Our first attempt at a Heroic

[Benjamen]

I have been levelling my 4 Horde Shamans, along with my friend, who is a Paladin, and we recently reached level 80. :thumbsup:
We decided it was time to start gearing up for Heroics and the first goal was obviously to get him to 535 defense.
After about a week of questing and farming materials for defense gear, gems, quest gear, etc., we finally got him to 685 defense rating/539 defense.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Fizzcrank&n=Dejavou
He is in mostly all quest/crafted blues and what not, but nonetheless, finally at the magic uncrittable number, so we run off towards our first Heroic Dungeon all excited to finally start getting some epic gear through badges/drops, etc.
My shamans are all in mostly quest blues and around 1600 spell power (flametongue and totem of wrath).
The paladin and my 4 shamans have levelled together since arriving in Northrend, and minus the learning curve of the new dungeons, we pretty much have flew through all the "normal" mode instances with little trouble.

Anyhow, we enter Utgarde Keep, which was the heroic daily, and get through the first boss with only a couple of wipes, mostly due to stupid things. Once we settled down we get to the 2nd boss (or bosses in this case), we wiped over and over until we gave up with all our gear at 0.
I was rather shocked at how hard they were hitting the tank, so I looked at my damage meter, Recount, and checked "Incoming Damage" for the paladin, and it showed that he had been "crit" 78 times. ?(
I thought "no way this can be right", so we repaired and went back in for a 2nd try. This time I reset the meter and monitored it every couple of fights thinking the addon was wrong or something.
After getting to the 2nd boss again, Recount had recorded that he had been critically hit 62 times. It showed each Shaman's DPS-highest was 1.2k and lowest was 1010 average.
So I spent about an hour reading numerous articles on defense at various sites, I found that even at 540, there is still a small percentage that you may get critically hit, but 62 times?

Frustrated, discouraged and tired, we finally gave up last night and went to bed, having only killed the Prince twice and received 2 badges. We will probobly try another instance tonight, hopefully it will get better once we get over shock of the damage
increase, usually having to heal every 3-4 dps cast versus 1 round of dps-heal over and over.

Northeast - 80 Shaman-Fizzcrank (US)
Northwest - 80 Shaman-Fizzcrank (US)
Southeast - 80 Shaman-Fizzcrank (US)
Southwest - 80 Shaman-Fizzcrank (US)
Benjeman - 80 Paladin-Fizzcrank (US)

[Talamarr]

Very interesting story.

How much damage was the crit damage?

[Bigfish]

That sounds pretty normal for freshly starting heroics. The things aren't meant to be your first step once you hit 80, and UP itself can be pretty nasty. I haven't had a chance to look at your armory, so all I can offer is some generic "Get filled out in crafted blues and purples." Titansteel Guardians are amazing, and the titanium spellshock pieces should help as well.

[Talamarr]

That sounds pretty normal for freshly starting heroics. The things aren't meant to be your first step once you hit 80, and UP itself can be pretty nasty. I haven't had a chance to look at your armory, so all I can offer is some generic "Get filled out in crafted blues and purples." Titansteel Guardians are amazing, and the titanium spellshock pieces should help as well.

The thing is, at 539 defense, he shouldn't be eating crits so something else is up. His avoidance (miss, dodge, parry) is pretty low but his crit % should be 0 on heroic bosses.

My hanging fruit guesses are a broken piece of gear or you're reading the log wrong. But I seriously doubt either of those are the case.

[Dorffo]

was he crit after the melee guy went into ghost mode or throughout the fight?

My starter heroics were Gundrak and Culling of Strath.

[Hachoo]

How is recount determining you were crit? Perhaps its wrong? How much damage were most of the crits for on average?

Also IMO Heroic UK is not as easy as Heroic Gun'Drak to start out in. I would start out in Heroic Gun'Drak (which is actually pretty easy with 4 shamans IMO) - if you want some help on figuring it out I wrote the Wiki article for Heroic Gundrak and I have a video listed in the 5 boxing videos sticky thread at the top of this forum on the Gun'Drak boss fights.

Gun'Drak was my first Heroic and I downed all but the last boss my first try, and the last boss on my second try, and have been farming it ever since. It also has 5 badges and once you get good at it can yield all 5 in about 25 minutes.

