Every Friday Tabana brings you the latest discussions straight from the Elitist Jerks forums with a recap of what was discussed and links to the full posts so you can stay on top of the latest in hunter theorycrafting.
- Simple Questions/Simple Answers
- Raid Encounters
- Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit
- Burning Crusade
- Reliquary of Souls 1/28/12
- Wrath of the Lich King
- Lumberjacked Achievement 2/1/12
- Kologarn Disarmed Achievement Possible? 1/28/12
- Thorim (10) Hard Mode, Part II 1/23/12
- Dragon Soul Tips and Tricks
Disengaging Through Heroic Morchok 1/31/12
In the Simple Questions/Simple Answers thread, daimonie wrote, “If I understand it correctly, the mechanics of Disengage say you’re at the spot where you started until you land. On heroic Morchok, can I disengage through the boss without fear of a Stomp?”
Hamsda replied, “Since the secondary target of Stomp is the person closest to his current target, disengaging should generally be no problem but in general there should be enough of a delay between Stomp and the explosion of the crystal to disengage after Morchok stomps.”
Repins replied, “Disengage as a whole doesn’t make much sense so finding a complete answer without someone saying yes it works or no it doesn’t work is going to be hard.”
Generally disengage works like how you described. It allowed you to go through cutters on Halion and take damage from a melee while disengage off of lumbermill. However certain mechanics don’t treat it like that. Shadow traps on Lich King didn’t for example. You couldn’t disengage over them. You can’t disengage over Magma Traps on Heroic Ragnaros. For some reason certain mechanics take into effect where you actually are, and not just where you took off from. I don’t know why there is a difference and I know this is not a very comprehensive list. However from my relatively small experiences these are the two that I distinctly remember just ignoring how the mechanic typically works.
Fire Breath/Lightning Breath Debuffs Bugged on Ultraxion 1/31/12
In the Simple Questions/Simple Answers thread, Pichuca wrote, “Yesterday did HC Ultraxion for first time and needed to use the Dragonhawk pet for the +8% magical damage debuff, since our boomkin goes tank for this one. What I find is that the debuff is rarely applied to the boss, almost never works on auto, I need to manually cast it in order to be applied, plus it cannot be reapplied while it is active.
Here are the logs:
World of Logs – Real Time Raid Analysis trys
World of Logs – Real Time Raid Analysis killI´m gonna try a wind serpent tonight to see if it works but I´m not confident about it. Would macro’ing it to any shot work well?
Gormanthomas replied, “I was able to mantain a 95.9% up-time by macro’ing it to AS. World of Logs – Real Time Raid Analysis
Hamsda replied, “Our hunter had the same issue with a windserpent on our first tries. He decided to manually cast it because otherwise it’d be used way too often… but if it can’t be reapplied while active then macroing it should be fine, might need some spamming though if the pet just used an ability.”
Pets and Platforms in Madness of Deathwing, Part II 1/27/12
In the Simple Questions/Simple Answers thread, wilegenuis continued the previous discussion of pet mechanics while jumping platforms in the Madness of Deathwing encounter, “I did some digging in my logs to see what is happening with the strange life cycle of pets during jumps. First it seems you are right, each time the pet jumps (or try to jump) all his buffs fades away.”
[23:50:15.744] Scrab's Temporal Displacement fades from Scrab [23:50:15.744] Scrab's Culling the Herd fades from Scrab [23:50:15.744] Scrab's Dash fades from Scrab [23:50:15.744] Scrab's Frenzy Effect fades from ScrabWhat is more annoying is that I start the fight as a SOLO DPS on the blue platform until the wing reaches 91%, than I jump back to the green platform to assist with the bolt. While I jump from blue to green, pet dies in 50% of the cases with no major damage done on him.
[23:50:15.744] Mutated Corruption Crush Scrab 7738 (O: 1262) [23:50:16.112] Scrab diesI suspect that the issue is that the pet does not jump with you, instead is being automatically dismissed and called with very low health pool for the 1st second, allowing a tiny damage to kill him
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Caribald wrote, “Looking at the lists in this thread, Reliquary of Souls has been soloed, but there isn’t a video. I have been trying it for a while now and I can’t for the life of me figure out how phase 2 is possible. Anyone got any ideas?”
