Saturday, March 7, 2009

Utgarde Keep

Hello all,

Since we are starting to get a lot more organized and have many more players gearing up to tackle heroics, I thought I would start an ongoing series on instance strategy.

First some basics: Plate tanks need to have 535 defense minimum and preferably be at the 540 cap. Healers should have 1400 +heals at the very least. Dps should strive to be 1200+. Obviously these are rough guidelines but if you go any lower in any of the these categories, the difficulty gets exponentially greater. Also players need to be comfortable using crowd control and tanks should be comfortable with marking so the pace doesn't lag. When pulling trash mob groups, 99% of the time kill anybody with mana first.

I will not go over each pull as I think learning these things is half the fun, but I will give you tips on each boss as well as any other special things.

First instance up...the easiest of them all:

Name: Utgarde Keep
Location: Howling Fjord
Number of bosses: 3
Special group make-up: None needed

Prince Keleseth: Tank him where he is walking. Casters...make sure the tank/boss is between you and both doorways. Boss will call forth skeleton adds and they will come from these doorways. Tank should aggro them before the reach casters. Boss will also encase someone in ice. When he does this, all dps should hit ice casing immediately to break out your comrade.

Dalronn/Skarvald: Tank where they are standing. Everyone needs to focus on Dalronn (the caster) and bring him down to about 20%. Then everyone switches to Skarvakd (the melee) and do the same. Then try and bring both of them down as quickly as possible and at somewhat the same time or very bad things happen. Adds will come during the fight but these can easily be handled by an assigned AoE dps or led into tank's AoE.

Ingvar the Plunderer: Tank where he stands. Casters need to stand at range and tank should try and point boss away from everyone. When he starts to cast his smash (a cone AoE in front of boss), tank should strafe away or run through him. When he starts to cast his roar, casters (including healers) should stop casting until he finishes or be silenced. Once you kill him, run behind one of the pillars so you are out of line-of-sight. He will be resurrected and you get to start all over. For the most part it is the same, however, he also has a nasty little axe that will spin around so don't get hit by that.

As always, hope you enjoy and feel free to comment if I missed anything of utter import. Next up: Nexus.

1 comment:

  1. The only thing I would add to that list is a note concerning the Stategists. These guys lay down a bomb on the ground under someone's feet. It does about 30% of the tanks hp in damage. Most tanks don't pay attention to it and just expect you to heal through it. I'd suggest keeping an eye on the tanks debuffs and asking them to move when it shows up under their feet. The DPS shouldn't be taking hits and should watch their own buffs.

    Also, for Healers w/ druid tanks, these guys are horrible mana sinks, very little popable mitigation, but high hp makes for lots of healing.

    1)As a starter, use lots of CC until you're comfortable with what your tank/healer can handle.

    2) Dragons, always keep dragons faced away from the group. Fire breath is baaaad mmmkay?

    3) final dragon w/ rider, sheep the rider.

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