Soloing Level 70 instances (at 80)

[Krazy]

Anyone else tried this yet? I had read some of people soloing regular ramps and slave pens at 70. Once I hit 80 and reached the defense cap again I figured it would be fun to try.

Regular Shattered Halls is pretty easy now.

You can walk around most the large packs in the big rooms and on the gauntlet just keep running into the big room and everything will despawn.

The first boss is still a pain, just try not to run out of mana and when he starts spinning just stay in and go all out, shield if you have to. Shadow resist aura helps to resist the shadowbolts/deathcoils. Move fast when he puts the red stuff on the ground (he does this A LOT since you are alone).

2nd boss just seal/judge wisdom and throw everything you got. His swing timer is slow so you wont get much back from BoS.

The last boss is pretty easy, just tank him near the entrance to his cage and seal/judge light (you get a ton of mana back with BoS on him). Most of the adds that come will die quickly in your consecrate and HotR.

As for trash most of it is pretty straightforward...walk past what you can and DO NOT pull anything else with the champions...their concussion blow can ruin your day if it hits and you have a lot of other guys beating on you. As for the 5 packs make sure you kill the sharpshooters first (make a macro to target them).

Thats about it...good luck on getting your figurine...its still one of the best block rating trinkets even at 80 (although that one from heroic violet hold looks pretty sweet!). It took me about twenty-five solo runs before I got mine.

Lately I've been soloing Mekgineer Steamrigger in steamvaults normal for the block neck...since there isnt one outside of naxx and I don't have a guild to do naxx with yet.

My ultimate goal is to be able to solo level 70 heroics but I'm not quite there with the gear yet. I was able to solo a few packs on SH heroic but once I got to the champions they burned me up. The first boss is much much much more difficult on heroic as well.

[Notorius101]

Lately I've been soloing Mekgineer Steamrigger in steamvaults normal for the block neck...since there isnt one outside of naxx and I don't have a guild to do naxx with yet.

Burning Skull Pendant
+44 Strength
+66 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 28.
Equip: Increases the block value of your shield by 44.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37646

[Krazy]

That's nice but I'm really looking for block rating as opposed to block value atm. We get so much block value from the strength on everything but block rating is still hard to find.

[Kelaan]

That's nice but I'm really looking for block rating as opposed to block value atm. We get so much block value from the strength on everything but block rating is still hard to find.

Except, how much defense would give similar block/avoidance %s?

The Steam-Hinge has 19 block rating. At 80, this gives (19/16.39) = 1.16% chance to block.
The Pendant has 28 defense. At 80, this gives 5.69 defense skill. That defense skill gives 0.227% each of miss/dodge/parry/block, which means your combined chance to not get a normal hit gets +0.91%.

Using the Steam-hinge, you gain:
+ 0.248% towards block cap
and lose:
- 37 stamina
- 37 block value (more, really, since Str gets multiplied by talents)
- 44 str
- 0.68% pure avoidance

It just seems like a net loss, to me. I don't think increasing your chance to block by a quarter of a percent is going to do more for your average damage intake than the increased block value and pure avoidance (not to mention EH from the extra health).

[PsiVen]

Yeah, the Mechanar neck was eclipsed for block% in TBC and there's certainly a number of necks that will outperform it now. Figurine is still worth getting for AoE grinding if you never picked one up before though.

I did heroic SH in beta before the nerfs and it was quite easy, but it will be more of a challenge now that ShoR and seal damage has been cut in half. The key to the pulls is blowing up casters first; I don't recall the champions causing too much trouble but are those the mobs you're referring to? There aren't any of those before the first boss.

[Kelaan]

Is it worthwhile to go back there at < 80 (e.g., 73 )? Probably not, I guess, until I get better defensive gear...

[Krazy]

Yeah I see what you mean...its too bad that neck drops in heroic gundrak. I've heard its very difficult.

