Heroic Blackrock Caverns speed run (Melee Zerg)

[Zugdud]

Greetings,

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be much incentive to farm Heroics right now if your goal is primarly to gear up for PvP. That said, quick Chaos Orbs are always nice and BRC can be cleared fairly quickly if you skip all the optional bosses (once you get a hang of the place it only takes about 15-20 minutes). Also I'd like to add that I probably couldn't kill the 2nd boss with my team even if I wanted to.

Team class/specs:
Blood DK
Unholy DK
Fury Warrior
Enhancement Shaman
Holy Paladin

They each tend to pull around 10-12k single target DPS right now (minus the Holy Paladin, ofcourse), with the tank a bit lower. Unholy does some monstrous AOE damage and his overall DPS for a clear tends to be significantly higher then the rest of the team (around 16-18k)

I am missing some video footage after the 1st boss but for those who are curious I just jump down the ledge on the left after crossing the first bridge, clear to the 2nd bridge, exit the instance via LFD, re-enter via LFD, and take portal to 3rd boss. I ran with the sound off, and also doubled the playback speed of the video (it's not very exciting, mostly just AOE spam)

EmbvjsoDjys

[Mercurio]

Nice. Interesting how melee teams can ignore some of the mechanics that are harder for caster teams and vice versa.

I'm sure they have been for a while, but I'm glad melee teams are a viable alternative for Cata heroics.

[d0z3rr]

Why paladin healer instead of shaman?

[Multibocks]

No sound, at least use the in game stuff. It's so quiet... =(

After watching this I foresee most heroics being boxable by the 2nd tier of Cataclysm by melee teams. A lot of stuff is doable right now. Is Karsh Steelbender or whatever hes called too hard for your team as well?

[Zugdud]

Thanks for the feedback all, the only Cataclysm Heroics i've cleared thus far have been Shadowfang keep, Vortex Pinnacle, and Blackrock Caverns. I am sure others are doable as well, the honor grid has been sapping all of my playtime lately but I have been meaning to try Lost City next . BRC is definitly my favorite at the moment as it can be cleared in a fraction of the time of the others, in my experience.

@Multibocks, I actually had never even tried to pull Karsh Steelbender until this morning and he turned out to be really easy. It seemed like my team took more damage from Rom'oggs quakes which can be tricky to fully avoid with follow compared to the lava puddles. Also as an added bonus, Raz cleared out the 6 trash mobs guarding the final boss, which probably makes up for the lost time spent killing Karsh.

@d0z3rr, I prefer having my Paladin Holy and Shaman Enhancement for PvP so those happen to be their best respective gear sets at the moment. I do have a fairly decent Restoration set on my shaman, but it's still miles behind my Paladins gear. When I get some time to try more heroics, I may run dual healers again to ease the learning curve of some of the fights.

[remanz]

10-12k single target dps in a 5 man heroic is impressive. That's what normal players do with full 346 gear. What's your unholy's rotation like? OB-> FS + SS spam ?

[Zugdud]

10-12k single target dps in a 5 man heroic is impressive. That's what normal players do with full 346 gear. What's your unholy's rotation like? OB-> FS + SS spam ?

Hi Remanz, i'd actually say that 12k is a conservative ballpark for Unholy single target while the warrior and enhance strugle hard to keep pace with him. Unholy is awesome, definitely a great spec for PVE multiboxed melee DPS in my opinion thus far, ungrouped and with only self buffed the Unholy will pull 13k on a target dummy using only spam keys. Running 5mans with buffs/debuffs from my team on near ideal melee single target fights like Baron Ashbury in Shadowfang Keep it even tends to be a bit higher. What I love about Unholy at the moment, is that thanks to Runic Corruption we have a constant and predictable rune refresh rather then a randomly refreshed rune. Additionally, it's quite easy to capitilize on the death runes and include the proc gimmick (dark transformation) within your spam key.

As far as setup goes, I am using ISBoxer+Innerspace setup with a 4 step sequence for PvE. I also use a toggle function to switch the binds to different in game keys for AOE situations. For single target this is what I have currently:


Primary spam key:

step 1 & 2:
/castsequence reset=5 scourge strike, festering strike, scourge strike, festering strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike
/cast dark transformation
/petattack

step 3:
/cast summon gargoyle
/cast dark transformation
/petattack

step 4:
/cast death coil
/cast dark transformation
/petattack

Secondary key:
/cast blood fury
/use 13
/use 10
/cast [@player] unholy frenzy
/castsequence reset=5 Outbreak, Pestilence, Blood Tap

Interestingly, while Dark Transformation does incur a global cooldown it can be included in macros like this and will activate when the ghoul accumulates enough power (give it a try). Assuming that is unintended and gets changed, it could be included as an individual step easily enough.

