Yikes, it's been a while. This Ji-kun kill was apparently a month ago. That means these are probably old news to some of you, but to those of you coming in for these now or in the future still, here is Ji-Kun and the Council of Elders.
Fifth Heroic was JI-KUN
I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP
I know, I know - Jade, Marksmanship? Still? You haven't given up on this yet? Surely Survival is the better choice for Ji-kun.
And it is! Assuming that your alternative spec is Beast Mastery. Beast Mastery is uselessness in its pure form on Ji-Kun, and any hunter running a BM/SV spec will absolutely want to play Survival. This is also true of any group that is having trouble clearing out their nests. In my case, however, there was no issue clearing out my nests. In fact, I'm fairly certain that with just a healer and myself, I could've cleared out any of the lower nests before they became an issue as Marksmanship. This is similarly true of the upper platform with a nutriment, but that's more because it's more single target oriented than the bottom nests. My point here is that the boss is Ji-Kun, not the damage meter. Clearing out your nests really quickly as SV and having high damage isn't the goal. As you'll see from the video, my performance on Ji-Kun was phenomenal as Marksman and when I went in to look more specifically for damage comparisons and performance bench marks I found that my damage on Ji-Kun was actually higher than most of the high parsing Survival players.
I know without any shadow of a doubt that I can pull off higher single target with Marksman than Survival, so that's exactly what I did.
So Ji-Kun. The heroic mode of this is very similar to the normal modes with the exception that during some nests a large, single target guardian comes into play. The nests that these affect have to kill the guardian in addition to the rest of the eggs. For us, this meant having a designated group for each nest, ensuring the same people went to the same nest each time around. I was on one of these Guardian nests, so you will see both the upper and lower platforms in their heroic edition if you watch the video.
This is the main thing I have to stress about this fight, and it's the one thing people still don't believe me on. You have three wing flight charges, and for each charge, you want to combine this both with a flight to the platform and with picking up a nutriment. It is possible for every single nest - it just takes more careful planning on others. In the worst case scenario, err on the side of caution. This fight is not so difficult that killing yourself in order to get a nutriment is better than or equal to no nutriment at all. However, if you can do it - why would you not?
To avoid Caw, begin strafing when her cast gets to 0.0. Don't walk into other people, though, as they may be the target of Caw themselves.
Do not play Beast Mastery here. every time you are in the air your pet despawns. Whether or not he gets the nutriment buff becomes void if your pet is constantly spawning and despawning.
Some quick things to consider: A warlock portal is the easiest way to avoid a downdraft that has its druid roar missed. Alternatively, you can coat the main platform in ice by throwing a trap at Ji-kun and using the Glyph of Black Ice. Do this only as last resort or if the rest of your raid is aware, as it can make the green pools hard to see.
One more: If you are going to a Guardian platform and your tank is not there, you will get the first attention from the bird. It can crit you and one shot you, so it is important that you know if you are arriving on the nest first. If you are, make sure you have deterrence up. Once you land, your pet will pull aggro from you. If it doesn't, you can feign. If nobody else has reached the nest by this point, you may wind up having to revive Fido. Oh... This also marks the first kill I recorded off my stream rather than frapsing, so I apologize for the slight drop in video quality.
On the upper nest, prioritize the eggs before the guardian. This is true whether you have a nutriment or not. The guardian will die from cleave, but the eggs have significantly more health on the upper nest than the lower. It is unacceptable not to clear out a nest.
Our group was going to the last set of nests in the sequence. For us, this was purple. The shadow priest, Gyrobine, who went with us wrote up this sequence of events for that particular nest set:
And it is! Assuming that your alternative spec is Beast Mastery. Beast Mastery is uselessness in its pure form on Ji-Kun, and any hunter running a BM/SV spec will absolutely want to play Survival. This is also true of any group that is having trouble clearing out their nests. In my case, however, there was no issue clearing out my nests. In fact, I'm fairly certain that with just a healer and myself, I could've cleared out any of the lower nests before they became an issue as Marksmanship. This is similarly true of the upper platform with a nutriment, but that's more because it's more single target oriented than the bottom nests. My point here is that the boss is Ji-Kun, not the damage meter. Clearing out your nests really quickly as SV and having high damage isn't the goal. As you'll see from the video, my performance on Ji-Kun was phenomenal as Marksman and when I went in to look more specifically for damage comparisons and performance bench marks I found that my damage on Ji-Kun was actually higher than most of the high parsing Survival players.
