hardest/easiest heroics

[sd78]

As some of you may recall, I've been whining about how easy the PVE content is since beta.

Oddly enough, some bosses are actually much harder now:

Brann Event- Used to be a joke, but is pretty damn challenging now, even with non-PUG.

Final HOS boss- used to be super-easy, now is somewhat challenging. The rest of the heroic is still a joke

Meathook in Old Strat- still easy but Pudge Hook can present problem for healer. Zombies spawn much faster too.

[damnskippy]

Meathook is only a problem if he chain hooks your healer. Depending on the gear level of the tank and the healer, somebody is gonna die.

[Gilissen]

Personal PoV :

You can zerg through all trash basically, I don't use CC unless the healer is really crappy.

Utgarde keep : very easy, no problem whatsoever
Utgarde Pinnacle : easy though the gauntlet can be /sigh with bad dps
Violet Hold : very easy except for the teleporting guy, dragging him out of los of his orbs makes it easy though
DrakTharon Keep : very easy, except on the last boss for a druidtank .. tanking in casterform taking 10-15k hits is not fun, mkay. Considering I have wireless & my little lagspikes tend to make the transition even worse .. :-X
Gundrak : Snakeboss :-\, I've had 1 guy handling all adds & I've had 3 guys failing to handle all adds, it depends A LOT on the people you got in your party, rest of the instance is very easy
HoS : very easy, not sure why people find the event hard ..
HoL : I wouldn't say it's easy, depending on group setup it can get hard with for example a paly healer on Loken or 2 elemental shamans + boomkin as dps ( yes I cried that run :P )
Strat : Meathook can annoy the healer but apart from that it's a very easy mindless zerg, just pick up the pace & chainpull
AN : I hate the first boss since they have untauntable mobs & I don't mark & caster + webbing makes it hard to keep aggro, 2nd boss can bug not closing the gates, 3rd boss quite challenging as well with a slow tank or a healer that doesn't get any help, so I'd say this instance isn't easy but it isn't hard either.
Old Kingdom : Boglord boss can get some nasty critstreaks but there's no other threat, that prophet is a nice fight, first a dpsrace & if you fail you put stress on tank + healer, it's survivable though did it once with 2 healers from 80%, took a while but he went down, last boss .. with 2 healers was a pain though but nonetheless I find him really easy as well. ( die resto druids !).
Oculus : haven't done that yet, only on normal on beta & just cba anymore :P
Nexus : easy except for the flareboss that can be hard with slacking dps

So far I haven't really done anything hard apart from HoL with a paly, but that had more to do with other people that kept on failing *cough Archi cough*.

I've had fun though ! The biggest reason my runs go extremely smooth is my own damage as a tank, I tend to top dps quite a lot during my runs, always at 2k+ dps. A lot of tanks still tend to go for max avoidance & ignore the dps but blizzard themselves said they tuned the events so that sometimes you need that extra dps from the tank & not the dpsers themselves and so far I've found this very interesting and true, I notice it a lot when I go dpsmode & see other tanks barely hitting 1k dps, the run doesn't go smooth at all then.

[AetherMcLoud]

Loken? Hard? ... waht?

Oculus imo. Horrible instance.

Yeah Oculus is horrible. At first I thought "neat, I can haz dragon!" but after playing the instance through one time on normal difficulty, I dread the day I am going to do it on heroic. It's just so... unfun.

Anyway, yeah Loken on heroic: If you try to always run around when he does the lightning nova thing, he is really hard, because you get a shitload of damage if you don't stay within a few millimeters of each other because of the debuff. But he becomes mindboggingly easy if you just stand still for the whole encounter, cuddling your tank.

His nova hits for around 12k on everyone. Our lowest member, a ret paladin, had 16k buffed. So we just stood there, took no damage from the debuff because we were on the same spot, and everytime he novad the restoshamy just spamemd chain heal, and I (as shadow) spammed prayer of healing. We even got the 2 minute kill achievement

[Cûr]

I'd have to say that the only two bosses that my "team" has had issue with is HoS-Brann event, and Occulus Mage Lord. We run myself (Frost DK) as MT, feral druid, fury warrior, blood dk, and a holy priest. We've breezed through most of the content due to our very high dps and ability to burn stuff down. We've finished every heroic except HoS.

Mage Lord in H-Occulus was a complete bitch until we went and made our FR gear, now it's a pain simply due to the snare, but beyond that it's completely doable. We haven't beat the HoS event yet, imo due to our lack of AE ability. But we'll get it, plus its fun with playing with friends that are skilled players.

