Protectors of the Endless Spring is by far one of the most frustrating fights of the tier in my opinion. The damage buff you are given in this fight from killing the little sha's doesn't transfer to your pet, therefor nearly making BM 100% useless on this fight. I played survival with a talent set up of:
3: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera
2: Silencing Shot
2: Aspect of the Iron Hawk
1: Fervor
1: A Murder of Crows
1: Glaive Toss
So, the first thing you will learn about this fight is that hunters are pretty god awful at it. You 100% should not be using any multi-shots in this fight even with 3 adds present. Although it's tempting to flex your epeen a bit, don't do it. Stick to your single target rotation, including BA>Trap. Single target damage is absolutely the most important thing in this fight. The next thing you will learn, depending on your strategy, is that if you are in a late soak group, your damage will suck, nothing you can do about it. I took the glyph of Ice Trap over the glyph of Deterrence for this fight. Deterrence blocks 100% of lightning storm, and is really the only time you will need it. Even with it blocking it, you shouldn't really need deterrence for anything, your passive 15% reduction from Iron Hawk should be more than enough for your healers to heal you through any of the dots in the fight. Having your pet on defensive stance while you are switching to adds if your group has you doing it, is a must. We have free mobility, so be right on your adds as they die to get stacks, no excuse to ever miss a stack of your buff. Tranquilizing shot can be used to dispell the healing buff if your healers are slow at doing it, but really you shouldn't have to do it. Overall, I didn't enjoy this fight in anyways, and cringe every week that we have killed it since. Here is a kill video from one of our mages PoV:
What an entertaining and exhilarating fight to take part in. I wasn't sure how much I was going to enjoy this fight when going through strategies and reading up on the fight. A lot of mixture between BM vs SV and how the fight goes from phase to phase. The biggest difference in this fight from normal to heroic is more or less like putting 100 pounds on your healers shoulders and hoping they can carry you through the fight. You will wipe quite a bit early in the fight trying to figure out exactly how to deal with these dissonance fields. A few things to note as a hunter. You will NEVER EVER EVER get Cry of Terror, but this does not mean you are a melee. You still need to stand out with the range. Also, you should never be near a dissonance field, hunters do absolutely nothing to bring down the health of the fields. Your raid staying spread out is very important so your healers can save as much unneeded heals as possible. With the strategy my raid decided to do I played Survival and took a set up like:
3: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera
1: Silencing Shot
2: Aspect of the Iron Hawk
2: Dire Beast
1: A Murder of Crows
1: Glaive Toss
(I ended up playing SV on our first kill, but I still believe BM is better for this fight during progression)
I decided very early on that BM would be the way to go for me. I played a few pulls as SV and was never quite on the same level as BM for the way we decided to handle phase 2. During the add phase we had each of our small add tanks put a mark on 1 of their adds each and we nuked that single target add in each group. Your tanks take WAY less damage when the number of adds is reduced from 4 to 3 in their groups. and with fixates going out they take less damage even more when they aren't being attacked by these adds additionally. I used little to no AoE during our first kill of this boss. Fixate damage has a range of 20 yds and will cause more frustrating deaths than anything on this fight. MAKE SURE YOU AND EVERYONE IN YOUR RAID GROUP HAS A WEAK AURA FOR FIXATE. You must immediately start running to the sides of the room if you get fixated if you choose to use a similar raid positioning to us (See video). Deterrence is extremely helpful on dissonance fields as it reduces the damage taken from them by 50% (glyphed). Deterrence is again strong in phase 3 if you get cry, deterrence just before you get feared to reduce that damage. We had our warlock dropping his soul well during both add phases, I think I used 4 healthstones in our kill attempt. These are very very strong and should 100% be used off CD during field explosions. Also using silencing shot during the add phases to interrupt Dispatch is very important and you should be trying to interrupt every one that you can as melee sometimes have to run out for being fixated.
