Might Normal-Mode Finalization Summary [ToT Raid]

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Continuation of my quick summaries of the normal mode ToT bosses as of the 5.2 patch landing.  This second week we went back in and cleared the original normal modes, then finished off the final three. These three were Iron Qon, Twin Consorts and Lei Shen.

The trash before Lei Shen can pose some problems if you're not ready for it. For the most part, it's just a matter of not damaging whichever add has the shield up. If you continue damaging the shield, you will probably kill yourself and anyone unfortunate enough to be near you. I also learned the hard way that it's not the most effective for assassinations, as it's more likely to kill you than it is your assassination target. Ehem. 


Tenth boss is IRON QON
I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

This fight might be more complicated for you than it was for me, since I was never soaking anything in phase one. At most, it will simply mean you pay attention for raid calls and strafe when you need to. Otherwise, the progress of the fight goes as follows: Fire phase one, single target the boss.  Wind phase two, avoid spreading your debuff as much as possible, letting it fall off whenever you're able, and avoid getting picked up by tornadoes. If you're going stage side, disengage works perfectly with the timing. If you're going door side, disengage will walk you into the third row every time. I didn't try this with Post Haste, so it might be all right if you have that. If you do get picked up by a tornado, you won't die as easily as other classes. Deterrence will save you and it should be up every time. In fact, I even hop into a tornado at one point with Deterrence up to ride it around to the group quicker. Reflect phase three is a cake walk, just don't be in the dead zone. If your slow debuff does stack up and no one is clearing it, use Masters Call. Your cooldowns will likely come up near the end of this, but I recommend saving them for the phase four burn (unless you'll lose a cast).





Eleventh boss is THE TWIN CONSORTS
I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

This is an extremely easy single target fight. All you have to do is spread out around the circle and damage whichever boss is up. The one thing you can mess up, and it is the one thing that I do mess up in this video, is to be in the way of Tidal Force near the end. Other than that, this is a really quick burn and there is no specific hurdles for a hunter beyond testing your throughput potential. Don't kill anybody with your Cosmic Barrage and don't get hit by the little green things flying around, they'll put you to sleep for 5 seconds.  






Twelfth boss is LEI SHEN
I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

Lei Shen was a blast. You can play this as any spec you want. For pure numbers alone, or if you're having issues spawning bouncing ball or diffusion chain adds, you will see more throughput from Survival. This isn't necessarily a good thing if you can put more single target on Lei Shen as another spec. Often times you have to move immediately after an ability goes out, so pay attention. Keeping Thunderstruck to the far side of the quadrant you're in is important and easy to do so long as you strafe after the ability goes out. Boss Timers will give you a ten second warning. Staying within your quadrant, towards the back, will make this fight a lot easier, as anyone caught in between or near the front of a quadrant risks putting an Overcharge in a place that will overlap other groups (the one that makes you big and stuns). You can soak Static Shock by yourself with Deterrence. If you clump up for Ball Lightning, you will die - make sure the timing for ability/ball lightning doesn't overlap, and if it does, to know which one is going to go out first.  





The full raid week can be watched on Twitch.TV. I was playing as Marksmanship the entire way through for data collection purposes. The write up on my experience is already up.
http://www.twitch.tv/nakauri/b/377070095 - Jin'rokh, Horridon, Council of Elders, Tortos
http://www.twitch.tv/nakauri/b/377100608 - Megaera and Durumu
http://www.twitch.tv/nakauri/b/377455015 - Primordius, Dark Animus and some Lei Shen attempts
http://www.twitch.tv/nakauri/b/377831096 - Lei Shen (and Heroic Sha of Fear, if you're into that)

Durumu the Forgotten's Maze

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Said I'd do a new post for Durumu's maze specifically.
Rather, this is the post I made on Might's forums about the maze. It has already been taken and posted on other peoples forums, so I see no reason not to just put it up publicly here. This video and the images are otherwise private or unlisted:



Hello, I have come baring video and really bad images to explain the eye beam.  Here is the video:



And here is the simplified version of how not to die to the maze, as much as I could make it painfully easy for us (remembering that I don't believe Blizzard ever gives us less than 3 seconds to respond to a mechanic):





Durumu's room is a circle split into tenths. The two side pies are split into two's. I've cross-sectioned the inner circle with white lines, then added two other lines beside these two indicating the side pies that have been split. The middle line (the one hitting 'start') is the central line and the one where the BEAM always starts. 

