Heroic dungeons difficulty, rated.

[yarr]

Reposted from General

Just thought I'd throw this in here for the heroics i've completed. On a scale from 1-10 (1 being mindlessly easy, 10 being very very difficult). 1: never wipe, not even close, 3: some close calls, maybe a stupid wipe. 5: moderately difficult, a weak group will have a tough time killing it. 7: Very tricky. 9: Extremely difficult, proud to have killed them. 10: Insane.
Format:
[Instance]: [Overall Rating]
Trash: [Trash Rating]. [Difficult mobs, difficult pulls]
[Boss 1]: [Boss 1 Rating]
etc..

Slave Pens: 4
Trash: 5. Double defender pulls can be tough. Be sure to drop tremor totems or use fear ward on champions, they are trigger happy with fears.
Mennu the Betrayer: 1. kill totems.
Rok. the Crackler: 3-5 depending on group. If you have the healing power to drop his debuff off, you should be set.
Quagmirrian: 3-6 depending on group. You will need to face him away from the group to prevent aoe damage. This is easy with a tank'n'spank group, and possibly tricky with 5dps.

Underbog: 4
Trash: 3. The bog giants before 3rd and 4th boss will kill you.
Boss1: 4. A bit tricky, be sure to reposition every 5-10 seconds to avoid mushrooms. Don't spread out, keep everyone in 1 clump, the mushrooms will always spawn on a player.
Boss 2: 3. DPS race. Fire lmaomentals + bloodlust = dead boss. Watch the tail.
Boss 3: 4. A bit messy sometimes. I found that earth elementals are nice even though I have a tank, to keep the bear off my guys. Kill bear --> kill boss. I always set /follow on all my guys at this point, to keep everyone in melee range (so he doesn't shoot).
Boss 4: 5-6. This fight can get really messy.

Steam Vaults: 6
Trash: 7. Sirens HURT. Success is a direct result of keeping grounding totems down, interrupts, and killing sirens early.
Boss1: 1, or 6-7. There is a crack to the right of the doorway where you cannot be hurricaned on. If you use this crack, the fight is horribly easy. if not, i predict problems.
Boss2: 3-5. Shaman groups will have an easy time with this fight Non-shaman groups may have a bit of trouble. Drop 1 or more fire elementals, and chain lightning peroidicially. If you are a pally tank, concecrate whenever it's up.
Boss3: 5. DPS the tanks quickly and you should be fine. I use Judge Wisdom on this fight cause my dps sometimes ooms... his constant spell reflections cause the fight to go on for a while sometimes.

Mechanar: 5 (instance score doesn't count boss 2. God help you if you really want to kill her)
Trash: 7. Tempest forge destroyers are very hard. Gauntlet event will have you wiping very often until you gear out, or get the hang of it (or both).
Minibosses: 1. Very easy.
Boss1: 3. Spread out and keep heals going. If you are spread far enough you dont have to worry about polarity shift.
Boss 2: 10 (or 9?). apparently she's beatable if you use all your cooldowns and just burn her, however I have never pulled it off. Thankfully skippable.
Boss 3: 3. If you tank him far enough you wont have trouble with his arcane explosion or aoe silence on your group . Burn him fast and his adds despawn at 20% or so.

Botanica: 3. If you have trouble with a boss just skip it. they are all skippable.
Trash: 4. Some tricky pulls. A few mobs spell reflect.
Boss1: 1. If you have a dispeller, dispell the debuff she uses.
Boss2: 1 for shamans, ?? for non-shamans. Shamans have it easy here. Drop 1 or more fire elementals, and weave chain lightning in to take care of adds. When he tranqilities, single-target dps the adds, dont bother LOS'ing. BONUS CHALLENGE: try to kill him before he goes immune, it's definitely possible ^_^.
Boss3: 4-5. Spread your folks out as far as they can go. When he sacrafices someone, be sure to turn them to face the boss. Tank him near where he stands to begin with, so that a sacraficed character can still dps. All-out dps and you should be able to kill him before all your dudes die =)
Boss 4: 3.
Boss 5: 5. Tank him 30+ yards from the group, his war stomp + arcane volley is brutal but can be outranged.

