See for how the below plays out at level 100 with start of expansion gear, but the summary is that the below pretty much holds true still.
Whilst people have always soloed older raids – I’ve farmed a number of rare drop raid mounts already – one of the concerns with the item squish Warlords brought in was how easy it would be to solo older content.
Blizzard did say they’d address this – they didn’t want to stop people soloing old raids for transmog, mounts, older legendaryies.
So how successful have they been?
Well, from the number of times Rhonin keeps on going about our lives being worth living in Dalaran – he’s yelling it almost non-stop – I think a lot of people are running older raids!
… apparently there is a queue of people waiting for Rhonin to yell about the defiance of our very makers before they can send reply code alpha
For some personal experiences with different classes doing this, please see Soloing in a 6.0 World – Personal Experience for how a variety of different classes and gear levels faired.
I’m mostly looking to run older raids for mounts – that means that if I can do things on 10 instead of 25 or non-heroic then I will to speed things up.
There are some characters who’ll not be doing that – my enchanter needs enchants from Ulduar which only drop for 25 player raids and my Paladin is looking at the Shadowmourne quest line in ICC which is best done in 25 player raids – but mostly its about the mounts.
For this I used my shadow priest – whilst he is my best geared character, he is somewhat squishy compared to the others classes I could use. My warlock and hunter have pets who can tank for them. My paladin has plate and my DK is a tank.
- Ulduar
- Icecrown Citadel
- Throne of the Four Winds
- Firelands
- Dragon Soul
- Conclusion
- A note on raid sizes
Ulduar
The mount here is Mimiron’s Head, with a 1% drop rate from Yogg-Saron 25, with no keepers up.
We can do most of the instance on 10 player mode and switch to 25 at Yogg-Saron to speed things up. We also skip Razorscale and Ignis.
Traditionally, you’d go in the vehicles and destroy all of the bunkers the Iron Dwarfs pour from before you reach the Flame Leviathan. You don’t need to do that – go into a Salvaged Demolisher, just go straight to the courtyard of the Flame Leviathan, kill the mobs there and build up the stacks of pyrite on the boss. And watch it die.
The other bosses die rather quickly as well!
The lack of keepers up mean you have to be careful with your sanity; no nice pools from Freya to keep you sane! This means that you do need to take care with the fight and do it correctly.
Having instant cast spells here is very handy – its the only way to damage the Constrictor Tentacles! Killing the tenticles off as quickly as you can is required. Having a way to remove diseases, poisons and curses before going into the brain room is very helpful as well; so being a dwarf helps thanks to the stoneform racial which removes such things.
The spell you use on the Constrictor Tentacle has to not just be instant – it can’t have any facing requirements as well. Thus a shadow priest has it easy – Shadow Word: Pain is instant, does a good chunk of damage up front and doesn’t have any facing requirements. A demo lock using Grimoire of Sacrifice only has rain of fire to play with! Not that I found this out the hard way with my warlock or anything…
The most dangerous part for sanity loss is in the brain room – if you face the skulls you’ll loose some sanity and there is no way to recover it without Freya’s pool. So DPS the yellow NPCs to reveal the controlling tenticles & then kill those. That opens up the brain room which you have to nuke – get out before the timer runs out or you’ll go insane.
Once you’ve gotten Yogg into the final phase its pretty simple to do.
Total time taken: ~30 minutes.
Gold earned: ~500g, before any AH sales
Naturally doing this a Fragment of Val’anyr dropped – which means I’ll be doing Ulduar on 25 to get the other 29 fragments I need to form the legendary Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings!
Icecrown Citadel
The mount here is Invincible, with a 1% drop rate from Lich King heroic 25.
With this we could do most of the instance on 10 player mode and switch to 25HC at the Lich King which really speeds things up.
You also don’t have to defeat the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter any more; the gates to Sindragosa are open and you can just walk around the mobs to reach it.
To switch the Lich King to heroic you need to have killed the Lich King on the difficulty you’re on – so to do Lich King 25 Heroic you’ll need to have killed him on 25 normal already.
The Lich King fight is relatively simple, but there are some “gotchas” you need to be aware of.
In phase one stand on the stairs – this negates the shadow traps.
When the Lich King runs to the center & does pain and suffering, continue to nuke him. But watch out for the icy orbs – if they hit you, you’ll go flying off the edge. For ranged this isn’t a problem – you can easily see them coming and don’t take much damage to kill.
For melee, it is more of a problem – try to have a ranged ability ready to kill them before they reach you. You could also arrange it so your back is to the throne so you don’t get blown off, but that’s somewhat trickier to arrange.
