Solo: Heroic Skadi the Ruthless (UP)

Last night I was doing a random heroic on my alt after the raid with some guildies. One of them asked if the place would be 2-mannable up to the third boss, Skadi the Ruthless, for the mount. I said it should be quite easy to 2-man it and started wondering if I could solo it. So, after the heroic ended, I logged back to my Druid and started flying towards Utgarde Pinnacle.

Preparation and trash
I used my regular tank gear (ilvl 264 & 277 stuff) with the usual buffs, MotW and Thorns, along with the Drums of the Forgotten Kings. I used my Flask of the North for some extra strength. Not so useful, but better than not using it. In addition, I used an Endless Mana Potion, because I had no regular ones on me.

All trash can be skipped with stealth. One time I accidentally ran into a pack of 4 mobs in the second hallway (before the first boss) and that turned out to be quite deadly. The first and second boss can be skipped, just like many pugs do, by simply not engaging / activating them.

The gauntlet
The gauntlet is fairly straightforward in the sense that it most likely won't kill you. However, transitioning from the gauntlet phase to the boss phase can be tricky. The first batch of mobs are all melee mobs that are rather weak and you can charge in and Swipe them to death like you would do on a regular run.

After that it gets a bit more involved: The Harpooners, but mostly the Witch Doctors deal more damage and you'll need to start handling the pairs of adds that run towards you. I opted to pull slowly and to prioritize DPSing the Witch Doctors, then the Harpooners and the Warriors last. My "rotation" on these packs, with 2-3 mobs being up, was to debuff my #1 target with FF, Mangle and Lacerate, then do the same with the #2 target and then just spam Swipe, obviously using (glyphed) Maul every auto-attack.

The Witch Doctors don't move easily, which means you may have to charge them and by doing so aggroing the next pack. This can't really be avoided. Don't hesitate to pop cooldowns, including SI+FR, when needed. Pick up 3 harpoons when you have time.

After the stationary packs have been dealt with, it's time to heal your wounds and wait out your cooldowns. If you DPS the mobs down efficiently, you should regularly have some time to heal yourself. Regrowth followed by Nourish spam until you need to shift back to Bear. Also shoot 2 harpoons at the boss when he's in the right position, that way you only need to shoot one last shot when you decide to transition.

Transition and boss-phase
Once your SI+FR and Berserk are back up and you're at reasonably high health (70% or so), the time has come to push to phase 2. Each pair of gauntlet-adds spawns quite a while before it actually activates and runs towards you. This means that you most likely won't be able to DPS down a pair of adds and shoot the boss down before the next pair spawns (not to mention the timing-luck required to have the boss in the right position when you down the adds). So you should transition with adds up.

Since the Witch Doctors hurt the most and the add-pairs alternate between Witch Doctor/Warrior and Harpooner/Warrior, I opted to only transition the boss when I was fighting Harpooner/Warrior or if I wasn't fighting anything, but Harpooner/Warrior would be the next pair to spawn.

When the time is right, shoot the last harpoon (this takes you out of form FYI), pick up the boss and pop Berserk to get rid of the adds that are still up. At this time you will definitely want to use Barkskin+Enrage to reduce damage intake and you may have to pop SI+FR as well. Once the adds are down, the actual bossfight begins.

There are 3 abilities that the boss uses besides his regular auto-attack. The first is a short stun, that you can't really do much about except soak it. The second is his whirlwind. If you react quickly, you can outrun the boss while he is whirlwinding, especially with Cat Form (with or without Dash). You should only take 1 or 2 hits of the whirlwind. Once you've made some distance, you can cast heals on yourself, while running away. I used Rejuvenation and 3x Lifebloom. After that, the boss is closing in and I would stop to cast as many Nourishes as I could (between 0 and 2 typically) before shifting back.

The final ability and the one that I found to be the most deadly is a Poisoned Spear he throws at you. This leaves a poison DoT that hurts quite a bit. However, since it's a Poison, you can remove it. To do this, I changed my heal-plan to include an Abolish Poison at the last moment before shifting back to Bear. Most of the time, Skadi would use his Poisoned Spear before Abolish would fade and with Abolish Poison ticking every 2 seconds and the DoT every 3, the poison is cleansed before it can tick. For all Poisoned Spears after that, I would just shift out and cast Abolish Poison on myself. The extra damage from taking a hit in casterform is worth not having to take the poison damage and with a bit of luck, Skadi will try to reapply the Poisoned Spear before Abolish runs out, giving you 2 cures with 1 cast.

