fives hit 90 and went into 90 heroics, OUCH - Help required

hi everyone,

new team 4 frost dk + 1 resto shaman since 2 weeks ago for mop pvp/pve.

The normal dungeons were to begin with challenging yet doable as the trash were ok to do.

however, just hit 90, il 435, frosts all in blood presence like i usually do depending on how tough the enemy/environment and first thing that happens is.... BANG my team gets munched up and i go crazy to heal. wtf!

Now ive done heroics in previous expansions and mop appears to me the hardest trash, and the bosses are just nuts?

Together my team punch out at il435, 320k dps and can burn out 27mil in about 1 min or less, to me that uusally kills anything however the amount of damage received by trash and bosses seems to me is very high, my resto is struggling meaning i got to change my strategy.

Im no longer pve, mop for me is pvp and likely 5.3 pve again due to the nice changes... however the follow nerf is crippling and being a melee group its hard in most bg's due to being stuck around objects.

I need to farm heroics for JP to convert, the only way is to keep doing random to avoid the lockout.

my group composition is:

4 frost dk 1 resto shaman, setup for ae healing. frost presence for nuking, and blood for longer fights or pvp.

i lead from the HEALER, not the dk's. the dk's all act for tanks for me and spread the damage and my healing is ae so it works well but in the 90 heroics with little options to upgrade gear and being in some pvp gear im in catch 22.

i need some help out, ive hit a brick wall. i cannot farm as trash mobs i have hard time with and if i burn them quick wand keeping the dk's up its easy but i suffer mana issues. 50% mana loss from a trash pack of 5. thats too much? is this normally for fresh 90's entering heroics?

the only thing i am doing that is making things harder, and being all in blood presence i didnt expect this but i dont have a tank spec dk. all dps in blood presence.

Im thinking what i need to do is:

setup 1 dk as a blood tank.

does everyone experience this in mop fresh 90's? i seemed to be getting smacked up by trash and i have down the easiest boss in scarlet, and that was HARD. killed him in 1 minute flat in a burn down fight total dmg 27mil but using every cd/resource available and i killed him after my third attempt..

my old team was in wotlk, and was highly successfully but not v good for pvp. druid tank, 3 unholy dk, resto shammy.

my new team has been good up to hitting 90, now i feel im struggling to enjoy gearing up.

maybe some guidance or light, as of now im not really motivated because of this brick.

Team Funk/Twilz
The Maelstrom

I had the same problems when I got to 90 and walked into my first heroic. It was beyond frustrating. My setup is Pally Tank, Priest Disc, Mage Arcane, Warlock Destro, Shaman Elemental. My solution was to grind daily quests out and hit the world bosses until i was able to get some of the justice point epic gear. It took a bit of time but i was able to make money and get all my Rep to exalted which was nice. My group is now around 490 ilvl from doing dailies and world bosses and i've been able to rock most of the heroics now with the exception of 3 where i've had problems due to the mechanics of the encounters, but I'm sure I'll get them as well once i learn how to do it. I also don't have a dedicated healer now and my priest is able to heal all the heroics through Atonement by doing DPS (she pulls about 30k DPS right now). The rest of my DPS is at about 50-60k each and my tank is pulling about 20k which is still low compaired to some people I see hitting 100k but it's about average DPS for most people.

Keep at it and you will get the heroics down and then wonder why you had so much difficulty.

No, that isn't normal, but neither is trying to do heroics with four dps and no tank in your first month of multiboxing. I'd try switching to a more standard group with one designated/geared/enchanted tank and your healer doing a lot of spammed heals on that toon specifically. An unorthodox group will work for some things, but not others as you are discovering. When you are new to multiboxing sometimes going with the simplest and most proven ways is the best way to guarantee success. MOP tanks are designed with a lot more active mitigation that you are completely missing out on by being frost. Also make sure that you are enchanting and gemming your tank and healer, buy both of them the darkmoon faire trinkets if you don't have better. Take a good look at the stats and don't be afraid to use a few pieces of crafted pvp gear if that helps you get your ilevel up.


You get JP for killing specific bosses, not just random. I'd find a list of the easiest heroics and work on being able to kill those first. I know for me the easiest was mogushan and one of the two scarlets (not the one with the dog boss first).

TLDR; Spec tank and report back.

I have to agree with luxlunae that it'd be much more forgiving with an actual tank/dps/healer setup to start off with. AoE healing can only heal so much so fast (especially when you're undergeared), and if everyone in your party is taking damage then that's probably no good until you get the gear to soak up that damage (or heal through it).