[Bigfish]

Honeslty, I'm not even sure where in recount you find incoming damage statistics, so that right there has me moderately curious.
I'm not even seeing this as an issue of spike damage, so much as I'm curious how heals are being sent out. It may also be an issue of some of the trash having a significantly higher crit rate, but that shouldn't affect the boss. I'd look at what's going wrong on the second boss, as there are a number of things that can screw you on that fight.

[Benjamen]

Very interesting story.

How much damage was the crit damage?The damage meter just showed an average 1205 for the Incoming Damage. I looked back at the combat log and it showed several crits of 3k to 7k from Skarvald as well as numerous "magic" crits from the other guy which is expected.
We never got either of them down past 50% as the little skeleton dudes and the caster just ate my Shamans up between my grounding totem cooldowns.
My only guess is that Recount is just not reporting it correctly as the remaining balance of the crits would of had to come from the trash mobs, which is what was so mind boggling.
I normally wouldnt even bother with a damage meter, but he was just taking so much damage so quickly (from full health to red before I could get off 1 round of Lava Burst).
However I logged onto my 80 Paladin and looked back at his incoming damage and the crit and crushing line showed "--" which is what I was expecting to see with my friends paladin.
He is smelting his Titansteel everyday (he is jewelcrafter) so I should be making him some Titansteel stuff soon and that should help alot.

[elsegundo]

Honeslty, I'm not even sure where in recount you find incoming damage statistics, so that right there has me moderately curious.
I'm not even seeing this as an issue of spike damage, so much as I'm curious how heals are being sent out. It may also be an issue of some of the trash having a significantly higher crit rate, but that shouldn't affect the boss. I'd look at what's going wrong on the second boss, as there are a number of things that can screw you on that fight.on the reports you can cycle through various charts and stuff. one of them is damage taken. you can probably skip to it by right clicking on the person's name and selecting the chart. they're usually in pie chart form.

[Bot]

i checked the armory and i noticed that none of the gear even had like an armour patch or anything on it. his gear looks similar to my DK's when i hit 80 for the most part but i had something on almost everything i could be it enchants or even just one of the random stam arcanums you can get (took me a while to grind out the rep for the tank one). i think the extra 108 stam from even the heavy borean armour kits would help a little. just something to think about. also grab some rhinoliscious wyrmsteaks or some other stat food of your choice for a quick 400 hp. also getting the 540 def might help a little more i was around 550ish for my first heroic and i dont think ive been crit at all but im not sure ill try and run something tonight and see for sure.

also heres the be.imba.hu report for the tank. http://be.imba.hu/?zone=US&realm=Fizzcrank&character=Dejavou ('http://be.imba.hu/?zone=US&realm=Fizzcrank&character=Dejavou')

it gives advice on proper chants and whatnot. anyways thats my two cents hope it helps a little :)

[Bigfish]

Oooooh, Utgarde Keep. My money is that the geists are causing all that crit damage.

[Benjamen]

Honeslty, I'm not even sure where in recount you find incoming damage statistics, so that right there has me moderately curious.

I just switched over to "Damage Taken", click on the players name (which opens the summary report), then in the bottom section you can click on attack summary for Incoming and Outgoing. It displays all the types of incoming damage and their numbers.

[Talamarr]

as numerous "magic" crits from the other guy which is expected.

This could have changed but I'm pretty sure that mobs can't get magic based crits on you. I'll probably do that same fight tonight so I'll check it out; maybe it's a problem with recount.

Again, his avoidance is pretty low, particular his dodge so he's getting a lot of non-blocked hits (normal hits). Tanks get some pretty decent mitgation with block value so pushing those avoidance + block % numbers up really really helps.

I just got started in heroics too; UK is the ONLY heroic I have cleared (twice now). I don't have any gear from heroics, everything is quested, crafted or rep rewards and my dodge is at 20%, twice as much as his. So, have your friend really work on his gear. While I'm still working on my gear too, you can use it as a reference as just about everything I have is attainable before heroic (Talamarr ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kilrogg&n=Talamarr')

I have a feeling that gear is the issue here.

[emesis]

I have a feeling that gear is the issue here.

Yup, Titansteel shield, ring, boots and helmet for the tank will make a BIG difference. You can gear up in heroics, but it will be much more painful. There's a certain "threshold" of gear at which point heroics start getting a LOT easier. Also, you guys should spend a little time in non-heroics - which you can farm - to get up to iLvl 187 blue gear where you still have greens or low level items (Sha'tari wrought armguards!?!)