Blood Furnace: 7, mostly for the trash and last boss.
Trash: 8. Melee orcs HURT! 3-4k on plate.
Boss1: 1.
Boss2: 5, because of trash leading up to him. Its not too bad for a pally tank group. but i can imagine any other group type getting owned. Boss himself is not 2 bad just avoid the green circles.
Boss 3: 9. I wiped many many times on this guy. I just couldnt avoid the aoe, /follow is simply too slow. I read a guide saying that pressing forward on all the guys as soon as he does his "closer" speech is a good way. I haven tried it. If you have only your pally left and he's < 20%, you can run away from him while spamming hammer of wrath for several minutes, drinking mana potions and healing. This works because he stops moving when he does the fire aoe.


Ramparts: 5?
Trash: 4 - nothing particularly tricky, but a number of the pulls in there have mobs that hit very hard.
Boss 1: 2
Boss 2: 2 (spread out far enough to avoid the aoe damage curse he uses)
Boss 3 (dragon + rider): 6-7

Shadow Labyrinth: 9 (maybe a 4 if you skip murmur)
Trash: 4.
Boss 1: 1
Boss 2: 5. Identical to non-heroic, you can use similar strats. Not so tough if you switch to good pvp gear with high stam.
Boss 3: 1. Identical to non-heroic. BONUS CHALLENGE: kill him before he teleports!
Boss 4 (Murmur): 9. I was considering rating him a 10 but i finally killed him (with 4 group members dead and my pally at 1000 hp)


Well, these are the heroic's ive done so far. If anyone has input, or wants to rate some of the heroic's ive not done yet, go right on ahead, ill try to add them to my original post.

[Zzyzxx71]

Lovin this post - I've thought in the past I wish there was something of the sort.

[yarr]

Update:, just finished Shadow Labyrinth, most of the instance isn't too bad. I had 1 trash wipe, cleared the first 3 bosses with no incident. They are identical to non-heroic. Murmur is way different however.

The 2 abilities they added are
1) he periodically (every 10-15 seconds or so) shoots everyone outside of his circle for 2k or so nature. If you have some kind of aoe heal mechanic this is not such a big issue.
2) when he casts murmur's touch (the spell that hits everyone around the target after 10 seconds for 4k and aoe silences) it draws everyone towards the murmur's touch target. This happens even if the "other" guys are across the room, on the other side of murmur. This is a big deal, and caused all of my wipes.

My normal strat (non-heroic) was to just spread everyone way out, and nuke him down. This doesn't work on heroic because he will suck all your guys together and they will all explode and die. There are two main problems that you will need to cope with when he casts a murmur's touch

-Not exploding on the group. I accomplished this by immediately singling out which character got murmur's touch, and running them away from the group.
-Getting the tank back into melee range. Not exploding on the group was 1st priority for me, so i had trouble with resonance stacking up. This was my main cause of death once i got good at not dying from the actual murmur's touch. More on how i coped with this, on the strat section.

Strat
The only reliable way i can think of doing this fight is as follows, for shaman based groups. (non-shaman groups are on their own. If you have a pet-class, you may be able to keep your pet on standby for the first part of the fight, and send them in to attack once murmur's touch happens. This leaves someone in melee range to keep resonance from stacking):

Start the fight with your 4 casters outside of the circle, far enough to not get hit by shockwave when he casts it. You can spread them out to be able to differentiate them, or you can just stack them all up together. Right before the pull, summon your 4 earth elementals. They will move in to attack once murmur uses his first aoe. I use a priest healer so healing was simply prayer-of-healing when he used the aoe, g-heal on tank otherwise. Try to keep aggro off the earth elementals, you will need them alive during the murmur's touch.

When murmur's touch happens, immediately figure out which character had the murmur's touch, and run them away from the group. You will need to "click" on their window to accomplish this. I can't think of any way around this. I found this to be the hardest part of the fight... singling out who has the touch and running them away. As soon as they are away from the group, run your tank back in asap. Hopefully your earth elementals are still alive, to prevent you from getting resonance stacking up (resonance + his nature aoe = dead people). Continue nuking him down. Continue to try and keep aggro off the earth elementals so they will be alive in case there's a second murmurs touch.

[Mercurio]

Thanks Yarr. Figuring out all this stuff for yourself the first time is very tough and in many cases it is just a simple strategy that can make a 50-minute 1st time fight into a 5-minute one-shot. Murmur sounds like quite the pita.

One question for you - the 2nd boss in Heroic SLabs wasn't tough for you? I got past him in normal a few months ago but he was closer to a 50-min 1st time boss than a 5-minute. I've been afraid to try H SLabs mainly becasue of the thought of getting past him.

