Heroic 5-mans?

[pxib]

I talked to my brother and father about the expansion and they both eluded to something I'd like confirmation from here.

You do 5-mans to get reputation which allows you to purchase heroic keys which allow you to do harder/complex versions of those same 5-mans for phatter lewtz. In order to get into said "heroic" instance, everyone in the group must have the key.

This seems ill-conceived. It creates a weird gap wherein folks at level 70 can't get groups for the instance they need in order to get rep for the key because everybody's already run the original version of that instance repeatedly (for the same reason... rep) and are already sick to death of it and have better gear because they've been repeatedly running the heroic version of THAT SAME INSTANCE (making them even more sick of it, especially the idea of repeating the same content for lesser rewards).

Am I confused or is this causing the obvious problems?

It's the raid-progression writ small... such that non-guilded 70's probably can't play anything at all.

[Furiously]

I think they alluded - eluded would mean they failed to grasp or understand.

I think the problem is likely even worse then that. Even guilded people who level a bit slow are likely to have a hard time finding groups. The dungeons are very unforgiving to under-equiped people as well.

But the good news is the heroics don't drop much better loot anyways so no one does them.

[Zetor]

Technically you could buy your rep up to revered with Cenarion Expedition, if you run Steamvault at least once (to get the letter) and buy a truckload of Coilfang Armaments off the AH. This is pretty expensive... but if you just run Steamvault 4-5 times and get a few armaments on the way, you should be able to hit revered. If you min-max cenarion rep like HH (aka. run underbog and slave pens a lot, and only do the quests after honored), I think you could hit revered without running SV more than once.

Other reps aren't that bad. Lower City has that repeatable feather-collection quest to get to honored if you don't feel like running crypts/sethekk, and you can do the quests after for a ~10k rep boost. One or two Shadow Labyrinth runs and you should be revered. You can get 5999/6000 friendly with the Sha'tar just by turning in stuff to the aldors and scryers (you gain 1/4 as Sha'tar rep as a bonus). If you run each TK instance once and do the Sha'tar quests, you're almost there; Botanica is about 2.5k rep, mechanar and arcatraz should be at 1.5k-2k a run. If you do the two CoT instances, you should almost be revered right there -- the completion for the Black Morass quest gives 8k rep by itself. A few more Durnholde runs (or future BM runs -- you need it for your karazhan key anyway) and you should be good to go.

The only rep that's a huge pita is Honor Hold -- if you don't min-max it, you'll probably do all the HFP quests first to bump you to honored, which is where the two lower-level instances cap out at. The only way to go from there is doing Shattered Halls over and over and over and over again. If you do it the other way around (do ramparts and furnace until honored, then do the quests, including the quests for ramparts and furnace), you should be able to get very very close to revered (maybe even hit it as a human) at level 62ish. Nobody I know did it this way, though.

Besides, my warlock is revered with most of this stuff and I have yet to see the oblivion hood/robe drop for me, so I'll keep running the instances for a while. :P


-- Z.

[Fordel]

Be nice to not have the stupid rep grinds at all, but what breaks my balls is the limits on how you get rep. Why do all the various turn in and mob killing rep gains all have to stop at Honored etc... I don't know. It's really annoying though.

My favorite rep from TBC? The Aldor/Scryers one. Buying rep off the AH in bulk is awesome.

[Fabricated]

My main problem with the heroics is that they're way too face-smashingly hard. A regular trash pull without CC should not be able to almost instantly obliterate a tank with 10k+ HP. Some heroics are easier than others, but the trash is just pumped up to OBSCENE levels. Typically the trash pulls are much worse than the boss pulls. Woe be unto anyone not in cloth in a heroic because in most of them if you get aggro for a second, you're done.

If I recall the felguards at the end of the Blood Furnace on Heroic can pretty much one-hit everything that isn't in plate on a crushing blow. Yeah, that's bullshit.

[Zetor]

Yeah. Some heroics are just very badly tuned. Trash is not supposed to be harder than bosses! I've read they are "re-tuning" some trash in 2.1 though, have to see how that shakes out. But the fact that in heroic slavepens some of the bigger pulls are a lot harder than the 3 bosses says a lot. :P (and heroic SP is one of the easiest heroics; hell, warlocks can SOLO that place. I'm serious, there are videos out there...)

I've heard bad things about heroic underbog too: some mobs that can 2-shot the tank, come in a double pull, and can't be kited away (like karazhan ushers). Not looking forward to dealing with the double untauntable AOE-crazy robot pulls in arcatraz either.

