Heroics w/ Melee team

[Boylston]

A couple comments:

I would NOT advocate going dedicated healer route. It's not necessary. Spend the time you'd spend configuring a multiboxing setup with a dedicated healer on setting your team up with a repeater area or keybind set that will allow you to easily redirect all Flash of Light and Cleanse casts on the same team-mate, as well as "everyone heals themselves".

As others have mentioned, if you start taking big damage to point-blank AoE stuff.... MOVE OUT OF IT and then PAUSE DPS to heal everyone up. All too often, early on, I was suckered into thinking I needed to just burn the boss down super fast. Top everyone off, there's not a berserk timer on these heroic encounters.

To the "How do I get weapons if I'm poor". I think a good option is to run your team INDIVIDUALLY through ICC 5-man heroics for a shot at the 232 weapons that drop. In a couple hours each night, you can get a lot of your team through and probably get 1 weapon a night that way early on. When a couple of your DPS has 232s, you should be able to EASILY farm Pit of Saron Normal (first boss only) to get the rest of your team iLvl219 hammers.

My team got a complete set of 219 hammers with nothing more than green/blue quest gear and the weapons from the Amphitheatre of Anguish questline (iLvl 170-187??).

If you do decide to farm gold, I'd spend it on GDKP runs with your tank to gear it up nicely (a lot of servers run regular ToC25 GDKP runs). I spent 3000g on a couple GDKP runs with my DK and ended up with 5-6 iLvl 245 items in two weeks--- GREATLY streamlined PvE as a result.

[kate]

Bringing this thread back (kinda) from the dead:

I have an all Paladin team (and I also can swap my tank out to have 4 shaman as well - 1 resto, 3 enhance, or whatever configuration works) - and I am *finally* making progress in handling heroics.

My tank is now geared 100% in stuff that you can trade Triumph badges for (still need a trinket other than the Black Heart, though) and the rest of my team is wearing (mostly) crafted blues, a the 2 crafted epics (head and feet) and then a couple of drops from normal FoS and PoS - so we don't exactly outgear the content but we're getting there.

What I'm noticing is that some heroic dungeons are absolutely trivial - Draktharon was easy, including King Dred (without any fear mitigation on the paladins, even), Old Kingdom. Some "normal but heroic" fights are also nothing - Brojham, Garfrost are easy. Others, however, completely ruin me - I cannot get past Hydronox in Anub on heroic (I get it to about 45%), and other fights in some dungeons where having real range is a huge advantage.

Some dungeons I haven't even tried the other bosses - for example, normal PoS, I haven't even tried Krik and Ick or whosit the dragon guy yet - I'm wondering, for an all melee team, how hard are those fights? I'm going to try to get past PoS tonight, so that I can do HoR and hopefully farm that shield off of Marwyn as that would be a nice upgrade for my tank.

For people playing all melee teams, what are your easy instances? What are the fights that just brutalize you?

[ZooljinX]

Only HC i have issue's with is HoR last part, those Aboms are so poop, else is pritty much faceroll when you get past 5k gs, what tactics do you use on Hydronox?

[OzPhoenix]

Kate,

Not sure why Hadronox is presenting a problem, I assume you're moving out of the poison right and cleansing your team as required?

Easy Heroics for 5xMelee (with say minimal, but not totally trashy gear)

DTK
UK (assuming follower-only movement is available for Ingvar phase 1)
OK
CoS

Those four I think would be doable for a 5xMelee team virtually in quest blues. AN is trickier because the first boss can run a team of off-healers out of mana if the DPS is low, and Anub'Arak is a right pain in the ass with his Pound attack that doesn't display his direction well.

As for the ICC 5mans (normal), none will be easy I reckon until the team has a little gearing.

Devourer of Souls will eat up poorly geared Melee in FoS. For PoS, Frick and Ick take some learning and Tyrannus is a small gear check. In HoR both encounters can run 5xMelee dry for mana (I'm assuming the 4xMelee are Ret Pallies doing off-healing for the tank).

Also, as to Boylstons comments.

I'd agree that 1xTank,4xDPS+off-healing works well for Heroics. If you never want to raid, you'll never need to change that.

However, if you do want to raid, or run in Cata from what we've heard so far, I'd recommend a dedicated healer. Either gear up first with 1xTank,4xDPS and then faceroll through Heroics to gear a Healer (what I'm doing right now), or go 1xTank,3xDPS,1xHealer from the get go.

[kate]

With Hydronox I am moving out of the poisons and cleansing, but what seems to happen is that my team winds up getting scattered (like, at least 2 members will, for some reason despite my not telling them to IWT, run off to some far corner of the room and sit in a corner) or the placement of the poison graphic on the ground will make it look like we aren't in it, but we are. I'm sure I'll get it at some point.

Yesterday I did the following heroics:

Heroic Nexus - the *entire* thing was trivial (I was assuming the mage would wreck me, but we ripped her to shreds FAST), cleared it in like, 20 minutes, no deaths.

