By request from another thread, a discussion about heroic instancing.

So the expansion is out, you've finally leveled to 70, bankrupted yourself buying your epic flying mount, and you want to run one of those heroic instance you read on the back of the box about.

Well then.

First, you need to have a key. The key is aquired (generally) by running whatever instance it is you want to run on heroic, on normal a few dozen times until you aquire revered reputation with the faction associated with that instance. For coilfang, it's cenarion expedition. For Shadow Labyrinth, it's Lower City. For Shattered Halls, Honor Hold.

So once you have the key, you're ready to go?

Stop. Go back to your bank and collect your naxx consumables, you'll want them.

Trash in heroics is harder than most trash in karazhan. Some bosses (generally the first two although this is not a hard and fast rule) of each heroic are generally unchanged. The last one or two are much more difficult.

I'll repeat that.

Trash in the heroic 5 man dungeons, is generally harder than trash in the 10 man epic raid.

Let that sink in if you haven't.


You will want crowd control. You will want a well geared tank (or two**). You will want to be very familiar with the instance and the mob abilities. Luckily for you, most of this is neatly accomplished by the keying requirement. By the time you can run an instance on heroic, you will be very familiar with it, and you should have a good feel for what each instance favors.

In general, I would say you need at a minimum, full 70 blues, or t3 pieces on your tank (I prefer 70 blues for stamina reasons) and your healer should be expecting a rough time and be prepared accordingly (mana pots et al). Flask of the titans is not out of place in any of the heroics, there are several trash mobs that have high burst (the water elementals in heroic coilfang, or the infernals in heroic alcatraz spring to mind).

In general, treat heroic as seriously as you treat naxx today, and you have the right attitude.

Now then, what about the rewards?

The bosses all drop a token (at this point on beta, this may still change) which can be redeemed (when you have enough) for various heroic rewards. The stand out items from the heroic reward list is the resistance gear, which as of my last check was 100 tokens. Assuming you run shadow labyrinth (lower city rep) you need to run it 25 times to get a full set. That's assuming you don't have anything else you want as a reward from heroics.

The end boss in each dungeon drops a guaranteed epic.

The reputation rewards from heroic are higher than standard, but depending on the reputation, it might be easier to obliterate the lower version of the dungeon than to grind the heroic mode (slave pens normal is easy. Slave pens heroic can be brutal.)

Lastly, as a rule of thumb do not expect to pug a heroic dungeon successfully. Most groups I've been in that are pure pug through the lfg tool on beta couldn't complete the instance, even with full explanations, complimentary flasks and protection potions, etc. This stuff is hard for the avg player.

**Optimal group composition for heroics (this is a starting guide, not a hard and fast rule)

Tank
OT
Healer
Healer/DPS hybrid
DPS

As a parting thought: I have just under 20,000 health in bear on beta. I was killed in a single round of combat by the first boss in heroic coilfang when our warlock did not cc fast enough.

Challenging five man content is exactly what I was hoping for from the xpack. Gives you something to do outside of raid time that isn't a pushover.

Good news, I say.

My only complaint is that it's so crowd control focused. Heroic instances become so much easier when you stack your group with CC.

It is fun, though. The sheer size of many pulls allows for a group to plan and plot out some creative methods of dispensing with a group of mobs. Mind control, fear, traps, sap, everything gets a use that you don't normally see in raids or normal 5 mans.

I do hope that stacking won't be neccesary for heroics (eg. we cant do this without a warlock, or without a mage, or whatever), but overall I'm looking forward to difficult 5man content aswell. However if they are truely that difficult, the Heroic turnin items seem a little lackluster compared to their token cost.

Does anyone have any experience with Heroic Shattered Halls? In terms of CC I would say that this place is the pinnacle of it, and while on normal difficulty trying to juggle 6 mobs can be challenging, I am lost at what to expect in a Heroic context.

This kinda miffed me, especially due to the consumable requirement. There's no way to circumvent burning pots like candy and farming flasks to be able to clear Heroic five-mans?

