Lock and Load - Heroic Feng the Accursed

Lock and Load

Hello hunters!

Feng the Accursed No More! 2/16 Heroic

What an awesome fight! I really enjoyed the slight change from the normal difficulty that this fight was. The only new mechanic added into the heroic version of the fight is a new phase, which has you kill some adds. Although the new phase is fairly simple mechanic wise, the increased damage output from the boss, and raid damage output needed makes this fight a sure test for every part of your raid group! Here is how I went about with the fight!

Spec: Beast Mastery

Talents: 3/3/2/2/1/1

Glyphs: Marked for Death, Animal Bond, Deterrence

With the correct strategy, for almost the entirety of this fight you will be stacked in a tight group on the boss, for all 4 phases other than the first (Staff) phase. For a majority of this fight it is a matter of maximizing your DPS in every way possible, making sure that you hitting your Bestial Wrath off CD at good times to maximize damage. Improvements on this fight will always come week to week, as it's pretty patchwork and gear will shine. Also, be conservative with your 2nd stampede, you will only get 2, so find  a time where your trinkets are lining up, hit stampede and your 2nd potion. Try not to do this just before the last phase transition  and the boss will be moving, and you may lose some pet up time. Be sure to take advantage of deterrence with a /cancelaura deterrence macro to help maximize moving. Having your warlock cookies keybound, although a relatively common thing, is EXTREMELY important in this fight, as there are some points where you may take a relatively large amount of damage, without warning. Be sure you don't clip your Murder of Crows. During shield phase, you can handle this many different ways. You will definitely have a BW available during one if you want to pop it to spam AoE adds with half cost Multi-Shots. I chose to use my BW's on the boss to help push the phases quicker, but this is up to you. Most guilds are having a DK grasp the adds into a tight group. I recommend using a binding shot as soon as the adds spawn on the raid, when the DK grips the adds they will immediately be stunned for 5 seconds. If you have a 2nd hunter in the group, have him put a binding shot on the back side of the adds, so ass soon as they move to the shield they are stunned for 5 seconds again. This gives your raid a full 10 seconds to just destroy the grouped up adds, and everyone will love you. Be sure during epicenter's you don't lose your SS dot, if you are inside the null barrier, you can still attack like normal, the increased miss chance is taken away with the barrier, but I could see where it can fall during a BW.

World of Logs; No logs this week as they got deleted! :(

Some changes you may or may not make.

If your raid group is struggling with the adds, survival is extremely close to BM on this fight, and will give you much more benefit on the shield phase of the fight. Also, lynx rush is a more forgiving talent to take than aMoC, which is more involved during readiness. Lynx rush will also give you some additional add damage if you chose to us it there.

Over all the fight was a ton of fun and I am extremely happy with how tuned it was!

Divinespeed - <LA> (Stormrage US)

laguild.enjin.com

Lock and Load, New Guild, New Opportunities

Lock and Load

Hello hunters!

It's been a few weeks since I've done one of these bloggy type things! A lot has happened over the past few weeks, which has led me to not blogging about my raid weeks here during the beginning of the expansion! So I am going to sum up my first 3 weeks of raiding in just a few sentences. 

New Faces, New Chances

Although I greatly enjoyed my time in Peachy Keen, the guild decided to head another direction with their hunter core and my trial was declined. I have absolutely no hard feelings for the decisions they made, and I wish them the best of luck. I already had an offer on the table from a guild that is really getting into the swing of heroic progression and looking to make a name for itself in the upcoming raid tiers. I am now raiding with <LA> of Stormrage (US Alliance). Although going Alliance was the toughest choice of this move, I feel like the officer core over here is really looking to push progression, make changes to push progression further, and overall have a fun raid environment that is going to continue to push progression.

Raids!

So, now the reason people actually would click on this blog, raiding! So, Mogu'shan Vaults was released a few weeks back, as a trial with PK, I didn't get as much time in the raid as I would like (which is why there have been no blogs). So we are going to consider this past week of raiding my first week of raiding. The fights are unique, very unique and it is so entirely refreshing to see fights that really have no relation to fights from the past. I think Spirit Kings is my favorite fight, a lot of interesting mechanics, and very well tuned. Elegon of course has it's challenges, but with DMF trinkets the fight took a sever decrease in difficulty from the first week.

State of the Hunter

I feel like Hunters are in an ok spot right now, we are lower than we'd absolutely like to be, but we aren't terrible to bring to a raid. We bring some interesting utility on multiple fights, and our DPS isn't the complete worse thing out there. Although we are definitely a lot more weak than we were during DS. I'm overall happy with the changes to Hunters this expansion, and I think it will only get better as we continue to gear and further perfect gear/reforging etc.

<LA> 1/6 Heroic

My first time killing Stoneguard comes in the heroic version! Generally I'd like to really touch on the specific changes I made while adjusting from the normal to heroic mechanics, but it's not something I can do in this situation. I will cover what I did for this fight, and some of the changes I believe I need to make to improve my performance. 

Spec: Survival

Talents: 3/1/2/3/3/1

Glyphs: Marked for Death, Animal Bond, Deterrence

The absolute toughest part of this fight in my opinion is being able to manage your focus, while being 110% raid aware. Focus control is something I have always struggled with on a fight where I need to be constantly moving, and switching targets. I chose thrill of the hunt so I would almost always have an instant cast when needing to move out of a trap, pool, or move to/from someone for chains. Also, you will always have 2 targets available to do damage on. This makes this fight not as good for hunters in my opinion, as 2 target damage is definitely one of our weak spots. The most important part of this aspect, and another reason TotH is a good talent choice is you can always have SS ticking on two targets at once. I believe I used a few too many multi-shots this week, as 2 target MS's are fairly week compared to a single arcane shot. I think I will try fervor this week, as it will keep me honest with MS, and give me extra focus for instants on the move. Hunters and Deathknights provide the absolute most utility in breaking cobalt traps while outside of petrification. With the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera talent you have a 1 min deterrence CD, with readiness you can break multiple in a short period of time, if your readiness happens to reset your deterrence. Another thing that can help with this fight if traps are over running your raid constantly. Have a resto druid symbiosis you, they will gain deterrence and you will gain dash, a short sprint that is absolutely amazing for running tiles.

Hope I helped you out with some tips for Heroic Stoneguard! On to Feng next week, and I will be back next week with an update! 

Divinespeed - <LA> (Stormrage US)

laguild.enjin.com