WOTLK CLASSIC HEROIC DUNGEON GUIDE

Hey everyone! Over the last week or so I've been doing ALOT of heroic dungeons and I wanted to put this video out going over my experience with them. Note that these aren't full fledged guides like my raid guides as there are about 50 heroic bosses in all so I kept them brief. If you have any specific questions or comments please let me know in the comments and I'll do my best to answer as best I can!
You can catch me streaming at / joardee or on my discord at / discord .
0:00 Intro
2:18 Azjol-Nerub
2:53 Anh'Kahet The Old Kingdom
3:42 The Culling Of Stratholme
4:34 The Violet Hold
5:09 Utgarde Keep
5:38 Utgarde Pinnacle
6:37 The Nexus
7:34 The Occulus
8:36 Gundrak
10:00 Drak'tharon Keep
11:05 Halls of Lightning
12:02 Halls of Stone
13:12 Outro
Music Credits:
Feeling Good - Alex Makemusic
Dare Me Now - Alex Makemusic
Square Eggplant - Isaac Dabom
Let Me Know - I Am Fowler
Light Trails - Lucky Sound
Night Dancer - Alex Makemusic

[@jennifersanford6858]

Awesome guide as always Joardee! The effort you put in really shows!

[@gbach919]

I appreciate how short this was considering it was every heroic. Great vid!

[@CDank]

Yoooo, new Joardee pogtent. I'll come back and finish this in the morning!

[@cherryogurt8926]

Awesome video, thank you Joardee

[@override83]

I just hit 80 recently and gotta do some heroics to farm some gear. I really appreciate the guide. It's my first time being back in over a year, so I'm a bit excited to play again on my holy pally. Thanks for the guide!

[@sergeantdoomkin8873]

Great video! I can sense this channel growing. A note for myself, I am around the 7,510-20th subscriber

[@Evirthewarrior]

The number of healers that die on the wave boss in Halls of Stone is unreal, they all stand in the laser beam because they do not understand how to push their move keys, they then blame the group for their death. So be ready for that.

[@comander95HD]

Thank you so much for your guide!

[@Cosmophile]

Let the grind begin.

[@Thickqt]

11:07 The Dog lmfao

[@microvan1234]

Culling of strat has been my favorite dungeon for years ❤️

[@Lukenukem67]

Awesome. Ty!

[@BRC_311]

Yeah I played WotLK back in the day. After the attunements and hard heroics of TBC they made them easier and accessible for everyone. Then everyone complained about it back then they decided to make the Heroics of Cata extremely difficult and require CC for boss fights and packs if not more so than TBC was and then people hated how hard they were again. Also it should be a bug on the Beta to get into heroics before 80 as it was a requirement back in the day to BE 80 to even enter heroic WotLK dungeons and was even confirmed in blue posts back then when they went over everything and how they worked.

[@kallemller6341]

Great video, sorry you had to experience playing with esquire!

[@daqimber]

I really loved your Sunwell guides , but this one is kinda .... well how to say it. You probably wanted to be short video, but this guide is good for someone who already done the content (and has good memory). For someone who never was in Northrend this may be not enough. You usually mentioned 1 boss ability and thats ok for some really easy bosses, but it would be useful to remind/tell which abilities boss have. For example : - rock stone boss in Nexus casts spell reflect on him. - last boss Oculus : save time stop for enrage

[@teolinshaolin731]

I think the hard part of heroics are some achievments , not the dungeons

[@y3wtub3]

and thats how it should be.

[@scoober1376]

Totally agree, heroics were accessible and easy if you just wanted badges, then you had the option of taking on achieves for the extra challenge. This was the essence of 5 man content in wrath, along with rdf later in the expansion. Removing rdf and making hcs harder will drastically change the feel of the expansion

[@rtcinema]

It would be nice to see some of the heroics made more challenging over time, but not at release. Grinding 51 emblems in a day should be a fun challenge not a daunting chore. Especially for the people who want to try and play alts or can't play more than a couple hours at a time.

