5-Paladins New 80s - which Heroics?

[OzPhoenix]

My newly 80 all 5 Paladin team (1xProt,4xRet) is running into issues with Heroics, namely bosses with AoE/agro-wipes. Is there a list anywhere (I've tried looking) for relatively boxable Heroics for new teams in Northrend?

So far I can do:

H UK (Ingvar took some working out, but is now reliably farmable)
H DTK (I have to skip the Summoner for sheer lack of sustainable DPS given that he ignores the tank, but I can do Trollgore and the final boss)

So far what I know I can't do:

H CoS (bummed on this one, cause it was a staple for Paladin/Shaman teams, but Meathooks Disease Expulsion makes the Rets almost completely unable to heal the Prot)
H Gun (first boss, AoE poison Nova, just can't get around it).
H AN (first boss right up the front, the Ambushers even when targetted always managed to pick off a Ret before I knock 'em down).
H HoS (and assuming H HoL would be even worse)

What I'm thinking to try next:

H Nexus
H UP
H OK

Over the course of 2 days, I managed to accumulate 18 Triumph badges and 2 Frost badges, so it's not like they're completely stuck, just somewhat limited. Gearing is from i150 blue (libram) up to i245 (chest/wrist), but mostly around the i174-i200 blue/epic level. Tank is 26k HP, def capped. DPS is 1-1.5k on all 5.

I fully expected issues, since no new 80's just run into Heroics unless they're being carried, so 5xnew-80's was always a recipe for wipes, I'm just looking for some advice on (i) which to try and (ii) which to definitely avoid.

[Solon]

I hit that same wall you are on about a year ago. I still give them a try now and again. When I asked for other opinions on what to do, most said put the tank through some heroic PUGs to gear up a bit and help carry your weaker team. I tried that, after about 4 PUGs I damn near cancelled all my WoW accounts. I remember clearly why I box lol. I just level another team when Heroic wipes get to me, and I haven't bothered logging them in for dailys in weeks ><.

[ghonosyph]

Violet hold is easy, as is all but a Couple of bosses in gundrak, dtk should be a cakewalk for you, get an anti fear trinket for dred tho.
I would upgrade all your pallys with some 226 gear and titan steel weps first and foremost. The mats are easy as hell to farm, especially if you have a main team you can farm with. When my pallys hit 80 I had been doing daily normal runs with them via dungeon finder and when they dinged they had 58 badges already, they also had the 245 chest and wrists, AND the belt and boots from ulduar then it was badge farming like mad doing random after random, if I couldn't manage i'd just go do one I could until the timer was up on the random. I also used shodokans guide to good effect and made a bunch of gold with my main team to fund 5 batterd hilts for all of them, as well as full epic gems and enchants for the whole team. They're mostly badge and crafted gear now with a 5200 gs across each fully identically geard gemmd and chanted lol they have 2pc t10 and the 264 boots now and are just now starting to really amaze.

Best advice I can give to you is if you have a main team already, use them to fund all the buyable gear you can get 245, 226, if you can afford it 264 and don't discount the value of t 9 set bonuses as they work great for a while :) good luck!

[Starbuck_Jones]

One option has been mentioned. Gear the tank up with some randoms. Even if people give you crap, tanks get insta queues so it wont take long even if you get vote kicked a few times. I remember gearing up my tank this way when the dungeon finder first came out and it only took a good solid weekend to be decked fully decked out in the best Triumphs could buy. It made a HUGE difference having double the hp when I was done.

Next is gear. Tell me you have a blacksmith. there are a lot of i200+ epics you can pick up.

Arena gear. Make a 5x arena team and just afk out of your 10 games each week. There are some very nice ret items to be had. Use your stonekeeper shards to buy honor. You're not raiding so who cares if the item has resiliance on it instead of expertise.

Reputation gear. Each faction in Northrend has some decent blue and epic gear to be had. Make sure you have on the right tabbard when you're in heroics and do some quests/rep grinding.

Regular ICC 5mans. They are not heroic but if you can get even one boss on farm its an emblem and i219 loot

The rest will come with time. The bosses that are killing you now like CoS will go down like crying babies with better gear. Gundrak snake boss wont even be alive long enough to cast poison nova and meathook will have a 45k hp tank to kill instead of 26k. Also use everything to your advantage. Drums of the Wild. Runescroll of Fortitude. Get some HP/ATK boosing food. Hell, if your rich even flask up. It can mean the difference between struggling and wiping, to making things your bitch while your gearing up.

[luxlunae]

I'd agree that you should just LFD the tank and 1 or two dps at a time. Hell, queue with 3 and get a healer

[Ughmahedhurtz]

For the Summoner in DTK, just use seal of light. You'll regen enough health that if you run out of blizzard to the other side of him when he casts it, you should survive the fight.

