Heroic Blackrock Caverns speed run (Melee Zerg)

[Zugdud]

Greetings,

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be much incentive to farm Heroics right now if your goal is primarly to gear up for PvP. That said, quick Chaos Orbs are always nice and BRC can be cleared fairly quickly if you skip all the optional bosses (once you get a hang of the place it only takes about 15-20 minutes). Also I'd like to add that I probably couldn't kill the 2nd boss with my team even if I wanted to.

Team class/specs:
Blood DK
Unholy DK
Fury Warrior
Enhancement Shaman
Holy Paladin

They each tend to pull around 10-12k single target DPS right now (minus the Holy Paladin, ofcourse), with the tank a bit lower. Unholy does some monstrous AOE damage and his overall DPS for a clear tends to be significantly higher then the rest of the team (around 16-18k)

I am missing some video footage after the 1st boss but for those who are curious I just jump down the ledge on the left after crossing the first bridge, clear to the 2nd bridge, exit the instance via LFD, re-enter via LFD, and take portal to 3rd boss. I ran with the sound off, and also doubled the playback speed of the video (it's not very exciting, mostly just AOE spam)

[Mercurio]

Nice. Interesting how melee teams can ignore some of the mechanics that are harder for caster teams and vice versa.

I'm sure they have been for a while, but I'm glad melee teams are a viable alternative for Cata heroics.

[d0z3rr]

Why paladin healer instead of shaman?

[Multibocks]

No sound, at least use the in game stuff. It's so quiet... =(

After watching this I foresee most heroics being boxable by the 2nd tier of Cataclysm by melee teams. A lot of stuff is doable right now. Is Karsh Steelbender or whatever hes called too hard for your team as well?

[Zugdud]

Thanks for the feedback all, the only Cataclysm Heroics i've cleared thus far have been Shadowfang keep, Vortex Pinnacle, and Blackrock Caverns. I am sure others are doable as well, the honor grid has been sapping all of my playtime lately but I have been meaning to try Lost City next . BRC is definitly my favorite at the moment as it can be cleared in a fraction of the time of the others, in my experience.

@Multibocks, I actually had never even tried to pull Karsh Steelbender until this morning and he turned out to be really easy. It seemed like my team took more damage from Rom'oggs quakes which can be tricky to fully avoid with follow compared to the lava puddles. Also as an added bonus, Raz cleared out the 6 trash mobs guarding the final boss, which probably makes up for the lost time spent killing Karsh.

@d0z3rr, I prefer having my Paladin Holy and Shaman Enhancement for PvP so those happen to be their best respective gear sets at the moment. I do have a fairly decent Restoration set on my shaman, but it's still miles behind my Paladins gear. When I get some time to try more heroics, I may run dual healers again to ease the learning curve of some of the fights.

[remanz]

10-12k single target dps in a 5 man heroic is impressive. That's what normal players do with full 346 gear. What's your unholy's rotation like? OB-> FS + SS spam ?

[Zugdud]

10-12k single target dps in a 5 man heroic is impressive. That's what normal players do with full 346 gear. What's your unholy's rotation like? OB-> FS + SS spam ?

Hi Remanz, i'd actually say that 12k is a conservative ballpark for Unholy single target while the warrior and enhance strugle hard to keep pace with him. Unholy is awesome, definitely a great spec for PVE multiboxed melee DPS in my opinion thus far, ungrouped and with only self buffed the Unholy will pull 13k on a target dummy using only spam keys. Running 5mans with buffs/debuffs from my team on near ideal melee single target fights like Baron Ashbury in Shadowfang Keep it even tends to be a bit higher. What I love about Unholy at the moment, is that thanks to Runic Corruption we have a constant and predictable rune refresh rather then a randomly refreshed rune. Additionally, it's quite easy to capitilize on the death runes and include the proc gimmick (dark transformation) within your spam key.

As far as setup goes, I am using ISBoxer+Innerspace setup with a 4 step sequence for PvE. I also use a toggle function to switch the binds to different in game keys for AOE situations. For single target this is what I have currently:

Primary spam key:

step 1 & 2:
/castsequence reset=5 scourge strike, festering strike, scourge strike, festering strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike
/cast dark transformation
/petattack

step 3:
/cast summon gargoyle
/cast dark transformation
/petattack

step 4:
/cast death coil
/cast dark transformation
/petattack

Secondary key:
/cast blood fury
/use 13
/use 10
/cast [@player] unholy frenzy
/castsequence reset=5 Outbreak, Pestilence, Blood Tap

Interestingly, while Dark Transformation does incur a global cooldown it can be included in macros like this and will activate when the ghoul accumulates enough power (give it a try). Assuming that is unintended and gets changed, it could be included as an individual step easily enough.

You could configure your spam key to also include the secondary key as part of the spam if you prefer, I just like the added control of having these abilities separated...feral spirit, deathwish, etc are on this key as well. When I want to use the secondary key, I just spam it simultaniously with the primary. Thanks to sudden doom, the gargoyle has a fair chance of being activated, however you can miss a minute or two at times. There is definitly plenty of room for improvement here, I haven't spent too much time tweaking this so if you come up with any suggestions or have any other feedback on my approach here i'd be very interested!

Edit: Oh, here is a link to my Unholy DK's profile (Primary spec is PvE, Secondary spec is PvP)

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ugdhaar/simple

[remanz]

Really appreciate that you are sharing the setup. I've seen unholy DK's do great dps in raid. and the awesome part, like you said, is that there are no RNG factors. You get constant good damage.

I do have a question regarding its damage. Did you play a bit unholy in pvp ? What percentage of the damage are coming from the pet. I'd imagine when both pets are up and attacking + DT. Unholy would have some great burst. But normally, it takes about like 20+ seconds to build that 5 DC buff ?

With up coming patch, unholy's damage will get normalized a little bit. But getting some more goodies in pvp (passive anti snare + chains of ice root).

[Zugdud]

Usually between 30-40% of his damage is from the pet(s). On Baron Ashbury for example, the ghoul will do around 4k dps over the entire fight. Gargoyle is worth about 3k DPS during it's uptime. Building up the 5 charges of Shadow Infusion as you mentioned can take awhile, the time can vary quite a bit in PvP depending on your time spent CCd/kited or if you opt to use Gargoyle first.

As far as PvP goes, I haven't done much Cataclysm arena yet... still sort of experimenting with various spec combos and trying to figure things out. For what it's worth the few time's I tried Unholy on my 5v5 team I had either died before Dark Transformation would go off, or it would finally pop when it was clean up time against the last 2-3 remaining enemies. I did try boxing some 3v3 as Unholy+Enhance+Holy as well, Unholy seemed perfect for this team, though I think when the patch goes live I'm going to bench the shaman for the Warrior

That said, the Death Rune generation potential for NS or SS is epic and as you said, the tree is getting some neat stuff in the upcoming patch so we will have to see what happens!

[katsurahama]

Can you share some of your addons? I am using the standard ui right now and need to move to click healing. I like the way you have yours set up. Thanks.