[Alemi]

Update:, just finished Shadow Labyrinth, most of the instance isn't too bad. I had 1 trash wipe, cleared the first 3 bosses with no incident. They are identical to non-heroic. Murmur is way different however.

With my 5 shaman group I found my strat on normal worked just as good as on heroic. The only difference is spreading out, but i have spread out macros and they work wonders for murmur's touch.

Earth Elementals make great tanks for him since they're immune to nature damage (thus, his shockwave).

I like the idea about this post- however, a suggestion. Different group makeups will find different fights, bosses, and thus instances harder than others. So you might want to put some clarification in there for group setups (I had to read a while to find you do a pally + 4 shaman). Example, I think Steamvaults is incredibly easy, trash and bosses included. However, I find Botanica trash to be boring (the protectors easily die to 2 volleys and lb + shocks, and since shocks are instant, no spell reflects) - however, Thor the Tender (3rd boss) is always hit or miss, depending on luck and nothing in my group can tank him for long without dying to his hellfire. Additionally, I find malicious instructors in Slabs to be harder than any of the bosses in there I'd be happy to add some more details about 5 shammy groups if you'd find that helpful.

[Thomas]

Nice list so thoughtout

[Schwarz]

Steam Vaults: 6
Trash: 7. Sirens HURT. Success is a direct result of keeping grounding totems down, interrupts, and killing sirens early.
Boss1: 1, or 6-7. There is a crack to the right of the doorway where you cannot be hurricaned on. If you use this crack, the fight is horribly easy. if not, i predict problems.

Where is this? Can you post some screen shots?

[Skrimshaw]

Reposted from General

Ramparts: 5?
Trash: 4 - nothing particularly tricky, but a number of the pulls in there have mobs that hit very hard.
Boss 1: 2
Boss 2: 2 (spread out far enough to avoid the aoe damage curse he uses)
Boss 3 (dragon + rider): 6-7

Ramparts: 3
Trash: 4 - nothing particularly tricky, but a number of the pulls in there have mobs that hit very hard. Only pulls that are a pain are the 2 dogs Ravenger guy. That guy can drop someone quick I save my EM NS CL for this pull.
Boss 1: 2
Boss 2: 1 Dead before the 4th grounding totem is gone. Usually take zero dmg this fight.
Boss 3 (dragon + rider): 1 Usually have the dragon down to 18k before he lands, finish him off quick, then take out the rider. As long as you renew Grounding Totems this fight is a snoozer.

IMO for a 4+ Shaman team. I run Ramps everyday just because its incredibly easy, and only takes 30-35 minutes.

[HPAVC]

I agree with the above poster that asks for the spec of the group, I didn't know it what the group was until the follow up posts.

Definitely the key to heroics is having maneuvering down, escaping aoes or adverse effects, and anti-crowd control measures and recovery from them. You have to be able to quickly recover from a mass fear or similar effect. You just cannot autofollow the main toon, then tank and nuke from a camp.

[Pent]

With a 5x shaman group, the heroics I've done so far easiest to hardest:
Grounding totem is the most important totem next to stoneclaw in all of these.

Mana-tombs: First boss is a DPS race and second boss is an endurance fight, spread out for second boss because he does a 1shot cleave, 3rd boss is a joke, 4th boss(Yor) hits extremely hard and reminds me of the last boss to Slave Pens (use potions)
Rating: 2 (really need ALL earth elementals for the second boss which can cause you to wait around for 10 minutes)

Botanica: Use all earth elementals on the first boss, only the last boss needs them all again, and it will be up by then, rest of bosses are a joke, trash hits hard before first boss, use chain heal when they shield.
Rating: 3 (first boss and trash before first boss can be a pain)

Underbog: Pretty easy, I was expecting something more difficult, I still dislike the dungeon because it is so long, second boss hits moderately hard
Rating: 5 (last boss can be a bitch if he levitates at the wrong times or spawns too many adds)

Slave Pens: Last boss is really really tough, he hits extremely hard and will oneshot earth elementals, try the best you can, endurance fight, use mana potions
Rating: 7

Mechanaar: First boss is easy and so are the minibosses... 2nd floor trash hits too hard and is likely to wipe you, the gauntlet event is extremely difficult, expect many wipes after the first boss.
Rating: 9

Sethek Halls: Alot of trash not worth doing, 6 pulls of ravenguards before the last boss is a nightmare, they oneshot shaman. First boss is easily doable if you need a drop.
Rating: 9

As far as gear level, my shaman have 850 spell damage, 8700 hp, 8200 mana, and 15% crit unbuffed