Is my tank and team geared enough to begin heroics?

[knopstr]

Hi All,

Please read that as "Is my team geared enough to BEGIN running the "Easy" heroics? I'm a few days away from 80. I've been averaging about .5 to .6 levels per day, so I should be able to hit 80 by this weekend.

Here's my tank:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Wildhammer&n=Laydnblack

and here's 1 of my shamans (the other 3 are pretty much identically geared:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Wildhammer&n=Imprue

My typical tank spell rotation is setup as a /castsequence macro and my shamans are on a /castrandom macro. I have the shamans healing macros set up so that the tank's dps/tank macro is bound to both so the tank is always beating away and the shamans will /stopcasting and heal as needed. Obviously following the advice from here in the forums. I'm planning on having the titansteel mace and any other crafted epics ready for the tank as well.

So, back to the original question, is my team sufficiently geared to begin trying heroics?

Thanks as usual.

[Turenn]

Your tank is seriously lacking stam, only 15,5k HP. Buy all the BoE epics you can. Tempered helm and boots will give you a great boost. I think I had 23k when I first started heroics, but that was with a warrior though. Good luck.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41387 Helm
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41392 Boots

They are cheap now :)

[Gomotron]

I agree with Turenn, need a little more HP to your tank.

Personally I think doing dailies for a few days to get 2K for a few epic pieces. Also, need to get the stam enchant on your bracers.

Also, there are some nice +def items in the level 80 instances which are worth farming. This will allow you to swap out your tanking ring without stam for a tanking ring with stam or a ring with stam and hit/crit rating. I think the Galdarah in Gundrak (normal) has a tank ring as a rare drop (at least he's never dropped it for me).

The shaman look pretty good imo.

[Dominian]

Like the guys said your stamina is to low!

I started heroics with 19k hp thought, 520 defence and 35% avoidance... Its managable but hard! (with a paladin)

Untill your defence capped 535 defence for heroics you will get thoose random critts were its simply impossible to survive. But if your willing to eat thoose wipes its doable without beeing critt immune! DK tanks should be higher then a paladin tank for certain but i cant set a amount tbh!

I played both paladin+4 shamans and paladin+3 ele shaman and a resto shaman.

If you think you can handle to seperate dps and healing with different keys you could respec 1 shaman to resto, its harder but it can take you futher in bad gear.

There are lots of fights that will get harder thought! Generaly straight forward tank and spank fights, but then again fights were you have to move your team alot while the tank is taking damage can be easier.

Atm i generaly block 1k damage,sacred shield eats 1k damage,riptide ticks for 500,healing stream ticks for 250 and earthshield procs for 2.5k on the avearge(critts included) That means each 5th second i negate 5-6k damage wich realy helps tanks with low healthpools. Once you get your tank gear up 1 tank + 4 shamans is way easier.

[Siaea]

Save your money from now to 80, and go buy the Tempered Titansteel Helm and Treads. Get the rest of the tempered saronite stuff (I think there's another piece or two you're missing), and run SLabs till you get the Adamantite Figurine (I think that's it) from Blackheart (at 80, I could get to him in just a couple of minutes if you're careful with where you walk) for a little more defense. That's basically what I did, and while they were a lot harder than they are now, it was doable with that as a start.

Buy the Wyrmrest tabard, and get the chest you get at revered (or Moorabi I think drops a defense chest I wore for a bit).

Your shaman look a little better than mine did when I started, so you'll probably be fine there. Just bind all 4 shaman to lesser heal the tank for when she takes spike dmg (and she will, DKs seem to be very spiky with taking damage, or at least that's what I've noticed).

Like others have said, you really need more hit points. Some of those bosses have abilities that hit tanks for 10 to 15k iirc.

EDIT: Looks like you have all the saronite pieces after looking again. Get that figurine from Blackheart the Inciter (32 defense) and probably the epic helm and boots (Tempered Titansteel stuff).

[knopstr]

Thank you kindly to all.

There was an obscure sentence in there that said I'd have some of the other BOE items made prior to beginning as well. I'm going to power-level JC'ing for the trinket as well. I used to be a titansteel factory, so I guess I'll have to fire that back up.

Keep you all posted. Itching to finish leveling.