You could configure your spam key to also include the secondary key as part of the spam if you prefer, I just like the added control of having these abilities separated...feral spirit, deathwish, etc are on this key as well. When I want to use the secondary key, I just spam it simultaniously with the primary. Thanks to sudden doom, the gargoyle has a fair chance of being activated, however you can miss a minute or two at times. There is definitly plenty of room for improvement here, I haven't spent too much time tweaking this so if you come up with any suggestions or have any other feedback on my approach here i'd be very interested!

Edit: Oh, here is a link to my Unholy DK's profile (Primary spec is PvE, Secondary spec is PvP)

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/earthen-ring/zugdhaar/simple

[remanz]

Really appreciate that you are sharing the setup. I've seen unholy DK's do great dps in raid. and the awesome part, like you said, is that there are no RNG factors. You get constant good damage.

I do have a question regarding its damage. Did you play a bit unholy in pvp ? What percentage of the damage are coming from the pet. I'd imagine when both pets are up and attacking + DT. Unholy would have some great burst. But normally, it takes about like 20+ seconds to build that 5 DC buff ?

With up coming patch, unholy's damage will get normalized a little bit. But getting some more goodies in pvp (passive anti snare + chains of ice root).

[Zugdud]

Usually between 30-40% of his damage is from the pet(s). On Baron Ashbury for example, the ghoul will do around 4k dps over the entire fight. Gargoyle is worth about 3k DPS during it's uptime. Building up the 5 charges of Shadow Infusion as you mentioned can take awhile, the time can vary quite a bit in PvP depending on your time spent CCd/kited or if you opt to use Gargoyle first.

As far as PvP goes, I haven't done much Cataclysm arena yet... still sort of experimenting with various spec combos and trying to figure things out. For what it's worth the few time's I tried Unholy on my 5v5 team I had either died before Dark Transformation would go off, or it would finally pop when it was clean up time against the last 2-3 remaining enemies. :D I did try boxing some 3v3 as Unholy+Enhance+Holy as well, Unholy seemed perfect for this team, though I think when the patch goes live I'm going to bench the shaman for the Warrior ;)

That said, the Death Rune generation potential for NS or SS is epic and as you said, the tree is getting some neat stuff in the upcoming patch so we will have to see what happens!

[katsurahama]

Can you share some of your addons? I am using the standard ui right now and need to move to click healing. I like the way you have yours set up. Thanks.

[Mokoi]

what is the major aoe component of your unholy DK? is it pest or blood boil? I would think if you wanted AOE, go frost hehe

[Multibocks]

My shaman are supremely jealous of your dps. Their 6-7k isn't cutting it anymore.

[Multibocks]

Could you provide a pic of your isboxer setup for your 4 step process? I think I know what you mean for 4 step, but I'm not positive. Thanks :)

[Apps]

Can you share some of your addons? I am using the standard ui right now and need to move to click healing. I like the way you have yours set up. Thanks.


OMG yes! X2. I want to know what the "click bar" addon you are using to do the dispells, and heals. I too am using mostly standard UI stuff... its rather difficult at times.

Please and Ty.

[Zugdud]

what is the major aoe component of your unholy DK? is it pest or blood boil? I would think if you wanted AOE, go frost hehe

Just disease damage spread via pestilence and sweeping claws. Death and Decay would probably be good to incorporate as well, but I have not bothered to.


Can you share some of your addons? I am using the standard ui right now and need to move to click healing. I like the way you have yours set up. Thanks.

For the healing the important addons I use are:

Grid
GridManaBars
GridCustomLayouts
Clique

Innerspace repeater regions handle the click broadcast, I have an action target group called PvE healing containing both my shaman and paladin.

http://isboxer.com/wiki/Action_Target_Group
http://isboxer.com/wiki/Repeater_Region

This is my gridCustomLayout, my team is always displayed on the first row in a consistent (alphabetical) order reguardless of raid size:


Zugdhaar,Zugddar,Zugdar,Zugdaar,Zugdharr;sortMetho d = "NAME"
1,2,3,4,5;5/8;NAME;NR



Could you provide a pic of your isboxer setup for your 4 step process? I think I know what you mean for 4 step, but I'm not positive. Thanks

Sure, see attached photo:

[Apps]

Zugdud, first, Thank you!

I will read all this and see what I can figure out. Right now I found Grid, and I have it installed. Only problem is, when Im on my tank, and I press my keybind for the macro for mouseover to Healing Touch, it only heals the healer... as if the healer window isnt recognizing the tank window for the mouseover... is this covered in your other links?

[Apps]

WHOO HOOO!! I got it figured out. Awesome setup, this just made my life sooo much easier! Ty very much for sharing your setups.

[Multibocks]

Thanks Zug! I'm currently leveling my 4 DKs and one priest from 80. Do uyou always run in Unholy Presence?

