“Through a Glass, Darkly” – the Resto Druid Way, Pt 2

Part 1 yesterday described how to get ready for this quest chain. If you haven’t read it yet and you’re an actual resto druid, go take a look. If you’re a holy priest or something, it might have some good advice for you too, just ignore the druid specific stuff.

Ok. So you’ve got your gear reforged, gemmed, enchanted; your buff food and flask; your keys bound to useful stuff; and your mage slave waiting around at the Nexus entrance to Arcane Brilliance you. Now what?

Enter the Nexus and you’ll see a big blue dragon there – our buddy Tarecgosa who we met outside. When you talk to her, she’ll start the gauntlet. Now, the gauntlet isn’t that bad, but I found it really confusing the first few times I ran it, so I’m going to do a whole walkthrough here.

Like everyone who runs the Nexus, she heads down the hallway to the left. Partway down she casts invisibility on you so the big sentry doesn’t see you. Keep with her and when you get to the room at the end of the hall, start attacking the big arcane sentry.

You’re going to dot him up with Moonfire and Insect Swarm, then look at the two doors you didn’t come in. A little magic-eater-dog thing is going to come in both doors. Guess what? Hibernate works on them! Pop Nature’s Grasp to root them when they touch you, and Hibernate one. Dot the other, then kill it with Wrath. Note, these guys have a really really nasty silence. Definitely keep one asleep while you kill the other.

Once dog 1 is dead, kill the other dog, then kill the sentry. All this time the sentry is doing an ability you will want to avoid. When there’s a big glowing ice patch under your feet, move. Get off it. Don’t stand there. It hurts.

If you get low, pop out of boomkin and drop a few heals on yourself.

When the sentry dies, Tarecgosa gives you a chance to rest – heal yourself up now – and then leads you down a corridor of mists. Stick with her and don’t stand in the mist.

You’re going to come down to the next corridor. In the normal Nexus, this is where the frozen people are. This time you’ve got another Sentry plus dog pair to handle. Just do it the same way as before. Hibernate one dog, kill the other, keep the Sentry dotted, heal yourself, kill the other dog, kill the sentry.

Tarecgosa will play with the Sentry while you kill the dogs.

Now that the sentry is dead, start heading down the corridor. Halfway down, this happens:

Yeah. Two big nasties. She freezes you and lies to them. They disappear and she runs ahead.

Now the first couple times this happened, I got really confused. See, there’s a slow effect on you after you come out of the ice, but you can more or less catch her at the end of the hallway. She runs up the next ramp and if you follow her, you’ll probably die, because things are coming up behind you to nom your face. Let her go on ahead, while you go to the end of this corridor and turn around to deal with the new threat: not two but three puppies. They spawn right where you were frozen and run for you.

See this image? This is what happens if you don’t move from where you were frozen. They spawn right there and you have no time to get set.

Hibernate one, pop your Nature’s Grasp, let one get rooted, and then move away and kill the third. They’ll still silence you but you can handle it this way.

I forgot to screenshot this next bit. As you go up the ramp there are frozen spirits in ice cubes, and mists. There’s basically 5 spirits to a “chamber”. Enter the chamber. AOE. When the mists disappear, go to the next chamber. AOE. The bits to worry about here are, these guys hit really hard. Don’t worry about mana, nuke ’em. Starfall kills them dead but Hurricane works well too. Also, they respawn when the mist forms, so don’t stay behind in a chamber – keep moving forward.

When you get past these, you’ll be up where Whatsername usually is, the splitting mage chick. Telestra. You know her. Anyway, instead, our buddy Tarecgosa is there, with a pair of arcane sentinel guys. Kill the first sentinel, avoiding the ice, and then the second.

Now Tara leads you around the corner and you find an ice wall. She’ll deal with it, and you get to deal with a great big named fel puppy demon this! Piece of cake. Dot him up, avoid his breath of fire attack, boom, he dies. I am serious about avoiding the fire breath thing though, it hurts if you don’t. When he’s casting, just get behind him, he doesn’t move once he starts casting.

Now – the funnest part!

Tarecgosa flies off and leaves you alone to make your way across the chasm. But you can’t use flight form inside! So just hop on that little platform. It’s a vehicle, but don’t worry, you don’t have to use vehicle abilities. It just takes you to the next guy to fight. There’ll be a big dragon on a big platform with four floating orbs. Nuke him, and click the orbs as your platform goes around. They give you a shield against his big damage attack although it doesn’t completely prevent damage. When you kill him, you have a new empty platform. Don’t jump yet – heal your wounds first. Then jump.

Two little adds will spawn, rising up on platforms. Hibernate one! Hibernate is awesome and this is the first time, like, ever, that it’s been so very very useful. Kill the other, then kill the hibernated one.

Then jump to one of the little platforms. Rinse and repeat your way across the chasm.

When the big scary dragon dude shows up, don’t panic, just jump to the next platform, kill the last dragon that you have to face, and jump to the ground. When you do, Tarecgosa will make her way to you and kill all the dragons on the ground. You don’t have to fight them!  Just try to avoid attention til she gets there.