I know without any shadow of a doubt that I can pull off higher single target with Marksman than Survival, so that's exactly what I did.
So Ji-Kun. The heroic mode of this is very similar to the normal modes with the exception that during some nests a large, single target guardian comes into play. The nests that these affect have to kill the guardian in addition to the rest of the eggs. For us, this meant having a designated group for each nest, ensuring the same people went to the same nest each time around. I was on one of these Guardian nests, so you will see both the upper and lower platforms in their heroic edition if you watch the video.
This is the main thing I have to stress about this fight, and it's the one thing people still don't believe me on. You have three wing flight charges, and for each charge, you want to combine this both with a flight to the platform and with picking up a nutriment. It is possible for every single nest - it just takes more careful planning on others. In the worst case scenario, err on the side of caution. This fight is not so difficult that killing yourself in order to get a nutriment is better than or equal to no nutriment at all. However, if you can do it - why would you not?
To avoid Caw, begin strafing when her cast gets to 0.0. Don't walk into other people, though, as they may be the target of Caw themselves.
Do not play Beast Mastery here. every time you are in the air your pet despawns. Whether or not he gets the nutriment buff becomes void if your pet is constantly spawning and despawning.
Some quick things to consider: A warlock portal is the easiest way to avoid a downdraft that has its druid roar missed. Alternatively, you can coat the main platform in ice by throwing a trap at Ji-kun and using the Glyph of Black Ice. Do this only as last resort or if the rest of your raid is aware, as it can make the green pools hard to see.
One more: If you are going to a Guardian platform and your tank is not there, you will get the first attention from the bird. It can crit you and one shot you, so it is important that you know if you are arriving on the nest first. If you are, make sure you have deterrence up. Once you land, your pet will pull aggro from you. If it doesn't, you can feign. If nobody else has reached the nest by this point, you may wind up having to revive Fido. Oh... This also marks the first kill I recorded off my stream rather than frapsing, so I apologize for the slight drop in video quality.
On the upper nest, prioritize the eggs before the guardian. This is true whether you have a nutriment or not. The guardian will die from cleave, but the eggs have significantly more health on the upper nest than the lower. It is unacceptable not to clear out a nest.
Our group was going to the last set of nests in the sequence. For us, this was purple. The shadow priest, Gyrobine, who went with us wrote up this sequence of events for that particular nest set:
Sequence of events for Group 5 (purple), in order to make optimal use of Feather charges and the Primal Nutriment buff:
The lower nest spawns after the second Quills is finished (Quills -> Downdraft -> Quills). Start running to the platform as soon as the Quills finishes channeling. There is a Nest Guardian with the 5 hatchlings. The next Feed Young is in 42 seconds, so if everything dies by then, we can use a feather to both fly up, and pick up a Primal Nutriment. This is generally easily possible and we sit at the nest waiting for 5 seconds or so until 3 seconds are left on the timer, before flying up.
After getting back up to the main platform, there is a Quills, then a Downdraft. At the end of the Downdraft is a Feed Young, which we take and then go to our upper platform (right above our lower platform). This nest will have a Nest Guardian with the three eggs. The tank that goes up will be delayed, so serious survivability cooldowns will be needed if you get there first. If you don't have powerful CDs, then you might want to make sure someone who does have them gets there in front of you. Once up there, we have 30 seconds to kill the three eggs and the guardian before Feed Young goes out. This should be doable if everyone makes it there on time with the Primal Nutriment buff. If not, then we still have another 8 seconds to kill them and drop down before Quills comes out. If we still haven't killed them before Quills is damaging the raid, then we stay up top until after Quills is done.
There is another Feed Young between dropping down from the Upper Platform, and going down to the lower platform, if a feather wasn't used to pick up a Nutriment before the Quills. Right after this is a Downdraft, at the end of which all three DPS and healer need to immediately drop down to the lower platform. At this point, we have only 30 seconds between the Downdraft finishing and being able to catch the next Feed Young, so ideally we are on the platform as soon as the eggs spawn. Our successful attempts at this involved the healer helping to kill the adds.
