I finally took part in one of the first two dungeon instances in Wildstar. Matter of fact, I have run Stormtalon’s Lair 5 times now though I have yet to do the other starter dungeon, The Ruins of Kel Vorteth. I am assuming that theRuins dungeon is much more difficult or not as fun because I have always queue’d for both but only Stormtalon’s has popped. Regardless, I have run Stormtalon five times now. The first time as a DPS engineer, because I wanted to get a feel for the dungeon, and the rest as a tank engineer. All runs were with PUGs, though I did have a single run in which a friend of mine ran as DPS.
Let me say up front, that this dungeon is a lot more difficult than any dungeon I can think of in modern WoW. Some of this is because it is a new game and people still do not understand the mechanics completely. Hell, I have had to explain how interrupt armor works countless times already. But much of it is also simply because the game is difficult. The mechanics of each boss fight is fairly straightforward but actually pulling off the fights is another matter entirely.
Starting off with the trash, you will find even the basic trash is fairly difficult. They hit hard, they heal each other and there is tons of AoE or splash damage for your healer to worry about. One of the first sets of trash mobs you run into are a Thundercall Shaman and Sentinel. The Sentinel hits pretty hard and has a nasty charge attack, which is easily avoidable because he has no interrupt armor, so you can simply stun him every time he starts charging it up. The problem, however, is the Shaman. The shaman heals and has to be focused down quickly because of it. He has two interrupt armor, so you need to interrupt him three times in order to land one and stop the healing cast.
The other trash mob that will give you problems is the Stormweaver. He has a nasty stacking DoT that applies on multiple group members that needs to be healed through and a channel spell that stuns and does continuous massive damage. This needs to be interrupted or will result in the certain death of the player.
Pulls can also be problematic. There are a few patrols near some of the pulls and accidentally getting one of them while attempting to pull others will result in an almost certain wipe for a PuG. The fact that there is no long term CC makes this even worse. You can’t use a hunter trap or sleep or even a sap, to take a mob out of the picture while you deal with the others. Mobs must be tanked or kited and killed one at a time. This puts a lot of pressure on the tank and healer to absorb the massive damage coming from the mobs.
The trash can be tough. The bosses can be nightmares. Strangely, the bosses go in descending order of difficulty, in my opinion. The first boss, Blade-Wind the Invoker, is the toughest boss in the instance. He is capable of causing much frustration, especially to a pick up group. Dodging telegraphs, and burst damage/healing are all very important with this boss and messing up on one aspect will cause certain wipes.