Category: hunters

Patch 3.3 Hilarity

Kurn / / general, hunters, icecrown citadel, paladins, ramblings

Good gravy, it’s been a busy 18 hours or so. Apart from some sleep, I’ve managed to:

– update almost all of my addons so I don’t get crazy LUA errors anymore

– do Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection on my hunter (all using the LFG feature which is FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC!!!)

– kill Razuvious (target of the weekly raid quest) on my hunter and my shaman

– tank a random heroic. I was a little surprised when I joined the random heroic queue on my paladin and it’s like “A GROUP HAS FORMED. YOUR ROLE: TANK.” And I was like, eh, why not? Best thing ever is that, halfway through, someone in the group was like “oh thank God we got a good tank!” and I’m like “haha, bad time to tell you I’m holy, 95% of the time?”

So, left to do: FoS, PoS, HoR, weekly raid on the paladin. FoS, PoS, HoR on my shaman.

We’re doing 25-man Icecrown tonight, I believe. They put together some 10-man groups earlier and at least one of them killed all four bosses, so we’ll see how that goes. What’s unfortunate is that it seems that the content is a cakewalk so far. I mean, my previous guild, who, on Monday, killed Heroic Northrend Beasts for the first time (and they’ve been trying since the FIRST WEEK OF SEPTEMBER) walked in there and killed Lord Marrowgar on the second attempt. I’m not thinking my current guild is going to have many problems.

Also, my tank gear apparently doesn’t suck. Granted, I had 5% extra health from Luck of the Draw (? The buff you get when you do pugs.) but party-buffed (kings, fort, and a Guru’s Elixir), I had 45,248 health. Kind of nuts. But I did upgrade from my T7.5 gloves and T8.5 shoulders to T 9.10 (ilvl 232) gloves and shoulders, so I’ve got 2pc-T9 bonus and 2pc T8 bonus and it helps that I picked up some ilvl 245 gear (Arbiter’s Muse and Bracers of the Shieldmaiden) from TOC25 last week. I figured if it was going to get DEed anyways, I may as well pick up some cheap off-spec loot so I don’t look like a moron in heroics.

And apparently, I don’t. :) Just need a new freaking sword or mace or something.

What is equal parts hilarious and sad is that my paladin’s tanking gear is better than my hunter’s gear. Period. /sigh.

Well, at least my hunter is no longer stuck on the steps up to the airship at the end of Halls of Reflection. A GM moved me somewhere because I kept getting DCed. Annoyingly, I could move my pet up the steps through Eyes of the Beast so I saw the dude with the daily, I saw the Captain’s Chest and I saw the port to Dal… but couldn’t interact with any of them. :P

Anyways, very much liking the new content. I’m hoping Icecrown Citadel won’t be a total joke of an instance like TOC.

OH! And I nearly forgot!

My hunter got to exalted with the Kirin Tor.

I have never done a single dungeon run wearing the Kirin Tor tabard.

ALL of that rep — 3000 to friendly, 6000 to honored, 12000 to revered and 21000 to exalted (42000 rep!) — was earned over the last year by virtue of cooking dailies, fishing dailies and dungeon dailies. And that wasn’t even every day. That was just when I felt like it. When I realized I was freaking halfway through revered a couple of months ago, I was like “damn, that’s a lot of rep!” and so I’ve tried to do at least the cooking a little more often than usual. But still, not daily.

I’m just so very amused that I got exalted with Kirin Tor (giving me 10 exalted reps!) without doing anything I wouldn’t have normally done.

Hee.

Kurn / / general, hunters, ramblings

Every so often, I get the urge to go flex my hunter muscles. And it always sort of surprises me when I don’t fail utterly.

I did a GREAT Ony 10 yesterday on the hunter, which started off with a really bad/stupid wipe and we had to replace the OT, but honestly, the second attempt was successful and beautiful.

We had two tanks, two healers and six DPS.

I did 4.6k DPS, we got her down without a deep breath and we got the speed kill. I was third on DPS, and I’m pretty sure that’s only because I did two volleys on the whelps instead of four, like the other hunter.

And you know, I’m not in terrible gear, but it’s really not amazing. Seven of my pieces of gear are ilvl 200 (cloak, staff, ring, ring, trinket, trinket, boots), three are ilvl 219 (chest, gun, bracers), one is ilvl 226 (belt — which I just realized I had more than enough conquest badges for), three are ilvl 232 (helm, shoulders, pants) and two are ilvl 245 (neck, gloves).

