Hunter's Guide to Ulduar, pt. 1: The Siege

The Siege: Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, Ignis the Furnace Master, XT-002

Flame Leviathan
The Flame Leviathan is the first of Mimiron's creations you'll face. During the fight itself and the preceding gauntlet, you'll either drive a vehicle or serve as its gunner, so class is irrelevant for the most part.

On its simplest mode, the FL fight requires that two things happen: Demolisher drivers keep their stacks of pyrite up on the boss, and everyone driving the Demos and Siege engines successfully kites the boss when he focuses them. Kiting is aided by the Bikes, who leave a trail of sticky oil behind them, which snares the Leviathan.

Harder modes increase the boss' health and add elements that need to be avoided (freezing beams, flame walls, etc.). Since class doesn't play a big role here, I'll leave the details to the reader. My only suggestion is that hunters pick up the role of a Siege or Demo driver since we're fairly used to kiting and the timing needed to do so.

Regardless of what you're driving, back off of the Leviathan when you get the five second warning from Deadly Boss Mods telling you that he'll be switching targets soon - this'll give you a comfortable head start if he does target you.

Phat lewts to look for...
10-man:
Pyrite Infuser - a fine upgrade from Grim Toll. ArPen isn't the best stat for hunters, but it's nothing to sneeze at since a good 60 - 80% of your DPS is likely to be physical depending on your spec.
Kinetic Ripper - this one isn't really a hunter weapon in particular, but if there aren't any Enhancement Shamans clamoring for it and you have a nice main hand weapon, it might be worth considering. If melee need this one though, leave it to the melee. There's better out there for hunters.
10-man Hardmode: Mantle of Fiery Vengeance

25-man:
Gloves of the Fiery Behemoth - These are quite nice, especially if you're hit-capped already. The high agility makes them a very nice Survival piece, but they're definitely worth supplanting for the 4-piece set bonus if it comes to it.


Razorscale
For some background, Razorscale is actually Veranus, the proto-drake brood mother and companion to Thorim you are most likely acquainted with from the Sons of Hodir questline. After being enslaved by Yogg Saron, she was fitted with iron plating and has since turned on those who would save her master - that's you. The idea behind the fight is that you're defending the Expedition from the Iron Dwarves as its mechanics repair the turrets that will allow you to chain Razorscale to the ground and destroy her.

Entering her Aerie, you'll be able to see Razorscale circling high above the platform. To start the fight, chat with the Expedition Commander near bottom of the stairs and let them know you're ready.

The fight runs in three stages:
- Air Phase
- Grounded
- Permanently Grounded


Air Phase
You'll see the Air Phase first. Razorscale herself will be out of range during this phase. The raid will move to the eastern portion of the platform to await the Iron Dwarves who'll use mole machines to make their entrance. For the most part, these will be AoEd down - hooray for Volley.

The mob you'll need to worry about is the Dark Rune Sentinel - these guys have a nasty whirlwind and need to be taken out post haste. Your group will probably have an OT to worry about these guys, and you'll want your Misdirect macro set up to send these guys to the OT when they appear. They're easy to recognize as the tall Vrykul model, and they pop out of their own special mole machine - when you see a machine rise a bit west of where the others do (closest to the center of the platform), you can hit that macro and MD the Sentinel to its tank. Do not send your pet in after this guy; his whirlwind may eat Fluffy alive.

This phase is pretty healing intensive for a newer group, so do your healers a favor and *don't stand in the fire*. Razorscale will randomly target players throughout this phase with two abilities - Fireball and Devouring Flame. You'll eat the Fireball, which leaves an orange trail and you'll move the hell out of the way of the Devouring Flame, which leaves a blue trail and a patch of blue flames on the ground. The flames it leaves behind deal about 5.5k per tick.

During this time, the friendly NPCs will have been repairing the turrets - two of them on 10-man, and four on 25-man. Once these are ready, they'll be fired at Razorscale, pulling her down to the ground and beginning the grounded phase.


Grounded Phase
This phase lasts 30 seconds. During this time, Razorscale will be stunned, so DPS as hard as you can - beat everyone else to the top of Omen. Unless there's a Sentinel up during the Grounded Phase, ignore the rest of the adds and let the tank hold them.

Most raids will use Bloodlust on the second of the Grounded Phases, so you'll want to use your Rapid Fire during the first.

Once the 30 second stun is up, if she's above 50% health, she'll knock everyone back with a wing buffet, and you'll be back in the Air Phase. If you do get her down to 50%, you'll head into the Permanently Grounded Phase.