[emesis]

I would say top of your priority list of things to do should be to visit non-heroic Halls of Lightning to get the Seal of the Pantheon from Loken. That's > 13 defense skill by itself.

Third boss is a bit tricky, will make sure you have your healing macros set up correctly for single player heals as well.

[puppychow]

you can go in with a 20k tank and wipe a lot but still clear a bunch of heroics.
you can go in with a 25-27k tank and wipe a lot, lot less. probably even 1-shot most of the heroics.

the second my DK hit 80 I had ready:

helm: tempered titansteel
neck: crafted JC neck
shoulders: some blue BOE i bought off ah for 50g, i think crusaders square?
chest: couple of quest rewards are viable here
wrists: i paid 800g and bought 60 valor badge ones (nearly best in slot)
hands and belt: forgot, crafted BS blues I believe
legs: crafted, raised argent dawn rep first and got those legs
boots: tempered titansteel
trinket1: JC trinket w/ +27 def trinket (later 41 stam once I was def capped)
trinket2: paid 6000g and bought a greatness deck, used now for DPS once I got trinket off heroic AN 2nd boss
weapon: crafted titansteel destroyer w/ rune stoneskin gargoyle
sigil: still using that crappy sigil from venture bay, helps with icy touch damage

ran naxx10/os10/voa10 first night and got a few upgrades, naxx25 next and got a few more, and after now 12 days I'm almost [Epic] in every slot and have a full set of epic dps gear too.

the sad thing is that heroics are really not that great a way to gear up anyone, its infinitely faster just to spend a ton of gold and buy stuff in trade/AH, join a good naxx10 pug and have loot rain down on you, then step up to 25 man raids and get a few more items, and bam, you are done in 1-10 days for just a few hours. Whereas you'd have to run heroics a LOT to get enough badges - all the badges I've gotten from heroic I'm using for DPS gear, ironically.

Don't forget especially to run VOA10/25, OS10/25, they each take only a few minutes and can get some great stuff.

[heyaz]

Your Shaman are good to go, but you tank isn't close. Try to get 22k on the tank before you start heroics, the more the better. I'm regularly doing the easy ones now (GD, DTK, UK, and first two of AN) with my tank at 27k and I still have to bomb heals like crazy to keep her alive on bosses.

Here is her armory fi you want to get an idea of what you can get. I have no 10 or 25 man gear, it's all crafted/quest and one piece of badge gear.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Nathrezim&n=Mevrouw

Drop about 4k gold into your tank and you'll be good to start. This should only be 2-3 days of daily quests with your group. I think my tank had around 22.5k when I cleared my first heroic. Can probably be done with less, but it's tough.

[Coltimar]

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41357
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41357

A TON of def between these two.

[daviddoran]

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41357
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41357

A TON of def between these two.

Unless im mistaken, they both are the same....

[Greythan]

Interesting thread. Fur mentioned the 20k HP and 535 def threshold.

Well, I've been 80 for a week or so and my tank (after buying a shield and getting one drop in a Heroic) is right at 19.8k hp (buffed) and 539 defense (still need to ding that pesky last def skill point for 540 ;) ). I've been trying to run Gundrak since I dinged 80. My first try on the snake boss I was still only mid 520's def and probably 18k hp. I beat him once. Even now, with some practice, I can still die on that first mob. I've only downed the Collusus once but I'm getting him closer to doable soon.

Point being, I can clearly see that my tank's "squishyness" is my weak point. Sure, if my DPS/healer were epic geared it probably wouldn't matter, but I feel like I'm putting out plenty of DPS for the content and healer mana/heal-size isn't the problem. Its just the fact that my undergeared tank can't be ignored for a second during a boss fight or he's dead. Makes doing other things in the fight (repositioning, casting situational spells, etc.) very tough.

I think every bit of improvement on my tank will translate into better runs. DPS/healer will simply ride-along. The bottle-neck is the tank.

[Powerwar]

My tank had 17k HP when I started doing heroics. His gear was very similar to yours.

My DPs shamans still have lvl 65 green gear on some of their items. Just don't want to waste gold knowing that in two days I will have enough rep to get them much better gear.

The only toons that I cared to gear was my tank and my healer.

