Five Man Preparation

It's been a while since I've done a non-heroic five-man on any of my characters. Luckily, I approach these instances much like I'd approach a raid. In short:

• Have elixirs. Two is better, but one is okay too. I don't waste flasks here, usually even not on heroic.
• Have buff food. Even if it's just Stamina food.
• Are you reasonably enchanted? I wouldn't kick you for not having EVERY slot up to date, but if the gear is good and the enchant is reasonably acquired, go ahead and put it on. It won't hurt. Gear that is not great or slated to be replaced is exempt.
• I don't worry or care about mana or wizard oil. It might not be worth the expense. Same for stones. Poisons are always required though.
• Every gem slot should be filled. Even if it's with a throwaway greenie.
• Have at least a few emergency health or mana pots.
• Have bullets (or arrows or whatever). Mostly for huntards, but please don't run out
• Have you repaired?

So, there's the subset of raiding checklist that I apply for five-mans. I treat heroics somewhere between a normal five-man and a raid. I'm more likely to use mana oil in a heroic, but probably won't blow a flask.

Kiting Basics (from a Kiting Noob)

I have a confession to make. My hunter wasn't 60 before Burning Crusades came out. As such, I don't think he's ever been inside Upper Blackrock Spire which you may know is the primary instance in which hunters learn to kite. Since I spent exactly zero time kiting Drakkasith, I'm usually pretty ill-equipped to kite when it comes up now that I'm 70. So, the caveat here is that everything I say may be dead wrong. It's just things that I do that seem to help in my meager attempts at performing a key hunter skill.

First off, I've very rarely been asked to or suggested kiting in non-heroic instances. Most of the non-heroics allow other methods of crowd controlling the mobs in question where a kite isn't necessary. And since I'm not an expert, I don't try kiting unless there's no other method of dealing with whatever pull makes it necessary.

So, here's the things I do:

1. Turn on Aspect of the Monkey if the mob is melee based. If the mob is slower than you can run with Aspect of the Cheetah, use that instead. Just make darned sure you don't get hit.
2. Put a Frost Trap in the mob's path. There isn't much chance that a heroic dungeon mob will be affected, but it can't hurt.
3. Park your pet as far away as you can and use misdirection to put the mob on your pet. This is almost surely going to result in a dead pet. But, it will buy the rest of the group time. Hopefully enough time to dispatch whatever else is there to necessitate the kite.
4. Use concussive shot. Again, like the Frost Trap, probably ineffectual, but if it does slow the mob down, all the better.
5. Use geography. The pathing algorithm for mobs will generally make them follow a real "path" instead of following your daring leap.
6. If Frost Traps or Concussive shots are slowing the mob at all, use them whenever they become available.
7. Know where you're running to. Especially on heroics, parties like to skip mobs because the risk is too high from engaging things you don't need to. We all know that heroic mobs hit hard. If you don't need to kill a group of 3, you don't. However, when it comes time to kite, you may need to run through where that group is or find an alternate route. Kiting is a last-ditch attempt for me, so if there are mobs in your kiting path, make your group clear them first. The last thing you want to do is make the last-ditch situation worse by adding 3 or more uncontrolled mobs to an already dicey pull.
8. Know when you are going to pull aggro off from your misdirected pet. If you park the pet far enough away, it won't take long.
9. Be ready to care for yourself. Take a potion if you get hit a few times.
10. Be aware when the kite is over. Be ready to feign death and get the mob back on the party.
11. Be aware of the path the mob will take. If for some reason you've kited him around another uncleared group, he's probably going to bee-line for your group once you feign. If he goes through the previously navigated uncleared group, he's going to bring them all back to your unsuspecting party.

So there's a list of things I do before a kite. I thought it might also be useful to point out the places I've been asked to kite mobs and how I've found to do it.

