Heroics w/ Melee team

[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!"

[zenga]

Aye, consumables can really give that extra boost you might need. I use the drums of the wild and drums of the forgotten kings, the stamina scrolls and out a great feast before starting a challenging fight. Flasks & elixirs are very useful as well, but that will get pretty damn expensive in the long run.

[kate]

Thanks for the detailed comments, as usual, Oz!

I don't use IWT when fighting Hydronox - so I'm not sure why they're running away. It's really strange. I'm sure I'll get it sorted out or, once I get a few more pieces on my rets, just brute force through it.

Got the hammers on all rets, and as soon as they all qualify for the heroic version, I plan on farming Heroic PoS trash to get hilts - most likely to sell, since Cata is nigh and money trumps gear that'll be instantly replaced.

With regards to raiding - I'm assuming you're talking about raiding with another boxer (or other people) and not 5-boxing raids? If you are 5-boxing anything, please let me know your secrets - I would love to try some of the earliest raids in Cata with only 5, if it's remotely possible. I will have at least 1 dual-spec healing & retribution once Cata hits. Actually, right now my current tank would be better as a ret/healing than protection, since her professions are more geared towards casters (ench/tailor) and one of my rets would be a better tank since she's mining/blacksmith. Alas, I was dumb when I first started gearing them up in heroics, so I just have a ret with more stamina than the others and a tank with a little less than she could have.

My thinking right now with regards to heroics is that I want to farm them now for money - there's no equipment they drop (except for the ICC heroics, and I can't come close to handling those yet) that would be an upgrade, and since equipment will soon be reset with Cata, farming up money, which is always useful, should be reasonable.

[d0z3rr]

I don't use IWT when fighting Hydronox - so I'm not sure why they're running away. It's really strange. I'm sure I'll get it sorted out or, once I get a few more pieces on my rets, just brute force through it.

I rarely got to Hadronox on heroic on my pallies. They still had the crappy crafted epic 2h mace (forgot the name) and were doing terrible DPS, so I always wiped on the guantlet because i couldn't kill the last wave fast enough before the boss aggroed. I did manage to get past the guantlet once on heroic, but got my ass handed to me on the last boss (can't remember why though...). When I enountered hadronox on heroic I simply used the same exact procedures as normal (you did kill her on normal right? if not, try practicing on normal).

As for hadronox I remember she was very easy in normal after some practice. Did you try grouping your paladins up? When she does the spew thing just mash your cleanse keys until your paladins are clean. If you have a /click set up on all your pallies then all you have to do is watch the ground for the poison cloud. When it appears simply strafe all your paladins to the right or left. They will move as one so it's much easier.

If you're getting runaways, do not mash the IWT bind. It is very consistent and you should never have to mash it, just hit it once to start attacking. Unlike /assist, where I find I have to mash that multiple times for everyone to get their targets. Also, make sure you aren't getting the classic runaways. That is where you release the shift key before the movement key. This happens if you are rushing things or are in a frantic movement situation.

[Whowantstoknow]

There's quite a few encounters that can be 5 boxed "solo". I've personally done most of Naxx, Flame Levi and Marrowgar I know there's others I could do too but haven't really tried such as Sarth.

I run a 5xpally team but have switched in a shaman and dk.

[kate]

There's quite a few encounters that can be 5 boxed "solo". I've personally done most of Naxx, Flame Levi and Marrowgar I know there's others I could do too but haven't really tried such as Sarth.

I run a 5xpally team but have switched in a shaman and dk.

What gear level were you? Would those encounters be feasible for a team entirely in triumph badge gear, do you think?

[Maxion]

What gear level were you? Would those encounters be feasible for a team entirely in triumph badge gear, do you think?

(all of this post is talking about 5-boxing stuff by yourself)

A lot of naxx is, maybe flame leviathan if you can get the controls right.
Personally I did some of naxx within a month of hitting 80 on my team, so that was in mostly 226 gear.
I haven't tried flame leviathan a lot of times yet, but I was getting him to about 20% on my third try in mostly 232 gear with some 245 and 251 stuff.
Sarth should be pretty easy if you can find a way to handle the portals on the one mini boss that goes immune until you kill the thing inside the portal, but if your team is all wearing plate then you should be fine on that, my squishies have not even dared try that one yet.

Marrowgar I haven't even dared try to do by myself yet since my tank doesnt even have over 40k health unbuffed (outside of icc) yet, and my team is around 5k-5.4k gearscore.

To successfully 5-box marrowgar i think the team would have to be quite geared. Since even with a full raid the gear requirement is quite high for doing it with one tank and one healer, or at least those two have to be geared.

[kate]

Farming HPoS now for hilts... Just got my first on my second run through clearing trash

[OzPhoenix]

Farming HPoS now for hilts... Just got my first on my second run through clearing trash

Grats! I've yet to see even one despite the 30-40 times I've run that instance.

Seems the RNG gods don't much like me.