More Outland instances revisited

I'm very fickle with my WoW playing right now. An instance run here, a raid there, some questing on an alt on another server... nothing can hold my attention for very long. Today I decided that I felt like playing my level seventy night elf druid once again and that I wanted to run a couple of BC dungeons.

I was quite surprised by how quickly I managed to get into groups each time. At level seventy the dungeon finder is practically trying to push you into Northrend, with "random Northrend dungeon" being the default option and "random Outland dungeon" not even being available anymore, but for some reason there are still enough people who actually bother to join for the old level seventy instances to get a full party together every now and then. I guess running nothing but Utgarde Keep and the Nexus for several levels gets old after a while.

First I tanked Shattered Halls. I had found a quest for it that I couldn't remember doing before (though I probably did), which intrigued me. Other than that however, it was pretty damn boring. Shattered Halls was never the most exciting of dungeons, but back in BC the large pulls were at least challenging. Nowadays you can just run from one end of each hallway to the next while spamming swipe the entire time. /yawn. Several people in the party said that they had never done the instance before and asked me to tell them if there was anything special that they should know about, but there simply wasn't anything worth mentioning. Except for the assassins that spawn in front of the stairs leading up to Kargath Bladefist's little area and massacre anyone who stays there after you engage him, but I had forgot about those myself, so our healer got mauled. We finished just fine without him though. At level! We're all just stupidly overpowered compared to even one expansion ago.

I requeued right away and ended up healing an Arcatraz run, tanked by the death knight that had been doing dps in Shattered Halls with me only a few minutes ago. I was the only one who knew the instance, but everyone had a blast. We laughed at Dalliah and Soccothrates bickering at each other, we laughed at a stealthed succubus almost ganking us, we laughed at Millhouse Manastorm. At the end of the run people agreed that "this dungeon was awesome". I had to concur, but at the same time I was slightly bewildered because I remember the Arcatraz being one of the less popular instances back in BC (not counting runs that had people making a beeline for the third Karazhan key fragment without killing any bosses). Probably because the key requirement used to put people off, and because it was really hard on heroic. Zereketh was a nightmare if your tank didn't have shadow resist gear from Black Temple and Skyriss was nigh impossible as well until he got nerfed. I remember spending hours in there, wiping over and over... but looking at it now - yeah, it is an awesome dungeon.

I started to do some quests in Nagrand but soon joined the queue again. This time I had to wait a bit longer until I got a popup asking me to heal the Steamvault. Woohoo! I accepted but told the group that I needed a second as my bags were bursting with rubbish from questing. One dps dropped from the group almost immediately, and the tank decided to start pulling without a healer. I managed to reach him just in time to save him from certain death, but even as I did so another dps dropped without saying a word. The tank continued to pull even with two dps down, got feared into a patrol, and as I frantically spammed heals to keep him alive I hardly noticed the fact that he was running towards the door... then the group got disbanded completely and I got beaten to death by the loose mobs as everyone else ported out, leaving me to corpse-run all by myself. I still don't have the faintest idea what was up with that. A copper for people's thoughts when they pull crap like that...

After repairing and selling my rubbish I tried once more and got an offer to tank Magisters' Terrace this time. As it turned out, that instance is still hard even in times of AoE tanking. Yes, you don't need the crowd control anymore, but it will hurt and some of the pulls are still annoying. We wiped twice on the bridge right after the entrance alone, first because I had forgot about the patrol, they aggroed onto the priest healer and she feared them into another group, then again because the balance druid's treants decided to pull another pack just as our healer was suffering from a brief DC. Then we wiped again when I tried to pull some of Selin Fireheart's trash and got too close to him. I felt like a complete noob.

Surprisingly the next couple of bosses went well. I pondered whether to discuss strategy for Vexallus but couldn't actually remember off the top of my head what all the stuff with his adds was about anyway, so I just pulled. In the end I killed all the flares on my own and grew to massive size. Go go giant bears! We had one big overpull on the way to Delrissa as the dps warrior didn't pay attention to where he was going, but somehow we managed to survive. The priestess and her entourage went down on the first attempt much to my surprise, though we managed to wipe on the last big pull in Kael'thas' room right after. The healer scolded me for standing in an anti-magic zone; I apologised and we tried again. I did tell people what to do on Kael, but just after I pulled, the balance druid DCed and the other two dpsers weren't doing so well on those phoenixes, so we wiped again. At this point the priest dropped group and I had to go as well since I was running late for my raid - as much as I hated leaving an instance run unfinished. I'll get you next time, Kael'thas! Not sure I'd want to come back repeatedly though, as the dungeon felt a lot more annoying than I remembered it - but then that might have been due to the people I was grouped with as well, as none of them made for particularly pleasant company.