Place One: Steamvaults (Heroic or Normal)
The first boss in Steamvaults comes with two elemental adds. They are immune to all forms of crowd control except banishing. Since you can't have a warlock with you in every group, there are a few options. Have the tank get all three mobs and burn down the elemental adds in a pre-determined order or kite the boss. In heroic tanking all three mobs is probably a precursor to a party wipe. Directly out the boss' room is a rock (often with a mineral node on it) with a path on the other side. I park my pet down there near the water, then stand up beside the rock so I can see my pet. Cast misdirect and boogie over to the boss and fire. I get another couple shots in and then run back toward the chamber that leads to the second and third bosses. And hug the wall back towards the entrance of the instance--that's generally the direction we've cleared in. Take special stock in point 11 above. If you haven't cleared on the way in, she may run back through the mobs in the anteroom.

Place Two: Slave Pens (Heroic)
The two naga directly before the hallway leading to the first boss are not controllable. Two mobs hitting a tank in heroic is certain death. Luckily there's a large pump directly off to the right of those mobs (as you look at them). You can park your pet back there and misdirect away. I believe both of those mobs are slowable by frost trap and concussive shot.

Place Three: Underbog (Heroic)
The two guards directly before the first boss again aren't controllable and cannot be separately pulled. Luckily they are up on a platform with a long winding trail leading up (or down). The mobs will follow the path, but are quite quick. Pull (or misdirect) to pet and jump down.

That's all I've been asked to kite and all I know on the subject. Good luck out there.

Ouch

I've often said in voice chat, "I never want to see what a heroic Shadow Labs looks like."

Well, thanks to Blizzard's new daily dungeon quests with Patch 2.3, I got to find out today. All in all it wasn't bad, but we didn't get far--we started too early in the day and were fighting against the heroic reset. With only about an hour and a half when we began, we were destined not to get too far.

We did kill the first boss before we decided there wasn't enough time to kill the second before we got kicked out. Here are a few things I noticed in my short time in there.

1. Loot didn't seem to change. I guess I expected that from an already 70 instance, just noting it for completeness.
2. Like any heroic, the trash hits VERY hard and the bosses, other than perhaps a new ability, don't change much.
3. Instead of 3 channelers around each pillar in the room before Hellmaw there were 4. So with only limited crowd control, it was challenging. Luckily paladin tanks can still tank multiples with good healing.
4. They bosses still drop stupid Spirit Shards, for which I've found no good use.
5. I still don't have enough badges on my priest to get what I want.
6. The Fel Overseers take most of the mana bar on my priest to heal through.

Hopefully tomorrow's heroic will be something I have more time for and have a prayer of getting through. The two things I did hear about changes to Slabs that I can't confirm are:

1. You can't graveyard zerg Blackheart.
2. Vorpil randomly banishes someone (and that someone can be the tank or healer)

Maybe someone has better (or at least first-hand) information about this as I can't confirm it.

Blizzard gets patch day right!

So, whatever children, small furry animals, and unidentified spices were sacrificed the to WoW gods seemed to have appeased their wrath. My UI did not completely bust (there were a few smallish coding fixes and some non-critical add-ons that need updating) and the lag was not game stopping. In short, 2.3 was a rockin' success.

Now, I didn't experience everything that changed--there's no way that could be done in just one night. Instead, I ran around like a lunatic swapping from character to character as I remembered things I needed to do. Here's the short list of things I did manage to accomplish:

1. Log into the bank toon, make sure the UI works. Make a few tweaks and call it a day.
2. Log into the priest, drool over the amount of spell damage he does (678). Go kill a quick monster to show myself how much easier it is. Hearthstone. Log out forgetting to check his mana regen.
3. Log into the warlock engineer. Fly out to Wildhammer and pick up the plans for the engineered flying mount. Hearthstone (cuz flying to Shattrath would take JUST. TOO. LONG.) Gather mats from bank, head to anvil, create flying machine of death.
4. Log into the hunter and look for daily quests. Find both dungeon quests and daily cooking quest. See I need a Kaliri Wing and head up to Skettis. Now, I don't know about you, but the damned giant Kaliri have knocked me off my mount about a bajillion times. In fact, I'm pretty sure some of them have cloaking devices considering how they've swooped at me while I'm all unawares. The place was empty--of birds. There were plenty of folks hovering about up there waiting to kill a bird. I flew about a bit and did the daily egg-bombing quest. Then I started buzzing birds on my epic mount. If I trained them carefully, I could ensure I got the first hit in. It only took two birds and I had my wing. Back to The Rokk.
5. Turn in daily cooking quest. Choose box of meat as my reward. 6 Warped Flesh, 7 Chunk o' Basilisk, a random grey and a new recipe, I can now make [Hot Spicy Talbuk]
6. Head over to Nagrand to lay the smack down on some Talbuk. And discover ZOMG -- the deadzone she is dead. *rejoice*
7. Get back to Shattrath. Log the priest back in. Go get Mad Alchemist recipe at the bird guys in Lower City. Make some. Drink one. Woot. Works. Make some sundry pots for my hunter. Log out without remembering to check his mana regen.
8. Log in the hunter. Find a friendly guild leathercrafter who is revered with Honor Hold. Sweet talk him out of a Nether. Get my new 24 slot ammo pouch! Woot.
9. Get into the Heroic Ramparts daily quest. Finish it after some really nasty bugging. The instance went nearly flawlessly (like 2 wipes) up until the dragon boss-which is who we have to kill for the daily quest. He has the two mobs just in front. Their death usually signifies the dragon landing and the last encounter starting. Well. Not for us. Each time we'd kill one of those dudes, another would re-spawn. Put in a ticket cuz I was getting. my. badge. Found out each kill gave 15 rep. And in a never-ending cycle. So..of course, the dragon aggros and starts the final event when we're not ready. Wipe. We think we figured out that if you kill them very close to one another in time that the dragon comes down. Not at all sure. Finally, finally, finally take down the big ugly. Get my item and hearth. Turn in.
10. Log out. Go to bed.

So. What's next?

1. Potentially get invited to a Zul'Aman tonight *cross fingers*
2. Remember to check the mana regen on my priest?
3. MORE DAILIES!
   

Heroic Hierarchy

What's the hardest heroic instance? What's the easiest? Which one should I do first?
All excellent questions.

I can only share what I know about these instances.

Hellfire Citadel: The only heroic I've attempted is Hellfire Ramparts. This seemed like a pretty straight-forward instance. Nothing too funky going on and no real changes to the fights. If you know regular Ramps and expect it to be the same (albeit with harder hitting mobs) you won't be far off. I've heard Blood Furnace is fairly easy if you have a warlock for CC. Shattered Halls is supposed to be hard.

Coilfang Reservoir: I've been in both Slave Pens and Underbog. I don't find either of them hard. Some pulls get ugly as mobs can be immune to CC. I've even finished Slave Pens where the last druid died and we didn't get the buff. Steamvault is supposed to be hard with a warrior tank, easier otherwise.

Auchindoun: My first heroic attempt ever was Mana Tombs. What a mistake. MT was hard, hard, hard, hard! I ended up spending a fortune on pots and shadow resist for the first boss. By the time we worked up to final boss, we realized we didn't have the DPS to finish. Very disappointing. I've also been in Sethekk Halls but only briefly. My group fell apart somewhere in the neighborhood of the first boss. I've heard Auchenai Crypts is super easy and Shadow Labyrinth is hard.

Tempest Keep: Mechanar and Botanica I've found to be badge piñatas. First boss is just a FUN fight on heroic. Second boss in Mechanar used to be skipped but I've heard she got the nerf. Third boss in Botanica was also skipped two times I was in there. The last time I was in there, the first boss wiped us a couple times with an increasing Arcane Devastation. After about 3 wipes, it stopped increasing and just started out hitting the tank for 4-5K Arcane Damage. We called it. Never been to Arcatraz but supposed to be more long and boring than hard.

Caverns of Time: I've attempted Old Hillsbrad. The patrols with one humanoid and a dog spawned two non CC-able adds. So, um, yeah. It sucked. Bad. I can't even imagine what Black Morass must be like. It seems like sort of a spin on the wipe wheel unless you're group is really good anyway, so I can't imagine it harder.