It also helps to have a flexible setup in your software as well. If you're trying to jam everything onto one single mindless macro rotation (healing included), well there's not much flexibility to be had and I'm going to guess that there are CDs and other abilities that could be used at a much better time than just hoping they fire off in the rotation at the right time or ignoring them altogether because they're "too hard" to micromanage.

A lot of people get very comfortable (or lazy) with the ease of dungeon leveling and once they hit the top level where stats are normalized, it becomes a rude awakening and they're, more often than not, unprepared for it.

You also said your iLVL is ~435. Crafted PvE (iLVL 450) pieces on the AH should be dirt cheap at this point in the expansion unless your realm is a ghost town.

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1 resto shaman, setup for ae healing.

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the dk's all act for tanks for me and spread the damage and my healing is ae

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i suffer mana issues. 50% mana loss from a trash pack of 5. thats too much? is this normally for fresh 90's entering heroics?

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Tanking's already been covered, so I'll skip that. AoE healing by its very nature isn't efficient healing and certainly not when you're fresh into heroics. AOE healing should be considered triage to buy you time for real heals. And if you're driving from the healer, there is no reason whatsoever to mindlessly spam your healing.

I went into heroics in quest and rep pieces and I think there was only a handful of heroic encounters I couldn't do at the outset as a standard tank/healer/3DPS. Remember, your team is a team and they need to work together, not as a mass of chaos and prayers. CC trash when mobs are too hard. Conserve mana and use efficient healing. Use defensive cooldowns and interrupts/stuns. Don't spread your attention any thinner than need be. Be aware of encounter mechanics, positioning and movement. Gear will come and make it mindless again but brute-forcing hasn't been the name of the game in a while.

thanks for everyones input, its all very helpful. few things to bare in mind i've boxed from the mid days of TBC so im not new as i cannot recover my old account so i just made a new one. im rusty since wotlk as i originally stopped for break when cata hit. i was doing icc10, and dominating pvp and succesfully do all heroics np.

Some reasoning behind my setup, which is not configured properly yet as ive been waiting to hit 90 first to sort the healing macros for specific emergencies.

i will admit i am part part micro-managing for now to level quick as possible. However cd's, cc are not macro'd, they are fired off on demand, im not that lazy :) The team is consisting of dk's as this is a melee team for my pvp, not pve through i was expecting not so much of a brick wall entering heroics based on past experience. the team is basic geared and not gemmed or enchanted like you say etc

one of the key issues, from driving from the healer is control. i nomally drive if it were via the tank for pve but remember im not pve. im doing heroics since the nerf bat to bg's, iwt in bg's in just too risky i have already given this ago and i can do it but its alot of work and fear bombs sticke veryone around fences and tree's/under bridges etc

This group works very well in alot of situations, i admit the gear is terrible but shamans with conductivity heal better than some pugs which i find funny. im part pvp geared so ofc i will be losing stats for pvpp,resil.

The beauty of dk's is the ability to nuke, magic protection and semi tank depending on gear and the entire group consists of targetable combat res on demand. . These heroics without proper gear obviously shows my methods are not going to work in the gear setup and specialism.

i will probably do what i used to do, drive from the tank as i had little or no issues.

On the server im on, everything is very expensive and the market is being controlled as always so its all super expensive or you cant sell anything to instant under cuts.

gear is difficult to obtain, so im doing tol barad and daily's for pvp gear, i will setup 2 sets of gear as i obtain more valor. with 5.3 down the road pve might be more interesting again with the 65% resil base, makes everything more viable in both environments.

things to do:

re-do my macro system pvp, and pve in mind.
heal targeting, multitude of options for the circumstance. (healing is semi micromanaged as i do the direct healing depending on whats going on.)
dedicated blood dk setup on 1 of the dks.

if you want to add anything that may cast inspiration feel free to comment.

Twilz

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Originally Posted by boxblizzardd

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i will probably do what i used to do, drive from the tank as i had little or no issues.

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With four frost DKs you don't actually have a tank, right? I think that driving from the healer is probably fine but you need to dual spec one dk blood, for dungeons. Unless I'm missing something, which is possible.

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Originally Posted by luxlunae

With four frost DKs you don't actually have a tank, right? I think that driving from the healer is probably fine but you need to dual spec one dk blood, for dungeons. Unless I'm missing something, which is possible.

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ok few hours of revising the group with new mouseover macros for the resto, dps revised macros and a dedicated blood tank on request through secondary specialism i am now eating 90 heroic trash for breakfast in il435-il440 standard gear and starting from brew first boss was easy through im still in need of optimising the iwt and mouseovers as that can be difficult when trash drop quick but group takes lots of damage.

thanks for everyones input, this is a positive direction as opposed to being munched up for breakfast by trash! When thier gear is improved i will switch back to ae methods but for now its brains.

ax