4221

I got my first exalted rep today - Hyjal - and picked up my second epic, the boots. The first was my Engineering hat.

4222

I’m a shaman healer and I regularly quit random non-heroic pugs if there is no CC organized by the tank. Pallies may be able to heal through that but I cannot and I am at 340 gear. I was in Grim Batol normal and the tank just rushed in after a couple of pug members said we need to CC! I joined this group after the first healer must have left (or was booted) and I quit group after the first pull non-CC pull.

On the other hand, I’ve been in some good groups with even 84-level pugs in non-heroics. I don’t even bother with non-guild heroics. Pallies can probably heal through heroic raid stupidity, but shamans can’t, at least this one can’t.

4223

Because most of the content doesn’t accurately represent Heroic difficulty. Are you really telling me PVE leveling and running normals prepares you for Heroics? That anyone who’s geared up through normals has the situational awareness and reaction times to be consistently successful in Heroics?

Most of my normal runs have been people AOEing trash packs down, so much so that it seems odd when a tank starts marking.

4224

Wow. That really wasn’t my experience with normals, except of course for low health Grim Batol packs and non-elites.

4225

What JM said, particularly in the ones like Grim Batol, HOO and Tol’vir.

4226

Yeah, I’ve done roughly 15 or so normal runs (not counting my throne of tides runs) and of those, 3 or so tanks chose to mark, and of those, 2 that I can recall stopped part of the way through and said, “we have the DPS, let’s aoe.”

I’ve really only had one or two runs that I’d consider rough on normal. Of course, I hit 85 about 4 days after everyone else because I was a dwarf warlock that started on the shattering patch. Though that seems odd, 4 days would make that much of a difference.

Edit: My experience may very well be an anomaly, but it seems like getting ilevel 333 items isn’t particularly hard and the content I’ve done I’d say doesn’t fully prepare people for heroics. And like I was saying earlier, can’t. But obviously, we’re working from very different starting points as far as our own experiences.

4227

It’s funny that you guys talk about Springvale, because I don’t find him that difficult… not as hard as the last boss in Grim Batol, for sure.

Just burn down the two adds, stick the tank on the one you’re not killing first and make sure they’re both interrupted, easy points.

4228

Ive actually found the last boss in Grim Batol one of the easiest heroic bosses by far. Its amazing how fast he goes down when you heroism with the damage buff from the vortex.

4229

He’s one of those guys that becomes a billion times easier with great DPS, I think. Many, many, many heroic bosses can be overcome with mediocre dps and excellent tanking/healing. The pulsing, unavoidable raid damage on Springvale means that your DPS really needs to be on the ball. You’re not killing him with the kind of scrubby 6k dps that I’m too often stuck with ;)

4230

Hm, I suppose. Even in the first few Heroics I ran on my Shaman, I was already pulling 9k+ DPS. I really don’t see how anyone could pull 4k DPS in a Heroic unless he were too apathetic to press his buttons more than once every five or so seconds.

4231

This conversation might be more productive if people would stop categorically insisting that heroics are “easy” or “impossible.”

They’re hard. If you’re able to clear them consistently good for you - you’re a very good player, playing with very good players and/or you’re very lucky in who you PUG with. I’m a pretty decent player, and I have had my fair share of pain in heroics. When people say they’re not hard at all all they do is look like some jerk swinging around their epeen.

But they’re not impossible. If you can’t clear a heroic no matter how hard you try, then there’s probably something wrong with your group. I’m not a great player, but I’ve managed to get through some. The people who insist that they’re just not doable, that they take three or four hours* are probably playing with a bad group. Christ, I can’t imagine sticking with a group for a three hour wipefest - at some point it becomes obvious that it’s just not going to happen!

I will say this: For trash, CC is huge. If you have no CC (the dreaded two warriors and a DK group) you are in for a world of hurt. Life is going to suck like nothing else. On the other hand if you’re lucky enough to have three CC (like I had in my Heroic VP run tonight) the trash pulls are a joke. They’re comically easy. Especially when the priest uses MC to jump trash off the ledge in VP.

As far as bosses go - there is definitely not a lot of room for error. You need to learn from your mistakes. After every wipe you should be doing a postmortem; identifying what went wrong to cause the wipe and coming up with specific things that can be done to fix it. This requires a level of maturity that is lacking in a lot of players; nobody likes to be the one who gets the blame for the wipe. But it’s necessary. As a tank I got my Heroic Deadmines group killed a good three or four times tonight because I couldn’t figure out how to properly deal with Foe Reaper’s charge attack. Part of it was positioning, part of it was me just not being aware enough, and part of it was me not fully understanding the nature of the mechanic. BOOM 3 wipes right there while I ironed those things out. But each time I did it I learned, and we eventually got past it. If your group is wiping over and over and over and over again to some boss and you’re not having this sort of postmortem discussion then frankly you are playing the game wrong.

  • Except Deadmines. Christ that place is huge.
4232

Just saw the message from Athyrn about Boss Notes. Looks like an excellent addition to my mod insanity. Thanks!

4233

sigh

So it was pointed out to me, absolutely correctly, that I might be coming off like a complete prick in this thread, especially with my last post.

I apologize.

If you’re pulling 6-6.5k or less in a Heroic, you shouldn’t have some guy being a prick to you on a forum, especially not some guy who likes to think of himself as empathetic.

Particularly since some classes (Rogues, Warriors, Rets, DKs) are very weapon-dependent, and if you don’t have a good weapon dropping…

I will, however, say that if you’re rocking an iLevel above 340, you should definitely be pulling more than 7k. If you’re not, we should talk! I will promise to be a reasonable, sympathetic person and say things like “I find it difficult to try to predict Euphoria procs; it seems to be much better DPS to just waste the occasional Wrath or Starfire out of the Eclipse rotation than to early-refresh a DoT.”

Nice. Empathetic. Stop being a prick, Aaron! glares at self

PS: Boomkin is hard. :(

4234

I agree with this and also with the rest of jeffd’s post.

4235

I had a PUG druid tank from another server that used in Grim Batol:
-sleep
-root
It was glorious. Something I had not seen druids do for over a year. In addition to the CC our group had. Mage and two shammies in that place in addition to this tank was CC-to-the-Max. Two hexes and elemental banishes.

4236

Druids own grim batol :) glyph of entangling roots rules.

4237

I actually had a druid healer come in who, when asked to entangle a mob, started bitching about how “he was there to heal etc.” and “You have no idea how hard healing is now”.

Healing certainly is hard if you don’t want to spend a single CC on a mob who then starts to heaps piles of damage on everyone.

Sigh.

4238

It’s kinda funny, on Moonie (Moon Guard), the Horde just does not show up as defense on TB, so all the Allies that aren’t picked try to hang out on the bridge, and time it so they’re on the bridge when control switches (so they can get the 1800 honor)… if they mistime it too early they get ported to their hearth stone.

Last time there was about 100 or so allies trying to time it.

4239

Not as easy as that. The start is fine, but the tank has to worry about picking up the adds that appear from both corridors, keeping the boss turned away from the party, keeping the boss & adds far enough away from the party so the casters don’t get silenced, and getting out of the (frankly fucking annoying) desecration.

I’m usually the top DPS and because I’m melee it’s a world of pain, desecration is a complete bastard. The plan as you say is really quite straightforward but it quickly dissolves into a mess because of all the little problems that I’ve mentioned. It just ain’t a fun fight :(

4240

Wow, that sounds like a bug…