Any time I get the chance to go be a hunter for a little while, I’m pretty happy to do so. I know I’m not going to top DPS in general and I know that it’s much easier to find a good DPSer than a good healer, so I do continue to heal, but it’s nice to have a change of pace now and again.

One of the reasons I chose to continue healing on Madrana for Wrath was that I really felt I could make a bigger difference by healing for my guild rather than DPSing for my guild. It’s also frustrating to have to care much about DPS. As a healer, I care about DPS to the point of “did we hit enrage or were the healers totally OOM?”. As a DPSer, I care about it to the point of “ffs, 2.5k DPS isn’t going to do it. What’s your hit rating? WHAT?! Go gem hit, for crying out loud, and do NOT come back without being hit-capped!” or whatever. (Well, 8% hit, but anyways.)

I really wish I could do some fun stuff on the hunter, get back into the swing of it, shake off the dust and get some boots that aren’t BLUE. :)

Learn to play, nubs.

Kurn / / druids, facepalm, hunters, priests, ramblings

Okay. I’m going to sound obnoxious. I’m going to sound elitist. But you know what? I don’t particularly care.

People need to learn to play their toons before they group with other people.

Let me say that in terms the typical WoW player will understand: l2play!

What brought this on? I’m glad you asked. :P

I’ve been levelling a druid and my brother’s been levelling a hunter. Now, because my brother doesn’t raid four or five nights a week, he’s jumped ahead of me and is waiting for me to hit 71 before he comes back and works through the obscene amount of XP needed to advance. I was something like, 67 when he hit 71. I’m now 70. So I thought I’d go tank or heal Utgarde Keep. It’s an instance I’ve tanked before (albeit as a paladin) and healed before (again, as a paladin) so it’s not like I’m not aware of what’s going on, right? Right. And hey, I have like, 13k health in bear form, so that’s sweet.

So I went to LFG and got in for a last boss kill in Utgarde as the tank. No problem. We cleared from the second boss(es) to Ingvar and all went fine. I popped Survival Instincts and Barkskin appropriately, kept up mangle and demoralizing roar… I felt pretty good about myself.

I went back to LFG and got invited to a pug as a tank.

Of course, it took 20 minutes for even ONE OTHER PERSON to come to the stone, but anyways. There was a 68 disc priest (… who was gemmed for spirit and spellpower, when his dual spec is shadow, who ALSO hadn’t assigned 2 talent points), a 73 hunter, a 71 hunter, a 70 mage and myself.

I should have known that the huntards were going to cause a wipe. I should have known. But because I’m a hunter and not entirely a huntard, I figured it was all good.

Wrong.

Idiots had their pets on AGGRESSIVE and nearly wiped us by pulling right off the bat. We DID wipe on a pack just inside the entrance because, rather than, you know, MISDIRECT ME or FEIGN or ANYTHING, the huntards both managed to grab aggro while I was stunned, then died or feigned, and then the priest ate it.

The priest who, by the way, never assigned those talent points I pointed out hadn’t been spent.

So I was like, okay. That’s their one wipe before I log the hell off. And then one of the huntards was like “wtf tank”

And I’m all “Excuse me?”

“lol jk jk man scool”

><

So we move on and we’re in the room with the proto-drakes… and the goddamn nub 71’s cat goes and grabs two packs while I’m tanking three mobs.

Wipe.

And I was out of there.

So, to the idiot hunters: Pets on passive, growl OFF.

To the idiot priest: l2gem and spec properly, you moron.

I may just quest my way to 80. This is just painful.

Shocking.

Kurn / / gear, hunters, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

Two posts in a single day. Good Lord, I know. What’s the world coming to?

It was a productive day. Went out and got my hunter the T9.10 shoulders with 30 Emblems to go with the T9.10 pants I got off Koralon a while back. Serpent Sting critting is hot.

Then went through Ulduar 10 with a pug and did FL, RZ, IG, XT, KO and AU, all for the first time on the hunter. So very, very, very weird to DPS those fights and that trash instead of healing them. Too bad we broke up before Hodir due to mass AFKs/DCs/etc.

Let’s see, what else… Did VOA 25 – no hunter loot. Did Ony 25 – no hunter loot, but I did win the head! So I got the Sparkling Onyxia Tooth Pendant to replace Pendant of the Outcast Hero. Pretty groovy, eh?

I’m at 264 hit rating and have replaced… I think it was 4 or 5 +16 hit gems. I’m cheap at the moment, so I only replaced them with +16 agi, but eventually, I’ll upgrade the T9 at least with +20 agility.