Go and make gundrak (normal) for the good tanking ring the last boss drops. The mamooth boss drps a nice mace for your caster toons. Just farm the mamooth boss until he drops all the maces... it's 4 resets per hour and you can reach him in about 5 minutes on normal difficulty... including the kill.

What you will need to do is force overhealing at the beginning until you get better gear. My healer still in a LHW spam machine... yet I have to see my tank die while he has still some mana.

Your shaman toons have very similar gear as mines, I could say even better because mines don't have the imba spell damage mace.
Basically, if you set a good healing macro you can do heroics with this group.

Some bosses you will be unable to down, but others will be easy.

This is what I can do with very similar gear to yours but with pala tank.

UK --> cleared. The last boss is a bit tricky. Keep your shamans close enough to each other, so they can top themselves with a single chain heal.
HoL --> first two bosses only. Ionar is impossible for now. You can do the first two bosses specific achievements, they are very easy.
HoS --> Krystallys only and you need to time heals properly. Perhaps you could do also maiden of grief since you have considerably more spell damage than me and I can get her to near 100 - 75k before wipe happens.
Gundrak --> cleared. Eck the Ferocious is more luck than anything else. If he enrages early it's a wipe no matter what. use nature res totems on eck and the colossus.
UP --> first two bosses. You cannot pass the 3rd boss with this gear, so don't try it for now.
Naxx10 trash --> abomination wing and undead is doable pretty easy... too bad it's only for the lols
Naxx25 trash --> abomination wing doable with lots of healing and patience. Undead wing only some mobs.
DTK --> cannot pass the first packs of mobs that do these shadow circles without wiping alot, so I don't do this instance for now.
Strat --> have not tried this one yet.

These are my toons, note how similar is our gear. all the improvements over your current gear are from heroic boss drops... the bosses I can kill and that are stated above. Some other are auction house items, or reputation/quest rewards.

Tank --> http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Skullcrusher&n=Loladinus
Healer --> http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Skullcrusher&n=Tuljin
Good geared DPS --> http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Skullcrusher&n=Buljin
Crap geared DPs 1 --> http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Skullcrusher&n=Ruljin
Crap geared DPS 2 --> http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Skullcrusher&n=Nuljin

In short... YES, you can do heroics :)

[Greythan]

Good point Fur.

My priest's gheal hits for close to 7k I think. Crits easily hit 12k so those numbers don't seem outlandish.

However, I'm not sure I'm using all her abilities to their fullest. I pretty much us renew to keep some health ticking, gheal as primary, and my "oh shat" button is the priest ability (forget the name atm) that saves the target from a killing blow with 50% of their health and increases healing received for 10 secs by 40%.

That's pretty much all I use. (I wince as I type this in anticipation of the, "wow, you really should be doing this, this and this") ;)

[Coltimar]

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41357
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41357

A TON of def between these two.

Unless im mistaken, they both are the same....Nope, you are not mistaken. I just forgot the second Ctrl+C I guess. http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41345 The pants and gloves together give you around 160 def. Stick one of these on the legs for 45 stam and 15 agi too http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=50964.

[Coltimar]

For Shaman, the Stormhide stuff pushed me over the top. Since my dps was lower in blues the fights lasted too long and I went oom. The MP/5 on this gear fixed that and the spell power on it was better than I had. http://www.wowhead.com/?search=stormhide I got the helm, gloves and legs and once I did I started killing the first three Gundrak bosses easily. The final boss gave me trouble until I got the strat down. It was as simple as dragging the boss back to the group when he turned into a rhino and putting Gift of the Naaru x4 on the tank :/

[Bigfish]

Could be your healer too. Heroic healing is MUCH different from normal healing. Burst damage (incoming) is significantly higher in heroics.

Having a healer that can heal normally for 7k and crit for 10k is where you want to be. My resto Shaman crits for 12k quite consistently these days.

Just to expound on this, healing different heroics and raids involves a HUGE differential in how you have your healing macros set up. I would argue this largely arises from our tendency to overheal normal 5-mans, and so we expect heroics to just use some of that excess healing.

Of course, among other things, some fights are easier, and some are harder based on set up and tactics. The important thing is to get whatever you are fighting down. Once you can do that, you should improve naturally.

