Has anyone 5 boxed and gotten a Bronze drake since 3.0.8?

[Hachoo]

I ran Heroic CoS tonight - second time I'd run it so I'm still not too familiar with it. I made it to where the drake boss would have been probably around 5 minutes too late. But, on one trash pull I lost my tank and a shaman because I messed up and that cost me at least a minute or two (took forever to res because zombies kept putting my shamans in combat. So if I get rid of that error and save 1-2 minutes, I just have to make up a few minutes of time which is definitely doable as I learn where to go for each wave more. The key to this instance is definitely thunderstorm and magma totems, then you never have to care about the zombies. If I remembered to use AMS more I would be better off as well I think.

Anyway, just curious if anyone had picked up a bronze drake specifically while 5 boxing this since the patch? I'm hoping to get 4 soon :)

[puppychow]

I got to uh the demon last boss (forgot his name lol, the horned demon guy who appears at the start) with 5 minutes to spare today, I already have 5 drakes so I didn't even bother killing the drake boss, could have done it easy though. No real issues, I didn't even use magma totem since i have a ret pally and ret aura kills zombies np. Only two small things I noticed were that my DPS was absolutely nuts, I pulled off my tank a few times by accident but a quick taunt fixed that. The stage bosses seemed even easier than before, with the exception of the drakenoid at the top of the town hall, he actually seemed a little bit harder -- he does this (new?) weird thing during the time lapse stuff where your screen gets that "phase" effect (ala Icecrown or Old Kingdom) although I was able to heal/DPS ok. One of my guys nearly died, not really sure from what, he was just taking tons of damage but a few quick chain heals fixed that. So I'd say just seperate the tank and others further away (I was kinda close) on that guy.

Oh, also Arthas as usual goes batshit nuts on the last corridor, he ran way way way ahead at one point and was just chain pulling like a dozen elites, that drained all my mana but it was nearly at the end so it turned out to be ok. I run with a resto shaman which worked out great, had to use mana tide totem twice in the instance.

[Hachoo]

Hmm I haven't had the problem with Arthas. Yeah he definitely runs ahead some but for me its usually just to the next pull which I'm ok with - he can take a beating and it gives me a chance to heal/rest if i need to.

I'm going to try perfecting this until i can get a bronze drake, then get 4 - my main has a red drake already and I think it would be cool to have 4 bronze drakes following him :)

[Hachoo]

Well, I ran this today again (third time I've run CoS) and I actually made it to the infinite corruptor with something like 30 seconds to spare. I was SO pissed. I had him down to 10k when he disappeared! One more volley and he would have been down :(

I lost 1 shaman on 1 trash fight which delayed me enough from ressing/resting that if I can do it without any deaths I think I can get this guy down.

Hints for making the run faster - Use thunderstorm a lot - either to kill the zombies or whenever its on cooldown, will keep your mana up. Also if you only have time to drop 1 totem before engaging, make it mana springs x4 so you regen more mana. I also found it was fast to drop 4x magma to kill zombies AND pull the actual undead pulls right up to my shamans - by the time I killed 1 ghoul usually the other 2 creatures in the pull were almost dead.

This instance gets easier every time I do it. The only thing that sucked was on this run I got a bunch of waves that were right next to each other - this sped the run up a ton - if I go again and the waves are spread way out it will make it tougher to get done in 25 minutes. I think I'm going to try this every day now though until I have 4x drakes (or 5 since I might as well get one for my DK also just for the heck of it).

Can't wait to take a picture of my team with red drake + 4x bronze drake.

[Fuzzyboy]

Since the shaman-buffs in 3.0.8 the I've gotten three drakes in three runs, one time with 4 mins left of the timer - I'm a big fan of 3.0.8! :)

[Hachoo]

Any tips to make the run go faster? I am trying to figure out what else I can do to make it work..

This last run where I had 30 seconds left when I got to the corruptor I didn't loot anything except bosses because I didn't have the time to spare - which sucks because I need the greens to DE, but I'd rather have a bronze drake.

I'm not sure where else I could save time - besides resurrecting my 1 guy, I didn't stop to drink anything at all. I suppose I'm probably spending too long/too much mana dropping a full totem sequence for every combat. Any optimal order to kill the undead to make it go faster? I found I pretty much have to kill the spider guys or the big stitch guys first otherwise I spend too much time healing.

Anyway, any tips people have on this would be great as I really want to get 4x bronze drakes :)

[puppychow]

I run with a resto shaman and its loads ezier imo, there are tons of times where my resto shaman is sitting around doing squat, but for the trash mobs and bosses that DO hit hard its much, much faster (imo) to have all your DPS focus 100% just on DPSing and your resto shaman spamming lhw on tank and chain heal on group. I even save lust sometimes for when the group is getting low, just so chain heal can go faster. I almost never, ever have all my shamans chain heal, with the resto shaman + chain heal glyph (hits 4 targets) you get massive healage. Plus I always drop healing totems and my resto drops mana tide when I need to. I also carry 2-3 stacks of water and just spam drink for a few secs whenever I can, I run 99% mana most of the time.

[Hachoo]

Hm, wasting drinking water might help me shave some time off.

For the resto shaman thing, I don't think that would actually make anything go faster for me - for bosses I hardly have to heal (in fact earlier I did Gundrak and killed Eck without using a single heal on my tank and my tank ended the fight with 20k hp LOL). My elemental shamans do ~2000 dps on trash each after 3.0.8 even while healing my tank/themselves if needed, so it seems like to make it go faster with a resto shaman my other 3 shamans would actually have to do 2666 dps each without healing which I don't think is possible (that is to say, I think my shaman will do more dps as 4 ele than 3 ele + 1 resto).