Another good example is heroic mechanar. The first boss is actually EASIER on heroic than normal mode (imo), and Pathaleon is pretty much the same fight (only difference is, it requires some more CC on the adds and less AOEing unless the group is like tank+healer+3 mages). The 2nd boss though.. /shudder. Make the bad fire elementals go away!


-- Z.

[SurfD]

Actually, other then a few things here and there, I think heroics are exactly what they should be: Face smashingly hard.

Lets face it.  It is REALLY easy for people to level up in WoW, and run a few instances here and there, and still ding 70 without having a fucking clue how to play your class effectively. (believe me, i have been in pug groups where level 70's died in normal fucking SLAVE PENS, because they were clueless chucklefucks).

Heroics (which are basicly the gateway to EVERY 25 man raid) are the proving grounds, where you quickly learn who cuts it and who doesent.  These are designed to seperate the good from the bad.

Heroics also teach very valueable lessons:
Proper aggro controll - you pull the mob off the tank, you die.
Proper CC management - heroics are ALL about the CC.  you break that sheep/trap/sap, you better be the tank, or you are going to die.

Yes, there ARE issues, but those are mainly due to some balance things that are likely going to be tweaked in future patches, and the fact that the design of some of the instances ment you went with an optimum class group or not at all.  Getting rid of sweeping strikes will fix many issues, and i believe there are some other tweaks being made to soften the Heroics up a bit.  All in all however, I still think 75% of them are good and proper on the difficulty level.

Also, the Epic loot on the last boss in many heroics is actually quite nice (being buffed in next patch) and often on par with stuff from most of the karazan bosses.

[SurfD]

Oh, and Zetor, my guild discovered a method that makes Mechanar the easiest 5 heroic badges you ever got (assuming you dont have much trouble with Paltheon).

Trick is simple:  Leave the second boss till last.

The fire elementals she spawns all get aggro on one random person in range when you summon her (as best as we can tell).
So you kill Paltheon, then have your group wait about 2/3 down the path leading to paltheon's room.
Have someone who runs fast, or can sprint/blink/whatever (but it has to be someone you can safely do without for most of the fight) go and ranged pull her, then run back to group.
The fire elementals will stop and aoe periodically while they head to the group, so she ends up getting to the group a good number of seconds before the elementals do (and the elementals should all have aggro on the puller).
The tank grabs her, group beats the snot out of her, and when the elementals catch up, the puller runs them down the ramp into paltheon's room, and kites them around the outside then back down the ramp, while the group moves back toward her room.

If all goes well, you get a good 15 to 20 seconds pure dps on her before the elementals catch up, and should still be able to dump dps into her after the puller kites away without ever having to worry about the whole group running madly around dodging elementals.

[Shavnir]

Personally what Heroic Mechs that I'm in usually end up doing is after killing the Calculator we go back, just fight the next boss in her room and any DPS that gets an elemental on 'em lays some dots on and runs down the hall and back, effectively kiting it away without the flame trail being problematic.  Your method sounds solid too.

Regarding the rep thing it can be annoying but in general these are things you would be doing anyways.  I mean I hit revered with Lower City but I still went to a normal Shadow Labs for a shot at my shouldergards of the bold off of Murmur.  The one thing that's a bit annoying is how much easier CE and Thrallmar / Honor Hold rep is if you min/max it early, but that's more just a "why didn't I save all those plant parts" kinda thing.

[Ironwood]

Of all the things that WoW Got Right :  Reputation and Faction grinds fucking suck.

[Jayce]

It's funny how you people complain endlessly that they are only adding raid content, what would another 5-man hurt? please put small-group content and I'll be happy, damn raiders.

Then you get about a bazillion new 5-mans and you complain that you have to run them   

[Threash]

It's the raid-progression writ small... such that non-guilded 70's probably can't play anything at all.

Non guilded 70s wont be running heroics anyways.  Maybe eventually they will be puggable but atm you'd be insane to step into any heroic without a very good group of people you know quite well.

[rk47]

It's funny how you people complain endlessly that they are only adding raid content, what would another 5-man hurt? please put small-group content and I'll be happy, damn raiders.

Then you get about a bazillion new 5-mans and you complain that you have to run them   

It's not bazillion. People love running them, but once they've done it 3-4 times and still not get the drop..that's when they start hating it. I've got 2 Exalted rep and got burned out from the 5 mans but I still miss some drops off 1-3 bosses non heroics. Do I still have the will to do heroics?

Casuals might find it perplexing that the reward to running the same instance 20 times in a row is access to the SAME instance with HIGHER difficulty.

[Merusk]

It's the raid-progression writ small... such that non-guilded 70's probably can't play anything at all.