Permanently Grounded
Once she's permanently grounded, your tank will grab aggro, which might be tough if you've been going all-out on the last phase, so don't hesitate to throw MDs up, and be ready to Feign if things get hairy.

Razorscale will only be casting Devouring Flames on the tank at this point, so the raid should be taking little to no damage once the remaining adds have been cleared out. She'll also use Fuse Armor on the tanks, forcing them to taunt off of one another after two stacks.

The usual way to handle this phase is to have the ranged DPS/healers in the center of a circle in which the alternating tanks will kite the boss. At this point, all a hunter needs to worry about is avoiding pulling agg - not a point to be ignored as your tanks will be taunting the boss off of one another to let Razorscale's debuffs wear off. So, pew pew, keep an eye on Omen, and enjoy the ride.

Lewtz!
10-man:
Razorscale Talon - Nothing to write home about, but worth rolling for if the melee aren't eyeing it.
Bracers of the Smothering Inferno - A good set of bracers with pretty evenly distributed stats.
Band of Draconic Guile - A nice ring for hunters, rogues, and the like. It's lacking in the Int department and there's better out there, but it's a nice piece nonetheless.

25-man:
Saronite Mesh Legguards - These are *the* pants. Get them, love them, do a little dance.
Remorse - another passable one hand weapon.

Ignis the Furnace Master
Ignis is a single-phase fight with a few tricks to keep in mind. Necessary Evil's usual strategy is to kite Ignis back and forth along the line in the middle of the room, always facing the furnace whence he came. The rest of the raid behind him, avoiding the flame patches on the ground. Since Ignis starts out about 42 miles from this convenient line, we usually use a Misdirect for the pull, just to keep things neat and clean.

Once the boss is pulled, you'll be fulfilling one of two roles: pew pew Boss or pew pew Adds.

Boss: Don't stand in flames, don't pull agg. Stop casting when Ignis starts casting Flame Jets. If you're caught in the middle of a Steady Shot when the Flame Jets cast finishes, you'll be locked out of spellcasting for a few seconds - bad news. You're still able to use instants freely here, so it's a good fight to switch over to Marks spec for, if you happen to have it.

Adds: In 10-man, we assign one ranged DPS to the adds and two in 25-man. Usually, it's something other than a hunter, as we don't have as much burst on demand capability as other classes. Hunters can do it, though, so here's what you'll be on the look out for: every 30 seconds or so, Ignis will summon one of his adds ("Arise, soldiers of the Iron Crucible!"). Your OT will grab this add and hang out with him in one of Ignis' flame patches. Once the add is properly Molten (bright red), the tank will bring him over to the nearest water pool, which will rapidly cool the add, making it brittle (gray). Once brittle, the tank should call out for you whether it's in the left or right pool. In order to damage it, you'll need to hit it with over 5k damage on a single hit. Do not send your pet in to help out - it won't do anything. Once the add is down, head back to the boss and wait for the next brittle add.

The only other thing to watch out for on this fight is the Slag Pot. Ignis will choose one raid member at random to hang out in his bellypot - this is a painful experience. Healthstones will *not* work if you're in the pot, but your healers should be on the watch for slag victims. Thank them if you live and use the resulting 100% haste buff to pew pew like crazy.

Woot loot!
10-man:
Rifle of the Platinum Guard - this is an okay ranged weapon. Definitely not the best out there.
Relentless Edge - A fine hunter weapon. You'll see feral druids and arms warriors rolling for this one too, but it's definitely one for hunters to keep an eye out for. The high AP is a friend to BM hunters everywhere.

25-man:
Helm of the Furnace Master - quite a nice helm, one of the better ones currently available,
Cindershard Ring - a pretty nice ring for hunters, strong quantity of agility for a ring and a good way to edge up ye olde hit rating. There don't seem to be a whole lot of hunter-friendly rings floating around Ulduar, so take note when this one drops.

XT-002 (hard mode)
This jolly fellow is the antithesis of his creator, Mimiron. He's gargantuan and gregarious - kind of reminds one of a less oozy Patchwerk, when you think about it. This is one of the fights for which I can cover hardmode, too, so I'll say a few words about that at the end.

Normally, this fight runs in two phases: Play Phase and Heart Phase. The fight will start out on Play Phase when the boss is pulled. Our raid uses a Misdirect for this pull as well, because we use a very particular tanking position: against the eastern wall, directly between the two junk piles. This is important because, if the XT is close enough to those two piles, he will NOT summon adds from them during the heart phase. Suggest this position to your raid leaders if they're not aware of it, as it makes the job of ranged and healers much, much easier.

