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Comment by 83214

This is a 5-man level 80 dungeon where you get to fight on dragons for the first time. Players can control healing, tanking, and DPS drakes in this nonlinear dungeon.

Comment by MonkeyPower

Please explain to me, i'm a little confused.

Well lets think there is 6 drake classes to choose from in the oculus. Lets think that those classes are (Those are not real classes in the oculus)
-Elite Guard (Tank)
-Warden (Healer)
-Assassin (Melee Dps)
-Berserk (Another Melee Dps)
-Chronomancer (CC Class)
-Defiler (Melee,Caster)

Ok now 5troll rogues that go to into the oculus. One of them takes control of Warden drake. One takes control of Elite Guard drake. And 3others take Defiler drake, Berserk drake, and Chronomaner drake. Do u understand now what this means?

It is unique in the way it allows each player to control drakes with specific roles (tanking, healing, damage dealing) to complete the dungeon.

Comment by Starfox

You still need a normal instance group, tank+healer+dps.
The dragons are used to fly from platform to platform, as the whole instance is more a huge space of floating platforms. And you need the dragons abilities to fight the dragons of the blue dragonflight flying around there.
There are only 3 to choose from:
Green, Red and Bronze, all with 2 unique abilities.
But once you got to the a platform, you hop off your dragon and fight some trash, except for the last boss, for whom you need to ride those dragons.

Awesome instance that just brings something new to the table, not just "here is route A, take it, kill everything, and no, there is no route B". Really nice to something done a bit different :)

Comment by 46244

As for the colors, as no one else seems to have mentioned:

Red: Tank
Bronze: DPS
Green: Healer

I was the tank in the run so I thought it natural to use the red. It's breath weapon chains to multiple targets, it has an evasion type ability that has a 5 second cooldown and requires you to have "evasion charges" that I'm not currently sure how work, and an ability called Martyr which lasts 10 seconds and has a CD of 10 seconds that redirects all harmful magic abilities to the caster. The "Martyr" ability didn't show up for me until after the 3rd boss.

Side note, the last boss bugged out and when into perpetual-evade mode for my party. One of our party went too close, aggroed and was killed by the boss before everyone was in range and he seemed to stay in the spot he was in when he killed said party member, kinda twitching around but not regaining HP like normal evading mobs. We tried many things, including having everyone leave the instance for 10 minutes, but in the end we gave up and weren't able to complete the instance.

Comment by 178064

I did it on Heroic (which was pretty hairy on the last boss).

Bronze gets a channeled debuff which adds 100% to all damage done to target over 10 seconds and Time Stop, which freezes the target for 10 seconds, with a 1 minute cooldown.

We had a Red Dragon tanking, with two Greens healing and two Bronze doing rotations with the debuff and Time Stop.

Comment by arco

Some preliminary remarks on the Oculus, since it seems to have a lot of people confused:

1) You use the drakes for a large part of the instance, but for every boss except the last one you fight him on foot, like all the other bosses in the game. Thus you still need a regular, balanced group (tank, heals, DPS) to get through this dungeon.

2) There are 3 colored drakes that you can ride in The Oculus: amber, red, and green. Judging by their abilities it's pretty clear that red is the tank, green is the healer, and amber is the DPS. You can split up the group any way you want - 1 red, 2 green, 2 amber, or 1 red, 3 amber, 1 green, etc. There's no restrictions on which drakes the party chooses, and drakes can be swapped out at any time by re-visiting the platform with the dragons on it, but each party member can only have one drake at a time.

Note that if you exit then re-enter the dungeon via the artifact at the beginning (which acts as the instance portal), you will lose your drake summoning item. This means you'll have to run through that first section to the portal that takes you to the dragons' platform to get a new drake, since flying mounts don't work inside. The trash does respawn after a while (I'd guess an hour), so you might have to re-clear this first section again.

Dying does not strip you of your drake summoning item - you can re-enter, mount up, and fly.

Comment by 88189

On a side note, 'Oculus' is another word for 'Eye'. Nice recycling of Tempest Keep Blizzard.

Comment by 238371

note that you get achievements for having none of a certain drake. for example, if you have 2 red and 3 greens but no amber, you get the achievement for having no amber. theres one for the absence of each color :)

Comment by Arathanar

There are three drakes found in this instance, controlled by players. You find these drakes after fighting Drakos the Interrogator, the first boss of the instance. While I may be wrong, the only boss you may use the drakes on in the final boss, Ley-Guardian Eregos. You may freely choose which drake to use, regardless of your gear, spec, or class. These Drakes use the new vehicle system, and are therefore NOT considered mounts.

Red: Tank
Item
NPC

Green: Healer
Item
NPC

Bronze: DPS
Item
NPC

Comment by thurin

'Oculus' is Latin for 'eye'.

Comment by Psychowolf

Note that this is for Heroic only, you don't get an achievement for doing it on normal.

Comment by Poldaran

I was wearing my Kirin Tor Tabard, so I received rep with them. Others not wearing tabards reported gaining Alliance Vanguard rep. I would assume it's probably like that in all dungeons.

Comment by Seahenar

Yes there is a need for a tank and a healer. The first 3 bosses require you to get off of the drakes and fight. As do the mobs you have to kill to make the 2nd boss spawn.

