when are you ready for heroics?Follow

Yes as soon as you hit 70 you should get all your heroic keys and start looking for groups to do heroics with.....


K, just had to get that out. Seriously though and I'm sure many people will agree with me, you shouldn't even touch heroic anything until you're geared to enter kara and for some people you shouldn't even touch heroics until you're revered with all the specific factions instead of grabbing keys at honored.

Doing heroics also depends on what type of pally you are. If you're holy, then having around 1k +healing a huge mana pool and 90% blue armor would be your best bet. For prot spec, go with the defense and mitigation guide and hit the 490 defense and 102.4% avoidace because trust me heroic guys will crit for insane numbers and take you out quickly, even when we wear plate.

Is that true? I've seen wipes in many instances because of crappy DPS. Especially on boss fights. If the boss doesn't go down fairly quickly, then it can get really nasty. For example, SLab (a recent experience, which is why it's fresh in my mind). If you don't kill those bosses quickly, you will wipe regardless of how good your healer and tank are. Same goes with any boss that creates adds, or does AoE stuff.

Of course, an undergeared healer or tank will cause many many more wipes. I just think that DPS needs to be up to par too. You can tell a bad healer or tank immediately. Bad DPS doesn't really get noticed until the bosses, and then it's really annoying...

A crappy played DPS can't do it, but a well played one probably could get away with it. But all the skill in the world won't save you if the tank and healer are quite undergeared.

Hell I was in Crypts right now and on Shirrak all the dps died and it was just me and the healer. We stayed alive for about 2 or 3 minutes. If we had any kind of dps who knew what they were doing we would have killed it.

If it was the flipside, and the healer and tank died with the dps up, I dont care how much gear they had, unless they are really really good and pulling all sorts of strategies out of their ***, they are going to get slaughtered.

hmmm... interesting info on this thread.

Now, I've read alot about the Libram of Repentance & actually had the impression to work toward this to attain 102.4 avoidance.

Is this a false impression? Being that the Libram costs 15 badges, which can only be obtained in either Kara, Heroics or ZA.

Should the Libram be a post-102.4 avoidance up grade?

That libram is invaluable before 102.4%. It's SO GOOD. You can run heroics in pretty much all blues. A few greens won't kill you, but you won't mostly level 70 gear of the blue variety. I've seen healers in Kara with as low as 800 bonus healing, 1100 being really where you want to start those. I've seen healers heal heroics with as low as 700, I would say 850 is really when you start reaching a safe place.

As far as tanking goes, you MUST be uncrittable to do heroics. Anything after that is almost academic given that other stats generally ride along with defense. Getting stam enchants, etc isn't a bad idea, but I didn't enchant anything on my pally until she was doing 25 man raids (it's an alt, don't shoot me) and I made it through heroics and Kara fine.

(P.S. I started tanking Kara like 2 full % short of uncrushable. I wouldn't recommend it, but you can get away with it.)

Edited, Feb 19th 2008 2:11pm by Loki

In my brief foray into Holy I definitely remember my first time healing a heroic. Just as Gaudion said, I was so scared I was going to let someone die. Especially being a Paladin and being unable to throw a HoT on someone real quick, you have to take time out of your day to heal someone else, and it's like "I hope the tank can take a few hits while I heal this rogue up"

Also my first heroic as a tank I was very self-conscious about my gear and ability to tank. I may have caused a couple wipes by my inability to take a big hit or two. It's much easier now that I have some better gear.

Heroics are something that should not be taken lightly, and I feel like they don't seem as intimidating as they used to when you needed revered to get the keys. When you needed revered to get the key it was much more ominous. It was like "Oooh... Blizzard wants me to gear up in these instances cause it's going to be hard" Now it's like "I got my heroic key at lvl 62, should be a piece of cake".

I really think that was a big mistake on blizzard's part. They could have waited for the expansion when all these instances will be obsolete anyway to just hand them out at honored.

Trust me, you'll be running plenty of heroics to get yourself enough badges for gear improvements. I still run heroics quite often even though I am exalted with all the dungeon factions (HH, Cenarion, Lower City) except Keepers of Time. Badges are great; the money you get from the heroic dailies are great too.

