Running heroics - where to start

[Fleecy]

First off, let me say I've run every instance on heroic with my priest many many times over - and then some. Unfortuantely I didn't really pay much attention to anything other than - well - healing.

My girls (5xShaman ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Eonar&n=Torrla') ) are ready to run heroics but I'm a little lost as to where I should start and how I should go about it. They are wearing full Netherstrike sets ('http://www.wowarmory.com/search.xml?searchQuery=netherstrike&searchType=items'), they have the shield ('http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=34675') and neck ('http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=34678') piece from Shattered Sun exalted rep. The have the main hand weapon ('http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=30832') from Lower City exalted rep. Hurricane ('http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=30043') boots (epic crafted). Scryer ('http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=29126') & Sha'tar epic rings. Nine epics in total. I'm not a great fan of PVP so all my gear is rep / instance aquired. I won't PVP unless its absolutely necessary to get past my "block".

Their stats are roughly:
HP: 9-10K
Armor: 9.5K
+DMG: 730 (no buffs, no totems) / 1K (buffs + totems)
Crt : 20% (no buffs, no totems) / 41% (buffs + totems)

So far I'm easily able to take down the first boss in Shadow Labrynth but I've not progressed past him - I detest the mobs between him and the second boss.
I've attempted heroic Mana Tombs, only because the first boss is so close to the enterence. But I didn't even manage to get him below 50% HP and I ran off with my tail between my legs licking my wounds. My basic strategy (in any instance, heroic or otherwise) is stand my ground and blast the shit out of everything before it kills me. I don't kite, I don't move at all.

Where should I go, what instances should I be attempting? I feel like I'm hitting a wall - or the wall is hitting me :wacko:

[Bena]

From what I've seen from the video of people doing heroics, it seems that kitting/stoneclaw is the best way. I guess if you notice that you can't take down mobs fast enough before they start killing you off try kitting.

[Fleecy]

So after spending an hour or so re-thinking how I've been attempting heroics and then saying to myself "ah screw it, I'll just keep doing it the same work", I managed to clear heroic Ramparts (very first every single omfgwfbbq) for the first time. Actually, its my first heroic fully cleared! But, before that I did attempt heroic Slave Pens and managed to get all the way up to Quag but I just couldn't take him down for the life of me - 2 repairs and the bastard is still standing!

Heroic Ramparts' trash is pretty damn hard at times and caused a number of wipes. The bosses fall down faster than referee with a kick to the groin. Though, the last boss (the Dragon) had my frustration levels at maximum for a while. I used the 'trick' to kill the dragon first and then the rider.

And as expected, none of the loot was suitable. LOL. But damn - heroic ramparts cleared! FIRST heroic cleared

[Knytestorme]

Grats Fleecy, even if you are from NZ :p

As for your last line, I can think of one loot item off every boss that was suitable for each of your characters :thumbsup:

[Nixi]

Congrats!!

I don't have much insight to give you for your 5 shaman team. But i can say that your shamans are way better geared than mine, and using a tank I can do all the Coilfang, Ramps, Blood Furnace, Mech and Bot.

[Fleecy]

...I can think of one loot item off every boss that was suitable for each of your characters :thumbsup:I'd like the shoulders from Slave Pens and the gloves from Ramparts. Infact, I'm going back to Slave Pens fully armed with pots and food and I'll see if I can clear in now. /fingers crossed

[Knytestorme]

hehehe, I was thinking bout the badges actually 8o

[Fleecy]

I thought the badges were a given :)

[Knytestorme]

I thought the bages were a given :)Only given if you kill the boss :D

[Schwarz]

Fleecy do you have totems of wrath?

I have alot less gear than you can can do slave pens and mana tombs on heroic. Generally I lay down my totems (5 totem of wrath, 4 healing stream 1 mana stream, 4 grounding totems 1 wrath of air, 1 earthbind totem 4 stoneclaw totems) and then blast the crap out of the first mob. Then swtich to the 2nd. Often times the difference for me from failing to succeeding is how fast I make the switch too the 2nd mob. One thing that I have gotten away from is chain lighting. If you just use your lightning bolts then the stone claws will work.