Comment by 255829

Ive done this dungeon now on both normal and heroic multiple times, same thing basically on both difficulty. As a tank, this is what i did;

Drakos the Interrogator: First boss - Is a tank and spank, avoid the weird adds from what we have seen.

Varos Cloudstrider: Second Boss - Take out the sentrys on the platforms, and any blue dragons close by in the air. then have everyone stay close, in melee range when u initiate the fight. The first blast you wont see the electric lines (they are blueish/purple) but the rest you will see about 1/4th of the platform lit up by these things, STAY OUT, he will turn and nuke that area for about 7k easy. Which is why all ranged stays close, move around the guy and outta the electric field, it moves counter clockwise (for at least the times ive done it) Random dragon adds spawn, any good healer can heal through the damage of the dragon add who beams random players, it does about 1.5-2k dmg but again if u stay outta the field and just heal through it you should be ok, avoid it if u can though. Thats it, this boss is actually really easy once you get the dance down.

Mage-Lord Urom: Third Boss - Follow him around 3 platforms, he will spawn adds, take adds out and meet him on center ring, from there ranged stand behind one pillar and tank him in place away from the ranged. Again any good healer can heal through the frostbomb which does an aoe dot (bout 600 a tick) and slows character movment. He will randomly teleport to the middle of the ring (in air) and start casting, any melee and the tank need to get back to the ranged behind that pillar ASAP! does about 12k dmg easy. as a warrior i intervene to my healer, then drag out the boss to the same spot. He does a timebomb on a random player as well, basically that player just needs to move away from the group, healers need to top timebomb toon off quick.

Ley-Guardian Eregos: Last Boss - First! Go into battle naked! so incase u die, ur items wont take durability reduction (ur on a dragon anyway throughout this fight) We do it with 3 Bronze (dps), 1 Ruby (tank), 1 Emerald (healer) Dragon. Clear the whelps before the fight just in case, Ruby initiate the fight and spam your first ability, take the first blast and use ur evasive maneuvers for the second blast, which will keep u from getting hit and allow u to get healed on and off throughout the fight. When adds appear have 1 of the bronze dragons stop time, the ruby dragon then targets a whelp and spams first ability, which will leap frog to them all and the freeze time will increase dmg and take them out easy. The only job of 2 Bronze dragons is to cast the temperal rift, which will increase dmg done to the boss, the 3rd bronze spams his first ability. When boss phases out, fly away as fast as fkin possible! rinse and repeat. Actually very easy and fun fight.

Thats it! enjoy the loots!

Comment by 118464

Hmm, how would you do the "No Green Drake" achievement? Be kinda hard to do the Heroic without a healer-drake.

Comment by Mortenz

Jumping down wont kill you, you will get teleported outside the instance gate.
You will lose your dragon that way tho, so you will have to pick it up. (You can use ground mount inside the instance.)

A good way to not lose repair bill if you are about to wipe.

This is no longer true, since it was changed so you do plummet to your death if you jump down from the instance.

Comment by 160603

I'd imagine chaining a few bronze tme stops and racking up some serious lances

Comment by 27308

done it with 5 amber ones, when ur drake is low hp, leave vehicle, and resummon, then rejoin the battle
we just aggro rotated with one keeping the 100% increased dmg buff up, until 10 stacks of shock charges were up per char, then bam, like 10% hp off each time.
really easy when you watch the number of debuffs your putting up when you do it.
on another run, my amber ended up tanking because the damage output was so much more than the tps of the 2 red dragons we had (that was normal however).
dont forget that you get parachuted when you leave your drake, so just leave directly above the platform, if you have to.

edit: this bug got fixed, but the boss is still resettable.
the easiest way to do this is currently to take 1 ruby, 3 amber, 1 emerald.
emerald keeps up 3 stacks of their primary nuke up on boss (focus target works awesome) and heals those who need using their life giving spell, touch of nightmare is totally unneeded unless u go for the 20min achievement and dps is paramount.
amber rotate their time stop (stun) and uses AFTER drakes spawn. no1 directly nukes them, they die from ruby dmg. nuking rotation is: channel temporal rift till you have 10 shock charges on bosses debuff bar (usually takes 9-10 secs of channel to achieve) then use primary nuke.
ruby just spams primary nuke on boss - unless some drakes are out of range, when the boss is NOT stunned, use martyr, take the first 2 hits and use ur evasive charges to use ur evasion spell.

at some stage a minute or so into the fight, the boss will go into banish form. he is unattackable and summons 5 orbs (one per party member). at this point EVERY party member should start to strafe around the boss (preferably the same way).
to aid this u can mark the healer. at the end of the banish phase u need to end up within 40 yards of the healer, so by marking him everyone has a focal point to get to after banish phase ends.
time stop as banish ends, let ruby down adds, then back to the usual.

Comment by xeyne

Any know what the rep reward for a run here is? Normal and Heroic

Comment by 265036

It is very possible to 2-man the final boss on the drakes. We did it on heroic with a green and a red, since the rest of the party died. The red kited at max length around the entire circle while using evasion, while the green also went around the circle but closer to the middle keeping 3 dots on the boss at all times (you don't have to be pointed at him to cast from the drake), so the green could get ahead of the red one and have time to stop to cast the healing funnel. Took us about 15 mins and spawned a lot of whelps, but it was lots of fun.

