Tank like a girl

WotLK brought us the new vehicle system, and a lot of quests where you have to use vehicles, amongst them a bunch of rep dailies. I know some of my guildies are struggling, I certainly was cursing and struggling with some of them. Nowadays I just breeze through, and I thought I’d share my mini-guide on the three worst offenders.

Defending Wyrmrest Temple:

This is probably the easiest of the three quests in this guide, but it can still get frustrating. It’s fairly buggy, so targetting the blue dragons around the temple gets annoying at times, as the dragons are either tapped or you get ‘Target not in line of sight’ errors. The fastest way to get this quest done is to fly out to the Azure Dragonshrine right away. Zoom down into the ley-line in the center, press 5, fly out again. This action alone will have aggro’d a lot of the dragons around the shrine, so be ready to hit 3 for Renew and start breathing fire on the mean blue dragons. Azure Drakes die very easily. One Fireball and one fire DoT and they’re dead. DoT a drake, use the main attack and then switch to another target. Azure Dragons are trickier. They have a lot more health. It will take two breath attacks, plus two DoT durations to kill them. Again, start with the DoT, two fireballs, reapply DoT, move on to the next target. Should you get more than 3-4 dragons on you and your Renew doesn’t keep you up, there’s no shame in using 4 to quickly fly away to safety. It’s less frustrating than being shot from the sky, that’s for sure. I get this quest done in 3-4 minutes, and I am daydreaming of actually getting the 2 minute achievement one fine day.

TLDR Summary: 2, 1 for Azure Drakes, 2, 2×1, 2 for Azure Dragons, 5 at the ley-line. Use 3 and 4 when necessary

Aces High!:

Another Wyrmrest daily, so more dragon action. It’s also training for Malygos phase 3 as you get to control the same dragons there. The first couple times I did this I thought I’d never be able to beat it, but once you follow a specific strategy, it just works. The most important part is that you need to be able to see buffs on your vehicle unit frame. If you don’t you might have a problem. Once that’s settled, this is almost easy. Once you have hopped onto your dragon, press 3 five times for a fully 5-stacked Revivify on your dragon. Then quickly grab the closest dragon by pressing 1 and keep doing this 3-4 times. If you have low latency, even 5 times. Press 2 to use your shiny combo points, then immediately press 3 to keep your 5-stack of Revivify up. The key is that you keep Revivify up, because a fully stacked one will keep you alive. However, keep a close eye on the cast bar of the blue dragons. If you see them cast Arcane Surge and their health is above 50%, press 5 immediately to protect you from massive burst damage.

TLDR Summary: 5×3 then repeat 4×1, 2, 3

Thrusting Hodir’s Spear

Both the coolest and the most frustrating of the vehicle dailies, and the only daily where you can die and get no parachute to safely glide to the ground with when you get knocked from the sky. If you fall, you get to smash on the ground. Next time you see a corpse in Dun Niffelem, feel for them. Btw, this particular part of the guide is dedicated to Niza, one of my guildmates. She gets the giggles whenever I complain that Thrusting Hodir’s Spear is hard. It must be the hormones, after all the horn-blowing and helmet polishing she’s done for the Sons, that she finds this funny In this quest a proto-drake picks you up and all that you have is a spear and your hands holding on for dear life to best this drake. The fight against the drake has 2 phases, with two different skillsets to use.

Phase 1: Keep your eye on the grip debuff and never let this get below 30. If it’s below 30, spam it 2-3 times. When Dodge is off its cooldown, use it. When 4 is off cooldown, always use it, it’s your big damage attack. Always use 1 after 4 to get your grip up again. If neither 2 nor 4 are available and your grip is up, spam the hell out of 3. Your goal is to get the drake to 25% health way before it’s flying above Dun Niffelem, the faster the better. The longer it takes, the harder it is to keep your grip up, until grip decays so quickly that it’s impossible to hold on.

Phase 2: Once the drake is at 25% health, he will want to snack on you in its maw, so now you only have two actions available to you. A stackable debuff trying to open the maw of the drake, and Fatal Strike. The more debuffs you have stacked, the higher the chance that your Fatal Strike meets the target. Again, this phase is a race for time, as you will steadily lose health from being chewed on. Spam 1 until you have at least 10 stacks up, press 3, pray it hits, and if not, spam 1 some more while 3 is on its 5 sec cooldown and hope you’ll be alive to try another time.

TLDR Summary: in phase one, press 1 when grip < 30, spam 3, use 2 and 4 every cooldown. In phase 2, spam 1 til you have 10 stacks, 3 until dead. Collect 500 rep and the feeling of being awesome!