My current neck is this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44402

which going to chain is

-13 stam
-20 str
-26 def (21% dodge/parry/block) so .63% avoidance
+1.16% block

so a gain of just over .5% avoidance (be it in block though) with the loss of stam and str. I'm still over defense cap with it on.

so it seems like an upgrade from that...

I did heroic lightning halls today and was getting pretty much obliterated. We completed it but I was taking some huge hits. My pally was an alt and I made it my main after 3.0 so I didn't have much tanking gear to work with (some kara/za stuff and thats it). My main was a rogue and I was in a sunwell guild like most of you but I never got much gear on my alt.

I enjoy tanking though and have a lot of fun with it. I'm not sorry for dropping my 8/8 T6 rogue for a pally in blues one bit. So as far as building an avoidance set (that's where Im going with this, I know some stuff is better because of stamina and all that)....once you reach 540 defense...is more defense on top of that ok or should I go with other avoidance (block,dodge,parry).

[Kelaan]

Dodge rating is very slightly better avoidance per rating point than defense ... but before the block cap, defense adds to block%, and thus is likely more desireable than dodge. Parry rating should never be a priority, but don't kick it out of bed.

Block rating will give you more block% per rating than defense will give (avoidance+block)%. However ... would you rather block 4 attacks, or dodge 2 and block 1? The former is more predictable, but the latter reduces your expected damage intake more, unless I'm mistaken

For example, let's say you have just enough defense to be crit-immune, and no other defensive ratings. That means you have ~5.5ish % each to be missed, to dodge, parry, and to block. With talents, and the innate 5% chance to be missed, that means you'd have 31.5% pure avoidance, and 5.5% chance to block. Holy shield brings you to 67% to not eat a Normal Hit.

Let's pretend you have enough block value to mitigate 15% of a hit.

At this point, our expected damage intake looks like:
- 0 * 31.5%
- 0.85 * 35.5%
- 1 * 33%
== 63.2% of the original damage

So -- we want more than that, clearly. Do we prefer to do it by increasing block%, or by increasing Defense?

To get to block cap, it would take (33% * 16.32 rating) = 539 block rating rating points. The same itemization points (assuming rating points cost the same?) could be spent on defense rating, netting us 109.55 skill, which yields 4.38% each of the 4 stats.

So, we are comparing a combat table that has:
- 0 * 44.6% (31.5+13.1)
- 0.85 * 39.9% (35.5+4.38)
- 1 * 15.5%
== 49.4% of the original damage

versus

- 0 * 31.5%
- 0.85 * 68.5%
- 1 * 0%
== 58.2% of the damage taken

{edit: I know, this doesn't include diminishing returns on ratings. Sorry.}

This suggests to me that if overall damage mitigation is your goal, spending itemization points on defense rating, rather than block rating, is wiser. Now, we don't really have that much defense rating floating around (to get to 650 def skill), so we are of course going to see gear with other ratings as well.

Still, what am I missing? Is the benefit of taking nearly 18% more damage (in this case) worth having a smoother damage curve? Having a nearly 20% increase in healing load seems like it could be troublesome.

[Dragonzbane]

I would be interested in running MT or BM or Durnhold to finally hit exaulted with those factions.

[uke]

When dual speccing comes out, I would actually recommend switching to ret for the first SH boss. JotW will keep your mana up much easier, you can down him quicker, and your shots during his last 20% whirlwind will get him down faster.

Then go back to prot spec for the rest of the instance.

[Threatco]

about parry vs dodge gemming.

dodge is better for maintanking progression for obvious reasons.

For those who may not know the idea about the gimped parry rating to % is that it does give the additional benefit for additional reactive attacks through more parrys which is good for dps and procs.

I gemed my prot gear parry to level as a compromise because even if ret could have more dps I still enjoy prot spec more and the higher seal procs helps alot when solo.

[Taijitu]

Soloed H-UB, H-SP, H-Durnholde with one death, from the last boss on UB, other than that, no real problems. Walked around most trash, was just going mainly for the achievements, so I skipped bosses that I could.

I tried H-BM, but I just can't do enough dps to keep up with the rift spawns.