First Heroic

Well, months ago my wife and I started multiboxing a team. prot pally, holy priest, 2x frost mages, and an elemental shaman. We'd go weeks where we didn't play at all. Then we'd have weeks where we played every night for 4 hours.

Last night we finally hit 80th on our last characters. We did it by running Halls of Lightning. And Loken dropped his defense trinket which put my paladin's defense at 536. At 80th he only had 19k hit points and 20k armor...but we thought what the heck since his defense is 536 we ran Gun Drak Heroic. We wiped 7 times. Tweaking and trying, positioning etc. But we finished it. AND I'M SO DAMN HAPPY I CANT STAND IT. I wanna get home from work to run it again and farm more badges and lewts. And then run heroic nexus cuz it's today's daily. And ...and....and. We're already talking about working up another 5 and 10 boxing naxrammas.

Just wanted to crow about having gotten our first team (we have 2 other teams at 60th) to 80th...and successfully completing our first heroic immediately on hitting 80th. Thanks very much for questions answered, guides posted, suggestions in conversations I've only lurked in. This board is just great. I had no idea it was going to be so satisfying to complete our first heroic. Granted we are a 3 boxer and a 2 boxer teaming up, so it's easier than for you hardcore 5 boxers ...but it's still incredibly challenging and fun.

I felt the same way after clearing Gundrak for the first time...congrats!

Congrats! I remember not being able to do it all at once when i first hit 80. I ended up slowly gearing out toons, did some guild raids, and a lot of pugs before i had the gear to have it on farm. Kudos to getting a heroic down so soon after hitting 80, thats a real accomplishment.

A guildie of mine had to kill Loken something like 30 times to drop the defense trinket... I got it on my 3rd or 4th loken kill. It will only get easier for you, once you start equipping the badge gear, which is all better than anything naxx has to offer, even in 25 man.

Also, make sure you do Direbrew as often as you can, those stamina trinkets are very nice to have, I currently stack 2, since getting more DEF on other items. The other trinkets are also very nice, and much easier to obtain than the badge ones, given the way the new badge system works (it seems a shame to have to downgrade badges to get mediocre gear, instead of using the badges on really good stuff...)

nice! I started only Dualboxing but recently aquired three more accounts. They are about seven levels from making 80. Cant wait.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Queshank

Well, months ago my wife and I started multiboxing a team. prot pally, holy priest, 2x frost mages, and an elemental shaman. We'd go weeks where we didn't play at all. Then we'd have weeks where we played every night for 4 hours.

Last night we finally hit 80th on our last characters. We did it by running Halls of Lightning. And Loken dropped his defense trinket which put my paladin's defense at 536. At 80th he only had 19k hit points and 20k armor...but we thought what the heck since his defense is 536 we ran Gun Drak Heroic. We wiped 7 times. Tweaking and trying, positioning etc. But we finished it. AND I'M SO DAMN HAPPY I CANT STAND IT. I wanna get home from work to run it again and farm more badges and lewts. And then run heroic nexus cuz it's today's daily. And ...and....and. We're already talking about working up another 5 and 10 boxing naxrammas.

Just wanted to crow about having gotten our first team (we have 2 other teams at 60th) to 80th...and successfully completing our first heroic immediately on hitting 80th. Thanks very much for questions answered, guides posted, suggestions in conversations I've only lurked in. This board is just great. I had no idea it was going to be so satisfying to complete our first heroic. Granted we are a 3 boxer and a 2 boxer teaming up, so it's easier than for you hardcore 5 boxers ...but it's still incredibly challenging and fun.

---

cool

Why not exchange one of your mages for a warlock to get more caster dps n synergy? What kind of classes are you planning for your second team?

Day 2 sees the completion of 4 more heroics. We started Gundrak again yesterday afternoon when we got off work and it was a bitch. All the fights we thought we'd figured out the night before...weren't working for us. We wiped once on Moorabi (a boss we one shotted the night before) and 4 times on the Drakkari Colossus (i hate those mojo puddles) before giving up. And then we took a nap.