2 exceptions to the chain lightning rule

1) if you can kill a mob with a lightning bolt and then chain lighting cast right afterwards (so both casts hit the mob at the same time) then do it
2) switch too your 2nd mob and use chain lighting to kill off the first mob

As for the first boss in Heroic Mana Tombs are you dropping earth elementals down? Try to drop 5 earth elementals down then just dps him down. Generally when I am learning a fight I go over board with my earth ele's. One thing that might help is having your main guy spam heals on whoever the boss is targeting. I only do this if it is a very tough bosss (2nd boss in Mana Tombs/2nd boss in Slave pens).

In general it takes alot of practice to learn all the pulls/tatics but when in doubt pop blood lust and use your trinkets you should be fine.

lately I have kind of given up on wow but my toons are
shaone/shatwo/shathree/shafour/shafive on azgalor.

put the time in and you will learn the instances. I know many times I would almost wipe on certain trash if i messed one thing up. I guess that is the good thing playing by yourself. You don't have anyone to get mad at you.

[Fleecy]

Fleecy do you have totems of wrath?

...Generally I lay down my totems (5 totem of wrath, 4 healing stream 1 mana stream, 4 grounding totems 1 wrath of air, 1 earthbind totem 4 stoneclaw totems) and then blast the crap out of the first mob. Then swtich to the 2nd. Often times the difference for me from failing to succeeding is how fast I make the switch too the 2nd mob. One thing that I have gotten away from is chain lighting. If you just use your lightning bolts then the stone claws will work.

Thats pretty much exactly how I do it too. Yes, I'm spec'd into Totems of Wrath.



As for the first boss in Heroic Mana Tombs are you dropping earth elementals down? Try to drop 5 earth elementals down then just dps him down. Generally when I am learning a fight I go over board with my earth ele's. One thing that might help is having your main guy spam heals on whoever the boss is targeting. I only do this if it is a very tough bosss (2nd boss in Mana Tombs/2nd boss in Slave pens).



Yep, I dropped all the usual totems and the 5 Earth Elementals. They dropped far too quickly for my liking. It was 2 shots later that we wiped. I'll attempt Mana Tombs once more tonight, if I don't get past the first boss again I'll consider it a right-off. After almost clearing Slave Pens last night (Quag still standing) I'll certainly be attempting this and he drops.

I think my main problem is lack of healing on the TargetsTarget (what the boss is targeting). Basically I'm not healing my Earth/Fire Elementals when the boss is smacking on them.

[Groovy]

Fleecy do you have totems of wrath?

...Generally I lay down my totems (5 totem of wrath, 4 healing stream 1 mana stream, 4 grounding totems 1 wrath of air, 1 earthbind totem 4 stoneclaw totems) and then blast the crap out of the first mob. Then swtich to the 2nd. Often times the difference for me from failing to succeeding is how fast I make the switch too the 2nd mob. One thing that I have gotten away from is chain lighting. If you just use your lightning bolts then the stone claws will work.

Thats pretty much exactly how I do it too. Yes, I'm spec'd into Totems of Wrath.



As for the first boss in Heroic Mana Tombs are you dropping earth elementals down? Try to drop 5 earth elementals down then just dps him down. Generally when I am learning a fight I go over board with my earth ele's. One thing that might help is having your main guy spam heals on whoever the boss is targeting. I only do this if it is a very tough bosss (2nd boss in Mana Tombs/2nd boss in Slave pens).



Yep, I dropped all the usual totems and the 5 Earth Elementals. They dropped far too quickly for my liking. It was 2 shots later that we wiped. I'll attempt Mana Tombs once more tonight, if I don't get past the first boss again I'll consider it a right-off. After almost clearing Slave Pens last night (Quag still standing) I'll certainly be attempting this and he drops.

I think my main problem is lack of healing on the TargetsTarget (what the boss is targeting). Basically I'm not healing my Earth/Fire Elementals when the boss is smacking on them.Have you tried to heal you earth eles? AKA a macro that heals target of target. Wont make them last to much longer but it helps.

[OzPhoenix]

Watching your progress with great interest, as your opening post sounds exactly how I'm currently playing my Shammies.

[Schwarz]

So on certain fights where your earth eles are all dying too quickly. I move my lightning bolt from position one and replace it with a macro like

this will heal the target of the boss (if you have the boss focused)

/cast [target=focustarget] Lesser Healing Wave

odds are you will run out of mana fast on your main but this should buy you enough time to get the job done.

As for the first boss in heroic Mana Tombs there must be something you aren't doing right. Usually I just nuke the crap out of him and he is either dead or at ~5% by the time he phase shifts.