The raging spirits summoned during this time are a pain for casters as they have a conal silence. They’ll last the fight if you don’t kill them – so try to cleave them down if you can.
If he lives long enough, you may get to handle Defile – basically move out of it. If you stand in it you’ll rapidly cover the entire area.
If you get pulled into the sword, kill the spirits up in the air. The faster you do that the sooner you’ll be out of the sword. If you can’t do that, just wait – you’ll come out after a bit.
Total time taken: ~30 mins
Gold earned: ~580g before AH sales
A certain amount of time was eaten up by roleplay… and it turns out that Fury of Frostmourne doesn’t kill you any more – it only did 18k damage to me.
I should note that I tried Lich King on heroic 25 before 6.0.2 hit; I didn’t manage it on my shadow priest – being silenced by the raging spirits got in the way of healing!
No problems post-6.0.2 at all.
Throne of the Four Winds
The mount here is Drake of the South Wind from Al’Akir in Throne of the Four Winds. It drops on any difficulty.
The main problem here is not Al’Akir. It is the Concave of Wind.
The concave of wind has three bosses, each on a platform with wind bridges between them. Part of their “fun” is if they’re left alone they use a powerful ability after ~5s into the fight:
- Rohash will silence the raid
- Nezir will apply a 500% haste debuff
- Anshal applies a shadow damage DoT. Which does damage and stops all healing
The usual method is to start on Rohash as being silenced is always irksome. You then move to Nezir as the haste debuff goes away when you start on him. Finally you kill Anshal.
After that its time to poke Al’akir – avoid the squall lines and in phase three move out of the clouds which form.
Total time taken: ~4 minutes
Gold earned: ~90g
Firelands
I’ve already managed to solo Alysrazor pre-6.0 enough times for her mount to drop.
However we’re after the Smoldering Egg of Millagazor which drops from Ragnaros on any raid difficulty. So we’ll do this as a 10 player raid for speed.
Total time taken: ~25 minutes
Gold earned: ~650g, before AH sales
Unfortunately you have to kill all of the bosses to reach Ragnaros, but this doesn’t take too long.
If nothing else, 5 minutes is taken killing trash to get Shannox to spawn!
Dragon Soul
Please see Mount farming 101: Dragon Soul for a detailed look at how to solo Dragon Soul
There are two mounts which can drop from Dragon soul normal, Experiment 12-B from Ultraxion and the Blazing Drake from Deathwing.
Deathwing Heroic also has a chance to drop Life Binders Handmaiden; at level 100 Dragonsoul heroic isn’t that much harder than normal.
Another reason for doing Dragonsoul on heroic is for transmog – a lot of the weapons have a lovely purple colour on heroic which works very nicely for some transmog sets. For example the staff in my Warlock’s transmog drops from heroic Deathwing
The main pain on this is Spine as Deathwing almost continually rolls – you have to move to the opposite side just before Deathwing rolls. On my first attempt I missed that roll by second – causing my only wipe of doing all of the above!
The other issue with Spine is that you’ll need healing as well – on my hunter I used a spirit beast for the heal & I’m very glad Devouring Plague has kept it’s healing component. It does mean I’m concerned with how my mage is going to handle this – all of the other chars I’ll do this with have self healing of some sort!
Blizzard have put in fixes for Spine – mostly around the bloods doing less melee damage and the time taken for Deathwing to go from detecting an imbalance to actually rolling going up.
You have two ways of dealing with the rolling – either continually kite from left to right sides or sit in a socket, tethered to Deathwing’s back. If you go the continually tethered route you will need to be able to heal yourself, especially on heroic. Even if you use the kite from left to right method, I’d recommend being tethered as you kill the tendon – you have to be tethered anyway to have Deathwing roll to get rid of the hideous amalgamations which come from the tenticles you kill.
Total time taken: ~35 mins
Gold earned: ~650g
Of the 35 minutes in the instance almost 5 minutes worth was RP. And another 2 minutes was spent on the irksome Ultraxion trash. I guess I could build up shadow orbs on those…
Conclusion
Running the five old raids above took just over 2 hours to do – not including any travel time between the instances, which probably adds ~15-20 minutes to the total.
It was also quite profitable, with a total of ~2,500g earned – although if you’re looking purely at gold making there are probably better ways to do it! However as an added bonus, it is quite nice. Plus there are auction house sales of BoE transmog items and recipes not included in the above – where I’ve put “before AH sales” above I’ve had such things drop.
The old raids drop some nice items for transmog as well – I kept the Sho’ravon, Greatstaff of Annihilation for transmog!
A note on raid sizes
Changing raid sizes isn’t something people usually do; with the farming I’m doing I’ll change the raid size from 10 to 25 for two raids: Ulduar and ICC.
