Lock and Load Heroic Garalon, Wind Lord, and Vizier.

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

Lock and Load - Heroic Lei Shi

Lock and Load

Lei Shi No More

After over 50 attempts this week, we managed to put down heroic 25M Lei Shi. The fight is a blast, and overall one of my favorite fights of all time. The simple twist of new mechanics and a very sharp enrage of 7 minutes makes this fight one of the most tightly tuned fights of the expansion in my opinion. 

I don't usually explain the overall mechanics of fights in these blogs, but as a ranged DPS you may be asked to control the debuff. Lei Shi gains a circle around her in about a 25yd radius. When outside this circle you slowly gain stacks of the debuff Scary Fog. The way this was managed in our raid was we had three warlocks cycling the debuff while never taking more than 10-11 stacks. Using warlock Demonic Gates to quickly gain access to the boss and to get back out without losing stacks seemed to be the most efficient way to do this. I never took the opportunity to stack the debuff so I don't have first hand knowledge of it, but this seemed to be the gist of how they managed the debuff. Where this fight gets tricky is the positioning of the raid, tanks and the debuff. If a 10 stack of the debuff gets in the raid and a Get Away! happens it's a insta-wipe. Using 4 specific stack spots, 1 for each tank, 1 for the raid, and 1 for the debuffs we managed to avoid having these issues.

Hunters are super super strong on this fight, finally. With the 5.1 changes, Get Away! has no effect on our overall DPS. There are some tricks to managing your BM cool downs, and maybe I can help you with some of these. My Talents looked like the following:

1: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera

2: Wyvern Sting

2: Aspect of the Iron Hawk

2: Dire Beast

1: A Murder of Crows

1: Glaive Toss

Standard Glyph Setup: Animal Bond, Marked for Death, Deterrence

The first thing you may notice about this set up is that I have taken Wyvern Sting in the level 30 tier. It's a super strong talent for this fight. Warlocks are super beneficial for their Banish ability as it is an unbreakable CC. Fears are super strong as well from priests and warriors. I wasn't assigned to a specific CC area as we had 3 warlocks and 2 shamans. I used Wyvern on the closest target to the boss as often as possible, as well as followed up on CCs with traps. The very last add phase at 20% of the bosses health is one of the biggest tests to a raids ability to really communicate a target, get everything CC'd and push through. One add incorrectly CC'd can cause a wipe. 

The fight has a DPS pattern that allows CD's to be managed in a such a way that you never was any BW's. The fight will always go in such a way that directly after an add phase you will have some sort of special. About 5-10 seconds after the add is killed, the boss will special. Saving CD's till after this special is announced will always be beneficial to you. I managed to grab my 4 set this week, but didn't test if the 4 set will have to change my opening, there is some speculation that it does. I'll be blogging sometime next week about the impact of the 4 set and what I think it about it, and how it will change BM as a whole.

Here is the video of the kill:

-Divinespeed <LA> US Stormrage

LAGuild.enjin.com

Lock and Load - HM Blade Lord - HM Spirit Kings

Lock and Load

Hello there internet! It's been awhile since I had the time to sit down and just get some stuff put into this blog. It's suppose to be a weekly thing, but hey, I'm pretty busy most of the time and trying to get all that needs to be done requires some things to be put on the back burner. First thing is first though. Patch 5.1. This patch brought some pretty ground breaking things to hunters as far as our mobility and raid utility. We've always got the bitch jobs for kiting, and running to and from a boss to do some random job. I rejoice these tasks now. Oh, you need me to keep kiting this add on Heroic Spirit Kings? No worries DPS still on the up. The post 5.1 change to Serpent Sting was extremely nice and something I personally thought Blizzard would overlook. It's not a ground breaking change, but it buffs all 3 specs, survival a bit more than the others. It also gives us a reason to use focus on multi-dotting when playing survival. The biggest thing this change did to hunter's was made every hunter 100% have to have a SV spec now when fighting any boss that has multi-dotting capabilities. I like the changes to MM as well as AotH to make our class competitive single target. Let's talk about a few fights!