Even after all that hard work my plate hand piece still didn't drop >.<

This strategy may help those who are going for the single color drake achievements.

Comment by 93176

How do you summon it while you are in combat?

Comment by pewtimestwo

Not sure if its been mentioned yet, but could someone just tell me what the minimum level for The Oculus is?
Thanks.

EDIT - Found out the minimum level for The Oculus is _75_

Comment by Samitch

I logged out here while dead, logged in and found I was in westfall, alive at Sentinel Hill graveyard. Has this happened to anyone else?

Comment by 261700

Yuck, this is a pretty tough instance if you haven't read up on the boss fights pretty extensively. We came out dying multiple times at various bosses. There are important tricks to each boss that you have to understand ahead of time. I don't recommend trying this instance without at least one person that can prep the group.

Comment by 182913

Using combat-dropping abilities like Vanish or Feign Death. W/o an ability like that I guess you're SOL.

Comment by 71125

Ok healer perspective:

You'll get a green drake.
He comes with 2 talents at first:
Leeching poison: https://www.wowhead.com/cata/spell=50328
Touch of the nightmare: https://www.wowhead.com/cata/spell=50341

Basically you can't heal until you get to the last boss. Just keep spamming your debuffs on the tanks target to kill the blue drakes as you fly from platform to platform

When you mount up for the last boss you get:
Dream Funnel: https://www.wowhead.com/cata/spell=50344

This is a heal with transfers YOUR life to the tank. So the way this works is you need to keep 3x stacks of leeching poison on the boss then switch to health funnel on the tank. If you neglect the poison you'll die.

Comment by 282514

i solo'd the drake fight at 1.4mil HP on heroic with a emerald drake. we were going for both the amber and ruby void achievements and my group died off but i had the wide counter clockwise circle path down while straffing away and ley would shoot me a couple times and stop to charge and get out of range. as long as i got my 3 stacks of poison on him before i got out of range again i was back to full HP before i got shot again.

the whelps were no issue because of the wide kiting.

key things:

stay way way wide. about 10-20yrds out side circle of the outer ring (by outer ring, i mean those 3 platforms).
don't worry about resetting him, if you strafe on the same height as he is at the beginning then you are fine. just don't fly above him or below him, there is a bug that he might reset if you do this.
it will take awhile, took maybe 10min to do 1M HP. so if you solo'd the whole thing it would be a 30min battle. never ever use nightmare while doing this, too much of a risk if something goes wrong in your path and you have to adjust.
on the bubble phase just keep moving in the big circle and when he cuts across the platform take him way way wide, again don't worry about resetting him as long as you are on the same height level as him you are fine. he'll shoot you a couple times but with 3 poisons back on you will just flux between 60%-100% the whole time.

might fraps if down the road, because a little hard to explain.

Comment by allan99

Hey guys does anyone know if you could go into this instance at level 78

Comment by 91216

Dropping down out of the instance now causes durability loss (death).

So if you're wiping on one of the bosses, this tactic is no longer valid to save a repair bill.

Comment by 308541

Yes there is a need for a tank and a healer.

Agreed. Fun as it sounds, I highly doubt a group of rogues and cats can stealth all the way through this dungeon. However, I think it's also helpful to emphasize that there's no connection between a character's class/spec and the drake they can choose for the airborne portions of this dungeon. Any character can take any drake (limit one per character at a time). Let's say a party is made of:

DK Tank
Rogue DPS
Warrior DPS
Mage DPS
Druid Healer

There's no reason that same group can't face Eregos as:

Rogue tank (Ruby drake)
DK DPS (Bronze)
Druid DPS (Bronze)
Warrior healer (Emerald)
Mage healer (Emerald)

They could also go 2 tank/1 DPS/2 heals, or 0/5/0, or whatever configuration they see fit; the only limitation is the players' understanding of how to tank/DPS/heal. Also, if a given configuration isn't working for the group, they can fly back to the drake platform and rearrange their party.

That said, Seahenar makes an important point: the drake-riding portions of the instance are rather limited, and for the remainder of the Oculus, standard party configuration (1-2 tanks, 1-3 DPS, 1-2 heals) still applies.

Comment by 255117

You don't need to be 78 to enter this instance. The required level is 75. This also goes with HoL, Utgard Pinnical (although u cannot be summoned for the stone) but u can use the Utgard keep stone.
Also you can obtain Northrend Dungeonmaster at level 75. You just cant LFG everything yet.

Comment by 121770

Mage-Lord Urom: Third Boss

Easy CC for the groups he summons: Have any class that can break aggro (rogue's vanish, hunter's feign, probably even shadowmeld), go in and start the fight. Make sure the other party members on on the drakes, in the event of a problem. Once you break aggro and are out of combat the mobs reset and can be CC'd like any onther fight.

Comment by 309638

Definitely one of my favorite instances, tho also one of the most difficult.
Mage-Lord Urom in particular was always tough to get down because the damage his frost bomb causes, but i read this guide that suggested using the frost-resist gear made for Sapphiron, makes the fight a cakewalk.

