Heroic Stratholme Drake Run

[Tahaz]

Tanks, Meathook seems to be the healer stumbling block in here. The Chains ability he has locked me down (shammy), leading to wipes. He must be los'd from the healer to avoid this. Not a worry if you got a HOT stacker.

[Aggroir]

Hope Spell Reflection works on Heroic: Strath.
I think it should work. Or Heroic would be really hard because Malganis do Carrion Swarm many times...atleast in normal mode.


When i used it in normal mode with improved Spell Reflection my group didnt even get any damage. Was a really easy fight.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Aggroir <Azeroth Alliance> Kul Tiras EU

[Manginae]

Got my drake and 12 of my guildies got it too :-)

[LightforgedUS]

You are right about the infinites Cider, their goals are...misguided...rather than evil. They realize they have the power to alter time, and they thought "hey! Let's change this one event so all this bad crap won't happen!" This, like you've seen in ANY movie that involves time travel, IS BAD!! En metaphor, the infinite dragonflight is you thinking that one event will change your whole life for the better, where that isn't always the outcome.

This lore tidbit brought to you by Lightforged on Haomarush-US!

[Kazeyonoma]

Anyone think back to say... Butterfly Effect or any of the other movies that revolve around changing time. Heck even Back to the Future turned out bad in BotF 2 when the changes McFly did to his dad caused him to break his back. See? See???? ;x

and damnit, 3 tries so far, best attempt was reaching the corruptor with 1min knowing we wouldn't make it. I blame the 900 dps rogue =(

[LightforgedUS]

One time i REACHED the corrupter with 1 min left on the timer, we killed him in 58 seconds according to DBM. Talk about close...

I actually HAVE it, the sad part is I can't use it >.< I blame my bad money management skill and 5k g skills.....

[Tokenelf]

When the Titans gave the Dragon aspects their respective duties, Nozdormu was given the power to move around in time. Being the smart dragon he was, he went to the most important time to see what happened. He went forward and saw his own death. He also saw all the events leading to it.

So there are two very possible outcomes to someone with the ability to manipulate time that has an entire race willing to die for him. He is either trying to stop it, or make it happen.

Both these assume one thing, you (the player) are going to be one of the 10/25 people killing him.

Theory 1: He doesn't really like the idea of dying. He gets some of his dragons to try and alter the timeline and sends them off. They are altered by all this and are the infinite dragon flight. The goal is to make the events leading up to the major reasons for your being powerful enough to kill Nozdormu just not happen. No Orc invasion means no Horde, and the life of a hero is out for both sides. Hyjal may have been to stop Night Elves or to take out Thrall or Jaina. Arthas dying before becoming the Lich King denies you the opportunities to fight in Northrend and also makes Forsaken not exist.

Theory 2: He knows you will keep beating them. He wants it. He needs to be the bad guy for you to be powerful enough and have the incentive to kill him.


Part of all this is the future and past quest stuff you do for Chromie in Dragonblight. You see the person behind the Infinite Dragonflight's attacks and it is Nozdormu. Chromie figures it is just him trying to help because she can't comprehend him being behind it.


At least this is what I tell myself so I can make sense of why I keep meddling in time. I mean, what happens if I step on the wrong ant?

[Radyor]

OMG the glitch....is there a fix or reset for it?

[Kazeyonoma]

i finally got a successful run last night... didn't win the drake =( boo.

[Muffin Man]

Closest attempt so far: got the guy down to 90k before he hopped in the portal. This was with a group that was mostly busting their ass (healer contributed a mighty 200 dps in between healing). Then we're sitting there dejected and the rogue (who beat my prot dps by about 60 I should add) says "Well this wasn't a timed run anyways." Too bad it was...

Another time we cleared the gauntlet just as the timer ran out. Doesn't sound that close does it? Until you realize we 4 manned starting with Epoch because our top dps d/c-ed =(.