That’s it, that’s the whole gauntlet. Now it’s time to face the boss… or it will be in Part 3!

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“Through a Glass, Darkly” – the Resto Druid Way, Pt 1

So, you’re a resto druid. Heals are your thing. Maybe sometimes you go boomkin or cat – you’ve probably got an offspec for quests and stuff and maybe on raid nights when the priest refuses to go shadow for the farm content. Somehow or another, you got 25 Eternal Embers and then bought the 3 Sands of Time from that vendor in Uldum, turned the combination in, and got sent to see Tarcegosa in Coldarra.

Now what?

First, don’t just fly off to Coldarra right away. You’ve got serious work to do. Now, if you regularly Boomkin, this may be no big deal. If you’re like me and rarely touch the stuff, it will take you a few tries. You’ll save time and gold in the long run by taking some steps up front

Gear – with luck you’ve been picking up some dps gear in your raids after the mages and locks pass. A pair of solid trinkets will make a big difference, and if you’ve got options in your other slots, that’s good. If you have picked up your Boomkin 2 set, or can get it, I thought it made a nice little dps increase when I used it. Your resto set bonus are going to be useless so if you’ve got alternate pieces for those slots with better stats, then go for it.

Once you’ve picked out your dps set, save it – you might be working on this for a few weeks. Then go to the reforger. Here’s the scoop: the stuff you fight in there tops out at level 85. That means all that spirit – that converts to hit and probably has you way over hit cap – can go. I know, it’s unnatural to reforge spirit, but what you really want is haste and crit. This fight is all about your dots and hots, so pump up the haste! Mastery is basically useless, you won’t be spending much time worried about your Eclipse rotation, so that’s the other stat to dump.

Check your enchants! I had some pieces in my set that had old enchants, or no gems, because it was offspec gear. Spend the money and get your stuff done right.

Spec – listen to me here. You’re doing this in full Balance spec. Your dots won’t hit hard enough in resto, and the dragon is flying way, way overheard so no feral either. But you don’t want a cookie cutter Balance spec. You are almost never going to be standing there casting direct damage spells at the boss – and if you are, it’s Wrath, or a procced Starsurge. So look for talents that boost Moonfire, Insect Swarm, and Wrath. Take a hard look at survivability talents – I took 3 points in Perseverance for this fight, because most of the damage you take is spell damage and that 6% reduction adds up.  I did not take Solar Beam – yeah the interrupt is nice but on such a long cooldown it wasn’t worth it. No Owlkin Frenzy – you are in caster form most of the time.  I also skipped Gale Winds but that one is arguable.  I recommend picking up Blessing of the Grove and Heart of the Wild from the Resto tree.

Glyphs – don’t do what I did and realize a week into this that you’re using resto glyphs. Go buy boomkin ones! The set I used was

Prime glyphs: Insect Swarm, Wrath, and Moonfire

Major Glyphs: Barkskin, Starfall, and Monsoon

Minors: whatever you want, but not Typhoon.

Typhoon is going to be a good friend to you on this fight. You want it on a short cooldown but not – I repeat not – glyphed out of the knockback. The knockback is your friend.

Buffs:  buy a stack or two of fish heads and some flasks of  intellect. Also mana pots or health pots or both. Bandages if you have the skill (I don’t, I admit, I fail). You might even want a few Volcanic Potions but save those until you know the fight well.

If you have a really, really good mage friend perhaps she will park outside the Nexus and cast Arcane Brilliance on you every time you die and run back. I didn’t bother, but it would be a nice little perk. She might even give you cookies so you can eat on the gauntlet phase.

Abilities: I had to redo my bars a little bit to make things I needed accessible. Your major damage spells are going to be Wrath, Moonfire, and Insect Swarm. You’ll get Starsurge procs so have that somewhere easy to use. You’ll use Typhoon  a lot, and you want your Wild Mushrooms and Detonate Wild Mushrooms on the keys. I also suggest having Hibernate on your bar, mostly for the gauntlet but you may need to sleep an add for a second at some point.

You want Barkskin and Nature’s Grasp in easy to reach spots. I had mine mapped to F1/F2 and also F11/F12, for easy access. Innervate – use it early and often! Starfall is a nice damage boost, and your treants should be somewhere easy to get to.

Whew! What else? Why, your hots – but if you’re a real resto druid raider you’ve probably got those bound to mouseclicks in Vuhdo or Grid or whatever. I’ll assume you have access to those in your balance spec, because if you don’t it’s gonna suck. If for some reason you need to map the heals to keys: prioritize Lifebloom, Rejuv, Regrowth, Healing Touch. Nourish isn’t going to cut it.

Yay! You’re ready to go! Make sure your gear is repaired. There’s a repair guy at the Transitus Shield in Coldarra if you need him. Then, hop a boat or zeppelin and get to the Tundra – or fly from Dalaran if you’ve moved back to mageville. You’ll get a cut scene, meet Tarecgosa, and be told to meet her inside the Nexus. Go on in – and note, you cannot be in a group of any sort at this point. When you talk to her, she’ll start the gauntlet event, so be ready.

Next Time: The Gauntlet!

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