Non guilded 70s wont be running heroics anyways.  Maybe eventually they will be puggable but atm you'd be insane to step into any heroic without a very good group of people you know quite well.

If by "eventually" you mean "right now," sure.  There's PUG Heroics forming on my Alliance server all the time, and the requests don't get the "PUG Heroic? LOLZ" the same way PUG Karas do.   Maybe it's the larger playerbase on Alliance side, so there's more folks running them, maybe it's that they're doing the 'easy' Heroics.   (Mech, Steamvault, Sethekk)

[Phred]

It's funny how you people complain endlessly that they are only adding raid content, what would another 5-man hurt? please put small-group content and I'll be happy, damn raiders.

Then you get about a bazillion new 5-mans and you complain that you have to run them   

It's not bazillion. People love running them, but once they've done it 3-4 times and still not get the drop..that's when they start hating it. I've got 2 Exalted rep and got burned out from the 5 mans but I still miss some drops off 1-3 bosses non heroics. Do I still have the will to do heroics?

Casuals might find it perplexing that the reward to running the same instance 20 times in a row is access to the SAME instance with HIGHER difficulty.

How many times do you think raiders have to raid an instance to get the drops they want?

[rk47]

raiders are not casual players. which is what 5 man non-heroics are about. I never sad I am a casual player, but majority like pxib's brother & father are probably wondering why they should run an instance 20 times just to gain access to it again at higher difficulty. Blizzard thought it would 'double' the content by adding heroics, I'd say that's the easy way out.

[Chenghiz]

Heroics are great, but they're kind of a copout excuse for 5-man content progression. Utterly changing boss fights, like Mechanar's first boss, is a great thing and it truly does make the instance worth doing even if it isn't getting you rep towards exalted and epics/tokens for epics.

[SurfD]

Yeah, the neat thing about many of the 5 man encounters is the way they use mechanics that people who never raided any of the old 40 man content would never have seen.  Many of the new tricks they pulled out for bosses in Naxx, such as the Poison Clouds, Pos / Neg debuff grouping and things like that were distributed around various 5 man encounters, so that people actually get to experience them, even if on a smaller scale.

[Zetor]

The thing that really ticks me (and my guildies) off is that they haven't reitemized the lv70 heroics at all. Yeah, you get badges, (a "chance" at epic gems after the next patch) and an epic off the very last boss, but it feels very underwhelming to down a "hard-mode" boss only to have them drop the same crap they do in normal mode.

They could add an alternate loot table to them with lv70 blues, like they did to non-70 heroics... some weird gear that won't make or break anyone gearing up, but should provide nice bonuses to certain off-specs or min-max a certain aspect, so people have an incentive to run heroics other than just farming badges and nethers (and MAYBE a sun eater if you're a prot warrior that's not also a blacksmith).


-- Z.

[Chenghiz]

I agree, it's disappointing that every boss except the last bosses drop the old loot+ a badge.

[Xanthippe]

My interest in playing WoW has dramatically declined once I hit 70 on one toon, and approached it on another.  I've been told that heroic loot is not much better than regular 5mans.  After watching my old guild bicker and whine and be mean to each other about whose fault last night's wipe was when they were figuring out Kara, I realized I really don't want to go back to doing the whole raid thing.

I just have no interest in getting together with 24 other people night after night for weeks to get some piece of loot so that I can be more efficient in getting together with 24 other people night after night for weeks to get some piece of loot so that I can be more efficient in getting together with 24 other people night after night for weeks to get some piece of loot so that <blam>

[Threash]

I honestly don't know why anyone bothers with pve anymore.  I haven't done more than a handfull of 5mans and im having more fun now than at any other time on wow.  Arena matches dont last longer than 2-3 mins, queues are usually under a min.  Sure its a pain getting everyone together to do a lot of 5v5, but i spend all my time doing 2v2 and 3v3 and regular bgs on the weekends.  Its fast, theres absolutely no grind (hell if i had played 80 less 1v1 games this week i'd be about 150 points ahead of where i am now) and you get gear at a faster rate than raiding.  The good kinda gear that lets you kick ass, not the shitty kind that lets you stand around highfiving each other about your "dps" on the latest cockblock boss.

[Jayce]

Some people like PvE.   

[Nonentity]

FUCK Heroic Shadow Labs. That is all.

Oh, and what the fuck is up with Heroic Steamvaults? It takes like, a tiny tiny fraction of the time.

I hate heroics. Raiding is more entertaining, and that is saying a LOT.

[Merusk]

Some people like PvE.   

No matter how many times you say it, it just won't sink-in for some folks.

