WotLK heroics sorted by difficulty

[Dominian]

Man I gotta say, I just hit 80 yesterday on my team and i got spanked HARD in heroics. I tried Azjol-Nerub, Old Kingdom, and Utgard Keep and made it to first boss in each place without too much hassle (few wipes on trash every now and then) but each of the bosses just wiped the floor with me. I think for those of us who are controlling the entire team and running a tank+4 team, you really want to gear up the tank a bit before heading into heroics.

I'm just going to farm up the trash in heroics (and maybe try a few different bosses) until I hit wyrm revered, which should give 2 more nice plate items. Then maybe Kiron Tor revered for spell damage stuff for my shamans. I think I'll also try respecing one of my shamans resto, I've cleared all the 80 instances (except Loken, too hard for me right now) with pally tank+mage+3 ele shamans, but it might be time to respec one as resto and dedicate him to healing.

Don't let the talk about heroic farming at the "easy" category fool you - it still takes gear and patience to get it down. I've done Utgarde Keep, which is the easiest heroic instance in my opinion, 6-7 times and I still manage to wipe on prince if I get a bad run of ice tombs (three in a row on the tank or healer will usually do the trick). My chars are equipped with mostly blue items (item level 200) and 3-5 epics, and while I started heroics with significantly worse gear, it gets a LOT easier as your gear gets better.

However, if you don't have a dedicated healer, that's a very good place to start. Also, dont understimate the AH for gearing up. You can get nice blue BoE items level 187-200 for 20-200g per item and it'll help you a ton. Do the normal level 80 instance quests, which also gives level 187-200 items and other quest with useable rewards (wowhead is your friend). Craftable items are underpriced at the moment because people use them to skill up - buy some of those and maybe even some blue pvp-items if you still have greens or low-level stuff.

Start out with Utgarde Keep and do Strath/Drak/Gundrak next - they're all fairly doable. You don't have to finish them if you don't have the routine/gear to do so, the level 200 blues which drop off all bosses are a big help too.

So what stats were you starting drak'thalon on?

The first boss just owns me (well i got him to 3% once ) classified as "tank and spank" wich is kinda true but the consume aoe just eats my shamans.. Is there no way to avoid it?

He starts out on 3k hits but after a while he hits for 5-6k fast and what mostly happens is that my tank dies when i chain heal myself.

Lets say i dedicated one healer to make things easier in the start it seems like you can stay out of los from the shadow aoe.

So topping the tank then chain healing the group?

I did UT keep VERY easy thanks to hex the trash was easy and i wiped once on the prince.

one shaman was left on the second boss but i burned down the meele boss to fast (didnt expect him to have such low amount of hit points)

I most likley spec one shaman resto tomorrow!

got any tips on macros for the resto one to make healing as easy as possible?