For H CoS, Meathook is easy, just make sure your prot faces him away from the rets. The silence effect only affects people in front of him. I had much more trouble with the first boss once you get inside the houses when following Arthas.

I've had good luck with the first two bosses in H UP, just don't forget to cleanse off the disease from the abomination trash.

Gundrak is just too painful to bother with, IMO. So much aoe nature damage and no nature resists on pallies. Your time is better spent elsewhere. You can, however, farm Moorabi easily for one badge a day and an i200 blue tank helm assuming you don't have tempered titansteel helm already -- just can't do it with LFD.

Don't forget normal FoS/PoS. You'll be able to get through FoS (probably) and Forgemaster Garfrost in PoS but you won't be able to kill Ick/Krick with 1000-1500dps on the rets, I don't think.

Also, don't forget the i200ish epics from ToC Normal. If you can get the joust part down, the rest of that run with rets is pretty flipping easy with paladins. The rogue boss's poison pool is the only thing you'll really have any trouble with.

What I would recommend is getting the FoS quests done so you can get into PoS. Once you unlock PoS normal, you can farm Garfrost normal repeatedly for a badge every 3-4 minutes. Once you get the path right, you only have to kill two skeletons and the boss. Plus, you'll get the i232 2-handers ( Garfrost's Two-Ton Hammer (http://www.wowhead.com/item=49802) ) which will help immensely. Then it's just ho-hum farming until you get the badge gear done. By the time you get the Triumph badge gear finished, you should be at around 4300-4500ish gearscore and can go farm some filler gear elsewhere much more easily. Mine were about where yours are (1000-1500ish depending on fight) and after farming the odd heroic here and there, my rets are now up to about 3800-4200GS and putting out about 2300-2800 dps. If you're curious, in my wow characters list, Zipples is my tank and Ukobach is my best-geared ret so far.

Just my 2 cents on all-paladin groups. ;)

Cheers,
Ugh

[jinkobi]

Have you ever considered dual speccing one of your rets to holy?

All you need is a dedicated healer to change your whole groups dynamic.

[Tdog]

For the Summoner in DTK, just use seal of light. You'll regen enough health that if you run out of blizzard to the other side of him when he casts it, you should survive the fight.

For H CoS, Meathook is easy, just make sure your prot faces him away from the rets. The silence effect only affects people in front of him. I had much more trouble with the first boss once you get inside the houses when following Arthas.

I've had good luck with the first two bosses in H UP, just don't forget to cleanse off the disease from the abomination trash.

Gundrak is just too painful to bother with, IMO. So much aoe nature damage and no nature resists on pallies. Your time is better spent elsewhere. You can, however, farm Moorabi easily for one badge a day and an i200 blue tank helm assuming you don't have tempered titansteel helm already -- just can't do it with LFD.

Don't forget normal FoS/PoS. You'll be able to get through FoS (probably) and Forgemaster Garfrost in PoS but you won't be able to kill Ick/Krick with 1000-1500dps on the rets, I don't think.

Also, don't forget the i200ish epics from ToC Normal. If you can get the joust part down, the rest of that run with rets is pretty flipping easy with paladins. The rogue boss's poison pool is the only thing you'll really have any trouble with.

What I would recommend is getting the FoS quests done so you can get into PoS. Once you unlock PoS normal, you can farm Garfrost normal repeatedly for a badge every 3-4 minutes. Once you get the path right, you only have to kill two skeletons and the boss. Plus, you'll get the i232 2-handers ( Garfrost's Two-Ton Hammer (http://www.wowhead.com/item=49802) ) which will help immensely. Then it's just ho-hum farming until you get the badge gear done. By the time you get the Triumph badge gear finished, you should be at around 4300-4500ish gearscore and can go farm some filler gear elsewhere much more easily. Mine were about where yours are (1000-1500ish depending on fight) and after farming the odd heroic here and there, my rets are now up to about 3800-4200GS and putting out about 2300-2800 dps. If you're curious, in my wow characters list, Zipples is my tank and Ukobach is my best-geared ret so far.

Just my 2 cents on all-paladin groups. ;)

Cheers,
UghPretty much agree with everything Ugh just said and let me definitely go ahead and say it again. Seal of Light!!! This will help make-up quite a bit for lousy gear. Not all the way but alot.

Also something I've been saying for awhile and somehow no one ever seems to hear me :p when it comes to melee teams, an extremely useful tactic to use on bosses such as Ick/Krick that spit out tons of that aoe crap is to simply kite the boss around while just walking backwards with your tank. This keeps your toons already moving so that when bosses like Ick/Krick start dropping aoe that need to be moved out of you already have a head start and aren't standing in that crap taking unecessary damage. My 4 ret paladins almost never even take a tick of damage from the green crap that he drops.

This tactic also prevents melee bosses from using spells with cast times as much since they will move to keep in range of you rather than stop to cast the spell. Now it's not true with every single spell or instant cast spells, but if the boss is always trying to stay in melee range of you they tend to not stop and cast a spell or a channeled spell anywhere near as often.