Overall this fight is super fun and that last phase feels like it's never going to end. Having healed this fight since our first kill, I can tell you, your healers will appreciate anything you can do to avoid damage/heal yourself. As a hunter we have our passive 15% reduction, but deterrence and health stones are VERY helpful. Just some additional help your raid may need. We had about 6-7 spell casters jumping in the corrupted fields as soon as they came up and getting CD's such as barrier and spirit link totem to support. This allowed us to get these fields knocked down before the raid dipped too quickly. The last phase we had our third tank stand in front of the raid group to take the Heart of Fear damage. Honestly, I never even noticed this mechanic even though I had one on me. Good luck with this one, it was overall a short encounter for us! Here is video, I hit record after the first add phase was over (sorry!).
I've fallen behind a bit on these blogs, and I always say I'm going to get back to doing them full time and just seem to fail to catch up. So here we go, 4 blogs in the next couple of days covering the past few weeks of heroic kills.
This fight, for a good player, can be one of the absolute most frustrating fights you may ever encounter. Your entire raid team needs to know how to handle the mechanics of the Muted Construct, and the people outside really need to know how to throttle damage up and down. We wiped on this fight several times due to people either killing the construct too quickly, or people not knowing how or when to use their Amber Strike properly. We used 2 tanks, and had a melee DPS taunting the construct ~5 seconds before flings to keep the monstrosity in place. You also tank the monstrosity near a pillar in the front of the room to keep your tanks from getting knocked all over the place with the stomp. I think survival is a hunter's best choice for this fight. It's also the one fight you can say, being a scumbag is ok for progression. Multi-shot your way to some high damage and a fight that can be a lot of fun.
Here are my Survivaltalents for this fight:
1: Crouching Tiger Hidden Chimera
2: Your choice
2: Aspect of the Iron Hawk
1: Fervor
1: A Murder of Crows
2: Barrage
Basically for this fight I considered myself a melee class. When the "Ranged on adds" calls came out, I usually maintained sticking to the boss/construct and nuking them down, while cleaving off with multi-shots when I would hit 3+ targets. I used a combination of BA and explosive trap, mainly using BA during phase 2 for the single target damage on the monstrosity. Make sure you A Murder of Crows the boss in phase 1, monstrosity in phase 2, and the boss in phase 3. You do this because no other targets will be alive for more than 30 seconds. Make sure your tank left in the suit for phase 2 continues to keep stacks on the boss as well as refreshing stacks when needed on the monstrosity. Going into P3 the boss will actually just melt if you do the fight correctly to this point. This is where BM makes the argument of being a better choice for this fight. I honestly don't feel it would be worth it, as you wouldn't even get your full 36 second burst in during this phase (Yes if done right, it's that short). You still burst extremely higher as SV, especially if you can carry a LnL into this phase. Make sure you don't attack the boss too early as he is still taking his huge reduced damage till he is done channeling in the middle of the room. Overall this isn't a bad fight for hunters, and a great fight to practice those scumbag techniques for future farm content. Here is a video from a mage PoV, forgot to record on the kill! Will try to get a video of our kill next week!
It's been awhile since I have had the time to sit down and do a blog, although as a guild we have been very busy over the past 3 weeks. After Lei Shi we set our sight on moving through HoF in it's entirety. With a lot of new recruits and a holiday schedule we struggled through a couple of heroics that should have been killed a lot sooner than they were. With nearly a full roster back from the holidays we managed to put down one of the toughest bosses of the tier, Imperial Vizier. Here's my brief explanation of the three fights.
Heroic Garalon
This fight was a true test of your entire raids ability to handle mechanics and damage. With the raid being able to handle these mechanics this fight is extremely simple. If the each individual raid member does their job the fight slowly snowballs to be much easier than you would anticipate. It has an extremely high DPS check, as well as healing check, and is absolutely not something to take lightly. Here is my quick hunter tips for this fight.
Spec:
3: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera
Doesn't matter, not useful
3: Spirit Bond
2: Dire Beast
1: A Murder of Crows
1: Glaive Toss
Here's my reasoning for this set up. Having deterrence for every other crush, or when your healers don't have CD's/weak CD's. No interrupts or CC's needed for this fight, so tier two can be anything. On this fight you are constantly lower than 98% so throughout the fight Spirit Bond will do more healing than Iron Hawk would damage reduction. The next three are the pretty standard BM choices. The A Murder of Crows choice is questionable, and I've heard some people taking Blink Strike here, but I think I still like crows. Just always crows the boss.
