Initial impressions of heroics and survivability
Cataclysm has only been out for a week, and a good portion of my guild is already waist deep in heroics. I’m sure most of you are probably in the same boat, if not already actively attempting raids. Isn’t that crazy? It’s only been a week!
Anyway, last night I went into my first Cata heroics and I must say, any anxiety I had about my own performance or gearing completely evaporated after the first few pulls. Heroics aren’t as difficult as I feverishly imagined them to be, nor are they WotLK cakewalks either. They occupy a plane between TBC and Wrath heroics, demanding attention and crowd control and quickly rewarding any group with good coordination. I’m loving them so far.
Antigen thankfully was kind enough to shepherd me through everything we ran last night, to the point where he marked most pulls for his CC and those of the other dps. Many thanks to him for softening the learning curve of how to handle each pull and which mobs needs to be dealt with in a specific way.
In total we ran heroic Lost City of the Tol’vir, heroic Stonecore, heroic Vortex Pinnacle, and heroic Halls of Origination. Stonecore was probably the one that gave us the most trouble, if you can really call it that, and Halls took the longest (if only because it has 7 bosses). We never really got mired at any point, except for the third boss in Stonecore which I kept dropping the ball on like an idiot during ground slams.
There are a few “trends” (for lack of a better word) that I want to point out from my limited heroics tanking experience. I welcome any insight from others in the comments as well, for the benefit of any tankadins getting ready to take the plunge into heroics shortly.
Word of Glory is amazing. I realize that this declaration is akin to announcing to you all that fire is hot, but bear with me for a second. Healers are dealing with a very loaded deck right now and they need all the help they can get from us. Using Word of Glory is a portion of your health bar returned that they didn’t need to spill mana over. Over the course of a longer fight, perhaps when they have to heal multiple people at once–and hell, any time for this is a good time–the more weight you can take off their already-burdened shoulders the better.
Use your cooldowns liberally! Remember: Divine Protection has a minute cooldown for a reason. If you’re not using it once a minute, you’re doing it wrong. I know I keep saying this, but it bears repeating for emphasis: healer mana is a precious commodity, and the less damage you take over the course of a fight, the better. DP is for rolling, Ardent Defender is for when you’re possibly about to die (the ultimate “oh crap!” button), and Guardian of the Ancient Kings is for big damage moments like a boss enrage that you don’t have a dispel for, or a period of lots of AoE, or the healer’s been stunned, etc.
Tank with Seal of Insight up. You don’t need the threat of Seal of Truth when dps threat is (hooray) back down to manageable levels. Use Insight to take the edge off.
Don’t forget about Holy Radiance! With mana free-flowing as it is, the cost is negligible. Pop it when you cap, especially during portions of lots of AoE to (as I keep saying) take the edge off and help the healer. A great time for the spell, I would say, is during the first boss of Vortex Pinnacle when you stack up on his hit box as the tornados collapse in.
Try to cleanse yourself. Broken record, I know: healer mana is precious, ours is more of less infinite–try to cleanse yourself when possible. But, be sure to vocalize you’re doing so, because the healer’s cleanse will go through too even if there’s no debuff there to remove.
Remember, you’re not going to get 2-shot. This is perhaps the biggest tectonic shift in psychology we have to jostle with since the debut of the expansion. In Wrath every fight was you versus the precipice. Now we can sit at the 50% health mark for a moment without being in immediate danger. Healers are currently rewiring themselves to not expend all their mana pushing everyone up to full health as soon as possible, and we need to (on the flip side) realize that we don’t need to start sweating or excreting other anxiety-triggered bodily fluids if our health dips down a bit. Keep calm and WoG yourself a bit for some breathing room, pop a cooldown, whatever. You’ll be fine, and the heals will come in due time.
Someone said this on Twitter an hour ago (but I can’t find who): if you’re taking regular, manageable increments of damage, you’re tanking something correctly. If you’re taking MASSIVE HITS TO THE FACE, you’re doing or standing in something you need to correct asap before you get yourself killed.
And like I continue to blather on about, a healer’s mana bar is like a mini-soft enrage timer for each fight. Once their ability to heal the group is exhausted, you’re in trouble. Postpone that as much as you can, for as long as you can!
As for heroics, I’m sure a lot of the difficulty of them (ie, just about all of it) will be mitigated quickly by increasing gear levels, especially once we start picking up purples from the raids. Which is kind of sad in a sense, as I’m loving the difficulty level at the moment. Heroic 5mans actually feel heroic again, take more than twenty minutes, and provide a suitable challenge. While it’s obvious they’ll get easier, I just hope they won’t get too much easier.
29 Comments to “Initial impressions of heroics and survivability”
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Good to know. Thanks for this post… will be a while before my Prot Pally is tanking the new Heroics, but I’ll feel better about it once I get there. Nicely written.
