ToC heroic vs normal

[Coltimar]

How big is the gap, really? In my mind it's huge because I still die in normal at times. I have tried on heroic and I die like a dog on the champions, but I don't think the gap should be as big as I am making it out to be. Thought? Opinions?

[Zamok]

I havent downed heroic yet boxing. The difference to me is huge, I can mess up on normal badly and get past it but heroic if I screw up or miss a purge/dispell on the summoned to get rid of the heal as an example thiings tend to go down hill quick.

Have had quite a few attempts at Heroic and if I can survive the initial onslaught when I charge my tank in to pull the champions then I seem to do alright in the jousting phase. Phase 2 of the BK smashes me still. My tank well outgears my other toons though so I guess its about getting more gear and more practice.

[Khatovar]

Gap is pretty much what I'd expect being that it's still a jump from normal to heroic. Normal is stupid easy for me, heroic is rough. It's like learning the whole thing all over again. I can do it, and it's not totally horrible, but one screwup is almost always a wipe.

Thankfully you can go as slow as you need to between fights. Take advantage of that is my best suggestion.

[Saoul]

Wiped on normal yesterday -final phase of the dark knight-, yet one shotted heroic with the worst possible combination of bosses rogue, shammie and warrior followed by paletress(or whatever the wench is called). Guess its down to focus and patience;)

[Malekyth]

I find heroic pretty hard, in that belt of difficulty between a significant challenge and bloody impossible ... but I have cleared it a few times.

Tonight I thought I'd run a druid through HToC to get some new pieces, and really steamrolled the place. It was a great feeling! --except, it was actually on normal, and I'd forgotten to reset it before I entered. Hah.

[Khatovar]

Tonight I thought I'd run a druid through HToC to get some new pieces, and really steamrolled the place. It was a great feeling! --except, it was actually on normal, and I'd forgotten to reset it before I entered. Hah.


ROFL I've done the same in the opposite direction. Thought I'd go in and blow out a quick non-heroic ToC while waiting for dailies to reset only to come out saying "WTF?! I didn't suck this bad 10 minutes ago!! Did I accidentally take off all my gear??"

[moosejaw]

O.o

Khat changed her avatar!!!!!!

How dare you change the EYE!!!!!!!!!

[Khatovar]

O.o

Khat changed her avatar!!!!!!

How dare you change the EYE!!!!!!!!!


Behold The Eye!

http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/5479/gifninjaxv.gif (http://img32.imageshack.us/i/gifninjaxv.gif/)

The Eye is ever changing! When I'm not being lazy. Heed it! And send me phat lewts and free money or something It sees into your very soul and quite frankly, I didn't need to see that thing that you did the other night.

Holy shit, I need sleep.:eek:

[SideWays]

When I first went into ToC with my toons I didnt had any experience with the instance.. Well of course I got the rogue+warrior+healer combo which wiped me in like 10 secs.. (Tankadin+4 Eleshamans)

After a couple of tries I rly figured it out and made it through ToC nh (Well, my tank was the last man standing after the black knight).. My shamans only had crafted gear(blue) and the pvp necklace ( i think they were doing round 1,7k dps)

The next day I wanted to try HToC.. And surprisingly didnt wipe until i made it to the black knight Oo
Again, after some tries I figured it out and even got the achievement (I think its called "I've Had Worse").. At that point my shamans were doing round 1,9k dps i think (max) so its definitely doable even if you are not in full epic gear :D

[BobGnarly]

Depends.

Jousting is really not much different.

If you get a good combo on the factions champs, they are easy. If you don't, they can be very challenging.

Paletress can be a pita, but it's really about execution, nothing more.

Eadric is a complete pushover.

The Black Knight is where you'll really feel it, though. I had normal on cruise control, and wiped at least 10 times figuring this fight out. I have this place on 15min farm now, and he can still kill me if I forget to drop the right totems, or am not paying attention. The second and third phases are definitely no joke.

I would recommend staying in normal until you can do it without dying consistently. Maybe go try a heroic out just to see, never hurt, but I'm thinking you'll want that experience before you go at it in earnest.

[Marious]

HATE JOUSTING! I cant stand it at all, its just so... ugh not fun for me. Its like not working for me at all! SO I stay away from that place, I know I can go in there and learn it but ugh again.

[gitcho]

Paletress can be a pita, but it's really about execution, nothing more.how do you manage Paletress on normal? I would love to be able to NOT have to reset the instance until i get Eadric >.<

[Jubber]

What are you running in normal gitcho for your team? That might help in determining a solution.

Edit: just asking cuz it looks like you have 2 possible teams for the encounter. One alot easier to handle than the other.