Plus, I just like having 4 ele for all the times I don't need healing (which is quite often these days since my tank is fairly overgeared for heroics at this point I think). Thanks for some of the tips though, always curious to see how other people do it :) Can't wait to get 4 drakes! Since I ran CoS this morning I've actually gotten 2 new epic pieces for each of my shamans and the t7 chest for my DK plus +40 stam to bracers so between all that I think it will give me that little extra edge i might need...one of my shamans has 2000 spellpower now self buffed with just flametongue weapon, so ~2300 with totem of wrath.

[Fuzzyboy]

Hm, wasting drinking water might help me shave some time off.

For the resto shaman thing, I don't think that would actually make anything go faster for me - for bosses I hardly have to heal (in fact earlier I did Gundrak and killed Eck without using a single heal on my tank and my tank ended the fight with 20k hp LOL). My elemental shamans do ~2000 dps on trash each after 3.0.8 even while healing my tank/themselves if needed, so it seems like to make it go faster with a resto shaman my other 3 shamans would actually have to do 2666 dps each without healing which I don't think is possible (that is to say, I think my shaman will do more dps as 4 ele than 3 ele + 1 resto).

Plus, I just like having 4 ele for all the times I don't need healing (which is quite often these days since my tank is fairly overgeared for heroics at this point I think). Thanks for some of the tips though, always curious to see how other people do it :) Can't wait to get 4 drakes! Since I ran CoS this morning I've actually gotten 2 new epic pieces for each of my shamans and the t7 chest for my DK plus +40 stam to bracers so between all that I think it will give me that little extra edge i might need...one of my shamans has 2000 spellpower now self buffed with just flametongue weapon, so ~2300 with totem of wrath.I know some of the bronze drake riders from in here are running with no resto, but I have no trouble doing it with my team (paladin + restoshaman + 2 ele shaman + balance druid). I do drop totems before fights, but I drop them as I run towards the mobs. I don't drink or loot, except for the pause after the first boss (the next wave wont spawn until a few minutes after he's dead anyway), although after the guy dropping the reins is dead, I come back to loot the second (fleshcrafter) and third (dragon-guy) boss. One thing to note though, is if lack of dps puts you real close to the timer running out, you'll be dependent on luck (ie how close the waves spawn to eachother). One time I had waves constantly spawning in the opposite spots in the zone and I just barely made it. Was fun though :-)

[Hachoo]

Hmm I didn't think about not looting boss 2 and 3 - how long will bosses stay there after they die before they despawn? I'd hate to lose 2 emblems and a couple blue items to get the bronze drake, but if they stay for 15 minutes or so it would obviously be possible to get back to the corpses. Anyone know?

[asonimie]

Ran 4x ele (~2000-2200sp) and a mostly epic DK tank. Ran Heroic for the first time (no normal runs prior) after reading a couple strats and I looted the drake with 2 minutes left. The new talents and +dmg is really great for instances.

note: i spec'd out of some pvp talents and into -10%mana cost / +mp5 talents for heroics this week. I think it really helped, I only had to drink quickly after boss fights, nothing else.

[Alemi]

Hmm I didn't think about not looting boss 2 and 3 - how long will bosses stay there after they die before they despawn? I'd hate to lose 2 emblems and a couple blue items to get the bronze drake, but if they stay for 15 minutes or so it would obviously be possible to get back to the corpses. Anyone know?They stay there for the entirety. I only look Meathook waiting for the waves to respawn. But leave up Flesh guy and Chrono Lord.

Got my first drake this evening with more than 3 minutes to spare.

[Hachoo]

Awesome! Will try this again tonight with only looting meathook as looting the other 2 bosses definitely adds 60 seconds or so to my run time, also I will try just drinking for a few seconds at a time as I have chances instead of stopping for 30seconds to drink when I need it. I think between those two and with a tiny bit of luck I can get them.

The other thing is, I will be getting 4x emblem shields for my shamans tonight and the extra armor/block will probably help reduce any damage I take from zombies which might help prevent needing any healing through the run (or not as much) on the DPS. Once I can get the 25 min run down to a science I'll probably make a video of it as well now that I have my video creation stuff working OK.

[Alemi]

Awesome! Will try this again tonight with only looting meathook as looting the other 2 bosses definitely adds 60 seconds or so to my run time, also I will try just drinking for a few seconds at a time as I have chances instead of stopping for 30seconds to drink when I need it. I think between those two and with a tiny bit of luck I can get them.

The other thing is, I will be getting 4x emblem shields for my shamans tonight and the extra armor/block will probably help reduce any damage I take from zombies which might help prevent needing any healing through the run (or not as much) on the DPS. Once I can get the 25 min run down to a science I'll probably make a video of it as well now that I have my video creation stuff working OK.Just got my second today with 3:45 to spare. I don't wear the shield as the pathetic block rate on shamans isn't worth it, and use the ward of the violet citadel instead (just for hit, but I'm well over the heroic cap, so it's mainly for raiding).

The -only- time i drink is after meathook, while arthas is trying to hit the infinite mobs in the inn in disguise, and while chrono lord is coming out. When arthas pauses in the archway on the gauntlet pull ahead of him, and you can make up a good chunk of time. I had a horrible spawn rotation today too, as it was Town Hall -> Fountain, over and over. Only 8, 9, and 10 were close together.