Heroics ranked by difficulty. By Threatco.

[Threatco]

Heroics by difficulty.

(Gear check, not learning curve)

Easiest to Hardest.

Easy

UK - Utgarde Keep
VH - Violet Hold *
DTK - Drak'Tharon Keep
CoS - Culling of Stratholme
Nex - Nexus ***

Normal

GD - Gun'Drak
UP - Utgarde Pinnacle
HoL - Halls of Lightning **

Hard

AN - Azjol Nerub
Oc - Oculus
HoS - Halls of Stone

Hardest

OK - Old Kingdom



* Random first 2 bosses can change difficulty. If your group knows all the fights it should be easy in normal gear. Portal trash is too easy.

** The Loken boss fight could be considered hard based on gear and skill needed. But the rest of the instance is too easy to call it a hard heroic.

*** Edited after comments. Difficulty comes from the need for experience as there is a lot of variety.

[kenshin648]

Is this your opinion or are these views shared by many people?

[Threatco]

Opinion.

[guillex]

Then can you go ahead and change the subject title to reflect that it's your opinions ... Might alleviate some confusion for non-regular posters.

[Veilan]

Right:

Heroics by difficulty.

Easiest to Hardest.

Easy

Nex - Nexus
CoS - Culling of Stratholme
UK - Utgarde Keep

Normal

VH - Violet Hold *
UP - Utgarde Pinnacle
DTK - Drak'Tharon Keep
GD - Gun'Drak

Hard

AN - Azjol Nerub
Oc - Oculus
HoS - Halls of Stone
HoL - Halls of Lightning **

Hardest

OK - Old Kingdom ***


* Random first 2 bosses can change difficulty. If your group knows all the fights it should be average in normal gear.

** The Loken boss fight could be considered frustrating based on the njubidity of your fellow players.

*** Toughest, but also definetely the most fun instance, because it doesn't become a sleepwalk after the second clear.

[Threatco]

Done.

[Threatco]

Right:

Heroics by difficulty.

Easiest to Hardest.

Easy

Nex - Nexus
CoS - Culling of Stratholme
UK - Utgarde Keep

Normal

VH - Violet Hold *
UP - Utgarde Pinnacle
DTK - Drak'Tharon Keep
GD - Gun'Drak

Hard

AN - Azjol Nerub
Oc - Oculus
HoS - Halls of Stone
HoL - Halls of Lightning **

Hardest

OK - Old Kingdom ***


* Random first 2 bosses can change difficulty. If your group knows all the fights it should be average in normal gear.

** The Loken boss fight could be considered frustrating based on the njubidity of your fellow players.

*** Toughest, but also definetely the most fun instance, because it doesn't become a sleepwalk after the second clear.

I agree with you for the most part.

I called Nexus normal not so much because of the gear check, but because of the variety in the bosses/trash makes experience valuble.
For the tank it is more important they know all the where all the pats are and who the healers are what path to go and of course how the boss fights work are a little complicated compared to other runs.
In terms of strain on gear and healer if group knows what they are doing. I could say it was easy too.

Violet Hold is easy because you can drink between trash pulls if you need to. And the trash them selves are some of the easiest in the game. Snorefest. The bosses can be tricky. But provided your group positions right, they don't seem to do much damage to anyone. I would be willing to concede this one as well but not as easily as nexus.

I do base this on assuming your group knows the fights but may have crap gear. So Nexus should be on easy and I will edit my post.

For that same reason HoL doesen't deserve to be hard. The boss does little damage if you do the nova's right. The other bosses and trash are on par with the other normal heroics listed. It's just funny because blizz made ranged classes have to learn to watch for and avoid novas instead of just stand at max range. A good thing IMO.

[knaughty]

AN I hate, Occulus is a PITA, agree with both of those being listed as hard.

Why do you have Old Kingdom as "hardest" ?

I would have put it as "standard difficulty".

[Threatco]

I would have put it as "standard difficulty".

Seems like the trash and bosses do more damage. Annoying pats. Dead ends. A lot of it is magic damage.

For the hardest it doesen't seem hard enough though.

[Veilan]

Old Kingdom checks everyone at some point, and often times unexpectedly. You need to get familiar with the instance and can still wipe. There's clustered patrols to groups, mobs with nasty tricks up their sleeves, bosses who make short work of idiot DDs, and so on. I don't think any other instance offers such a variety of challenges, and I have not felt any other instance to be harder. I'm biased of course, since the Old Kingdom is my favoured instance.

