is pretty well geared other than having a blue weapon, my mage who can manage11k on trash, 13 on bosses, two well geared shaman healers from guild, Bocat, and two other guildies: a well geared dps warrior who knew the fights, and a somewhat geared mage who also knew the fights. Then we grabbed a resto druid and two dks from Trade, one dk as a a tank, and headed in.
Trash was fine. Our dps was so low that the nerfs meant things died about as fast as I’m used to. My dps was the worst at 11k, I believe, but only Bocat and the warrior really performed well. It was a bit painful. The dk tank was pulling about 5k so no help there.
After we got it cleared, it was Shannox time. Everyone said they knew the fight so we pulled. We had a couple issues:
The dk tank was on the dog and was using a different strat than we used…. basically trying to trap the dog before spear time, not after. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, and often Reversion couldn’t clear his debuff
The dps was low. We had the melee staying on Shannox and Rageface just would. Not. Die.
People were standing on traps. To be fair, it was mostly two people who did had known computer issues (lag and addon problems). But that didn’t make it easier to deal with the traps.
The resto druid wasn’t a raid -level healer. His spell choice was bad (did not want to use Lifebloom. Seriously?) and his gear was light. It wasn’t a deal killer but it hurt.
Did I mention the dps was low? I’m an arcane mage, I ought to be able to do more than 13k. Bleah.
On the third try (Reversion: was it only 3? I think it was 5 or more. Ug.), we got Shannox down. That was the first time everyone stayed alive to phase 2. P2 didn’t take any time and the healing seemed way less intense.
So basically, the nerf meant a group that had no business being there could kill the easiest boss, after a few fails. But it wasn’t a total pushover. The “bads” that some elitists seem worried will get “free loot”, won’t. If you couldn’t down Shannox before it’s probably because of mechanics, not raw numbers, and the mechanics still have to be handled.
I may be complaining this weekend when we go in with our real crew, but at least it’s not a complete joke.
Oh, and did anyone else notice a buffed epic drop rate? We cleared Shannox trash, got one, and Beth trash and got another (Rev’s other bear now has a purple weapon!). Could be coincidence but after all the nights we’ve gone in there without a single BOE trash drop… Got a crafting ember on our one boss kill too, but that’s not a big enough sample size to make any guesses there.