[Kedearian]

as cider said. get 3 dps 1500+ a good healer, and dont stop moving. I've gotten the drake boss down about 5 out of 6 times now, and the one i missed was because when i said "over 1500 dps" they translated at "under 1000 dps" so we got the boss to 20% and he ran off. Said dps is now on my ignore list and their GM got a "you need to teach your guildies to read" note.

Ked

[Apx]

Tanks, Meathook seems to be the healer stumbling block in here. The Chains ability he has locked me down (shammy), leading to wipes. He must be los'd from the healer to avoid this. Not a worry if you got a HOT stacker.

I've done this as a shaman healer a few times, and have yet to fail. The hooks aren't really that bad if you top off the tank before you get hooked.
The whole run seems to be pretty easy, with a pally tank anyway... Even with 1500-ish dps.
A lot of AoE helps for the clearing part, but for the most part check out the minimap and be able to run ASAP, and hope for good spawns.

Also, watch out for arthas bugging, it has happened to people I know.

[CrimsonTemplar]

First, thanks for the movie. It pointed out a few things my group can be doing to get through the gauntlet faster - like pulling the melee mobs back towards the middle of the instance, shadow resist aura during second boss fight, and more chain pulling once you leave the Inn.

One problem my group has been having is that after finishing off a wave the instance seems to stall for a little bit before the next wave/flag appears. What we've started doing is grabbing all the non-elite zombies and finishing them off asap, which seems to help.

What we've done with loots is stick with Need/Greed, unless there's an enchanter in the group; then we pass, he Greeds to disenchant, and anyone who might needed it Needs

The problem with Arthas, or Chatty Cathy as I refer to him, is that you really have to keep him moving or the event will take too long. Ciderhelm touched on this in the movie, but it bears restating. He walks slow and talks way too much. It is very easy to eat, rebuff, etc while he chats before the boss fight in the inn (3rd boss). Immediately following that fight you should talk to him - looting can eaily be handled while he talks.

As a Paladin healer, this run can be tough from a mana point of view. Divine Plea, Arcane Torrent, Divine Illumination when it's up and 16MP5 buff food help keep my mana up. My usual group has mne running with a Boomkin so I can get an Enervate from time to time and the bonus crit helps with Illumination procs.

I have so far only completed this run once with a previous group (friends, not Guildies) and lost out on the Drake that time. I'm working with guildies now that we have enough 80's for a regular group. Our tank, a Warrior, was really under-geared starting off, but has been getting progressivley better geared by running heroics and buying emblem gear. Current party composition is Warrior (Tank), Healadin, Hunter, Boomkin and rotating in a Mage/Rogue/second Hunter depending on who is on at the time.

I know it was mentioned in the comments directly after the movie, but it bears repeating. You can leave Arthas waiting once you reach Market Row before the Mal'Ganis fight in order to take care of the Infinite Corrupter. He'll wait there until you talk to him and it is far better to get the optional boss knocked out than to go into the Mal'Ganis fight and run out of time.

From a lore perspective, the Infinite Dragonflight seems to be trying to to the right thing, but a lot of the things they were trying to stop could easily have been worse for Azeroth in the long run. For example:

Black Morass - yes, it would have averted the invasion of the Horde, but it would have left Azeroth fragmented and vulnerable to the Burning Legion. The Horde were their tool, not their sole means of attack. The Horde inadvertantly made Azeroth stronger by unifying the Humans and their allies against a common foe.

Old Hillsbrad Foothills - Without Thrall to bring the Horde in it's present form together they would have either continued to languish in prioson camps or would have become footsoldiers of the legion at Mt. Hyjal.

Culling of Stratholme - If Arthas didn't start down the path towards becoming the Lich King he wouldn't have been responsible for Illidan causing a schism within the Legion and for wresting the Scourge away from the Legion's control. This would have made the victory over the Legion at Mt. Hyjal much harder if not impossible.

[Taelas]

Having just tanked a drake run yesterday (our first successful run, and only our second try), all I can say is that it's FUN.

Our DPS was just a little under the minimum, I think. We got him during the last minute of our timer (though he hadn't started walking back yet).

