Dying in instances

When starting out on a new server, and your gear is crap. How many times would you say you've died in an instance. Or even instances all together? For me, all too often :p

I am usually trying to beat instancetimer. So it happens on leeroy trash pulls mostly, a disconnect, or a run off into the distance problem.

When I am trying to beat heroics (or cata normals for the first time) it happens a lot until the team overcomes it.

But its not a wipefest until well into cata for sure, and my gear is usually very crappy.

My first real team, died often, till I got the hang of the team, plus passed down some heirlooms. I will say, that not having at least one toon much higher level, to come in and help pound into sumbission a particularly difficult boss would have frustrated me immensely.

Yup, Id die more often, if I didnt have a ready "win" button. However if I did wipe a lot, id take it as a sign to level just a little bit or re-review my gear.




Quite a while back... , I logged one toon from my Pally+(3) shammy+Druid team, and logged in an 85 from that account. As soon as I did. Several people in guild chat made comments like..

"oh crap Apps is bringing out the big guns, he must be madbro"
"alliance ganking? I feel sorry for that poor schmuck"
"I still say multiboxing is cheating, and now you are going to bring an 85?? Isnt that cheating while cheating?"

Followed closely by yet another guildmates comment (not me)

"... stfu Dustin...moron."

I started boxing at the tail end of Burning Crusade.
Did my RAF, and just barely leveled shammies to level cap before WotLK.

So my first boxed instances, as the whole group were WotLK.
I did questing to level.
And ran dailies for gold, to upgrade my tank asap.
Decided on Prot Pally Tank, 4x Elemental Shaman.

Died a bunch, doing heroics on the six or seven bosses which were suggested as doable with a fresh team.
Not sure the exact number of deaths.
Pretty sure there were 3-4 heroic bosses that fell on the first or second try, having read the strategy on this site.
Within a couple of weeks (likely helped by AH gear upgrades, via Dailies) all seven bosses were on farm status.

I gradually added gear to that mix.
Also started doing Dailies on three separate teams, for close to 5k gold a day.
Somewhere in there, I dropped one shammy for a destro warlock (replenishment and 13% extra spell power); even with a toon less than half geared, the team as a whole significantly improved and tougher encounters were easy.

Eventually did all heroic 5-man content except Oculus.

Yeah my low team in KJ barely squeeks by due to gear levels, and my level 85 team on Argent Dawn does fine with trash, and most bosses in vortex, but the mobs in Lost City of Tol'Vir, most are doable, the bosses, well I think I need better gear to take on the bosses.

As a boxer, gold is generally easier than for a non-boxer.

If you have a lot of gold on the server, chances are you have tradeskills to generate more.
If that is the case, you can use the auction house to purchase upgrades, especially for the tank and/or healer.

You can do dailies, to generate gold.
Which will initially go to the tank/healer or other key character on the team.
Eventually, that gold will go into tradeskills to make more gold.

Not exactly on topic of dying in instances.
More a... how to over time die less in instances thanks to gearing, irregardless of the instance itself.

Heh yeah thats true, I'll check the AH on the server I sortta quit on. its a RP server with a very low AH economy

Well, I rarely ever run an instance until it's green to me for the most part. In classic WoW, that was due to having completely crappy gear. In BC and later, it was because by the time I had all the quests for that instance, I usually out-leveled the instance. That was almost universally the case in WoW until WotLK (where instance quests didn't require any "breadcrumb" quests to get them).

In Rift, I'm outleveling the instances first primarily because I'm still learning game mechanics.

In my multiboxing experience, though, I really only died in instances if I was undergeared AND at-level, or I had a glitch and pulled two or more extra groups of adds. That's largely been the case in Rift as well. Heroics weren't as clean but still not too bad because I stuck to what I had success with until I geared up enough to tackle harder encounters.

I'm extremely pragmatic when it comes to instances: if I start wiping, I do something else and come back later with a fresh perspective and/or more gear/levels. It's a game. I don't play these things for a sense of accomplishment -- I play them because they're an entertaining hobby. I'm also the explorer type, so I can only stand the same content X times before I get bored and want to move on.

My first group was a Priest and 4 Mages. They only had trouble with the Shade of Erenikis in Sunken Temple, but that boss was a good 3 levels higher than the others. After that I did not run into problems until that second hellfire instance, The one where you pull the lever and it spawns a bunch of waves followed by a Beholder boss.

Then I switched it up to a standard paladin 4x shaman group. Never had problems with an instance again. Dont get me wrong, I still died and had some wipes, but it was from going to fast or it was still learning the fights.