[Zugdud]

Awesome guys, glad it was helpful. Yup, I always run Unholy Presence with the Unholy spec DK

[Mamut]

It must be nice to have the option to go double healer for a tough boss. Thank you for sharing your movie and your macros. I have a Mixed melee group I'm leveling up on the side but its so fun i might switch it to my main lol.

My warrior is arms atm, how complicated did you get with your fury macro? I'd love to get the extra crit from a fury warrior into the mix once i get high enough to use titans grip.

Keep up the good work and share some more vids!

[remanz]

Thanks to Zug's strategy, I beat this with dk enhance 3 retribution paladins. Skipping 2nd, 3rd, 4th boss lol. The portal skip is classic, not gonna say much more about that. For the last boss, do I really need to move ? I was trying to kite, but didn't find it too effective. Probably I should just sit there and whack. skipping 3 bosses make this instance the fastest out of all heroics.

I am gonna start trying heroic Throne of Tides and Halls of Origination.

[katsurahama]

Im curious about the fury macros as well...

[Zugdud]

Cool Remanz, keep us posted with your Throne/Halls progress! I saw that you had also cleared Heroic Lost City in the DK/Rets Heroics thread, nice work, any pro tips to share? I haven't had a chance to play much recently, but was going to try tackling that place next.

For the last boss in BRC, yeah, kiting is a bit tricky and possibly pointless with a melee group given the thunderclap and ground snare spam. The last few clear's I've just stood in one spot as you mentioned and it worked fine, I have my UH go AoE mode to pickup the add agro and heal him up during phase changes.


As for the Fury Warrior setup (4 step):

Primary key:

Step 1:
/castsequence reset=5 bloodthirst, heroic strike

Step 2:
/cast berserker rage
/cast raging blow

Step 3:
/castsequence reset=5 Colossus Smash, Sunder Armor

Step 4:
/cast execute

Secondary Key
/cast Death Wish
/use 13
/use 10
/cast slam
/stopcasting
/startattack

For AoE mode, heroic strike is replaced by cleave and sunder armor is replaced by whirlwind x2.

Definitly plenty of room for improvement here, adding more steps would probably be worth while.

[remanz]

Lost city wasn't too hard, does takes a little bit to get used to the pace. It all follows the same pattern.

Tank walk backwards or walk side ways (side way is better). SO tank drags the boss around. Slaves follow (possibly with IWT spam) to DPS the boss.

FOr the first boss I have to clear both sides and drag the boss for a big circle. Never stop at one place for too long. I am using retribution's to heal so I don't really have a healer. But Holy radiance + WOG stacking was enough. For your setup, and you probably already know this, spam crusader strike + holy shock on your holy paladin, you get HP quicker and stop to heal maybe only when the boss does it earth quake AOE and there are spikes coming out of the ground.

The croc + lockmaw was a little harder. I use my army here. So open with army , burn croc with bloodlust (probably don't need lust for you) as you got enough cleave damage. Need to cleanse the poison, and dodge the whirlwind from lockmaw. I did not have enough cleave to kill all the adds, but your team should do fine.

3rd boss is easie, same drag /kite and dps follow. Move around to dodge phoniex. In phase 2, same pattern.

last boss, right after you dps him a bit, he will summon adds. Just kill those 1 by 1. Take your time to heal your group up. Make sure your are near full into phase 2. once in phase 2, ignore adds and just burn boss. Need some AOE heals, but holy radiance from the holy paladin should do just fine in here.

a note on the trash, I have to CC the trash in Lost City. I don't know , they were hitting very hard. I can't AOE them down.

[hannibal]

Thanks for the vid and info. Since watching it, I have cleared H Blackrock the past 2 days. Im using your portal strat and doing first and last boss. These are actually the first cata instances I have cleared, reg or heroic. Ive mostly been concentrating on pvp so far.

Im running 1 blood, 3 frost, and 1 hpally atm. Im only using about 4-5 pieces of pvp gear and the rest is pvp. The frost dks are pulling around 10-11k over the course of the whole instance and the tank is coming in at a little less than half of that. I think the next time I run it I will try 4x frost, as my tanking is not very effecient atm due to lack of setting up macros and binds.

Popping 4x army on the bosses makes them fairly trivial, especially the last one. I actually have more trouble with trash.

[Multibocks]

4 x frost? You mean tankless? Or a frost build in Interesting idea, not sure the increased dps is worth the possibility of wiping though because someone got crit and deaded...