I know I’ve been overly trepidatious about heroics. So much so that I’ve been running regular dungeons with my guildies and marking and having them CC mobs just for practice.
Now that most people are 85 and heroic ready, tonight our guild begins its foray into heroics, chain running until we just can’t CC any longer!
Nice refresher course on survivability, my only issue with running Seal of Insight is the huge loss of expertise by not utilizing the SoT glyph (I’ll go from 22 expertise to 12 – ouch!)
@Rhidach
14 December 2010 at 3:36 pm #
The loss of expertise is a pain, but on the bright side it’ll have a very negligible effect on your threat. At this point I’m focusing survivability over anything else.
What’s your replacement prime glyph, Word of Glory?
WoG is the new total hotness, so much so that I’m considering speccing 2/2 in Eternal Glory just for the chance of back to back free full power WoGs…
I’m specced for Eternal Glory and Blizzard will have to pry it from my glowing, freshly-healed hands. Love it.
@Rhidach
14 December 2010 at 5:11 pm #
I’m probably going to use that in my single-target spec instead of Glyph of Judgement. It’s just too awesome not too.
Great writeup, totally agree with everything. Although I’m a tank brother from another mother (i.e. a warrior) I too have decided that my goal is to help my healer save as much mana as possible.
Also, although CC has been much talked about and has made a nice return, I think the key is that group DPS now need to do just a little bit more to help the group in different ways i.e. interrupting, stunning, moving when the opportunity presents itself. In doing so, I’ve found it helps keep damage low and mana high.
@Rhidach
14 December 2010 at 4:23 pm #
Yes, great point! Interrupts are another way we can mitigate damage dealt to ourselves. For Paladins, we have a (generally) short-cooldown stun that we should be using as much as possibly to prevent incoming damage.
(Also, I lol’d at “tank brother from another mother”, nicely done, haha)
@Anafielle
15 December 2010 at 1:01 pm #
I too rofled at tank brotha.
Someone once told me that gear will eventually negate a lot of the need for CC, but will not negate the need for intelligent interrupts. Interrupts are win!
I’ve been nervous to try tanking heroics even though it has said I have the gear to for days. I’ll give it a go later today and see how things go. I have been using Insight, WoG, and Radiance, along with any and every trick I have. WoG though is awesome. Definitely feel like a heal tank, and kinda feel bad for Warriors.
Thanks for the thought! =). So far our Victory Rush ability, which is usable after we get the killing blow on an enemy, has been very very helpful and surprising useful in runs so far.
I was actually able to stay alive and kill the first boss in H-Stonecore last night using my self HOT and VR after our healer died when the boss was at 20%. Of course the major difference is that we have to get the killing blow on an enemy.
I will say, I think I use WoG more than I do SotR in heroics. I’ve also found that Lay on Hands is very useful with the glyph that brings it down to 7 minutes. Given how long some heroics can take 7 minutes could be up for every boss, it’s a great emergency heal when coupled with something like DP it can let the healer top off the rest of the party without having to worry too much about the tanks health.
I will say though having so many AoE primary abilities (AS, Holy Wrath, etc) makes working around CC and confined spaces very difficult. Also, you tried throwing you shield while running heroic deadmines? Watch out for the hallway with the monkeys..
@Anafielle
15 December 2010 at 1:04 pm #
I too use WOG more than SOTR.
When I’m doing a CC pull, I let the CCers do their thing. The mobs will run at the DPS. I like to wait for the mobs to get far back before I AS, and that keeps them pretty much out of CC breaking range. It also puts a sense of terror into the DPS that I quite enjoy.
I do hate those CC pulls where you can’t do that, though, and you have to sit within cleave range of CC’d targets.
I haven’t run deadmines yet- thanks for the hint :)
This is spot on I had no threat issues so it was all about survivability. Making good use of y healing options as opposed to just my defensive cd’s definatly made things easier.
Methinks if you’d done heroics a few days ago you wouldn’t feel the same. :P I started heroics Friday morning and they were painful, to say the least. As of Saturday evening my shortest heroic completion was sitting at 4.5 hours, and there were very few due to both time and difficulty.
But as of yesterday I’ve noticed things picked up a lot; I assume it’s people becoming more familiar with the fights and getting gear. (I’m completely out of JP upgrades mainspec already!)
I think those in the first few days of heroics really saw the brunt of the difficulty in adjusting to the Cataclysm model while people are now beginning to find them easier and easier as those that came before can share their insight and tactics.
And yeaaaaaah . . . between all the things you’ve suggested here, mostly WoG (With all applicable talents for it,) I actually did 30% of healing on heroic Admiral Ripsnarl one night. xD
If only they’d give us a Magic cleanse back I’d be sitting pretty!
