Lock and Load
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!
-Divinespeed <LA> Stormrage US
LAGuild.enjin.com