DTK - Dred was the only one who posed any challenge, but tanking him at the middle of the stairs made the fears a non-issue. No deaths.

UK - 99% of the time this is now pretty easy assuming I don't fumble-finger during Ingvar.

OK - Totally easy, 20-25 minutes, tops.

HoL - I can get past the first 2 bosses easily, but there's no way I'm going to handle the lightning boss, so I didn't even try. Maybe once I figure out movement better I'll try - I know I could kick Loken's butt if I could get to him, so that's no worry.

HoS - I keep fumble fingering during the event; it's the stupid stuff on the ground that I wind up getting stuck in for just a tick or 2 before I can get out that winds up taking me out. So I can't even take 1 boss here, alas.

I'll try CoS today to see if I can handle it now - it was ripping me up a while ago, but that was pre-IS and pre-getting my tank geared.

What I'm doing now is just running random heroics with my team and if it's a dungeon I can handle, I clear it of course, but if I can't I just do the parts I can, by which time I can just teleport out and try to run another. If it's one I'll just repeatedly die in without taking out a single boss, I teleport out and raise some professions til the timer resets. As my gear gets better hopefully I'll clear more and teleport out less I did get about 35 badges on each team member yesterday, so I figure the gear will be improving quickly!

I think mostly I just need to figure out a better way to move out of stuff like fire, poison, etc. Is there any kind of add on that will say "HEY! Idiot! There is about to be stuff on the ground so move!" either while the thing is being cast or right when it gets cast? Between the consecrate and divine storm spam, it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between my stuff and patches of fire/void/etc. If anyone has ideas on better ways to handle lots of movement (I have keys set up to help my followers strafe while I sit in place, ones to make us all strafe, etc.) I'm all ears.

Right now, yes, doing the distributed healing with the rets spamming FoL as needed, and it works very well. There's never really been a time where I've died due to a lack of healing - it's always been a mechanic/movement kind of thing. What's making a dedicated healer setup seem more necessary for Cata? Though, I have been collecting a healing offset for one of my team - might as well, to get some experience with it, and maybe it'll help in some of the fights I'm finding tricky.

[uffela]

HoS - I keep fumble fingering during the event; it's the stupid stuff on the ground that I wind up getting stuck in for just a tick or 2 before I can get out that winds up taking me out. So I can't even take 1 boss here, alas.

Last and also first time in Heroic HoS, I found a couple of ways that worked with Krystallus and Maiden of Grief. When Krystallus petrifies and are about to shatter, hit Divine Shield on all and keep dpsing. He's dead just as the bubble wears off. That makes this fight trivial. Think I found that trick here somewhere and it made a huge difference.
With Maiden I wiped continuously, changed tactics and just backpedaled while tanking and let my rets whip her big, beautiful behind. She stopped for far fewer shadow pools, and died with only two rets killed. It was ugly and simple, but we danced on her corpse in the end.

Inspiring to read about your progression - I need to step up and follow through on more heroics. Keep up the good work!

[kate]

Last and also first time in Heroic HoS, I found a couple of ways that worked with Krystallus and Maiden of Grief. When Krystallus petrifies and are about to shatter, hit Divine Shield on all and keep dpsing. He's dead just as the bubble wears off. That makes this fight trivial. Think I found that trick here somewhere and it made a huge difference.
With Maiden I wiped continuously, changed tactics and just backpedaled while tanking and let my rets whip her big, beautiful behind. She stopped for far fewer shadow pools, and died with only two rets killed. It was ugly and simple, but we danced on her corpse in the end.

Inspiring to read about your progression - I need to step up and follow through on more heroics. Keep up the good work!

I'll give those bosses a try next time - I just wanted to do the Tribunal event first so I could at least see if I could take the boss. Unfortunately I suck at moving out of fire, half the time. Thanks for the tip on Krystallus! With Maiden, I'm thinking more movement is going to be painful - but if I can turn her into a badge, that's not a bad thing

[kate]

Just added CoS to my "easy" badge list - and got the drake, too Even though once Cata comes out there will be a huge gear reset, I'm having fun with this!

[zenga]

tip: if nature damage is a pain, use drums of the wild, it has 40 charges and it can make a difference

[kate]

tip: if nature damage is a pain, use drums of the wild, it has 40 charges and it can make a difference

!!! GOOD point! I have one of every profession, so I could use consumables to bolster my chances - I'll give that a shot!

Edit: I'd been avoiding using consumables for.. well, I'm not sure why, but it made sense at the time. I'm out of the habit of using them, I guess.

Edit #2: I figured out a way to handle the Smash/Dark Smash from Ingvar - there seems to be a little LOS issue where I can just back my rets up behind a pole in the stadium. Ingvar kept on randomly turning around to smash/dark smash the rets, so I had to improvise this. Yay for another heroic I can do "easily!"