Then we logged on fresh a few hours later....and managed to finish the colossus. Took us another couple tries and we realized we downed him more due to luck than skill the night before. Then we thought what the heck let's try Utgarde Keep, it's sposed to be easy. Wow was it ever. Our tank got some decent gear upgrades out of our two Gundrak runs, so we pretty much walked thru UK without a single death. I had to doublecheck to make sure it wasn't on normal.

Buoyed by our ease with UK we went on to Drak Tharon...an instance we ran regularly to get to 80th. And waltzed right thru it too! So now we're feeling pretty cocky and we went on to try The Nexus since it was the daily heroic. We were dreading the mage boss that gave us trouble when we first started running it. And she gave us a bit of trouble, but on the 2nd attempt we killed her. Our priest went oom on the final boss (our dps is still pretty gimp) but our tank solo killed her with about 200 hit points to spare... what a rush!

Okay it's 2 in the morning let's goto bed. No wait...let's see what we can do in Violet Hold. Who cares if we wipe, we made a bunch of money off doing the daily heroic. 1st boss woot lucked out...the bird. 2nd boss woot lucked out again...the lava dog. Last boss caught us by surprise and we wiped. We were getting lazy and when she did her first summon we didn't react fast enough. Can't quit now even tho it's 3am! We let everything reset and re ran the whole thing and took her down, again with most of the group wiping but who cares she can't rez herself...we can.

2nd day of heroics and we're already at 25 badges and revered Kirin Tor on the mages/priest. No kids this weekend...they're at the ex' wive's....so 20 more today and 20 more tomorrow cuz we're gonna run these 5 again and again til they're on autopilot before moving on.

I'm so addicted right now. It's like a brand new game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naysayer

cool

Why not exchange one of your mages for a warlock to get more caster dps n synergy? What kind of classes are you planning for your second team?

---

We have 2 warlocks at 60th waiting in the wings. Just gotta get the time to level em up.

In fact, we have a whole guild/stable that we leveled up during RAF to allow us to mix and match. We formed a guild on Runetotem called <The Coven> that has 23 characters between 60th and 80th that are just our's. Our 2nd group will probably be components of our first group mixed with shamans, warlocks, whatever. As neither of us knows a darn thing about playing warlocks, we'll probably duo our two warlocks by questing to 80th. So it'll take a looooong time...cuz we're busy with Team 1 :) Then the debate is if we each 5 box and try 10 manning, do we RAF and level up a fresh crop, or transfer 5 to the new accounts..../shrug. Ah well it'll be a bit away from now we'll deal with it then.

Any multiboxers on Runetotem wanna team up for Naxxrammas?? :)

Quote:

---

Well, months ago my wife and I started multiboxing a team.

---

Your Wife?!?! How???????????

My wife hates WoW with a passion! I've tried so many times to get her to play... :(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SFbase

Your Wife?!?! How???????????

My wife hates WoW with a passion! I've tried so many times to get her to play... :(

---

I have the same problem, my wife says im having an affair w/ WOW and she gets downright HOSTILE about it... mmm yeah I LIKE wow and I fool around w/ her regularily, but I LOVE you honey!!!! I SWEAR!!

Get me to play?!?!?! He better not try to stop me! He plays what I want to play and he damn well better like it!

Sacrifyse

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sacrifyse

Get me to play?!?!?! He better not try to stop me! He plays what I want to play and he damn well better like it!

Sacrifyse

---

Yes dear. Would you like a back rub while you play?

(A wife who plays wow is a double edged sword)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SFbase

Your Wife?!?! How???????????

My wife hates WoW with a passion! I've tried so many times to get her to play... :(

---

That sucks.