[CrimsonTemplar]

I've now managed to do this successfully 3 times and got my drake on the third success. We finished off the optional boss with 1-3 minutes left on these runs.

Party composition for the last success:

Protection Warrior
Beastmaster Hunter with Devilsaur
Fire Mage
Holy Paladin
Combat Rogue

The most important thing was to keep Arthas going and to keep moving during the second gauntlet phase. We'd often drag some of the elites from the previous group to the next group rather than wait to finish off each group before moving on. The tank needs to be able to take a fair amount of abuse and the healer needs to keep him topped off while moving.

[Ilaryon]

We have a group that's farming the drakes right now. We do pretty well and usually finish with about 5 minutes on the timer each time.

Our group makeup is

1 Prot Warrior
1 Unholy DK
1 Enhancement Shaman
1 Fury Warrior
1 Resto Druid (Greatest healer in the world IMO )

Having a druid healer means no issues with Meathook and the rest of it's a cakewalk since everyone else is in mail/plate, so even if anyone pulls aggro our healer can keep them up until I get the mob back...or they burn the mob down. Unholy DKs can do some ungodly DPS right now.

[Bludmane]

I love the video and all the input from you all. I also love this site thank you all!

I have a few questions though, you mention the min. req for dps and only say your tank need to be "well geared" ?

I am putting together a group to do this my play time is limited so I am trying to make our attempts counts (hoping for success!)

I will be doing this with my Paladin "Aidranna" on Azshara (yeah I like the horde) Can any of you look at me on the armory and let me know if I am geared well enough? Or maybe post some min tank stats?

thank you so much!

P.S. Ciderhelm your the bomb!! thank you for another awsome video!

Bludmane/Aidranna "zug zug"

[Taelas]

When I tanked it, I had 20k health and about the same armor, 535ish Defense, with no particular avoidance items. Group makeup was two Blood DKs, Restoration druid and Balance druid. We had the additional benefit of being in the same room.

I'd say your gear should be OK.

[silentk]

Just wanted to add a few more tips for the drake runs that may have been missed (I read the previous comments but I may have missed something.)

I have completed the drake run coming up on 15 or so times now (still no drake for me) with a couple of different groups, and I have had several groups end pretty quick. The first few times I completed it with pug groups, first time a with a Paladin tank, and heavy aoe dps. This run had a higher dps mage in the group so I did not have chain issues on Meathook (I am the resto shaman).

If you have a healer lacking HoT's, stack high threat range dps behind the healer, and have them blow all their cooldowns to chew through Meathook. With 1-2 ranged dps behind me there is a lesser chance I will get hit by the chains. (Meathook's Chain spell is based on range and threat, and places a DoT on you while you are silenced.)

For group composition, aoe tanks seem to work better for me. I did complete a drake run once with a pug group led by a prot warrior, that group also had two ret paladins so I am unsure how much that would have changed things.

My group of friends that I run with is: Prot Pally, Balance Druid, Frost/Arcane Mage (he changes his spec too often) and pug ranged dps - usually hunter or mage. Each dps puts out 2.2k or more so it is a pretty easy run for us.

Another planning note is after the 3rd boss (the one in the town hall) we talk to Arthas to open the door in the bookcase and immediately leave him behind. If you run the final gauntlet without Arthas you remove some of the extra annoyance of him picking up more targets than your tank has originally intended. We blaze down the alley, kill the bonus boss, and rebuff if needed. Yes you do have to reclear the alley twice more to bring Arthas up for the final boss but we find its a much more reliable way of making sure we hit our timer.

I have also completed the run with a guild based group, Unholy DK tank, Frost Mage, Ret Paladin, and a pickup Unholy Dk, dps was about 1700 each (Mage was 2.2k) we completed the run with a couple minutes to spare despite having one player die in a big pull in the alley gauntlet.

Lots of fun, by far my favorite instance in the expansion.

[Kazukio]

Something I would like to point out is that You do not need Arthas to defeat the final Boss to obtain the Drake, just before having him engage Malganis go to where the Infinite Corrupter is and slay him. easy for those groups who fall just short of the Timer.