Found the last boss actually pretty easy using two amber drakes, two ruby drakes and an emerald.
All the achievements seem do-able as well, tho i could definitely see the emerald void being an problematic.

Comment by 249533

If you are trying for the quests/achievement please note:

If you die during the final boss fight and fall out of the range. You will not be able to loot any BoP items or get the achievement/quest done.
This is not a glitch, and I talked with a Game Master the only thing to do is more Oculus.

Comment by dusk

Red = Ruby
Bronze = Amber
Green = Emerald

Comment by 324997

This instance is the only one I do not enjoy. I dont know why, it was just a beating to run :-(. After getting through the 3 bosses we got the the final fight we wiped 3 time then gave up. So The Oculus is on the bottom of my fav. list lol :-/

Comment by nikbos

This has got to be blizzards worst attempt at a instance! The only thing you need is a group that listens to your instructions on how to kill the bosses, and drake riding skills! However it is still really hard! The last boss is doable for a level one, if you get a summon to him: in fact I did it with a Level 50 rouge and a group!

Really sad and annoying Instance!

Comment by 159706

Yellow is NOT DPS! Why do people keep saying that? The only thing yellow is good for is time stop, but red puts out at least twice as much DPS as yellow.

I do not recommend the combo that others have suggested. Instead, try 1 emerald, 2 amber, and 2 ruby. If you do it with 3 amber it will needlessly take a very long time and have a higher chance of wipe. The thing that wipes the group most often is the astral plane thing, when those bubbles come out you gotta run like a granny on meth.

Comment by 207578

OMFG I HATE this instance, I ran it once on normal and 1 attempt on heroic and I will NEVER EVER enter this God for saken instance again

and forget about the The Eye of Eternity too I don't care what kind of gear drops there NOTHING is worth this much frustration

Comment by 272357

Any tips on healing this as a disc priest? Did a try and we got to Mage-Lord Urom where we wiped several times until giving up. Damage was all over the place and I tried my best to keep up but it wasn't enough.

I have healed almost every other HC dungeon without any problems as disc priest but this one really shocked me with it's damage. The big problem seems to be all the damage the whole party recieves, and disc has no really good AoE heals.

Is it like this always? Damage to the whole party or did the tank do something wrong?

Cheers!

Comment by kie1996

If anybody would like to do this instance with me whisper: Kiebrowndk :D

Comment by deolrin

Home for the most powerful murloc ingame!

Comment by lovelywaz

New PTR (3.2) notes:

# The Nexus: The Oculus & The Eye of Eternity

* Vehicles (drakes) used in these instances now scale with item level.

Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17899680776&sid=1

About time !

Comment by Vladeon

Remember though that unlike the vehicles in Ulduar, these do not scale to your iLevel. So, if you're going for the achievements or are in a group that's prone to wiping, you can do the whole vehicle part of the instance nude so that you don't accrue a hefty repair bill. This is especially useful when doing the achievement for completeing the instance with no green (healer) drakes. Just don't forget to put your clothes on afterwards.

EDIT: With patch 3.2 the drakes health and damage will scale with the user's item level.

Comment by 333750

I don't think anyone's mentioned this but you CAN buff the drakes. A priests stamina buff on them is actually around 12k HP towards them and a pally's kings gives around another 5k.

Comment by zefnar9

This instance is teh suck.

Comment by jordie3

Note: Mage's Invisibility will not take you out of combat.

Comment by 404888

The link you provided set off my anti-virus.

FYI

Comment by 446908

Am I the only one who would rather eat his own arm than do ONE SINGLE Oculus run?

Comment by 201249

If you don't wanna lose money on repairs, you can undress once you are on the drake. It won't lose stats if you do this way.

Comment by 235552

Can we skip 2nd boss Varos Cloudstrider?

Comment by FenrisHalo

I've heard this should be the first dungeon you should go to when you hit 80, though manly because of the gear. Is this really a good idea? Wouldn't it be smarter to start with something a bit less advanced than having to control these dragons (havent been in there yet, so I don't know if it's not very advanced at all...).

In my opinion, starting out with a simple dungeon would be smarter, though I do admit that maybe finding a tough one is good for the morale when you enter a simpler or easier one later on...

Comment by Stonehearth

Nerfed in Patch 3.3 on the PTR. Taken from the Patch Notes:

Dungeons & Raids
Oculus

* Many bosses and creatures have had their total health reduced.
* Several bosses and creatures have had cooldowns on specific abilities increased, effect durations reduced, and damage on some of these abilities reduced.
* Ring-Lord Conjurers and Sorceresses now hang out in packs of 4 instead of packs of 5.
* Vehicle scaling on the drakes based on the rider’s item level has been increased to make them more powerful.

Comment by 76534

25% chance to cast level 1 blink when struck.

Comment by Slavaa

See no Oculus. Hear no Oculus.

Do no Oculus.

Comment by 466884

It doesn't matter if theyre reducing the health of bosses and such. The entire dungeon is very very time consuming, everything is so far apart and the fights are boring as hell. You could do 2 other heroics in the time it takes to complete oculus.