I managed to pull 5k DPS at some point today, albeit on trash. The Explosive Shot nerf has smacked me upside the head, so I’m only pulling about 4-4.5k DPS instead of like, 4.8-5.6k DPS (depending on available buffs, etc). I guess that makes sense, because hi, I’m in shit gear. ;)

Still, Explosive Shot dots are still critting, under ideal circumstances, over 5.5k. I tried Marks after the ES nerf and felt the pain of it and the fact that I don’t have remotely close to the amount of Armor Penetration I’d need to make a Marks spec work nicely. So even post-nerf, Survival’s working well for me. Or at least better than Marks. I find that I’m really accustomed to Survival, too. It felt weird to not be refreshing SS because I was using Chimera to refresh it.

Anyways, enough rambling. Productive day today. Maybe a ToC 10 on the pally tomorrow before the raid. (Incidentally, Tuesday raids have been dropped and all other raid days are now until 2am instead of 3am! Ecstasy! Maybe now I won’t be a freaking zombie!)

… wow?

Kurn / / gear, general, hunters, paladins, ramblings, ulduar

Holy crap, holy paladin tier bonuses that DON’T SUCK?!

  • 2 piece bonus – While your Divine Illumination talent is active, your healing spells are increased by 35%.

Oh my God. That is… fucking amazing. I’ve always viewed set bonuses that include talents as being something to encourage the class/spec to actually use that ability. I OFTEN forget to use Divine Illumination. Like, frequently. In reality, I should be using it on cooldown. Now this 2-piece T10 bonus is going to not only force me to remember to use Divine Illumination more often, BUT will greatly offset the fact that healing is halved when Divine Plea is up. This is a brilliant move. To date, we’ve had to use Avenging Wrath (which interferes with bubbling) to help mitigate that loss, or pop +spellpower trinkets and basically pray that we don’t have to cancel DP.

Especially considering the bonus WAS reducing Divine Favor’s CD by 60 seconds, this is a major improvement. I approve.

In fact, I consider this bonus to be just as strong as the 4-piece T9 bonus, albeit in a different way. T9’s 4-piece will encourage people to use Flash of Light and Sacred Shield more to get that FoL hot ticking away at double its regular strength. I mean, I can’t wait to get my 4-piece bonus, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be working hard to get the T10 2-piece ASAP, so I have a choice in fights. Do I aim for more healing via SS/FoL or do I aim for less panic about the tank dying? It’ll depend on the fight.

  • 4 piece bonus – Your Holy Shock spell causes the next Holy Light you cast within 10 sec to have 0.3 sec reduced cast time.

More encouragement to use Holy Shock? Another oh-shit use for it? Hm. My Holy Lights, raid buffed, are already coming in at about 1.2 seconds. I have 673 haste and then usually swift retribution aura and wrath of air and, of course, judgements of the pure. This bonus is probably not as amazing as the 2pc, but nothing to sneeze at, either. It’s not like you don’t WANT your tier, and this bonus will serve as halfway decent incentive to upgrade from T9’s 2-piece bonus, which is utter crap, unless you’re the only paladin in a 10-man raiding guild.

I’m really happy with the bonuses, for once. Can’t wait to see what the models will look like, although I’m going to predict something purple. I could really go for yellow, but I’m guessing pink/purple instead. After all, I got my wish for good set bonuses. Can’t have everything! ;)

In other news, about to go do Ulduar 10 with my hunter!!! I can’t remember the last time I was *excited* to do Ulduar…

Tales of patch 3.2.2, Onyxia and many failed pugs.

Kurn / / facepalm, guide, hunters, onyxia, raiding

Onyxia has been back in our lives since the servers came up on Tuesday. That’s about 30 or so hours ago.

In the last 30 hours, I have:

– Killed Onyxia on 10m in a semi-pug with my hunter (and gotten the Dragonstalker Helmet after dying early on while pulling whelps off a priest)

– Killed Onyxia on 10m in a full pug with my shammy healing (and been one of four people left standing — me, the MT and two DPS — because people don’t understand the concept of whelps, aggro and deep breaths)

– Killed Onyxia on 25m in a raid with my paladin healing with the guild I’m applying to (with nothing bad to report)

– Killed Onyxia on 10m in a pug raid with my paladin healing (whereupon I died and the druid in the raid apparently didn’t know what “BR” or “brez” meant)

– Wiped several times on 25m Onyxia on my hunter (I think it’s three different raids?) including one where one of the “tanks” had 30k health unbuffed and was wearing PVP gear

I know I need to write a post about guild drama and why I’ve ended up on Proudmoore, but honestly, that can wait.

