First Heroic

[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.

[Queshank]

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.

[Gadzooks]

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.