While I've been avoiding epic dungeons and skirmishes after some bad experiences, my pet tank keeps trying them. Last night he was in Valindra's Tower with a guildie, wiping once again. Looking over his shoulder, I noticed that their group was one player short, so I thought I'd surprise them by jumping into the queue on my rogue. If they were that desperate for a fifth, even my poor dps would be an improvement! But I got no pop.
"Try your cleric," my pet tank advised after I had told him what I was trying to do. Aha! On my cleric I got a pop instantly, for a group of four people trying to fill that last spot. So I joined - and landed in a completely different party about to engage the first boss. Oh. Since I hate dropping from groups for no good reason, I thought I'd see what this dungeon was all about.
Having never been to Valindra's Tower before, I ran in circles while the rest of the group killed the first boss. Eventually I managed to catch up though. Everything died really quickly, apparently because we had an amazing great weapon fighter in the group who did twice as much damage as the entire rest of the group combined (something like seventy million over the course of the run). Soon we were done. Meanwhile, my pet tank's group was still wiping and still one person short.
I tried my rogue again. After a few minutes, I got a pop - this time for a completely fresh run. This one, too, contained a seventy-million-damage great weapon fighter who made the whole thing a breeze.
My pet tank's group eventually had to give up. The queue system seemed to have bugged out and was refusing to give them a fifth party member, and they just kept wiping on the last boss (Valindra herself). He then told me that this had been his fifth attempt at this dungeon and that he had yet to complete it even once. While I had just bumbled in like a clueless idiot and got carried to completion twice within an hour. Oops?
Hey, at least both of my characters got silly hats out of it. Behold the horned cleric!
Epic dungeons can go one of the three ways: 1. there is someone with 3k+ IL who hard carries the rest of the group = easy win, 2. the group has a proper class distribution and people are decently geared = you gotta work for the win but it's in your reach, 3. the group is undergeared/ lacks key classes = you're in for the world of pain and masochism. When toons wipe on the first group of normal mobs it's a sign for me to quit the party.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds about right, and part of why I usually avoid them. Too much of a gamble. I just got lucky this one time.
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