Play Phase: During the play phase, you'll be DPSing the XT while using /range to stay at least 10 yards from everyone else at all times. This is important because of two abilities the XT will throw out there: Light Bomb and Gravity Bomb.

Light Bomb (properly known as Searing Light) will be thrown out on a random raid member (non-tank) and deal significant damage to that player and anyone within 10 yards of him. If you're already 10 yards from everyone around you and a good distance from the melee, you'll make the healers' job much easier.

Gravity Bomb, on normal mode, is mostly an annoyance, and will pull anyone within about 15 yards of you to where you're standing when it expires (think AoE Deathgrip). Do your best to avoid getting pulled by it.

The other ability to be aware of during the Play Phase is the Tantrum. Be sure you're within healing range (40 yards) when this starts, as it knocks out 10% of your health each second for 8 seconds. Be ready to blow a health pot or stone at this point - this is a ton of damage for a new raid to deal with.

Heart Phase: Every 25%, the boss will get tired ("So tired...!"), and his heart will drop out of his chest for 20 seconds. DPS the bejeezus out of the heart. If you kill it, you'll activate hardmode, if you don't kill it, you'll take out a pretty good chunk of the XT's total health, depending on how much you took off the heart.

As the heart phase ends, adds will be summoned from junk piles far away from the XT. Three types of adds may be summoned - repair bots, assault bots, and bomb bots.
- Bombs need to be taken care of from range, lest they explode on contact and blow up the raid.
- Assault bots are large bots with a pretty good amount of health. If you're doing normal mode, you may or may not have a separate tank for these. Don't worry about killing them - they don't do too much damage, and will take a while to knock out. If you don't have a separate tank for them, just MD them to the tank and let them get killed by splash AoE.
- The repair bots are the tiny ones who come in gaggles of 3 - 6. When these start getting near, drop a frost trap to slow them, and unleash the AoE on them. You should have no trouble getting the lot of them down in the span of two Volleys with the help of the other ranged DPS. If they get to the boss, they'll repair him, so don't let this happen.
Once the adds are dead, head back to the boss. Rinse and repeat. If you're juuust shy of killing the heart when the 20 seconds are up, you'll have very little to go before the next heart phase, so be on your toes with the adds (stay in healing range though, the Tantrum can happen on the heels of the heart phase).

Hard Mode
If you're planning to give hard mode a shot, use the first heart phase to get it rolling. No raid damage will be going out, so healers can DPS, and you'll definitely want to blow Bloodlust to make it happen.

Once hard mode is triggered by the death of the heart, the XT will heal to full health and his abilities will have some new tricks to them. Note that, since the heart is dead, you won't see any more Heart Phases - just Play...

New Light Bomb: Just like before, this will deal damage to those within 10 yards. Once it ends, however, it will spawn an add called Life Spark with around 50k health on normal and 175k on heroic. These are very nasty little adds - they deal nature damage to the entire raid and can usually be found smacking your healers. They pack quite the wallop and MUST be first priority for ranged DPS to take out. I recommend a /target Life Spark macro. Also, if you have a Shaman, Nature Resist totem should be down, and if you don't, Aspect of the Wild should be up to help with the AoE.

New Gravity Bomb: In addition to being annoying, gravity bomb also leaves behind a shadow pie a la Lady Blaumeux of the Four Horsemen. Tip: don't stand in it, and don't pull people into it. These are really pretty easy to avoid, just be aware of them.

When Necessary Evil did this, we had only two ranged DPS, if memory serves, so the other hunter and I spent almost the entire time on the Life Sparks. The best thing to do is leave your pet on the boss and do everything you can to keep these guys off of your healers.

Loot!
10-man:
Gloves of Taut Grip
10-man Hardmode:
Magnetized Projectile Emitter - the red gem socket on this puppy helps to push it heads above a good number of the 25-man weapons. It's well worth the effort.
25-man:
Brass-lined Boots - Not an astonishing set of boots, but a reasonable upgrade from the old Pack-Ice Striders. Twisted Visage - Though it's most likely to go to a feral druid, this is a very nice hunter weapon. It's a good replacement for Black Ice.


That's it for The Siege of Ulduar. More as more comes.

Also: Necessary Evil is recruiting! We're primarily in search of DPS right now, ranged or melee. Head over to the Recruiting Forum at http://www.necessary-evil.net/ for details on how to apply.

