Rather by chance we all ended up online and in WoW Classic yesterday.  There was no plan.  We all hadn’t been online together for a few months at this point, probably not since we attempted Shadowfang Keep in Season of Discovery.  And it was a timely meeting as we were close to the eve of Cataclysm Classic.  It was time to start getting ready.

We spent a bit of time getting everybody together and making sure we all had flight unlocked in Azeroth proper.  There was some fumbling about to get characters together and working with their changed up specs.  Ula, a frost mage so far in WoW Classic, read that frost was dead in Cataclysm, so swapped out to be a fire mage.

There were other change ups.

Beanpole was done being a gnome warlock and paid for the race change, which includes a name change, so became Liftkit, a worgen warlock, largely on the strength of the built-in speed traits.

Then Potshot, who dual-boxed a pally healer and a hunter DPS through Wrath for us decided to swap out the hunter for a Deathknight.  He leveled his new DK up over the last few weeks and even did a bit of Wintergrasp with him to gear up a bit.

So our new lineup for Cataclysm is now

• Wilhelm – Protection Pally
• Fergorin – Holy Paladin
• Kharageenan – Blood Deathknight
• Ula – Fire Mage
• Liftkit – Demonology Warlock

Having gotten all that together in about an hour, and still having daylight to burn, Potshot suggested we ought to do a practice run.  So we started planning to go back to Northrend and travel to an instance, once we figured out which instance would be suitable… when somebody noted that we could just use the Dungeon Finder and teleport our collective asses into an instance.

The Dungeon Finder had limits on where we could go as level 80s, so we decided on heroic Utgarde Keep.  That is a pretty well known instance to us and we have a history there.  So it was off to Utgarde… pop, and we were in there.

Once in there was a bit more setup time to figure out what we had to do and what buffs still applied and all of that.  Small things changed.  Warlock health stones, for example, now heal a set percentage of your health rather than a specific number of hit points, no doubt a reaction to the hit point inflation that the Northrend gear stats brought about… and which the Cataclysm stats will no doubt inflate further.

Eventually we got ourselves set and faced the first mobs.

That went pretty well.  We were sloppy on the first pulls no doubt, but we were overpowered enough to account for that with trash mobs.

We made our way through the trash to the first boss, the legendary (to our guild at least) Prince Keleseth.  We knew how to fight him, it was just a matter of holding it together and doing the right thing… which basically means all standing on Keleseth so AOE will take care of any ice block issues.

As it turned out our group in Cata spec melted Keleseth so fast that ice block wasn’t an issue.  We even got the achievement for not breaking any of his ice blocks.

We rolled on from there pretty confident.

We managed to screw up the fight with Skarvald the Constructor and Dalronn the Controller, slaying Dalronn too quickly, leaving us fighting Skarvald at almost full health while Dalronn’s ghost beat on us.  But we powered through.

We drove on to Ingvar the Plunderer and, knowing the trick to that fight, also got him on the first try.  The only hitch was one fight where we picked up four trash mobs, only to have another three wander in on the side where I didn’t see them.  If I had been more aware I could have laid hands or used a healthstone.  And, even then, it wasn’t a wipe as Ula and Fergorin finished off the fight, then Fergorin ressed us.

So we got through our first instance with the new specs pretty well.  That also got us our first guild dungeon achievement, as guild achievements are a thing with Cata.

Having done that in a rather short time, we decided to do another, this time picking the heroic version of The Nexus, another dungeon well known to us.

Our main issue in The Nexus was simply forgetting all the mechanics of the first fight with the heroic only mini-boss, Commander Kolurg.  The whole thing where his group will fear you and you’ll go run into a bunch of other mobs, pulling them into the fight, which is a pretty sure fire way to get a wipe.

So we wiped.  But by that time we had remembered the warlock soul stone and had one up on Fergorin, who revived himself.  The trick was that I died way on the far side of Commander Kolurg, such that there was no way to get close enough to ress me without aggroing the boss again.

That was when the new pally spell, Absolution, came in handy.  That revives the whole group at once, bringing them to the pally, while having a much greater casting range (100 yards vs. 30 yards).  That was enough to pull us all in safely.

We went back and pulled Commander Kolurg around the corner, far from other mobs, and dealt with him there.  Then it was onward, clockwise around The Nexus, picking off all of the usual suspects.

We got all the way around to Keristrasza, where we managed to remember to jump frequently, bringing her down, finishing the instance and garnering our second guild dungeon achievement.

So we did pretty well with our warm up, and even got Kharageenan a few upgrades… not that they won’t be immediately replaced by superior green gear in the first zone in Cataclysm.  But it is always nice to get an upgrade.

We were also looking at the transmog system in Cata Classic, which as I think I mentioned, is actually the version in retail, which only sucks somewhat, and not the original version from Cata, which sucked a lot more.

As part of that some of us were interested in acquiring gear “looks” from stuff that dropped.  You might be able to see that I am wielding the Mace of Unrequited Love, a drop from that fight, because I wanted that in my transmog options.

I do like that they went with the more modern transmog mechanics… there is no reason to relive the original versions, that doesn’t help anybody… but I am a bit miffed, as always, that it totally ignored anything you had in the past.  That means we might be going back to some old instances to seek out some looks… or old raids.  We’re high enough level now that we could probably smash and grab raids through Outland at least.  We’ll see.

Anyway, we had our warm up.  Now to see if we are prepared.