Our first attempt at a Heroic

[Benjamen]

I have been levelling my 4 Horde Shamans, along with my friend, who is a Paladin, and we recently reached level 80. :thumbsup:
We decided it was time to start gearing up for Heroics and the first goal was obviously to get him to 535 defense.
After about a week of questing and farming materials for defense gear, gems, quest gear, etc., we finally got him to 685 defense rating/539 defense.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...rank&n=Dejavou
He is in mostly all quest/crafted blues and what not, but nonetheless, finally at the magic uncrittable number, so we run off towards our first Heroic Dungeon all excited to finally start getting some epic gear through badges/drops, etc.
My shamans are all in mostly quest blues and around 1600 spell power (flametongue and totem of wrath).
The paladin and my 4 shamans have levelled together since arriving in Northrend, and minus the learning curve of the new dungeons, we pretty much have flew through all the "normal" mode instances with little trouble.

Anyhow, we enter Utgarde Keep, which was the heroic daily, and get through the first boss with only a couple of wipes, mostly due to stupid things. Once we settled down we get to the 2nd boss (or bosses in this case), we wiped over and over until we gave up with all our gear at 0.
I was rather shocked at how hard they were hitting the tank, so I looked at my damage meter, Recount, and checked "Incoming Damage" for the paladin, and it showed that he had been "crit" 78 times. ?(
I thought "no way this can be right", so we repaired and went back in for a 2nd try. This time I reset the meter and monitored it every couple of fights thinking the addon was wrong or something.
After getting to the 2nd boss again, Recount had recorded that he had been critically hit 62 times. It showed each Shaman's DPS-highest was 1.2k and lowest was 1010 average.
So I spent about an hour reading numerous articles on defense at various sites, I found that even at 540, there is still a small percentage that you may get critically hit, but 62 times?

Frustrated, discouraged and tired, we finally gave up last night and went to bed, having only killed the Prince twice and received 2 badges. We will probobly try another instance tonight, hopefully it will get better once we get over shock of the damage
increase, usually having to heal every 3-4 dps cast versus 1 round of dps-heal over and over.

Northeast - 80 Shaman-Fizzcrank (US)
Northwest - 80 Shaman-Fizzcrank (US)
Southeast - 80 Shaman-Fizzcrank (US)
Southwest - 80 Shaman-Fizzcrank (US)
Benjeman - 80 Paladin-Fizzcrank (US)

[Talamarr]

Very interesting story.

How much damage was the crit damage?

[Bigfish]

That sounds pretty normal for freshly starting heroics. The things aren't meant to be your first step once you hit 80, and UP itself can be pretty nasty. I haven't had a chance to look at your armory, so all I can offer is some generic "Get filled out in crafted blues and purples." Titansteel Guardians are amazing, and the titanium spellshock pieces should help as well.

[Talamarr]

That sounds pretty normal for freshly starting heroics. The things aren't meant to be your first step once you hit 80, and UP itself can be pretty nasty. I haven't had a chance to look at your armory, so all I can offer is some generic "Get filled out in crafted blues and purples." Titansteel Guardians are amazing, and the titanium spellshock pieces should help as well.

The thing is, at 539 defense, he shouldn't be eating crits so something else is up. His avoidance (miss, dodge, parry) is pretty low but his crit % should be 0 on heroic bosses.

My hanging fruit guesses are a broken piece of gear or you're reading the log wrong. But I seriously doubt either of those are the case.

[Dorffo]

was he crit after the melee guy went into ghost mode or throughout the fight?

My starter heroics were Gundrak and Culling of Strath.

[Hachoo]

How is recount determining you were crit? Perhaps its wrong? How much damage were most of the crits for on average?

Also IMO Heroic UK is not as easy as Heroic Gun'Drak to start out in. I would start out in Heroic Gun'Drak (which is actually pretty easy with 4 shamans IMO) - if you want some help on figuring it out I wrote the Wiki article for Heroic Gundrak and I have a video listed in the 5 boxing videos sticky thread at the top of this forum on the Gun'Drak boss fights.

Gun'Drak was my first Heroic and I downed all but the last boss my first try, and the last boss on my second try, and have been farming it ever since. It also has 5 badges and once you get good at it can yield all 5 in about 25 minutes.

[Bigfish]

Honeslty, I'm not even sure where in recount you find incoming damage statistics, so that right there has me moderately curious.
I'm not even seeing this as an issue of spike damage, so much as I'm curious how heals are being sent out. It may also be an issue of some of the trash having a significantly higher crit rate, but that shouldn't affect the boss. I'd look at what's going wrong on the second boss, as there are a number of things that can screw you on that fight.

[Benjamen]

Very interesting story.

How much damage was the crit damage?

The damage meter just showed an average 1205 for the Incoming Damage. I looked back at the combat log and it showed several crits of 3k to 7k from Skarvald as well as numerous "magic" crits from the other guy which is expected.
We never got either of them down past 50% as the little skeleton dudes and the caster just ate my Shamans up between my grounding totem cooldowns.
My only guess is that Recount is just not reporting it correctly as the remaining balance of the crits would of had to come from the trash mobs, which is what was so mind boggling.
I normally wouldnt even bother with a damage meter, but he was just taking so much damage so quickly (from full health to red before I could get off 1 round of Lava Burst).
However I logged onto my 80 Paladin and looked back at his incoming damage and the crit and crushing line showed "--" which is what I was expecting to see with my friends paladin.
He is smelting his Titansteel everyday (he is jewelcrafter) so I should be making him some Titansteel stuff soon and that should help alot.

[elsegundo]

Honeslty, I'm not even sure where in recount you find incoming damage statistics, so that right there has me moderately curious.
I'm not even seeing this as an issue of spike damage, so much as I'm curious how heals are being sent out. It may also be an issue of some of the trash having a significantly higher crit rate, but that shouldn't affect the boss. I'd look at what's going wrong on the second boss, as there are a number of things that can screw you on that fight.

on the reports you can cycle through various charts and stuff. one of them is damage taken. you can probably skip to it by right clicking on the person's name and selecting the chart. they're usually in pie chart form.

[Bot]

i checked the armory and i noticed that none of the gear even had like an armour patch or anything on it. his gear looks similar to my DK's when i hit 80 for the most part but i had something on almost everything i could be it enchants or even just one of the random stam arcanums you can get (took me a while to grind out the rep for the tank one). i think the extra 108 stam from even the heavy borean armour kits would help a little. just something to think about. also grab some rhinoliscious wyrmsteaks or some other stat food of your choice for a quick 400 hp. also getting the 540 def might help a little more i was around 550ish for my first heroic and i dont think ive been crit at all but im not sure ill try and run something tonight and see for sure.

also heres the be.imba.hu report for the tank. http://be.imba.hu/?zone=US&realm=Fiz...racter=Dejavou

it gives advice on proper chants and whatnot. anyways thats my two cents hope it helps a little