Lolbroek replied, “Yes, I managed to kill it last night again, but it was a lot harder than I remember when I did it months ago in T12 gear. And than it struck me…I simply did too much dps. So I switched out both my trinkets for some stamina ones, Aspect of the Fox instead of Hawk etc etc.”
You will only want to use Chimera Shot on cooldown for the heal and interrupt as much as possible with Silencing Shot. Also dispel the shield with Tranquilizing Shot and keep Mend Pet rolling. If you drop low you can feign and get some Spirit Bond ticks. For reference, I had a little less than 190k hp and the fight took just over 20 minutes. Good luck.
Caribald asked, “I’m not sure I understand… How do you avoid just getting stun-locked by Spirit Shock?”
Lolbroek replied, “If you focus on dispelling the shield the cast-time and therefore the frequency of Spirit Shocks drops and you will be able to interrupt a cast. As long as your pet is up it will eat alot of the Spirit Shocks but it will have to be close enough to the boss in order to do so.”
In practice, 90% of the time you will only have time to perform 1 action between Spirit Shocks. Depending on whether the shield is up or your pet’s health is low this will either be a Tranquilizing Shot or Mend Pet. If neither is the case interrupt a cast followed by Chimaera Shot and Feign Death to get the boss back in range of your pet. [...]
Lumberjacked Achievement 2/1/12
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Dragoran wrote, “I will give a try again to ‘Lumberjacked‘ (defeat Elder Brightleaf, Elder Ironbranch and Elder Stonebark within 15 seconds of each other in 10-player mode.) but the last attempts were pretty… meh. I have a hard time surviving the iron roots. Would you have other tricks than using Master’s call?
Caribald replied, “If Master’s Call is on cool-down, you can Intervene and use Kill Command. If you get rooted outside a mushroom while the big add is up, you’re dead :P I don’t know though, I haven’t tried soloing Lumberjacked, simply because I already have those achievements back from level 80, but if you try Freya with Ironbranch up, that works at least.
Kologarn Disarmed Achievement Possible?1/28/12
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Dragoran asked, “Has someone managed to make the achievement “Disarmed” on Kologarn? Each time I touch an arm I am caught in the right hand. Is it doable solo?”
Caribald replied, “I doubt Disarmed is possible since getting grabbed means wipe.”
You can survive the grab and just have him reset if your pet dies while you are grabbed, but with the low cooldown on his grab one would need to be so stupidly lucky that it’s not even funny. You have to be lucky even when nuking the arm as soon as it’s up again to not be grabbed. The thing about him is that if he’s channeling Eye Beam when he tries to grab, the grab fails. I don’t know if it’s possible to force him to do that by killing the arm with a certain time left on his cooldown for Eye Beam, but for me it’s just RNG and killing the Right Arm as fast as possible.
Onin replied, “The thing with Kologarn is that the timing on his Grip is kind of random. It doesn’t take much luck to make him cast Grip during Eye beam, and the two have the same cooldown. But for some reason he may randomly decide to delay casting Grip, while Eye beam is always consistent, so you might get caught outside an Eye beam after a few minutes.
Disarmed should be totally possible, though. I’ve killed Kologarn by nuking his body and crossing my fingers quite a few times. Getting the achievement only requires 1mill additional damage and a little bit of planning, which in 400+ gear should be easy as pie. It just takes a lot of attempts to get lucky.
Caribald replied, “Oh, I was thinking about the With Open Arms achievement… Disarmed is very easy then, assuming you don’t get gripped along the way, but it’s the same chance as when doing him normally.”
You don’t need to do 1m more damage, as Kologarn takes the damage an arm has when an arm dies (I believe 543k on 10 man), so it’s just a matter of getting Kologarn to somewhere between 544k and 1087k, getting Left Arm low, then nuke Right Arm when it comes up and finish Left Arm when it dies. Kologarn will die from the arms dying and you get the achievement.
One could do it in conjunction with Rubble and Roll and do the following: Kill right arm, then left arm, then right arm, get left arm low and Kologarn below 1088k, then do the same as above.
