After last week’s run the group spent a bit of time going out and running quests out of Honor Hold in order to gear up a bit.
The place is a bit of a mess
That did, of course, get us some experience as well, and by the time we formed up again for another run this past Sunday, the group looked like this:
- Ula – level 61 gnome mage
- Beanpole – level 61 gnome warlock
- Wilhelm – level 60 human paladin (protection)
- Fergorin – level 60 human paladin (holy)
Potshot had also been busy with Skronk, the guild alchemist, who was out gathering herbs and creating potions for us, including a fire resist potion for that last boss fight.
We managed to get right into the instance… we ran back enough last time to not get lost… and into the first few mobs.
Starting off strong
We did have a couple of minor mishaps on our way to the first boss, as we mis-timed a patrol and forgot that when you hear the announcement about hounds, you had best be prepared for even more adds.
Whoops
Fergorin also accidentally lit off a consecrate in the midst of some adds, which brought him down as well. But we successfully made it to the first boss, Watchkeeper Gargolmar. After clearing all the groups from where he wanders, we followed our previous successful strategy and killed off his helpers first, leaving him vainly calling for healing as the fight went against him.
But no healing came as his healers were dead
After Watchkeeper Gargolmar we cleared the rest of the opening area and went up the ramp in the tower to face our biggest non-boss nemesis, that group of five at the top of the tower.
Those guys again
We made sure the soul stone was up and went at them. This time they resisted Ula’s polymorph and seemed to deflect all of her frost damage. We thought we were going to wipe and then we wiped. But at least we brought three of the five down in the attempt. Once we revived we gave it to the other two.
Not so tough without all your buddies, are you?
We managed to get through the open area at the top of the tower and to Omor the Unscarred. Last time around it took us four tries to bring him down and I wasn’t sure if we really learned much about the fight after the first two tries. But we tried to harness what we knew, spreading out and getting ready to go all in.
And it was a near run thing. Ula got popped trying to remove Omor’s curse and Skronk fell to that as well. Beanpole and I held him for a bit before the curse got him as well, but Skronk had a soul stone up again… we had waited until it was ready again before we started the fight… and got in some heals on me and some damage before going down again. That left me alone with Omor, who was down to the hairy edge of hit points, but so was I. I had used everything besides lay hands up to that point, so hit that as I got low, which gave me just enough to bring him down.
It is for you
I had just a bit of health left.
Just 21% left in the tank
Unfortunately his last words were prophetic as he had left behind three fiendish hounds that were still on me. With no mana and everything else on cool down I went down before I could finish them off.
Omor lost and defeated us in the end
So we beat him on the first try AND we wiped. We had to run back to the instance, but his corpse was still there to be looted when we returned. That was good, as he had the Tenacious Defender, a nice belt upgrade for me.
That just left us with Vazruden and his dragon mount Nazan.
Vazruden and Nazan waiting for us
This fight we felt we had learned something from. We had some fire resist potions and had read up that the tank, if careful, can nestle up to Nazan when he is down on the ground, getting under his head, which will cause him to miss with his big fire breath weapon. So we kicked off the event by killing the guards, then tackled Vazruden, and finally I went in and grabbed Nazan.
And the plan of keeping under his chin seemed to work. Nazan steps back every so often when you get that close, but I kept pressing up to him with each retreat until I had him up against the edge of the platform where the battle takes place.
Nazan breathing fire over my head
It went well right up until it didn’t. While I was avoiding his breath attack, he was still hitting me and dropping fire bombs on me, which added up to a lot of damage. I used my health stone, but didn’t have a health potion up because my fire resist potion was on the same cool down.
I died.
But we were so close and, while Fergorin was clearly next to go, both Ula and Beanpole were still in the fight and if seemed like we would get there.
Nazan must die, he is almost there
But once Fergorin went down Nazan turned on Ula and his breath did her in, which left Beanpole alone to whittle down the last 2% of Nazan’s health.
Beanpole alone
He didn’t make it. We wiped. And, furthermore, while we had the soul stone up again, Fergorin couldn’t ress me, way out in the open area, before the event reset and the guards reloaded. He just got off the spell before being attacked. I ran past him, hitting myself with Divine Protection, which somehow kept me out of combat, so when Fergoin went down I was at least able to ress the party.
Still, we were feeling good about how close we had been to victory. It felt within our grasp.
And then we did the fight two more times and came nowhere close. On the next fight I forgot to take the fire resist potion and got caught in the open between Vazruden and Nazan as I was trying to go grab the dragon’s aggro and took the fire breath weapon full on and died instantly.
The next time I took the fire resist potion and managed to grab Nazan successfully, but on his first hop back he launched his breath weapon at me before I could step forward and I was down again.
Dead again
After that Beanpole had to go as RL was calling, so that was the end of our second attempt at Hellfire Ramparts. We will have to look into what else we can do to mitigate Nazan next time around.
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