For your shamans, you need to respec and put a full 3 points in Elemental Precision. Then get your hit rating up to 79 for heroics. You should at least have Icewalker on your boots. Enchant your blues. The blue belt you have isn't bad; socket it and put a +16 hit gem in there. Etc.

Gear up a bit and that will make a world of difference. It's no fun getting your face ripped off in heroics.

[Bollwerk]

From - http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t37172-protection_paladin_field_manual_wow_3_0_wotlk/

I've got 540 defense skill so I should be uncrittable, but some mobs in instances or outdoors are still critting me. What's going on with that?

Some mobs have higher than normal crit rates, or have buffs that raise their crit rate. These are the exception rather than the rule, so this shouldn't be an issue very often, and no known raid bosses have more than a 5.6% base crit rate against a level 80 player.

[puppychow]

Your defense drops to 0 as well if you are not facing the mob from the front -- and that boss runs to your shamans and then runs back to the pally, so its pretty easy for your tank to be "facing" the wrong way.

as echod above, do not start with heroic UK. I wiped a lot when I started there. heroic gundrak and heroic culling (ignore the timer) are the best to start with, drak'tharon is also pretty good. Don't even zone into the 2 spider instances, halls of stone/lightning, violet hold, utgarde pinnacle, or nexus until you gear up your tank a bit. Once hes sitting above 26k hp and 535 def unbuffed it gets a lot easier.

[wowphreak]

I agree with puppychow here most likely pali getting hit from behind he needs to have the mobs between himself and the shammies

Or could be that one of the mobs to far left/right of the pali and it looks like there in front but he's still getting hit from behind.

Sometimes the tanks gotta dance with mobs till there in the right spot :P

[Xorn]

It depends on the money you got BUT I lent myself 30k gold from a friend who's actively playing the auction house (and I hope Ill be able to pay it back with doing daily-quests, I already created a route for myself ...) and bought myself a lot of stuff like:
- Spellshock Necklace, Ring
- Titansteel Guardian
- Deathchill Cloak
- more epic shit
and spent about 15k with it, my shamans are on level 75 now (except for one who is already 80) and the moment they hit 80 they'll be at ~1500 spell dmg, completely unbuffed - now add the Totem of Wrath and the flametongue weapon-enchant I get to something like 1700 (estimated, my level 80 shaman gets to 18XX spellpower without any more epics than the mentioned ones) without any heroic epics and quest blues/greens until then.
If you're interested in it; I planned it here:
http://www.chardev.org/?template=127708

Add 211 from Flametongue Weapon and 280 from the Totem of Wrath and we're at 1941 spellpower without them ever having entered a heroic instance! Its just a lot of money ... :)

By the way:
http://www.chardev.org/?template=143640
This is the "final"-template when I am done with everything, 2108 spelldmg selfbuffed.

Hope I could help in any way.
I also checked the stats of your tank - they're horrible, it must have been the same with me starting to tank heroics and it was like hell, I bought every epic item I could buy from money (titansteel and stuff) and I barely reached 21k life and horrible avoidance stats. :(
The tank is just soo important.

Xorn

[Multibocks]

Your defense drops to 0 as well if you are not facing the mob from the front -- and that boss runs to your shamans and then runs back to the pally, so its pretty easy for your tank to be "facing" the wrong way.

as echod above, do not start with heroic UK. I wiped a lot when I started there. heroic gundrak and heroic culling (ignore the timer) are the best to start with, drak'tharon is also pretty good. Don't even zone into the 2 spider instances, halls of stone/lightning, violet hold, utgarde pinnacle, or nexus until you gear up your tank a bit. Once hes sitting above 26k hp and 535 def unbuffed it gets a lot easier.

No, you will not get crit from behind. You just lose parry/dodge. Also Im betting like the other poster above said, its the geists. Those guys crit almost EVERY hit when they are beating on a non-tank. I'm thinking they have around 30% crit rate.

[Dominian]

I started writing a long post and hitted the back button on my browser! SCORE!! all gone, but oh well i make it short.

