1 DK 4 Ret Cata Dungeon Progress

[Kromtor]

Currently level 84... got sick of questing and started running normal cata instances. So far things have been tougher than I remember from previous expansions due to a lot of AoE but still possible with a melee team. Dungeons currently cleared (All normal, no heroics yet):

Black Rock Caverns
Stonecore
Vortex Pinnacle
Grim Batol
Halls of Originations
Lost City of Tol'Vir
Throne of Tides

Melee teams should not be discouraged (for PvE at least). I think both the Tank + 4 Ret team and Healer + 4 DK team will be viable for most dungeons.

[Ualaa]

How is your healing with the 4x Rets?

Are you going Divine Storm or Crusader Strike?
Is Word of Glory your primary heal now? Do you track Holy Power, or just heal whenever a toon is low enough to warrant topping off?



Not sure on 4x Frost + 1x Healing, it will depend on if the Frost can hold threat I suppose, and if they can burst bosses down.
I really like 4x Hungering Cold, on round-robin.
And Howling Blast AoE damage, for packs of mobs.

I suspect, the team will need one of the DK's to dual-spec Blood, for heroics, but might be able to brute force through most of the normals.



I'm not sure if my five Ferals will be able to do instances, in Feral spec; they all have a Resto off-spec, if need be.
One of them has all of the relevant bear talents.

Four moves, virtually guarantees five combo points, and an instant cast nature spell of 10-sec or less.
Which would mean, 4x Healing Touch/Regrowth to the bear every 8-10 seconds... and basically infinite mana due to crit hits as kitties.
But that's 2 GCD's of no DPS (one for the heal, one to resume Kitty) every 8-10 seconds.

So far, while questing (they're midway through 82nd) they've not needed any healing at all, except for two or three quests with higher level elites. Even still, that's 5x Rejuvenation after the mob is dead; their DPS is rather sick

Probably better off, with 1x Bear + 1x Heals + 3x DPS, in instances; I suspect that will be required for heroics as well.

[Kromtor]

1 Ret's healing is sporadic and unreliable, with 4 of them assuming you aren't dumping your holy power on damage it is decent enough. Divine Storm is only worthwhile against large pulls and honestly I don't know for sure if the miniscule damage increase you get from divine storm as opposed to crusader strike + righteousness aoe is worth the fact that you'll be less likely to generate holy power. The divine storm healing even when spammed is total crap, especially now that it can't be glyphed.

Word of Glory is the majority of the healing but I do have to do some egress flash of lights and of course lay on hands. The level 83 heal is underwhelming but it helps on some boss encounters.

I read a lot of your posts on DB about 5 feral and I have a 5 druid team I was considering. The thing that kills me for feral is the 2 GCD for healing combined with DoT's being the primary source of damage. It just turned me off to them, but depending on how the healing scales who knows.

My Pally DPS suffers greatly though due to all the healing. You're not just losing a GCD you're losing your #1 damage dealer in templar's verdict. It's also not worthwhile messing with inquisition if you're not gonna be spamming templar's verdict so that's another thing you lose. My DK ends up doing more damage than my rets even on bosses. My rets used to do godly AoE and healing with divine storm, those days are over.

Edit: Just added Tol'Vir to the list... when I'm clearing trash I'm glad I have my DPS machine DK tanking but when I'm doing bosses I'm wishing I had my warrior tank.

[Kromtor]

Just finished Grim Batol... Drahga is a very difficult boss for melee boxers since one of your guys needs to kite while the others kill... I kinda just muscled through it and had 3 deaths. All other bosses are pretty easy.

I guess heroics are the next challenge now that all normal 5 mans have been completed but I can't enter them yet due to gear requirements. I'm thinking about leveling my Tank + 4 enhancement group since i've seen some videos of enhancement doing some crazy damage. Their healing is likely to be way behind rets though so we'll see.

[Tim]

Originally Posted by Kromtor

Just finished Grim Batol... Drahga is a very difficult boss for melee boxers since one of your guys needs to kite while the others kill... I kinda just muscled through it and had 3 deaths. All other bosses are pretty easy.

I guess heroics are the next challenge now that all normal 5 mans have been completed but I can't enter them yet due to gear requirements. I'm thinking about leveling my Tank + 4 enhancement group since i've seen some videos of enhancement doing some crazy damage. Their healing is likely to be way behind rets though so we'll see.

Try running up to the heroic and entering (VS LFD with your team). Can you get in that way?

[Kromtor]

Ya looks like you can still enter heroic without the iLevel requirements. This is gonna be ugly though

[Kromtor]

I think I might be mistaken about having completed all the normal 5 mans... it's a little confusing because on the in-game dungeon list the heroic list has several more instances. I figured they only had heroic versions but I'm thinking I just haven't discovered them on the map/in quests so they haven't shown up at all let alone as locked... stupid me.

The first boss in Vortex Pinnacle is easy even on heroic so if you have the patience to farm him for some 346 gear that's not a bad way to go. Trash has sooo much health now it seems like it takes forever to go through it though and some of the pulls can be a challenge.

[Tim]

Hey Kromtor, are you that guy who physically joined keyboards together or something like that for Eve multiboxing? If so, that was nuts (in an awesome way)!

[Kromtor]

Ya that was me. Luckily the Eve GM's said software multiboxing was legal, because my wooden dowel setup was not exactly ideal.

Ok Throne of Tides now complete on normal, the remake instances don't have a level 85 normal mode apparently so all normal 5 man's have been complete. For those trying heroics the first boss on heroic SFK is doable - I even accidentally got the achievement on him by interrupting his spell that heals your group. Other heroic bosses are proving very difficult for an all melee team. Lots of AoE's and adds that need CCing/kiting/special ****.

[Tim]

So with the wooden dowel, did you position the main one over a key, and then press the dowel on that key, and it would move over to the other keyboards and press them at the same time? Is that how it wored?

That is so crazy!