Posted by iTZKooPA on Monday, January 19th, 2009 - 40 Comments
Tags: dungeons, gear check, gearing up, grinding, heroics, instancing, loot
Yes, I dinged while working on Sons of Hodir
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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?
Related Posts: I Don’t Care About Your “Ding”, Additional Instances Cannot Be Launched, Creating a Spectacle in WoW, My First Step Into Wintergrasp, I Wanna Hex You Up,
By dagimp007 on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
its to fast to get H ready and raiding ready.. i hope they give us something more chalanging
By Toast on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I only had 1 day of gametime left after hitting 80 so I knocked out 4 heroics that day heh
By Bullhogeley on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
“My old warrior buddy set me straight in only the way he can, through ridicule and yelling.”
That’s what we do….besides staring at bosses crotches.
By Dallik on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I just say I’m looking for dungeons and take whatever is thrown my way, Heroic or not, makes no difference to me.
By Raknor on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Thank god someone else said it too. Hitting level 80 does not give u a free pass to heroics, as a tank i should not be out dpsing everyone. Im tired of seeing people with lvl 70 gear in queue for Pinnacle. I was in a heroic the other day, when (no joke) someone said, “sorry if my dps is low, i just hit 80 an hour ago.” WTH!? Im sick of wiping cuz our dps cant kill anything quick enough, and our healer’s got more greens than a columbian drug mule.
By Ironhoof on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
In my opinion, to do heroics, first you need to do some normal dungeons so you get a feel for what you are up against. You need to know what that guy does when he’s normal and then add to all the stuff that he has, a bit more, let’s say half (in the worse case).
Oh, good luck to Loken, he’s a real PAIN. More people die at that guy every day than at any other boss. He has more kills that Malygos.
By Sathas on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I’ve tanked heroic violet hold and reg naxx arachnid quarter
there’s 2 more possible upgrades i can get from reg instances: 1 from first boss in UP, the other from last boss in oculus
540 defense here i come!
By Eventime on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Being a BS ret pally, I made the epic helm and boots before starting my first heroic. I also tried to knock out some icecrown quests to see if any of the gear was an upgrade for me. I’ll admit I didn’t really do any regular lvl 80 dungeons (and have only done CoS since) before jumping into heroics. Still, I had all blues plus the two crafted epics before my first heroic, and soon after had my crafted epic 2h mace. I’ve done 2 wings of Naxx with another guild, and am currently 16 badges from getting the T7 chestpiece.
Yeah my gear isn’t amazing, but most of the time it’s plenty enough for a well-geared group to accept me.
By Vyllanas on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
A well geared tank and healer can carry a freshly dinged 80 without much problem. I agree that it isn’t fair to your group if you’re PUGing heroics as soon as you ding, but if your own guild refuses to help you, then they just don’t care about gearing you.
By zoova on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
lol @ ” our healer’s got more greens than a columbian drug mule.” XD
By Lemur on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Well, I did a 5-man normal twice in a row in Northrend while I was leveling my warlock. Can’t remember if I got any gear out of it though. I remember that the character was too low level being L71 to get the quests for the instance, so no rewards from those atleast.
I hit L80 with the warlock about 15min before 10-man Naxx Arachnid guild run. The first boss was a tough one because we were still figuring out the tactics and most had a lot of low level gear but the rest of the raid was easy enough. That first guild raid in Northrend took quite a long time to pull through but it was a challenge and lots of fun. I got two drops from it with lucky rolls.
To be honest, the quest rewards in Northrend had replaced much of my Kara gear, so I suppose there was some gearing up done. I knew that going for hit bonus was the way to go and had selected my gear and gems accordingly.
The game is very easy and if you go through all the gearing up process, there is not much challenge left anymore. But that is of course the whole idea. You can choose how much you gear up when going towards harder instances. The more you will gear up, the easier it will be to pull it through.
PS. I prefer raids over heroics anyway. So far, I have done more raids than 5-man heroic runs. I suppose the biggest reason for that might be that I do not, and will not, grind for badges.
By Cedric on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
I try to at least have mostly blues before I attempt any heroic dungeon, and I’ll start with the easier ones like Heroic Utgarde Keep and Heroic Nexus and work my way up. I don’t actually mind running normal dungeons. Any dungeon run is fine by me. Running normals also give me a chance to remember all the dungeons since I just usually run them once when I’m levelling. Managed to get about 3 or 4 epics and I just have 1 green trinket left.
By Sardit on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
half green / half blue here, all northrend gear, i’m a healer and i’m still refusing to do heroics even though i do get plenty invites untill i get some gear ups from gundrak, dtk and oculus. After that i’ll be doing heroic uk & nexus working my way up.
Heck i got invited 30 mins after i dinged 80 to heal a 10 man naxx run. Would any of you like a healer with no gear doing that? Naturally i refused. But just to prove a point. Healers usually don’t have to wait to gear up. They are welcome to heal as soon as they can enter an instance raid. heck my first utguard keep run was way before i dinged 70. Can’t remember what level exactely but i was still questing in outland since the big spider things outside valliance keep killed me the first time i tried to go there.
