Ding! LF4m Heroics!
Posted by 
iTZKooPA on Monday, January 19, 2009 - 40 Comments Tags: dungeons, gear check, gearing up, grinding, heroics, instancing, loot
iTZKooPA on Monday, January 19, 2009 - 40 Comments Tags: dungeons, gear check, gearing up, grinding, heroics, instancing, loot  Yes, I dinged while working on Sons of Hodir |
Wrath of the Lich King's PvE content may be easy compared to The Burning Crusade, but there remains a line of progression. For instance, hitting level 80 does not mean you should immediately jump into one of the many heroic dungeons. With my long weekend, I figured I could get a bunch of heroics under my belt seeing as I have finally hit level 80 (DING!). My old warrior buddy set me straight in only the way he can, through ridicule and yelling.
I still have a lot of gear from Season 2, Karazhan and high level crafted items equipped and haven't seen many alternatives. This is why I was thinking about banging out a dozen or so heroics with my free day. After the text-lashing, I checked in with WoWHead to see just how much my gear could be upgraded through non-heroics. Turns out to be a crapload. Nearly every dungeon from Gundrak on has some sort of an upgrade, incremental and not so incremental. The only thing that they lack is a pair of quick daggers for my Mutilate build. Guess I will be sticking with old trusty for awhile longer.
Rather than diving into the ranks of heroic runners, I have taken the advice of my friend (although I will never admit it to him) and segued to the non-heroic instances for the moment. By the end of the day I will have run over a dozen non-heroic dungeons, and hopefully, bumped by gear into the next level. But damn if I don't want a new off-hand dagger.
Doing non-heroics before jumping to heroics may seem like an obvious notion to many of you, but I have run across countless people in the non-heroics who are barely geared for them, let alone the more difficult flavor of the dungeon. Even many of my guild mates tried to make the leap from level 79 to heroics. The better geared members were able to roll with the punches, but just as many had to be replaced during the instance. From our anecdotal evidence, anyone decked out in SSC gear or better, with some Wrath gear mixed in there, was more than ready for heroics.
Nice, just found a group for Halls of Lightning, off to shiv some baddies from Nordic lore. This will be my first run at Loken, hopefully he is kind enough to drop his hood. For those still leveling, do all the heroic runners a favor, check out which dungeons have gear you need and hit them up first. My tank is sick of out DPSing other party members in heroics...
How many of you had the patience to gear up before attempting your first heroics? For those that just dove right in, what was your gear like and how did you do?
Reader Comments (40)
Thank you for speaking up about this issue...somewhat. When I dinged 80, I wanted to jump into heroics as well, my gear wasn't great, but I had heard how "easy" they were. So I opped out on doing non-H's for awhile. However, half-way through my gear upgrades I was LFG for oculus when someone pst'd me asking if I would pull dps for there heroic, that one dropped out and they despertly needed to finish the last 3 bosses. After telling them my ap and dps, they said they didn't care abd that it would be easy. Well, after paying a 40g repair bill TWICE and finally quitting on the last boss (the one were my gear didn't mean anything anyway) I decided that I would not go into another Heroic until I was green-free and all my gear was at least level 78 or above. I am now in two pieces t7 and two pieces nax boe drops and I hopelessly find myself pugging w/ others who were like me back at dinging 80. So PLEASE, everyone who just dinged 80, unless you did it only in instances and have all the drops you need, you are not ready and please go get geared!!!!
A good tip is to lvl up doing instances.. as u ding lvl 80, you will have alot of blues and maybe a few greens, but not many.
When i dinged on my shaman, the next day i had about 3 epics because of this, people had no problems inviting me to heroics.. they just said "your gear is fine"
it may take some time.. but atleast then you will have alot of quests to earn money of.
the way i did it was i started in borean tundra, got some instance quests, did them, finished the area, went to howling fjord, did the same etc etc.
it took me 7 days from the release with school work and girls/parties to attend to >:D
dinged 80 in sholazar ;P
I went right in with Karazhan gear and spellfire set. I thought I did great until someone said that my dps was way lower than the number 3 on the list. Turned out I did 900 dps and the one above me did 1750. 0.o That shocked me.