1. First let get this straight, the tank can NEVER turn his back to the boss. He cant dodge or parry then!
2. He got a horrible spec, try this http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000000050253 503311251533312321502302000000000000000000000 this alone will bring his avoidance up 5%. Its not the worlds best spec but certainly better than the one he use now!
3. Look the boss your facing up on www.wowwiki.com if its a first timer, lots of good tips there. (unless you want the challenge figuring it out yourself)

Your paladin is slacking on enchants,leg armor and sockets.

Bracers: 40 stamina
Boots: 22 stamin
Leg armor: 40 stamina and 15 agility
Extra socket space in the belt: 24 stamina
Shield: 18 stamina (or 20 defence rating)
shoulder: Last patch a shoulder enchant wich i forgot the name of but it can be bought for 10k honor in the hall of honor. AKA thats 2 wintergrasps if you do all dailies. 1 hour work! 30 stamina and xx resillience. (easier then getting honored with sons of hodir, http://ptr.wowhead.com/?faction=1119)
Head: Get to reverd with Argent Crusade and get a enchant with 37 stamina and 20 defence rating.

This alone means 211 stamina aka 2110 more hp brining it to 24070. Once again might not be the most perfect enchants since you always need to keep it balanced.

I started my heroics in way worse gear then you and did UK,Gundrak,drak and strat with 520defence,20k hp and 40% avoidance. This was also before the shamans 3.0.8 buff with 1400 spell power.

People always imagine that its impossible to do heroics without beeing critt immune, but its not. There are unlucky moments when you dont want to get that critt when you do but its pretty rare when defence pass 520. However your already critt immune so it shouldnt be a worry.

Dont let the fustration eat you and your mate it will get alot easier after you done it 2 or 3 times! :)

[Dorffo]

While I was able to start clearing heroics pretty quickly (i'd had practice with Heroics in TBC, which helps tons) - its worth mentioning that I probably went through at least 1k gold in repairs the first couple weeks =P

And as other posters have mentioned - if you aren't playing the tank and in full control of OSH~T buttons and cooldowns, you really need your tank to be a bit beefier then he is (or just expect to lose him regularly until the heroic healing rythym sinks in).

[Benjamen]

My thanks to everyone for their comments and help. This community is an excellent source of help and advice. I cant remember the last time I visited the cesspool forums at the WoW main site. If I need to know anything I usually check here first.
It turns out that my damage meter had become corrupted somehow and was showing the same data for incoming as well as outgoing so the critical hit thing was false data. I reloaded a fresh version and we made numerous runs at Heroic Gundrak and Draktheron Keep last night, which did show 0 crits, but nonetheless it didnt go so well as after 4 separate runs to the repair man at 0% armor led us to decide that we are gonna hold off for a bit until we straighten all our gear out.

[Xorn]

As soon as your tank gets better avoidance-stats and a bit more health you should have no problems at all, I guess.
In the beginning I was running COT4 for my first time and the infinite mobs dealt so much damage I didn't know what to do and how to survive that even though they couldn't crit me at all. 4 Mobs and I was practically dead almost every time.
After two wipes or so the healer decided to spam-heal me so I would decide - it worked but he wiped on the third boss alot since I was totally new to the instance and nobody thought it would be useful to explain a thing or more to me. Sad and cruel beginning for a tank ...

[Bot]

i hate when i need some info or wanna decide on a strat and everyones just go go go. seems pointless to me.

[Xorn]

Youp like: "Do I have to know something about that boss?" ... "GOGOGOGO" - "alright ..." fight starts, fight goes quite easy and then the boss uses his special uber power mega ability nobody told me about which totally kills me
"uhm about that ability, I thought you knew about it .."

Random groups are just soooo much fun!

[Catamer]

when you first start heroics it can be brutal.
I tended to have more problems with trash mobs than the bosses myself.
I converted one shaman to resto and this seemed to make a huge difference to me.

I have the DPS butt on as "2" but the resto shaman does nothing for "2" and on button "3" I have the same dps as "2" but the resto shaman has a castsequence staring with earth shield, riptide and a bunch of lesser healing waves on the pally and one or two chain heals in the mix.
I also have panic button that all shaman cast chain heal on themselves with but if I just lightly hit the panic button the non-resto shaman are usually in mid-cast so only the resto does the chain heal on herself. I do this for topping off the team with a mild heal.
So for the second boss in UK I back into a corner and pull to the team and use Magma totems to help burn the trash down.

good luck with that.