In Baleroc 10-Man, hunters should not be part of the crystal rotation. Ever. Sure, we can take the damage and our dps doesn’t stop entirely, but being in melee range that often gimps the entire raid in a big way. This is one of those fights where the PvP-centric minimum range really messes-up PvE. I’ve been part of my raid’s crystal rotation since we began Baleroc, and while I knew it wasn’t optimal, I really didn’t realize the extent of what was happening until looking at some logs recently. Here’s my dps report from our last kill:
If you’re unfamiliar with the fight, hunters only take damage when we’re “hugging” the crystal. See what happens to the beautiful yellow line every time the ugly red line goes up? Yeah, I know. Going from 25k to 5k is not cool. Also, he has a six-minute enrage timer. While this was a kill, we didn’t technically beat that time. Much like the Fellowship’s encounter with this dude, our victory came at a high cost. I think it’s safe to say if I could have sat-out two of these five crystals, we would have beaten the enrage.
You might not be able to avoid crystal detail, especially if your 10-man team is lucky enough to have two hunters. If you have to do it, you can at least make the best of a bad situation. If you’re familiar with the BM spec, use it. Your pet is always in melee anyway! Use Glyph of Raptor Strike to make life a little bit easier on your poor healers. Think hugging the crystal sucks? Try healing this encounter! In addition to Raptor Strike, don’t forget Kill Command while you’re in melee, which is easy to do if it’s not part of your normal shot priority. And while you’re waiting on the ridiculously long cooldown of Raptor Strike, you might as well Wing Clip. Has Raptor’s cooldown always been that long? Seems silly. The most important thing you can do is fully commit to your job. When it’s your turn, be right on that crystal. I mean on it. When we were learning this fight, I started-out trying to skirt the minimum range in order to keep my dps up. Too often the Tormented debuff would tag a melee dps, or worse, a tank. If the tank gets that, or your crystal rotation goes to hell, all the dps in the world won’t save your attempt.
If your raid has options, don’t hug the crystals. Many non-hunters, even raid leaders, forget about the minimum range. If that shifty warlock is trying to weasel out of having to move during this fight, explain your situation to the raid leader. Better yet, show them the graph above or one of yours, especially if your team is hitting the enrage. If you have to do it, do it right. It’s certainly not the end of the world. Even with the horrible roller coaster of dps above, Baleroc did cough-up some loot with his last breath.
Happy Hunting,
JC Sway
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I too am part of my guilds crystal rotation and understand your plight. Having said that I only had to deal with standing in melee for the first 2 weeks of Firelands.
After that I told that tank that I was not going to soak a crystal in melee as it is completely unnecessary for me to do so when all the tank has to do is move backwards about 4-5 feet and we have plenty of room on the far side of the crystal to soak and dps at the same time.
We also had a week where we had 2 hunters in for Baleroc and all you have to do then is put them together in the rotation so that when the tank moves it covers the movement for both hunter.
Just a thought on what you could do to help your raid out a little more.
I still don’t understand why Blizzard is so stubborn about keeping in the retarded minimum range mechanic. It would make fights like this a little less of a pain in the a**, and finally give hunters some viability in rated PvP.
Unfortunately, my raid does run two hunters, and both of us are on crystal duty, while one of our Ret paladins sits out. I still top the meter on this fight by plenty, but we’re almost always right up against the enrage timer (we two tank it). Most of the time, however, when it’s the other hunter’s and my turn on the crystal rotation, everyone else keeps a good distance so that we can still back off the crystal enough to shoot at (short) range. We tried one attempt where I didn’t have to be a part of the crystal rotation, but it got screwed up halfway through the fight so I had to end up jumping in after someone died anyway. Oh well.
On the last attemt we took no melee dps in our 10 man raid and crystals stoped to spawn in melee range.
So if you can, tell everyone one to stand back and you will not have any problems with the minimum range.
If that ret paladin wants to stay out of rotatnion, he might as well stay out of boss.
I am a hunter and I regularly am part of the crystal rotation. It is attracted to the closest person.
Make your melee stand away from it. Get as close to it as you can. Take one melee swing and step back. Then disengage at one number less than what you’re healers want you to take. (I do mine at 8.)
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/tqlniznv3mhjrt7a/details/11/?s=8936&e=9276
I am always part of the crystal rotation (in my 10m team). I’m not sure how much trouble it is in 25m, but due to his large hit box (and thus the woes of our min range), just get the melee to stand back a tiny bit, they don’t have to be right up in his grill.
