Heroic Farming Speed question

[crowdx]

Hi all,
so I have been farming heroics for the last 6 weeks or so and I am wondering what I am doing wrong. I keep seeing people posting about doing 2 - 3 heroics an hour and I am wondering how? I am pretty well geared and burn through heroics pretty fast, but the fastest I have cleared Gun or UK is about 30 minutes and so hence my question on what am I doing wrong? These are very easy heroics and so how could people be doing some of the other dungeons faster?
It seems it is the trash that takes the time, are there shortcuts people are using to get to bosses? I read about people doing Gun using certain paths pre the randon dungeon tool, but now that does not work (using the two entrances to skip the trash).
Any insight or advice?

[Coltimar]

I'm guessing others aren't looting. That's all I can think of. I know a few shortcuts but 2-3 per hours seems pretty quick.

[Slimjim19]

They are probably dragging the trash and AoEing it down. My pally doesnt have the HP yet so I am about 30 minutes per atm.

[crowdx]

Well for me, in UK, I pull the whole first hallway in one pull and then nuke through the rest up to Prince, after that it seems like it could be an easy wipe to pull more due to the extra trash which could be pulled.
It seems in a lot of places pulling multiple mobs could be an easy wipe.
Maybe I just don't have enough Leroy Jenkins in me :D

[Velassra]

They are probably dragging the trash and AoEing it down. My pally doesnt have the HP yet so I am about 30 minutes per atm.

I'm lucky if I can do UK in 90 minutes lol. I'd kill for 30.

[crowdx]

Velassra, I presume you are in mostly blue? It gets easier when you get geared, most of my teams are just slgihtly 5k gs with all i219 and above gear.
UK wiped me a ton of times when i started Multiboxing, prince was a total pain, now I just nuke through it. Gear = speed :)

[Slimjim19]

UK is one that people used to skip when badge farming due to the amount of trash before the first named. After you reach him, it speeds up.

[Velassra]

Velassra, I presume you are in mostly blue? It gets easier when you get geared, most of my teams are just slgihtly 5k gs with all i219 and above gear.
UK wiped me a ton of times when i started Multiboxing, prince was a total pain, now I just nuke through it. Gear = speed :)

Paladin is abit better off than others, crafted epics, 2 other boe's and 1 out of ToC regular...(tanked for a cpl friends lol). I sit aroundish 3500ish last time I looked ( did but the 245 Libram, goes off all the time too:). The rest sit between a cpl crafted epics, blue 200's and blue 187's. UK surprisingly is the easiest for me.

I loot too, can't let one little silver peice go to waste. I can't help myself either, if I can skin it....I skin it;) Lol.

[SideWays]

Hmm I burnt through heroics pre 3.3 actually (only in badge gear)..

I dont loot trash which is of course a bit faster than looting everything. My fastest run in Gundrak took about 14mins I think (only skipped most of the trash between the 2nd and the 3rd boss - just jump into the water)..

I dont know what you are doing "wrong". Just try to pull as much trash as you can. Oh and I never drink btw (you shouldnt have to drink with some badge gear).

[crowdx]

Yes, with my locks I never have to drink, with my hunter and mage group (offset group) I do need to drink here and there. I also jump in the water in Gundrak :)

[Ualaa]

I'm pretty consistently running DTK + UK in 30-45 mins each.
I loot every corpse along the way, but am tempted to use the old Master Looter/Loot Threshold/Opt Out of Loot method, so only greens will sparkle.
At the moment, frostweave is still skill ups from making the 20-slot bags, although I've not gotten a skill up in the last dozen bags (445/450).
I'm sending all the DE mats and bags to my horde team, via the neutral AH; they're up to 11k (22nd level, 5 of them), hopefully will have 25k for epic flyers before they're big enough to fly fast.

Haven't really focused on a lot of heroics, more of my effort is on leveling two teams without RAF.
And consistently running dailies with at least 2, sometimes 3 teams, which is 45 mins each team.

They're up to 3 of the 5 tier 9 pieces.
Pally has a lot of auction house stuff, Naxx25, Ulduar 10/25, ToC 10/25 and one piece of ICC 10/25 BoE gear; sitting at 36,900 health with the imp and sanctuary buffs.
The rest of the team hasn't had their gear upgraded more then heroic drops, and four badge purchases so far.
Although one of the shammies was full Naxx25 geared, and a couple hundred badges of Heroism/Valor level stuff.
The warlock who joined the team -- traded for a shammy, to the other team (Curse of the Elements), is basically fresh 80th gear, plus the 3 pieces of T9.