That said, I'm feeling burnt-out because of shitty game mechanics.

 "Well, we'll force you from a group of 40 people you know well, down to 10 people.  Maybe you can get 2 groups going, but not more than that because most trash will require 2 tanks.  Oh sure, you COULD use offspecs to offtank, but since they've been forced into "RAID ROLE" for 2 years all the players you've got in those roles are SHIT at that bit.  Sure, you COULD force a spally to respec and offtank, but he just wants to heal and his gear's set up that way. Same with the druid, the only one you've got that wants to 'offspec' wants to DPS, not be feral. HA  HA, sux2bu for weeding out those 'individualists' a year ago.

Oh, so you finally got a good grove going in Kara, but half to 3/4 of your members have quit because you can't take them on a regular basis?  Wow, that sucks, because you needed 15 more just to take a stab at the next stuff.  HAHAHAHA."

It's a load of crap, really.  This contract-to-10 then balloon up again stuff is bullshit. 

Ditto on the Fuck Heroic Shadow Labs.  Hey, we've got dungeons of varying lenghts, but the rewards are going to be the same for the uber difficulty.  That makes sense, right?  I certainly see why there's only groups going for Mech(or wherever that sword drops) and Stamvaults.  The others simply aren't worth the repair bills, as the trash sucked enough on normal difficulty.

[Fabricated]

Well, Heroic ramparts isn't TOO bad and it has some pretty good drops.

[Zetor]

That's the thing though... only the non-70 dungeons were reitemized. Doing heroic ramparts / furnace / underbog / slave pens / crypts / mana tombs is definitely worth it, you can get some new shiny stuff (not sure about sethekk actually) like the alternate doomplate / mana-etched / desolation sets. Even post 2.1, the only "new" drops off heroic bosses will be the gems (that aren't really good to begin with, at least the ones I've seen so far -- you're almost always better off with a standard blue gem). Just adding some new lv70 blue drops to the lv70 instances wouldn't hurt.

Of course there's the issue of some trash being way too freakin' hard in some instances, but it sounds like they're addressing this in 2.1. Same with warlocks being able to solo heroic slave pens. ;)


-- Z.

[Chenghiz]

Why do we still have 25-man raids, anyway? Am I correct in saying that 10-man raids are pretty much universally preferable?

[SurfD]

Woah woah, Warlocks can solo heroic slave pens??!?  WTF.  How?

I know there is that crazy asian hunter that has the videos of him soloing all sorts of crazy shit (like Heroic Durnhold), but how does a warlock Solo slavepens?  Some of those mobs are IMMUNE to CC and occasionally go immune to magic.

[Ironwood]

Fear ?

And MOR DOTS ?

[Shavnir]

Woah woah, Warlocks can solo heroic slave pens??!?  WTF.  How?

I know there is that crazy asian hunter that has the videos of him soloing all sorts of crazy shit (like Heroic Durnhold), but how does a warlock Solo slavepens?  Some of those mobs are IMMUNE to CC and occasionally go immune to magic.

There's about 4 places that you can abuse pathing to cause the mob to move away then move back towards you by hopping up and down a ledge.  Combine that with some really insane shit on Quaggmirrian (summoning then saccing a vw everytime he gets nicked by the poison) its pretty nuts.  And waaay harder than he makes it look.

[Zetor]

The Korean video on the 'net is the "hard way" to solo the instance. There's a way to skip every pull and only kill Quag, without using invis potions or anything of the sort. There's a 20-page thread on the warlock forums about it... many people have farmed him already. It takes about 20 minutes to get to the kill position. Most of the tricks are getting nerfed next patch (some pathing bugs fixed, and an overhang added that prevents the 'lock from bypassing half of the instance with a tricky jump), but someone has claimed that he was able to do it on the test server post-nerf.

(note: I haven't tried it myself.. I suck at jumping puzzles and my 700 ping wouldn't make it any easier. Besides, it's just more fun with a guild group, it's fairly easy for a heroic. :P)

Edit: Here is a video that shows how to get to the Quag pull spot without fighting anything. It's a mage vid that uses invisibility twice -- but a warlock can avoid the same pulls by using the imp or eye of kilrogg to aggro the mob groups, pull them way back, and run past while they're distracted.


-- Z.

[Calantus]

http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-8640617637006519726

Thats the hard way apparently, as Zetor said.

There's also a vid of a hunter doing it too.

[SurfD]

ahh.  I was aware of there being the ability to skip large chunks of the instance by exploiting certain terrain features, but i still figured you pretty much needed to kill at least 2 or 3 packs of mobs to get to quag.