Where to once your 80?

[Youngceo]

My team finally made 80 this morning, run a holy dk and 4 shammys.

Im just collecting up pieces of Stormhide gear for the shammys but apart from that I really dont know where to start. I tried 2 heroics and just got rolled as you do in blues and greens, my tank has about 510defense and 22k hp, shammys are at about 1600 spell power with wrath etc.

Should I just be doing normal instances for rep, if so which faction has best gear for shammys/dks. I should probably be trying heroics with just the dk alone but I cant really be assed taking even longer progressing guys solo, so I think ill just have to find a way to slowly progress em all abit.

So what did everyone else do once you hit 80

[Perrigrin]

I'm kinda in the same situation (a bit better gear on the tank, but not good enough to tank heroics with a sub-par healer - even though I tanked alot of them with non boxing setups easy).

My drive to play has been a bit low, plus work starting after the holiday season - So all I've done is a few sessions of dailys in IC for some nice cash.

I do plan to run UP normal a few times for rep and a few upgrades that seems to be in there - But any other ideas are appreciated. Might also step into AV for some honor farming.

[Hachoo]

Finish all your storm peaks and icecrown quests to amass a huge quantity of money (20k or so). Spend a lot of the money on titanium gear for your tank and revenant/titanium gear for your shamans, and walk right into heroics. I didn't have to gear my team up in regular instances at all. I did a crapton of quests in 5-7 days, got like 25k gold, bought a titansteel destroyer and 4 titansteel guardians, titansteel treads, earthguard ring, earthguard chain, some tempered saronite gear and daunting gear (all crafted boe), then revenant chest/feet for shamans and went right into Heroic Gundrak and had almost no issues :)

[Catamer]

there are pleanty of ice crown daily, ebon blade has nice easy daily set in particular. ( 6 total but one of them is an awful collection quest that I don't do )
Buy your tank whatever it takes to get to 535 defense. ( at least that's the magic number for a pally ) I'm sure others can give you ideas of what a DK needs for defense.

for heroics I have one of my shaman as resto doing zero dps, heals only on a cast sequence that starts with earth shield, riptide, lesser healing wave.... ( as many lhw,ch as it takes so that when I get back to riptide it casts right away )
so for button 2 I have 3 shaman doing dps and the resto just standing there and
for button 3 I have the same dps but the resto does his healing castsequence on the tank only.
and the numpad-5 I have all shaman do a chain heal on themselves.
most times when the group needs a heal I can just tap the numpad-5 and only the resto is ready to cast so only the resto heals the group although it is my panic button and if more cast chain heal it's usually ok.

The easiest boss to take down is the right hand side boss in gundrak, the one that turns into a mamoth. He does an AoE stomp that hits the whole but he never double stomps so you have plenty of time to heal your tank and your team before he stomps again.
the easiest last boss is in Zul'Drak because 1/2 of the fight is in transformed mode.
good luck.

[Hachoo]

FWIW I think the easiest last boss is ingvar on heroic - if you're not mental and avoid all his smashes and roars which are very easy to do you practically dont have to heal.

For first bosses I find the snake boss in gundrak easier than the mammoth (though the mammoth is cake too) - just put your DPS up on the ramp coming in from the entrance to the instance and drop healing stream totems and you don't hardly have to heal or worry about any adds.

[Youngceo]

Thanks for all that item info, I had a bit of it but not all.

Im farming HoL atm to get the trinket off Loken and with the other Boe epics I will easily be at the defense cap so I can worry about stam then. Im still running 4 elementals as I was hoping to do bg's with them however the only bg im really enjoy is AV and theres hour long queue times at the moment on my server theres no1 playing. Im going to respec one to resto for awhile till I can get ahead and hopefully go back to 4 ele once I gear up enough and dont need heals every 2 seconds, or until dual specs come in.

Ill try gundrak and zuldrak also when im ready to try them again. I kinda liked the gundrak instance too so if i can manage to clear it ill be happy. I have a feeling the hardest part is just getting started, once I got some gear and can manage to clear a heroic like a normal one gear should come in no time with the amount of badges you could collect.

Whats the verdict on 10 man naxx? If I get the gear mentioned above good enough for heroics would it be pugable with another 5, I know another 5 boxer on the server also if any of it would be possible to box or does it require some movement. even if I could only farm a boss or two for some more badges

[mikekim]

how about run for a winterspring frostsaber - there are currently 8 lvl 80's running this atm on my server (sorry this is my QQ as i'm currently running it with 3x lvl 60 teams and has pushed my quest rep turn ins from 8-10 mins to over 40 X( )

why? is there nothing else to do in Northrend once you hit 80?

