puppychow
11-15-2008, 01:11 AM
All right, I just completed The Nexus (regular), my team is a 71 prot pally, 71 mage, and three 71 elemental shamans. I wiped quite a bit. I DO NOT RECOMMEND LEVELING IN THE NEXUS. Its a pain in the ass instance, the XP/hour is not great, and the bosses are difficult. I found Utgarde Keep much easier. I'm going to try the spider instances later and then probably just level in UtK. I have heard Azjol-Nerub is easy, but this is from people who said Nexus was easy -- which it is for a non multiboxer.
The trash is pretty simple tank'n'spank stuff in this instance, don't really remember anything hard. Keep moving on the plant wing, they respawn where they die but move back to where they start. I'd grab 4-5, move ahead into a corner or watery area, kill them, and keep moving.
I went counter-clockwise, you can go either way.
Boss #1: big plant guy. I saw some tip that you could avoid spikes completely by standing on ramp, this did NOT work for me. Dunno if someone smarter can figure that out. Anyways, what I did was tank him where he is, and keep my entire team stacked up on lip of ramp. You need to be able to see them either from your tanks POV or a second window with one of the DPSers. Whenever the spike started growing, I'd strafe left or right with the DPSers -- I have shift-Q/E bound on the alts to strafe and forwarded in Octopus. I missed a few spikes and got hit a few times, but ended up downing boss on second try. If you keep getting spiked you are probably going to wipe, its important to keep an eye out for them and immediately move your DPSers away if a spike appears.
Boss #2: the void guy. Easiest fight in here, just DPS him and DPS portals when they are up. I moved my team a bit closer so my tank could get chain heals. I would get one add always out of the rift portal, but chain lightning + consecrates killed it. 1 shotted this one.
Boss #3: The female. This was a doozy. I didn't really have any good tricks here, I popped my fire elementals at 50% (when she splits into 2 or 3) and just ran around with my tank around trying to gather up people. I have "F" on my keyboard set to /follow focus (ie follow the leader) and would just mash it while running around. Cast a lot of chain heals right after the "yoyo" effect. I killed her on my first try, but lost 3 people and my tank was at 500 hp (lol). A warrior tank may be great here since he can spell reflect. Save bloodlust for 50%, then blow it and kill the arcane add first, then frost, then fire. I spammed chain heal a LOT, and tried to keep everyone stacked near each other. The fire bombs do virtually no damage, the tricky part of this fight really is simply getting everyone together and facing the right way after gravity well. I use pitbull and have cast bars for party turned on, so whenever I noticed one person wasn't DPSing I would slightly rotate my DPSers (shift-A/shift-D is bound to turn left/right) until I saw them casting again. I used frost aura on this boss, didn't drop a fire resist totem.
Boss #4: final dragon boss. This is much, much easier with shamans than without (lol ramparts!). You must drop grounding totems CONSTANTLY. Tank her so your tanks back is up against a wall, and put the rest of the team somewhere on her "side" she they are neither in front of her or behind her. I use this macro for grounding totem:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Grounding Totem
My buff bars (ElkoBuff) shows how many grounding totems I am, whenever it dropped to 1 I would drop 3 more. It completely prevents the worst of her attacks, the encase-in-ice or whatever that does a ton of damage to one person.
The other important thing is to jump frequently. It became a rhythm fight, I really wasn't DPSing very hard, instead I would:
cast lightning bolt/arcane blast
jump
cast lesser healing wave
jump
cast chain heal
jump
<rinse and repeat>
Jump (spacebar) is passed to everyone, I basically wouldn't let the debuff stack higher than 5.
I saved heroism for 25%, she enrages there - I couldn't purge it, but my purge macros are messed up I think. I also dropped fire ele totems at 25%. She hits HARD enraged, a prot warrior with shield wall would be nice - I dropped down to under 1k hp a few times and thought I'd wipe but lesser heal waves came through just in time. I used frost aura on this, but maybe concentration would have been better - the constant ticking of damage really hurts casting spells.