Also, how's the cash return as compared to regular 60-mans? Do the mobs generally drop more BoE greens/blues/money or do you emerge with no net difference except higher pot costs and repair bills?

Unless the rewards are obscenely good I don't see this being worth the effort if it is as you describe.

Also with the heavy requirements on group composition I can see some classes that just won't be able to get much other than pity groups that give it a shot on Heroic.

Sounds like the "basic" group will be:
Druid/Paladin/Warrior (main tank)
Druid/Paladin/Warrior (off tank/dps/semi-backup healer)
Healing speced something
Possible other healer or DPS with CC
DPS with CC

Unfortunatly the population distribution doesn't follow those percentages as far as I can tell. Many many more DPS characters and not all of them might be optimal for which ever dungeon you plan on running.

Sure you could probably stack druids/shamans/paladins, but for Horde druids and paladins might be a bit hard to come by for every single group. Seems like there are going to be a lot of people that won't ever be able to experience any of the heroic just on somethings you say. Really hope this is wrong though as they sound somewhat fun and I'd sure like to have a chance at completing them.

Not sure what to make of the consumables requirement problem as well, they don't really make it more fun or challenging in my opinion unless they were setup that they would be reactionary as opposed to pre-fight buffing to the gills to survive X thousand damage or you need (priest mana pool) x 3 mana to beat requiring all the mana potions and oils.

If the items themselves were better than anything you could get in Kharazan then it might be worthwhile as you gear up in the 10 mans to run the 5 mans (sorta like how many people ended up doing the quests for the orignal dungeons before they removed the raid possibility of Scholo and Stratholme). How do the rewards compare?

One other question to end this rambling: does the entire group need to be eligible or just the group leader to enter heroic mode?

I just got done with a Heroic Steam Vaults run myself as the tank. We did not use any consumeables except mana pots, but they sure as hell would have helped. It was Resto Shaman, Holy Paladin, Feral Druid (tank), Fury Warrior, and Frost Mage. We had a couple dumb wipes just to bad pulls, not knowing what to expect from certain mobs on heroic (Defenders, OW, 2.5k melee hit on 24k armor!).

My gear put me at 12k health/24k armor with buffs. Generally, the trash wasn't too bad, except for the very last trash pull in the instance, which had 2 defenders and 2 observers. The defenders could not be sheeped, and they each melee me for 2.5k a hit, every attack. The first bosses were pretty easy, we one shot both of them without much effort. The third boss was stupid hard because the nature resistance buff giving npc died in one cleave to a mob he ran up to and beat on. He never got aggro, he just died from the cleave and screwed us over.

The last boss was frustrating, just because he puts out so much aoe damage on the entire group, it was ridiculous. And yeah, I very firmly agree with the OP that you are going to want two people able to heal, including one dedicated healer. Otherwise, very fun and challenging to them.

This is awesome news. I really hope the Heroics enter live like this without being nerfed because challenging content, that does not require you to build a big guild just to do it, is what I always wanted from WoW. It feels like doing DM N all over again with blues and greens as your gear and back when you were afraid of the 4 Ogre pull just left at the entrance. :D

25 Heroics runs for 1 resist item sounds harsh though.

There are more than 50 BoE epics that are craftable that require Primal Nethers:
http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter...1,11;crv=0,0,0

I haven't yet done the research to find out whether they are recipes that are readily attainable or recipes that you need to find or get out of instances.

Perhaps the most in demand items will be Golden Spellthread, Runic Spellthread, Nethercobra Leg Armor and Nethercleft Leg Armor.


Thanks Anias for making this post.

It is my understanding that yes, everyone needs the Heroic Key to enter a Heroic dungeon. (thank God)

Does each boss in a heroic instance drop a Badge of Justice? Or just the end boss?

How does the epic that drops of the end boss compare to epics out of Karazhan?

There was a lot of complaints a month or so ago about the awful risk versus reward in Heroic instances. Have the developers done anything to address this?

I understand there's a one day lockout for each heroic instance. Could you theoretically run several different heroic instances in the same day?

D

Is the lockout similar to what we're used to at the moment? That is, the first boss down we're locked into a raid ID. Or alternatively, is it when we zone into the instance?

