2500 Gear Score Tank Downs ICC Lower Spire

So I dinged 80 on a new team on Friday and thought about the long grind that was ahead of me to get them geared up.

Lots of heroics to gather enough emblems of triumph to be able to...
do normal ICC 5-mans to collect some ilvl 219 gear to...
do heroics faster and build up enough gear and rep for head enchants to be able to...
do heroic ICC 5-mans for a few weeks to get some ilvl 232 gear to be able to...
get into groups every week for VoA10 and VoA25 and maybe start into ICC10

Made me tired just thinking about it. So instead, I just threw them into a couple of my solo ICC10 teams that I run each week to see what would happen.

I didn't buy or craft anything for the two mages, who did a pitiful 2100 DPS and had hit ratings of about 100. Of course, that was before they died, which happened very quickly when faced with any kind of AOE damage. If they survived more than 2 minutes it didn't matter b/c they were OOM. But who cares? They are just DPS - my other DPS toons made up for them and I was successful.

My two healers were a bit more critical, but I figured I'd throw two of them at everything by 3-healing instead of 2-healing on another team. They were able to survive AOE damage a bit better as the sources of AOE healing.

But my poor 2500 gear score tank! I did actually make her an ilvl 200 shield to get her to such a lofty gear score (LOL), and she entered ICC with a bit less than 21000 hit points. I was shocked that I was able to one-shot Marrowgar and Lady. I wiped about four times on Gunship before getting it down, then one-shotted Saurfang. It was quite humorous to see her health pinging from 10% to 100% over and over, but I got through it.

I really wouldn't have thought it possible, but with a 25% buff in ICC, even a so-so player with a tank wearing one purple, 3 blues, and the rest greens can succeed.

It is funny how the raiding progression ladder Blizzard created for WotLK has gotten compressed towards the end of the expansion (of course, help from eight "friends" to carry newbie toons through ICC doesn't hurt either).

behold the power of the 25% buff

I'd say behold the power of the first four bosses being over glorified trash fights. The buff just makes it crazysause.

Again skill > gearscore.

Lol true :P

man im going there next week 5 toons 5k gs then 5 toons well 4k tank in pvp gear and 4.2k huntard then 3k healer and dps lol should be a roit

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Originally Posted by Nejcha

I'd say behold the power of the first four bosses being over glorified trash fights. The buff just makes it crazysause.

Again skill > gearscore.

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In regards to the first four being a complete cakewalk, for 10 actual players I would totally agree. I can't imagine how any pug could wipe against them.

But before we give folks the wrong impression here, I guarantee that if you gave almost any WoW player (even most boxers) ten 6K gear score toons and told them to do Gunship, it would be a total wipefest for hours upon hours. They would probably eventually figure it out, but it would be a long, painful process. I'd hate for roflstomp (or others reading this thread) to get frustrated if they don't waltz in and one-shot everything.

So your last statement is right on the mark. It still takes some skill, strategy, and patience to 10-box even the first four. Just makes it more fun with a few sub-3K GS toons in the mix :D

Undergeared on EU-Arathor

Slowly working their way to the LK wearing nothing but iLvl200 blues with epic crafted buffs to gear.

None of them have a gearscore of over 3300.

What Mercurio is doing is far more impressive than the Undergeared project.

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Originally Posted by Owltoid

What Mercurio is doing is far more impressive than the Undergeared project.

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mines bigger

Well question is did you MT with that toon? Or did you use it together with a properly geared tank? Because it's my experience that besides 1 MT it only requires one plate class to be around. I've solo tanked marrowgar with the 10% buff in 10m normal mode, with a dps dk standing next to me.

My point being that a very poor geared tank (quest greens/blues) has probably more avoidance and an equal amount of health than a very well geared plate dps class. So in the end that doesn't seem to matter a lot as long as your MT has decent gear.

Of course this is still a very nice & fun achievement.

Very impressive, now do an undergeared healer too! ;)

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Originally Posted by Mercurio

It was quite humorous to see her health pinging from 10% to 100% over and over, but I got through it.