The main limitation with this tactic will be mana. You will shapeshift often and cast inefficient heals (HoTs are quite bad without spellpower to boost them). Use Innervate as soon as you first run low on mana. Then pop a mana potion the next time you run low and pray that Innervate is back up when you need it. Use Barkskin and Enrage on cooldown to reduce damage intake. Keep Frenzied Regeneration up and pop SI+FR whenever you can, but ideally not during a whirlwind or when a whirlwind is about to start. You don't want to run out of rage and only get reduced benefits from FR. The SI glyph is useful for this fight, as it boosts your SI+FR healing quite a bit. I didn't use it. Swapping to a healer weapon during whirlwinds to boost your healing is another great idea that I came up with only after the kill.

On my kill, after 3 failed attempts, I went down to 10% when the boss was at 35% HP while I was waiting for SI+FR and Innervate to come back off cooldown, so it was quite close. However, during the next whirlwind, I could Innervate and spam myself up a bit and when he caught up with me SI+FR was back and I went back up to 75% and the deal was sealed at that point.

Encore: Soloing Oculus heroic
A few weeks back I tried soloing Oculus on heroic mode for no particular reason. Despite the trash dealing mostly magical damage, it was easy to deal with using cooldowns. The first 3 bosses were not so hard, the third boss requires you to kite him around the platform to prevent the frost DoT from stacking.

The last boss turned out to be impossible though. I flew a green drake and had swapped in a few items that had a higher itemlevel than my tank set (Go go ilvl 277 Moonkin-offspec-gear) to maximize my drakes health and damage. The damage from the boss is outhealed by the leech-DoT, but the whelps spawn too quickly and will start to overwhelm. Stacking the DoT to 3 on a whelp and letting it tick is not sufficient to kill most of them (whelps have different levels and their HP scales with level), which means you have to go back to that whelp and spend a global cooldown on it to finish it off. And that takes too much time, because the next wave will be up by then.

Kiting the boss, as was done on solo-kills (and green-only achievement runs) in the past turned out to be unsuccessful as Blizzard apparently hotfixed the encounter at some point to give the whelps infinite range on their spells. Perhaps that with a couple more upgrades (Steelhoof, if you're reading this and I know you do, give me extra DKP for the sake of science!)
I can do enough damage to kill the whelps with one 3-stack of the DoT and I can keep up, I don't know.

Soloing Molten Core as Feral Druid

With Cataclysm the entire old world is going to be remade. So it's not unlikely that old raid instances like Molten Core will be remade or removed. So right now is the perfect time to return to that infamous hole in the ground, either to farm rep or, more ambitious, farm for Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. Various classes/specs can solo Molten Core these days and Feral Druids are no exception. With 2 players, more or less any combination of classes and specs can handle the place.

This post is on how to solo Molten Core with a Feral Druid. I first did this with T8 level gear and some bosses needed some thought. Now with mostly T10 level gear, alot of the tips that I'll mention are no longer needed. Gear has a big effect on how easy it is to solo the place, so keep that in mind when reading this. Your mileage may vary.

Gear & Setup
Melee damage from the trash and bosses is really low. The majority of the damage you'll take will be magical in nature. This means that armor and avoidance are fairly useless. Stamina and resistance are king. Resistance has a big effect on the damage you take and most of your healing (Imp LotP and Frenzied Regen) scale with your HP. The tanking rings from Onyxia are very nice. Additionally, a Lesser Flask of Resistance can be a big help and they're dirt cheap. I like to run with Drums of the Forgotten Kings as well, the +8% stats is useful to have and the drums are not that expensive to make. DPS stats on gear are always useful, but I prefer survivability in the form of HP and resistance over more DPS. Beat stuff with endurance.

To enter a raid instance, you need to be in a raid group. What I found most convenient is to log an alt, invite a guildie to a raid group, make the guildie raidleader, log my Druid, get invited and get leadership. The offline alt stays in the raid and the guildie can now leave without the raid disbanding. Finally, make sure you have plenty of bagspace, as there will be a lot of stuff to loot and the epics sell for anything between 1 and 10 gold each, so that's not too bad.

Imp. LotP will provide most of your healing. If you go low, use Survival Instincts and Frenzied Regeneration combined with any trinkets that increase your max health (such as Juggernauts Vitality) for maximum returns on Frenzied Regeneration. Use Barkskin and any other damage-reduction cooldowns whenever they're up and you're not at full HP. If you need to heal, pop Barkskin as you shift out, cast Regrowth and then spam Nourish. Innervate yourself before you shift back if you expect to have to heal again before your mana has replenished.

Lucifron
Lucifron is quite straightforward, the majority of the damage will come from his shadowbolts. You can ignore the adds, they will die when you Berserk and from Swipe and glyphed Maul. The curse that double the rage cost of your abilities can be annoying, but it's not a major issue. You can decurse yourself if you want, it'll make it go a bit faster, but it's not needed.

Magmadar
The main challenge in this boss lies in the trash before him. I opt to clear the two packs closest to him to ensure I don't get adds when I get feared. Make sure you see healthbars on the Corehound packs (press "V") and make sure they die at roughly the same time or they resurrect each other. Magmadar himself is not a problem. Make sure to move out of the fire and save Berserk to break a fear. Other than that it's just a long fight.