The main reason we play wow together is there were times in the last few years we were living paycheck to paycheck. 30 dollars a month for pretty much all of our entertainment was a hell of a good way to save money. Cable television? What for, we play wow. Goto the bar and drop 100 bucks for a single night? What for, we play wow. Goto the movie for 40 bucks? What for, we play wow.

Obviously things have changed....as we now pay 90 bucks a month for 6 accounts and are seriously considering adding 4. But since we still don't watch television, and we still dont like paying 100 bucks to goto the bar, and the movie theatre is uncomfortable anyway....it's still cheaper than most of that anyway.

Hit her with that angle :)

I love hearing that excitement in your post!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Queshank

I had to doublecheck to make sure it wasn't on normal.

---

lol - I remember doing this a few times.



My second team just hit 80 and I'm feeling the drag. Its prolly just me but I feel like the way they have gear setup is just giving me the blahs. I'm thinking I'll take a break for awhile and try to capture that excitement again after another patch.

Can't wait for cataclysm.

I can remember a few times thinking to myself "Is this thing on normal?". Then scrolling back and checking that I did indeed loot badges. Good times.

lol - yeah, I can do HGrundrak now in 30mins - the mobs blow up so quickly I have to check to see if I'm on normal. I went to H halls of stone and got a wake up call though, the mobs there hit really hard - ouch. Finally did HUP a couple of nights ago - got a real sense of achievement as that place was always a killer for me and I'd been avoiding it, but 3 magma totems and chain lightning sorted out the gauntlet nicely. I might start farming it for the sword.

What really helped early on was food/flasks/potions with +stam +hit +spell +haste +crit whatever etc - they really made the difference, expensive but if you shop around you can get some bargains. I keyed up health pots on key number 5 and would tap that to save mana/time/dps for a LHW. What's nice now is the new insciption recipe that gives you a massive stam buff, combine that with some pots and it's a massive increase. Also the first bits of gear I went for was in WG, really nice +hit items with loads of +stam. More stam = less healing = more dps. My shammies run with 20+k stam now and can stand in poison and yawn.

I tried H Gundrak 3 times last night, and got my butt stomped, hard - the snake boss and Moorabi 3-4 shotted my pally each time, and the snake packs do too much damage to the pally, too - dps is averaging 1200-1400 on everyone but the pally and the priest. I had'nt planned on going in, but I'm finishing up quests there for loremaster, what the heck.

Gah. Whack whack whack whack. Dead.

So, I had another "doh" moment, and realized my defense rating is still way too low, so I went broke gemming and enchanting her, and still only got to 532 - a couple of days of dailies and normal instance runs should get me the last couple of epic gems to get that 535, then I'll try again. Oh, and I need revered Argent Crusade for the head enchant, so it's a while of Slave to Saronite and Pa'troll to get it (I'm finished with all of the quests but two in Icecrown, if you can believe that - the phasing for all 5 is really messed up somehow, and they can't see each other in the area where the quests are)

The only option after this is to PUG/PVP the pally, which I'm not looking forward to, I really want to avoid that.

You should do ok with 532 defense. Make sure you have every passive defense ability up. Sacred shield before fight, keep up holy shield and spam that flash heal. On Moorabi, if you can't interupt his transform then be ready for large group heals, like a mini Loken. Once you have 535 defense you can try the first 2 bosses in HoL or do trollgore ( skip novas and king dred) and take out thoranja in dtk.

Poked my head into H-Gundrak last night; was my team’s first heroic encounter as well.
/shrug – snake boss went down toot sweet, every one but Pally got the achievement. Moorabi got smoked too; couldn’t coordinate stopping him from transforming so we missed the achievement; he hits pretty hard but nothing that my Shaman couldn’t handle.
Gave the Elemental a shot, but wiped; I need to work on movement for this fight.

For gearing up I strongly suggest spending time in ToC normal; my Paladin sports just over 28k hp now unbuffed.
She is sitting right on the Crit Immune threshold; the two piece set of Deadly Gladiator gear with 50 resilience bonus helped get her over the tipping point.