[Zappy]

Hi all,
so I have been farming heroics for the last 6 weeks or so and I am wondering what I am doing wrong. I keep seeing people posting about doing 2 - 3 heroics an hour and I am wondering how? I am pretty well geared and burn through heroics pretty fast, but the fastest I have cleared Gun or UK is about 30 minutes and so hence my question on what am I doing wrong? These are very easy heroics and so how could people be doing some of the other dungeons faster?
It seems it is the trash that takes the time, are there shortcuts people are using to get to bosses? I read about people doing Gun using certain paths pre the randon dungeon tool, but now that does not work (using the two entrances to skip the trash).
Any insight or advice?

Depends on team. Using DK/Ret team, I can run UK from start to finish looting everything I kill in 15 minutes. I usually lose the 15 minute dungeon finder debuff on the last boss. One thing with this with team though is that I never have to stop and drink/eat on them. I haven't ran it recently on my shammys, but the last time I ran it, I was right on 20 minutes. The difference there was that I had to drink several times.

To me, heroic Azol'nerub is by far the fastest. I've gone from start to finish there in just under 10 minutes. What I found is that when you clear it, the dungeon debuff time automatically disappears.

As you get more gear, you'll find it easier each time. When I first tried UK, I couldn't finish it, then after a few gear upgrades it became easier and quicker each time. I've also gotten braver each time doing multiple pulls at once, in addition to skipping a few packs where I can. (hallway before 2nd boss), and there's a set of mobs by the stairs that if you're careful you can walk by.

[Prega]

i do heroics each day.
some instances are really fast: AN - 15/17 min, UK 15/18 min, VH 18/20 min max ( i need to skin everything there), nexus 22/25 min, dtk 16/20 min, new FoS around 17/20 minutes.
if lucky with random, i can do 3 runs in 1 hour.
all done with looting/skinning:)
with 5 paladins almost dont need to drink/eat
unique instances for me over 30 min are HoR and PoS. HoR is hard and requires some rest and sometimes CD ready before last event. PoS is for killing all mobs for my battered hilt collection (atm 0(zero(nothing)))

PS: forgot oculus. if i get in random, i do 3 boss and 1 wipe max or jump it. so it no counts for me:)

[zenga]

If you can do 2 heroics per hour i think you are doing just fine. There is always the distance you have to run, no matter how fast you kill. There is always the trash packs in the way, no matter how fast you kill. Some trash is not designed to pull together, as they don't move, slow you down, etc ... then it's just faster to kill smaller packs. I honestly believe - besides a couple of exceptional players who know every single mob with their eyes closed, and who usually outgear the instance a lot, - that the " i can run in it in x time" can be compared to the dps exaggeration.

[Mystic]

Interestingly enough I just started to time my runs to get an idea of shards per hour, blues (disenchant) per hour, epics (abyss crystals) per hour, etc.

I was primarily interested in shards per hour since 30 shards equals 2000 honor, and I wanted a comparison to honor per hour from various BGs assuming a 50/50 win/loss which is typical for Reckoning in my experience. The idea is to run heroics when we have WG for the shards, getting as much if not more honor per hour than I'd get running BGs, with the extra boon of getting enchanting mats. For AV, by the way, it has become a rush to the end fest now, and yields about 500-600 honor for alliance regardless of who wins, and it takes 6 mins. Factor in 4-6 minute queues, and the yield is around 3000 honor per hour.

Ironically, this is exactly what I get from farming shards while doing heroics, 3000 honor per hour (30 shards = 2k honor).

I run a DK/4xRet team that is stacked out in PVP gear, with the DK having two sets, one PVP and one PVE for tanking. Not sure which will show on armory if your check it as I switch all the time mixing heroics and PVP.

So, to give you details that answer your question here are my average times, since I started timing them (two days ago). All dead mobs fully looted. I will update as I run different heroics not yet listed.

CoS - 30 minutes (thanks to all the RP crap you have to endure)
UP - 21 minutes
VH - 14 minutes
Old Kingdom - 20 minutes
DrakTharon Keep - 21 minutes
Azjol Nerub - 13 minutes
UK - 19 minutes

[crowdx]

So what I am seeing in this thread is that Melee teams seem to run quite a bit faster on average than caster teams. I use an addon for timing my dungeon runs, are others also using an addon or just looking at their watch/clock to see how long it takes?

