Wootgarde Keep

Galli and I went through Utgarde Keep yesterday with Stenwick tanking (most of the time, ha ha) and Mareyn healing. Utgarde generally has a pretty badass look and feel. So much of its sheer awesomeness occurs earlier in the instance though, making the later parts actually kind of a letdown. The fiery mouth that you see in all the canned media is by one of the first hallways of the instance.

This fire consumes surprisingly few of my fps.

What mysterious portents lie ahead outside my los?

Prince Keleseth is the first boss and a superbly designed encounter. It's like a 25-man raid compressed into a miniature 5-man box, similar to Kael'thas in Magister's Terrace but significantly less obnoxious. Having not been spoon-fed strats from Wowwiki like we were for most of our nub WoW lives, we actually wiped a couple times figuring out wth was going on. Galli was terribly excited about using Master's Call while learning the fight, even though we discovered it wasn't necessary after all.

Knuth, go nom that off the tank plz.

The second encounter was a pretty average pair of bosses, and the third and last boss completely bugged out for us. It was probably supposed to be a totally earth-shattering culmination of the vrykul questlines, with adds, emotes, dialogue, and multiple phases, but the elite parties involved were curiously silent, and we had to zone out and back in to finish the guy off because he become unattackable.

Hmm, Ramparts reskinned?

Aww shucks... go easy on him next time, I guess.

Exiting the instance is reasonably convenient, which is always important when yours is mage-less party. You jump down this perilous trash-chute-looking thing, and the water at the bottom prevents you from dying. Shamans who pug bad players should remember to carry fish oil to administer retribution as necessary.

Slightly less ezmode than Kael's portal to IQD.