And getting a group that knows where to go and what theyre doing is very rare (because most of them, including me, really dont give a @#$% about this instance and its only during daily heroics that this instance sees its share of traffic).

I absolutely love nexus and i cant believe that this turd is right on top of it.

Comment by Sincerity

~~Worst... Dungeon... Ever...~~

Dungeon most bribed to get us to play in.... Ever.

Comment by Sharpless

As an added incentive to running this heroic, each player who helps defeat the final boss will receive a loot bag. These will apparently contain two extra Emblems of Triumph, rare gems, and a chance to receive the Reins of the Blue Drake! Keep in mind that you can only receive the loot bag if the Oculus was chosen and completed through the random heroic feature.

Source

Comment by 444694

^^ meh he beat me to it. Yes, I just wanted to confirm that your FAVORITE dungeon is getting an upgrade. Because of this fact, Heroic Oculus is now the heroic with the most emblems of triumph obtainable, at 8 (4 because of the bosses: Drakos, Varos, Urom, and Eregos; 2 because of the random heroic option, which gives you 2 extra emblems, and 2 because of the bag).

Comment by Dadaum

To encourage player´s to run this instance,(since is being reported lots of waiving) Blizzard is adding some changes on Oculus.

´´Once Ley-Guardian Eregos is defeated, one loot bag per character will be provided in his chest in addition to the current rewards. Each loot bag will offer players rare gems, two additional Emblems of Triumph, and a chance of being rewarded the Reins of the Blue Drake. These fine treasures could be yours should you honor your fellow party members by besting the challenges contained within The Oculus! Keep in mind, however, that these extra loot bags will only be awarded to each party member if Oculus is selected by the Dungeon Finder when players choose the Random Heroic option.``

I

Comment by Boshnak

Loot might need to be updated -

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22418861894&sid=1

To encourage players not to shy away from the many invigorating adventures to be had in The Oculus, we have applied a change to enhance the rewards players are provided when selected for this dungeon via the Random Heroic option in the Dungeon Finder. Once Ley-Guardian Eregos is defeated, one loot bag per character will be provided in his chest in addition to the current rewards. Each loot bag will offer players rare gems, two additional Emblems of Triumph, and a chance of being rewarded the Reins of the Blue Drake. These fine treasures could be yours should you honor your fellow party members by besting the challenges contained within The Oculus! Keep in mind, however, that these extra loot bags will only be awarded to each party member if Oculus is selected by the Dungeon Finder when players choose the Random Heroic option.

In light of this change, the Reins of the Azure Drake will now have a chance of dropping in both 10- and 25-player versions of The Eye of Eternity.

Comment by 215195

quote from blizzard:

To encourage players not to shy away from the many invigorating adventures to be had in The Oculus, we have applied a change to enhance the rewards players are provided when selected for this dungeon via the Random Heroic option in the Dungeon Finder. Once Ley-Guardian Eregos is defeated, one loot bag per character will be provided in his chest in addition to the current rewards. Each loot bag will offer players rare gems, two additional Emblems of Triumph, and a chance of being rewarded the Reins of the Blue Drake. These fine treasures could be yours should you honor your fellow party members by besting the challenges contained within The Oculus! Keep in mind, however, that these extra loot bags will only be awarded to each party member if Oculus is selected by the Dungeon Finder when players choose the Random Heroic option.

SWEEEEEET!

Comment by adamathefrog

Be quick to get your loot bag before the other players in the group leave, otherwise you won't get one. I was too slow clicking the chest before the group was disbanded, and the chest is now empty!

Comment by 416975

This instance still isn't worth going to even with Blizzards little "bribe"... stupid people end up making it go on way too long,(my friends and I have actually fallen asleep while doing this place...) Only thing worth doing here is getting your "Champion of the Frozen Wastes" title

Sorry Blizzard, Still not working..maybe put a little more effort in to other parts of the game than trying to get us to do one instance.

Comment by 360470

A poorly designed vehicle interface, nonsensical skills equal fail dungeon. The drakes are too large to see anything but the butt of the drake, spamming buttons to do what, I still have yet to figure out. The rewards are nice but utterly unattainable in a pug, hence worthless.

The best strategy is to kill the first boss, get saved to the instance and leave. Take your 15 minute penalty - but at least you wont get queued again for it during the day. Once I was actually put in this POS 4 times.

Comment by genericname

Just because you are unable to use the Dragons that are required in this instance does not make a "Fail dungeon". In my opinion, the Dragon interface is extremely simple in design, for example:

I play on the Bronze Drake whenever I go in there, however I took the step forward to help my group out when the healer's UI wouldn't support the Vehicle UI. 2nd attempt after using the green dragon(For the first time) we downed Eregos, and nobody died. 1st attempt on the Red Drake, and I got Emerald Void easily.

On to your next concern,

"...Nonsensical skills..."
Do you even read the skill tooltip? Honestly, I read the things, and I laughed cause of it's completely straightforwardness(Yes, it's a word, no spaces). For my example, I shall use "Martyr" Straightforward as hell.