[Greythan]

Makes sense on the melee teams as melee DPS doesn't require mana/regen as they go.

I also find myself not interested in going much faster than I do. The only thing I need to incorporate is more AE pulls. I don't know about you all, but I do run a single toon in dungeons from time to time. What I notice is that the well geared pug group will AE everything and move fast. With multiple looters and AE trash pulls, they go real fast.

[zenga]

I'm mainly looking at my buffs. I cast greater blessing of sanctuary for example at the start of a run, and i see how long it's still up at the end of it.

[pinotnoir]

I usually do them in 20-30min. I loot everything because the vendor trash sells for usually 25-30g per run. In addition to the trash drops I de all the greens, blues, and epics I dont need. Right now I am hording the mats because I keep saying I am going to finish leveling 2 enchanters. If you sold all that stuff you can make some cash. I am not in a race and plan on posting a video if I can figure it out soon.

[Ogloo]

yeah i dont loot anything but bosses.. unless im in ICC heroics :) hilt farm ftw

[Bigfish]

Well, the super fast farmers, its a straight run to the bosses, skip what trash you can, pull what multi-pulls you can. How effective that is depends on how well you handle your group, and how well you know the "tricks". Gundrak, for example, can go super fast if you can kill the initial snake pulls quick, rop the boss, jump in the water, kill the collusus and his adds from behind, jump in to the water on the way to mamtoth, and then jump in the water again after Eck, you can clear the place in under 15. That said, you miss out on a lot of vendor trash and DE mats that way, so unless you're looking for badges and nothing but badges, it doesn't usually go that fast.

of course, thats also for being severely overgeared for the content and wiping the floor with it. Naturally it takes longer if you're actually gearing up at the time.

[Niley]

15 mins for every heroic other than strat, pos/hor.(maybe i missed another one, but cant thing of it right now)

1. everyone in my team is above 5k gs, with some very close to 6k.
2. I loot everything
3.I skip bosses that i don't need to kill
4.I dont heal, i will let my tanks argent defender go off w/e i can before i even think about healing. Totems take care of healing my dps.
5.I have 4 dps+tank(tank wears mostly ret gear, 528 def)
6.Pull 2-3 groups of trash at once, sometimes more, magma totem+6s fire nova, and lock stunning takes care of it easily,
7.Bosses with 412k hp die in under 8-9s, ones with 512k die in 12-14s....who needs healing :P

[Zappy]

Here's a run I fraps today of Azjol'Nerub - right on 11 minutes:

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?p=263409#post263409

[Powerwar]

My fastest was Gundrak in 6 minutes skipping the eck boss.

In most cases skipping trash completely is money in the bank because 22 gold for random heroic completion per toon will be always more gold than clearing all the trash unless it's some instance where battered hilt could drop.

[Dorffo]

I'm averaging 20mins on the longer runs, hitting the 15min timer on AN/Gundrak/DTK. As others have posted - I AE the trash and only loot when the shaman need to drink.

The exception to this rule is any of the new ICC 5mans, where I'll take my time and check for hilts :D

[Shodokan]

I'm guessing others aren't looting. That's all I can think of. I know a few shortcuts but 2-3 per hours seems pretty quick.

Niley and a few others said 4-4.5 is what they can do per hour, including looting.

Edit: he already posted >_>

[falsfire3401]

Yep it all comes down to how much trash at once your tank and healer can manage, and if your healer and casters can go without having to stop to drink very often.

I don't have an 80 healer yet, but I'm close. My priest is 79 and has alot of crafted epics waiting for her already when she dings. I'm currently using LFD as part of my leveling method, and if I have a good tank in the group (ie one with good mitigation/avoidance and is not a major mana sink), I can pretty much go a whole run without drinking.

So speed comes from 3 factors:

1) How much trash your tank and healer can handle at once
2) How fast your dps can burn things down
3) How little your casters/healer need to pause to mana up

[Zappy]

and don't forget 4....