Hunter's Guide to Ulduar, pt. 0

Necessary Evil has been making its way through Ulduar for the last few months now and we're down to General Vezax, Yogg Saron, and Algagon. So, I figured it might be worthwhile to write up some short hunter guides for the bosses we've downed. Many of these fights have roles that hunters fill quite well, and those will be highlighted in each guide along with a list of the loot that might be of interest.

For the sake of expediency, I'll assume that you're using Deadly Boss Mods.

Part 1: The Siege
Part 2: The Antechamber
Part 3: The Keepers
Part 4: Descent into Madness

These are coming out to be pretty lengthy, so there are links within each post to the specific fights. A short list of the loot hunters might find interesting is also included with each description.

Servers... guilds... stuff & things.

A few weeks ago, I moved my characters from The Venture Co. to Bloodhoof, and joined Necessary Evil. There are many reasons behind the move, and overall, it's been a good decision.

Bloodthunder Tribe was the first guild I helped run, and it taught me a great deal. Primarily, I learned that an organization with ambivalent purpose is a weak one. The guild leader and I started Bloodthunder when we were in our 30s or 40s, intending to develop a role-playing guild (VeCo is, afterall, an RP-PvP server...!). People grow, however, and goals change. Ambivalence swelled as the guild's leadership found purpose in different aspects of the endgame. For me, RP became secondary. I still do it - still animate my characters' reactions, read all of the quest text, and hunt down or create lore when I can. The game changed for me, though, on my first Naxx PuG. From there on out, raiding steadily climbed its way to the top of my priorities.

Progression on a low-population server, such as VeCo is difficult. That isn't to say that there are no good players - quite the opposite. There are many very strong players, and many who happen to be good people as well. Progression as a strict RP-only guild on a low-population server, however, is a herculean effort. The prevailing model is RP-tolerant progression, in which RP is welcome, but not required, and the guild's focus is progression. This model works well because it allows a great deal of flexibility in the raid force while maintaining the RP aspect. On the other hand, it does not support things like in-character /g chat and frequently scheduled RP-events (squashing valuable raid time with RP does not go over well with your raid force).

Some of Bloodthunder's leadership favored this model, some favored the strict-RP model, so we kept the strict-RP model with which we began. Over time, it became clear that putting together a reliable 10-man raid force was unlikely. Waiting and hoping for our recruitment to pick up for 9 months was a draining experience. Losing the Goldilocks members - those who felt that we RP too much or too little, never juuuust right - was painful. Between these things, PuGging 30-50% of a weekly 10-man, and leveling & gearing a healer myself to fill a scarce role, the guild became more stressful than what I had imagined.

A lot of good came out of the guild, though. The friendships and experiences I found in Bloodthunder are deeply cherished. I wish only the best to you all. Thank you to those who have been understanding and have maintained contact and friendship.

As for the future, I am very happy in Necessary Evil. Playing alongside family is a great feeling, and taking down Thorim for the first time last week was a blast. The Cask of Dalaran Red was totally worth the gold.

Mr. BRK, you will be missed.

I think the news of Mr. BRK's departure from blogging is well known by now, but I want to say, with the deepest respect, that it takes a big man to step down from doing what he loves to focus on who he loves.

Brain, BRK, I wish you all the best, fo' shizzle.

/cough

I may have been somewhat distracted of late. Bloodthunder Tribe now has its very own level 80 resto druid.

But... I have not been slacking, I promise.

I still need a new gun, though... ~_~

Leveling Instances & Pets

I PuG most instances and the Bloodthunder Tribe is a bit scarce on Hunters, so I don't often have the chance to group with other hunters while playing Nadie, especially not those still leveling. As a resto druid, however, I do! I'm glad for it because I love having a hunter around, of course, but it also gives me a chance to see the class from the outside and hear how its players feel about it.

A few nights ago, I was getting ready to heal Gundrak (for which one should always have a hunter) with a group of very friendly people, and we were chatting away while waiting for people to make their way to the stone. We were on the topic of PuGs in general, and the level 77 hunter in the group lamented having been booted from a PuG earlier that day for having a level 76 pet, rather than a level 77 pet.

While we didn't hear the other players' side of the story, it struck me as odd to go so far as to boot someone from a non-heroic, 5-man instance for having a pet one level lower than himself. Now, it takes a whole lot to convince me that someone needs a boot in general, but even so... Trying to see this from the other side, I can only guess that the party leader must have been familiar with the importance of having level 80 pets in heroics and raids, and must have applied the same sensibility to his leveling party.

