Heroics w/ Melee team

[Ragewolf]

can melee teams 5pallies or 1dk+4pallies take on all heroics? not counting oculus cause thats hard single player let alone boxing.

[Myc]

I don't see why not.
I have done quite a few and im not even geared out.
(5pally team) 1prot/4ret.
right when i dinged 80 i cleared Culling of Strath as a random no problemo.
i think the hard ones are HoL (3rd boss)... forge of souls 2nd boss... ToC 1rst boss with rogue..and idk i haven't gotten to deep into it.
some snags were i know it can be done with a healer but hope gear will fix it.

[Kicksome]

Yeah, I find it easier with 1 dk and 4 ret pallies vs a dk and 4 shaman.

I was able to do most of the new heroics with my melee team before my shaman team.

You can just keep going without stopping with the DK + 4xRet. It made instances a lot faster. No going back to collect followers and no stopping to drop anything.

[Ragewolf]

Thanks all.

[jimbobobb]

can melee teams 5pallies or 1dk+4pallies take on all heroics? not counting oculus cause thats hard single player let alone boxing.

Yes the mentioned melee teams can do all heroics - just some of the later ones are a bit gear dependant. And the oculus is ridiculously easy as a boxer. Much much much much much easier than doing it with a group.

[heyaz]

Yes, they can do all of them. I've done every regular heroic, I tend to skip ICC 5 mans because the ridiculous aoe makes them too annoying for me. That and ToC (ever since the faction champ jousting because more trouble than its worth) and Occulus (because I don't feel like setting up the macros for once instance).

[Lax]

I've done every 5 man heroic many times as 5 paladins (holy, prot, 3 ret). Most of them are doable with a prot and 4 ret after you're geared.

I find oculus very easy and I don't have any special macros. My winning strategy for ley-guardian is:
1. use all Ruby drakes
2. Put healer on the ground and make him not follow. No drake, just heal.
3. turn on FTL DPS Keys -- standard for any vehicle fight.
Then during the fight it's just a matter of spamming the attack button, which will also take out the little drakes when they come, hitting evasion every time it's up, and using the taunt button (martyrdom i guess?) on the one guy I want my healer to primarily focus on (i click it so it doesnt broadcast). Fly around during phase shift and that's about it.

The only 5 man content I really have a problem with as 5 paladins is the abominations in the lich king escape. Without nature resist, I have to be very careful that 1 or fewer aboms is facing my team at any given time. My holy paladin tends to die if they both spray him, and then it's really annoying to start the event over. I'm levelling up some other teams though, and may end up swapping a shaman into my paladin team for nature resist and other goodies

[Shodokan]

I've done every 5 man heroic many times as 5 paladins (holy, prot, 3 ret). Most of them are doable with a prot and 4 ret after you're geared.

I find oculus very easy and I don't have any special macros. My winning strategy for ley-guardian is:
1. use all Ruby drakes
2. Put healer on the ground and make him not follow. No drake, just heal.
3. turn on FTL DPS Keys -- standard for any vehicle fight.
Then during the fight it's just a matter of spamming the attack button, which will also take out the little drakes when they come, hitting evasion every time it's up, and using the taunt button (martyrdom i guess?) on the one guy I want my healer to primarily focus on (i click it so it doesnt broadcast). Fly around during phase shift and that's about it.

The only 5 man content I really have a problem with as 5 paladins is the abominations in the lich king escape. Without nature resist, I have to be very careful that 1 or fewer aboms is facing my team at any given time. My holy paladin tends to die if they both spray him, and then it's really annoying to start the event over. I'm levelling up some other teams though, and may end up swapping a shaman into my paladin team for nature resist and other goodies

This, but with dk + 4 rets. I only do a few bosses in icc 5 mans.

[Boylston]

My experience with DK+4xRets is that I have been able to do just about any heroic I wanted (or needed).

I'll echo a few others...

I tend to run a random heroic each night for the frost badges, but I'll "turn down" queues for the Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection as well as Oculus. Oculus isn't hard, I just don't like it and I don't have a character that can be dedicated healer for the "easy mode" strategy mentioned elsewhere. PoSaron isn't impossible, but the last section and boss of it aren't a sure-fire win for me and I'd rather just hit an easier heroic in the interest of time/efficiency. ToC is also often skipped, although I can't remember the last time it queued me for it.

On my gear-up path, I was able to do plenty of heroics even appropriately (or under) geared without an issue, enough to easily farm Triumph badges and get iLvl 200-232 upgrades. I made sure to do normal and heroic ICC bosses at the beginning of the instances for the juicy upgrades there, especially in PoSaron.

Unless Cataclysm is filled with more "challenging" 5-mans from top-to-bottom, I plan on using instance running as a leveling and gear up strategy yet again. I think I agree with others that the all melee team is nice from a no-downtime perspective and is faster than my shaman team was. If only they gave characters a point-blank, area-of-effect loot corpses spell.... mmm...

[kate]

I'll throw my 2 cents in -

I just got to 80 and am trying to gear up my 5 paladin team - 1 prot, 4 ret. I have reasonably "OK" starter gear - I mean, other than most of the crafted epics I have the recommended minimum gear to begin doing heroics.

I'm getting my ass kicked in a most brutal fashion. My gear simply is NOT sufficient to do more than handle trash and - if I get lucky - a couple of bosses in the earliest heroics.

Partly this is due to not having more sophisticated tools (no way to spread out my team, for example, since I'm using AHK and nothing else), and partly it's due to not having any ranged damage - some bosses do a constant AOE that I simply cannot heal through unless I completely stop DPSing (and no, going 1 holy won't help - tried it, can't heal through it) and ranged would help a LOT to deal with it since it'd just be the tank taking hits.

So, from my experience - limited as it is right now - unless you're using better tools and probably willing to gear up individually somewhat before going into heroics with that team, you'll really struggle. From what people are saying here, once they gear up it's great - but it's getting geared up that's the tough part.

Either that or I am hands down the absolute worst multi-boxer ever