I would rate them as the following, given my following melee heavy group (a ranged dps group would differ):

Really Easy
Violet Hold - Knowing the strats makes this instance like Black Morass, you sit around waiting
Nexus - Easy, nothing new.
Utgarde Keep

Easy
CoT:Strat - Almost everyone has a bronze drake, nuff said.
Drak'Tharon Keep - Can't think of anything that stands out.
Gundrak - If you use the terrain to your advantage you can trivialize the snake boss. Unlucky impale on your priest is bad.
Utgarde Pinnacle - Bane is bad.

Challenging
Azjol'Nerub - We had issues on the adds and bugs on the last boss due to lack of "real" AE.
Old Kingdom - I find the phased fight fun

Not Worth Your Time Unless You Need Something Specific
Occulus - Too much trash for our tastes. Did it once to get the award. Mage Lord is hard on melee groups without resist gear.

[proga]

AN : I hate the first boss since they have untauntable mobs & I don't mark & caster + webbing makes it hard to keep aggro, 2nd boss can bug not closing the gates, 3rd boss quite challenging as well with a slow tank or a healer that doesn't get any help, so I'd say this instance isn't easy but it isn't hard either.

it's a goal for an achievement - kill before he closes gates.

[mickj]

Meathook is only a problem if he chain hooks your healer. Depending on the gear level of the tank and the healer, somebody is gonna die.

I think the first couple times we did meathook the healer did not surive.

It's definitely rough if you bring in all melee.

Old Kingdom is probably the roughest heroics because of their trash. I didn't find the bosses to be all that challenging after we figured out their gimmicks (the last boss was really annoying but not overly difficult), but some of those trash pulls were really brutal. It's definitely an instance where trying to AOE tank everything will give you major problems.

[zarum]

I'd say old kingdom is the hardest if you don't know the trick to the end boss. Other then that its either long or short. Free emb's. So don't be scurrrrrrr'd just jump right in.... oh also it's easier without a pug =P

[Mysmere]

it's a goal for an achievement - kill before he closes gates.

our group accidentally did this one.
the boss just kinda happened to be surrounded by 50+ mobs swarming it and we were lucky to hit it fast enough to take credit

[Tumatauenga]

oculus isn't hard, but it's easily the STUPIDEST instance in all of WoW

it is far to gimmicky, like a crappy mini-game that no one likes to play

i've heard azjol-nerub is hard, but i haven't done it yet (only one left for heroic achievement)

on an individual boss basis, i'd say the brann event in HoS and Skadi in pinnacle, just because as a warrior tank, handling AoE tanking without a constant AoE move can be difficult, but with good timing it's not too bad.

as far as old kingdom goes, people are saying the trash is more difficult than the bosses...this is because of the spell flingers, they do a pretty big spell with a long cast time, so if you don't recognize the threat there and interrupt/spell reflect it, it can hurt pretty bad (spell reflecting it, btw, does ~50k damage to the mob, so being an intelligent warrior tank makes the trash in there easy sauce.)

[Gamehenge]

Loken can be a real bitch if people are being dumb. The only trouble i ever had with him once people got the run down the stairs, fight till nova, run back up the stairs strat down was when he was being a douche when i was trying to turn him around and would instead side shuffle while still facing the same way. The large hit box on him can mean nova death to your group if you don't get him turned the right way. One time it seemed like he was littlerly trying his damn hardest to face the wrong way, try and circle around he would walk sideways, run through him to the other side he would then run through me and then turn the wrong way agian, i was like god damnit ass turn the fuck around! >

The UP gauntlet can be tough on a new group without lots of aoe, however once you get a feel for it, it's not too bad, hardest part of the instance though imo. The key thing is as the tank run at least halfway down the corridor as the waves are coming out so you can take out a big chunk of the guys quickly, and can keep up the pace before your healer goes oom. If you have really good aoe and a good healer you can just run to the very end and aoe kill everything at once. Last boss is only hard if peeps stand on the orbs or whack away during bane.


Last boss in old kingdom is terribly easy if you los the insanity. rest of the instance sucks and is just a chore to do.

[camy011]

Really Easy

Violet Hold
Nexus
CoT:Strat
Drak'Tharon
Gundrak
Utgarde Pinnacle
Utgarde Keep
Azjol'Nerub
Halls of Stone
Halls of Lightning

Easy

Old Kingdom
Occulus

Challenging

?