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.
- Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit
- Problems with Kael’thas Part II 4/18/12
- Razorgore: A Better Strategy 4/19/12
- The Lich King Soloed, Part II 4/19/12
Problems with Kael’thas Part II 4/18/12
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Steevnash replied to a question asked earlier regarding problems with Kael’thas, “Biggest problem that will slow down your damage output in Phase 2 and 3 of this fight is if your pet does not maintain aggro, if you’re having to kite/dps all the weapons down it will take too long.”
Consistently MD your pet when you move on to the next weapon, and start with the Arcane Infuser. Placement of the bodies in Phase 1 can help you avoid some CC and kill them quickly in Phase 3 (as Kripp mentions in his awesome video). Phase 4 can get a little technical and a lot of people do it a lot of different ways. It’s easier to just show you how I do it…. youtube.com/user/disteevnash
Aerevyn wrote, “I finally managed to get Kael’thas to phase 5 aka the ‘easy’ phase. Unfortunately when he picks me up in the air, I don’t get to fly/swim around like I used to (when it was current content), instead I fall & take full falling damage, killing me after 2 falls… Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug? Has anyone else experienced this?
I was also “fortunate” enough to encounter his 102k flame strike which is another bug apparently. Very frustrating for me as I’ve been working towards this for some time now! Is there anything that can be done to prevent this?
Steevnash replied, “Starting last week, it seems like, Kael’thas started getting a little pissed that more and more people were coming to pick on him every week. So he decided to do things a little differently in Phase 5.”
From what I can tell he’s doing 2 things:
- Might cast a Mind Control to start P5
- Not granting you the levitate ability
Adjusting the commonly used strat shouldn’t be too difficult:
- LoS him behind a pillar to begin P5, usually I’m seeing him use one of his 2 MC emotes as soon as the phase starts, then I’ll just start attacking like usual.
- When you start to fall back down from being lifted up, when you’re at about his head level, hit disengage. I’ve tried it a few ways to see what’s going on and if I cast Disengage on the way up I won’t take much damage when I land, but I do not gain the levitate ability. If I hit disengage on the way down, again take no damage, but I do gain Levitate ability.
You definitely want to start avoiding getting hit by his flamestrike. The difficult part about avoiding the flamestrike is it can push you further away from Kael’thas to the point that your pet will lose the buff from the Staff and get disoriented. I’ve started DPS’ing Kael’thas as close as I can to him and my pet while waiting for him to cast Flamestrike on me so that when he does, the area he hits is close to him and I have plenty of room to back up and still be within range to grant the Staff buff to my pet. Keep me posted on the attempts, hope it goes well! Kael’thas kill from last week and a few other solo’s
Rawbb replied, “I killed it today and noticed that while he does fling you way up in the air, if you don’t do anything you don’t take damage. You’ll stop right above the ground and you can ‘swim’ out before you get any stacks of the HP reduction debuff. It’s pretty similar to Solarian’s bomb in this regard.”
Caribald replied, “As for Kael’thas, I completely disagree with Kripparian’s video that you should be BM for it, but that video is pretty old so I guess it could have been alright back then. He can indeed throw a Mind Control when levitating between phase 4 and 5, or he can spawn another phoenix. I just hide behind the statue until he lands again or until he does the emote.”
In the weapon phase I just aoe, I don’t see a reason not to, all the weapons are dead about a minute before next phase. I Misdirect the front 5 and then either ignore staff and bow for the time being, or MD those as well. I aoe with the Cosmic Infuser targeted to prevent heals and I throw a Silencing Shot if it tries to.
For phase 3 I have Thaladred dead behind Kael, Capernian at one entrance and Sanguinar + Telonicus at the other. I place my pet on the Capernian side, although it should be the same thing if you place it on Sanguinar + Telonicus side. With the staff buff up I MD Capernian with a Chimera Shot and Sanguinar + Telonicus with a Multi-Shot. Pet should be attacking either Sanguinar or Telonicus to gain permanent threat on them. Chaining Misdirection I nuke Capernian. Thaladred shows up and I Misdirect him too, once he gazes a new target he just clears threat and gives 10k threat to whoever is gazed, so it’s easy for pet to overaggro with Misdirection spam.
After each fear from Sanguinar, make sure to get in 30 yard range of your pet and reapply staff buff if it fell off. You wanna kill Sanguinar and keep Telonicus for last, then place your pet behind the statue. Finish Telonicus and line of sight Kael, let pet get aggro and wait for mind control emote, then nuke for max 30 seconds (I usually type something to get time stamp in chat to see how long it was since his emote).
Flamestrike is just a matter of moving out of the orange circle on the ground before it detonates. The aoe left on the ground is larger than the first animation, but not really so big that you should be out of staff range of the pet. You can use Steevnash’s advice and stand as close as possible to Kael before he casts it, then move directly away once he casts it. Alternatively, stand far out and move to the side while still being in LoS.
I haven’t tested the levitate in phase 5 much, I usually just either Disengage or something. It used to be so you could swim in the air and didn’t fall anymore once you reached the highest point, but you also got thrown back up when you landed on the floor. I’ve landed on the floor after Disengages, but had more than enough time to get back into the air before getting thrown.
If you’re looking for more Kael kill videos as Marksmanship, I have one uploaded here: Hunter solo: Caribald vs Kael’thas Sunstrider – YouTube and my latest kill here: aRRoSC2 – Kael’thas Sunstrider I didn’t deal particularly well with phase 3 in either kill, but hopefully it helps solve any additional questions you might have.
Durendil added, “For Kael’thas, his flamestrike always did 100K damage (at least, it did about a year ago) if you stood in it’s middle. For phase 5, seems to me that to fly you must move. Disengage always worked for me.
Razorgore: A Better Strategy 4/19/12
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Durendil wrote, “For those looking for easy money, I finally understood Razorgore and made up a 100% working strategy: Durendil: Hunter solo: Razorgore perfect strategy – YouTube”
Caribald relied, “That worked surprisingly well, just cleared Blackwing Lair with no issues at all. Thanks for the video guide!”
The Lich King Soloed, Part II 4/19/12
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Caribald wrote, “”I uploaded my Lich King solo, finally, if people are interested: Hunter solo: Caribald vs The Lich King – YouTube.”
Durendil replied, “Nice video for Lich King, and I saw something veeeery interesting: do you actually, to get rid of an infest, unequip your weapons? Or do you also unequip something else?
Caribald relied, “Yeah, in phase 2 I used Distracting Shot to taunt him when he had the haste buff, and either because my FD was badly timed or him just having a ridiculous attack speed, I took a total of 3 hits (first one absorbed). I didn’t have enough % hp to remove Infest, so I used my Equipment Manager “0″ to remove weapons (you can’t remove anything other than weapons in combat). Since you don’t lose health but only maximum health by doing that, your health percentage goes up, and in that case it was enough to get over 90% and remove the Infest. Since there isn’t really any other damage in phase 2, I had more than enough time to get full hp before having to taunt again.”
Oh, and just an explanation for my phase 1 method on Lich King. I eat the first tick of the disease using Raptor Strike and Intervene the next two. One of the Infests lands before the third tick of the disease (sometimes timed so you actually can’t stay above 90% as there is a slight delay on Infest removal), and for that I do a second Raptor Strike and Deterrence to get a 44% damage reduction (28k tick). That leaves enough time to get healed up before next Infest.
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.
