Fighting Malgyos as a hunter

In a nice start to the new year the Badgers have downed Malygos in normal mode for the first time. Since it was a spur of the moment raid with the guildies online at the time rather than an 'A team' planned attempt the victory is even sweeter.

I mentioned in my last post that I believe (like others) that Malygos is the most epic fight to date in WoW and I definitely stand by that. The mechanics of the fight certainly require everyone to be executing their role with a high degree of skill. Whatt I'm going to talk about here is the fight from a hunter perspective, there are many good guides out there to the overall fight strategy so I see little point in repeating them.

I found the fight quite difficult as a hunter during phase one, however perhaps this came down to the particular way we executed the fight and the composition of our raid group. I'm definitely interested in hearing tips, tricks and suggestions!

Power spark buff and positioning
The thing about phase one of course is that you want to make sure that you arrange for as many people in the raid as possible to benefit from stacked power spark buffs. The way we handled this was to have the main tank reposition Malygos as much as possible each time a spark spawned so that it was coming from his rear. The ranged and melee DPS would then down the spark when it was in range but before Malygos was able to soak it up.

As the only hunter in the group I found it very difficult to be on the spark buff area and still at range of Malygos. The spark buff area is quite large - about 10 yards, but so is Malygos' hit box. I would start the fight at the top of the damage meters and then quickly fall down the list during phase one. Now as we all know hunters are very good at MQoSDPS and Malygos is a DPS race so it's important for all DPSers to gain benefit from the buff. I mentioned the issue I was having and our MT bless him was able to position Malygos such that the melee and I were all able to enjoy the buff. I'm pretty sure that this adjustment helped us win. Not because I'm all that awesome - but because of the nature of the fight.

As a hunter you're in a great position to help position the sparks - and as tempting as it may be to do this to your benefit it's better of course for the maximum benefit to be achieved for the raid. I use a target macro - /tar pow and concussive shot to slow the spark once it's on the platform since they move quite quickly at this stage. This gives the melee time to pick it up and down it in their position - we also had a death knight using Grip to pull them in and using Concussive gave him some precious extra seconds.

Pet behaviour
One thing I also noticed during phase one is that pet behaviour is a little buggy. Several times I noticed after coming down out of the blender that George my devilsaur was over near the boss but not actually attacking. As a BM hunter this is not good. I had to call him back to me and then send him back in again to attack. Quite annoying as this required precious seconds away from pew-pewing.

Phases two and three
There's nothing much specific to hunters for these phases - in phase 2 stay on the ground, the melee are the ones that need the disks and in phase 3 everyone is in the same boat - stack stack boom!

Altogether a fun and challenging fight. I'm really looking forward to doing it on heroic!

A huntery look at Mt. Hyjal: Anetheron

Welcome to the second in a series of posts on Mt Hyjal from a hunters perspective. When we first started Mount Hyjal I looked around for a hunter guide to the instance and didn't come across anything so hopefully other hunters will be able to get something out of these posts, or even better from my selfish perspective - teach me some new stuff to help improve my performance *grin*. I've previously written about the Rage Winterchill fight.

As per my previous post WoW Wiki provides info on the instance overall and the specifics of the Anetheron fight.

As usual I will be talking from the perspective of how we in DB handle the fight, I hear tell we do things somewhat differently from many other T6 raids. The important thing to remember is: your mileage may vary, there is no 'teh one and only' strategy. Also, rather than covering general tactics I will look at tips and strategies specific to hunters.

Anetheron is the second boss of the instance and the last boss which you will fight in the Alliance camp. The trash waves preceding the arrival of Anetheron introduce a new mob type which is of great interest to us as hunters: Banshees!

Trash waves
As per the first bosses' trash wave hunters should be dropping frost traps in sequence to slow the incoming mobs. All of the other tips etc I mentioned for Rage Winterchills trash waves apply again. However, of specific interest to hunters for this fight are waves 4,5,7 and 8 which feature Banshees. Waves 4 and 5 have 4 Banshees and waves 7 and 8 have 2 Banshees. Hunters can provide an important service to the raid by kiting the Banshees back to the NPCs to take care of them leaving the rest of the raid free to handle the other mobs.

Preparation
Make sure you have swapped your PVP trinket back out for your normal trinket whilst the raid is preparing for the Anetheron waves.

I have a general macro named 'target' which I update for various fights and prior to the commencement of the Anetheron waves I like to set it up for the Banshees so that I can quickly start the process of grabbing aggro and kiting them. My macro is very simple: '/target ban' and bound to a key. I use a combination of Arcane and Distracting shot to grab aggro. You could MD yourself I suppose but I prefer to use my MD on my tank target to introduce a nasty Abom to them for instance at the beginning of the wave.

In my post on Rage Winterchill commenters suggested it was a good idea to bring NPCs into the fight early. This is fine and good and if you need to introduce the NPCs from the very first wave of the instance you should do it. We find in our raid that we handle the waves quickly enough without the NPCs involved leaving us time to drink and rez (if need be) between waves and will save the NPCs for the Anetheron fight.

Anetheron
Of note for hunters in the Anetheron fight is the fact that Towering Infernals will spawn on top of players at timed periods. Whilst the player targeted should run toward the OT who will tank the infernals it is the job of the hunters to MD each infernal onto the OT.

Therefore it's important to set up an MD rotation as overwriting another hunters MD can cause big problems. I set up an alphabetical MD rotation with our hunters as the easiest to remember and not dependent on group make ups being changed. We don't use an MD on the boss as he arrives as the MT is usually able to pick him up straight away. Still it's a good idea to keep on your toes in case one is needed.

