OUCH Time in TOC Heroic

Well the guild after a successful kill on Dr Zoidberg (Ze General for his proper name) on heroic mode had only Yogg left to down this reset. As a few of our guildies hadn’t done Yogg we set about the great blob with gusto. After 3 wipes as people got the feel for the tactics we got him down with no one being either dead / driven bonkers.
Overall a good start to the evening especially as at least half the raid had never seen past Yogg phase 1 before.

So with Ulduar cleared and our tails up we started on TOC 10 man Heroic. OMG can anyone say OUCH TIME.
We came close on the Northrend beasts with a wipe at 8% when Mr Icehowl went nuts and blew the raid to bits with an enraged stomp (I ate 48K damage which was nice). I must admit as a healer the damage on the tanks was insane both our tanks are in the I level 232/ 219 area they were eating massive spikes at certain points basically requiring spam healing all the time to keep the tanks topped off in case of a run of big hits.
The 10 man TOC heroics really do require pure 10 man guilds like ours to have farmed 10 man normal TOC to death. You do need to squeeze every bit of DPS, Avoidance, and Healing out of your raid to beat the enrage timers 25 man raiders who are having a bash at 10 man heroics really do have an advantage with being able to access weapons and gear of (I) level 245 before they go into heroic 10 man. Pure 10 man guilds basically don’t get this unless they pug 25 mans or run VOA/ Ony pugs and hope to get lucky.

With the new instances and Icecrown radiance they are supposed to be balancing the loss of tank avoidance with more predictable steady damage that peaks and troughs with boss abilities. This in my opinion can be no bad thing as the heroic TOC Northrend Beasts just seem to be massive spike damage on the tank that require spam healing. Take the twin worms for example our disco priest got a poison on him requiring him to move to the tank to get it burned off by the tanks fire debuff. This means he had to stop casting big heals so he could inch his way towards the tank. I was support healing on the raid and running what HOTs I had time for on both tanks, before I had chance to really run up spam healing with nourish the tank ate 2 big spikes went from hero to zero within a second.
Compare this to Ulduar hard modes and it is completely different Ulduar makes fights more difficult by requiring the raid to tighten up on their performance and use environmental conditions to their advantage. Sure the tanks / raid get hits hard/ more but not insanely so to pass these challenges you need to stop casting at certain points, stand in buff effects, taunt when the other tank gets a debuff and everyone’s favourite DON’T STAND IN THE FIRE!

I am hoping Icecrown will be similar to Ulduar rather than TOC. TOC was a nice filler but I don’t like the fights a lot and oddly enough I miss trash, it was nice to warm up on trash before the fights kicked off. Also the step change from normal to heroic mode massive and the ramp up is of the order of upping the incoming damage to the tank to insane levels.


Zetter