Do Not Meddle in the Affairs of Dragons...

for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

I learned that last night with my first heroic in WoW. For my non-WoW readers a heroic is an instance, either five or ten man, set on a much higher difficulty level then the regular instance. I'd never done a heroic in Burning Crusade, so I got my first taste last night with Oculus. Yeah Oculus. Not the easiest heroic to start with.

Now I've never been to Oculus on regular but I had heard plenty of stories. I knew that the last boss was done on dragonback and I was not terribly excited about that. I have problems with the quests where you have to control something else. But I was still excited to get a chance to go. Heroics are tougher, and I need the practice. They also drop much better gear.

My group had a hunter (Jeff of course), a druid, a paladin, a priest, and me. The other four are seasoned instancers. They have been through Kara more times than they can count and done most, if not all, of the instances in Northrend (Naxx excepted). So we had no difficulties with the trash up to the first boss. Drakos the Interrogator is really just a tank and spank, while avoiding the bright pink bombs he sends out. Nothing difficult. DOT and keep moving. We killed him quick and I got my first Emblem of Heroism. Yay!!

Then you get your dragon, do some simple aerial combat (actually very easy) and find the next boss area. We had some initial trouble getting to the next boss. A wipe or two where Jeff and I had forgotten to clear the snowflakes. Varos Cloudstrider is not an easy boss. Many groups simply can't get past him, particularly on heroic. He shoots out lightning doing large quantities of damage. You have to stay behind him the whole time. It was a lot of moving, not good for a caster, but with my dots I felt that I could contribute a little. He was tough intense fight. The tank died quickly in the fight but was battle rezzed to survive to the end.

Mage Lord Urom offered only a couple problems but we managed to bring him down with only a couple deaths (me included :-( ). The adds weren't the issue. We killed them quick. But on the fight with him alone we lost me, the hunter, and the paladin. Somehow the tank and the priest were able to finish him.

Then we mounted up on the dragons for Ley-Guardian Eregos. If I never hear that name again, it will be too soon. This fight took us well into when the second session was supposed to start. We tried several combinations of dragons (each does a different type of damage). We tried several different strategies. And we did way too many rezzes and corpse runs. We made nine or ten attempts on this guy until we finally had had enough. The best attempt I think we only managed to bring him down to 40%. It was discouraging.

We were all mentally exhausted. I had a terrible headache, left over from my illness, and was thinking of calling it a night. My repair bill was awful. Then one of the group suggested Violet Hold heroic. Okay so bed can wait. In twenty minutes we ran through heroic Violet Hold. There was not one death. My first successful heroic. It helped leave a better taste in my mouth. It was an incredibly frustrating night but well worth the effort. I'd do it again, but hopefully next time with some better plan of attack.