Tuesday, June 24, 2008

"Fun" with Ahune

I have not yet had a good run at Ahune, and I've downed him only twice. Never on Heroic. Let's see what we have...

Too much melee dps, and most under-geared.

A moonkin who socketed blue gear with spell haste (for a total of +16 haste, woo!) and melee'd the rock elemental mob (the one with the stacking AoE debuff?) to get mana back.

A rogue who wanted the paladin to run back and rez him on a complete wipe so he could talk to a guildmate for a strategy, when we had already stated the strategy. And everyone else was running back.

A group just running in and summoning without clearing any of the packs of trash that roam through the area.

A group asking multiple times what the strategy was, while in combat, while I was trying to heal everyone and everything and get them to move away from the giant earth elemental mob and keep the trash off of me and stay out of the shiny ice (because it's totally cool to get shot in the air, guys!) and dps the boss when he's just a core.

At this point I don't think my luck will let me have a good Ahune run. I think he could be an amazingly fun boss. If my group is never at least 2/5ths full of stupid.

/cry

12 comments:

Unknown said...

I've killed normal-mode Ahune a few times - it feels like the encounter is tuned for groups who are in mixed heroic/kara gear. Web forum comments give me the impression that heroic-mode Ahune is tuned for groups in T5-ish gear.

It is important that your DPS be well-geared. They need to drop the non-elite adds fast. Ideally, you want to kill him in two frozen core stages - each time Ahune resurfaces, the non-elite adds are summoned faster and faster.

Anonymous said...

Personally I find this seasonal boss to be too hard. I haven't done it on my more well geared hunter but as my currently resto druid. The quest allows you to accept it at 65 and there is no way I can see a group of lvl 65 characters successfully downing Ahune without a lot of luck. I really expect to see Ahune get nerfed soon as from what I've seen the gear he drops is a downgrade for those who can actually down him.

Crusard said...

I am Crusard, a Holy Priest who reads your blog via Google Reader but I normally do not have the time to comment. I really enjoy your blog BTW.

Ahune- We wiped on our first attempt and have had tremendous good luck since that fight. Here was our group make-up.

Rogue- Main Boss DPS
Mage- Main Adds DPS, pops cool-downs on boss
Druid- Healer for the whole fight
Druid- Stance dancer. Tank (Bear) on Elite Elemental and DPS (kitty) for the boss.
Priest(me)- Assistant healer in Elemental/adds (prayer of mending and HoTs mainly), Full DPS on Boss (Smite and SWP FTW).

The extra healing in this set-up really helped to mange the damage caused by the adds and allowed me to use most of my mana on the boss.

On our 5th and final try we got the boss down in two exposures.

Sadly my enchant did not drop on any of the 4 successful attempts and we did not have time to try heroic but we plan on doing a nightly 5-clear and hopefully attempt him in heroic.

Good luck with your next group! [wink]

Jive said...

I've only had two successful attempts w/ Ahune and while it was kinda neat it wasn't so epic like Headless Horseman I felt like doing it over and over and overrr. I feel your pain. :/

Anonymous said...

Emailed you about this

^_^

Anonymous said...

Haven't down the bugger yet, but we did only try on heroic. Went in with a prot war, a dps war, a combat rogue, and a mage who then left for kara, so had a lock. 4 hours of wipes later, no downing. OMG WTB CC 4 HEROICZ. <3 the blog.

PS My verification word is very appropriate for my comment. It started "qq" :)

Siha said...

I tend to agree that he's too hard. We went in there a few nights ago with a bear tank, me healing (holy pally), two frost mages, and a BM hunter. As a group, we've been playing together for over two years, and we're T5/6 geared across the board. We can do the hardest heroics wipe-free. And we wiped four times on Ahune in _normal_ mode. We got closest with _me_ tanking and the druid healing. Having our two AoE DPSers be largely useless due to elemental resists really hurt us, too.

I really feel that a seasonal boss should /not/ be this picky in terms of composition and spec. It's supposed to be a fun event, not something that requires respeccing and careful group composition - that's totally counter to the spirit of a "holiday", IMO.

-Siha

Shadow Word: Blog! said...

I agree with another poster that this boss is tuned a bit too difficult for the lackluster rewards. The only reason for a T5 geared group to even attempt this boss on heroic is for the enchant and a shot at the non-combat pet. The gear is below kara standards and people in gear less than kara standard will have a hard time downing him on normal mode, let alone heroic. The drop itemization also seems pretty horrible. I downed him 9 times last night and only saw 2 different drops with the tanking and healing cloak.

Anonymous said...

I have been seeing a lot of complaints about the difficulty of this boss so I documented the strategy I've used to down him.

Kill Strategy: Ahune

Anonymous said...

This boss is a good bit harder than the headless horseman. I've failed miserably once on heroic, done it successfully--easily--with an all-guild T5+ geared group and myself as healer (resto druid), and done it successfully three times on regular. What I really wanted was that cool frostscythe for my pitifully undergeared warlock--managed to get it on the third attempt, before my low dps tried their patience too much.
PuGs do not do well on this.

--Sydera

Shuma said...

I guess it depends on the skill level of the rest of your party. Yesterday I ran it with an fury warrior that was geared for starting KZ, a level 69 elemental shaman who was in full greens and blues, a full t4 level pally healer, and a feral druid in kara/badge gear. I'm a protection paladin who was wearing spell damage gear in each slot for the fight. We managed to do the fight 3/5 times. Both wipes were bad luck due to either one of our party members got knocked past Ahune and aggroing the slavedriver near the cave or our pally healer being knocked into the water. The rest of the other attempts were successful and relatively stress free.

Pies said...

Our guild did Ahune a few times, Kara-level or lower gear. I was doing it on warlock, so I just kept seeding the elite add to take care of the non-elite adds and everyone else dpsed the elite. The non-elites are very weak, one seed per wave was enough.

Although I do agree that this boss seems a bit too hard considering the rewards.