Tank - starting HeroicsFollow

Hi guys,

This isn't really an 'evaluate my gear/spec' thread, more it's just a question to find out how big a difference there is between the level 80 normal dungeons and the starter heroics.
I have tanked Culling of Strath without much of a problem, and since then I have had the Tempered Titansteel Helm made, and have levelled my JC enough to make the two trinkets and put in some epic gems.
At the moment my Def skill is 539 and my health unbuffed is a bit over 24k
Calculating my avoidance (from the sticky) comes to 83.66% w/ Holy Shield up.

Is this enough to bridge the difficulty gap from CoS to Heroic UK or Nexus? (i heard talk that these were the easiest 2)

My Armory in case you're curious: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dath%27Remar&n=Eogris

I'm not a tankadin, but if I were pugging either of those Heroics, I'd heal for you (assuming average DPS contributors). You won't necessarily sail through them without a wipe, but your gear indicates that you are probably ready to make the leap.

You're defense capped, and have a respectable about of health. Go for it - but don't be surprised to rocket up in the gear stakes from here on in. :-)

You can do pretty much any heroic that you want in your current gear, but I would tend to avoid AN, OK, Gun'Drak, Occulus, UP and Halls of Stone unless you have a really well-geared healer and very well geared DPS. You will want to get into H UP as soon as you feel comfortable though, only one boss is particularly difficult, and the best heroic-level tank weapon you can get drops from King Ymiron.

People seem to forget this, but as a Prot Pally, heroic CoS is not any harder than regular CoS, at least in my opinion.

UK is flat out easy, Nexus is pretty easy, especially if you use resist auras on the mage boss and the final boss, DTK is pretty laughable, but with relatively low avoidance, King Dred is going to hit you like a truck, so you would have to have a good healer and pop some cooldowns on that particular boss.

If you have a lot of ranged DPS including a hunter or ele shaman for the nature resistance, HoL would be ridiculously easy with a good healer. VH is generally easy, but a few of the potential bosses are tricky, so you may want to read up on fights like Xevozz, Ichoron, and the big voidwalker guy (whose name I forget). Ichoron is laughable if you use the 3 defense switches. You will get the Dehydration achievement automatically if you use 1 switch every time Ichoron "explodes"

Overall, I would say every day that you can, you should attempt to do UK, Nexus, DTK, CoS and VH on heroic and maybe even HoL if you can put the right type of group together for it. In no time at all you will be swimming in emblem gear and ready for absolutely every heroic.

As far as emblems of heroism go, UK = 3 Nexus = 5 DTK = 4 CoS = 4 VH = 3 so even if you can manage just those 4 in a day, that is 17 emblems, and HoL would make that go up to 21. If any of them happened to be the daily heroic, add another 2 freebies.

I would get the EoH belt as your first piece. It is just THAT good. If you decide to be a heroics MACHINE for 2-3 days, you can get the belt that fast. You won't replace it until 25-mans.

Edited, Apr 1st 2009 10:39am by jeromesimina

That is normal. Its a burn party at that point. All about heals and DPS. Kill the blue one first.

Also only need 535 defense for heroics.

H UK is easier but healers want the mace from H Nexus so ...

Good Luck.

Interesting. On my warrior I always give a kill order of purple (arcane), then blue (frost), then red (fire), because I can interrupt the blizzard with Shield Bash, but hate dealing with time stop and poly. We've never had problems doing it this way. My guess though is that as long as you pick a reasonable kill order and everyone sticks to it you'll be ok.

I'm the same. I find that being sheeped or having your healer sheeped is far worse than taking the aoe blizzard damage. I usually put frost resist up then go Arcane, Frost, with fire last. The dps can usually focus fire the Arcane down pretty quickly while I hammer the frost and taunt/judge the fire add. It doesnt matter though as long as you get them down in the end without trouble. Usually the longer it takes the worse off you are in that phase. If you can keep the adds controlled and realtively close to each other while maintaining threat on them its up to the dps to do the rest.

This is what you have to remember for those higher/harder heroics. Its not as much gear as it is experience with a most of the fights. For example:

Heroic Azjol Nerub: First boss is easy as long as you focus fire the Skirmisher mobs before they get a chance to drop aggro and make a beeline for your healer (hand of Protection used at the right time here can be a savior for your healer and you as a result). The difficulty with the last boss in there is two fold. One Making sure you kill the adds that spray the poison first and two position Anub so that his Pound doesnt hit the rest of the group. Sometimes this fight will bug and he will target a dpser for some reason. You cant help this.

Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle is pretty straight forward but from what I have seen as a dpser and a tank most people will struggle on Skadi more than anywhere else. Make sure you have someone that knows what to do with the spear/bolt thingies and decide before it starts whether you will be all staying inside the little room or outside when you get to the end. The second boss is pretty straight forward just make sure you position the Jormunger so that it faces away from the group so that you can avoid everyone getting hit by his poison spray. On the final boss positioning is again important. If he has opened a few boats try and position the group near the opened boats so that when the orbs pop up there is more time to move away from them. Save your human ( same as pvp trinket) racial in case you are stunned and he opens up the orb boat near you.

If your looking to run Heroic Old Kingdom for the bracers off the last boss remember that after the second boss you can always head straight to the last boss and then come back to do the last two (I have done this quite a few times when I have pugged heroic OK because there hasnt been enough burst dps in the group). Avoid overgeared druid healers as killing the clones on the last boss can take forever =P

Your gear is fine for those heroics. Make friends with some good healers and you wont have any trouble in them. Good luck.

You'll want to replace the belt. Icebane has lots of stamina, but it's not something you should wear outside of frost resistance fights.

You also might want to pick up the Titansteel Bonecrusher. It's much more threat, and you look like you can spare the +defence. It depends on if you're willing to spend the cash.