Cata kicking my arse - undergeared?

Hi all,

With much satisfaction, and a ton of help from the community here, I have RAF'd a team of 5 feral druids to level 80 using Dungeon Finder (and AH upgrades along the way) exclusively after level 10. I was able to clear all but the toughest of WotLK bosses, and have everyone's gear score up to 230-240 (with a mix of AH greens and blues, and some self-earned dungeon quest rewards).

My tank bear has about 44k hp, about 34k armor, and my group does about 11-12k *combined* dps. The other 4 have about 35k hp.

I was all happy to do a Cata random (non-heroic), and killed the first 4-naga pull in the opening hallway of Throne of the Tides without much trouble - they hit harder than even heroic WotLK mobs, but was able to mow 'em down and keep up with the healing jusst fine. Then I cam across a Naz'Jar Sentinel, a single pull - and he is just humiliating me. He's got about 500k hp, which should be a long but sustainable fight I figure... but about 5 seconds in to the fight, he starts dropping a dot/effect on me (lie ablue water face/bubble), no cast time (so no way to interrupt), and it chews through my crew in about another 5 seconds - seems like about 8k dps incoming, which I've never seen anything like even on WotLK bosses.

SO my question - am I really *this* unprepared for Cata entry dungeons? Should my armor, hp, and dps be like 5x what they are right now? And for heaven's sake, if yes to that last question, where am I going to get that kind of gear at my level. I find it so hard to accept that a front door trash mob could wipe me so easily, I guess I'm looking for some guidance and sanity...

Thanks a ton!

The original cata dungeons are very tough to multibox. The hour of twilight dungeons are much easier, but not until you're geared.

But you shouldnt have too much trouble running dungeons at your level. My teams leveled alot through dungeons so I could skip the collection quests. Sounds like you just need to work on your macros and keybindings so you're able to move freely and have more control over each toon.

The Naz'Jar Sentinel you speak of has an ability that absorbs healing on you for 10 seconds. Its not any damage just cant be healed during that time. If I remember right he also drops green stuff on the ground your toons have to move out of.

I would advise doing some quests add picking up some greens. The "thanks for buying cata, here are you green epics" quest rewards (gear reset items) are worth it.

But anyways, skip water world immediately, and go to Blackrock Caverns http://www.wowhead.com/zone=4926 you will blow up the place compared to water world.

The cata instances are out of order IMHO as far as complexity goes, I and a lot of others too thought we should be able to blow up green level mobs and instead got our asses kicked.

You run BRC a few times quick and you will be geared here and there.

Stonecore is a bit harder, but depending on your comp it would be that hard, just realize the flow of the fights. The hard part was the last boss and moving out of void zones if your characters are insanely weak on mana.

If you dont know how to move your slaves independently, if you dont know how to or refuse to crowd control, if you cannot use 'the other spells' like ranged aoe, interrupts, and so forth smoothly the instances will be a big learning curve.

Cata and Wrath dungeons are a world apart. With Cata, Blizz seemed to decide that they wanted CC back, curing and interrupts should matter and things like that. There's not a whole lot of AOE tanking or "just heal through it".

With the guy you're talking about, you should cure the debuff, but the vital thing is moving. He's a "teaser" for the second boss, Ulthok. You need to move out of his green poison puddle {which he can throw anywhere, so watch your healer, too}, but not kite him so much that the puddles end up boxing you in.

If you want to get to 85 and the great Twilight dungeons and wonderful Looking For Raid, I would spend as little time as possible in Cata dungeons and heroics. The gear really isn't that great and it is frustrating to boot (of course, starting with Throne of Tides is starting with the worst of the whole lot).

So if you just want to get to the good stuff, I would get to 85 just by questing in the Cata zones, buy high ilvl stuff on the AH (look for the ilvl 377 PvP gear) and maybe do BGs to get a high enough gear score to be able to Queue for the Twilight Heroics, go in with your toons one at a time until you understand the fights and get some decent PvE gear, then Q 2-3 at a time, then you can solo them eventually. Once you get any toon to ilvl 372, run LFR for the amazing loot in there.

If you want to experience the (imho bad) content of Cata dungeons, you can certainly do that too to gear up. If you do, it will make you appreciate the Twilight dungeons and LFR that much more when you get there.

If you think that mob is bad, the first boss will make you ragequit WoW. I would avoid ToT until 85. Vortex Pinnacle is another nightmare waiting for you. Actually, pretty much every cata instance sucks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

If you think that mob is bad, the first boss will make you ragequit WoW. I would avoid ToT until 85. Vortex Pinnacle is another nightmare waiting for you. Actually, pretty much every cata instance sucks.

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Grand Vizier Ertan STILL gives me fits when I'm single boxing. The debuff applied by those tornadoes will some days be impossible to avoid, no matter what I do, and then that chain lightning just likes to eat your face after you get the debuff.

I don't think I cleared throne until level 83 or 84... it definitely is the worst. Do BRC and make sure you clear clear clear trash and you should have no problems if you look up the fight mechanics. You won't be able to just blow stuff up without knowing the mechanics but we have some great threads here that I found very helpful.

The PvP type gear, is fairly decent for a tanking druid.
For most classes, PvP gear is a substantial drop in PvE performance compared to similar iLV PvE gear.