Dash, Dash, Dash. Having the maximum uptime on your pet's dash when it's moving from body to leg is so helpful. Also, with the strategy we originally did with this, we had range switching to a far leg without going to it. If your guild is using this strategy, when your pet is attacking a leg, regardless if you are near the leg, it gains the buff. So any time a leg is up make sure your pet is in it, it's a DPS gain, even with the travel distance. Overall the fight is a lot of fun, but requires a ton of raid awareness and concentration to meet the extreme healing and DPS requirements.
Here is our first kill:
Heroic Wind Lord
So, Heroic Wind Lord is definitely a boss you should be doing relatively early in your raids progression. We ended up 24M'ing the boss on our first kill, because it's that much of a joke. I played SV on this fight as it seemed to be the obvious choice for all of the AoE. Although I have played BM on it since, and it's equally as good if done correctly. There is a good chance you will be chosen to CC adds, which is no issue for a hunter since our trap has a 40 yd range, and lasts 90 seconds. If you aren't chosen to CC adds, you may be put in the interrupt rotation on the menders. I went with the set up of:
3: Crouching Tiger Hidden Chimera
1: Silencing Shot
2: Aspect of the Iron Hawk
3: Thrill of the Hunt
1: A Murder of Crows
2: Barrage
There is a lot of debate in my opinion about barrage vs. glaive toss. Barrage will definitely do more overall damage than glaive toss, but you lose a lot more globals while channeling barrage. I still think barrage comes out on top, but like I said there is debate on it. Avoid wind bombs and really just stay alive. Deterrence will full block the rain of blades, and whirling blade. Normal AoE rotation for the most part. Save your Stampede for when you will pop hero after the 2nd set of adds die and you are single targeting the boss. If you play BM you will pretty much save your CD's for the areas where the boss is taking the 600% increased damage. Hitting for over a million is fun. There honestly isn't a lot to this boss mechanically, so I can't give too many hints on it. Here is our kill video.
Heroic Imperial Vizier Zor'lok
Finally this week we managed to finally down arguably one of the hardest bosses of the tier, Imperial Zor'lok. This fight is an absolute blast and I really enjoyed our progression on this boss. The fight is a single target, avoid mechanics and win type of fight. The fight does not have a strict enrage, and is truly a test of your entire raids ability to avoid mechanics, or mechanic. The set up I took was a very base BM set up.
3: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera
DON'T TAKE A TIER TWO TALENT
2: Aspect of the Iron Hawk
2: Dire Beast
1: A Murder of Crows
1: Glaive Toss
So, going from top to bottom here. CTHC is a good talent for the last phase, where your deterrence will block all of the yellow pulses from Attenuation. Deterrence will only lower the damage of the green sonic pulses, so ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS avoid them. There is a point in the last portion of my video that shows a good place to run from them, but some quick thinking is sometimes needed ;). Your tier 2 talent provide no benefit in the fight at all, and will actually hurt you if you get mind controlled, as it's one of the first abilities your character will cast, so don't take anything. Also, burning your deterrence before the third platform is also a good thing, as below 60% health the MC likes to pop and sit in a full deterrence (see video). As for the rest of my talent choices, they are your standard single target BM choices. When switching platforms or staying on a platform having a pet dash macro as well as master's call handy is very nice to help quickly move your pet. My video also provides some nice showing of what to do if you get behind the group while running during the attenuation. It will happen, don't be stupid and die to them all night. It does nothing but frustrate the rest of your raid when you are needed a brez every single pull. Hunters are rather strong on this fight do to not losing too much damage while moving, although damage isn't really an issue on this fight with it's very long enrage timer. Stay alive, do some mad damage, and enjoy this fun fight! Here's the kill video.
Sorry for the late post on these 3 bosses. I've had a ton of questions about my opening rotation lately and will try to get to that very very soon! Hope you enjoy the videos!