HOW TO DO ONYXIA WITHOUT BEING A DUMBASS

It kind of astounds me that I feel I even have to think about writing this, but apparently, there are a ton of people out there who never killed Onyxia the first time around. I used to lead Onyxia raids. Granted, they weren’t altogether successful (due primarily because we would go in with 30 instead of 40 people) but I DID down her pre-BC and I have my Rhok’delar to prove it.

Step 1: Trash

If you’re new to the Onyxia encounter, you don’t know about her trash. Which is okay. But as with all new encounters, there are two ways of learning about them — researching and experiencing.

Onyxia’s trash consists of four mobs, called Onyxian Warders, and they are pretty easy to dispatch. Key points to bear in mind:

– They have a Cleave. Do not stand in front of them unless you are a tank.

– They have an AOE fire nova ability. Do stand at range if you can.

– Do attempt to pull one at a time. (Hot tip! If you’re a tank, do not stand over that hump in the tunnel, because your healers do NOT have line of sight on you! You’ll know the hump in the tunnel when you see it.)

Once the trash is taken care of, it does not seem to respawn within 20 minutes or whatever the old timer was. For this, we should all be grateful.

That brings us to…

Step 2: Lady Katrana Prestor, I Presume?

So there she is. Lying there on the ground in her lair. The environment hasn’t changed at all and most of Onyxia’s abilities haven’t changed. In fact, the fight is remarkably similar to how it used to be. Old-school raiders shouldn’t have any problems.

Phase 1

Your tank, presuming he or she is not a complete moron, will run in and turn Onyxia around, so the tank’s back is to the north wall and Onyxia’s back (and tail!) is facing the south tunnel where you came in from. If your tank is not doing this, your tank is likely an idiot and I urge you to hearth the hell out of there ASAP. :P

Once positioned, Onyxia in Phase 1 is pretty simple. Phase 1 lasts from 100% ’till 65%. Things for everyone to bear in mind:

– Standing in front of her is only for the tank. By “in front” I mean anywhere in front of her front legs. She has a 180 degree CLEAVE, breathes fire and has a wing buffet that bounces you quite some distance — which is why your tank should position themselves to bounce off the north wall to land, more or less, exactly where he or she was pre-wing buffet.

– Standing in back of her is for NO ONE. You hear me? NO ONE get anywhere near that damn tail! You get hit by her tail and it’s not some stun like on Sartharion, ohhhhh no. You get hit by her tail and you get shot over into the whelp eggs. Upon doing so, you will break the eggs. And in so doing, you will likely wipe your raid. So do not stand behind her.

– Melee (and OTs) should stand at her midsection, preferably closer to her hind legs than her front legs. OTs should watch for whelps to pick up.

– Ranged should be, you know, at range, and keep an eye out for whelps to DPS down when the OTs have aggro on them.

Phase 2

Phase 2 begins when Onyxia has hit 65% health and ends when she lands at 40%. She’ll be all “screw YOU guys, I’m gonna fly around and ruin you!” I think the phrase is actually “I’ll incinerate you from above!”. Don’t say she didn’t warn you.

Several things happen in Phase 2.

a) 20 whelps spawn from each side every 90 seconds. This can be poor. Give the OTs a chance to grab aggro before you AOE things. Healers should watch your healing at the spawn so you’re not ruined by 40 whelps right off the bat.

b) Lair Guards are a new twist to the fight. They’re a lot like Onyxian Warders. They ALSO cleave. They ALSO have a blast nova. And they also have this thing called “Ignite Weapon“. So that’s 25k damage to targets in a 5 yard radius on 25m and 17.5k damage to targets in a 5 yard radius on 10m. The trick is that Ignite Weapon can easily be dealt with by… that’s right, disarming them. The blast nova still sucks, but since melee have to be directly underneath Onyxia to beat on her, you can put melee on these Lair Guards to help disarm them and have them run out during the 5 second cast on Blast Nova. Basically, you want to burn these suckers down ASAP.

c) Onyxia needs to be taken down to 40% health primarily by the ranged DPS in your group. Due to the fact that she moves around a LOT, dots are here to save the day. That means every single dot you can think of. Whatever does the most damage the fastest wins. Ranged should primarily down the whelps whenever they spawn (after giving tanks a chance to get aggro) and then return to focusing on Onyxia. It’s best to refresh your dots right when the whelps spawn to ensure maximum damage done on Onyxia while you AOE.

d) Onyxia will be flying around the room, as I mentioned. She’ll also be casting two spells. One is Fireball and it hits people for 5-8k damage (10m/25m) and has a 10yd splash radius, so do /range 10 and stay away from people.