To change from 10 to 25 you’ll need to be outside of the instance.
If you then need to change to heroic – eg for the Lich King – then you’ll need to change from normal to heroic inside the instance.
Since it’s not taking me that long to do the raids and the gold is good enough, I’m not saving locks on one character and allowing others to use that.
However if I was to do that I’d stop killing bosses at the boss before the end one.
You have the character with the lock enter as leader so most of the bosses are down. You then have the other members enter. The char with the lock then leaves.
Then rest of the raid kill the 2nd to last boss, giving them a nice lock at the right point. They can then become leader, switch to 25 / 25HC and kill the final boss.
Sivation's musings about WoW... and cooking 
Reblogged this on Shadow Word:Therapy.
Pingback: Soloing raids Patch 6.0
Dragon soul has three mounts. Madness drops a second mount on heroic. But you have to do spine also on heroic to be able to kill death wing heroic.
Indeed, but Spine HC is not easy to solo given the magic debuff which still one-shots you is still present & cast often.
I am already saved this week so I am waiting on the reset. I’ve seen where warlocks can use the singe magic from the imp to dispel it and since that is my main I’ll be attempting that for another mount drop. Fingers crossed.
I wonder if the cooldown on singe magic will be too long here or not – the debuff lasts for ~8s before it explodes AFAIR.
I copied this from wowhead. This is the strat I’ll be attempting.
8
“By stym (10,632 – 4·23·126) 12 days ago (Patch 6.0.2)
Destruction Warlock Heroic Mode Solo Guide
This is the strategy for 10-man Heroic Mode.
Talent choices:
I used Grimoire of Sacrifice and sacrificed an imp for Singe Magic, and that is mandatory.
The rest of the talents is not very consequential. You will have some health issues on this fight so I’d recommend picking talents that will either shield or heal you.
I picked Soul Leech, Mortal Coil and Sacrificial Pact. I ended up not needing to use mortal coil or sacrificial pact.
Glyph choices:
I went fully defensive, with Glyph of Eternal Resolve, Glyph of Healthstone and Glyph of Ember Tap
Initial notes:
As mentioned in other strategies below, you will ALWAYS trigger a roll wherever you are standing. This means that unless you are secured by a dead Corruption thanks to Grasping Tendrils, you will have to constantly move back and forth between both sides to avoid getting thrown off.
The Corruptions will not stun you.
Strategy:
1- initial phase
Start by killing 3 Corruptions with Incinerate , then stand on a dead corruption to anchor yourself to the Grasping Tendrils. tank the incoming Hideous Amalgamations but do not kill them! Degradation will stack for every amalgamation you kill. Those thrown off by Deathwing do not count, so just wait for Deathwing to complete a roll sequence.
A couple seconds after you engage an amalgamation, it will infect you with Blood Corruption: Death. Dispel it immediately with Singe Magic. It will automatically transform into Blood Corruption: Earth, which will buff you with damage reduction after 15 seconds.
This is the most crucial part of this fight. EVERY time you engage a new amalgamation or a new pack thereof, they will cast blood corruption. Use any means necessary to track the debuff and be quick dispelling it. I used TellMeWhen to track the debuff.
Normally an amalgamation will only cast it once on you, but if you spend too much time killing or kiting it, it will recast it after maybe 25 seconds. Since the cooldown of Singe Magic is 15 seconds, you’re covered.
2- Gathering Residues
a few seconds after the amalgamations learn to fly, place yourself in the center of the spine and start running around in a small circle to continually reset the roll sequence. Drop a Rain of Fire in the center of the spine and refresh it every 8 seconds. the incoming bloods will die within a few ticks and stack nicely in the center. Continue until you have 9+ residues in the center of the spine. Alternatively you can incinerate them to benefit from the shield effect of Soul Leech. Note that they will start crawling towards a dead corruption and as a result will be a little spread out when you’re done.
3- Dealing with the Amalgamation and Tendon
Conflagrate the last standing corruption and throw a Chaos Bolt at the incoming Hideous Amalgamation to tenderize it a bit. Ideally you want it down to 20% life before you kite it so you can shadowburn it fast when it is time to kill it. Start kiting it on the residues. Don’t forget to constantly move back and forth between the left side and the right side of the spine and DON’T FORGET TO DISPEL YOURSELF. I died a ridiculous number of times because I was not focused on my debuffs. When the Amalgamation is up to 9 stacks and gets superheated, kite it to the armor plate and kill it. You WILL have to also move back and forth during the kill, always hugging the armor plate.
When the amalgamation is dead, go hug a dead corruption that is close to the armor plate. Wait patiently until the amalgamation explodes and Incinerate the Burning Tendon. This is also your opportunity to use self heals ( Ember Tap or anything else at your disposal).