[Multibocks]

Hi Remanz, i'd actually say that 12k is a conservative ballpark for Unholy single target while the warrior and enhance strugle hard to keep pace with him. Unholy is awesome, definitely a great spec for PVE multiboxed melee DPS in my opinion thus far, ungrouped and with only self buffed the Unholy will pull 13k on a target dummy using only spam keys. Running 5mans with buffs/debuffs from my team on near ideal melee single target fights like Baron Ashbury in Shadowfang Keep it even tends to be a bit higher. What I love about Unholy at the moment, is that thanks to Runic Corruption we have a constant and predictable rune refresh rather then a randomly refreshed rune. Additionally, it's quite easy to capitilize on the death runes and include the proc gimmick (dark transformation) within your spam key.

As far as setup goes, I am using ISBoxer+Innerspace setup with a 4 step sequence for PvE. I also use a toggle function to switch the binds to different in game keys for AOE situations. For single target this is what I have currently:


Primary spam key:

step 1 & 2:
/castsequence reset=5 scourge strike, festering strike, scourge strike, festering strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike, scourge strike
/cast dark transformation
/petattack

step 3:
/cast summon gargoyle
/cast dark transformation
/petattack

step 4:
/cast death coil
/cast dark transformation
/petattack

Secondary key:
/cast blood fury
/use 13
/use 10
/cast [@player] unholy frenzy
/castsequence reset=5 Outbreak, Pestilence, Blood Tap

Interestingly, while Dark Transformation does incur a global cooldown it can be included in macros like this and will activate when the ghoul accumulates enough power (give it a try). Assuming that is unintended and gets changed, it could be included as an individual step easily enough.

You could configure your spam key to also include the secondary key as part of the spam if you prefer, I just like the added control of having these abilities separated...feral spirit, deathwish, etc are on this key as well. When I want to use the secondary key, I just spam it simultaniously with the primary. Thanks to sudden doom, the gargoyle has a fair chance of being activated, however you can miss a minute or two at times. There is definitly plenty of room for improvement here, I haven't spent too much time tweaking this so if you come up with any suggestions or have any other feedback on my approach here i'd be very interested!

Edit: Oh, here is a link to my Unholy DK's profile (Primary spec is PvE, Secondary spec is PvP)

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/earthen-ring/zugdhaar/simple

OK so after doing some research I realized that I wasnt using diseases. I notice your rotation makes no mention of it. So is outbreak your only way that you put diseases on a target? So you start fights with that macro correct?

[Zugdud]

OK so after doing some research I realized that I wasnt using diseases. I notice your rotation makes no mention of it. So is outbreak your only way that you put diseases on a target? So you start fights with that macro correct?

Yup, I typically use the secondary sequence containing outbreak and pestilence+blood tap on larger packs and bosses (I also have other short duration cooldowns on this key for my other classes). The advantage here is that you can maintain a perfect 2x Festering Strike->8x Scourge Strike rotation via death rune conversions.

[Multibocks]

Ah ok makes sense, my DKs dps just jumped a huge amount =D

[katsurahama]

You inspired me to try a melee team in instances. Im trying blood dk, combat rogue x3, and a resto druid. Its definitely different than tank + four ranged classes. Its fun though. I may switch the dk for a druid at 70 (63 now) for an all stealth team.

But their aoe will really be nonexistent then.:(

This group really takes a beating with boss aoe or auras though.

[Multibocks]

Who? Rogues? Actually mutilate rogues have good AoE(fan of knives), which spreads their poisons around quickly. Deadly Poison 5 stack x 3 on every mob would be pretty sweet.

[Toned]

When I did my all melee grp in ICC.

It was Rogue/DK/Enh/War + Resto Sham Healer.

I found Mutilate rogues to be the way to go, but that was pre-cata. I haven't got to leveling this group to 85 yet. I'm just curious why you went with 3 combat and not 3 mutilate?

[Longshot17]

+Rep for this post and I haven't even seen the movie yet!

I'm just super excited about the Fury Warrior and DK DPS setups. I tried out the 4-step setup on my lvl 75 Fury warrior last night, and I was close to (wearing lots of greens) what I would output manually, using recommended rotations from MMO-Champions. So can't wait to get to 85.

For the four-step, sure I have it right, but it's don't progress to next step for like 1 second? I looked at your screenshot, but it appeared small for me so couldn't pick up the nitty-gritty details, but like I said, I set it up actually as a 5-step (including insta-slam) and because I'm a spammer, made it, so it would not advance for 1 second to the next step.

My next step will be to incorporate my DK/Warrior into a group with a Mage or Ele Shaman who use 2-step macros and get them to co-exist.

Never thought to look in the Movies section for such great macro tips (thank-you Search function)!

[Multibocks]

DK dps took a nasty nerf, unholy has been hit with nerfs 2 patches in a row.

[Zugdud]

Cool! Glad the info was useful, fair warning though... I have not been playing much WoW lately ( have just been farming weekly conquest points) and have not been following any recent game changes so I am not sure if Unholy would still be the king of PvE DPS as it seemed to be about 2 months ago, or if the sequences I was using are still ideal.