Heroics order, part I: the easy ones
Yesterday, as I was leveling my shaman, I listed to one of Veneretio’s podcasts, and one of the questions he received was which instances make good starter heroics. Which took me right back in time. There I was, with every possible blue out of a normal instance, looking for a new challenge. With me I had my trusty sidekicks, a warlock and a priest, with the same predicament. We so got our asses handed to us, repeatedly. Wipe after wipe after wipe. That was back when you needed to be Revered with factions to run heroics, and when you actually were able to PUG because people had run instances a lot. At the time my most burning question was what instance to tackle first. There are various different opinions out there. By now I have run almost all heroics, with two exceptions so I’ll just add my opinion to the masses.
Before I start listing heroics, here’s my warning. If you’ve never been to Karazhan and you just want to start heroics, and your fellow group members have the same gear level, be prepared that heroics are hard. They are! Sure, ask in any forum and people will be ‘roflmao, noob, l2p, heroics r caek’. When you’re all clad in purples, they are significantly less challenging. But when you start out, prepare to wipe until you can wipe no more. As comparison, our first full heroic Slave Pens run had about six wipes. Basically, after second boss, we wiped from pull to pull. 3 hours after heading in, we finally killed Quagmirran. Yesterday, I ran heroic Slave Pens again (though I was on my rogue) and we completed with zero wipes, in about 55 minutes.
Enough rambling, here’s the meat! I will be using a scale of 1-5 to delineate difficulty as I see it, with tanking hints. A general hint before I start: trash is much harder than bosses in heroics, that’s why you skip as much trash as you can, unless you like your rep grinding masochist style. For your first attempts, I would generally advise at least two CCers. Once your gear is a bit better, you can start bringing the poor suckers who get left out, like enh shaman, boomkins or fury warriors.
Heroic instances in order of difficulty:
1. Slave Pens
2. Underbog
3. The Mechanar
4. Hellfire Ramparts
1. Slave Pens (1/5): The ultimate beginner instance for heroics. If you’re a beginner, bring tons of CC. It’s all humanoids, so mages, rogues, warlocks, hunters, shadow priests, they can all CC for you here.
Most difficult trash pull: Defenders. Come in pairs, cannot be CCd at all, spell-reflect, hit like trucks. In blue gear, expect 3-4k per hit. I found it impossible to tank both of them back then, as your healer will produce great amounts of aggro trying to keep you up. If you struggle, hunter kiting or frost mage kiting one of them works, just most of the time results in a death of them. Another helpful trick is to have a rogue stunlock the DPS target. Also, don’t be shy with Concussion Blow and Disarm, which both greatly minimize the damage you take. Once you start having more armor, the pulls become easily tankable.
Other notable pulls: Careful, after the second boss, there are three pulls that just spell ‘wipe-alert’. Especially the pull in the tunnel to Quagmirran has killed us many a time. Pull way down in the tunnel to avoid being feared in stuff you didn’t clear. In Quagmirran’s room, stand right by the tunnel when someone lets Bite out of the cage and fight the 3 mobs right there. Bite won’t aggro that way, and you can get your OP buff for Quagmirran.
Bosses: Mennu is cake, as long as someone takes out his totems quickly. Spell Reflecting the Lightning Bolt is awesome. Rokmar just needs to be burned quickly before the bleed effect kills you. Quagmirran needs to be turned away from the group because of his Cleave, and once he starts using Acid Spray on someone from the group, you taunt him after a second or two, so that you will get the majority of the damage. The Mark of Bite will greatly help here.
2. Underbog (1/5 with a lock, 2/5 without one): The next step up would be that other Coilfang Reservoir instance. Based on your group make-up it’s just about as easy as Slave Pens, but if you don’t have a warlock for banishing, the way to the first boss is somewhat painful. CC options: warlocks for banishing elementals and fearing wasps; mages for polymorphing bats and the humanoids between boss number one and 2; rogues for the humanoids; spriests for the humanoids; hunters for everything. It is a bit on the longish side, early runs will probably take 2 hours or so, nowadays we usually complete it in 90 minutes.
Most difficult pull: similar to the Defenders in SP, you have a two pull without any CC option, right before Hungarfen. They hit hard, they grow, and they like running away to smash a healer to pulp. Use similar tactics as described for the SP Defenders.
Other notable pulls: The two Underbog Lords just before the end of the instance are scaaaaary. They really hit harder than anything. Huge aggro range too, so be careful. Never turn your back on any of the bats, they can backstab for 5k+ on plate. For all pulls towards Swamplord Muse’lek, use line of sight to pull all wasps to you. There’s a corner you can run around that will force them to fly around it. You can bash or reflect the poison spit.