My team usually runs with 1-2 melee, so we are pretty range heavy. A great tip is that when you have the crystal order (we do the 3 people/crystal strat) make sure you are last. When the melee/other range starts, get the others (if range) to position themselves behind the first person. This allows them to move when ready, and you are right behind person number 2. As stated already, it is a proximity mechanic, so you don’t have to be right on the crystal.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/ktq46z0f5xqwieum/sum/damageDone/?s=2837&e=3121
^^ logs from my most recent kill, 372 ilvl.
My personal tips are make sure you don’t go too far out once you are done tanking the crystals. Being third in my part of the rotation allows me time to pool focus around a chim shot, and move in while using chim + an arcane. This prevents any swapping to fox and doesn’t waste any globals.
I support your call for doing the mechanics (ie being ON that crystal to prevent wipes) yet discussing it with however melee you have before hand should remind them that they need to make sure they are not near that crystal when they arent tanking it.
I am the only hunter in our 10 man and this has not been that big of a deal IMO. During the fight I just edge up to within 10-15 yards or so from the boss as my turn approaches and as the teammate before me is on the crystal I steady shot to get to 100 focus by the time it is my turn. On my turn I arcane shot my way to the crystal until the purple twining cord of death attaches to me and the I back up until I am back out of melee range and continue my rotation until the shard disappears (I would suggest that the hunter never take the first turn on a new shard as the travel time can be a killer) and then I disengage out of it. If I am close enough to the shard at the time of the switch (and no one else gets inside the range…melee, looking at you), I only lose one shot per shard.
I am also part of my raids rotation and never get closer than minimum range.
It takes some education to the melee classes but if you stand ‘behind’ the crystal at minimum range you should never need to stop your rotation (some aspect switching involved) It just takes some thought on behalf of the melee to judge your distance in relation to theirs to get the switching correct. This was achieved by our team on only the third attempt and resulted in a kill two sec before enrage.
As indicated above. Just disengage when needed for a quick get out
If the melee dpsers hang out at max melee range when the crystals spawn, you can be almost on top of it and still shoot the boss.
I usually never end up in melee range, but maybe our melee dpsers are unusually well trained. :)
just tell your melee to be at max range and that problem is solved. it’s really not that hard and not really an issue if they do it properly. they just need to be careful and to stand at a safe distance when they’re not next.
as a bm, i’m one of the better options to take the crystal (+10% healing and 20% damage reduce on demand, which is rare). moving around doesn’t hurt me at all; sometimes i don’t even need to switch to hawk if i manage to save up enoug focus.
in heroic 10m, we used a 3-man rotation after both shadows took one crystal each, leaving one backup (the MM hunter) who usually needs to jump in as often as everyone else a few minutes into the fight. so leaving out the hunter won’t work anyway.
to clarify:
the crystals spawn on a melee’s position. making the melees stand on max-melee range causes the crystal to spawn there too. our range starts a step further. problem solved.
in detail, our melees (we’ve usually 1-2 of them) stand right behind the boss at max melee-range once a crystal fades, wait for it to spawn, then run right and left to balerocs side. they never leave melee range and are able to dps as much as they want. of course, they need to keep a certain distance of each other to avoid infecting each other with the debuff.
the ranged stand in a half-circle behind the boss, so that the crystals usually spawn in the middle of it. this ensures short runtime from any position for quick reactions and better dps.
When learning Baleroc i would equip the mirror trinket (for resists) and take 21-22 stacks of the debuff using glyphed raptor strike every 5sec.
Combined with heroism this let our healers build up more stacks of healy goodness.
there are of course other options but i was happy to give it a burl and it works. Now our prot pally (in ret spec) does that :)
While I agree it is not ideal to have a hunter in the rotation , you may need to step up and do your part when needed. Especially on heroic Baleroc. I am used as back up in my raid for soaking the crystals. Somethings you can do to keep DPSing is as said above just make sure when you are soaking the other move far away from the crystal which will allow you to get within min range. Another thing you can do especially for heroic baleroc is use glyph of raptor strike and make sure to hit a RaptorStrike when you are soaking , should be able to get two off unless you use a 3 person rotation , but 2 is better to keep the number of people with tormented down, at least on heroic.
As a hunter I’m not a big fan of being so negative as to say I will never ever be in the rotation. It’s a little counterproductive to raid progression, and is only an issue if you’re not able to complete the fight due to a shortage of DPS. That said I’ve had our lock guild leader try stand out of the shard rotation just so he could be top DPS.. and i’ve taken him to task over it.
As others have said, the melee range factor is easily overcome by having everyone else move further than melee range away from the crystal. Making sure people keep good distance away from it when they dont need to be near it is simply good practice for heroic mode.