Emblems: Random Heroics vs ICC Farming

[heffner]

Well I ran through all three ICC on normal (got stuck on the "run from Lich King" so I didn't finish that yet). I didn't get a single hilt drop, but the drop rate is probably where it should be. Also, I would bet the drop rate is lower on normal versus heroic.

I'd say the normal ICC instances are about the same difficulty as heroic ToC. There is a lot of moving around on some boss fights and you have to actually pay attention again (at least I do). This makes sense since they both drop i219 loot and emblems (was happy to hear that!!). You can complete the quest line in normal as well.

For me, the difficulty of the instances on normal is basically how the questline progresses, HoR > PoS > FoS. However, it really should be ranked by boss.

I haven't done much heroic, I did manage to kill Bronjahm on heroic but not Devourer. I am actually afraid to do some of the fights in heroic :P Normal was hard enough for me.

[Mosg2]

Hilts don't drop in non-heroic mode unfortunately.

Shrug, the non-heroics feel pretty cake to me. I was able to brute force down all the bosses except the Devourer of Souls which took a little bit of finesse. My guys aren't all that greatly geared too.

[Ualaa]

And seriously Shodokan, who's going to be doing this when they're in full T9 unless they're looking for the pvp set pieces? In that instance, you've already obviously got some sort of farming routine down.

On my server, there are players who are on very strong 5's arena teams... who will take two of the members, and sell ratings in 3's to people for a lot of gold. Boost you to 1800 or whatever rating you have agreed upon, for whatever price.

I could see offering heroic runs, once your team is rather geared.
You have a strong tank and healer, and two DPS.
And then sell badges for whatever, to newer people who are undergeared and want to raid whatever, but don't have the "gearscore" to get into pugs.

Not sure what the market will be on that.
I suppose it depends on when Cataclysm comes out.
If its a year off, with one more content patch, this might be a decent market.

[Iceorbz]

How much is that hilt going for on the AH (it's BoE right?) I didn't see any on my AH to I can't tell

Ive yet to see one.... i look about 15 times a day.

[Mosg2]

I spent a ridiculous amount of cash on them. I don't regret it though. I can farm up cash doing Heroics 5x easier now that I have the DPS to brute force anything down.

BTW, starting with 5 toons with 1 in Two Hand Swords *sucks*. Sigh.

[Starbuck_Jones]

I don't see selling heroic runs as a very viable option, with the new dungeon finder just about any group that has a good tank and healer can carry the rest of the team. One of the Occulus runs I did we had a pair of noobs that kept dying and did not how to fly a drake. Thats fine and well but it did slow things down while they learned.

We got to the second dragon kin boss and it was just myself the tank. a healer and a hunter. The other 2 finally just left in frustration and we finished the rest of the zone by ourselves. Green, Red, and amber drake.

Point is that there are enough over geared players to carry any fresh 80 and in a weeks time that fresh 80 will have 5/5 T9.

[valkry]

I've been giving this a lot of thought over the past day or two. With my DK+Ret group I can kill Ick/Krick and Garfrost in regular PoS 5 times per hour with a couple minutes leftover at the end. This comes out 10 emblems an hour and carries a very low risk of wipe--I can basically autopilot and do this while watching a movie etc.

The other option is random Heroics. If you estimate it at 30 minutes per instance you're going to be making 10-13 badges an hour on average. However, you can't just brute force all of them the same as you can with non-Heroics. One single wipe is probably going to make you the same speed as ICC farming. Also, what if you get an instance that you don't have on farm or just plain can't complete? I would dread getting HToC and then HoS one after the other :/ VH with the wrong bosses for your group maybe?

With all this in mind I'm really thinking that PoS farming is going to be the fastest, safest route to badge farming now. Thoughts?

How do you get emblems from a normal dungeon?

Edit: nvm, found the answer

[Gadzooks]

Ugh. I tried FOS last night, on normal, and got facerolled by the third pull of trash in under 20 seconds - my priest died almost instantly.

So much for that.

I have under a month left before I'm going to be quitting, I don't think I'll get much done. The lag is killing me on my server, it's laggy and buggy no matter where you go - I'm even getting it all zones in Outland.

I tried to do some badge runs last night - barely got Moorabi down, and could not take Eck down due to the lag.

Gave up, and went to go do dailys. Traveling in Icecrown is so painful with the lag, I gave up.

Went to Outlands to farm some Heroics, "Instance cannot be found".

Sigh.

Went in now, to farm some BC Heroics (Northrend is laggier than before, I was getting 1-2 FPS in Dalaran), I cannot get an Outland dungeon to spawn.

I'm done, for the day. It's just beating my head against the wall.

I'm thinking of heading down to BestBuy and picking up a copy of DragonAge or Fallout3.

[Souca]

Ugh. I tried FOS last night, on normal, and got facerolled by the third pull of trash in under 20 seconds - my priest died almost instantly.

So much for that.

I have under a month left before I'm going to be quitting, I don't think I'll get much done. The lag is killing me on my server, it's laggy and buggy no matter where you go - I'm even getting it all zones in Outland.

I tried to do some badge runs last night - barely got Moorabi down, and could not take Eck down due to the lag.

Gave up, and went to go do dailys. Traveling in Icecrown is so painful with the lag, I gave up.

Went to Outlands to farm some Heroics, "Instance cannot be found".

Sigh.

Went in now, to farm some BC Heroics (Northrend is laggier than before, I was getting 1-2 FPS in Dalaran), I cannot get an Outland dungeon to spawn.

I'm done, for the day. It's just beating my head against the wall.

I'm thinking of heading down to BestBuy and picking up a copy of DragonAge or Fallout3.

There was a good deal of lag and server crashes over the weekend. From what I've seen it's related to the cross realm dungeons, but I'd expect it to be solved by some server changes or a hotfix/patch this week. Hopefully things will be better this week.

- Souca -

[Svpernova09]

Saturday night the lag on Kil'Jaeden got pretty terrible, but I was still able to down bosses. it just made doing anything other than instance farming a 5 minute CD >.<

I still think it's amusing I get sub 100ms to Kil'Jaden (PST located in LA) and I never got below 150ms to Madoran (CST located in Dallas) with me being in Memphis.

For the geographically challanged, Dallas is closer to Memphis than Memphis is to LA.