Bosses: Hungarfen means constant movement, hit V to see spawning mushrooms right away. Ghaz’an is kinda boring, as long as your healer can keep you up. Swamplord Muse’lek himself is a PITA. Get the damn bear to 20% first, his charge is like the most aggravating feature ever. Have everyone stand in the bear’s butt to avoid chasing him forever. Black Stalker needs to be burned fast, ignoring the adds works great.
3. Mechanar, Home of the Sun Eater (2/5): If you’re a warrior or paladin tank, this is likely the one heroic you will run over and over and over and then some more. Until you cry. Then The Sun Eater drops and you never set foot in the instance again. True story, for me. Still, it’s the avoidance sword, you’d be strange not to want it, as tank. CC options: mages, rogues, spriests for the humanoids. Warlocks make the demon pulls trivial. Ideally, those little annoying ones are enslaved and then just spam their Arcane Explosion thingy. Fun times. Hunters for trapping everything. For the end-boss, two classes that can fear are ideal.
Most difficult pull: Tempest-Forge Destroyers. Single pulls, hit really hard, but their worst part is their ability to use Charged Fist. Here you can really shine as warrior tank, because you have the unique ability to actually spell-reflect that. Reflecting roughly 4k damage is awesome cake! So be aware when you tank them to have spell reflect ready and be thankful that it’s off the global cooldown. As beginning heroics tank, you should always have rage for Spell Reflect, at my gear level I actually have to save the rage to be able to use it, at times.
Other notable pulls: My advice is to leave Nethermancer Serpetrea for last, because she can be very demoralizing. She’s harder than anything else in there. Instead, head towards Pathaleon the Calculator. The gauntlet is tricky and might require some dirty tricks. If you manage to survive the first wave of four, the Destroyer and the wave of three should be manageable. Be ready to Intervene on the Destroyers, they have a habit of heading straight for the healer. For the second part of the gauntlet, I strongly advise to use the elevator method for the last wave of four mobs. By elevator method I mean running out, using the elevator to go back down, wait til you’re out of combat. Once you go back up, the four mobs will be waiting for you and you can CC at your leisure. It sounds cowardly, but it’s better than wiping on the damn bridge. Pay attention to the Netherbinders, once they start summoning their Arcane Servants, you’re in trouble.
Bosses: the gatekeepers aren’t really worth mentioning, just run out of the Jackhammer. The first boss is significantly easier than on normal, go figure. You just have to tank your butt off, because DPS with matching buffs will lay down serious threat. Pathaleon is best done with a fear rotation, try to hold the adds on you as long as you can. Nethermancer Serpetrea aka ‘That fire bitch’ is the hardest nut to crack. Kite her around, Intervene/Feral Charge whenever the Dragon’s Breath wears off, and curse. She sucks that much, and it usually takes us a wipe or two before we get her down.
4. Hellfire Ramparts (2.5/5): This is a very short instance, but surprisingly I haven’t tanked it a lot, despite some interesting drops in there. CC options: mostly humanoids, so the usual options. Druids can hibernate the dogs.
Most difficult pull: there are several contenders here, but the pull with the Beastmaster in the first part of the instance is noteworthy as wipe-central. Don’t pull until the pat has left, pull faaaaar back and don’t be surprised by the dog-pack the Beastmaster summons. If the pat adds, you’re screwed, in most cases.
Notable trash pulls: Raveners hit extremely hard. Be prepared for that. In the pulls with the caster and the one guy in the center, kill the lone guy first, CC as many casters as you can, and generously use spell-reflect.
Bosses: On Omorr, try to tank the felpuppies as long as you can, because they like to eat casters for breakfast, lunch and dinner. On Nazan, don’t forget to move him around the platform, fire resistance of any form is a great help here, as is tremor totem or fear ward. I didn’t mention the first boss, because there’s no real change from when you first killed him at level 60.
This concludes the first part of my heroics blabbering. Part II will describe all medium-level heroics, basically the ones I would run anytime, and part III will cover the ones that you have to really talk myself into running.
See also:
Don't Look Up
Volunteer Work
50 Fish
Looking For Multitudes
[...] Like a Girl has a post on Heroics order, part I: the easy ones. Her assessment matches my experience. I know that some of the harder heroics are at [...]
Still going through archives.
My first heroic run ever was Mech (I also got The Sun Eater on that run!) because folks were telling me it was the easiest. I had no idea I could spell reflect the charged fists either, so I was getting hit *hard*. My Shaman healer was having a rough time keeping up with the damage I was taking on those guys. On the bright side, Pathaleon went down like a limp noodle. We got Nethermancer to 20% on our first attempt then decided we’d hit up the first boss in Bot instead (rogue in our group needed just 1 more badge). We took her down, but I died at the same instant she did (I got the killing blow, too, hehe).
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admin Reply:
October 9th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Sun Eater on the first try, wow! Lucky guy.
I think I got mine on try number 12. I lived in Mech for a while there, back in the day when the Gatekeepers still dropped a badge each.
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