Faid’s last blog ..Rigging Your Transmutes
@Anafielle
15 December 2010 at 1:10 pm #
I was running heroics a few days before Rhidach was. I cheezed the gear requirement at the behest of my guild, and walked into my first heroic with five pieces of 277 gear on. Three of us had cheezed the gear req. (I need to post to be honest.)
It was hard, but we were fine. It took a few wipes on every boss, but certainly not 4.5 hours. Pug runs have taken me 4.5 hours, but not guild runs. The longest dungeon I ran was Grim Batol Normal when we forgot to do the drake thing, and that was painful as shit, but it was only 3 hours.
Now of course, these are guild runs with everyone on vent discussing what to do, which seriously speeds everything up.
I couldn´t agree more on your points, and while I have been doing most of those myself while leveling up, there are a few I´m gonna try to implement from now on, like the cleasing tip, since I think last time i seriously cleansed myself was the Iron council´s Falcon punches, since i tanked two of them at once on Hard mode. As always, four thumbs up for you
Interesting about tanking with seal of insight instead of truth, I will give that a try since I haven’t had any issues with aggro.
And LOL @ not going to get two shot, I still panic when I am at 50% HP… old habit I guess. :)
@gameldar
14 December 2010 at 11:38 pm #
I haven’t had a chance to actually tank anything yet – let alone be ready for heroics… wtb some solid uninterrupted play time.
Anyway – just curious about how you are factoring WoG in – is it basically just a case of I’m down in health therefore use WoG otherwise ShotR – or use ShotR early and get the threat lead and then not having to worry about it? i.e. in general you are not having threat issues so using WoG is fine?
So far, as long as the dps have half a brain (i.e. skull diez naab!), there’s no way they can creep on you.
In the *very* worst cases, ou could always time your pulls to use Divine Plea and open up with a Exo -> Running judgment -> ShotR. That’ll give you all the threat lead you’ll need.
And a side node: If you cast AS as soon as (not before!) a sheep lands, it won’t hit the sheep. You can also throw the Shield to silence a caster when the sheep is next to it, and it won’t bounce.
Can’t say for Holy Wrath though,but can DEFINITLY say that HotR will break the sheep. Been there, seen it, done that.
Holy Wrath and Hammer both break CC. However Avenger’s Shield avoiding CC is a bloody godsend. Just don’t get too trigger happy–even if you hit it AS you see the CC land, there are times lag and whatnot lets it bounce to the CC anyways. I’ve had the odd rough pull because of that…
@Anafielle
15 December 2010 at 12:36 pm #
AS will bounce to roots. Just FYI, if you always run with a boom like I do, and you use roots as a convenient melee CC. It doesn’t always break em, but it will bounce.
Anafielle’s last blog ..anafielle- @TheElitists every single person Ive spoken to- including people trying to level fast- enjoyed em too
@Anafielle
15 December 2010 at 12:39 pm #
Here is how I factor WOG in:
Single Target — I pull with Divine Plea, AS, Wings/SOTR in melee range. It hands me about 100k threat off the bat, and my dps can pop lust immediately. I usually SOTR twice more while wings are up.
From then on, I use WOG with pretty much every 3 stack of holy power.
I’ve also noticed WoG to be effective at helping group heal too. I have mostly been running with a resto Druid whose heals are very slow and steady. If someone is sub 50% and I am over 50% I will usually use it on them. I still saw it crit for 20,000 on some occasions. I’m even considering picking up the tier 2 holy talent to increase its crit chance on low health targets.
For threat on boss pulls, I’ve been building the habit of popping AW, AS and Judgement on the run then watching for a sacred duty proc on my first couple of judgements, inquisition, divine plea, and then SotR for sweet padded threat!
Finally I’ve noticed on some of the fights that have more than 5 adds out at once, inquisition and a couple hammers seems to take them down very quickly, which affords your dps more time killing the boss.
What do you think about the WoG glyph that makes it a HoT?
@Rhidach
15 December 2010 at 4:47 pm #
I’m not sure how that would interact with the overheal bubble (if the HoT portion triggers it, for example). Either way, I don’t see any major benefit to it since we benefit from any overheal anyway.
Hey Rhi…one note. You mentioned about cleansing yourself due to healer mana concerns. It is true it helps and if you do it you really should tell the healer so they don’t waste the mana. But, I wanted to let you in on a little secret us Shaman have. In our resto tree is talent that adds a heal to our cleanses. it isn’t a whole lot, I think I was seeing 3-4k heals but could be wrong, but it does compensate that if the mana used was wasted on the non-existant cleanse that we at least get something out of it.
@Rhidach
17 December 2010 at 10:10 am #
Interesting, good to know!
Anyone who reads this…I was wrong on the Resto Shaman cleanses. They have to be successful cleanses for the heal. Testing in Heroics and such showed that.