The balance of the team is between 12-1500 spell power; my Resto Shaman gets priority on the drops.
I still lack the tanking belt and gloves from ToC normal; Paletres has not been kind to me nor has the BK; we keep getting the same drops.

When I look at the amount of healing done, I am amazed at how much my Shadow Priest adds; she is like having a druid tossing HoT’s on my Tank all throughout the fight, and allows my Shaman to focus on the Tank as the other members get a continual feed of HP through both the Spriest and the Shaman totem. For me personally I plan to continue working on dailies for gold; I don’t want to PuG for gear since the whole reason I started this m-box gig was to see if I could do it.

With my entry into Heroics over the weekend, I know this is possible; it will just take time and patience.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gadzooks

I tried H Gundrak 3 times last night, and got my butt stomped, hard - the snake boss and Moorabi 3-4 shotted my pally each time, and the snake packs do too much damage to the pally, too - dps is averaging 1200-1400 on everyone but the pally and the priest. I had'nt planned on going in, but I'm finishing up quests there for loremaster, what the heck.

Gah. Whack whack whack whack. Dead.

So, I had another "doh" moment, and realized my defense rating is still way too low, so I went broke gemming and enchanting her, and still only got to 532 - a couple of days of dailies and normal instance runs should get me the last couple of epic gems to get that 535, then I'll try again. Oh, and I need revered Argent Crusade for the head enchant, so it's a while of Slave to Saronite and Pa'troll to get it (I'm finished with all of the quests but two in Icecrown, if you can believe that - the phasing for all 5 is really messed up somehow, and they can't see each other in the area where the quests are)

The only option after this is to PUG/PVP the pally, which I'm not looking forward to, I really want to avoid that.

---

Our toons had okay gear by the time we tried our first heroic, simply because we ran instances all the way to 80th and did very little questing. And the whole time I was keeping in mind my 535 defense goal. So we would farm an instance for a certain piece of defense gear until it dropped.

We wiped 3 times on the snake boss before we figured him out. Since then we've done him 3 more times with minimal difficulty. The drakkari colossus was our frustration point in Gundrak. We wiped 5 times on him our first try. Last night was our first time downing him without at least one death. Oddly enough, the final boss we have 1 shotted every time even the first. He's the easiest boss in Gundrak from our perspective. I really think the key for us was having at least CLOSE to 535 defense for heroics on our tank. And of course having a dedicated healer helps immensely :) 2 people 5 boxing is probably exponentially easier than 1 person 5 boxing.

In our first couple days of running heroics, we killed several bosses with only the paladin standing (yay bubble and lay on hands). Every heroic run has made every encounter that much easier. In one weekend of nonstop playing (cuz we couldn't stop) .. we've managed to go from 23k hit points buffed on our paladin tank, to 31k hit points buffed. He's a jewelcrafter so was able to throw a couple 51 stamina gems in sockets. (Beamer on Runetotem if you want to see where we're at comparison wise). And I can tell you what quests and stuff we did on the side to get a defense item here and there. If a green "of the champion" piece of gear dropped that had more defense than what I had equipped, even if it had 2x the stamina and was blue gear, I equipped it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Harem

I love hearing that excitement in your post!




lol - I remember doing this a few times.



My second team just hit 80 and I'm feeling the drag. Its prolly just me but I feel like the way they have gear setup is just giving me the blahs. I'm thinking I'll take a break for awhile and try to capture that excitement again after another patch.

Can't wait for cataclysm.

---

I could see that happening easily on a 2nd group. We started our 2nd group of dps. We included a druid simply because we're tired of seeing all the leather drops. We've now run entire heroics and gotten nothing but leather drops. We have an 80 paladin tank and 80 priest on hold (our prior mains before we started 5 boxing) to group up as a paladin/priest/warlock/druid/shaman team.