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Sounds like life as a healer in random heroics. I swear, if I had a shorter GCD I could keep some of those people alive.

Grats man! Always amazed at what you manage to accomplish. Almost makes me never want to consider 10 boxing since I doubt I could even come close.

- Souca -

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Originally Posted by zenga

My point being that a very poor geared tank (quest greens/blues) has probably more avoidance and an equal amount of health than a very well geared plate dps class. So in the end that doesn't seem to matter a lot as long as your MT has decent gear.

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You are absolutely right, Zenga. The first two fights really don't require two well geared tanks (though it sure is helpful).

My MT in that team has a GS of 5121, so she's decently, though not greatly geared.

The breakdown of a crapgear tank's impact imho:

With Marrowgar you can completely solo tank him with no other toons even near the tank - the tank just takes all the cleave damage himself and it can be a challenge to heal through.

With Lady I always solo tank phase 1 (tank two adds while the DPS blows through the third so fast it doesn't need to be tanked) and if you have a paladin tank you can basically solo tank phase 2. After getting 5 stacks of insignificance I was happy to note that Righteous Defense still keeps her on the tank for 6 seconds or so and if you tank her away from the rest of your team, she will have disengaged, moved over to them, and raised her hand to one-shot someone just as your Righteous Defense cooldown wears off and you can taunt her back to you again. I actually found this out solo-tanking her in a PuG months ago before I started solo 10-boxing and the other tank got killed in phase 1 (lol). Solo tanking her in phase 2 makes it much more exciting for the DPS who think they are about to die every 8 seconds. ;)

With Gunship you really need two decently geared tanks - High Overlord Saurfang or Muradin start knocking the snot out of whatever tank heads over to the other ship unless you get the Mage down very quickly, so optimizing that took me a few tries.

With Saurfang you can play a bit with the Rune of Blood by taunting him a second or two with the crapgear tank then taunting back with the decentgear tank so that the crapgear tank isn't tanking the boss except for a few seconds each rotation.

The crapgear tank didn't end up with any drops from that run, but my 2500 GS mage on that team now has a bunch of greens along with a shiny new Frost Needle and Muradin's Spyglass. Funny, but that mage doesn't even have an offhand equipped (I messed up and deleted the quest ones I got while leveling) and that sword is still a huge upgrade over the heirloom staff he was using.

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Originally Posted by Souca

Almost makes me never want to consider 10 boxing since I doubt I could even come close.

- Souca -

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LOL, had to read that 3 times before it made sense to me.

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Originally Posted by Multibocks

Very impressive, now do an undergeared healer too! ;)

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Did undergeared healer... with 5500 GS tank :rolleyes:

Doing BOTH the undergeared healer AND the crapgear tank on the same team? :eek:

I'm not that big of a glutton for punishment.

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Originally Posted by Mercurio

You are absolutely right, Zenga. The first two fights really don't require two well geared tanks (though it sure is helpful).

My MT in that team has a GS of 5121, so she's decently, though not greatly geared.

The breakdown of a crapgear tank's impact imho:

With Marrowgar you can completely solo tank him with no other toons even near the tank - the tank just takes all the cleave damage himself and it can be a challenge to heal through.

With Lady I always solo tank phase 1 (tank two adds while the DPS blows through the third so fast it doesn't need to be tanked) and if you have a paladin tank you can basically solo tank phase 2. After getting 5 stacks of insignificance I was happy to note that Righteous Defense still keeps her on the tank for 6 seconds or so and if you tank her away from the rest of your team, she will have disengaged, moved over to them, and raised her hand to one-shot someone just as your Righteous Defense cooldown wears off and you can taunt her back to you again. I actually found this out solo-tanking her in a PuG months ago before I started solo 10-boxing and the other tank got killed in phase 1 (lol). Solo tanking her in phase 2 makes it much more exciting for the DPS who think they are about to die every 8 seconds. ;)

With Gunship you really need two decently geared tanks - High Overlord Saurfang or Muradin start knocking the snot out of whatever tank heads over to the other ship unless you get the Mage down very quickly, so optimizing that took me a few tries.