[@ryano1808]

The only problem with that is that you can do heroics in quest greens with no issue, making level 80 normal modes completely irrelevant. I remember back in the day, initially doing a couple normal mode 80 dungeons before realizing they were a complete joke, then straight up skipped to heroics of dungeons I had never even done before. Wotlk heroics are easier than TBC normal modes. They could buff them by 25% and they would still be easy, but might actually require some lvl 80 blue dungeon gear to complete.

[@xplicitmike]

they shouldn't be too much easier than tbc heroics. shit is a boring aoe fest in wrath

[@floreaciprian9742]

thats true, but if they do that they must keep the option to clear it as it was at launch. Cause if you make it harder to match toc gear for example, you will definetely wipe if you're fresh 80

[@scoober1376]

Gotta disagree, they should try and keep the feel of the expansion the same and easy heroics was definitely a big part of wrath. Spamming rdf for badges and alt gear, messing about with friends doing silly pulls and dps races, 5 man's were the chill, fun, accessible part of the expansion. The challenge was all in 10 and 25 man's and their hc modes and that's how they should keep it, otherwise it isn't wotlk

[@heygek2769]

@@floreaciprian9742 i think they were playing with the idea of making hardmodes for them, so its optional

[@remysfteland5580]

Are we ignoring the dog humping the pillow? 😂

[@halfblood3368]

Hi nice video! How long did you take to do all the heroics ?

[@kungjocke9446]

They were never hard back in the days. Was nearly impossible to fail.

[@voltagebolts]

It would be nice if they made it harder

[@kungjocke9446]

@@voltagebolts I mean, the average player back then actually had brains, and actually TRIED to complete stuff. The average player today is like a brainless cow.

[@voltagebolts]

@@kungjocke9446 you ain't lying but I would like it to more challenging for us who can just fly thru it

[@glennovich1006]

They just stealth buffed the heroics as of yesterday - from my own testing on beta

[@agilagilsen8714]

So, I just leveled my first character to 80. And going back to how I was back in the days, well, obviously I’m a tank. Now, what I found is that with quest/leveling dungeons gear you can tank basically all heroic dungeons right away. I did find that ToC is almost impossible, but that was the only one, and in particular the first boss where there are three champions. If you’re low ish HP and lack defence above 535 you just get stomped. However once I got beyond 520iah defence ToC heroic was pretty easy. So, not unlike this video, yeah, heroics are pretty simple. Go have fun and get those emblems! Get that drake and live your best life 😁

[@Dyzlan]

Thanks for putting together such a solid primer for heroics. I have a couple questions - how long did it take you guys to run all the heroics roughly, and how much of your tbc gear was still applicable during your runs? Thanks again!

[@janatle]

Didnt know you could do hcs under lvl 80. Is it grpleader that sets it hc and then i can basically be 1x80 and 4x78/79 in the grp?

[@NoNo_Notlikethat]

Wrath heroics didn't get hard until the ICC patch. The three new dungeons that released with ICC were the hardest, but were easily done with just the slightest bit of thought, some interrupts, and maybe some CC. The rest of the xpac was basically Diablo 2.5, and you could hack and slash your way through everything in 15 minutes.

[@anubis9116]

Classic wrath is the finally wrath patch, so heroics are super easy

[@briansung3036]

Thanks for the recap! By the way, can u do heroic one or more per day?

[@Eyeon491]

1 time per heroic per day.

[@Stimbim]

11:51 does LoSing behind his throne still prevents all damage, instead of running away?

[@MihaZ]

I started playing in december '04. Wrath was when WoW got A LOT easier in heroics. No cc, no real strategy except aoe zerg. WotLK is great for the lore, the pvp and the art. PvE always felt weak to me.

[@ryano1808]

Yeah, it felt like they completely gutted any semblance of difficulty from the game when it came out. Oblivious noobs in bad gear could get hit by every mechanic in the instance and still succeed just fine, completely removing any sense of need for gear progression or learning the ins and outs of fights. Competing for who can hit the helpless loot pinata the hardest is the only thing to look forward to, which is pretty pointless.