As for hints on Quag I drop all the earth eles by the water and pull out my healing macro then nuke the crap out of him also. Also try to swap out a grounding totem for a nature resist totem and you should be golden. When i was learning slave pens I had more problems with the crab packs than any boss.

One thing that I might be overlooking is that I am using orcs so I might be getting a little more dps at the start from my racial. Give it time/practice and you should be able to do most heroics. Sometimes Earth eles don't pick up bosses very fast and that makes it a wipe. In that case just go do something else for 20 mins then come back and try it again.

[Fleecy]

My second day attempt at Ramparts and I one-shotted it. All bosses went down without any problems! But alas, the gloves fail to drop once again. But woot.... its todays daily!

[Toned]

See the link in my signature it is my work in the progress I've been slacking but it does have some decent videos.

[Fleecy]

Update: Ramparts one-shotted! - same shitty loot as yesterday. No gloves yet :(
Update: Slave Pens (attempt 2) - caster boots. No shoulders yet :(

After watching a lot of videos I've discovered a huge hole in my strategy when running heroics. I'm not healing the elementals and not kiting enough.

So off I go back to Heroic Slave Pens a few revised macros. I'm now able to stagger my Earthbind totems, and I now have a (fixed) heal target-of-target macro. My previous heal target-of-target macro had a small issue - it didn't work. :) So my new macro has all my girls healing the target-of-target with the all important /stopcasting sitting in there.

My first attempt at kiting went exceptionally - until I ran too far and right into the middle of another mob. But I only lost 1 girl and was able to kite the new mob and the remaining mob, I came out with only 1 dead girl and a huge silly grin on my face. Kiting - check! Moving on to Quag (shudder....)

So I get up to Quag once again, armed with my new heal target-of-target macro I setup my totems and earth elementals in the usual "X" formation and I pull Quag. Good news the macro works but with all 5 girls stopping DPS to heal target-of-target I gimped my DPS too much and ran into other problem. Twenty minutes later (Earth Ele cooldown) I tried it again and I had the same problem. So I decided to have the 4 girls DPS while I focused on healing the Ele's. I got him down to 4%. Twenty minutes later I tried the same strategy... I got him down to 2% - followed by a *LOT* of swearing.

So, I thought about how I could do it differently for a good 18 minutes and then it hit me. My problem with still my gimped DPS. Because my girl has the highest +dmg in the group I was still gimping myself. So on the girl with the lowest +dmg I made a heal target-of-target macro and put it on the same slot the Lightning Bolt sits on. Basically when I spam Lightning Bolt, this girl will spam heal target-of-target. So a few minutes later all the totems are down, all the Ele's are down and I pull the boss - yet again. To my surprise Quag went down!!! AND I had 4 Ele's still alive.

What I might do on tonights run(s) is make a small change to the macro(s) and implement a staggered cast sequence on 2 girls. So I'll have something like:


Girl 1 /castsequence [target=targettarget,help] Lesser Healing Wave; [harm] Lightning Bolt
Girl 2 /castsequence [harm] Lightning Bolt; [target=targettarget,help] Lesser Healing Wave

Hopefully at any given time 1 girl will be healing and the other will be DPSing, next cast they swap. I'm not sure if this will actually work out or if I just leave it to the boss fights only.

[Toned]

You can get away with 4 nukers 1 healer or 3 nukers and 2 healers. If you make everyone a healer you aren't killing shit.

[Freddman]

Tried my first heroic ( slave Pens) today using my four shamans and a +1500 healing priest, must say i got ownd by the trash :P
Think my dps is to low, because i had (if lucky) downed 1 mob and half on another mobs health before all my stoneclaw totems where down.

here is my armory: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Wildhammer&n=Ryloth
Got the same gear on all shamans, maybe iv better farm some LC rep and get that mace and bleed my eyes out in BG before i trie it again? :P

[Toned]

Learn2earthbind kite you will need to do this on most heroics untill you are geared. Practice doing it on normal shadow labs before the 2nd boss with those 4-5 mob pulls. Then once you get it down do it on heroic it becomes pretty easy.

[Freddman]

Learn2earthbind kite you will need to do this on most heroics untill you are geared. Practice doing it on normal shadow labs before the 2nd boss with those 4-5 mob pulls. Then once you get it down do it on heroic it becomes pretty easy.
That's an idea :)
Better try that!

[Tasty]

At the beginning.