(i know its a mount for the achievement count, but AAAARRRGGGHHH)

[Gadzooks]

Grats on 80! :)

My 3 hit 80 last night, in Storm Peaks. I headed back, finished up training, and have been doing a lot of work on DPS between Elitist Jerks and the practice dummies. I've got all three of them around 1200 with some changes and talent respecs and stuff, so I'm pretty happy, considering the gear they have.

Now, I'm going to finish the quests in Storm Peaks and Icecrown, continue saving mats for the tailoring and leather items, and work on reps - I just started Sons of Hodir.

I'm really enjoying the quests in Icecrown, so I have no problem continuing - and hell yeah, the money rolls in! I've made 400 gold each since I dinged, just running quests and dailies.

After that, I'm thinking of just running each one solo in PUGs to gear up. I *despise* PUGs, but if I gotta, I gotta! :)

I'm also going to go back and finish up all the old reps in Outlands, just because i never finished a lot those dungeons - I knocked out normal Hellfire, and I'm working on normal Coilfang right now. Crap loot, no rep, but it's fun!

I'm also getting ready to start another team, and I may be able to add a 4th, so I'm excited about that. :)

[heyaz]

Finish all your storm peaks and icecrown quests to amass a huge quantity of money (20k or so). Spend a lot of the money on titanium gear for your tank and revenant/titanium gear for your shamans, and walk right into heroics. I didn't have to gear my team up in regular instances at all. I did a crapton of quests in 5-7 days, got like 25k gold, bought a titansteel destroyer and 4 titansteel guardians, titansteel treads, earthguard ring, earthguard chain, some tempered saronite gear and daunting gear (all crafted boe), then revenant chest/feet for shamans and went right into Heroic Gundrak and had almost no issues :)

What kinda stats did you have when you started? I took the same approach, finish icecrown and storm peaks stuff as well as dallies. I got the full pre-naxx tank set (only epic is the shield though, none of the other stuff). And so far the shaman all have titansteel guardians with enchants, and the rest is 78-80 blues.

Tank is about 21k hp, 528 def, 31% avoidance..shaman have 1500sp with flametongue... and the bsoses in Gundrak mopped the floor with my group. After about 10 wipes I gave up. Should I dump more gold into my shaman or tank first?

[Hachoo]

Tank. I didn't go into a heroic at all until I had 535 defense so I was uncrittable. I think I had around 21.5k hp on my tank. Shamans basically had quest blues and titansteel guardians. So very close to what you have.

I would read the gundrak boss strats because there are gimmicks that you really need to take advantage of to make the place doable. For instance, on the snake boss, you should position your shamans on the ramp coming down from the entrance 1 level up from your tank - they wont get hit with any poison or AoE and it will make picking up the snakes with your tank easier, though I can practically kill the boss now before any snakes arrive.

Second boss (colossus) you have to use 4 healing stream totems and a nature resistance, and when you first start out it really helps a lot to drop 4x earth elementals (but only AFTER the boss transforms into an elemental).

Third boss is pretty easy no special strat other than try to interrupt his transformation with earth shock and if you can't, then make sure when he quakes you spam LHW on your tank and then once your tank is back to full THEN chain heal your shamans.

Eck (heroic only boss) is pretty easy IMO - park your shamans in a corner outside his room wedged in so Eck can't jump behind them...when he leaps on them, wait about 2 seconds, then taunt him, that way when he spits he'll be facing your tank.

Last boss is by far the toughest, I didn't kill him until my third trip in when I got some good advice - when he turns into a rhino, do not attack with your shamans at all, do nothing but heal your tank or shamans, period. Other than that, you want him to be far away from the shamans when hes in troll form, and close to them when hes in rhino form.

Of course all this only works if your tank is uncrittable, because unfortunately some of these bosses will 1 shot your tank if he gets crit (like the last boss, the third boss, etc).

Hopefully that advice helps, once you learn the tricks I still think gundrak is the easiest instance even moreso than UK.

[Perrigrin]

I headed back, finished up training, and have been doing a lot of work on DPS between Elitist Jerks and the practice dummies. I've got all three of them around 1200 with some changes and talent respecs and stuff, so I'm pretty happy, considering the gear they have.
What spell rotations are you using?