My pally has 15.8k hp and is in t4/badge, my shamans are crap geared (1 pc t4, been grabbing northrend quest gear), my mage is in t5/bt gear.
Cleared it once with my team, not gonna run it again until 80.
The trash is pretty simple tank'n'spank stuff in this instance, don't really remember anything hard. Keep moving on the plant wing, they respawn where they die but move back to where they start. I'd grab 4-5, move ahead into a corner or watery area, kill them, and keep moving.
I went counter-clockwise, you can go either way.
Boss #1: big plant guy. I saw some tip that you could avoid spikes completely by standing on ramp, this did NOT work for me. Dunno if someone smarter can figure that out. Anyways, what I did was tank him where he is, and keep my entire team stacked up on lip of ramp. You need to be able to see them either from your tanks POV or a second window with one of the DPSers. Whenever the spike started growing, I'd strafe left or right with the DPSers -- I have shift-Q/E bound on the alts to strafe and forwarded in Octopus. I missed a few spikes and got hit a few times, but ended up downing boss on second try. If you keep getting spiked you are probably going to wipe, its important to keep an eye out for them and immediately move your DPSers away if a spike appears.
Boss #2: the void guy. Easiest fight in here, just DPS him and DPS portals when they are up. I moved my team a bit closer so my tank could get chain heals. I would get one add always out of the rift portal, but chain lightning + consecrates killed it. 1 shotted this one.
Boss #3: The female. This was a doozy. I didn't really have any good tricks here, I popped my fire elementals at 50% (when she splits into 2 or 3) and just ran around with my tank around trying to gather up people. I have "F" on my keyboard set to /follow focus (ie follow the leader) and would just mash it while running around. Cast a lot of chain heals right after the "yoyo" effect. I killed her on my first try, but lost 3 people and my tank was at 500 hp (lol). A warrior tank may be great here since he can spell reflect. Save bloodlust for 50%, then blow it and kill the arcane add first, then frost, then fire. I spammed chain heal a LOT, and tried to keep everyone stacked near each other. The fire bombs do virtually no damage, the tricky part of this fight really is simply getting everyone together and facing the right way after gravity well. I use pitbull and have cast bars for party turned on, so whenever I noticed one person wasn't DPSing I would slightly rotate my DPSers (shift-A/shift-D is bound to turn left/right) until I saw them casting again. I used frost aura on this boss, didn't drop a fire resist totem.
Boss #4: final dragon boss. This is much, much easier with shamans than without (lol ramparts!). You must drop grounding totems CONSTANTLY. Tank her so your tanks back is up against a wall, and put the rest of the team somewhere on her "side" she they are neither in front of her or behind her. I use this macro for grounding totem:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Grounding Totem
My buff bars (ElkoBuff) shows how many grounding totems I am, whenever it dropped to 1 I would drop 3 more. It completely prevents the worst of her attacks, the encase-in-ice or whatever that does a ton of damage to one person.
The other important thing is to jump frequently. It became a rhythm fight, I really wasn't DPSing very hard, instead I would:
cast lightning bolt/arcane blast
jump
cast lesser healing wave
jump
cast chain heal
jump
<rinse and repeat>
Jump (spacebar) is passed to everyone, I basically wouldn't let the debuff stack higher than 5.
I saved heroism for 25%, she enrages there - I couldn't purge it, but my purge macros are messed up I think. I also dropped fire ele totems at 25%. She hits HARD enraged, a prot warrior with shield wall would be nice - I dropped down to under 1k hp a few times and thought I'd wipe but lesser heal waves came through just in time. I used frost aura on this, but maybe concentration would have been better - the constant ticking of damage really hurts casting spells.
My pally has 15.8k hp and is in t4/badge, my shamans are crap geared (1 pc t4, been grabbing northrend quest gear), my mage is in t5/bt gear.
Cleared it once with my team, not gonna run it again until 80.