Once back on the main platform, there is another Quills and Downdraft, with Feed Young occuring 10 seconds after the Downdraft. We've never actually needed to go up and kill the nest on the Upper Platform, though.
Sixth Heroic was COUNCIL OF ELDERS
I was playing as SURVIVAL
This one is definitely a survival fight. The health of all the bosses much reach zero, so as much as you can push on them via Improved Serpent Sting the better. However, it is the order of events that makes this fight what it is. That means it is not a blanket AoE fight like Horridon or Tortos-killing-bats. Similarly to how a single target must die during certain transitions of Horridon, or that whirl turtle waves must be met, here too you must meet a damage threshold for each Elder you are pushing.
That means if you are just AoEing like mad, barraging and multishotting and explosive trapping, you are not being a conscientious raider. Yes, your damage will be higher. But that means you're making other people pick up your burst slack. If they are perfectly compensating this for you, then by all means. However, if your raid is constantly hitting full power or not pushing targets at the right time, or heaven forbid not killing Loa spirits, it's time to put barrage down and pick up the glaives. You must target switch and you must do your job, first and foremost, before trying to have the highest damage possible. The order in which your raid tries to do this will dictate this more closely, but chances are if you're burning Sul you will not have the luxury as much as you would like.
You can disengage out when Sul is casting Sand Trap. This isn't a major point since you can also just strafe out without any consequence, while if you disengage then you must stop casting cobra (if it happens to line up that you want to disengage in the middle of a cobra). More importantly, you can use Master's Call to remove yourself or anyone else from a Sand Trap. This is useful if your dispels aren't going out, or the healers need help. I have my Master's Call set up to cast on myself or my target, and the macro is included below.
Currently you have the option of either picking up Silencing Shot to help with interrupts or Binding Shot to help with Loa Spirits.In 5.3 you get Binding Shot for free, so not putting this down will be a major disservice to your raid. Binding Shot is Marksman only in 5.3, I'm crazy. Nonetheless The Binding arrow will pick up the Loa Spirit when it spawns, so instead of relying on your slower/rooter to pick up the Loa Spirit immediately, rely on yourself to give them the buffer they need. If you're marksman. Or we're talking about past performances. Nothing is worse than a hunter asking why the Loa Spirit is so slow to be rooted or slowed, when they are capable of holding it in place to allow the other players to target it. If this is not an issue, Silencing Shot is your friend.
There is no excuse not to switch to the Loa Spirit or the Twisted Fate. Down time is not an acceptable play style. On that note, if your targets are dying on time, use the opportunity to Multishot and cleave ISS onto any surrounding targets at least once. At that point you can go back to single target in order to kill these adds on time.
This video is our second kill, not our first. Sorry about that. First and second are usually similar anyway.
That means if you are just AoEing like mad, barraging and multishotting and explosive trapping, you are not being a conscientious raider. Yes, your damage will be higher. But that means you're making other people pick up your burst slack. If they are perfectly compensating this for you, then by all means. However, if your raid is constantly hitting full power or not pushing targets at the right time, or heaven forbid not killing Loa spirits, it's time to put barrage down and pick up the glaives. You must target switch and you must do your job, first and foremost, before trying to have the highest damage possible. The order in which your raid tries to do this will dictate this more closely, but chances are if you're burning Sul you will not have the luxury as much as you would like.
You can disengage out when Sul is casting Sand Trap. This isn't a major point since you can also just strafe out without any consequence, while if you disengage then you must stop casting cobra (if it happens to line up that you want to disengage in the middle of a cobra). More importantly, you can use Master's Call to remove yourself or anyone else from a Sand Trap. This is useful if your dispels aren't going out, or the healers need help. I have my Master's Call set up to cast on myself or my target, and the macro is included below.
Currently you have the option of either picking up Silencing Shot to help with interrupts or Binding Shot to help with Loa Spirits.
There is no excuse not to switch to the Loa Spirit or the Twisted Fate. Down time is not an acceptable play style. On that note, if your targets are dying on time, use the opportunity to Multishot and cleave ISS onto any surrounding targets at least once. At that point you can go back to single target in order to kill these adds on time.
This video is our second kill, not our first. Sorry about that. First and second are usually similar anyway.
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