First Heroic

[Queshank]

Poked my head into H-Gundrak last night; was my team’s first heroic encounter as well.
/shrug – snake boss went down toot sweet, every one but Pally got the achievement. Moorabi got smoked too; couldn’t coordinate stopping him from transforming so we missed the achievement; he hits pretty hard but nothing that my Shaman couldn’t handle.
Gave the Elemental a shot, but wiped; I need to work on movement for this fight.

For gearing up I strongly suggest spending time in ToC normal; my Paladin sports just over 28k hp now unbuffed.
She is sitting right on the Crit Immune threshold; the two piece set of Deadly Gladiator gear with 50 resilience bonus helped get her over the tipping point.

The balance of the team is between 12-1500 spell power; my Resto Shaman gets priority on the drops.
I still lack the tanking belt and gloves from ToC normal; Paletres has not been kind to me nor has the BK; we keep getting the same drops.

When I look at the amount of healing done, I am amazed at how much my Shadow Priest adds; she is like having a druid tossing HoT’s on my Tank all throughout the fight, and allows my Shaman to focus on the Tank as the other members get a continual feed of HP through both the Spriest and the Shaman totem. For me personally I plan to continue working on dailies for gold; I don’t want to PuG for gear since the whole reason I started this m-box gig was to see if I could do it.

With my entry into Heroics over the weekend, I know this is possible; it will just take time and patience.

Still haven't even looked at normal ToC. Dunno why. We always forget it's there I guess.

[accretion]

Still haven't even looked at normal ToC. Dunno why. We always forget it's there I guess.

Jousting is evil, imo. Several folks here have made good guides to handling the encounter, but I just haven't pulled it off yet. I probably need to spend an evening or two getting my rear end kicked to see whether or not I can farm this.

[Day]

Congrats on your first heroic great work!

I remember my first H i completed i was so happy : ) I ran a prot warrior and 5x elemental shaman team when i first started my heroics with many attemps, wipes and big repair bills i got to just started farming only the bosses i could kill maybe first one or the first 2 in each heroic i could till i was able to buy gear with emblems. yeah i started out with as many crafted peaces of gear i could make and just went at it. Dont give up the more gear you get the easyer the runs get.
Now my team is well geared I changed my warrior for a prot pally with only green drops and some blue boe gear that i had picked up along the way 512D and 24k hp and the 1h axe from the zul drak group quest i was able to clear all heroics i was already clearing with my warrior only thing was i just had to heal more and dps a little slower.

First Heroic Team: Deviteman (prot warrior) 4x Elemental Shamans Xpepsi, Xcoke, Xdrpepper and Xsprite ( US Bomechewer)
Second Heroic Team: Zuzana (prot Pally) 4x Elemental Shamans Xpepsi, Xcoke, Xdrpepper and Xsprite ( US Bomechewer)

Now that i can farm heroics pretty easy I sub in one of my alts and just keep them on follow or I bring in a guild mate.

Reg ToC farming tips:
I farm and run guild mates with my 5box team all the time through reg ToC. Simple rule with the jousting in have everyone stack and use a assist party1 macro made this way every toon attacks the same target 3 thrusts 50k hp and the mob is dead next target. same for next 2 groups and 3 mains now the trick is to refresh mounts on alts when they get low hp dont let anyone get dismounted in your group.. before last patch I use to kite the last mob to the door and run out. YOU DONT have to do this anymore they auto reset to the gate once the last one is downed. I would have a chanter in your group at all times cause its a abyss farming if you cant use the gear.

Macro used:
/assist party1
/cast Shield-Breaker

ps: if you use the ? icon to make your macro it will change to the shield breaker icon automaticly when you mount up.

Once you use the macro all alts target your target and then just use default attack key 1 = thrust
your defense shield can be casted at the same time as when you thrust because they do not share the same globle CD so keep your shields up and take less dmg. I hope this post helps and happy farming : )

[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.

[kraemder]

I felt the same way a couple nights ago. I got my slaves going again (what the heck) and hit up heroic UK.

I did it wipe free and I didn't have to drink every trash pull. It was not the nightmare I remembered when i tried it a few months back =D. Probably because my tank and healer gear have gotten upgrades with the new badge loots and h toc.

Actually, before I hit up a heroic I made myself run regular toc several times to get some epics for my dps shamen. You would think mail wearing caster class would be able to use a lot of drops but it was actually pretty frustrating - the amount of stuff that got melted shocked me but I still recommend it.

