The Oculus is probably the dungeon that gives me the most apprehension. Mainly because back when I was the level to actually run it, it was HARD and people hated it and stayed away.

This unfortunately has left us with a lot of players who don’t know what the heck they’re doing with the instance. (Or, how many bosses there are. >_<)

So, here is

Caliban’s Guide to : The Oculus

(intro post to guides here)

General Zone Info

The Oculus lies in the western part of Borean Tundra, and the intance itself encompasses the floating rings and platforms suspended above the Nexus. It has a bad rap because it used to be REALLY hard, and about 2/3rd’s of the instance requires vehicle combat in the form of flying drakes.

In 3.2 and 3.3, the health of many mobs was reduced, and the drakes were made to scale with the rider’s Item level.

There are 4 bosses, and you need to kill all of them to progress.

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I’ve got a great idea! (Wouldn’t you like to know…)

So, like most of you, I’ve been running WAY more heroic instances than I ever have before. Some of these (Oculus, Gundrak) I only ever ran once or twice before the coming of the great LFG. So I am, to put it mildly, a bit shaky on some of the boss mechanics.

This usually isn’t a huge issue on the druid (whack-a-mole) or the Gnome (just need to watch casting interrupts) but on my DK it’s led to more than a few “…oops, he whirlwinds” moments where I get insta-gibbed.

So, since one of my original purposes of this blog was to have a place where I could “think out loud” to help myself play the game better, and hopefully help others along the way, I’m going to do just that.

I’m going to run a series of guides on the Heroic Instances of Northrend. Because I’m sure I”m not the only person who hasn’t run these in FOREVER and who needs a refresher on boss/instance mechanics. (I’m looking at you, everyone who bails from Oculus.)

So, here are my goals:

• Cover the basics of each instance (where to go, required & skippable bosses, etc)
• Important boss mechanics
• Instance Achievements, including the hard ones.

Resources

Deadly Boss Mods - Not really a reference, but this includes a package for 5-man bosses. Why are you running with out it?

And the ever-popular WowHead and WoWWiki.

The Guides

The Nexus:

• The Oculus
• The Nexus

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