[@naejimba]

They are SUPER easy... the only things people screw up is 1) not doing the dragon mechanics right on last boss of Oculus 2) If people are dumb enough to stand in the ice on the third boss of UP, or they damage when Bane is up on King Ymiron 3) If melee especially don't know the mechanics to Krystallus in Halls of Stone. Other than this, it is almost impossible to die. The most faceroll heroics that I remember.

[@yaloops5349]

On average how fast are these heroics at this faceroll level? expecting you have BT or higher gear?

[@imbafolk2203]

Did I miss something or did you forget The Oculus?

[@kaelanriley9880]

I agree with making them more difficult, but I feel bosses in the dungeons should drop more pre raid bis if that’s the case. If the bis comes from badges then they should be realistically farmable

[@kreate7648]

Don't forget to wear your rep tabards to get exalted faster while doing dungeons.

[@miraage]

You won't get rep without tabard to begin with. It's not TBC where specific dungeons give specific rep.

[@lukasnebelong1306]

11:00 - Halls of Lightning - what is going in behind you in the couch dude ? XD

[@Bakiz]

As someone who PvPs mostly I wouldn't want the heroics harder, I just want to go in and go out get my badges , I don't want a pve challenge from the Heroics. #SomeChanges, so Blizzard can add something like m+ if people want challenge.

[@BeastnHarlotDFO]

As a westerner, quite curious to see what it plays like on ping less than 300

[@ProfSmoke]

Imo the only reason a lot of the classic content was so much HARDER back in the day is because we were playing on weak computers with snail internet connections, so now that those factors have been removed, it's just EZ clappers

[@mobbs616]

I subscribed, I would like to know what you did to get the pet bar like that on grid2. Would make my life better.

[@Joardee]

Hey! Sorry I don't use Grid2 so I cant help you there. Thanks for the sub, let me know if you have any more questions!

[@mobbs616]

@@Joardee dang those health bars look just like grid2. What r u using?

[@NickyD.Streams]

bro had to flex the scarab lord

[@bradbarnett4111]

I hope they are easy. Certain tbc ones were hard enough it made them impossible to pug or run without certain classes there during p1

[@joelwillis2043]

On the release of TBC way back in the day, I remember trash in Underbog heroic 1 shotting anyone not the tank.

[@miraage]

TBC heroics/raids are a joke. Go try SFO before hard nerfs.

[@joelwillis2043]

@@miraage Get to 2000+ ELO in chess before you talk to me about skill. What a sad little child you are.

[@FCSPsuppi]

how long did it take you to do them all?

[@4kMattyJ]

Any timeline set for your next video in the 'History of Speedrunning' series? I know you're a busy dude, thanks!

[@Joardee]

SOONtm? Its taking a while sorry, trying to get them all done before wrath launch!

[@gollese]

As a healer, i really hope they tune them so you can enjoy it a bit more. No one who never healed will never understand how boring it is to do ultra easy content.

[@tomomaric5407]

I agree on this, with the exception in Lich King dungeons, especially Halls of Reflection. When you get those waves of enemies in the first room, it gets pretty hard, especially when you are bit lower with the gear.

[@tribbybueno]

the easier the runs are, the more dps you should be doing. period. my dedicated disc priest loves runs where he gets to pop off and do a bunch of damage and only has to heal me a little bit

[@porkys1029]

i remember these being much harder back then... i got most of the achievements on the first world tour

[@crwakamv980]

let me tell you something if they mess too much on the buff people will quit pretty fast since most groups are randoms with dungeon finder it's gonna get worse with wrong spec tags ect

[@MrPyrhus]

Can't say I ever really struggled with heroics in TBC, but I always found myself doing the same ones. People were really cowardly when it came to running things like BF. I guess having a mage or shaman kite trash is hard?

[@Joardee]

Don't forget those felguard things, those things hit hard even in SWP gear!

