Heroic Hour of Twilight is for Gearing up from ilevel353

Last night, the last night before VP resets, i decided to finally take my warrior tank (Voltaris) out to the new 5man heroics.  These new 5mans are designed for the player with minimum ilevel of 353.  As luck would have it, Volt is exactly ilevel 353.  So me and my girlfriend partied up and looked to the LFD tool to give us our first dungeon.  Of course, since this is my first time, i was sent to End Time. 

Now, I have no idea why we went to End Time since there's absolutely no reason why this instance relates to the Well of Eternity.  But anyway, leave it to bliz to make awesome content while making us go in many directions as a sort of "quest".  I enter and my first encounter was with a group of OK dps who liked to rush through content.  aparently, they did not know how to follow the tank.  We started with sylvannas and the dps tried to rush through and skip the packs.  I know from experience that if you're not careful, the patrol next to sylvannas can be aggroed during the fight. so we took them out.  someone pulled accidentally and we wiped from having two trash packs.  in we go again and i tanked them well enough. 

The sylvannas fight wasnt hard because i've done it before. my health wasnt going down much at all since most of her attacks were magic.  the damage was constant and there were no spikes.  the trash packs were much more difficult on my than sylvannas.  in any case, im glad everyone else knew the fight and we cleared her in just one try. 

The next fight was Tyrande.  I was amazed at how weak the trash mobs were.  it took me a second to figure out that the lights come out in predetermined spots and once i knew where to look, the whole circle became super easy to do.  even the mob packs are predictable. the boss fight itself was a little tough.  we died at about 1%.  our hunter died about 15 seconds into the fight while the rest of us lasted until almost the end.  we had a second try and i asked the folks to help interrupt stardust (i did 8 all by myself the previous fight).  i also asked my girlfriend to Hero early on so we can get a good chunk of her health down before things got hairy.  sure enough, we survived with me doing about 6 interrupts and the paladin doing a few. the hero helped as everyone was doing about 15k dps. 

On to Murozond!  We 1-shot him.  love how DPS knows how to reset the encounter.  I think this is one of the funner fights of the game because of the illusion that we're doing much more damage.  it's an illusion because the boss itself has more health to compensate for the extra damage it takes to get him down.  in that sense, we just think we're doing more damage, but the boss is dying as if it was a regular encounter.  it's kinda like how a level 50 mob dies to a level 50 player the same way a level 85 mob dies to a level 85 player. down goes the dragon and i got myself a nice pair of boots! 

I ran all three dungeons, each one twice, for the remainder of the night.  I am mostly decked out in my old gear but i did get two drops: one, as mentioned, was the boots and the second was the shoulder pads from the Archbishop. The quest gear that dropped was a gun from killing Murozond, was a gun.  Those were the only three tanking pieces i got but they're more than enough to tank these instances.  There were more drops and quest rewards but those were all plate dps items.  I've kept those in my bags just in case i want to try out dps for Volt. 

In any case, i wrote this post to briefly show that a person in 353 gear (minimum required for Hour of Twilight dungeons) can easily tank these instances.  the tank cannot chain pull as much as he likes, or ignore CC's and killing assignments.  but, if done right, the whole set of instances can be completed quickly and efficiently by a tank who meets the minimum requirement.  Now this is not to say you can skimp on the tanking gear.  every piece of gear i had was a mix of zull gear, heroic gear and 359 justice point welfare gear.  the average ilevel turned out to be 353.  i still have 346 weapon and shield and i had a 333 shoulder pad before coming into that instance.  however, every piece was a tanking piece.  i think this is very important when going into the dungeon.  i have seen way too many dps who think that they can put on half tanking gear and do well.  their hope is that they have a lucky group, where a couple of great dps and a great healer can carry them.  please do not do this.  it puts unnecessary strain on everyone.

Thanks for reading. Tune in again next time!