The Nexus is another of the first few and easier Northrend dungeons.  It is located in Coldarra, Borean Tundra.  The Nexus has a somewhat open layout, and a bit more trash than Utgarde Keep, and a few of the pulls are larger and a bit trickier.  While a little more challenging, it is still quite easy once you know what you are doing.

A Full Clear of Heroic Nexus
will yield 5 Emblem of Conquest.

This makes it one of the more popular dungeons for running for emblems, as for experienced and geared people, it is very easy for its emblem yeild.

The arrangement of Nexus is such that you COULD do the bosses in a different order than I am listing them, this is simply the path I have seen.(map at the bottom).

The First HEROIC Boss Encounter: Commander
Kolurg/Stoutbeard.
This Boss is only present in Heroic Mode, if you are only concerned about Regular Mode, you can ignore the details regarding this boss, but the information for clearing this area in general may be useful.

This boss is in the middle of a frosty path of opposing-factional mobs frozen in blocks of ice:

"Berserker" mobs that can do a Knockback, which if careful can knock you into other groups, most dangerously, the boss.
"Cleric" mobs that can heal themselves and their allies. always kill these first.
"Ranger" varietys.  these are archer type of mobs and will shoot at you from range.  as such they can be easy for novice tanks to forget about.

The Commander will be pulled with Two Clerics. These should be killed first, as they will attempt to heal each other and the boss.
You will also want to pull the Commander back almost to, if not all the way to the beginning of the ice-path.  As this boss has a fear that can make group members run and aggro the next group. While this boss isn't that terribly tough, it is generally not helpful to have several more mobs running around.  Both ally and horde Bosses for this encounter use the same abilities.

Commander Kolurg/Stoutbeard has 3 things to be concerned with:

1) Charge: He will periodically charge and stun a group member.
2) Fear: he will occasionally effect the group with a 6 second fear, causing everyone to run away randomly.
3) Whirlwind: this tends to be what kills most groups that wipe on this boss. after a 2 second cast does a large dose of damage to everyone in an 8 yard radius. this can kill the squishier classes in one hit.

This fight can be more mobile than many, Casters must be particularly careful to not inadvertently be within whirlwind range when it goes off.

The Commander may drop:

Second HEROIC Boss Encounter: Grand Magus Telestra
This Boss has a few abilitys to be concerned with.

1) The Main Feature of this boss is that she Splits into 3 versions of herself, on Regular, she does this once(at 50% hp).  on Heroic she does this Twice(50% hp and 15% hp).
each split has a different ability:

Fire: Casts fire spells Scorch and Fire Blast.
Frost: Casts Blizzard and Ice Barb.
Arcane: This is the most important to note of the three.  This one will do a 3 second polymorph like spell on a group member, and a group-wide two second stun.

Many try to deal with this portion of the fight by killing the Arcane(purple) split first as to minimize interruptions from the polymorph and stun.

2) The Second notable effect is called Gravity Well, she pulls everyone to her and bounces them around.  This inflicts shadow damage, and prevents all but instant-cast spells. 

3) Additionally, in her regular form she will cast Firebomb, which does a 5 yard AOE around the target, and Ice Nova, stunning everyone for 3 seconds.

Sometimes groups ignore everything and simply steamroll through the encounter.  This can work, but can be messy.

The Achivement for this boss is:"Split Personality: Defeat Grand Magus Telestra in The Nexus after having killed her images within 5 seconds of each other during both splits." Sadly I have yet to personally accomplish this achivement, so I have no suggestions besides simply using an AOE-heavy group composition and pre-arranging to only use those spells, and when the tank has them all at once.

on REGULAR Telestra can drop:

On Heroic Telestra can drop:

Note regarding Trash between Telestra and Anomalous:
Between Telestra and the beginning of the next section of the dungeon, there are several pulls of humanoid type mobs. if you hang to the left wall, these can be avoided entirely.  Most groups I have been in choose to Skip these.
Once you enter the next area, there will be pulls that involve a bright spark-type mob. generally these are killed first, as they do lightning bolt style damage to the group and can be rather hazardous. sometimes a single DPS is assigned to deal with it, sometimes not.  it dies rather fast.

Third HEROIC Boss Encounter:Anomalus
Anomalus will Periodically spawn "Chaos Rifts" that will use a chain lightning like effect causing group damage, and if not killed quickly enough, spawn adds.  Additionally at 75%, 50% and 25% he will spawn additional rifts, some of thesehe will shield himself so that he will be invulnerable until the rift is destroyed.