PRE WOTLK - my first heroic experience
I want to start out saying that I was ASKED to join a group for my first ever heroic. I was a level 67 (?) Holy Priest who had just switched from Shadow. A bunch of level 70 guys asked me to heal Heroic Ramps. I aggroed like a son of a gun. They were all uber geared so we did actually finish the instance. I felt really bad though since we wiped 5 or 6 times.
So i was a healer noob with no where near the correct heals or gear to do my job properly on my first heroic.
-Annieoakley
This content is easy. Heroics done on the first day of 80.
All 10 man content cleared in 2.5 weeks.
I lvled my paladin to 80 as holy (lolfail) specced ret after i dinged, bought some gear from the AH (only blues no epic's) and went to my first heroic, 2 days after that i had full hc/badge/naxx gear for both ret and holy spec and a few things for prot. :P So yea its pretty easy to do heroic's and raids even if u've just dinged.
As soon as i hit 80 i got a whisper asking if i wanted to OT VoA(Reg).. I was in full blues(all Wrath blues)and it was cake. I did H UK(Tank)after that in the same gear and that went smoothly. Then, I did H Nexus(Tank) and we cleared with out any wipes. So, you dont really need to take your time to get geared if you did most of the quests and got lucky in some instances before you hit 80.
Im going to be one of the tanks in H Naxx (Plague and Spider quarters) Sunday at 1pm server time so wish me luck! Dudeofdeath out!
Dudeofdeath of Altar of Storms
Sorry about the double post..
I have done OS too, it was cake :D
I got t7 gloves there and t7 shoulders in Naxx and im just gonna use them for feral DPSing because my gloves and shoulders are better for tanking.
Dudeofdeath of Altar of Storms
well this is an very interesting post...
i think u shud have at least mostly high lvl blues before u even consider heroics.
i am a healer so i asked a few healing buddies i have to find out wot i needed to start doing heroics.. n a few things i got was as a healer u need a t least 1.3k bonus heal to do them which is very true becos i tried with 1.1k before and my spells just werent healing a tank that has a 30k health n it's not worth it for a group to keep wiping and then paying the repair bill all the time..
so before u ding 80 get a bit of gear. and all u dps hu r slacking out there n gettin out dps'd by the tank sort yourselves out n take ur time to gear up
Just dinged to 80 on my priest and after getting my new spells i just went right in heroic strat with pug group.
We never wiped and only had problems with healing at first boss cause of a wrong strategy on him.
i have seen this way too much , just cause people hit 80 they think they can run heroics , it really puts the pressure on those who took the time to do the research and get some decent gear 1st
basically the ones who took the time to gear up are just crutching the scrubs who don't want to put in the effort , i inspect and if your not up to snub , i look for others who are , go scrub on someone else's dime
GOOD POST
This needs to be said, and repeated as much as possible, I'm a healer myself doing a lot of instance running and there are simply to many players going about in heroics when they're not geared. Worse, after they completed it with some imba group they actually believe they are geared enough for it and flaunt the achievement in your face. Where recount clearly shows them barely breaking 1k dps. Good gear for an heroic means there are no wipes. Bad gear... loads of repair bills, and a stressfull time for the rest of the pug.
@ dudeofdeath.. What you describe is basically gearing up. If you leveled through quests and did all instances on normal at least once you're bound to have better gear then those that only did a little bit of questing and never got passed the borean tundra / dragonblight / howling fjord zone's.
If you actually went to some other instances then just grinding uk / ut pin / nexus and occulus. You're bound to be geared up decently. However, loads and loads of players just go to the few easy dungeons they know and then after they've just dinged 80 insist on going to HOL heroic because the loot there will gear em up nicely.
Besides instances there are many quests and more specifically chain quests that allow you to incrementally improve your gear. The higher lvl the realm the higher lvl the quest rewards. I began Northrend with my rogue mostly decked out in 2nd Gen badge vendor gear from Sunwell Isle and found getting upgrades that were actually better rather hard at first, but eventually they came. Wow-Heroes.com is a godsend when comparing yours and others gear ratings. Also great for checking for upgrades.