Azjol-Nerub and Ahn’kahet

I managed to squeeze in some dungeon time this afternoon with my buds Volkaar (Death Knight) and Rivvin (Healing Paladin).  We were all in the 73-74 range and coming close to finishing up the Dragonblight quests.  It’s been our goal to experience every dungeon on the way up to 80 at least once, so that meant Azjol-Nerub and Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom were next up.  [Quick note: We did Utgaarde Keep a few days ago and it was great.]

Azjol-Nerub
Azjol-Nerub

We couldn’t find anyone in our guild that wanted to run these dungeons – we don’t blame them, they’re all like 80 now – so we had to PUG it up.  We got off to a rough start going in with two stereotypically awful pugerific players but managed, after the 4th wipe on the first pull, to reform with two players who not only knew how to play but knew the dungeons pretty well.  3 DK’s and 2 Paladins = the recipe for success I guess.  We were able to run through both dungeons with no problems.

Azjol-Nerub was pretty short.  There are only three bosses in the place and they’re all very close.  The dungeon is laid out in a sort of .. well, nerubian spider lair sort of decor.  In the middle of the place there’s a big spiderweb that you descend and the whole place has a real neat feel to it.  After we stopped wiping on the first pull, it ended up being a lot of fun and quite easy.  Getting to fight Anub’arak was really awesome.  He was quite a noteable character from Frozen Throne but sadly received very little story and attention in WotLK.

Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom was also pretty short imo.  There were a few more bosses (maybe only 1 more, I forget) and the dungeon had a lot of extra mobs whereas Azjol felt like it was a straight pull-boss-pull-boss layout.   The bosses were all fairly standard and seemed to employ either a tank-and-spank tactic or a tank-and-spank with adds that need to be dps’d in the middle.

The loot sucked but I honestly didn’t expect much or care.  At the rate we’re capable of progressing it would have lasted a week at most (or less).  Overall, these two dungeons were fun and exactly what I want from an instance while leveling:  Fairly quick, fun boss fights, and neat to look at.

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  • I atmosphere of Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom is stunning. That place was originally going to be a zone but they decided not to. You can really look out into the distance and see miles of land and beauty.

    I love how great the bosses are in the new expansion as well. (Not really sure what Mordiceius meant as a gimmick…)

  • Having a Druid in party in Ahn-Kahet on Heroic is going to make the fight quite difficult. They dish out and heal themselves really well! Neither Rogue, Warlock, Mage, Paladin or Priest were a problem, but as we had a druid healer in party, it became really hard work to kill the boss. Especially our Paladin tank and the healer had trouble killing their evil twins.

  • Did you complete DB by now? I just completed Dragonblight yesterday and was rewarded with a very nice cinematic at the end of a quest chain in Fordragon hold. Personally I thought it was really nice (although at first I thought WoW had crashed). I hope Blizzard will introduce more of those cut scenes after some notable quest chains.

  • As an added plug, if you’re into short, low trash instances with fun boss fights, the WotLK raids are going to be very much your style. Just for fun, youtube tankspot’s malygos guide!