For a direct kill, all that has to be done is for all DPS'ing units to switch to the rifts when they are formed.  The tank should use some degree of AOE at this point to grab any adds that spawn.

if the DPS(and tank) kill the rifts promptly, there should be minimal adds and the fight should go rather smoothly. In my experience the rifts can appear in a rather large radius around the boss.  The Adds, if they spawn, should be killed, but usually inadvertent AOE can do sufficient damage to take them down.

The Achivement for this boss is: "Chaos Theory: Defeat Anomalus in The Nexus on Heroic Difficulty without destroying any Chaotic Rifts."
if you simply attempt to power through and DPS him down ignoring the rifts, the group DPS will accumulate and require extreme healing(if remotely possible at all).  I have read about a method that involves kiting the boss down the ramps/platforms, but I have not personally seen it sucessfully executed.

on Regular Anomalus can drop:

on Heroic Anomalus can drop:

Note regarding the Trash between Anomalous and Ormorok:
When you enter the next area after Anomalous, it will be a crystallized forest type area. this area has loads of small sprout mobs that will aggro normally, but instead of actually dying, they will go dormant for a bit, this gauntlet is not difficult, but can be a problem if you don't expect it, as after a little while the dormant sprouts will reactivate.  this detail alone can make it annoying to have to ressurect anyone.
Additionally there are patrolling groups of mobs, most of which include one centaur-type mob and two treant type mobs. the centaur style one can cast heals, so kill that first.
there are also large treant mobs as well, but these do not patrol much and are not a big concern. (they are the object of a quest though)

Fourth Heroic Boss Encounter: Ormorok the Tree-Shaper

This boss has one primary gimmick to be concerned with.  He will relatively frequently casts a "spike" effect, where a broad area around him, frosty circles appear, and then turn into spikes, anyone who is standing in or too close to one of these circles will be thrown into the air, taking damage from the spike, AND from falling when they come back down.
Move out of these circles if at all possible.  IF you avoid these, then the fight should go quickly and easily.
In Heroic Difficulty, in addition to the spikes sproutlings will spawn. these will likely go for the healer.  they do not do much damage, but it is still greatly preferable for the tank to pick these up if at all possible.

on Regular, Ormorok can drop:

on Heroic Ormorok can drop:

There is a ramp/tunnel after Ormorok, at the end of this tunnel is an opening that you can drop down and be near the next boss. be careful when you drop down that everyone is ready, and that the tank goes first, as a patrol or two moves around right near where you fall.
Leaving the crystal forest area, you will see the final boss, a dragon frozen in a block of ice. make sure to be aware of patrolling mobs to each side diagonally.
There is also one caster NPC near the ice block, don't worry about aggroing the big dragon yet.

Final Boss Encounter: Keristraza

There are 3 Orbs in the room with Keristraza, these are interactable and are used to release Keristraza from her ice prison.
When released she will immediately engage, there are a few things to keep in mind.
The primary Gimmick of this fight is an "Intense Cold" aura, once she is active everyone will get ticks of this throughout the fight, each "unit" of this, deals 100 frost damage per second, and slows casting/attack speed by 10%.  This debuff is entirely removed by any movement.

The conventional way of dealing with this, is everyone simply everyone jumping constantly.  jump, attack, jump attack, ect.

Periodically aMagic effect(Crystallize or Crystal Chains) will root people down, preventing them from removing the Intense Cold debuff, some classes can remove this, and should strive to do so as possible.

Additionally, the Boss will do a Tail Sweep to any characters standing behind her, and a breath effect damaging anyone in front of her.  AS SUCH all melee dps should be positioned to one side or the other.

I have seen some groups try to have the tank move Keristraza around to remove the Intense Cold debuff from Pets, but in my opinion, this makes the fight unnecessarily mobile and challenging in ways that it does not need to be.
BUT as such classes and specs that rely heavily on pet damage will have to tend to manually moving their pets in order to remove the debuffs themselves.

Keristraza on Regular can drop:

Keristraza on Heroic can drop:

The Achivement for Keristraza is: "Intense Cold: Defeat Keristrasza in The Nexus on Heroic Difficulty without allowing Intense Cold to reach more than two stacks."
This is conceptually an easier achivement than some,  the key is simply to run with someone who can remove the "Crystal Chains" and "Crystallize" effects, and have them make a point to remove it from you.  this combined with the usual jumping, should allow you to never get over 2 counts of Intense Cold.