It's a fact of leveling that your pet will spend the first 20% or so of your next level being one behind, but if you're doing non-heroic instances your own level, this shouldn't be an issue. This isn't to say that pet levels don't matter. They do. They matter a lot. The difference between a level 79 pet and a level 80 pet is huge. The difference between a level 78 pet and a level 79 pet, on the other hand, is fairly minimal. Allow me to illustrate:



Chance-to-hit
In a raid setting, it's imperative that pets be max level. In heroics, pets really ought to be max level, but if the group is okay with a hunter knocking out that last level, and you can absorb the DPS loss, a level 79 pet is alright. 78 is pushing it. For regular instances, it's nice if the pets are their master's level, but it shouldn't really be an issue if the pet in question is the one the hunter has been leveling with, since it should never be but a level behind the hunter.

Why the difference? In part, it's the mobs you're facing off against - a level 78 pet is going to miss heroic Keristraza's big, red, level 82 hide a whole lot more often than a level 80 pet will. The same goes for any pet four levels below the mob it's attacking. Missing 15% of your attacks is missing 15% of your DPS. If your pet is ~40% of your total DPS, that's 6% of your DPS down the tubes. Ick.

Trash mobs in raids are levels 81 - 82 and bosses are 83. In heroics, trash mobs are 80 - 81 and bosses are 82. In regular, level 80 instances, trash mobs are level 79 - 80, and bosses are 81. So, the hit cap for a level 80 instance is 5.2%, or 165 hit rating. If your pet is one level below you, his hit cap against a level 81 mob is 5.4%. Problem though: pets only inherit full percentages of hit from their masters and Focused Aim does not apply to pets. So, unless you're astonishingly well-geared for having just hit 80, and you have 197 hit rating (granting 6% hit), there's very little difference from your pet's perspective. In fact, there is a .2% chance-to-hit difference. If you're Beast Mastery, the expertise from Animal Handler should go a long way toward limiting the other worrisome factors of glancing blows and parries.

This can be applied to lower-level instances as well. Boss mobs are usually one level above the instance level, meaning you and Fluffy have about a little more than a 5% chance to miss them, regardless of whether he's your level or one behind.

Pet Skills
The other important factor is pet skill ranks.

Just like us, hunter pets learn new skills and new skill ranks as they gain levels, with the last set of skills being learned at level 80. Unlike us, though, they do not gain new ranks of one skill or another every level, or even every other level. Take Cats, for instance. A new rank of Claw is learned every eight levels, while a new rank of Rake is only learned every sixteen levels!

This holds true for all of the pet family skills. Each family (such as Bears, Ravagers, Crabs, etc) has two skills.* The first is a DPS skill, while the second is either a DoT or a utility skill, depending on the family. The DPS skill gains a new rank every eight levels, while the second skill gains one every sixteen levels.

For a Ferocity pet, these special attacks comprise about 40% of overall DPS, so those shiny new ranks are a big boost. The last ranks of both abilities are learned at level 80. Between 72 and 79, however, the pet learns nothing new. The only difference will be the relative levels and base stat improvements. These are nice improvements, of course, but handing Fluffy a sack of Spiced Mammoth Treats would go a long way, too.

Of course, if you're doing Halls of Lightning at level 76, well, that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

*Cats and Spirit Beasts are special. These families have Prowl, as well, which ranks at levels 30 and 50. Spiders, Tallstriders, Warp Stalkers, and Tutles are exceptions to the sixteen level rule, as their utility skills, Web, Dust Cloud, Warp, and Shell Shield, have only one rank.

Tier 8 Set Bonuses

The indispensable MMO-Champion posted the newly available Tier 8 Set Bonuses this morning. Us hunters weren't left out of the fun:

(2) Set: Increases the damage done by your Serpent Sting by 10%
(4) Set: Your Steady Shot has the chance to grant you 600 attack power for 15 seconds.

Here are the 25-man and 10-man set screen shots, if you'd like to take a peek, too.

The two-piece bonus, I have to say, is not terribly exciting. It's undeniably nice, but it's the four-piece bonus that's really the nice one. This one is like having a third "proc on attack" trinket, rather than a set bonus - and a none-too-shabby trinket at that! It's not unlike the Mirror of Truth, although the proc is bound to Steady Shot alone. The real measure of this bonus will come when its proc rate and internal cooldown can be determined. It's safe to say, though, that since the Mirror of Truth and Grim Toll stack, the set bonus will probably stack as well. 1600AP plus 612 armor penetration? Gimme.