In the DB raid we have a couple of rogues who will use Distract on the bosses as they arrive to give the raid more time to prepare for the fight (drink, rez, buff, etc). As soon as possible after the last trash wave I change my target macro to '/target tow' so that I can very quickly pick up my infernal. These guys can smoosh squishier members of the raid very quickly and you want to get into range of the infernal asap. It's important to communicate about the MDs. I generally announce who has the next MD over vent for each infernal, also important is to quickly coordinate who will have the next MD if the next hunter in the rotation has gone down. This is one fight where having several hunters is a good thing. It's definitely doable with only two if neither one dies, and I know of raids that have no hunters at all! Of course I think you need at least two hunters but I'm a little biased ;)

Once the OT has picked up the infernal ranged DPS should burn it down before the next one arrives whilst melee DPS concentrate on the boss. In our raid we position Anetheron on the right hand side (if you are facing the entrance the mobs come through) with the OT standing near Jaina. This allows the healers on the OT to benefit from Jaina's awesome spirit buff, keeps the infernals far enough away from Anetheron and gets the other NPCs involved in the fight.

It's important to keep the raid spread out as much as possible so that the number of people affected by Carrion swarm is kept to a minimum - this is most important for the healers of course.

During the fight we also have one hunter (me usually) keep up Scorpid Sting on Anetheron which helps out the healers who are needing to split their time between healing the MT, OT and also the raid as well as dealing with downtime from Sleep and Carrion Swarm. To do this I need to position myself where I can swing between pewpewing the infernal and throwing up another sting on Anetheron without having to move much.

Sending your pet onto the infernals does no good due to their fire damage so I generally send Snaggle to gnaw on Anetheron's knee caps and try and keep a mend pet on him. The most important thing in this fight for hunters is getting the infernals to the OT stat and keeping up MQoSDPS. As soon as Anetheron is down to around 15% or so we switch all DPS over to him and burn him down whilst the OT handles the remaining infernal and then finish the infernal off afterwards.

Once Anetheron is down it's time to hand out the sweet loots, grab your badges and mount up and ride to the Horde camp. Make sure everyone is out of the base before talking to Jaina and activating the destruction of the base. If you happen to be a miner you can mine nodes containing epic and rare gems along the way. We hand any gems mined over to our loot master who hands them out via raid rolls at the end of the raid.

So now you're two bosses in and ready to take on helping Thrall and friends save the Horde base, guides to the two bosses you'll face here coming soon!


Image courtesy The Warlocks Den

A huntery look at My Hyjal: Rage Winterchill

Welcome to the first in a series of posts on Mt Hyjal from a hunters perspective. When we first started Mount Hyjal I looked around for a hunter guide to the instance and didn't come across anything so hopefully other hunters will be able to get something out of these posts, or even better from my selfish perspective - teach me some new stuff to help improve my performance *grin*.

So, on with the show. I'm not going to give you the details of the instance here, just tips and strategies for hunters. There are plenty of resources out there to give you information about the instance overall and the specifics of the Rage Winterchill fight. Go read them now if you like, I'll wait.

Back? Ok good.

Now I'll be talking from the point of view of how we in DB handle the fights, this will of course change from raid to raid, and what works for one raid may not work for another.

Preparation
You'll want to come to Mt Hyjal fully prepared with all your consumables etc. For the first two fights the only special gear you will need is your PVP trinket. Preferably the 2 min cool down one. The trinket only costs 8k honour so it's not hard to get hold of with a little effort.

Trash waves
There are eight trash waves before each boss (except for Archimonde) and if you wipe on any of those waves you have to begin the encounter for that boss again right from the very first wave.

The instance starts at the Alliance encampment where you will fight the first two bosses, Rage Winterchill and Anetheron. We fight the trash waves just at the gates where they enter. If we need to engage NPCs we kite the mobs back to them.

• Drop a frost trap just ahead of the entrance before the path heads downhill and get any other hunters in the raid to drop their own frost traps in sequence behind the first one back towards the raid so that they get triggered in a chain. This will slow the mobs nicely and if you have a pally tank like us will give them a lovely chance to consecrate and get most of the mobs to stick to them like glue.


• As a hunter threat is always an issue - switch between the mobs your tanks are targeting to get the most out of your DPS. It's very helpful here if you have a mod that can show tanks and their targets such as CTRaid, OrA or Xperl Unit Frames (if someone with the either of the first two mods has assigned the tanks this gets picked up by Xperl). There are no doubt other mods that do this job too.


• Multishot is awesome for the trash mobs. Remember to feign preemptively if you can and switch targets often though


• When your tanks have built up some nice threat dropping an explosive trap in the melee adds some extra fiery death to the mix.


• Each hunter in the raid should be assigned an MD tank. Use your MD on every pull. Especially good with Abominations which are nasty, particularly to squishies.

Rage Winterchill
Mr Lich is the most straight out fight in the instance. Stay out of Death and Decay - and remember to keep your poor pet out of it too! If you get Icebolted use your PVP trinket immediately to escape it.

Work out with the hunters in the raid who has Imp Hunters Mark - they should be responsible for keeping it up on the boss. There's no real need to use any stings on this guy.

Apart from these things it's simply a matter of unleashing the DPS, burning the guy down and collecting the phat loots.

So there you have it, the first boss in Mount Hyjal is toast. From here on in it gets more interesting and therefore more fun!