4) How many times you've ran the same place over, over, and over again. :D

[KAC]

Velassra, I presume you are in mostly blue? It gets easier when you get geared, most of my teams are just slgihtly 5k gs with all i219 and above gear.
UK wiped me a ton of times when i started Multiboxing, prince was a total pain, now I just nuke through it. Gear = speed :)


I laughed when I first went into NORMAL FoS and got an epic pair of junk shoulders to de after 5 mob kills. I can do Normal FoS in 18 mins thas 36 kills which includes the 2 bosses and get an emblem in 9 mins average that is that is 7 emblems in a tad over an hour. I dont even bother to run old heroics anymore unless its a random for some frost badges. I will do FoS normal over and over for basges plus if you de and you should have a chanter in your group you get gobs of abyss crystals that selll for 25-30 g all day; I have stacks of them. Even if you could do H Gundrak which has 5 emblems and H Nexxus which has 5 emblems in an hour you would be getting one more emblem than me and you can only do them once a day. Old heroics are pretty much useless to me now there is really nothing in them for me except maybe the stam trinket for my druid I would use on offspec for his tank but other than that everything in the old heroics is junk do your one for the daily frostbadges and then screw em. RUn N FoS over and over this will also give you the skills needed to beat it on heroic with ease! Dude that says he does heroic gundrak in 6 mins and skips eck..make a vid becuase there is no way you kill 4 bosses and even pull and kill the trash and dont loot in 6 mins I find that hard to believe but then again I loot every mob I kill and my times and gold bank reflect that. I'd like to see you do a H HoL in 6 mins..lmfao

[Shodokan]

I laughed when I first went into NORMAL FoS and got an epic pair of junk shoulders to de after 5 mob kills. I can do Normal FoS in 18 mins thas 36 kills which includes the 2 bosses and get an emblem in 9 mins average that is that is 7 emblems in a tad over an hour. I dont even bother to run old heroics anymore unless its a random for some frost badges. I will do FoS normal over and over for basges plus if you de and you should have a chanter in your group you get gobs of abyss crystals that selll for 25-30 g all day; I have stacks of them. Even if you could do H Gundrak which has 5 emblems and H Nexxus which has 5 emblems in an hour you would be getting one more emblem than me and you can only do them once a day. Old heroics are pretty much useless to me now there is really nothing in them for me except maybe the stam trinket for my druid I would use on offspec for his tank but other than that everything in the old heroics is junk do your one for the daily frostbadges and then screw em. RUn N FoS over and over this will also give you the skills needed to beat it on heroic with ease! Dude that says he does heroic gundrak in 6 mins and skips eck..make a vid becuase there is no way you kill 4 bosses and even pull and kill the trash and dont loot in 6 mins I find that hard to believe but then again I loot every mob I kill and my times and gold bank reflect that. I'd like to see you do a H HoL in 6 mins..lmfao

If it takes you 18 minuets per run that is 2 badges per run. Assuming you can do 3 in 1 hour that is 6 badges, not 7, but i'll give you the extra first boss kill. If you are in 100% blues or something that is decent i suppose? I mean if you get nexus or gundrak you get those 7 badges in about 30 minuets max even if you are in mediocre gear. People like niley and such who run through heroics in 15-20 minuets per pretty much no matter what is is (i'd assume minus occ and HoR)

Theres a mathmatical breakdown in another thread of mine that someone else posted, that once you are geared you can make over 2k an hour just because of all the extra badges (about 20 per hour). Theres no way you are making that much profit from doing the normal FoS. Doing normal FoS/PoS should only be done until your team gets the gear it needs form there. Otherwise you make more g/instance otherwise. If you are happy about the 2-3 abyss crystals you get... you said that is what 90g on your server? The random LFG tool gives you 65g of that every time you finish an instance. So i'm not sure what you are trying to say when you state that normal FoS is better than a normal heroic... when it clearly isn't. You get atleast double the badges for the same amount of time per run from heroics. Bages = money, drops = money... it's not like normal FoS can drop hilts.

[crowdx]

For me the amount of gold was not the question, rather the speed people were running heroics. I reckon I am just too cautious. I ran Gun last night using some of the shortcuts mentioned in this thread and it still took me 30 minutes via my timer addon. Considering each boss takes me about 1 miunte or less to down, the rest of the time was spent running or postioning guys for the pulls, 5 bosses = 5 minutes.
Still I suppose 5 badges in 30 minutes is not bad :P

[Greythan]

7 if it was random :)

[Asuka]