Heroic Blade Lord Ta'Yak

This fight is super super interesting for hunters, as it's a single target fight, but really tests a raids patience and ability to control the boss in such a way that you are never overwhelmed. I think the fight as a whole will certainly test a lot of guilds. As for Huntering this fight, I took a pretty standard Beast Mastery talent set up of:

1: Post Haste

1: Silencing Shot

2: Aspect of the Iron Hawk

2: Dire Beast

1: A Murder of Crows

1: Glaive Toss

So this fight I will start with the 1 and only new mechanic this fight brings. Blade Tempest draws all players towards him and after a short period he basically kills you. There are a few tricks to this mechanic that you can utilize. If your raid has 3 druids you can rotate stampeding roars to quickly get you away from the boss and out of his kill you mechanic. If your raid has 3 druids that are smart enough to use their roars in a good rotation you *may* consider Crouching Tiger Hidden Chimera, as you can have a deterrence for every single unseen strike. The reason I like post haste for this fight is because if you happen to hit your disengage a bit early during Blade Tempest you will just stop and not fly backwards at all. Post haste gives you the ability to still get away when this happens. 

DPS on this fight is pretty simple. Get your Bestial Wrath lined up for AFTER Unseen strike, Unseen comes every 60-65 seconds, so if you have it lined up slight before, as your third BW will be, be sure not to waste any as you can't attack the boss during Unseen Strike. You can DPS while running away from Blade Tempest. During the 2nd phase you can also send your pet to attack the boss from about half way down the hallway with a /petattack macro. You can take advantage of being able to move and attack also during the tornado phase, just don't derp into a newly spawning tornado (it will happen). Be sure to get Serpent Sting up on the boss immediately after each unseen strike if it has fallen. Overall this fight is a lot of fun, and hunters bring some of the best DPS to this fight if you manage to do it right.

Heroic Spirit Kings

Fuck. This. Fight. I am so happy that we were able to get this boss down in just over a week, about 125 pulls (including resets). The fight is a true test of your entire raids ability to face mechanics and deal with them quickly. It's a rapid fire test of your abilities as a raider. Everything from stop DPS mechanics, to don't stand in bad stuff mechanics, to interrupts, dispells, enrage removals, dodge mechanics. It's all built into this 1 10 minute stand against the 4 kings. I took a standard Beast Mastery talent set up once again: 

1: Crouching Tiger Hidden Chimera
1: Silencing Shot
2: Aspect of the Iron Hawk
2: Dire Beast
1: A Murder of Crows
1: Glaive Toss

Will start with mechanics again and what hunters bring to the plate during this fight. The most important things hunters provide in this fight, outside of our strong single target DPS, is a ranged interrupt, Tranquilizing Shot, and the ability to attack a 100% reflect damage without taking damage. On top of all this we are extremely mobile for all of the dodging/kiting mechanics you may be faced with. King 1 is a pretty standard stack and nuke with a lot of movement. His new ability you simple stop attack, wait for a dispell and continue. This is the same with the next boss. When the 2nd King is active take it on yourself to spread out from other people once the first king has died. We have mobility, other casters do not have this same ability. Let them nuke while you find a sweet spot not within 8 yards of anyone. When the third king becomes active at 30% remaining on the 2nd king, you should be in an interrupt group with other ranged to be sure no no shadow bolts get off. These are very dangerous and when combined with almost any other damage, will certainly 1 shot a person. When the 4th and final boss is active you should be in charge of dispelling the enrages via Tranquilizing shot. Glaive toss and multi shot (Non SV) are also very helpful in breaking mind control if you don't have a priests halo/warriors Dragon Roar.