After the plate flies away, kill all standing corruptions and start over.
Additional Considerations:
Did I mention you need to dispel yourself? Dispel yourself.
heroic Madness of Deathwing is laughably easy compared to this,
Good luck on your Blazing Drake/ Life-Binder’s Handmaiden!
Last edited by stym 6 days ago (Patch 6.0.2)”
Cool; that is quite useful & out of all of my chars only my ‘lock & perhaps my SPriest will be able to solo due to dispells.
One thing – I found out the hard way that if an amalg is in the process of exploding & Deathwing rolls, it’ll fly off & you don’t get the tendon exposed!
Lol! I too found that out, the hard way. /facepalm
I did an entire heroic DS tonight with no problems up to spine. Wiped once due to lack of healing due to debuf. Second time was a lot cleaner and was able to clear it. A word of advice, drop the amag’s health down before getting their stacks up. That almost killed me on the third plate as they hit pretty hard at 9 stacks and that healing debuf up. Madness was cake too. No mounts dropped either, so returning for another run. GL!
Just a heads up, I did ICC and ulduar today and tried the 10 man switch to 25 man trick. It didn’t work for me. When I walk back in it reverts back to 10 man. Looks like I wasted a weeks lock out for those two and I’ll be headed back next week to do them completely on 25. Heroic switch works fine though.
Thanks for the heads up; I’ll test this on some chars later.
I’ve just tried to repo this in ICC on a char & wasn’t able to. Killing Marrowgar on 10, went out & changed to 25. Back in & it was still on 25, with Lady Deathwhisper having the amount of health I’d expect.
It could be I need to be further in and that’s something I may check later.
It could be EU servers don’t have a change other regions have – we’re after the EU maintenance at the time of testing as well so the EU & other regions should be in the same state. It could even be the server I’m on myself.
Also wonder if its an addon getting in the way as well, although that feels unlikely.
Just took my mage – who tends to go splat against HC LK due to lack of heals – and successfully ran ICC on 10 normal to open up access to the LK. Then did the “go outside, flip to 25, enter and flip to heroic” dance to open up HC LK. And whilst she didn’t survive, there were still the 25HC-only things like shadow traps, three valks, etc.
I was able to switch to heroic no problem but my chat text when entering would switch back from 25 to 10 . It might be a US server thing, I’m not sure about other realms. If it works for you then take advantage of it for sure!
Looking into it abit more, it seems if you switch to heroic your stuck on that raid size. I did that on loot ship since it’s a faceroll and hoping for better gold/loot drops. That looks like what my problem was for ICC. Not sure about ulduar. I’ll probably just make it 25 from the get go and not worry about.
Yeah, that’ll do it – once you’ve got a heroic lock, you’re stuck with it. Only way to do loot ship on heroic if going for the mount would be to flip it to 25HC for the ship & then back to 10N.
TBH given the loot & hassle of changing to 25HC from 10N and back again, it’s not worth the time.
ICC does only lock your ID when you set it to heroic. As long as you kill normal you can switch raid size without any problem. Your raid size is only changeable from outside the instance. The mode normal/heroic is only changeable from inside the instance. As soon as you agree to being locked to heroic mode you being assigned a unique ID and cannot switch anymore.
Ulduar is completely different. There is no heroic mode! In Ulduar the way you do the fight or start the fight could start the hardmode (kind of heroic) e.g. press the button at Mimiron is hardmode, killing the heart of XT is starting hard mode and killing Yogg without speaking with the guardians is hard mode. There is no function of the raid mode.
And as far as I know you can switch from 10 to 25 and back without any problem.
Is the Firelands drop 100% on any difficulty? I soloed it on normal and didnt get it. Did they change it?
Neither mount from Firelands is now 100%; it used to be that Ragnaros would drop the Pureblood Firehawk 100%, but only on heroic mode.
When Firelands was no longer end game content the drop rate was nerfed to 1% as usual. Same happened with Dragonsoul HC as well
Is the drop rate for Pureblood Firehawk slightly better depending on difficulty? 10norm, 10hc, 25norm, 25hc?
Not any more – it seems to be a 1% chance on all difficulties
But the fact you get more quantity of loot per boss kill in 25 man would increase the chance to get it?
Unfortunately not – even on 25 player you’d only get a single mount to drop.
It was only in the last months of SoO HC that Garrosh started dropping more than one mount.
Actually, just realised my last point doesnt make sense. Doesnt matter how much loot there is, a percentage drop rate is unaffected. A 1% drop has the same likelihood for a loot table of 20 items as it is for 5 items.