Shadow Priests and Fury Warriors in TBC 5mans?

[Cerevantes]

"Shadow Priests and Fury Warriors in TBC 5mans?"

From people with TBC experience or current live experience with these classes, How do these two "off specs" deal with 5man instances. I'm especially interested in heroic difficulties.

[Morollan]

To be honest, I don't think TBC will be any different to the current game from this point of view. Shadow Priest and Fury Warriors are both dps builds. As long as other characters cover the healing and tanking roles then it would do no harm to have either or both of the above in the party. The only problem would come if you were expecting them to do the healing or tanking roles respectively. Neither would be able to cope, IMO.

[Clavina]

CUT AND PASTED FROM THE ELITIST JERK FORUMS... NOT MY OWN WORK

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.

org thread here: http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=9755

So what can i get from Heroic compared to Normal?

They're not quite itemized yet it seems but fact is that bosses can drop tokens which you can buy stuff for. But ofcourse the loot will be superior to normal mode and endbosses are sure to drop epics like ZG/AQ20.
A list of what's "buyable" for the badges that drops in Heroic Mode http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=8512

Everyone in the party get 1 badge pr. boss just like the AQ40 items. And no their not "farmable" when you kill first (easy) boss in an instance your locked out till 5AM next morning. But ofc there's 15 instances you can run on heroic (required that your revered with 5 different factions) a day. And yes everyone in the group gotta have the key. meaning casuals will have a hard time !!

So without knowing much about Karazhan+ drops it sure looks like atleast healers and tanks wanna run this **** a few times for some rewards like http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=3288 , http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=3284 or http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=3293

[Cerevantes]

That looks like a big ol'
"Guess Shadow Priests and Fury Warriors are respec'ing to primary duties"

=P

[Seeo]

That's someone's opinion...

When MC was the "big" thing, people specced to primary duties, now it's a walk in the park and Fury warriors (provided they are good) can tank through all of it, same for everything else. What looks crazy now, might not be so crazy in the future.

[Twoflower]

That's someone's opinion...

When MC was the "big" thing, people specced to primary duties, now it's a walk in the park and Fury warriors (provided they are good) can tank through all of it, same for everything else. What looks crazy now, might not be so crazy in the future.

that is mostly because today these guys are overgeared for mc...

[Piemaster]

That sounds really fun and interesting to me. It will give smaller guilds who can't fill full 25 man raids something to aim for.

[Clavina]

That's someone's opinion...

When MC was the "big" thing, people specced to primary duties, now it's a walk in the park and Fury warriors (provided they are good) can tank through all of it, same for everything else. What looks crazy now, might not be so crazy in the future.

You are correct but we are talking about sooner rather than later here. I'm sure that once everyone is decked out in Illidan epics then fury warriors and shadow priests will be able to get through these no problem. For the immediate future though I think that cookie cutter builds and roles will be required

[Aerath]

Am not sure...

VE + Impr. LotP = lots of free healing...

Let the druid tank, and the Fury Warrior DPS :wink:

[Mallstrop]

A druid tank will fit in well, Improved LOTP is a very nice bonus, expecially if you've got some none casters along. You're not losing out on much by having the druid tanking instead of a warrior, assuming that Blizz let them gear up as efficiently as a warrior.

I guess a fury warrior doing DPS would atleast be able to off tank and a shadow priest heal. But when you can bring along a proper DPS class, all of them can offer some form of CC. personally, I'm thinking that a druid might be vital, they could DPS, Heal or Tank, basically removing the need for a fury warrior off tank.

[Laringar]

hrm, and 4% of 20k health is 800 from Imp LotP... not bad for once every 6 seconds. Sounds like it won't be enough to help a whole lot though. Least not on the MT.

And I must say, that I personally love the idea of druids being a lot more useful, because of our utility. Can't remember who said it, but...

"Druids are like the swiss army knife of WoW. Sure, you might have a better screwdriver, knife, and corkscrew... but are you going to pack all of them to take on a trip?"

I hope we can gear up like warriors... guess I'll have to wait to see the stats on T4 and T5. And reading this means that I, even more, can't wait to try out Heroic mode. Gonna be a good challenge.

[Mallstrop]

I didn't really mean just the improved part of LotP, the 5% crit chance is by far the best bit, the improved part will hopefully be able to take some of the preasure off the healers though.

[Aerath]

Well, was in a Strat run the other day for fun.
Spent pretty much all the run in kitty form.

Total healing from LotP: 100k
Total healing done by Priest: 250k

Sure, that's 6% vs the future 4%, but health will scale quite a lot as well.

I do think that's a substantial number.