Morning all, I’ve just just been reading one of my favourite haunts (Miss Medicina) an interesting post about why Oculus is a failure, it kind of got me thinking, and to be brutally honest I dont consider it a failure, in fact now it’s one of the easiest heroics in the game, when WoTLK was launched sure it was hard, but over the months it’s recieved nerf after nerf and loot lovin’ to encourage people to stick at it. Now Uncle Buel is gunna give you the benefit of his (limited) knowledge showing how easy this instance really is, and that you can be out of there in 20 to 25 minutes, no great shakes – with your badges, and now thanks to recent lovin, the extra loot.

Entrance:    ok you enter at the bottom level, the opening crawl in is a simple left hand sweeoping curve full of dragonkin and whelps, simple tank and spank situation. Run to the end of this killing all the way, where you’ll see a portal.

Once through this portal you see Drakos the Interrogator (Boss 1) quite a straight forward tank n spank, yes you get magically pulled into the boss, and he summons bombs around you, but quite an easy job for any moderately geared healer to keep you alive through.

Once he is dead, you get mounts – there are three mounts, Tank (ruby – far right keeper), DPS (amber – middle keeper) and Healer (Emerald – left hand keeper) easiest combo I have used is 1 Ruby (tank), 2 amber (DPS), 2 emerald (healer). So summon your mount, each one has restricted abilities until the end encounter – but take a few minutes now to check what each ability is – just tell the guys you need an AFK if you’re worried about being called a nub lol.

Fly to the center of the instance, where you need to clear the Banf of acceleration, a simple job, get the tank to use the entry arches to los pull, they all file thru the arches to get to the tank, a simple nuke fest.

Next part is pretty easy there are 3 floating circlular platforms just above you, you need to fly to the southern ones first, follow the tank let him take the aggro there are 4 mobs on each platform, these are simple to put down, nuke them fast, move to the second southern platform rinse and repeat the first platform. Then onto the northern platform where you’ll see Varos Cloudstrider (Boss 2) – essentially another tank n spank, you need to be slightly mobile during the fight to avoid the Energize Cores, this spawn covering about 1/3 of the platform, a simple job to avoid as you have 2/3rds of the platform to move freely in – with good dps this boss is nuked in no time – got a shammy in the party? Great – use bloodlust/heroism now.

Next level up (Band of Transmutation), around the center “core” there are 3 “kidney” shaped platforms, on each of these you will have an “encounter” with Mage-Lord Urom each time he will summon in 4 mobs for you to kill (not much of challenge here) once the third platform is cleared he will meet you in the centre of this level. now this part calls for a small amount of tactics firstly follow the tank so you’re the same side of the boss.

Tank the boss either clockwise or anticlockwise moving him out of the frostbomb he throws on the floor (this causes constant damage to you and your helaer wont be best pleased if you dont help out) so the tank keeps him moving occasionally Urom will teleport to the center you cant hit him or hurt him so dont bother trying, you get the easiest job ever HIDE!!!! just take cover behind a colum so his Empowered Arcane Explosion doesn’t hit you (yeah this one hurts about 13.5k damage on heroic). It’s not a difficult fight, and usually he’ll only get to teleport and use Empowered Arcane Explosion once.

Final part, and again, it’s really easy if you follow a simple set of guidelines. Firstly fly upwards clearning the trash you need to on the way to the platform with the chest on it. Now you should be able to see 3 platforms, your tank will decide whether you got clockwise or anticlockwise and decide the Time stop order on the DPS (ie who uses first and second so you dont waste it) and that’s all the decisions you need to make. So pull Ley-guardian Eregos, stay hovering over the platform do not move yet lay down dps, healer poison and heals (poison keeps your health up by leeching through the poison) DPS don’t use your time stop yet – wait for it…… when Eregos goes into Enraged Assault (deadly boss mod highlights this for you, or listen for “Such insolence…. such arrogance…. must be PUNISHED!”)  first DPS now hit Time Stop contiune nuking until Planar Shift – this again DBM highlights now which way did your tank decide to fly? follow him to the next platform either clockwise or anticlockwise – if you set off immediately you wont get hit by anything, once at the next platform hover over it and let the tank pull her, rinse and repeat this process, usually she is dead on the 2nd platform. And that’s it – well done, it wasn’t that hard now was it? The reason for staying above the platforms is simple really, if your mount dies, you fall onto a platform rather than falling to the floor and dieing. If you do lose your mount and fall to the platform it’s not over for you, you can still range dps and heal from here, I’ve done this healing from the platform before without a mount, and found it just as easy to heal the party.

Fly back to the chest platform, grab your loot, thank the party for the smooth run and thats it.

So is it really all that difficult? is it worth dropping out of a party and taking a 15 minute deserter debuff? No I dont think it is, if you explain to new people each phase as you go round, it takes about 5 minutes longer and they get to learn it to. We can do a guild random here in about 15 – 20 minutes tops, randoms take about 5 minutes longer.

I can understand why it’s disliked, but dont get the logic of instantly dropping so you dont have to go there, by the time you’ve taken your 15 minute sitting on the sideline debuff, you could almost be finished and have badges to show for it.

So in closing, I have alot of respect for Miss Medicina, and I agree with alot of her opinions but on this one I’ll have to say…. I dont believe it’s a failure as it is exactly what it says on the tin! Sure we all like playing our toons, thats why we rolled them up and spent many, many hours kitting them and for that reason it’s disliked……….  alot!

Meh, as always comments encouraged, if i’m wrong (and it has been known) feel free to comment, not just “loser” or “noob” but constructive comments.

/Buel

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 10:41 am and is filed under General Chatter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.