The Heroic

Over the weekend, I attained a number of personal goals:

- I FINALLY finished Loremaster.
- Brian helped me score a red winter hat after I untterly failed to solo Grand Mage Telestra four times.
- Ground first aid to 525 and fishing to 500
- Bought Master flight because I was sick of flying around to arch digs slower than max.
- Ground faction to Revered w/ a couple of factions for the gear
- Finished ALL of the Winter Veil achieves I can before Christmas

By the time all was said and done, I was sitting smartly at around item level 331 without ever setting foot in a heroic and itching to try them out.

The way Blizzard has laid out loot progression for 'new 85's' is as follows: You must have average item level 329 to queue for heroics. All dungeons except the "last three" (Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and Lost City of the Tol'vir) give loot that is level 312 or less. To get level 333 loot, you must camp those three dungeons repeatedly, finish a few rare quest lines that reward that level gear, or pick up gear from the various factions' Quartermasters once you have an honored reputation with them.

Beyond that, one must either purchase i346 gear with Justice Points earned from doing regular dungeons, get really good at some tradeskills, OR pick up faction rewards from the various quartermasters. Quartermaster gear is level 346 and 359 for revered and exalted respectively. A couple of factions have no daily quests to earn reputation and those that do have very little to pick from, leading to an extensive reputation grind, that's mitigated at least a little by wearing one of their tabards while fighting... in the same last three dungeons.

At the time, I thought reputation was only gathered in dungeons on Heroic level, since I'd been diligently wearing tabards and earning no rewards for helping guildies through Blackrock Caverns and the Throne of Tides many times. When the guild got a group together for Grim Batol, I jumped at the chance to earn "real gear". Hoo boy.

I'll save the run down of the dungeon for tomorrow's post, but I will say this: I went in with i331 average and it wasn't enough by far. To call these 'Heroics' is a joke, a cruel jape by the designers. These are five-man RAIDS and bringing anything less than a raid attitude to it and five skilled, geared players will result in wipe after wipe. I knew it wasn't going to be WotLK's easy 15-minute speed runs. I was not prepared for a two-and-a-half hour strap-yourself-in-this-will-be-hell run that culminated in no less than 16 party wipes with the last two bosses unfinished.

Mind you, this is with my guild group... on Teamspeak to coordinate... many of whom earned the Kingslayer title before it went into 'easy mode'.

After we disbanded, I studied my gear hard and started to work...

The gear I had was 'decent', but I had prepared for a Heroic... not a raid. It was time to change my mindset and put my game face on. I started by enchanting every single piece of my gear. I'd been lax because mats are pricey and I was rather under the misbegotten impression I wouldn't need enchants on gear I'd be replacing soon. Bwahahaha, joke was on me.

Fortunately, my reputation was really close to revered for a couple of groups, so I ran dailies for a couple of days to push me over the line and picked up a couple of nice gear upgrades. A couple of days later, I did the same with two other factions and repeated the process. I'm now at i336 with about 700 spellpower above that first fateful run and am just about ready to try it again.

I had the pleasure of running Grim Batol on regular mode, so I could see how it was supposed to go down. I'll go over that next time...