Then we might move team 2 to new accounts and try 10 boxing naxxramas.... and hopefully that'll recapture the excitement of accomplishing something new for us.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rocky Rhode

Poked my head into H-Gundrak last night; was my team’s first heroic encounter as well.
/shrug – snake boss went down toot sweet, every one but Pally got the achievement. Moorabi got smoked too; couldn’t coordinate stopping him from transforming so we missed the achievement; he hits pretty hard but nothing that my Shaman couldn’t handle.
Gave the Elemental a shot, but wiped; I need to work on movement for this fight.

For gearing up I strongly suggest spending time in ToC normal; my Paladin sports just over 28k hp now unbuffed.
She is sitting right on the Crit Immune threshold; the two piece set of Deadly Gladiator gear with 50 resilience bonus helped get her over the tipping point.

The balance of the team is between 12-1500 spell power; my Resto Shaman gets priority on the drops.
I still lack the tanking belt and gloves from ToC normal; Paletres has not been kind to me nor has the BK; we keep getting the same drops.

When I look at the amount of healing done, I am amazed at how much my Shadow Priest adds; she is like having a druid tossing HoT’s on my Tank all throughout the fight, and allows my Shaman to focus on the Tank as the other members get a continual feed of HP through both the Spriest and the Shaman totem. For me personally I plan to continue working on dailies for gold; I don’t want to PuG for gear since the whole reason I started this m-box gig was to see if I could do it.

With my entry into Heroics over the weekend, I know this is possible; it will just take time and patience.

---

Still haven't even looked at normal ToC. Dunno why. We always forget it's there I guess.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Queshank

Still haven't even looked at normal ToC. Dunno why. We always forget it's there I guess.

---

Jousting is evil, imo. Several folks here have made good guides to handling the encounter, but I just haven't pulled it off yet. I probably need to spend an evening or two getting my rear end kicked to see whether or not I can farm this.

Congrats on your first heroic great work!

I remember my first H i completed i was so happy : ) I ran a prot warrior and 5x elemental shaman team when i first started my heroics with many attemps, wipes and big repair bills i got to just started farming only the bosses i could kill maybe first one or the first 2 in each heroic i could till i was able to buy gear with emblems. yeah i started out with as many crafted peaces of gear i could make and just went at it. Dont give up the more gear you get the easyer the runs get.
Now my team is well geared I changed my warrior for a prot pally with only green drops and some blue boe gear that i had picked up along the way 512D and 24k hp and the 1h axe from the zul drak group quest i was able to clear all heroics i was already clearing with my warrior only thing was i just had to heal more and dps a little slower.

First Heroic Team: Deviteman (prot warrior) 4x Elemental Shamans Xpepsi, Xcoke, Xdrpepper and Xsprite ( US Bomechewer)
Second Heroic Team: Zuzana (prot Pally) 4x Elemental Shamans Xpepsi, Xcoke, Xdrpepper and Xsprite ( US Bomechewer)

Now that i can farm heroics pretty easy I sub in one of my alts and just keep them on follow or I bring in a guild mate.

Reg ToC farming tips:
I farm and run guild mates with my 5box team all the time through reg ToC. Simple rule with the jousting in have everyone stack and use a assist party1 macro made this way every toon attacks the same target 3 thrusts 50k hp and the mob is dead next target. same for next 2 groups and 3 mains now the trick is to refresh mounts on alts when they get low hp dont let anyone get dismounted in your group.. before last patch I use to kite the last mob to the door and run out. YOU DONT have to do this anymore they auto reset to the gate once the last one is downed. I would have a chanter in your group at all times cause its a abyss farming if you cant use the gear.

Macro used:
/assist party1
/cast Shield-Breaker

ps: if you use the ? icon to make your macro it will change to the shield breaker icon automaticly when you mount up.

