I had the pleasure of tanking Deepstrike Mines on my Cleric with a few other Circle Of Trust members a couple days ago. If I recall correctly (which I probably don’t), there was a DPS Warrior, Healing Cleric, DPS Mage and a DPS Rogue with us at the time. I don’t remember the exact names of the people, but I’m pretty sure they were all on vent and I have a vague idea of who they were. I may have been slightly intoxicated, making a note to make notes of who the hell I’m playing with. Ah well, moving along. 

The warrior was at the level minimum for the instance or else I probably would have made him tank it since Warrior shields have about 10x the armor that Cleric bucklers do. The other Cleric was specced similar to me, but I trumped him for the tanking role by being 5 levels higher and carrying a shield, pretty sure he respecced for healing. We didn’t have much in the way of CC either, so we pretty much pounded through every set of mobs recklessly. I think my Parry though all of it was around 18%, and block (although useless as I discovered later that night) bounced from 5-20%. The problem with block, is that it only mitigates about 20% of the damage when you block something unlike most other games where it’s just another form of total mitigation. Parry works better as a mitigation tool than Block does.

I recall pulling the Reavers or Cleavers, or whatever the big axe carrying skeleton mobs are called and getting us killed two or three times. They hit hard, like a boss. The rest of the trash was pretty uneventful. You run around a bunch of scaffoldings and wooden bridges in a big circular pattern that really shows how little their sense of architecture worked. One path through the entire bridge network? Would it be that hard to have a central platform that branches off to the rest? Besides the point. People really want to hear about the bosses, and where we screwed up I think.

There was a chain-y spirit looking boss who came with four adds and did a cleave on one of the platforms. It didn’t really register to me that he was even a boss really. I just ran in and started swinging, grabbed all the adds and put his big ghosty back to the group. He poofed into a bunch of adds halfway through the fight, I was still spamming some AoE at that point and grabbed them all up pretty quick. After killing that set of chain-y ghost adds he comes back ready to take it like a chump and drop some blues for us. Oh, right, every piece of gear except the last boss was cleric gear. I needed nothing from it.

Well the next caster boss was cake. I don’t really know what mechanic he had, I think he spawned some adds, but we just nuked the shit out of the poor… things. He was off near a little cave and was wearing a dress, it was not a pretty dress. He kept trying to heal himself or something and made this glowy triangle of invincibility. Seems like a poor tactic since all we had to do was roflstomp the adds that powered it. Occasionally, well, apparently there was at some point a different mob that ran around flashing people lewd pictures of his junk. I don’t recall that part. Two down, two to go.

Finally, we get to a boss that actually does stuff! There’s this big, huge, sexy, rock-man-beast on a platform to smack around. Granted, all he really does is a cleave and a massive knockback at least it’s a few minutes of chaotic fun. Now I suppose you’re intended to run out of the way when he’s preparing his massive knockback, but I found out if you just stay up in his face you don’t get knocked off and it’s a bit more fun anyway. He’s not a hard boss by any means, but oh.. shit, the next one was a bit tougher.

You head down to the bottom floor and in a side cave there’s a dozen or so undead mining in a room. Pick them off two or three at a time from distance, because when you walk all the way in the two in the middle awaken some weird Gem Crystal Alien Thing that prompty cuts them into pieces. I have to mention, we wiped a few times here. I think the first time all of my fun Justicar buffs fell off mid-fight. The second time… I uh, forgot to turn them on. Yeah, I wiped the group twice. Sue me. 
The third time we were really getting into the swing of things. The boss has two different buffs, Fire and Earth. When his Fire buff is up he flings a red blob at someone randomly in the room. You can’t dodge it, but it doesn’t hurt a whole lot. A flaming red crystal pops up where it lands however and burns the shit out of people standing near it. Tanking like a pro, I decide “hey, don’t stand next to the thing that’s on fire”. Good idea right? Yeah, then it exploded and killed someone. Wipey wipey #3.

Gem Alien Boss also tosses a earth crystal. This thing heals the shit out of the Gem Alien when it pops up, so everyone needs to break it into little pieces ASAP. Wipe #4 came because I didn’t feel I was necessary in the breaking of Earth Crystals. Eventually the boss enrages and starts one-shotting. So, every break the thing unless you’ve got really good DPS. Attempt number five went like cake. Don’t stand next to the fire. Kill the healing thing. Murder, rape, and pillage the Gem Alien Boss like it owes you a piece of that shiny ass.

Ok, so some notes for next time. 

• Remember who I’m running raids with
• Get names of mobs and bosses
• Take screenshots of things (people like pictures)

That’ll do people. Enjoy your Rifting.