Life has been pretty busy over the last while with a lot of family visits, so I haven’t been playing very much and thus, not writing very much either!
But, now that I’m back home on my high speed connection, I’m back playing a bit here and there. Truthfully, the weather is so beautiful that I’ve been enjoying that a lot more than I’ve been interested in playing, but with how short our summers are, I know that’s not a permanent affliction.
Scheduling Play Time
As a person with a Life[TM], I don’t have all day to sit in front of World of Warcraft to advance my toons, nor do I really have any interest in playing that much, really. So, I’ve decided that especially since I haven’t been in an organized dungeon group with my guild friends for a couple of months now, I should make some kind of specific effort to schedule a run or two and follow through with it.
I convinced two of my friend/guildmates to get Guild Event Manager running again, as we had used it when our guild was a more active levelling guild, and it was a great way to schedule events for people with sketchy and unreliable play-times… and on Monday morning we scheduled our first run, for Hellfire Ramparts, and three of us subscribed through GEM.
We chatted up a couple of other guildmate friends over the few days the run was posted, and were fortunate to round the party out to five with guildmates only (our guild is very small).
Heading Into Hellfire Ramparts
Two of us had never even been in there, and had no idea where to go, so I headed to where I thought it might be and we spent some time bonking on Shattered Hand guys on the Path of Life or whatever that road is. In the end I was in the wrong place, so we were summoned via the Meeting Stone and headed into the instance.
As a level 60 Fury-spec’d warrior, I was probably quite gimped in terms of generating threat, but it was good practice just the same. I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off for the most part, but was successful in taunting baddies off of squishies enough times that I felt I did okay. I will probably respec now that we’re scheduling dungeon runs into Outlands instances, and put more points back into Protection like I had originally planned - to get Last Stand and Defiance.
Priestly Loots
Our party had two Priests in it and they shared the Heartblood Prayer Beads and Band of Renewal.
Warrior Loots
I picked up two rings, myself - Mok'Nathal Clan Ring as a Stamina ring, and Tourmaline Loop of Strength which has +23 str. They replaced pathetic counterparts with required levels of 37 and 44, so I’m pleased with the upgrades.
Where Is Hellfire Ramparts?
We had a couple of wipes, and one had us running back to the dungeon, but I had released later than the others who knew where they were going, and again they had to rez/summon me into the dungeon!
Fortunately the final boss in Hellfire Ramparts leaves you very close to the entrance, so we were able to quickly leave the instance once we were done, and I was able to figure out how to get back there next time ;)
The answer to that question, of course, is that it’s southwest of Thrallmar, and there’s a north-to-south road into Hellfire Citadel that you take, crossing a bridge to get into the tower. Entering from the Path of Glory or whatever will NOT get you there.