[Clone]

I didnt notice much difference stepping up from normal to heroic but my team is pretty geared. People talk about purging on the champions but I have always just focus fired them down Kill order always Rogue > Mage > Shaman > others. As for Paletress I just have staggered tremor totems (cast 1 each second) Then my guys very rarely get feared and if they do its for less than a second so its a quick reface and carry on.
Black Knight is the only boss in there which requires more than 1 button spam and all I do is heroism at the start of phase 2 and drop earth elementals. If you strafe away from the zombies as soon as he dies in phase 2 and go into phase 3 with everyone alive then its pretty much impossible to wipe. Ive done the whole of phase 3 with just a healer and tank before though.

[SideWays]

Honestly going for Rogue > Mage > Shaman as a shaman team doesnt make any sense at all.. Why would anyone kill a boss first who doenst hurt you at all?

I would always go for Rogue > Warrior > Shaman, always drop grounding totem, get out of the poison clouds and stun/windshear the shaman if hes healing too much..

For the paletress: As soon as she summons the boss keep your toons to follow you and of course drop grounding totems and tremor totems.. After a fear just hit follow again.. its also possible to purge her HoT btw :) (no need to if you have decent dps though)

The black knight is a lot harder: I would recommend to watch some ToC movies (i think the way I do it is the same as Multibocks did it) Get your shadow resistance aura and drop frost resistance totem, chain heal and cast Holy Wrath if you have trouble with the ghouls.. and drop grounding totems of course :P Good luck..

[Hurricane]

Im pala + 4 ele shamans - all heals is done either through chain heal cast on the shamans at the same time or a lhw x 3 + a hw on the paladin

Jousting is really easy after i had practiced alot on normal. i use /target party1target macro and always kill one target at the time. stacking all my chars on top of eachother against the big entrance where the bosses comes from. Whenever one of my chars is getting aroound 50% i run away with him manually while continue bashin 1 + 2 + 4. Remeber you can change mount without dismounting first, (just right click the new mount when you are near enough) and you normally loose aggro when you switch mount.

When i have killed one of them on jousting, i move the main char or what ever fits best on top of the on that is dead and just use him to cast shield breaker if he is to far away, same thing when the next one dies. use one of the others to stand on top and camp.

I always reset the instance if its rogue + warrior + healer combo tho.

If the mages comes im happy. i own him with 4 grounding totems. the rogue is the worst, because of the aoe poison thing so i always kill him first.

Popping earth elementals if things gets nasty. Kill prio is: rogue > warrior > shaman> hunter > mage

Somehow i always get paletress.... need the mace or the dagger ffs!

Paletress strategy.. I use staggered tremor totems. spread my shamans abit from eachother. always keeps my shamans topped off with chain heals, and normally i have to cast chain heal right after fear. if many of my shamans is turned face away from boss i hit follow and the cick on walk backwards button on all chars right after, then they are facing the boss again. DPS and purge hot, and dispell the holy dot with the paladin. I wipe 2 of 5 attemps on paletress.

Eadric is easy as hell. Free epicz

Dark knight, i neeeeeed my 4 fire elemenalts and blood lust of cooldown to feel like this is a easy figth...

I line my shamans like 20 yards from a wall next to each other, with like 10 yards between them. Use 4 grounding totems, 3 healing totems and one cleasing totem, stoneskin and strenght of earth and totem of wrath + 3 searing.

Right before i pull the dark knight i backpedal all my shamans to the wall and pull the boss.

That way im sure all shamans and pala is in range of all totem debuffs. I tank black knigth close enough so my searing totems can help dps. when the add comes i nuke him down. i top of tank and shamans and play it soft in phase 1, no need to stress here. Recast groundings etc.

Phase 2 i pop concecration and pop 4 fire elementals. i cast the aoe undead stun and chain lighing as often as possible. many of the zombies gets nuked in this phase and make sure all my chars is topped of with chain heal and stuff. sooner or later i loose agro on zombies and the run to my shamans. i chain heal and let the fire elementals dps a bit on them then i thunderstorm and most likely all of the zombies is cleaned. i dont stress on dpsing the dark knight here either, but the dark knight usually dies right after szombies goes down anyways. i also use the 50% damage reduction spell on the pala when i know most of the zombies will explode. usually pretty early in phase 2.

DONT FORGET SHADOW RESISTANCE AURA:)

Phase 3: I pull the black knight closer to my shamans (he does less damage the closer ur chars is). pop bloodlust and stoneclaw totem so i get extra shield on my shamans and dps like hell. i watch the health on my shamans and if one of them gets really low i use lay on hands to top him off (this has saved me many times because the 3 other shamans dies but the last one has enoguh hp to dps the last few percentages).