The other spell is, of course, Deep Breath.

When you see the emote that Onyxia is taking a deep breath, you have exactly 8 seconds to not be fried by it. What you need to do is this:

a) Look up.

b) Find Onyxia.

c) Run behind her or to her sides.

d) If it’s not possible to run behind her or to HER sides, run to your closest side of the cavern, without spawning whelps, please. Or, if you’re REALLY in trouble, you can iceblock or bubble through it. It’s a cone-shaped breath that doesn’t last too long, but if you take the full brunt of it, you’re literally toast.

Assuming your raid can handle the whelps and the Lair Guards and doesn’t get fried…

Phase 3

Give your tank Fear Ward or, at the very least, Tremor Totem. Strength of Earth or Stoneskin totems are fail in Phase 3. Shammies should be split up so one is in each group, assuming you have that many shammies. Tanks, then healers, then DPS should have priority on Tremor Totem. Why? She does a Bellowing Roar that fears you like a moron for three seconds. You’ll know it’s coming because the screen will shake just beforehand.

In conjunction with that, lava now spews out of the cracks in the floor. So don’t stand on cracks in the floor. Oh, and she still does EVERYTHING she did in phase 1. So watch where you’re standing!

Unlike classic Onyxia, 3.2.2 Onyxia no longer resets aggro between phases. She should come right back down to your main tank. MTs, you should be in position when Onyxia hits about 43-45% health so that she comes to you and positioning isn’t so much of a pain in the ass.

Then you burn her and collect your phat lootz.

Loot:

In addition to the helms (there are 3 different Judgement, Stormrage Ten Storms helms, 2 different Frostruned helms, 2 difference Transcendence helms and 2 different Wrath helms — all for different specs) and other gear she drops, she will drop an Enlarged Onyxia Backpack (Unique, 22 slots), an Ashen Sack of Gems (similar to Magtheridon’s gem bag, containing 1-3 epic gems) and, of course, her own head. Her head leads to a quest, which leads to some nice loot, which you can check out here.

But what about the Mature Black Dragon Sinew? Does Onyxia still drop it?

Way back in the day, hunters had a class quest for an epic bow, staff and quiver. To start the quest, you had to get the Ancient Petrified Leaf from Majordomo’s chest in Molten Core. He would always drop EITHER the leaf or the priest item for their quest, the Eye of Divinity.

But even without being on the quest, you could acquire the Mature Black Dragon Sinew (needed for the bow and the staff) from Onyxia. That’s what happened to me. I was in a pug Onyxia run and was the only (nub) hunter who hadn’t already gotten her bow. So I got the Mature Black Dragon Sinew and eventually got the Leaf and then got my bow.

Bornakk, a blue poster, has said that the Mature Black Dragon Sinew would still be available in-game, though probably not off Onyxia herself. WoWHead comments attest to this, claiming a drop off a non-elite dragon somewhere outside of BRD (possibly the Burning Steppes? That would make sense, as there are dragons from level 50-60 in the zone, and it’s a levle 60 quest.).

What this means is that hunters can still get their bows, if they so desire, which means my brother should start farming dragons for his sinew. :)

Hunter stuff.

Kurn / / hunters, raiding, ramblings

So I went to Proudmoore after my raid tonight (smoothest Thorim kill in forever with a WEIRD raid comp!) and did my cooking and fishing dailies and somehow wound up in a Naxx 25 pug.

Thus far, I have my T7.5 legs and proof positive that survival is HAX. I should not be doing 4.9k DPS on Thaddius. Even if it IS Thaddius. My gear is just that bad. Then again, I’m hit-capped and not a moron, so…

But explosive shot is disgusting. In the face. For real.

A-posting we will go…

Kurn / / facepalm, general, hunters, paladins, raiding, ramblings, ulduar, world events

Haven’t written much here about raiding of late. Or much of anything barring the 3.2 holy paladin changes that will KILL ME. But this isn’t a post about 3.2. It’s a post about recent achievements, recent happenings and the fact that I miss being remotely knowledgeable about hunters.

The big thing… Yogg died on June 18th.

heroic-secrets

Continue reading “A-posting we will go…”