Bear tanking fun

Well, not the druid kind. ;)

I hopped over to Eastern Plaguelands and got myself a cute lil' black bear, and went over to Hellfire Ramparts to see how he'd fare.

I went into Ramps on Heroic at first, and got to the first boss with a bit of difficulty. It may be that the bear was only level 75 still, and that the mobs hit pretty hard, but I couldn't down the boss at all. I did get his adds down, but poor Kyou couldn't take the boss's hits. So I went out and set it on Normal.

I know, I know, on Normal they're pretty much 20 levels lower than me. And clearing them was really easy. I even pulled the first boss with two or three add packs. But Thunderstomp plus Swipe made for great AoE damage and I didn't even need to Volley.


Got through the rest of the instance pretty quickly, the room just after the corridor was especially fun when I pulled all of them. ^^ I guess if you ever need BC enchanting mats* this would be a great way to get it. (do I smell a market for Mongoose?)


After that I headed over to Utgarde Keep to test him out against level 70 normal dungeon mobs. I had tried to solo a bit of this dungeon before (during the Valentine's event, I got bored of waiting for the boy to show up so I started clearing a bit with my gorilla) and it was a bit difficult. I don't know if it's just me now, or the new changes, but I cleared the first few mobs a lot easier than I did the first time I tried.

Ran into some problems at the forge, but after that it was smooth sailing. But the first boss... well I don't conceivably see how you can solo him. I did find a way to bug out the adds he summons though, so that could come in handy. But because you're only in there with you and your pet, you will inevitably get Ice Blocked. You can command your pet to attack the ice, but all the while the boss will be hitting on it with no heals. When 3.1 comes out I might go back in there with a level 80 pet and try again though.

And again, it's a great way to farm for enchanting mats*. I probably got lucky that time, had three greens drop and one blue. Heh!

Oh, and I found someone who got the new 81 spell power to staff done. Looks pretty cool!

I also noticed they added some changes to the UI. (well, honestly I'm not sure if they're new, as I hardly play with the default UI) As you can see in the screenshots, elite mobs' nameplates have the gold dragon border on their level. Also, there are two sounds that play which indicate you have 90% of the tank's threat, and another which indicates that you have pulled aggro. Pretty handy! Gotta commend Blizz on this sort of thing.

*Speaking as an enchanter, of course!