On another related note, the tank + healer level sets a bar of sorts. For example: I did heroic SP last night. The tank was all epiced out, 17k hp unbuffed. I myself am all epiced out and ~2000 healing. We had no CC and one DPS warrior who did less dps than the tank. If the tank had had 12k hp and blues, and I've geared in the same fashion, that group would never have made it to the first boss.

So tank and healers define what a group can accomplish.

Stats needed for heroics are much the same as what you need for Kara. You can go above or below this depending on your own skill level and group composition but as a rule of thumb you would want the following:

+1000 Bonus heal
8-9k mana pool
15%- 20% Spl Crit
80 mp5

If you had to choose between spl crit or mp5, I'd pick spl crit for heroics. Fights do not last half as long as they do in raids so mana regen is less of an issue. As you will be solo healing a tank who will be taking big hits, spl crit can/will save your bacon at times.

Just FYI, I'm right at or slightly above those numbers and my two attempts at a Heroic have been absolute failures, despite well-geared tanks. Party composition and poorly played DPS may have had some role, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly the fact that heroics are hard. I could keep the tank alive without a problem normally, if the DPS would avoid pulling aggro and if the CC didn't break. Inevitably though I'd end up with 2-3 mobs on me every other pull and if bubble was still on cooldown from the previous mess, that would pretty much guarantee a wipe. A trash mob in Underbog spanked me once for over 6k damage with a single non-critical hit. It was a terrible feeling.

There are many factors in a succesful heroic run... But yes, I have experienced that dps chars can start them sooner than healers, and especially tanks.

The first time I entered heroics was with my main: healing priestess. At that time, with revered keys, and a full guild group, I was also scared... But it was easy for that char, who had beginned Kara and had the tailoring epic gear, which is really a plus.

My second char was my paladin tank, and it really was way more difficult to prepare that char for the challenge. The gear is not always as easy to get from one char to another. I had to follow the mitigation tutorial, to farm a little more instances, to craft the epic palatank boots and pick up the exalted shattar shield in order to take the hits... Never had to seek for information about my healer. Now my tank is full epic (t4/5) and I know that any tank, even with very high mitigation, will take non negligeable damage, especially on some trashes (generally harder than bosses) clearly designed to test mitigation and healing power (the kind of trashes immune to CC). Tank really need more than over char to be efective in this game.

My third char was a feral druid, always expected to tank (or to leave the group) and it was quite the same, even if a druid itemisation seems less painfull than a paladin one at first (with the easy crafted tanking set).

Next come my dps chars, mage warlock and amelioration shamane. They are mainly in blues, with a few epics (didn't manage to run enough kara with all those alts). Yes it is easy to find a group for heroics, and to do the job to be done. Yes sometimes fights demand great dps, but in non-raid without enrage it is marginal.

Of course my mage is the most popular char and my shaman the least one (CC). A couple of times people didn't accept to run with my mage, her stats are not epics ones, she has the spell power and crits, she can follow an epic tank's threat generation, but she has other sacrified stats that I should work on. Her hp is low (7k), as her mana regen and spell hit. But in heroics that doesn't really matter. I kown what the tank and healer are doing and it helps a lot to play with the required skill. If I know I have to take risks and aggro a mob during a fight to save the healer for exemple, I know I have to succed and will not have a second chance due to my hps.

But definitively yes, dps can enter heroics soon without hurting the group's performances.

I would say to focus more on the following for pre Kara:

15% Holy Crit
110Mp5 While casting
9000 Mana unbuffed

I wouldn't worry too much about the 1k bonus heal and if you can get your gear to reflect the 3 areas mentioned you'll have PLENTY of bonus heal, at least 1k.

BTW - as a holy paladin, you will only hit these base stats by enchanting your gear and you might need to use some non-plate items but that's ok, you shouldn't get hit too much. There's really only one boss fight in Kara you'd want to be in full plate.

Edited, Feb 29th 2008 10:20am by hetah

I think even if you were epicced out, you'd still wipe if your dps was pulling that crap or your tank wasn't protecting you. Unless the entire group is overgeared, there isn't a whole lot of room for error in heroics. You'll need to keep your groups running at optimum if you don't want to wipe. That means no mobs on you, no dps overaggroing, no one breaking cc and only tank taking the hits. Try a few more times with an experienced party and see what you think.