Onin replied, “I’ve already achieved With Open Arms, using the same crossing-your-fingers tactic. Not difficult, just requires luck. I guess all his achievements should be pretty easy.”
Caribald replied, “Yeah I figured you got that from your description. I don’t know how easy dodging eye beams constantly when you’re the only target there would be though… I’d guess that one’s the hardest then. [...]“
Dragoran announced, “Disarmed done, it wasn’t that hard, you just have to be lucky. I managed to do ‘If Looks Could Kill’ some times ago so I only miss ‘Rubble and roll’ which must be the easiest of the three. [...]“
Thorim (10) Hard Mode, Part II 1/23/12
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Caribald wrote, “I [...] uploaded kills of Auriaya, Thorim HM and Onyxia. [...]
Dragoran asked, “Could you explain the strategy for Thorim? You pull the ancient giant, go back in the arena as fast as possible and then I don’t understand what you do, could you explain please? It looks like you keep an add from the arena until the end, does killing it reset the fight? Is it mandatory to enter the HM using these tactics?”
Caribald replied, “Thorim has been done before me by Szalor… The problem with Thorim is that when no one is in the arena, the fight resets after a few seconds, so to actually pull Thorim you need to get behind him before the encounter actually starts.”
When the fight resets a Lightning Ball goes through the tunnel (wipe mechanic) and you have to be in the arena. You need to pull the Ancient Giant because it will be an invalid target once the tunnel mobs respawn (you also see in the video that the Iron Ring Guards don’t aggro or have a unfriendly nameplate second time in the tunnel. It’s the same deal with the Giant). The tunnel event is then completable even though the encounter isn’t really started (it does once you kill the last arena mob). If you notice in the video, I go close to Thorim the moment he is attackable (I spam Hunter’s Mark and run in), which makes him do his emote and jump down. If you go to Thorim too early, he will simply be an invalid target just like the Iron Ring Guards and the Giant. You have time for some pet swapping to buff crit, str/agi and Call of the Wild before he’s attackable, and what I do is then get serpent sting up, 2 steady shots for Imp SS (he still takes 99% less damage so it’s simply for max output once he jumps down), call pet, MD, mend pet, pet on focus, place pet and nuke.
Hunter’s Mark and Serpent Sting on Burning Tendons in Heroic Spine of Deathwing? 1/25/12
In the Survival thread, chuanetta asked, “What about Hunters Mark (+ 1700AP) and Serpent Sting (+10%dmg)? Use this or save time for direct dmg spells?
Espallargas replied, “For the exposure, Hunter’s Mark is only worth if passively applied with Marked for Death (MM).”
For the Sting, as BM with Improved Serpent Sting, on an average per tick analysis (weighted average on hits and crits) vs. Arcane Shot it was worth to spend the GCD on the Sting, but only if you applied it right away (I was doing KC > Sting > Rotation) and refreshed it with CoS in the middle of the way (After BW was off). Also, after testing both, on average the 6 Sting ticks were a bit higher than the average Arcane Shot you would use instead. These will scale differently for Marksman or Survival, but you can stick with the same logic to figure out which ones you should be using. Just as a reference for other specs, by checking the logs I posted above, Lokores (MM) and Дэвилфраг (SV) didn’t use SrS and Saavik (SV) did use it (5 ticks).
Nostferatu replied, “In SV spec, if you’re making a target macro for the Burning Tendon why wouldn’t you add in the line: /cast hunter’s Mark along with whatever else you want to use? That phase is all about absolute burst over a specific time period. [...]“
Grimmarg replied, “Hunter’s Mark isn’t off the GCD, so it would be better to add Explosive Shot, Chimera Shot etc. to that macro.”
Pichuca replied, “If you add into one macro two spells that use one GCD each, the macro will only execute the first one the time you press it, trigger GCD, and do nothing more. You need a /castsequence macro:”
/cleartarget /target Burning T /petattack /castsequence [nomod] reset=3 !Hunter's Mark,Explosive Shot
[...] This [macro] puts HM and fires ES pressing twice on it, but it uses TWO GCDs. [...]
A full index of all Elitist Jerks posts recapped at the Wow Hunter’s Hall is maintained in the Index of Elitist Jerks Hunter Forum Posts.
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