For me the amount of gold was not the question, rather the speed people were running heroics. I reckon I am just too cautious. I ran Gun last night using some of the shortcuts mentioned in this thread and it still took me 30 minutes via my timer addon. Considering each boss takes me about 1 miunte or less to down, the rest of the time was spent running or postioning guys for the pulls, 5 bosses = 5 minutes.
Still I suppose 5 badges in 30 minutes is not bad :PIt gets quicker once you're more comfortable with your gear and the instance. I used to do 40 minute UK, 40 minute GD with Eck, 50 minute HoL, always 2 minutes shy of dragonkin boss in CoS. Right now I do 20 minute GD without Eck and only skip the trash between the 2nd and 3rd boss. UK still takes me 28 minutes, HoL is down to 30 minutes, and I always have 2 minutes extra in CoS now. All 15 of my 80s have the mount in their bags, some have even picked up a spare. :D

I haven't raided in a few months so all my tier 9 gear is from badges acquired from running heroics. I am at a point where it's one heroic per night per group. All I'm really interested in right now is selling 15 Primodial Saronites every 12th day. Those go for 2k each compare to the 35g Abyss Crystals on my server.

[Shodokan]

It gets quicker once you're more comfortable with your gear and the instance. I used to do 40 minute UK, 40 minute GD with Eck, 50 minute HoL, always 2 minutes shy of dragonkin boss in CoS. Right now I do 20 minute GD without Eck and only skip the trash between the 2nd and 3rd boss. UK still takes me 28 minutes, HoL is down to 30 minutes, and I always have 2 minutes extra in CoS now. All 15 of my 80s have the mount in their bags, some have even picked up a spare. :D

I haven't raided in a few months so all my tier 9 gear is from badges acquired from running heroics. I am at a point where it's one heroic per night per group. All I'm really interested in right now is selling 15 Primodial Saronites every 12th day. Those go for 2k each compare to the 35g Abyss Crystals on my server.

The 15 primordials will be nice, but if you arn't going to gear your characters anymore what's the real point of them? Other than pvp that is.

[Gorkette]

A lot of people are now in a holding pattern awaiting the landing of Cataclysm :)

2.5k a day will go a long way towards new gear when that kicks off

[Shodokan]

A lot of people are now in a holding pattern awaiting the landing of Cataclysm :)

2.5k a day will go a long way towards new gear when that kicks off

My server they are down to 1500 each :( So 5 would only be worth 7500 or so... which if not doing weeklies comes out to 650ish gold per day. Still not bad at all though. But if i had 3 groups it would be more i suppose so it would be worth it.

[drevil]

if you can run a hero in 20 min you won't need any loot from it ;-)

[Asuka]

The 15 primordials will be nice, but if you arn't going to gear your characters anymore what's the real point of them? Other than pvp that is. I checked my titanpanel a few days ago and average 10k each on my 5 accounts and my guildbank has ballooned up to 89k, so I guess the real point of them is to assist me in gathering up 200k and hire an army to take over Stormwind. :D I stopped raiding a few months ago and have no desire to start it back up, so right now it all about collecting gold, mounts, and them cute mini-pets. I don't think I'm undergeared for any of the heroics, as all my characters are floating around 4.5k GS. I don't see how T10 or 264 off pieces will benefit me greatly in heroics. I will still stop to loot every mob and that's what's taking up most of the time.

[mmmbox]

30 mins doing UK, Gundrak and Drak'Tharon is what you should aim for, and thats including killing all and looting without rushing or feeling stressed.

If you want to do it faster it starts to become a gear question

I have a routine for all dungeons i rarely use short cuts except in gundrak after killing Eck but i dont leave trash cause as i said i like to collect the money n mats :)

PoS still takes about 1h to finish and i rarely go throu it without a whipe or 2-3 deaths :)

[Littleburst]

I loot every corpse along the way, but am tempted to use the old Master Looter/Loot Threshold/Opt Out of Loot method, so only greens will sparkle.


How exactly do you do that?

If i put it on master loot and pass on loot on main, no bodies sparkle, if i do take loot my part of the corpses sparkle. The slaves didn't pass on loot.

[sargorn]

How exactly do you do that?

If i put it on master loot and pass on loot on main, no bodies sparkle, if i do take loot my part of the corpses sparkle. The slaves didn't pass on loot.

You can put it on group loot, and pass on your main. Greens/blues/epics will cause sparkle corpses. One of your 'slaves' needs to not pass, and roll on items. Never bothered to try it with masterloot though.

[blbjtb]

With my Dk and Rets the Most it takes for an instance is 20 min most take 15 min or less Id say i knock out between 3-4 an hour.

[Kicksome]

My DK & 4x rets can blow through instances really quick - 0 down time.

It takes a lot longer for the shamans, they have to stop, put down totems etc... Then you have to go pick them up, drink at times.