This is the conventional path:

And for those who have not been to the area, if you speak to the large Dragon at Amber Ledge, you will be able to be sent to "Transitus Shield" as depicted on this map:

This is the Entrance you will find when you go west (and slightly north) of the Transitus Shield area:

Trial of the Champion AKA TOC or TotC, is the new 5 man dungeon with World of Warcraft Content Patch 3.2, "Call of the Crusade".

This dungeon is very fast and small, with no real trash to speak of, it involves 3 overall encounters,  with 5 bosses total.  All loot in this dungeon is Epic grade.    I have found some of it to have unusually distributed attributes, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.  it can make determining if its better than other gear trickier though.

On Regular setting, this dungeon has a difficulty around that of the easier heroics, with the exception of a few spots that can be very challenging.

Once everyone is inside the instance and buffed up, everyone equips a lance (which can be obtained, if you do not have one, from the weapon stand near the entrance) and mounts a jousting Horse(A)/Wolf(H).  after this someone speaks to the NPC in the center of the ring, and starts up the event. after a rather long winded introduction, the doors will open and an opposing-faction champion, and 3 escorts will parade in, and take a place to one side, then another, and another.  at this point there will be 3 champions, each with 3 escorts.

After a little more long windedness, one of the sets of 3 escorts will move forward and you will have to fight them. this part is quite easy, as they go very quickly, dying almost as fast as the Liutennants for the "Battle Before the Citadel(A)/(H)" daily quest.

Once the first escorts are defeated, the second group does the same, then the third.  this part is really extremely easy.

once all 3 sets of escorts are defeated, all 3 commanders move forward and engage at once, this is not really that hard, but it will go faster if the group focuses on which one to take down first.

After a commander is defeated, they will dismount,  they will sometimes try to run to get another mount, to prevent this, if you see them get up,  you must trample them,  this is done either by simply walking over them with your horse.

Now, heres where it gets tricky. when all 3 have been defeated, they will pop up and you have to fight all 3  at once,  if you can, it is advisable to attempt to have them all be dismounted in aproximately the same area, but this sometimes is harder than it seems.

Every group I have run this with yet, has wiped at this point, as it is phenomenally difficult to smoothly pick up all 3 bosses, particularly if they are not dropped in the same spot.   for the tank: when the third boss is almost down, dismount and switch to your real weapon instead of the lance, and be ready to try to pick them all up.

Now, Which 3 you get is random of the 5 opposing race champions, and each race's champion acts as a different class and has different abilities.

Horde Champions(bosses ally will see):

Undead: Rogue,  "Deathstalker Visceri"
Tauren: Shaman, "Runok Wildmane"
Blood Elf: Mage, "Eressea Dawnsinger"
Orc: Warrior, "Mokra the Skullcrusher"
Troll: Hunter, "Zul'tore"

I am afraid I don't know the classes associated with each of the ally champions.

as they come out, before killing their suboordinates, there is time to discuss which of these need to be killed first in the second phase, and use raid markings accordingly(even before they are engaged).

if you wipe at this point (which every group I have been in has)  then you will NOT have to go through the first part again, and all 3 champions will be standing in a row near the gate they came in.  this allows them to be re-marked and engaged in a much more orderly fashion.

once these 3 are defeated(they do not actually die, they just stop fighting at 1 health and disengage) they will return to the gate, and the NPC that started things will return, and a chest will appear in the center with your loot.

to start the next phase, you speak to the NPC again.

once you do so, there will be some more long winded introductions and parading as the next boss, and three groups of 3 subordinates comes in and takes their position.

you can pull and dispose of each group of 3 separately, this is rather easy, just make sure to kill the caster first.

then the boss will engage.  this will be one of two bosses.

Eadric the Pure:
This guy's main gimmick to be aware of is "Radiance" when he starts casting this, turn around so you are facing away from him when it goes off. then you can resume fighting normally.   the healer should be aware of a damage spike(not neccesarily just to the tank) from some of his other abilities such as "Hammer of the Righteous", which has a vocalization and text announcement to go with it.  If you avoid the radiance effect, it should be easy.