That said, there is no surefire way to decide the cutoff for when it is appropriate to do heroics. In that regard, heroics are also not your first step on the loot train once you hit 80. You can literally gear an entire team in craftable gear and quest rewards, and in my opinion you should be pretty decently far in to doing so before you start working on strategy over gearing.

Of course, that's just my 2 cents on gearing in general. I only ever dropped 2 bosses in Heroic UP, and now I just farm Naxx and Archavon for badges.

[knopstr]

The original intent of my thread was to determine whether or not I could begin to do heroics once I hit 80. Based on some people's opinions, I can and other's I should wait.

I dinged lvl79 last night...actually about 3 bars in too. I'm going to throw caution to the wind when I hit 80 and just do it.

My DK is unholy and out of habit I tend to tank in Frost presence. I did this when I was soloing to get the added armor benefit. The armory doesn't show added bonuses from presence. With Frost P up I have about 25K armor and my health is about 200pts shy of 20K. My AP jumps up as well. I'm sitting at 537 Defense right now in Blue crafted and a few quest items.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Wildhammer&n=Laydnblack

On my shopping list or items that I've made;

Tempered Titansteel Helm -- Socketed with Austere Earthsiege Diamond and a Regal Twilight Opal
Tempered Titansteel Treads
Titansteel Destroyer
Titanium Earthguard Chain
Titanium Earthguard Ring
Ring of Earthen Might
**Power-level JC for the +27 dodge gems and trinkets

This list just improves upon the gear that I already have. I thank all of you for your input. I did pay attention to your ideas about upgrading my Stamina and will undoubtedly be putting some thought into that as well. My goal is to maintain the 535 Def and put any other stats into Stamina. I'm going to stay Unholy as I prefer the play style.

[puppychow]

unholy is a great multiboxer tank spec, and yes you definitely want to stay in frost presence for extra threat, armor, and HP. I've MT'd naxx25 as a unholy DK in frost presence and heroics are a piece of cake. The hardest thing when multiboxing is just initial threat aggro, while most guides will tell you to start with IT and then Pest BS etc, I prefer to drop a D&D, wait a sec or two for rune refresh, then pull with IT, Pest, BS, BB, - I can start DPS right off the bat if D&D is on the ground. I try to get up unholy blight when possible too for any adds/etc.

BTW re: JC when you first start you'll want to probably gem for +27 defense over the dodge/stam to help hit the defense cap, then once thats done go for +41 stam over dodge. Remember that every point of defense translates into extra dodge/parry, so you aren't losing that much by going over 535, 540, etc. I'd aim for 540 so that way you can run raid pugs as well, there are tons of VOA/OS pugs that will snap up a tank and you can find a easy upgrade for a few minutes of time, saving hundreds of badges. A naxx10 pug run is also a worthwhile investment, 3-4 hours can net 3-10 epic items.

[Tizer]

DTK --> cannot pass the first packs of mobs that do these shadow circles without wiping alot, so I don't do this instance for now.
They caused me a few issues until you realise you have to burn them down as fast as possible. Also use your pally stun to stop them casting. Soul mages i think they are. Just go mental on them. There are only 3 max in that corridor. Last night i was in there only one was present at the end with the 3 warriors. Flameshock / Lava Burst / CL usually enough to do the job. Also its worth setting up your cursors to strafe your team left / right while your pally stays stationary. Just in case you get a void. :)

[wowphreak]

knopstr make sure yer not just concentrating on gearing yer tank the healers and dps need some gear love to :P

If all yer chars have about the same gear level as yer tank yer good to go for heriocs

[knopstr]

I dinged 80 last night and equipped all of the BOE's I had had made this week.

My DK now (in frost pres) has 25K health 26K armor 2600AP and 540 Defense. I think I'm good to go to start heroics now.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Wildhammer&n=Laydnblack

My Shamans, while not uber-geared by any means, are not too bad to start. They're all geared about the same atm...going to use badges to gear them up.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Wildhammer&n=Imprue

[Rin]

Congratulations on 80, you'll have to let us know how the Heroics go for you.

Also, you may want to start running 10-25 OS (regular mode, no drakes) and VoA. You can pretty much join either of those raids in blues and you'll be able to quickly amass valor points and/or tier 7/7.5 gear easily.

Cheers!

Rin