By Aramathis on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
LF4m???
LFM….. L4M…. Some extra letterage in there!
By banikk on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
LF4m stands for Looking for four more!!!!!
haha
i ran 4 heroics as soon as i hit 80. it was great although i
did have a hefty repair bill
By Deidare on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Well im a tank so when i leveled all i could do was “instance” (well i did quest to obviously but i mean im a tank so i had to tank) meaning i had alot of really good northerend blues by the time i dinged 80 and when i did i went start for heroics. Trust me it was a good idea once you hit that 80 and you at least think you have decent gear go for it. Im already on to raiding with one or two epics i made and one or two i got from heroics (plus a gun an friend made me). My advice is to hit them as soon as you can and get into thouse raids defently before new content.
By vagner on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
i like raiding AQ40 its cool to have the bug mount people think i”m dumb…
By Ltshanks on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
If you need some new daggers for you mutilate rogue, get 2 Librarian Paper Cutters (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37856) .. and put Mongoose or Berserking (although i’d probably wait til they reduce the cost of mats for it)
on my server LPC’s go for about 75-80 gold. Definitely worth it for mutilate rogues, as faster weps = more crits for Focused attacks (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=51636) and more procs of mongoose and poisons.
By Ltshanks on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
*LPC’s are the best daggers pre naxx.
By Thatguy on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Man, about 3 hours after i dinged 80 i got rushed into our first 10 man. i kept telling ppl i have done very little non heroc runs, let alone get my LW up, grind my pvp gear, or get some heroic drops. but in my kara gear t4 gear BG merc gear and a few quest rewards i got pushed into my forst guild 10 man. needless to say i got yelled at. why? becase i was undergeared. fun huh?
By Bug on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 8:02 am
I know most people say looking at Wowhead and Tthottbott is cheating, but I would rather be informed about the game then running around Northrend like a chicken with my head cut off. I reviewed which quests gave me blue gear that would help my rogue and I went for those when I leveled. Some of those quests involved going into the non-heroic dungeons, which was great, it was like killing two birds with one stone… cause if I didn’t get something from the boss, at least I completed the quest that gave me a nice upgrade. So by the time I reached 80, I was partially ready for Heroics, cause I still had to deal with the change in difficulty level with the bosses… but then it is still a learning experience, and if anything, doing enough heroics gives you some nice gear if you decide to do Naxx.
By Pauldy on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 9:14 am
I think many are able to make that transition there are plenty of upgrades out there on the way up after you hit about 75 you should start replacing much of your gear. I had replaced all but a sunwell neck piece by the time I hit 80. I definatly wouldn’t recommend HOL for your first heroic, nexus seems to be one of the easier entry heroics to start gearing you up for the rest.
By Kalcifer on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I never hit the level cap before burning crusade so all this heroic stuff is kinda new to me. I managed to get a boost from some friends of a friend so my first heoric was ok. So i thought that if those were ok then surely i could manage a pug group. Big Mistake. Signed up for a PUG group to the Nexus and said straight off that it had been ages since i had done the nexus so could someone explain what the bosses do beforehand. I had read up but wanted someone to just tell me what to do. Anyway we spent the whole time in silence and then straight into the Treeshaper dude where i died straight away on his big ice pointy things. Anyway we got past that but could not get past the next boss.
Anyway the whole experience has put me off pug heroics for life. Now me and my guild are going to OUtlands to grind through the heorics there as practice for the heorics in Northrend.
By Dayrius on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 11:28 am
oh i know how that tank feels out dpsing the specced dps in
instances, if your doing under 1k dps in a 80 heroic, your not geared
By Rob on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
As a healer, I was fortunate to have a great guild to help me gear up. Through some heroics and some normal instances, I was ready to take on regular heroics in a couple of days with a poorly geared tank. Now I sit at about 2k healing power and understand most, if not all, of the fights now in the dungeons.
I will say, it is a pain to try to heal someone who has not geared up at all or being in a group that has low dps because everyone just hit 80. It’s hard on the healer to keep a tank alive for 10 minutes while people are trying to kill the boss in a heroic. I agree with your choice. You should definitely gear up a little bit prior to running heroics.
By Voldenmist on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
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!!!!
By Moggafogga teh shaman dude! on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
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
By Moggafogga teh shaman dude! on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
dinged 80 in sholazar ;P
By Fallor on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
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.
By Annieoakley on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 2:52 am
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
By LolHeroics on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 12:01 am
This content is easy. Heroics done on the first day of 80.
All 10 man content cleared in 2.5 weeks.
By Jeenyus on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 4:10 pm
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.
So yea its pretty easy to do heroic’s and raids even if u’ve just dinged.
By Dudeofdeath on Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
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
By Dudeofdeath on Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Sorry about the double post..
I have done OS too, it was cake
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
By deathisnear on Sunday, January 25th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
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
By keznar on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
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.
By xaan on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
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
By Sardit on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 7:56 am
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.
By Sardit on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 8:01 am
@ 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.
By Linmore on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 10:27 am
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.