Well, I’m sure this won’t be a proper “Ode” since I’m not sure what that would be. In my world, it’s just about giving reverence to something that has influenced you in some way.

Blackrock Depths is a HUGE instance that, before the expansion pack hit with its extra 10 levels and huge improvements on gear, was a “player barrier” for me in my leveling guild. The difference between taking a group into Sunken Temple and into Blackrock Depths was quite noticable, to the point where I actually had to think about a little bit of class balance when forming groups to go in.

It made sense, however, because Blackrock Depths and the whole Blackrock Mountains instancing areas were End Game raiding zones or preparation for End Game raiding, and there had to be SOME kind of transition between easy-to-zerg dungeons and the ones that required 10+ people to tackle.

These days, however, BRD isn’t near the challenge it was. Between improvements to the strength of equipment and the nerfing of the difficulty of the dungeons and bosses, players can be much lower level and survive in BRD where before the small guy would have caused a wipe of the entire party (at least in the guild I was in) prior to expansion.

But, it’s still a great dungeon for getting experience through mob murdering and quest turn-ins, along with upgrading gear for your 50s characters so they can be dressed in pretty blues and occasional purples before they hit the Outland where a lot of greens are huge upgrades over those dungeon blues and purples.

But with how much easier Blackrock Depths is than it used to be, it makes me wonder - what level should I start considering taking my healer into the old 60s dungeons of Dire Maul, Lower Blackrock Spire, Strat and Scholo?

Tags: azeroth gear, bael'gar, blackrock depths, blackrock mountain, BRD, dark iron dwarf, dark iron dwarves, dungeon guide, dungeon playing guide, Dungeons, gearing up in azeroth, healing in dungeons, holy priest, instances, lord incendius, priest gear, priest gear in azeroth, warcraft screenshots, world of warcraft, wow pics

So, the other day a friend and I exchanged dungeon runs. I took his little Rogue through a few arms of Scarlet Monestary and he took me and another of his friends through part of Blackrock Depths.

At level 53 and 50 respectively between myself and the other friend receiving benefit from the dungeon run exchange, we didn’t do much but stand back for the most part, although for most of the grouped battles, I put a few heals out on my friend and his pet and had to fade and shield a few times.

I was fine with the healing as long as I waited long enough from the start of the fight to send my first heal out, but on occasion I would send that first big heal out too soon and no amount of fading or running towards the pet “tank” could save me.

Faced with the run back, I had a lot of time to contemplate corpse retrieval runs I’ve done to various instances over the past few months. Now that there’s a new graveyard super-close to Razorfen Kraul and Razorfen Downs, is the graveyard run to Blackrock Mountain (which houses Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire and Molten Core) the longest corpse run in the game?

WTB a shorter corpse run back to BRD…

Tags: azeroth, blackrock depths, Dungeons, graveyard run, holy priest, instances, lower blackrock spire, molten core, pick up group, PUG, retrieving your corpse, run back to blackrock mountain, upper blackrock spire, warcraft screenshots, world of warcraft, wow pics, WTB