Left Foot of Darkness

There are times where you feel invincible, like you can do wrong, or there is no foe you cannot tackle. Our initial journey into Tempest Keep: The Mechanar was not one of those occasions.

The Mechanar was the first level 70 instance that we’ve tried to tackle. (Actually, I think the Steamvault is considered a 70 instance, but The Mechanar was the first level 70 instance where we made it past the doorway.)

We wiped almost immediately upon entering, overwhelmed by arcane golems and blood elf spellcasters. I think this initial wipe was my fault because I was still fiddling around with some healing macros and was trying to rearrange one of my action bars so that it was set for “Healadin” mode. I couldn’t multi-task during battle. My bad.

One of the issues I had trouble with all night was keeping Kneeko’s bird, Tenz, alive. Now I like Tenz, and I think he’s a great a great addition to the party, but when he starts taking damage, he goes down fast. I just could not keep that bird alive. Maybe I would have better luck with his brother and sister, Onez and Fivez.

Once we figured out what we were doing and started getting used fighting tougher mobs, we started to make our way through the instance. Our first major roadblock was Gatewatcher Gyro-Kill, whose devastating tzatziki sauce area effect and pita bread devastation blow left us spitting chopped tomatoes and onions for hours. Forunlawf still smells like garlic. His buddy, Gatewatcher Iron-Hand, was a bit easier, in spite of his slime attack, and gave us the second half of the key to the Cache of the Legion. This contained an item that was, of course, totally useless and had to be dusted. Whoop-de-frikkin-doo.

Our equipment took a lot of damage from this instance. The Mechanar Tinkerers and their stupid bombs were a pain, as were all of the various flavors of Sunseeker spellcasters. Devin brought along the repair bot that he had made. The prices were a bit high but it was very convenient to have access to it in the instance; however, the lower rear placement of the fudge dispenser was really unfortunate.

We made our way to the first major boss, Mechano-Lord Capacitus, who was guarding the world’s largest pink glass Rubik’s cube. This guy was a real pain, who not only shoots out floating bombs that travel around and then explode for a few thousand points of damage, but who also cycles through a series of reflection shields, that throw back melee and ranged spell attacks depending on the color. Devin consulted the tome of knowledge, and we eventually beat the bastard by having Scotty tank him while we stayed up on the stairs to avoid the bombs. He also dropped a nice item that was useless to everyone and had to be dusted. Whoop-de-frikkin-doo-too.

Now we moved on the next big boss, Nethermancer Sepethrea, who summons two fire elementals that randomly target some unfortunate soul and then leave trails of fiery death behind them as they chase you around. We never managed to kill her, and eventually had to give up. I picked up this little bit of info from the WoWWiki site.

Sepethrea can be a very hectic battle, and as everyone takes a fair amount of damage, a good bit of the responsibility for success or failure rides on your healer. As soon as you engage her, the Nethermancer summons two very slow moving Fire Elementals that stay for the whole battle and cannot be killed, damaged, or feared. They randomly pick a member of the group and chase them — very slowly — for a while, meleeing for about 500-700 damage when they reach them.

Eventually they stop moving, do a somewhat damaging Hellfire for a while, then pick another target and repeat the cycle; all members of the group need to be aware if they’re being chased by an elemental and kite it around so they don’t get hit. As for Sepethrea herself, besides a relatively weak melee attack, she has only two spells: A Frost Shock that slows movement speed by 50%, and Dragon’s Breath, exactly like the Mage spell, which does damage in a frontal cone and disorients the target. When the tank gets hit by Dragon’s Breath, she will begin attacking another member of the group until he regains his senses. The group needs to do what they can to avoid damage for a few seconds until that happens. If they can survive while juggling the Elementals, the fight shouldn’t be too painful.

“Shouldn’t be too painful?” Yeah, right.

Brian made a good point in saying that the evening was a learning experience. Obviously, this instance was tough, and we will do better next time. There were many moments in the evening where I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to die, and that’s really what it’s all about anyway.