This is a very simple nuke and win fight as far as DPS'ing goes. Not much is going to significantly help or hurt you in this fight, when 2 bosses are active you may try to roll 2 serpent stings, but the main priority is always killing the lower health boss. There is honestly so much going on towards the end of this fight I was so focused on just making every single global matter when the boss wasn't reflecting. When he got to high energy in cowardice phase I basically just kept DPSing, using much less arcane shots as it was really the only ability that could hurt me for a lot. Here is our kill video from a mages PoV, I look to get back to recording this week!

Logs: http://worldoflogs.com/guilds/195797/

Will be back to writing more here soon! Expect more of the Weekly Raider as well!

-Divinespeed 

<LA> Stormrage (US)

Been Awhile Internet

The Weekly Raid

So, it's been awhile since I sat down to write one of these things. The past couple weeks  have been loaded with several things for me. Call of Duty was released, Diablo is somewhat interesting again, and that raiding thing. Let's talk about that raiding thing. We have put in a few extra days the past two weeks to try to catch up as we lost nearly an entire week due to the hurricane smashing the faces of a few of our raiders. All in all it's been good though, getting a Spiritbinder Heroic kill as well as finally pushing through 25m Heart of Fear made the past two weeks extremely good for us. We plan on pushing onto the third raid instance with an extra night tonight, and hopefully clean that place up, as it doesn't seem it's too difficult on the normal mode. 

So the topic I really sat down to hammer down today was self preparation and how this really ties into your raid progression. It seems this past week on our first normal Heart of Fear clear we ran into a ton of issues with people showing up to raid extremely unprepared. By unprepared, I mean they showed up to a progression raid with absolutely no knowledge of the encounters ahead, the mechanics that these fights bring and how they could contribute to the raid team. When trying to be the best guild you can absolutely be these small attentions to detail can really make a difference if everybody in the raid has just done research on how their class can approach a fight. Small details such as knowing you can BoP a person before entering Dissonance Fields, can save your raid a headache. Knowing how to interrupt on a fight such as Amber Shaper can, and will, save your raid a wipe or two that definitely did not need to happen. When you show up completely blind to fights you are causing your raid to spend time on something that really did not need to happen. An issue where you mess up a mechanic will happen, everybody is human. Admit you made a mistake, wipe the fight and pull again. I'm as bad as anyone at trying to figure out ways to solve an issue the raid continues to have. At the end of the day, know your job, what you need to do, and leave everyone else's job up to them. With good leadership the people who constantly mess up with slowly be fed to the sharks and you're raid will grow stronger. Play your class to the best you can do it, and know how to deal with mechanics. Most guilds will take a strong mechanical player with slightly less damage, than a more weak mechanical player with higher damage.

-Divine <LA> Stormrage

The Hurricane Woes

Lock and Load

Our raid group, like plenty of others had to lose a lot of raid time due to the hurricane. What a bad week for this to happen as well. New raid released and we were hoping to get in a start issuing out some tier. We ended up splitting into a couple of 10m's to at least get the chance to see some of the new content. Here's my synapses of the first 3 fights. 

Vizier is an interesting fight that really isn't that interesting. Dodge some rings, stack in some bubbles, break some mind controls, repeat and the boss falls over. It's a pretty decent fight for us and with use of  some single target nuking the fight was a quick kill. Blade Lord has some interesting mechanics that are very predictable with use of DBM timers and good raid positioning, this fight again was a relatively quick kill.

Now to speak on Garalon. The enrage on this boss was moved back the Wednesday after the raid was released because it was simply too tight for a normal raid encounter. To speak on hunters on this fight I'll keep it short. Get ready to be sat if something isn't changed. Cleave classes like rogues, warriors, fire mages, and multi dotting classes will be doing 2-3x the amount of damage we can do. We aren't fit for this type of fight, and I really don't see there being anything we can do about it. I'm almost positive I will play my shaman for this encounter, as hunters just can't push out the required damage.

Sorry for the short blog this week, been a crazy crazy week. Also, my Sony Vegas is having some weird issues when I updated it, and I can't open the program. So no new videos for a little bit.

Divinespeed - <LA> Stormrage (US)

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