I disagree on HoL. Much of the trash is already deadly, especially for melee DDs, and you have to use proper CCs. There's tricky gauntlets and pull timings. Also, two bad runic foci can just insta-fry any healer. But the biggest reason of course is Loken - just because everyone runs properly at the nova doesn't mean your healer will find himself an easy time with aura + arcs. It's certainly not an average instance, it deserves to be in the hard category. Or better put, it deserves to be in a category higher than Pinnacle and VH.

[knaughty]

Good points re Pinnacle and VH. I'd put those in the "easiest" category. VH is a bit of a joke, really. Void Elemental is the only one that feels like a boss. Haven't had tentacle head yet, despite doing instance a dozen times.

Old Kingdom I like, it's interesting and memorable. I think a lot of the difficulty can be brute-forced, however. A lot of it boils down to "kill stuff before it kills you". The pats after VampireBoss are a bit hard to pick up solo, but if you can brute-force 2-3 packs at once because your tank is an idiot and pulled it wrong, the difficulty goes away

I do find the "madness" boss a bit painful. Did him a few times last week with:
• Holy Priest
• Shadow Priest
• Elemental Shaman
• mage/BM hunter/rogue.

Trying to kill the holy priest when the SP and the ele shaman are also healing him can be... difficult. Especially when also having three magic classes try and nuke me down. Both priests also have problems with rogue/BM hunter bursting them down. Got him all three times, but was hard.

[Threatco]

I would of had pinnacle in the easy catagory until I ran it with a fairly new 80 healer and weak dps.


















The gauntlet was just destroying them. Even after figureing out how to avoid the path of ice, they could not dps faster then the adds were coming, and if just one shadowbolt hit them they was toast.

The healer went oom fairly fast. Then if you do get to the end and shoot skadi down, your group is still going to get one shot the second he whirlwinds. And they are going to forget to finish off the last of the adds. And unless you know how to kite him behind the guns and know to taunt him back to you when he starts spinning at your group, then it can get messy.

With that group I had to start the event, run out to reset it, then run down the hall before skadi spawns. That way I can stand in the door of the spawn spot and pick up all 30 mobs as soon as they spawn with conc/holy wrath. I use some dps to go run to skadi start it and run back. With my gear I can handle it with a bubblewall. Then we just sit in the room until all are dead, safe form frost paths, then we can go start the skadi fight on our terms.

I agree it's on the easy side of the normal list. But except for its moderate simplicity the instance is a higher gear check then alot of the others. The mobs hit fast and hit hard.

[Cearn]

Utgarde Keep is not easy if you are new to it (stand in explosions, get the wing buffet and pull additional packs), though it's not hard either. Pretty much all pats in the instance can be tanked additionally to most packs. The raw amount of damage makes the last boss fairly non-easy though in my opinion. Easy sounds like "go there after you ding ASAP!!" and with a low dps group you will eat nasty slams.

Halls of Lightning is much harder than Azjol Nerub and Oculus imho, you just have to realize that using CC is a great way to beat a heroic (same goes for Ahn'Kahet). In HoL you can screw up on many pulls. The corridors with the first boss, Elemental pat in the room of the second boss (and being oops-thrown into more groups^^), the mini-gauntlet and the room after the third boss which is just filled with so much mobs... And Loken is enough to push this instance to hell if you're running with pugs or bad healers.

Halls of Stone on the other hand has always been a piece of cake to me. Pretty much all packs are not more than 3 mobs, the first boss is old news to anyone who saw Gruuls Lair, the Maiden hits like a girl, which she probably is, and the event is a piece of cake considering consecration (and bubbleawll for the last ~10 secs when you're getting overrun). The final boss is the only thing worth mentioning, but he's much easier than Loken or Ymir, imho.

Having said that, you might want to change the system into a table thingy with dps-requirements and hardness of packs/bosses, worth of CC (and which type) and maybe some otehr stuff.

[Threatco]

For HoS I can agree. It is the one I have run the least, mabey 5 or 6 times. It's mainly the fight with the waves, and the raw damage that melee do in this instance that earn it the herd rank. Indeed it is simple in that you don't need experience with it to do it.

UK I find it harder to agree. I can see your points on how positioning on some of these fights, especialy the drake fights is important. But positioning is easily learned, and after that they realy dont hit hard compared to other heroics.

HoL is positioning and experience as well, not just mindless chain pulls like gun'drak. But the mobs when pulled right hit on par with the others in that catagory.


All this is just my humble opinion.

[fuzzygeek]

I do find the "madness" boss a bit painful. Did him a few times last week with:

You can LoS Insanity around the big round pillars, and the shadow images die upon spawning. Everyone has to LoS correctly; 1 person being in LoS of the boss will cause the spawns to .... spawn ... normally.

Edit: Passionario says this has been hotfixed; I'll have to check later today.