From the sidepath we ride onto the on-ramp and the highway to Erebor. After the 3-mans the 6-man Bells of Dale and and the three raids were released in march 2013. The relevance of these raids has changed whereas Bells of dale has remained a constant joy to run except for the fact that you have to kill squirrels for a speedy run.
3 in 1 raid
Each raid had a seperate story that took place in a moment around Erebor. But all could be quite short when preformed correctly. But each one had multiple ways to complete them. Making these more then just a one-encounter raid like Draigoch or the Watcher. But each one did have only one encounter in them. Making them feel less raidy then for example Mirkwood or Isegnard before.
The battle of Erebor
The easterlings have made their way to the steps of Erebor and have challenge your raid. They have grown confident that they even let you chose just 2 of the 6 possible vectors of attack. Ranging from Enrage timers, extra adds or catapults blasting your party to stunneriens. Even featuring the raid for a few times, but alas this was during the scaled loot drought that fell upon us after mordor was launched. The raid falls in the middle of speed vs challenge and still remains an Erebor favourite.
The slow Flight to the lonely Mountain
Taking place far into the future, Dale has been overrun and the citizens are trying to make their way to the Lonely Mountain. The flight is a survival raid where your group has to fight of waves of easterlings during a 10 minute timer. Each consisting of different types that require a focussed, geared and bloodthirsty tank and dps group. Messing up on crowd control or not protecting your healers would quickly envelop your ressers. That is if you did it during the release. Time hasnt been friendly to this raid with it only being run to unlock the armour sets not long after it.
The Fires of Smaug
After splitting the raid in 3 groups, your raid will do the same for this complex exercise of timing and directional awareness. The people of Dale have made it into the mountain, but are now at risk of being a smoked salmon if your raid doesnt succeed. Easterlings are using a fire grim to smoke them out. Defeating the fire grim and his tender while having the rest of your raid try to close the valves that guide the smoke into the mountain with easterlings coming from all directions to interrupt you sound hazardous at the best of times.
The best of times?
Each raid has their own merits and how they rank among the other instances really depends on the time you ask the question. When they were released people had been waiting a good long time and the challenge they presented was good. But over time the difficulty waned as with most scaled instances they were balanced to the gear that was available at the time. During the times that Flight was a featured instance it was one of the most boring time you could have in the game. But now with the Mordor revamp and 115 it might even be more of a challenge then ever before.
History (in the making) – Mordor revamp and set bonusses
It might be a strange time to talk about Mordor, but the interest of Erebor has changed over time. Mostly related to set bonusses. Even if Erebor wasnt that a challenge the set bonuses you got access to by completing the raids were so good that classes like hunters, captains and loremasters ran around with these sets well beyond the level 85 characters they were intended for. A captain without them couldnt get into a Throne raid without them. While the gear at 115 has that much more stats, people would wonder if a hunter would still use them. We got our answer when SSG made the unsuspected move to limit the armour sets to just “original level + 10” characters. A confusing and crude fix to a problem that had been in the game for a long while. Set bonuses in the game are now nearly non-existent, featured instances and scaled loot are invalidated to a point that the game at 115 feels emptier outside of Mordor. Mirkwood being our first steps outside of Mordor and the patch notes giving us a glimpse in the post-revamp era.* Rumors, beta patch notes and comments by developers show that there are changes coming to the issues mentioned in the History in the making. Road to Erebor moved forward and Mordor revamp pushed to a later point due to Update 22.
Bells of dale
I’d like to leave you on a positive note. The bells of dales has been one of my favorite post Isengard instances released. An easy to run, but hard to master instance. Flavorful and rich in lore with a landscape and view to accompany it. Each class has a role to play and gets to change it up in each different area. Going from full aoe during boss 1 for champions to none at the last boss. Ranged having to bob and weave power-draining squirrels and keeping the archers of the healers with the tank rounding up the melee mobs for the champs. Stopping the shadow-rats from chewing the bells of dale for that extra loot in a flurry of critters that you better not kill during the last boss. Extra mini-quests and bosses during the instance themself if you want some extra marks. It feels like an instance made with love to be loved to run by all.
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