In closing, you've got something wrong with you, probably your attitude towards Oculus in all honesty. I don't like Oculus, I find it to be tedious and rather boring. However with the nerfs that have come it's way, I'm surprised anyone is still wiping on this.
* Many bosses and creatures have had their total health reduced. (Eregos included)
* Several bosses and creatures have had cooldowns on specific abilities increased, effect durations reduced, and damage on some of these abilities reduced.
* Ring-Lord Conjurers and Sorceresses now hang out in packs of 4 instead of packs of 5.
* Vehicle scaling on the drakes based on the rider’s item level has been increased to make them more powerful.

Comment by 468077

As of patch 3.2, you no longer keep the mount summoning item if you die. You need to go back to the NPCs.

This means Make it count is harder, and you need to take more care not to wipe.

Comment by 432660

Can anyone confirm a drop rate on the blue proto drake? I've run this three times on random since Blizzard has announced the drake, and I've yet to see it drop. If the drop rate is insanely low, two more badges is not going to entice me to run this. I'm a JC: I can get rare gems all of the time. Maybe change it to epic gems and you might entice me to run this more often.

Comment by pezz

A paladin's frost resistance aura reduces the damage the random trash drakes do to your drakes by ~20%, even if the paladin is on his or her drake.

Doesn't work on Eregos's arcane damage, but it makes the flying around parts of the instance a little bit easier.

Also, you CAN change auras while riding your drake. In the standard UI your aura bar disappears while mounted but going through your spellbook or using an addon (I recommend opie) will still work to change auras. However, the only aura with any benefit while on drakes is Frost resistance. Drakes are vehicles, not mounts, so no Crusader Aura.

Comment by Yewb

There is a dismount bug here. Dismounting your drake (it seems to happen frequently on the 2nd boss, but I've seen it happen elsewhere) may not remove the drake's action bars and give you your own ones back. Logging out and in should fix this. I don't know why it happens, but it's current as of 3.3.5 and I've experienced it occasionally ever since hitting 80. I'm not using any action bar addons, so it's WoW's interface at fault.

Comment by 380942

Why was this dungeon so hated? Unfortunately I couldnt witness it in true state, before nerfing and drake scaling. But even then, how could it be bad? First floor and 2nd floor have quite simple NPCs, which do not have nuking or evading abilities and can be just aoed down. Bosses are also far easier than say...HHoL. Eregos fight is the only vehicle based fight pre-Ulduar, so getting a chance to do it IMO is much luckier than say...watching Anub'arak burrow 3 times... As it was stated above, drake's skills are intuitively easy, it does not require positioning or any other complexities you face in normal encounters. And as of 3.3.0, this dungeon is simply the best dungeon you can get for random. Four! bosses, non of which has wiping abilities. Same easy trash. Scaling drakes. And finally the cache with sweet 2 additional emblems and gems (and possible mount). If this dungeon was any hard earlier, it was not the hardest dungeon, and now it's easy to get Make it Count even without intention. Honestly, this dungeon has least problems than any other for me.

Comment by 233434

I have been attempting to get a Blue Drake without success now for many months. With little else to farm or work on, I've turned my eye to getting this now, before Cataclysm makes it impossible to run Heroic Oculus.

So far I have seen two interesting methods for "farming" this mount, which I will explain further and request input on.

Method one: group-assisted specific dungeon queuing.

Pros:

Almost guaranteed one Oculus run per day

Cons:

Requires a team of 2-3 people, or access to multiple accounts and group roles (healer and tank vital)

How it works:
One of the features of the random LFG system, is the ability for players in the random queue, to be placed into groups who are queuing for a specific dungeon. Thus, the aim here is to have two parties working together. Party one queues specifically for heroic Oculus (none of the players in this party will receive the "Cache of the Ley-Guardian" bag). Party two queues for a random dungeon, gets put into party one's group (the members of party two WILL receive their bags, because they found the dungeon as a random.

Now the problem here is that it can be difficult (nigh impossible) to tell if you've joined up with the right party. The best solution to this problem is to have party one contain a healer, and party two contain a tank (the two limiting factors for quick queues). You could swap those positions too (having the tank in group 1 and the heals in group 2) but since tanks are usually the biggest limiting factor, they'd work best in group two. This way, it can be easy to tell exactly when queues pop and which roles are being filled.

If you are a tank or a healer, this can be an ideal solution to farming, since you really only need to find a healer/tank friend to make a go of it. If you're a DPS though, this means you need to find both a tank AND healer, who are willing to fiddle around getting into what many view as the most annoying 5-man instance at level 80.

This method isn't 100% guaranteed (especially at peak times) but it's as close as you can get right now.

Method two: dungeon lockout extensions

Pros:

Requires no outside assistance
You don't actually have to do anything extra if you're already farming heroics.

Cons:

Not actually proven to work (kind of a big one...)

How it works:
Here are some blue posts on how the random LFG works, and how it favours certain dungeons under certain circumstances:

Ghostcrawler: "It's more fuzzy random than actually random. For example it is less likely to put you in a dungeon that you ran recently."
- (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677582413&pageNo=1#9)

Official Dungeon Finder FAQ: "The Heroic lockouts still exist, however the difference is that the random heroic option will ignore any potential lockouts a player might have. This means that even if you run every single WotLK heroic dungeon in a day, you can still choose the random heroic option to continue running WotLK heroics that day. As mentioned above though, the heroic dungeons you have run the most that day will be the least likely to be randomly selected for your continued play by the dungeon finder system."
- (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=11824373363&sid=1)

The facts as stated above, are that you are less likely to run a dungeon via random queue, if you ran it "recently". Some people have made the assumption that being saved to a dungeon decreases the likelihood of running it again. However, people have also argued that blizzard may in fact use another system to track dungeons you've run independent of your lockouts.