Overall black knight is also based abit on luck, you might get the aoe crippeling dmg stuff under ur feet on one or two of ur shamans, if that happens u have to manually run out of it and heal up, i have wiped some times due to this becuase i didnt ssee it early enough and could not heal through it.

GL. I also thought heroic was to hard core for me, expect to wipe quite few times on black knigth but dont give up :)

I have no idea how other mixed setups can get him down, might be easier if u have a healer in your group.

[BobGnarly]

how do you manage Paletress on normal? I would love to be able to NOT have to reset the instance until i get Eadric >.<

Important things (keep in mind i'm running 1 paladin 4x ele shaman):

- grounding totems. Some of her spells can be grounded, and it lowers her DPS substantially.
- staggered tremor totems. Totally trivializes the Waking Nightmares, and hence, most of this fight.
- Purge renew off nightmare.
- Dispell holy fire dot, it does a lot of damage.

Here's a video I just uploaded a few days ago. This is a heroic run, but there's no difference strategy wise. Hope it helps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJMlPOqKhyI

[gitcho]

srry - late reply ... yeah - that's what i figured ... you're screwed on this encounter if you're not running 3+ shamans ... I'm running pally, priest, 3x mage and paletress is a wipe. Best I've been able to do on BK is beginning of the 3rd phase ...

I've decided to park this team and run up my druids so I can create a pally,disc priest,arcane mage,ele shaman,balance druid team for PVE and hopefully do a bit better on this encounter ... shamans = win methinks...

[BobGnarly]

For sure the shaman help. Are you dispelling the holy fire dot and dispell/spellstealing the renew? That really helps when you're first hitting this encounter.

Black Knight, one thing: his desecration, mark, and ghoul explosion are shadowfrost dmg, which means will resist against whichever of those is the lowest. So run cold resist aura and prayer of shadow protection both. This helped me a lot early on.

Keep at it though man, that group can definitely do it. PoM and CoH are great heals for this encounter.

[Coltimar]

After wiping like Charmin on my 2nd team in normal (I screwed up ISBoxer and I've been trying to sort it . . .) I took a break. I just brought Team 1 into ToC normal and monkey stomped it. No deaths on any part. I may try heroic tomorrow.

[Multibocks]

If you can do faction champs on heroic I would do it everyday and skip the paletress and BK. Some good shit on the first chest for upgrades.

[Catamer]

ToC non-heroic is a joke that drops whatever the team doesn't need.
I hate ToC heroic myself... I can do it just fine with the team that doesn't need anything from there. (classic pally + 4 shaman)
If I bring in a new character it's usually bad news with several team wipes.
It is supposed to be a fast way to gear up but once I got the weapons on my main team I quit doing it.

[offive]

Pretty sure Paletress's holy fire does fire damage, I drop a FireResist totem in my farm and it negates more damage. I farmed the heck out of the place on normal and hero... still missing one haste trink and one 1h SpellPower weapon on my shammy team Pretty much got and de'd most everything else multiple times. I find if I run the instance during peak server load I have a much tougher time than off peak times. Lag seems to effect this instance more than others.

However, I have not gone in ToC in a while, ever since I subbed in my hunter for weeks trying to get the polearm to drop and hate the place with a passion now (the pole arm dropped the one day ToC was the daily and I decided not to take my hunter). Besides I think when 3.3 hits most people will be skipping ToC all together. Of course with the removal of daily heroic quests and the introduction of the daily random badge reward, who knows how many times we will be getting stuck in ToC. Unfortunately I have two more teams I a leveling up and fear I will be back in ToC a bit more... :(

[Clone]

Honestly going for Rogue > Mage > Shaman as a shaman team doesnt make any sense at all.. Why would anyone kill a boss first who doenst hurt you at all?

I would always go for Rogue > Warrior > Shaman, always drop grounding totem, get out of the poison clouds and stun/windshear the shaman if hes healing too much..

For the paletress: As soon as she summons the boss keep your toons to follow you and of course drop grounding totems and tremor totems.. After a fear just hit follow again.. its also possible to purge her HoT btw :) (no need to if you have decent dps though)

The black knight is a lot harder: I would recommend to watch some ToC movies (i think the way I do it is the same as Multibocks did it) Get your shadow resistance aura and drop frost resistance totem, chain heal and cast Holy Wrath if you have trouble with the ghouls.. and drop grounding totems of course :P Good luck..

I didnt think of the mage as not hurting me as I dont even use grounding totems. Bit noobish of me but its really not needed anyway, its tank and spank with the only the rogue forcing any movement.