Argent Confessor Paletress:
her main "thing" is that she summons a mob to assist her that looks like some boss mob.  nearly any boss mob, apparently, but this is only an appearance and each one uses the same abilities.  there is also a fear involved which can cause problems.
she is notably harder than Eadric, but not unbearbly so once you know the fight.
a note for the tank: make sure to continue threat generation on her as well as her add when she summons it.

after she is defeated, another chest appears and the NPC waits for you to resume the next boss.

Once you speak to the npc,  there is more chatting, then the black knight shows up and gives some of his own chattering, while/after killing the NPC Announcer(the one you talk to to resume things)  he then engages rather abruptly. be careful to pick him up fast.  Very quickly after engaging he summons a ghoul from the corpse of the NPC he just killed.  The tank must grab this as well.

In Phase 1, everyone should primarily focus on killin the Ghoul, then resuming on The Black Knight. he dies, and then comes back for phase 2with a more skeletal appearance.

In Phase 2, the tank must grab him quickly,  but then he does Army of the Dead, which summons many adds.  to deal with this, everyone should pile up on the tank as much as possible, and AOE everything. most of the adds go relatively fast, but it can be a rough burst.once he is killed after THAT he comes back AGAIN.
also Note: in Phase 2 he will cast Desolation, which you want to move out of ASAP.

In Phase 3, He has the form of a Wraith, at this point everyone simply has to DPS hard on him.  He does a debuff that increases damage you take from him, but I have not found this to be a problem at all on regular.

when he dies in that state, he stays dead(for the instance anyway) and you can loot the remains.

with a solid group that knows what they are doing, this instance can be run as fast, or faster, than Violet Hold.

on Heroic mode I have heard that this can need a very very geared tank, and on an attempt I ran on heroic with my DK Tank(whom is geared to be able to run any other heroics perfectly fine, and probably do fine through Naxx10) was getting smacked around unmanagably hard at least for the Healer I had at the time, even just on the 3-champions encounter.

also note that on Regular this instance does NOT have a lockout.

this instance on regular does not give any emblems.

Utgarde Keep (AKA: UK) is one of the first dungeons one encounters in Northrend, and one of the easiest Heroics.
It is located in Central Howling Fjord, and consists of Three Boss encounters and has a moderate amount of trash mobs that are mostly laid out in a very tank-friendly way.

A common strategy to keep in mind for the trash of Utgarde Keep, is that you generally want to kill the "Runecaster" mobs first, aside from this it is relatively straightforward.

A Full Clear of Heroic Utgarde Keep will yeild 3 Emblem of Conquest

The First Boss Encounter: Prince Keleseth.

Upon first entering Keleseth's chamber, there are 4 Vrykul spread out. this can be challenging if you are not careful as there are frequently multiple casters which will not run to the tank when engaged.
One common method of handling this, is for the group to stay on the stairs leading to his room, and the tank pulling the group and running behind the door frame of the entrance, as to force the casters to come into range.

Prince Keleseth has two abilities to take note of:

1) Ice Tomb.  He occasionally casts this on a random person in the group. this freezes the person in a block of ice making them entirely unable to take any action.  This tomb can be targeted and attacked to free the person.  If the tomb is not destroyed, it will last 20 seconds.
2) Skeletons.  he will cause several skeletons to run in from the next room, if the tank is positioned between the group(or more importantly, the healer) and the door they come out of, then the tank should be able to relatively easily grab the skeletons and they can be AOE'd uneventfully as they have very little health.
The skeletons will periodically be replaced or resurrected and must be dealt with accordingly.

For the Achivement: "On the Rocks: Defeat Prince keleseth on Heroic Difficulty without shattering any Frost Tombs" You simply have to not break the tombs. this can be done inadvertently by AOE, so if you are going for this achievement you need to be careful to avoid such.  While a powerful group can bulldoze through regardless, a more regular group would likely have a problem if the healer or tank were to be tombed. This achievement can be done almost accidentally if you are lucky.

on Regular Difficulty Prince Keleseth can drop:

Dragon Stabler's Gauntlets
Keleseth's Blade of Evocation
Reinforced Velvet Helm

on Heroic Difficulty Prince Keleseth can drop:

Strategist's Belt
Wand of the San'layn
Infantry Assault Blade
Battlemap Hide Helm

The Second Boss Encounter: Skarvald the Constructor & Dalronn the Controller

Each of these behave seperately but must be taken together.