[Youngceo]

I just cleared my first heroic Draktharon, id have to say apart from the 2nd boss (the summoner) the rest is pretty cake so long as your half decently geared.

the 2nd boss has alot of adds, and dont think he can be tanked so I had to heal my shammys a buttload, lost 2 guys but managed to just get him. Dred took about 3 go's but was just stupid healing on my part. The last guy I got 1st go with full health on everyone hes that easy its not funny. When he turns your guys to skeles just spam 3+4 on your clones which basically cast a armor and drain life. Takes awhile but he doesnt hit hard at all.

I ended up respeccing one resto and having him dedicated healer. I think the thing with heroics is just practice, i have to get in the habit of healin even when im at full.

Going to try gundrak next.

[Hachoo]

Gundrak is the best for sure. I finally did heroic drak last night and yes if you do it right the last boss is very easy. But yeah, a full 5 badge gundrak run is faster than a 4 badge drak run (and faster than a 3 badge UK run!). Best farming instance for sure. I think I'm going to try heroic culling of strat tonight or tomorrow - haven't even done normal yet.

[Youngceo]

Went into gundrak last night and was gettin the shits cause the rhino boss was just making a mess of my tank and I couldnt hold agro, after about 4 wipes I realised I had a lvl 60 offhand book equipped from ony run like an hour before cause I wanted to see what the skele looked like, and forgot to equip my destroyer back haha. Still managed to get him to 50% with that though!

Heroics are gettin alot easier now im gettin my healing game down, I got the snake and elemental boss first goes, the snake boss I even got the achievement for not getting wrapped and wasnt even trying for it.

By the time I got to the last guy I had a few pieces of broken gear, i lost one guy early didnt realise he got impaled but still managed to get the boss to about 25% with 4 guys and broken gear, I should get him later today easy.

So thats gundrak and draktharon I can farm now at least, what are other decent short instances? I hate UK that place seems to have neverending trash

And my final question, what gear in order did you guys buy with your badges? Im thinking ill prob get the trinkets for my shammys first that increased haste or spellpower or something, im assuming that will add alot of dps and make things even easier.

[Hachoo]

So far all I've bought was the necklace and totem for my shamans and the belt for my DK. Wish I hadn't bought the necklace though - would have bought 4x titanium spellshock necklaces instead and saved up for my t7 gloves or something.

UK does have a lot of trash, but once you overgear it a bit and get some experience you can just keep running killing running killing without stopping, so it does move kind of fast. But, for only 3 badges meh.

[TheBigBB]

If you're going to do heroics there are enough easy bosses that you can save the money you make and just get the heroic gear rather than get craftables. I wouldn't spend 2000 gold per epic when you will just run out of stuff to buy within a month with your badges anyway. However, some slots are seriously lacking itemization, so once you figure out which slots those are, buy some BOE epics for those items if you want to get fully purple. Shoulders is one example.

[Hachoo]

I don't run heroics till it goes out of style. That would be insanely boring. I run a few every now and then for badges. Even if I ran out of things to buy badges with who cares? Over the next few patches they'll be adding T8 equivalent badge items, etc, and those will probably cost 100-200 badges per item - i'll NEVER have enough badges for those, so I might as well get started early :)

[Pulphero]

for heroics I have one of my shaman as resto doing zero dps, heals only on a cast sequence that starts with earth shield, riptide, lesser healing wave.... ( as many lhw,ch as it takes so that when I get back to riptide it casts right away )
so for button 2 I have 3 shaman doing dps and the resto just standing there and
for button 3 I have the same dps but the resto does his healing castsequence on the tank only.
and the numpad-5 I have all shaman do a chain heal on themselves.
most times when the group needs a heal I can just tap the numpad-5 and only the resto is ready to cast so only the resto heals the group although it is my panic button and if more cast chain heal it's usually ok.


How did you get a macro that casts LHW until riptide is off cooldown? and do you macros set on your resto shammy to only heal the tank? Or are you cycling through the group somehow?

[Youngceo]

I think riptide is on a 6 sec cooldown, but last for 10sec or so? would take too long to figure out how many LHW's you can cast in 10 sec then recast.

Ive tried spamming heals on my tank but he just seems to go out of mana way too quick, resto doesnt seem to be real mana efficient for me, not as well as I would like it to be for boxing anyway. 95% of the time going OOM isnt going to hurt but on semi long heroic boss fights he needs the mana