[@holysecret2]

Arcatraz and MT 1st bosses were also notoriously tough, but really fun too. It hurt to see them nerfed into the ground. Early heroics were a lot of fun when they were challenging. But yeah, the loot / rewards should fit the challenge as well. So it would be great if WOTLK could improve on both ends

[@MrPyrhus]

@@holysecret2 I guess mana tombs first boss is where I draw the line. It hit harder than gruul and the only thing you could do about it is have SR gear or something like 2 healers (with your average heroic pug). I don't think requiring resist gear makes something hard, it just makes it annoying and ridiculous.

[@gollese]

Stuff can still be pretty tough as Joardee mentioned, the felguard.. In full SWP gear. Theres quite a few dungs out there that brings a lil challenge still.

[@deinemudder3066]

im against making them harder because relevancy dies with toc 5man and it would safe me time finishing rep and emblem farm due to most likely not being able to finish all of them on workdays. if i was unemployed or on lighter workdays/homeoffice i'd be in the somechanges camp.

[@mobbs616]

Also, i heard they are keeping heroics how they are but adding Heroic+ to wotlk classic.

[@robertwacholz5646]

giga brain love the healer POV

[@deathi]

it would be fun if they buffed some of the dungeons like how they are doing with naxx. i know in timewalking most pugs found in group finder end up wiping on loken in hall of lightning

[@lead111]

short answer: No Long answer: Nooooooooooloo

[@whitemagick4]

How long would it take to do all these heroics in a day?

[@sparksnstocks9457]

My guess is 8-12hrs at least

[@jacobcook7019]

Doesn’t on your group. You can speed through with a group if they were geared from tbc. I’m sure 30-40 min runs

[@jmac28083]

Heroics should be challlenging enough so that players that refuse to respect mechanics will cause a wipe. I.E. move out of fire, pre cast heals, interupt enemy spells, keep enemies crowd controlled, face bosses the correct direction. In other words play like the difficulty is on hard (heroic).

[@miraage]

"I.E. move out of fire, pre cast heals, interupt enemy spells, keep enemies crowd controlled, face bosses the correct direction" that's LFR level difficulty. Heroics need something to be done between a few party members, like arrows on the Manastorm brothers.

[@ryano1808]

They should be. I remember playing wotlk back in the day, and people would often just ignore all of the mechanics and faceroll with little consequence. It was terrible.

[@splaticus230]

hopefully this will get me off warmane ha ha haaaa

[@anubis9116]

Seeing how classic is the final patch version with the class tunes and buffs, no theyre overly easy

[@h0p0p]

Isn't it known that diminishing returns on defensive stats aren't implemented in the beta ? Not saying it will be 100 times harder on release, but definitely a lil' bit less easy once it's fixed. Heroics were locked until level 80, I'd be surprised if they changed that. Thanks for the guide, keep up the good content !

[@gollese]

They change it because of beta i suppose.

[@Hari-on1sf]

I do agree that they should buff heroics to make them a bit more challenging. One of the reasons why heroics are harder to do in TBC in my opinion is the fact that the classes aren't as strong as in wotlk. That makes them seem harder than they are and slower due to many classes having few buttons to press or simply being weak in certain areas like aoe dmg for example.

[@Joardee]

Yeah agreed, lets hope for #somechanges!

[@minibleau]

Classes were stronger relatively speaking in tbc, wotok heroic mobs were tank and spank, tbc packs were the issue, then in cata they flipped it and made bosses the problem

[@miraage]

Wait till people find out that they are not forced to bring 1-1-3 comp into the things like BF/SHH/MT heroic. There was also a number of tanks who had the audacity to enter heroics, while not even being defcapped for normals.

[@FuzioNda1337]

so what u are saying is everything is basicly understuned. the beam from halls of stone when helping magni basicly killed ppl in 3 seconds back in the day. if they players where slow they went full to 0 real quick not only that its pretty mana intensive fight ungeared. Kinda summs up that all heroics are undertuned. Not saying it will be imossible hard not at all, but the heroics clear week one took time and it was more or less forced cc, or the tank got blew up. Week 2-3 it was complete steamroll. aoe tanking alot of packs etc. But week one it was carfully cc some dungeons etc. the trash hit hard. not as hard as in tbc but hard enough that you couldnt tank full packs. And yes ppl had swp gear etc and some better pieces played in hc guild that competed for world first even ensidia struggled and cleared it slowly aswell back in the day. Now sure ppl are better and know more, but the numbers here dont add up at all.

