2008-01-14 Ragefire Chasm - the First Challenge

The Grunt Foundation team assembled sunday morning to take on the first dungeon instance of WoW, Ragefire Chasm. The group started out with 3 level 15s and 2 level 14s.

The mage had collected all the starting quests for RFC ahead of time and was able to share them with the rest of us. One quest, [Hidden Enemies], required a trip to Skull Cave outside Orgrimmar as a pre-quest to get one final RFC quest we needed. The group trooped out to the cave and had to clear that area some three times before we were all able to complete it. From there we re-entered Orgrimmar and shuffled between the quest giver near the RFC entrance and Thrall himself a couple of times before we got the RFC quest. Finally we were ready to begin.

Philly had prepared a rather lengthy strategy for the group and posted it on our new website. While RFC may not be that tough, I felt it was important that we start off using good group habits so that when things got a lot tougher we would already be doing the right things. Pulling, aggro management, mob assignments, loot rules, etc, were all covered. Nobody read it. :-)

That was ok, though, they didn't get off that easy. Having laid all that out ahead of time, it was easy for Philly to interject things in game at the appropriate moment. Right up front I asked our warrior if he planned to be our main tank. He said yes, and that curtailed any possible confusion later. That made the pally our melee damage dealer, not tank, and so he and the others understood that the tank would have priority for Philly's healing.

The first leg of RFC begins with some snake like things scattered down a long, dark tunnel. It is a very dark dungeon, with lots of deep fiery red tones. Philly pointed out before the first kill that all of the mobs in here were elite, so take it steady. The tank began pulling, first with a bow, and once we had the measure of the mobs, he began using Charge on the single mobs. When we reached the first batch of humanoids, troggs, the tank pulled a lead mob without aggroing the rest, but it was clear future pulls were going to draw a crowd. How about we mark our targets, so we know who to attack and who to cc? (crowd control) Philly asked. Good idea, everyone agreed, and we settled in quickly using a common marking system that should serve us well every time we face multiple mobs.

For our first real group challenge with tough multiple mobs, we did very well. Everyone knew their roles and stayed focused. Philly overhealed at first, and I was running low on mana pretty quick. But I soon learned how low I could safely let the tank's health get, and when or whether to toss heals on the pally or the others. The tank held aggro very well, often handling two mobs. His pulling was pretty impressive, too. DPS followed the kill order. We did remarkably well both crowd controlling the right targets at the right time and holding off against the cc'ed targets until drawn in by the tank.

Philly also played with his Power Word: Shield, so I would get used to using it. It was never really needed that badly (ie, an emergency spell to keep someone protected long enough to get a heal on them), but Philly would pop it on the pally just to save him the bother of healing himself and once in awhile on the mage or warlock on the few times they pulled aggro.

Our first Boss fight ever was against Taragamon the Hungerer. He's a level 16 elite and is a pretty standard tank and spank boss. The pally decided to tank him, and for that I Shielded him once the fight started. The elite went down faster than we thought he would, and we got our first blue gear as well, a cape that was won by the warrior. Three other bosses would meet their fate and we completed five quests, all that RFC offers. I don't think Wild or anyone else in the Wild family ever finished ALL the quests in RFC.

Philly made it to level 16, and better than half way to level 17.

Later in the day Philly got some more game time to level professions and in the process made level 17. The warlock also made 17 out of RFC with the rest at level 16, I think. We are moving forward at a pretty good pace. We will head back to quest in Ghostland on our next run and might be able to finish with that area.