When did you start Heroics? (Poll)

I am now happy to report that I can contribute to my own thread.

I hit 80 last night, bought my new spells (still haven't remembered to spend that last talent point XD), and started gemming/enchanting for Def.

I was still wearing a ton of BC epics and had waaaaaaaaay less than 500 Def, to say nothing of 535. I swapped several of those out for quest/rep/crafted blues that were in my bank. Got the three Wrath Def enchants. Got the Honored inscription from Sons of Hodir (cheaper on Blackhand than the Exalted with Scryer). I was gemming with uncommon quality gems because I didn't want to break the bank on items that are soon to be replaced. Somewhere during all of this, a guildie offered 3 belt buckles to whomever wanted them. I took one and threw it on my belt, socketing it for Def as well.

When all was said and done, I was at around 527 Defense. I had enchanted everything pretty well except my helm - I'm very close to revered with AC, and didn't want to go to CoT and blow a bunch of gold for their much less sexy version.

I figured what the heck, the best way to get that last 4000 rep to revered is to run instances anyway - and I was going to get 5 more Defense skill naturally just by getting beaten up. So I walked into Heroic Violet Hold with about 527 Def and 20.7k hp unbuffed.

Piece of cake.

We even got the Voidwalker and kiting bosses. No deaths except my wife's pet, which pulled aggro every time the final boss teleported us, and died twice on that fight. My wife got the epic gloves for her trouble, though.

As soon as I hit Revered with AC I'll enchant my helm and switch up to Wyrmrest - they still have a chest and boots for me.

Thanks for all the input - we'll hopefully be running a bunch of these tonight.
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I hit Heroic Strat as soon as I hit 80. I had 471 defense, and about 19k health. It was crazy. We ended up having to 2 tank it in order to clear the instance, but it was worth it, as I got 3 upgrades in there.
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If self esteem was mana, emos would be rogues.

I answered none of the above, but the better answer would have been all of the above. It isn't hard to be in all blues and have 535 or higher def right at the time you hit 80, especially if you had a decent set of gear to start with pre-Wrath. plus, if you'd been saving mats you've probably already got at least one set of crafted gear (if you're like me and leveled blacksmithing as you went, you should find that the level 78-ish blues help you level plus help you a lot in terms of def)
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Heroics? What are those?

Still "scrubbing" along at 76. Hopefully will be 77 this week...
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As soon as I hit 80 this week I'll be diving into heroics head first. I've already got 2-3 healers in my pocket and my DPS friends are going spastic that I'm taking so long to level. We're all smart players and understand that you can't always lolchainpull. Can't wait!
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More thoughts on the difficulties of various heroics. For reference, I'm sitting at 550 Def, 23.4k unbuffed hp.

Utgarde Keep and The Nexus seem to be the two easiest (of the ones that I have run).

Violet Hold can be easy depending on the bosses you get. The water boss and the kiting boss are the worst for me. Kiting boss - seems like the only way to beat him is to kite him around the balcony. You apparently have to keep him (or yourselves, maybe) out of line of sight with his orbs, or they teleport and insta-wipe you. We start fighting him on the steps he spawns near, and then start kiting when he starts summoning the orbs. I've found that just backing up the whole time may be too slow - I eventually just turn around and run. Free shots at my back, but he doesn't hit hard at all.

I've only run Pinnacle once and it was super easy. We one-shotted everything but the final boss; got him on the 2nd try. Old Strat is pretty easy as well.

Azjol-Nerub - the last boss is a nightmare AFAIK. I've fought him at least 10 times and only beaten him once in all those attempts. Seems like the healer's mana regen and the DPSers killing adds quickly might be the key? It's tough.

Old Kingdom - we went into this one yesterday. No one in the group had done it on normal. For the first hour, we were giddy with the fun of exploration. It was like playing a different game entirely. We did cheat and read up on bosses. The 2nd boss took 3 tries. The 3rd boss took 4 or so - you really, really have to DPS the adds ultra fast. The final boss is a lot of fun, casting that Insanity debuff which is hysterical, where you fight copies of your party. Our poor hunter was quickly killed by the copies of our DK and Rogue - she couldn't get to range. I tanked my DK and rogue to nothing in no time flat, and then had to stun our healer while I killed my wife's (!) hunter. We lost another member along the way, but the actual boss phase is nothing. You don't have to fight members of your party who are dead, so the second insanity phase went really fast and we 3-manned the boss down with no trouble. And the heroic bonus boss was laughable. This is a really long instance, and probably will be even now that we know how to do it.

I haven't run Gundrak on heroic yet, and haven't run Draktheron Keep, The Occulus, nor either Halls of _________ on any difficulty.

I'd recommend someone just starting heroics to prioritize VH, Pinnacle, and Old Strat for the great epics you can get, as well as UK and Nexus for badges - and the Nexus has a good helm, too.
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As soon as I hit 80, wearing whatever gear I happened to have, which incidentally got me to 540.. before i leveled up defense-skill.

>.>

<.<

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Kieras <- armory
Proud cook of Savory Deviate Delight

I started running heroics the moment I hit 80, even without respeccing to Prot

Reason was that we wanted to do a bunch of runs with a tightknit group, and the other tank of the guild happened to be in the same group as well, so instead of running instances with 2 tanks and 3 healers, we had some of the people remain DPS specced for the sake of a couple of Heroic runs.

I ran my first heroic (pug) with 528 defense, 20k5 health with kings and 20kish armor. Went fine.
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