My team is prot warrior, holy priest, and 3 awfully geared elemental shammies. I did a gear check on them and their score is like just under 1400 and they're not fit to pug nax10. ouch.

[Queshank]

I felt the same way a couple nights ago. I got my slaves going again (what the heck) and hit up heroic UK.

I did it wipe free and I didn't have to drink every trash pull. It was not the nightmare I remembered when i tried it a few months back =D. Probably because my tank and healer gear have gotten upgrades with the new badge loots and h toc.

Actually, before I hit up a heroic I made myself run regular toc several times to get some epics for my dps shamen. You would think mail wearing caster class would be able to use a lot of drops but it was actually pretty frustrating - the amount of stuff that got melted shocked me but I still recommend it.

My team is prot warrior, holy priest, and 3 awfully geared elemental shammies. I did a gear check on them and their score is like just under 1400 and they're not fit to pug nax10. ouch.

Isn't it annoying melting stuff (I like that term ) when you still need upgrades?

Yesterday we managed to squeeze in two heroic runs. Every single boss dropped leather. We don't have a leather wearer. We have 3 clothies, a mail and a plate wearer. The amount of leather that seems to drop in our daily runs is really starting to annoy me. It's why we restructured our 2nd group to include a druid so at least SOMEONE benefits from epic leather pants. Even if they're the wrong spec.

[echo]

Jousting is evil, imo. Several folks here have made good guides to handling the encounter, but I just haven't pulled it off yet. I probably need to spend an evening or two getting my rear end kicked to see whether or not I can farm this.

jousting is super easy once you know the trick. it's actually the easiest part of the event next to the pally 2nd boss IMO.

trick is as follows

for the initial waves of 3x3. just shield up, and assist main and thrust em down. stay in one spot and pull them to you with shield breaker. dont get fancy. you should kill all 9 with maybe 5% health lost on one toon.

for the 3 jousting bosses. all assist on one. shield breaker when they run, thrust when they get close. dont get fancy. slow and steady WILL win every time. the key that made this part trivial for me is knowing that you can jump from horse to horse when you want without being knocked down first. fight the bosses near some of the fresh horses near the side of the wall, and when you notice one of your team members starting to dip below say.... around 33% health or so, just run them over to the fresh horse and right click on it. instant full heal. horses seem to respawn though the joust never lasted long enough for me to confirm. but just keep doing this, and have this macro

/follow party1
/assist party1

set and bound on alts so they can follow your main while you are all mounted up. the rest is all trivial, just time consuming. it usually takes me around 7 min max to get through the opening speech to when the 2nd boss spawns. havent really tried farming this place again ever since they offered the option to skip the opening intro so i dont know how fast i can do it now. but now that the bosses run away after you dismount them, it's stupid easy as you have all the time you need to setup for the actual toe to toe fight.

[Ridere]

How geared do you need to be (mainly tank) for regular ToC vs other Heroics? Like should I gear up my new bear tank and try to tackle the easier heroics, or should I just go straight to normal ToC?

[Lazyassguy1776]

Well... my 2 cents:

Team: Paly tank, Holy Priest, DPS hunter mage and boomkin all hit 80 about 2 weeks ago.

I geared up just doing the first 2 bosses of TOC for about a week (skipped black knight as I just cant seem to get straffing right yet). Sure... i could have wiped a ton and kept at it, but figured I should gear up first.

After a week of that (about 20 runs), i decided to give Heroic Gundrak a shot. Breezed though the entire zone. Then UK and Nexus were all a breeze. Think I will farm them for a while before moving on. I find those heroics to be a TON easier than I thought they would be.

[Rocky Rhode]

I ran ToC (normal) from the get go, we did 3-champs loot box; reset/repeat.

Once my Tank got closer to Crit immune we began to learn the Pally boss…I now call him Edric the Panzy….Paletress is and always will be a Pita…Black Knight just took getting my healer geared up enough to survive phase II.

Once we cleared ToC (normal) several times it was off to (H) Gundrak.

Last night my team began (H) ToC; wiped a few times getting use to the added damage in (H) jousting; reset once as we got the Hunter & Rogue….ended up with Warrior, Mage, Shaman. Paletress came in next....

Current plan is to run (H) Gundrak, (H) ToC Champs and Eadric, (H) DrakTh Keep nightly for gear and badges. Fitting all this in along with the mandatory dailies for rep is time consuming.

Since the last time I posted in this thread...my Pally has gone from 28k to 36k HP buffed; now crit immune to an 83 level. Gear comes fast ....as I stated above...just need patience