Lock and Load - Heroic Protectors of the Endless Spring

Lock and Load

Protectors of the Endless Spring

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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=z-QHjnzjFlk

Lock and Load - Heroic Grand Empress Shek'zeer

Lock and Load

Grand Empress Shek'zeer

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!).

Lock and Load - Heroic Amber-Shaper Un'sok

Lock and Load

Heroic Amber-Shaper Un'sok

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 Survival talents 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!

Oh yea, we only had 24 people in the raid group..

-Divinespeed <LA> (US) Stormrage

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