When I started solo 5-man instances as Death Knight tank I had 40k unbuffed HP in Frost Presence, 540 defense (capped) and about 20% dodge and parry. I've been using 2H ilvl 251 and no buffs. While in raid I use Unholy build which does most avoidance (and decent damage) and so far, even in 25-man raids, I have no problem to keep aggro. However Unholy build has limited self-healing abilities therefore I used Blood build for solo-instancing.

I've started with TBC 5-man instances on heroic mode. None of those was a problem. It took some time to adopt myself to Magisters' Terrace Kael'thas Sunstrider but after a few wipes I found the way how to handle it. I was there often until I got Swift White Hawkstrider (as a part of my goal to get 100 mounts).

Were all those instances a challenge? Not really. 5-man TBC heroics are really "tank&spank", so I went into 20-man vanilla WoW instances.

Zul'Gurub wasn't my favorite place while on US server due to the time zone difference, so it was really fun to be there again and down all those old bosses solo. In most cases level 80 char is overpowered for this instance and there is nothing difficult there. Just interrupt mobs' heals when needed and do not forget to heal yourself.

It took me about 3 month non-stop (means killing that boss after every reset which is on 3 days interval) to get Swift Razzashi Raptor from Bloodlord Mandokir and almost 7 month to get Swift Zulian Tiger from High Priest Thekal. I even became exalted with Zandalar Tribe while farming those mounts.
NB! If you decided to kill Hakkar - do not forget to kill High Priests first otherwise this boss will evade or reset. It took me a few tries (and some web-reading) to figure that out.

Was it a challenge? Nope... So I went into Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ20).

I've never been there before, so I read about all bosses before my first run. It was worth it since at least final boss, Ossirian the Unscarred, is not complicated encounter but requires to use appropriate game mechanics to down him.

On my first try I down all bossess there on my way to him. Indeed you need to clear some trash, but that shouldn't be a problem. The most fun was to kill the 1st boss, Kurinnaxx, because of his Mortal Wounds, that reduces healing by 10% and stacks up to 10 times, and Sand Trap, that silences you for 20 sec and reduces your chance to hit by 75%, so appropriate and timely self-healing is the key here as well as Army of the Dead.

However there is no need to kill this boss if you run for achievement (which is to kill Ossirian), you could easily skip it riding at his left side over that bug's thingy - no aggro there. You have to deal with the second boss though, General Rajaxx, and his army, since you cannot skeak in without killing it. Nothing difficult here though. The rest of the bosses could be easily avoided, especially walking over water or you could easily kill them just for some fun.

As a preparation to final boss fight you need to clear trash from the room where Ossirian is located. Those are Anubisath Guardians with different abilities. The most dangerous one is Meteor that does about 13k damage that splitted between the players. Since you are alone you'll get it all. So watch your HP that should be always above it.

The fight with Ossirian is relatively easy, you just need to pull him while mounted and move to the closest Ossirian Crystal. When you click on Crystal it will apply the 45 sec debuff on Ossirian that decreases his damage and makes him vulnerable to certain spell damage schools. The rest of the fight is to move him from Crystal to Crystal and "tank&spank".

The FRAPS below is just an illustration of how I did it:

Stay tuned for the next battle report where I'll talk about more intensive solo fights in the other instances.