The problem is, without a massive amount of statistical data, it's very hard to prove one way or another. The good news is, if you are farming for a Blue Drake, it doesn't much matter. Simple solution: each day when you start running heroics in search of Oculus, simply extend all other heroic instance lockouts. It "might" increase you chances of getting Oculus. No amount of anecdotal evidence will really prove this, but it can't hurt to try.

* * * *

I hope some of the above information helps other potential Blue Drake farmers get their mount before Cata. If you have luck anything like mine, you need all the help you can get.

Iliath of Undermine

Comment by 137356

When Cata was released, lvl 80-82 toons could join/use the WOTLK random heroics feature. As of the latest patch, only lvl 80 toons may join WOTLK random heroics.

Which means, being that the "Reins of the Blue Drake" ONLY has a chance of dropping via the random heroic feature, to obtain this mount you should turn your xp off at lvl 80 and continually run random WOTLK heroics till you get this dungeon and this drop. Unless of course you'd rather run these heroics for only one lvl (80) and hope of getting this dungeon and drop before you ding lvl 81.

EDIT: IDK why this is being downgraded, it has everything to do with topic...

Comment by hatman555

Level 2 Band of Acceleration – To access the Band of Acceleration you will require the aid of the Drake mounts. There are 3 different mounts to choose from. To obtain a mount you need to speak with one of the NPCs who are release from the cages behind the first boss, Drakos. The three NPCs correspond to the three types of Drakes --->

Emerald Drake (Healing Drake) Abilities:

Button #1.) Leeching Poison (60 yds - Instant ) More than a DPS ability, this is a self healing ability for the drake. It will be the only healing ability until the final boss. Multiple targets can have up to 3 stacks of the leeching poison at the same time. Targets affected by the leeching poison will change to a bright green color.

Button #2.) Touch of Nightmare (60 yds - Instant ) While this ability hurts the caster, it produces a significant amount of damage as well as adding a damage reducing debuff to the target. This debuff will be especially useful for the final boss. Casting Touch of Nightmare with low health will result in death.

Button #3.) Dream Funnel (60 yds - channel) This ability will allow the green drake to heal other Drakes in the party, by effectively giving its health to them. It is important to make sure the green drake does not give away too much health and also that leeching poison remains active in order to replenish lost health. Movement or casting will break this channel. Damage will not break the channel. You can kill your drake by channeling all your life away. (This ability is not available until the 3rd boss, Mage-Lord Urom, has been killed.)

Ruby Drake (Tanking Drake) Abilities:

Passive Evasive Aura This passive ability will give the Ruby drake a store of Evasive Charges to use with his next ability. No Casting is required for this ability.

Button #1.) Searing Wrath (60 yds - Instant ) This is the primary damage attack of the Ruby Drake. Because each target jump increase the damage is it best to select targets with lower health to attack, in hopes that the beam will jump to a target with high health and do more damage. Attacking the summoned whelps first in the boss fight is the most effective use of this attack.

Button #2.) Evasive Maneuvers (Instant ) A defensive CD that will absorb an entire damaging attack or spell for the cost of 1 Evasive Charge for each absorb.

Button #3.) Martyr (Instant ) A defensive CD that will redirect all damaging attacks or spells from other party members to the Ruby Drake. (This ability is not available until the 3rd boss, Mage-Lord Urom, has been killed.)

Amber Drake (DPS Drake) Abilities:

Button #1.) Shock Lance (60 yds - Instant ) This is the main damaging ability of the Amber drake. Because of the stacking damage bonus this attack gets from Shock Charge It is best not to spam this attack but to alternate it with the Drakes 3rd ability, Temporal Rift.

Button #2.) Stop Time (Instant ) This ability effectively freeze’s all flying dragons for 10 seconds as a secondary effect, the user of the time stop applies 5 Shock charges on all targets affected. Ability has a 1 minute CD for each drake.
(**Important**: Time stop has diminishing returns. If a second time stop is cast immediately following a prior time stop, its effect will be reduced by 50%, thus lasting only 5 seconds. If a third time stop is cast, its effect will be reduced and additional 50% and only last 2.5 seconds. A forth time stop in a row will produce no effect. To avoid these harsh diminishing returns, casters should wait at least 30 seconds between casts.)

Button #3.) Temporal Rift (60 yds - channel) This ability is a preparatory DPS ability for the Amber Drake. During the 10 second channel, all damage will applied Shock Charges to the target. As a additional bonus all damage dealt to a target being channeled by another drake is increase by 100% to a maximum of 100% increased damage, this means that 2 channels will not increase damage done by 200%. The channel may be canceled at any time with movement or a casting of another ability. (This ability is not available until the 3rd boss, Mage-Lord Urom, has been killed.)