[@bidu2331324]

Theyre faceroll on double dmg/health pservers.

[@cameronweiss1424]

I personally don’t want to see them buff heroics. It kinda sucked when your tank would randomly get one shot in tbc heroics or you couldn’t press your buttons cuz if you pulled aggro on one mob you just insta died. I see heroics as a means to farm gear/badges for raids, not as an end in themselves. There’s nothing worse than pugging heroic arcatraz and spending 2 hours in there and not even killing the last boss

[@Joardee]

Definitely see that POV, but I think after the first week or so though you'll find them pretty boring without a bit more of a challenge!

[@Evirthewarrior]

I absolutely want them to buff heroics, the wrath of the lich king heroics are boring AF and are nothing but a terrible boring AOE grind to get your badges, It is about as exciting as the "fill the bar" quests in later expansions. There isn't much though into how to do them.

[@andromidius]

Honestly if they implement "some changes" I'd be fine with them adding mythic dungeons as an option. Even if it offers literally no bonuses beyond an achievement. Even if it just normalises your gear item level to something relatively low and keeps everything the same (aka, Challenge Modes during MoP). Doubtful it'll happen, though. But there's more fun to be had with easy heroics - such as running it with fewer people, no tank, no healer, etc.

[@jethrojangles9541]

@@Joardee there was never any challenge to them back in the day! You just speedran them instead. No ceiling on the challenge there, and it gives prot warriors an excuse to exist

[@licoriece]

I only remember 5 things one could wipe to in wotlk hcs with randoms: 1. Halls of lightning the room with the dwarfs 2. Utgarde the fearing trash in the room before the endboss 3. Halls of lightning first boss 4. Gundrak skip and hunter/wl/dk didn't dismiss pet and pulled mobs 5. Gundrak endboss for some reason(very rare) I also hope they buff hcs, but i m not sure how much it would do If they only raise the numbers a bit.

[@telezma7878]

Played beta recently and I can confirm they are not challenging at all

[@povang]

Having played original wrath, I dont remember heroics being this easy. I remember a lot of wipes and rage quits, even far into RDF launch with mandatory gear score to enter heroics. I remember a lot of people forming 4000+ gear score pugs far into ICC content release for heroics back in the day just to ensure a smooth run. There has to be some tunning issues. I think TBC heroics are overtuned, my tank in Kara gear can randomly get one shot in TBC heroic. TBC heroics are so overtuned that most people on my server demand t6 tanks just to have a smooth run.

[@shugshug7723]

It only happend if everyone was freshly dinged with 0 gear if you had just 1 icc geared dps he would solo everything easily, and even with just freshly dinged it wasnt hard People just Got lazy and expected to have someone with gear in the group carry Them, and trolls lots and lots of trolls

[@kriss1_]

@@shugshug7723 "if you had just 1 icc geared" ... so heroics were not that easy for the entire duration of the expansion. In my opinion heroics were fine all the way till the RDF patch, challenging for some but easy if one had some gear. Easier than TBC for sure but not faceroll. Then RDF patch and ICC+3 dungeons came and everything turned in to aoe cleave faceroll fest. Obviously we're not getting the real experience again, so this time around it will be even easier, much like we can see in this video.

[@cabercrombie13]

They shouldn't buff them outright. It should be similar to mythic+ where you can choose to do it at harder difficulty for better loot drops. This would ensure all skill levels (and let's be honest, time-capped players) Could still enjoy and complete the content

[@user-sd35u]

Bosses are mannequins. With such little damage, they don't make any sense. Blizzard should think about increasing damage, and the boss should deal serious damage to the tank (1/3-1/4 hp after each hit depending on the type of boss) Same with hp, each boss should have 800-1kk+ hp so that the boss died not so quickly and managed to use his special abilities a large number of times. I would also recommend to increase the intensity of the use of special abilities of bosses. Elite mobs in dungeons also need to increase damage and health reserves. The guards, who are called by elite mobs, also need to increase their health reserve, because they die from any aoe ability and their call does not make sense to anyone.