Gehennas
This boss used to give me the most problems. The reasons for that are first that he casts Shadowbolts and Rain of Fire almost continuously and rarely uses melee, bypassing your Savage Defense. Secondly, he applies a curse that reduces healing taken by 75%. The curse has cooldown, but he seems to not use it if someone is already affected. So when you decurse yourself, expect a new curse shortly after. Decurse once more and you should have a window to heal. Do this when you hit 30~40% HP, heal up with SI+FR. Repeat this with casterform-heals if you drop low before SI+FR is back up. In the meantime, run out of the Rain of Fire when you can. If you have any resistance buffs, now is the time to use them. The adds are of little consequence, ignore them and they'll die eventually from Berserk, Swipe and Maul.

Garr
Garr is very straightforward. Depending on your gear you either want to focus-fire down the adds or just start on Garr and let the adds die from Swipe and Maul damage. Although you'll resist most of the explosions from the adds, make sure to get your back to a wall so you don't get knocked into trashpacks you've skipped.

Baron Geddon
Geddon does only magical damage, so your armor is useless. The main dangers are his Hellfire, that increases in strength with time (Just run out of it) and the Living Bomb. The falling damage you take after Living Bomb explodes can be painful. Make sure you have rock above your head that you can bounce into to reduce the fall-distance. The tunnel before Geddon is a good spot, but you can also use the area just before the ledge overlooking Golemagg. Additionally, Feral Charging Geddon while in the air makes you take no falling damage.

If you need to heal in casterform, do it during the Hellfire, as Geddon isn't hitting you then. The mana drain debuff he casts doesn't do anything as long as you're in Feral form, but it will quickly drain your mana if you shift out. It lasts for 5 minutes, so it can be slightly annoying if you need to heal after the boss.

Shazzrah
This boss is trivial. You will most likely outheal its damage with Imp. LotP and if not, SI+FR will certainly do the trick.

Sulfuron Harbringer
You're in for the long haul with this one. Sulfuron has 4 adds and they all heal each other. Alone you will not have enough DPS to burst down an add, so the only option is to outlast them until they run out of mana. Most of the damage will come from the spells cast by the adds. Just stay alive by cycling your damage reduction and healing cooldowns until they run out of mana. The adds die very quickly once that happens and Sulfuron himself does not pose a big threat.

Golemagg the Incinerator
Golemagg has 2 adds that can't die while the boss is still alive, but they don't hit very hard. Attacking Golemagg gives a chance to stack a fire DoT. Once you get high stacks, you should stop attacking Golemagg and wait for the DoT to fade.I like to hit one of the adds when doing this, to keep Savage Defense going. Use Barkskin at this stage, as the damage intake will be highest. At 10% Golemaggs damage output goes up considerably, so make sure you're high on HP and low on DoT stacks at this point.

Majordomo Executus
This fight is rather easy. There are 8 adds that need to die to beat the encounter. Even though 4 of them are called "Priest", they don't heal. Just take them out one at a time. When there's only one add up, it's healed to full and its damage increases, but this is hardly worth mentioning.

Ragnaros
The final boss. His melee damage is rather low and you'll outheal most, if not all, of it with Imp. LotP. The main threat is the periodic knockback. If you get knocked back and end up out of melee range, Ragnaros will spam 6K damage Fireballs at you, which can eat through your healthbar rather quickly. To counter this, make sure you save at least 5 rage for Feral Charge and quickly spam Feral Charge when he does the knockback. This instantly brings you back in melee range. If you don't manage to charge back, make sure you get back to the boss as soon as possible. Once the boss submerges, just Swipe-spam the adds, they die very quickly.

Farming for Sulfuras
For Sulfuras you need the following items:

• Eye of Sulfuras - This is the legendary drop from Ragnaros. It seems to have a 3~5% drop-chance so you'll just have to hope for the best.
  
• Sulfuron Ingot x 8 - These drop with a 15~20% chance from Golemagg, but they're not BoP, so you can fetch them on the AH as well.
  
• Blood of the Mountain x 10 - These drop from Molten Destroyers (~5%) and can be mined from Dark Iron Ore nodes (~1%). Your best bet is to farm the Molten Destroyers in the zone, get out, wait 30 minutes for the place to soft-reset and go again. The Bloods can be traded, so check the AH, since these are hard to farm.
  
• Dark Iron Bar x 20 - These need 8 Dark Iron Ore per bar. The Dark Iron Ore is mostly found in Molten Core, though there are some nodes in the Searing Gorge as well. Your best bet is to get a miner in your cleared raid to grab the ore or to fetch it from the AH. The bars can only be created in Black Rock Depths.
  
• The rest is all easy to get and you'll get automatically while farming MC for the other components.
  

Good luck!