Once you use the macro all alts target your target and then just use default attack key 1 = thrust
your defense shield can be casted at the same time as when you thrust because they do not share the same globle CD so keep your shields up and take less dmg. I hope this post helps and happy farming : )

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Queshank

Our toons had okay gear by the time we tried our first heroic, simply because we ran instances all the way to 80th and did very little questing. And the whole time I was keeping in mind my 535 defense goal. So we would farm an instance for a certain piece of defense gear until it dropped.

We wiped 3 times on the snake boss before we figured him out. Since then we've done him 3 more times with minimal difficulty. The drakkari colossus was our frustration point in Gundrak. We wiped 5 times on him our first try. Last night was our first time downing him without at least one death. Oddly enough, the final boss we have 1 shotted every time even the first. He's the easiest boss in Gundrak from our perspective. I really think the key for us was having at least CLOSE to 535 defense for heroics on our tank. And of course having a dedicated healer helps immensely :) 2 people 5 boxing is probably exponentially easier than 1 person 5 boxing.

In our first couple days of running heroics, we killed several bosses with only the paladin standing (yay bubble and lay on hands). Every heroic run has made every encounter that much easier. In one weekend of nonstop playing (cuz we couldn't stop) .. we've managed to go from 23k hit points buffed on our paladin tank, to 31k hit points buffed. He's a jewelcrafter so was able to throw a couple 51 stamina gems in sockets. (Beamer on Runetotem if you want to see where we're at comparison wise). And I can tell you what quests and stuff we did on the side to get a defense item here and there. If a green "of the champion" piece of gear dropped that had more defense than what I had equipped, even if it had 2x the stamina and was blue gear, I equipped it.

---

My pally is 24k unbuffed, 29k buffed.

I hear what you and everyone is saying, it's awesome. I'll figure it out, this is why I MB. :)

I still have upgrades for the team to get, and gems, and enchants, so I'm fine with dailies with occasional forays into dungeons to test myself. I swapped in the Lock for HOL normal, and did very, very well, it's a noticeable boost on the tank with the defense rating - and I'm redoing my heal buttons and making several "Heal The Tank" buttons, and using HOTs from the druid in the mix, along with innervate.

I also need/want to raise an alchemist, to make flasks. I have a max level cook making raid food.

I just need one Heroic I can farm, to start collecting badges, and then once I have a good mix of badge gear, it's ToC time, or whatever is current (probably the new IC 5 man).

It'd be nice to go into Cata with a 5 man team that can jump into instances right away. :)

I felt the same way a couple nights ago. I got my slaves going again (what the heck) and hit up heroic UK.

I did it wipe free and I didn't have to drink every trash pull. It was not the nightmare I remembered when i tried it a few months back =D. Probably because my tank and healer gear have gotten upgrades with the new badge loots and h toc.

Actually, before I hit up a heroic I made myself run regular toc several times to get some epics for my dps shamen. You would think mail wearing caster class would be able to use a lot of drops but it was actually pretty frustrating - the amount of stuff that got melted shocked me but I still recommend it.

My team is prot warrior, holy priest, and 3 awfully geared elemental shammies. I did a gear check on them and their score is like just under 1400 and they're not fit to pug nax10. ouch.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kraemder

I felt the same way a couple nights ago. I got my slaves going again (what the heck) and hit up heroic UK.

I did it wipe free and I didn't have to drink every trash pull. It was not the nightmare I remembered when i tried it a few months back =D. Probably because my tank and healer gear have gotten upgrades with the new badge loots and h toc.

Actually, before I hit up a heroic I made myself run regular toc several times to get some epics for my dps shamen. You would think mail wearing caster class would be able to use a lot of drops but it was actually pretty frustrating - the amount of stuff that got melted shocked me but I still recommend it.

My team is prot warrior, holy priest, and 3 awfully geared elemental shammies. I did a gear check on them and their score is like just under 1400 and they're not fit to pug nax10. ouch.

---

Isn't it annoying melting stuff (I like that term :) ) when you still need upgrades?