-

While it is important to select a good and effective combination of Drakes, party members can switch at any point in the instance, and any drake will be effective in clearing trash. Don’t worry about who is flying what until the final boss fight.

Comment by Draintwo

Do the dragons you ride scale? I'm wondering if they do scale by how much. As in would it be possible for two level 85s to ride two dragons in heroic oculus and duo the last boss? I know they'd need to scale quite a lot for that. Has anyone done this at 85 to confirm?

Comment by 650053

The drakes do scale. Not enough to solo though. (Using a bronze drake, with time stop I nearly one-shot all the lesser drakes, and my drake had 214K HP (vs the 75K my lvl 77 had). This was on regular.
I was able to get him to 70% solo by sitting on a green drake, and strafing adound the boss, but after awhile, there were just too many whelps. Given an additional person, you could probably 2 man this, and defiantly 3 man.

And as to people getting lost and not knowing what to do:
1. Ask. if you ask your party members, they will likely tell you.
2. Look up. Your final goal is at the very top of the instance.
3. Use the guides provided. All 3 npc's direct you, and when you are mounted, you can press '6' at any time and the drake itself will tell you what you should be doing.

But, the VERY basics are as follows: (no boss strategies, look those up elsewhere)

Phase 1: Get drakes.
This involves following the fairly straightforward path, using the portal, then killing a boss to unlock the drakes.

Phase 2: Kill constructs and then kill Varos.
This can be accomplished by flying up, and clearing 2/3 circular platforms, then flying to the center and going around the ring. doing this makes Varos stop casting his shield, so land on his platform and kill him. All this is done at about the same altitude, about halfway up the spire.

Phase 3: Chase and kill Urom.
Fly STRAIGHT up and east just a little, and you will see a medium sized, irregular platform, 'chained' to the spire. Made-Lord Urom will be in the middle.. Land on it, and kill the monsters that spawn. Once dead, stay at the same altitude, mount up and fly due south, to find a similarly shaped platform. Land, and kill the monsters again. Mount up, and continue clockwise around the circle, heading north west. Land and kill the monsters. Once done, do what he said and '...find him in the center ring.' Fly straight into the center, at a slight downward angle to land on his platform, beside him, then kill him.

Phase 4: Kill Eregos.
Fairly straightforward. Mount, and fly to the top, killing whelps along the way. Proceed to kill the boss(Bloody big blue dragon, if you miss it, get your eyes checked.)

Comment by 725641

I just solo'ed with the green drake. I didn't read any of these posts before trying it, so I figured I should go with the drake that heals at least. At first I didn't think it was possible because the little drakes start piling up so much, that even with the healing and my drake scaled with my gear, there were so many drakes it was ridiculous. So, here is the strategy I used:

*Having enemy health bars visible will be essential to this strategy

1 - Start the fighting by Stacking 3 (#1 Leeching Poison) on Eregos and then hit him with (#2 Touch the Nightmare).
2 - Keep spamming #1 until he spawns the first drakes
3 - For me, each drake took 2 stacks of #1 to kill them. Also, one (#2 Touch the Nightmare) will instantly kill a drake, you must have poisons on constantly to heal through the self-inflicted damage. So, target a full health bar, hit #2, click another full health bar, spam #1 twice, another full bar, #1 twice again
4 - Switch quickly back to Eregos and #1, if the original poisons are still ticking, you will only need to hit #1 a single time and it will refresh all 3 stacks of poison.

Basically, by hitting each drake with #1 twice, and insta-killing a drake with #2 whenever it is refreshed, you can keep ALL of the drakes killed. It takes some practice rotating between targets, but just keep your priority killing the drakes, if the poison wears off Eregos it's okay, you can quickly stack 3 when you have two poisons on every drake. If you get efficient enough at killing drakes, you can blow an extra #2 on Eregos for added damage.
By keeping the 3 poisons on Eregos and an extra #2 every once in a while, his HP will consistently drop. It isn't fast at first, but once you get the rotation down, it was much faster.

Happy Solo'ing friends!

Comment by 725641

My Emerald Drake Solo video guide is FINISHED !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLYAm6prTps&context=C3baffa3ADOEgsToPDskIgzC3bFJTNvngxPWtMvLlB

Sorry it took so long after posting my written guide, I spent a lot of time editing this though. I hope it helps all of you solo'ers out.

Please vote this up for all to see, thanks! ^_^

Comment by 973860

One BIG hint: when fighting Eregos on your drake, MAKE SURE you are on top of a platform.
This way, even if your drake dies, you float down and do not die.

I just soloed him and my green drake died 3 times until I got the timing correctly! The first time, my chute opened but I had nothing under me, so I died.
The second time, I made sure I was flying just above the platform, and when my drake died, sure enough I 'chuted down and just called a new drake for me.

Comment by Aquifel

Oculus: remembered for being the only dungeon that was so horrible to run that they gave you an extra loot bag for running it if you were unlucky enough to get it via randoms.

Links

The Oculus

The NexusThe OculusDrakos the InterrogatorVaros CloudstriderMage-Lord UromLey-Guardian EregosThe Eye of EternityThe NexusBorean TundraThe Oculus

The Oculus

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