The Frostlord, Ahune

Let me begin by saying that I love the Flame Festival. It's great! Summer has begun, the children are out of school, and the XP for my druid is immense with the ribbon dance. There's a whole mess of holiday items to collect, including this awesome red Wisp.

But let's get on to my point. In addition to the experience bonus and the collectables, there is a holiday boss called The Frostlord Ahune. He's in the Burning Crusade dungeon The Slave Pens, and is available for the same random queue as regulars and heroics and offers a once-a-day reward: the Satchel of Chilled Goods. What's special about the Satchel is that there's a small chance it will contain the Frostscythe of Lord Ahune, a very choice-looking stave-class weapon. This being true, many people flock to do their daily dose of the boss and most are not geared for heroics. And, I've found, most don't know how the boss works.

I don't mind people that are undergeared. Sometimes I even run a random regular just for the satisfaction of having uber gear in an instance that doesn't call for it. That's of my own volition and I'm well aware not to expect anything over 316 Item Level. But during the holidays, I'm not expecting that at all. In fact, I'm rather hoping I'll come accross other folks who have heroic or raiding gear because when I'm trying to get the boss down as quickly as possible to get my Satchel, it really helps to have competent, capable group members. Unfortunately, that is wishful thinking; the average random Frostlord Ahune queuer is wearing his armor class' Bloodied gear, which has resilience and is a poor way to gain Item Level points, or is wearing 316 Greens, or worse. Some of them aren't even level 85, and I hope a special place is reserved for them when they die.

My first complaint is against level 84s who queue for Ahune. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. When you queue at level 84, you immensely detract from the group's overall DPS, and therefore cause the group to have to withstand more Resurfacing phases. Those phases are difficult to tank purely because the adds are all over the place and generally out of range of my Thunder Clap wherever I'm standing. It wouldn't be bad if the other group members were in gear of my calibur, because the adds only have around fifty-thousand health and could easily be killed by anyone else, but when they're level 84 something even that minor could annihilate them. If you're level 84 and in an Ahune group, you're a detriment.

Second. People that don't know how the fight works. I hate those people. Whether you're a casual player, an elitist, and PvPer, whatever, there is no excuse not to know a fight if you're going to queue for it. Especially one as simple as The Frostlord! It's seriously just kill adds, kill the exposed crystal. Wham. There are numerous resources for you to learn how to do a fight, and in this expansion there's no room for blissful ignorance. If you're going to willfully click the button to sign up for Ahune, the least you can do is know what he's going to throw at you. Usually what happens to me when people don't know how it works is:

• I don't get healed because the healer is lost in confusion because s/he had no idea what was happening.
• The DPS don't kill anything and the adds start stacking up and then kill me.
• No one attacks the crystal immediately and I see this message before it takes damage: "The Frostlord will soon resurface."
• More than two Exposed phases take place and I get mauled by the increasing amount of adds.
• I recieve a crippling thirty-minute debuff for leaving because Blizzard didn't count on morons ruining my holiday experience. It doesn't help that when we wipe there's a huge middle-finger in bold yellow text saying, "THE FROSTLORD HAS WON."

Figure out what you're doing. If you don't know how a Zandalari works, watch videos from Classic and Burning Crusade. If you don't know how Ahune works, he's been around since The Burning Crusade. Look it up. If the first thing I hear from you as I enter the dungeon is, "I've never been here before" or "Anything special to know about this fight" then I hate you.

I think there should be an iLevel requirement to queue for Ahune. In all seasons past, there's been an almost requisite need to be max level, and now even that can't save you from dying stupidly. If everyone had to be wearing 333-346, then it wouldn't even take more than one Exposed phase to kill Ahune, and that would be ideal. I may be a jerk for saying all this, but my character is going to live to see tomorrow. What's going to happen to yours?

-Ghill