Skarvald the Constructor has 3 abilities

"Stone Strike": which does damage and knocks the target back.
"Charge":  he will randomly charge a member of the group, stunning them for 2 seconds.
"Enrage": he will periodically increase his attack speed and damage.

Dalronn the Controller has two abilities in regular.

"Shadow Bolt"  which he casts at random group members.
"Debilitate" a mild Damage-over-Time for 2 seconds and has an effect that reduces casting, movement, melee and ranged attack speed for 8 seconds.

on Heroic, in addition to higher damage versions of those two attacks, he will also summon skeletons. these should be picked up by the tank if at all possible.

The "Gotcha" of this Fight:
After one of the two dies, he will resurrect in a spirit form, and resume fighting until the other of the two is destroyed.  Only in this spirit form it is untargetable, unkillable and does not continue the aggro table it had when it died.  As such if Skarvald is killed first, he will be highly likely to charge, and destroy the healer.One method many people use to deal with this, is taking Skarvald down to low health, then before he dies, switch to Dalronn, when he is dead, quickly finishing off Skarvald.

Despite having two bosses, this encounter only gives one loot opportunity.

on Regular this encounter can drop:

Skarvald's Dragonskin Habergeon
Arm Blade of Augelmir
Chestplate of the Northern Lights

on Heroic this encounter can drop:

Dalronn's Jerkin
Dagger of Betrayal
Bindings of the Tunneler
Helmet of the Constructor

The Final Boss Encounter: Ingvar the Plunderer

This fight has Two Phases.

In Phase One, he has 4 abilities:

"Cleave": this does damage in a frontal arc. melee members simply need to be behind the boss.
"Smash": this is a devastating frontal arc attack, particularly in heroic that will take a large chunk of health out of the tank, and likely kill anyone else that it hits.
"Staggering Roar": This does damage to everyone, and more importantly, interrupts spellcasting for 6 seconds. if you can avoid being mid-cast while this goes off, do so.  (As I understand it, this will only have the interrupt effect if you are casting when it goes off, and that this applies to Dreadful Roar as well)
"Enrage": Periodically his attack speed and size will increase.

In Phase 2, he has Upgraded Versions of Smash and Staggering Roar, and 2 additional Abilities.

"Dark Smash" similar to Smash, but in addition to a large hit to the frontal arc, it knocks down, and does damage to everyone.
"Dreadful Roar" similar to Staggering Roar, but interrupts for 8 seconds instead of 6. it will also increase how much shadow damage inflicted persons will take.
"Woe Strike" A curse that makes healing the inflicted person do damage to the healer. Group Members that can remove curses should try to do so.  The healer should avoid healing those who are inflicted with this curse if possible.
"Shadow Axe"  A spinning axe will appear in the air, and do substantial damage to those it hits.

The Tank must orient Ingvar facing AWAY from the group as to minimize the chance of his frontal-arc abilities killing group members.

After he is killed in Phase One, he will be resurrected, starting Phase Two.

In both phases what is probably the single most important "Trick" is that while he is casting Smash/Dark Smash, he cannot turn.  So if while he is casting Smash/Dark Smash, the tank moves forward through or around Ingvar then the brunt of the damage will not hit anyone.
in Phase Two, everyone must keep an eye out for the Shadow Axe in order to move out of the way.  Sometimes tanks find it worthwhile to move even if they do not directly have to, as a way to force the melee dps to avoid the axe in order to continue DPSing.  Everyone should have an eye out for this.

If these factors, particularly avoiding Smash/Dark Smash are taken into consideration, this fight can be quite easy.

on Regular Difficulty Ingvar can drop:

Holistic Patchwork Breeches
Ingvar's Monolithic Cleaver
Overlaid Chain Spaulders

on Heroic Difficulty Ingvar can drop:

Sharp-Barbed Leather Belt
Drake-Mounted Crossbow
Staggering Legplates
Annhylde's Ring

Unsmashable Heavy Band
Plunderer's Helmet
Enraged Feral Staff
Breeches of the Caller
Design: Fierce Monarch Topaz

and 1 Frozen Orb

This Screenshot shows both entrances to Utgarde Keep, the zone border is straight in from #1, the summoning stone is directly inside from #2, there is a large hall between these two entrances.

After defeating the Ingvar, if you follow the path leading up to him straight on, there will be a jump into water, then another, and another, leading back to the entrance zone border.

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