Quest:Dead Man's Plea/Alternative strategies

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Alternative Strategy 1

This is how my party completed the 45 minute baron run. A Warrior, a Holy specced Paladin, a Restoration specced Druid, a Warlock, and a Hunter. We were all in blue items, and one or two epics per person. We used similar tactics as written above, yet we took a different route. At first we went for Nerub'Enkan, which was down in 7 minutes, after which Baroness was being killed when the timer said 32 minutes.

From her courtyard, we followed our way through the alley to Maleki (so in other words, we skipped the rat trap), and when Maleki was down, we still had 20 minutes left. Now here comes our trick (it is not a real challenge as a normal 45 min baron run, but can be used by people who are fed up with all those PuG's): What you do is, you run with a swiftness potion (all five members of course) towards the gate... making sure there is some way to prevent a full wipe (Divine Intervention, Soulstone, Feign Death + Cables, etcetera), since you are sure to wipe.

The thing is, you have to wipe behind the gate, but make sure you don't run too far, or the event will start, making the gate shut down and possibly leaving people behind. When all five people are dead, resurrect and rebuff, and you should have 18 minutes left for last part of the run.

So in short, you use innovation to skip 20-25 mobs, which saves 5-10 minutes of your time. Up to you to use this (may not be as challenging of course), but it worked for us.

Alternative Strategy 2

My Party had a very different party make-up. A protection warrior, feral druid, affliction warlock and 2 paladin. Not what you would usually consider a very balanced party. However, for this run, this was an optimum party for 1 reason, no down time in the form of mana breaks. Everyone stocked up on at least 2 to 3 stacks of Heavy Runecloth Bandages and used them liberally.

Here are the roles:

Prot Warrior - Equipped a 2 hander for most caster fights, and switched to sword and board for Ghouls and Bosses.

Affliction Warlock - Lifetap often, and bandage often. The warlock was the main puller in this case, after putting a full set of DoTs on one target, the warlock switches targets and pulls the next. Usage of drain life and bandages to keep mana and health full. Also provide health stones to everyone in the group.

Feral Druid - Stay in cat form for optimum dps, switched to dire bear when additional tanking is needed. When out of combat, casts inneverate on Holy Paladin and heal over time spells to restore party's health.

Retribution Paladin - Main undead damage dealer and additional off tank. The retribution paladin can deal very good damage on Undead foes, has little downtime and requires very little healing. The paladin's main role is to assist the tank and to keep enemies off the warlock.

Holy Paladin - This was our main healer. The holy paladin has to be top notch, knowing when to focus on healing and when to help with damage. When meleeing, this paladin should always judge Seal of Wisdom and keep wisdom up to keep his mana high, and also supply the other paladin with mana. The entire instance is not very healing intensive, so the constant use of Flash of Light should be sufficient. Cast Holy Light only when necessary.

Strategy - After clearing the first few groups we headed towards the Baroness. The warlock pulled from max range and immediately after the Holy Paladin heals the warlock with Holy Light and nukes the Baroness with Holy Shock and Exorcism. This almost guarantees that the Paladin will be mind controlled. Divine Shield out of the mind control and the group will have almost 2 mins to burn down the Baroness. At this point the warrior should pull aggro and should immediately use intimidating shout when he has enough rage.

After the fight, the holy paladin and the warlock heads into the Ziggurat and clears it using Concentration Aura and Rain of Fire. The rest of the group moves on with the Retribution Paladin healing. The next few clears should be simple until the group of casters before the spider boss. Engage them when the Paladin and Warlock return. After the Spider Boss is taken down, the Warlock and Paladin proceed again to clear the Ziggurat while the Retribution Paladin turns on Retribution Aura and heads into the Rat Trap by himself. Concentration, Divine Shield and a couple heals should take care of the rats.

The group proceeds to move on and clear all other groups according to the map. At the gates, any adds on the abominations should be off tanked by the druid. The warlock should also have a void walker up at this point of time. When the millions of mini skeletons appear, wait until all the groups are in range and have both paladins cast Holy Wrath at the same time. Now prepare for the 5 elite skeletons, this is where the druid will tank 2 skeletons, the warrior 2, the void walker will handle the last one. Everyone else will be DPSing them down as fast as they can.

With 3 practice runs, we managed to do it in 38 minutes with this strategy.