Fresh 80's- How much do you spend gearing them up?

[Hachoo]

Edit: I also didn't want to run normal 80 instances at all - the gear drops are fairly horrible, the rep sucks compared to running heroics, and they don't give badges. I had extra money so I figured why not

Yeah, that's kind of what i've been thinking myself. Why bother running the things on normal when I'll get more Rep on Heroic? (why that is stuck above badges, I have no idea. Probably because I never got used to the whole idea of a badge vendor, but I digress)

Except Loken. Gotta go kick Regular Loken's head in a few times til he gives me his awesome trinket. Twice.

Seal of the Pantheon is unique-equipped, so you only need one of his trinket.

Be prepared for a wake-up call gettting TO Loken, however. Ionar is a bitch. I'd run Drak and Gundrak several times on heroic successfully, went into HoL (normal) and proceeded to get my ass kicked, repeated (like 10 wipes) by Ionar, the boss before Loken.

I was trying the run-away strategy for him and his knockback effects kept breaking my follow. Finally figured out to take my guys out to one of the balconies, healing stream * 4, and just stayed put healing thorough his Disperse. Loken himself was trivial and was kind enough to cough up the trinket. Haven't tried HoL on heroic; not sure I'm going to anytime soon.

To echo what's been said, I geared up all my guys pretty throughoughly with crafted blues/epics, especially my tank, before setting foot in heroics. Took my about a week after getting my second team to 80 cause I got the epic flyers first (to make the dailies faster). Straight to heroics after that; hadn't really run any dungeons to speak of in Northrend prior to that.

Ionar is actually quite easy with tank + 4 shamans. I will be making a video of heroic HoL soon to show my recommended layout (which I think I got from someone else here but it helps to see it in a video). Regardless, 4x healing stream + chain heals make this fight pretty easy.