Monday, October 22, 2012

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

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