Yesterday we managed to squeeze in two heroic runs. Every single boss dropped leather. We don't have a leather wearer. We have 3 clothies, a mail and a plate wearer. The amount of leather that seems to drop in our daily runs is really starting to annoy me. It's why we restructured our 2nd group to include a druid so at least SOMEONE benefits from epic leather pants. Even if they're the wrong spec.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by accretion

Jousting is evil, imo. Several folks here have made good guides to handling the encounter, but I just haven't pulled it off yet. I probably need to spend an evening or two getting my rear end kicked to see whether or not I can farm this.

---

jousting is super easy once you know the trick. it's actually the easiest part of the event next to the pally 2nd boss IMO.

trick is as follows

for the initial waves of 3x3. just shield up, and assist main and thrust em down. stay in one spot and pull them to you with shield breaker. dont get fancy. you should kill all 9 with maybe 5% health lost on one toon.

for the 3 jousting bosses. all assist on one. shield breaker when they run, thrust when they get close. dont get fancy. slow and steady WILL win every time. the key that made this part trivial for me is knowing that you can jump from horse to horse when you want without being knocked down first. fight the bosses near some of the fresh horses near the side of the wall, and when you notice one of your team members starting to dip below say.... around 33% health or so, just run them over to the fresh horse and right click on it. instant full heal. horses seem to respawn though the joust never lasted long enough for me to confirm. but just keep doing this, and have this macro

/follow party1
/assist party1

set and bound on alts so they can follow your main while you are all mounted up. the rest is all trivial, just time consuming. it usually takes me around 7 min max to get through the opening speech to when the 2nd boss spawns. havent really tried farming this place again ever since they offered the option to skip the opening intro so i dont know how fast i can do it now. but now that the bosses run away after you dismount them, it's stupid easy as you have all the time you need to setup for the actual toe to toe fight.

How geared do you need to be (mainly tank) for regular ToC vs other Heroics? Like should I gear up my new bear tank and try to tackle the easier heroics, or should I just go straight to normal ToC?

Well... my 2 cents:

Team: Paly tank, Holy Priest, DPS hunter mage and boomkin all hit 80 about 2 weeks ago.

I geared up just doing the first 2 bosses of TOC for about a week (skipped black knight as I just cant seem to get straffing right yet). Sure... i could have wiped a ton and kept at it, but figured I should gear up first.

After a week of that (about 20 runs), i decided to give Heroic Gundrak a shot. Breezed though the entire zone. Then UK and Nexus were all a breeze. Think I will farm them for a while before moving on. I find those heroics to be a TON easier than I thought they would be.

I ran ToC (normal) from the get go, we did 3-champs loot box; reset/repeat.

Once my Tank got closer to Crit immune we began to learn the Pally boss…I now call him Edric the Panzy….Paletress is and always will be a Pita…Black Knight just took getting my healer geared up enough to survive phase II.

Once we cleared ToC (normal) several times it was off to (H) Gundrak.

Last night my team began (H) ToC; wiped a few times getting use to the added damage in (H) jousting; reset once as we got the Hunter & Rogue….ended up with Warrior, Mage, Shaman. Paletress came in next....

Current plan is to run (H) Gundrak, (H) ToC Champs and Eadric, (H) DrakTh Keep nightly for gear and badges. Fitting all this in along with the mandatory dailies for rep is time consuming.

Since the last time I posted in this thread...my Pally has gone from 28k to 36k HP buffed; now crit immune to an 83 level. Gear comes fast ....as I stated above...just need patience

We decided to try TOC (normal) for the first time last night. It was pretty darn easy, especially using Jimbo's SMASH 12&4 technique.

5 abyss crystals.

Ran it again today to see if we could remember it (we weren't sober last night).

5 abyss crystals.

I think I'm going to be more frustrated by the crappy leather drops than I am excited by the upgrades in ToC. Maybe we'll try heroic sometime later this week.