I think the heroic 5 man to Naxx comparison is a bit exaggerated, although I have only done 1 group of Heroic instances (Coilfang, don't have enough people keyed for the rest). Our first heroic instance was Steam Vaults, in which we had no problem with (Mage/Priest/Paladin/Hunter/BearDruid). We didn't wipe once, but that was mostly due to pro kiting by the Hunter/Mage combo or the Paladin's ability to backup heal the few times I died. None of us used any pots.

It also seems like the higher level instances may not always be as hard as the lower level ones. It felt, to me, that Slave Pens was actually much harder than the higher level Steam Vaults. The group was mostly the same, except a Mage was substituted in for the Paladin (resulting in Mage/Mage/Hunter/Priest/BearDruid). The lack of a backup healer could've been the problem.

As for risk/reward issue, I've actually found that many times I get the same items off bosses on normal and heroic settings. We got multiple 'normal' drops in our heroic instance when we ran Steam Vaults.

Every boss.

From what I understand that is just heroic instances not being completely itemized.

Everyone in group needs key to enter heroic instance, which means everyone needs to be revered with the faction in question.

The lockout is the same as the current system, you kill one boss, and you're locked to that particular heroic instance until 5 am the next day. So you could run a total of 15 heroics in one day, if you ran every single instance. Requires revered with 5 different factions, however.

Each boss gives a badge except the last boss, who always drops an epic plus blues. The epics from heroic last bosses are pretty close to karazhan gear. Perhaps slightly worse. Karazhan has harder bosses, easier trash. Heroic has harder trash, easier bosses. The risk vs reward still seems slightly off to me, due to the number of badges necessary to get the vendor epics. I have enjoyed them, overall, though. I just make sure I have a strong group (multiple mages/warlocks) before I try anything.

I wouldn't quite say that heroic instances require naxx style preperation, but they require a lot more thought than your average instance. You absolutely have to have a plan. You can't wing it and risk having a healer literally two shot by a stray trash mob.

Yep. Just like AQ insignias.

From looking through the list of stuff on http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=8512 you can purchase it seems that you are probably going to have to send your healers and tanks through the Heroic stuff as there are some pretty nice items. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of DPS type upgrades though there are a few good ones. Of course Blizzard could add in a bunch of other rewards and such.

For tanks I can see the need for 100 (lots of fire resist there, probably a reason) and another 83 (neck, shield and ring) to help on anything later on. At 4-5 badges per run thats something around 40 heroic runs. Obviously less should you be able to find an equivilent elsewhere (Kharazan?). Healing and damage classes can potentially get by with less resist stuff, or rely on the old Lava/Fiery Core craftables for fire resist since they are only fire resist and stamina, no attack power or plus damage/healing. All of this presuming that the Heroic rewards are buffed at some point... http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=15430 vs. http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=3280. Blue one is much better and looks significantly easier to get.

Hope there are other options as 40 plus runs is more than what seems reasonable to me at least :(

Looking at the list of items you get with badges, I can't help but notice - they're almost all ilvl 95, where several instance blues are 115 and up. I guess this is an oversight on Blizzard's part and would be why the shield linked above is worse than the blue equivalent.

That was one thing that was odd. I also saw this one: http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=14772 with is ilvl 95 as well but (potentialy) quite a bit better than the others but I have no idea the difficulty of getting exalted with Sha'tar is.

Not final code or something but I can't imagine that Blizzard would have these supposed "hardest of the hardcore" dungeons give items worse than running them regularly.

I believe that the blue shield is from some botany wing of an instance and not a raid so it should be a lot easier to aquire.

You didn't even mention the most insulting part of a heroic instance. The unique epic gem.

Sorry for being abit confused here but, I've always read/been informed of multiple things about Heroic Tokens:

Each boss drops one [True/False] - (would be 4~ per instance)
Everyone in the group gets one [True/False] - true as stated above.

I just assumed the worst at first; only one drops per run and only one person can loot it, to say things looked bad at that point would be an understatement - however if its each boss and everyone gets one... xD