With Saurfang you can play a bit with the Rune of Blood by taunting him a second or two with the crapgear tank then taunting back with the decentgear tank so that the crapgear tank isn't tanking the boss except for a few seconds each rotation.

The crapgear tank didn't end up with any drops from that run, but my 2500 GS mage on that team now has a bunch of greens along with a shiny new Frost Needle and Muradin's Spyglass. Funny, but that mage doesn't even have an offhand equipped (I messed up and deleted the quest ones I got while leveling) and that sword is still a huge upgrade over the heirloom staff he was using.

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Makes a lot of sense to me. Though the only drawback to solo tanking marrowgar (i.e. without any plate dps or off tank) while 10 boxing is that you'll need a bunch of extra buttons to use each and every cooldown. He can hit like a truck. My tank is fairly well geared (i have no idea about the gs, but can equip a 264 tank piece in every slot except for weap/shield, though i prefer some lower level pieces depending on what gear i'm wearing/ ) for icc 10m normal, and solo tanking means that I really can't play on auto pilot. So i can imagine for 10 boxing an off tank will help alot.

For lady D: i'm with you. So many players can't think out of the box ... I told the off tank a few weeks ago to go dps spec for that fight. Huge argument. 'How are you gonna tank the adds in p1'? Me: 'how do you think we do it on 25m?'

For gunship ... i wonder if hunters can reach the mage from their own ship.

My motto is still: the faster you kill, the less healing you need. I could convince our raid to go with 2 healers until dreamwalker/sindra. And it pays off. With 3 healers players tend to feel very safe, and they seem to be less raid aware. While 2 healers (with very high output in our case) seems to improve the concentration and eventually leading to better results.

Anyone keep up the good work and get that poor green tank of you some crafted pieces.

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Originally Posted by zenga

For gunship ... i wonder if hunters can reach the mage from their own ship.

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Nope, I tried that. It is really a pretty good distance you have to jump to get on the other ship, then the mage is set back too far there. But good thought. Out of the box thinking helps on lots of fights when you are 10-boxing. Most ideas that I have and think are cool don't pan out, but some are golden.

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Originally Posted by Mercurio

Did undergeared healer... with 5500 GS tank :rolleyes:

Doing BOTH the undergeared healer AND the crapgear tank on the same team? :eek:

I'm not that big of a glutton for punishment.

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we did the first 4 bosses in icc lower spire with 1 tank with 4.5k gs, 1 tank with a 4.3k gs and the tank healer had a 3.9k gs :D

we wiped a few times on the first 2 bosses, wiped a lot on the quest miniboss and then called it for the night... went back the next night and 1 shotted gunship and deathbringer :D

Admittedly our other healers were well geared.

Yeah, doing things with low GS healers is certainly tough. Check out the gear scores on my healers at the end of Pinot's "Pantero and Legalism Down Marrowgar" video.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=30906

I know that this has nothing to do with multiboxing per se, but it my view on GS...

GS is possibly the worst thing that I have ever come across while playing the game.

It used to be people looking for pugs for their guild raids asking for a certain level of DPS from a person before they could join the raid. Then it became link the 'achievement' and have a certain level of dps before your could join the raid...

Now you are getting GS elitists who, not only require the achievement but a high level of GS just to be considered for the raid.

I have 4 toons that have Storming the Citadel achievement in 10man, with 2 of those having it in the 25man version as well, and my tank is the lowest GS of the lot.

I have already proved that I can tank the first part of the raid, but people just dont care because they want people who are, in their opinions, geared to do 5-6 bosses without a problem. With the right healers healing me, and the right dps nuking the bosses, there is no reason why I couldnt do at least the lower spire and plagueworks (and probably Dreamwalker) before I run out of steam gearwise and they need to get a better tank for the job.

About 50% of the guys who do the run in ICC10 with the guild are undergeared but we are there for the fun of it and wipes arent going to piss us off because we are not in any real hurry to race through it without wiping because we are enjoying ourselves as we go along. We have had a couple of pugs join us, had a good time and turned around and said that if their current guild wasnt full of friends, they would be applying to join us.