[@jozefbania]

Yes doing one heroic 30 min is very exciting.

[@hyleriangaming22143]

Honestly I'd say leave heroics as they are, maybe buff them a bit but honestly I'd say just bring in the mythic+ system from legion, it's really the only non-gimmick way to keep content relevant to people who've been playing since wrath launch while still making it doable by a group of fresh 80s without needing to be carried

[@kokorochin01]

All I want is for the game to be buffed. All heroics made harder

[@Sylusssss]

I am sure you probably could have just dropped a 10 second short saying "just do mechanics lol" and only about 5 classic Andys would have hurt feelers

[@darkwingduck2551]

i think it's kind of funny that blizzard is going to make all these changes, when the game comes out in about 2/3 months, and they won't even give the people RDF. people just need to play the game for what it is and stop expecting for too much sadly.

[@daystarzgaming3034]

Buff them after the first 2 weeks, i don't want to do 12 super difficult heroics EVERY DAY for the first week, way too time consuming.

[@crwakamv980]

why buff things we are not playing a competitive game we are just playing for the feel not the hardcore part of it

[@edwardc4453]

Bruh. U need to do everything in the game for 6 days. Mate…what the shit.

[@Shinio69]

If they buff heroics then they need to give better rewards. There is no point of making them harder if that's the only thing that changes.

[@TheHiddenRoar]

i remember soloing heroics with my warrior tank

[@Maeccerpott]

I don't get why people are always like "this is too easy lol". It shouldn't be hard, it should be fun. Hard isn't fun to me and I am sure for a lot of others, too. People who have jobs and don't spend 60hrs a week playing wow

[@miraage]

Absolutely every wow raid/dungeon in absolutely every expansion is just a sequence of up to ~5 buttons for each member + just "watch your feet/surroundings" for some hazard. That's it. Yet people fail at it and demand nerfs, like happened to Vashj/KT.

[@paulnoone4834]

If you have T6 or even T6, 5 gear you don't have to farm those little upgrades

[@miraage]

Little to no swp gear is wrath preraid bis. Maybe a handful of items. But FWIW most of the decent guilds did The Immortal achievement in mostly SWP gear, which is very sad.

[@NN-lu7lx]

Halls of lighting and halls of stone should not be open on reliease as they are ulduar patch dungeons t8 and we are suppose to be on t7 so yeah calculation might be a bit off for the emblems. At least this is what i remember and know.

[@anderfu8273]

I was going to play WOTLK classic until i saw this video and remembered how boring the 5 man were.

[@mechanicus2501]

I dislike all the dungens because people only want to rush and do it fast, nobody cares about explaining and its all about grinding. I wiped and died on the stupid dragon boss and tried to enter the dungen but my group was still doing the boss so I basicallly got nothing. Also i enter the spider dungen and we wiped to first boss nobody again explained anything and I left. I like wow classic and tbc rest is just trash. I dont understand people actually want to bother getting constant new gear. WoW has changed to much I will never do the dungens again. I think ill rather go back to classic server max lvl 60 that was and always be the funniest and best memories. Rest is absolute garbage and waste of time. I am pretty good at playing wow and what u are saying are mostly in correct i even have better gear then you (in the video) and the dungens was pretty hard. But i gues that what happens when they changed the way people make group now its just some stupid automated system. Also playing healer priest and having a shadowpriest as dps on your team is like 0 gear to me. I did 5-6 dungens and only got one rope. I have full pvp gear lvl 80 (not arena gear) and its still better what you can buy with the emblems and stuff you get from the dungens. So its just waste of time for me. Healing people to get 0 gear and 0 loot. Trash absolute trash.