[Seldum]

Also do some WG and get some honor. Then buy some of the Gladiator gear. Atm my tank (bear - Weedpower)is wearing atleast 3-4 pieces of pvp gear. Everything helps.

[OzPhoenix]

Thanks all - some very good suggestions there. As I noted, I'm not dis-heartened by the wipes, as I knew what to expect (though the gold drain, at 65g a wipe is an issue... lol). I hadn't considered ICC normal, and I'm now slapping my head about it too since so much of the kit in there would be upgrades. I'll definitely try that out once this 24-hour maintenance is over.

I did actually try normal ToC and after a few goes figured out the jousting well enough, but then got absolutely slammed by the first 3-boss team. I'll have to look into that, as I had counted on that as a gearing path to replace low level gear.

I've got all the smithing crafted epics on, as well as the i245 pieces, but legs, belt, hands, neck, trinkets, rings and librams are trashy i150-i187 greens and blues, which I think is holding them back.

I was actually surprised we didn't have a "new 80s gearing guide" around, and if it weren't so close to Cata, I'd happily make one. I guess what I will do is take some time to record my own path to gearing up, and post it here once I'm over this "new 80" hump.

Seal of Light also didn't occur to me for Meathook, which is poor form on my part I think, I'll run it past him too once this maintenance is over.

PvP I'm avoiding just because it's really absolutely not my thing any more, and I want to try and gear up without it if I can. Pre-gearing the tank is something I'd considered (in fact, my prot pally tank on my first team is still active and super geared), but I'm trying to avoid that too, in the vien of "what if this were my only team" sort of thing.

I'll start keeping some notes on my progress and throw it back up here as a guide for however short time we have left to Cata.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

PvP I'm avoiding just because it's really absolutely not my thing any more, and I want to try and gear up without it if I can. Yeah, same here, as I'm not set up for FTL or fast leader-switching, so fears and other problems would be more difficult for me to deal with. Though I'm slowly changing my mind with the cheap cost of a few of the upgrades honor and WG marks would provide my guys.

[OzPhoenix]

Yeah, same here, as I'm not set up for FTL or fast leader-switching, so fears and other problems would be more difficult for me to deal with. Though I'm slowly changing my mind with the cheap cost of a few of the upgrades honor and WG marks would provide my guys.

I'm (currently) so anti-PvP, there could be free sets of Tier10 inside the starting cave in 80 and I still don't think I'd do it... lol.

I've now got H UK, OK, and DTK on farm, so the badging is starting to progress now. Of course, as I add more gear, it becomes easier to add more gear, that ol' "new-80-hump". Haven't even had a chance to try any others outside of AN, HoL, HoS and CoS and GUN, so there's still quite a few options for picking off bosses if not whole instances to go - and of those I mentioned, I think at least CoS (and possibly GUN) could be done with some of the strategies I've gleaned from this thread as well.

So, while I'm not exactly piling up the badges left right and centre, I'm making decent headway. Rets are now up to about 2k dps, with the prot hanging around 1.7k.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Heh. Go run Garfrost normal for your Two-Ton Hammers. That'll put your weaps up to 212dps (plus a gem slot) and will be a nice boost. Lucky Old Sun from Bronjahm in FoS should be easy enough to farm, too, though it takes longer as there's more trash in there to get through. You have better gear starting out than I did at that point.

[OzPhoenix]

Heh. Go run Garfrost normal for your Two-Ton Hammers. That'll put your weaps up to 212dps (plus a gem slot) and will be a nice boost. Lucky Old Sun from Bronjahm in FoS should be easy enough to farm, too, though it takes longer as there's more trash in there to get through. You have better gear starting out than I did at that point.

I'm hoping to get some time in ICC this weekend. In between Argent Valiant series + the Argent dailies, heroic randoms, farming UK/OK/DTK and the weekly raid Slats and I did tonight, I just haven't had time yet... hehe.

Bought my first Triumph piece, the T9 Hands. 9 Frost badges so far as well.

[OzPhoenix]

Just an update in case any were interested (should probably move this thread I guess).

5 days later and it's a big difference. Badges are coming a lot easier now. There's 4 full dungeons I can clear (UK,OK,DTK,CoS) and from almost all the others I can get multiple bosses. I've made a number of Triumph badge purchases now swapping out the worst pieces of kit, next up is the i245 shoulders (need 50, currently have 37) which I'll get tomorrow night.

DPS is much improved now, as is tanks survivability.

I'm not (yet) blasting through each run in 15 minutes but certainly getting faster. Last run was H OK, cleared 4 bosses (all bar the cultist boss near the final boss - still working that one out) in 30 minutes for 4 Triumphs + 2 Frosts and no deaths.

Thanks again all for the helpful advice.