Adventures in Scarlet Monostary

I'm often considered weird in my circle of friends for playing as many locks as I do. Not that I've got anywhere near the reputation that my girlfriend's Hunterington's Disease has, but still, I get more than a few strange stares over vent. I could go into some detail about why it is that I enjoy leveling a class that I already have a max level of, and I intend to do so in a later post. That's not what this post is about though, I just wanted to establish that I have a low level warlock in addition to my max level one.

And so, out of my interest in leveling a second warlock, Arnoux was born. She was named for the object of Frederich's passion in Flaubert's Sentimental Education which I was engrossed in at the time that I rolled her. That's not what this post is about though, I just wanted to establish that Arnoux is the character in question, and explain her unusual name.

What this post is about is an instance run. I like to run instances, it's my favorite thing to do in this game as a matter of fact. Grouping together with other people who all have vastly different abilities and specializations to surmount obstacles that they could not individually conquer is very appealing to me. Unfortunately, instance groups are hard to find when you're low enough level that even a level 50 could give you a run-through without breaking a sweat. As such, I'm left to take what I can find--though I did draw the line with the group who invited a hunter when we needed a tank for gnomer.

So on this particular day I was, as I often am, running around doing nothing of great importance while sitting in LFG with the note "Experienced Warlock LF any instance group." I figure that given the one hundred and thirty-three levels of warlock that I've gone through between my three highest level locks, I'm allowed to call myself experienced compared to the large majority of other players looking for a Scarlet Monostary group.

Anyway, I get a tell from a priest interested in doing Library. Apparently on the earlier run some warrior ninja'd the Robes of Doan and he was rather intent on reacquiring the misappropriated garment. Since I was already wearing the thing myself, I didn't have a problem agreeing to pass on it. So I get my summon, and we head in there.

Now, not to say these players weren't fine gents, but it quickly became apparent to me that at the very least, they were somewhat new to the game. Not really a bad thing though--Library could be three manned by a decently competent group at level 30, so a five man group of level 30+ players shouldn't have a problem. And it's not like they were stupid or anything; the tank tanked, the healer healed, and the DPS made sure things died. And, as a nice little bonus for me, I had to put Curse of Recklessness on all the humanoid mobs to prevent them from fleeing and pulling extra groups. It was nice to be in an instance where I was able to bring some utility to the table aside from just summons and healthstones. I don't get to do much of that kind of stuff in instances these days.

The instance started out well. We were clearing groups at a reasonable pace--save for when the tank and healer stopped to have a discussion about whether or not we should put the instance on heroic for better loot. After roughly ten or fifteen minutes of clearing, we got to the houndsmaster. The healer and group leader initially didn't want to do the fight, due to the apparently very high level of difficulty, but all three DPS insisted, and he rather easily assented to our request.

It's a good thing that we insisted too, because upon entering his tiny chambers we discovered that he was already dead! Apparently, the leader had forgotten to reset the instance since last time (an understandable mistake really) and we had just been clearing respawns. Thank goodness we discovered this before wasting 40 or 50 minutes clearing our way to Doan! So we all popped out, reset the instance, lost our feral kitty druid to a never-ending AFK, and started clearing again.


*facepalm*

It is at this point--with only two DPS--that I shouold perhaps point out that the other guy was a resto-spec'd druid in cat form. I know it's silly of me to be all hardcore raider about Scarlet Monestary, but the guy was barely out-DPSing the healer, and half the time he seemed to just be AFKing while on follow. That honestly wouldn't have been such a problem, except for the fact that I *could not* get the healer to heal me during pulls. Being the only DPS in the group is terribly mana-intensive; particularly for a warlock at around my level, when mana efficiency is at its worst. As such I found myself furiously life tapping just to try and scrape together enough mana to batter down the zealous humans without resorting to going meleelock on them. Apparently DPS doesn't need heals, even when they're at about 15% health and the healer is spending 50% of his time idle. Remind me to make more bandaids next time I log in.

About the time we reach the courtyard, kaloo kalay, another DPS is found! A fellow warlock! A destruction warlock. What's more, he seems to be a rather experienced and capable player, which really helps to speed things along. Something I find really quite interesting about low-level instancing is that it is, in general, easy enough that the players don't need to do everything "the right way." And hell, even if the content was hard, most players just don't want to take the time to look up cookie cutter specs or casting rotations for their lowbies.


A Devious Scheme!

Anyway, what I'm driving at is that this lock was really interesting to me. I mean, first of all, he's level 32 and destruction. I'M the only other warlock I know who ever did something as stupid as leveling destruction, and I loved every minute of it. What's more, this fellow had his succubus out, of all things--and managed to do an excellent job picking up a stray mob with a seduce now and again throughout the instance. Not the easiest of feats, effectively CCing with your succubus.

The rest of the instance was relatively uneventful, save for the resto druid switching from cat form to bear form on the last boss. I assume it's some kickass strat that I've never read.

Good Group. Friendlist adds all around. (Seriously, it was fun.)