The initial eye sores filling the room (purple segments) fill up two pie segments at a time. Once it gets to the beam, the remaining pie segments fill up as 0.5 rather than 2.0. 

Steps to the maze, in seconds:
1. Durumu focuses his beam on central line
2. Pie segment 1 fills with eye sores (purple 1)
3. Pie segment 2 fills with eye sores (purple 2)
4. Pie segment 3 fills with eye sores (purple 3)
5. Pie segment 4 fills with eye sores (purple 4)
6. Pie segment 5 fills with eye sores (purple 5)
7. BEAM STARTS, this area is always filled with eye sores (yellow 1)
8. Maze reveal begins, this is usually also always filled with eye sores but can sometimes reveal the THREE LANES (yellow 2)
9. All three safe lanes are revealed, they look like key holes (yellow 3)
10. Yellow 3 is extended for an extra second
11. Keyhole's lock, all three lanes get closed off from each other (yellow 4)
12. MAZE RUNNING STARTS. Follow the dissipating clouds - it's labyrinth style (yellow 5)

Usually in the middle of the maze running pie segment purple 1 (maybe 2), the two closest lanes to the boss will merge into the melee lane. This doesn't always happen, though, as sometimes the first lane can be directly on top of the boss and too far from lane 2 to merge. 

Here it is in action sequence by sequence:














Therefore, as you can imagine, the safest way to do this is to start at pie segment 5 nestled against the originating point of the maze (the one farthest from the beam durumu is shooting). You will then pay attention to which lanes become revealed in pie segments 3 and 4, getting into one of them during the 3 second interval. If you are not in a lane by the 3rd second, it will close in on you. It will then take another second for the maze to begin progressing, but it will progress forward as a simple labyrinth rather than linearly so you have to pay attention to the clouds on the other side of you and shift according to your lane. 

edit; A note about segment yellow 4/5 - the eye sores will "lockout" and close the lanes from both sides of the pie segment rather than one, which is why it can "appear" that the lane disappears. You want to be in the middle of the keyhole space and be ready to micromanage some adjustment so you don't get hit by the locking. 

Recommend watching the video at the top again with the new knowledge in tow. 

5.2 Hunter Spec Comparisons

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There's been a lot of debate since 5.2 went out regarding which hunter specialization will be the new supreme choice. Some people say that Beast Mastery is still the primary single target spec, while Survival is still the primarily AoE spec, with Marksmanship falling behind both. Others say that Beast Mastery and Marksman are equal in single target, while Survival is the best AoE. Still others say that both Beast Mastery and Marksman pale in comparison to Survival on both accounts.

In the first week of raiding, I played a mixed combination of BM, SV and MM. In the second week of raiding, I only played MM. After this experience, this is my opinion on the three hunter specs and where we'll see them go as the tier progresses:

The first half of the instance is going to largely favour survival, while the second half of the instance is going to largely favour beast mastery and marksmanship. As far as I can tell, survival is still the king for AoE, while they all do similar single target potential depending on the length and nature of the fight. Anything that's single target with multiple interruptions or travel time will favour marksmanship more than beast mastery. However, anything that's single target that greatly distracts the player without hassling the pet, such as Durumu, will favour beast mastery more than marksmanship. In all cases, the standard deviation for performing well favours survival. The longer the fight, the better marksmanship seems to do. Marksman is also less forgiving with its cooldowns than Beast Mastery is for single target, whereby Beast Mastery gives the players more room to make up for their incorrect whack-a-mole phases.

If you're an orc, you're probably going to favour beast mastery over marksmanship. This is especially true of orc engineers. However, a marksmanship hunter will see huge increases in their damage output swapping from orc to troll. Therefore, if you're troll, you have the option of playing beast mastery for single target (more forgiving, more experience from the rest of the expansion) or playing marksmanship (less forgiving, harder to pull off). Changing my race in various sims from orc to troll for MM is an approximate 1.5K difference, while the opposite is true from troll to orc for BM.

Which spec is the most effective depends on the nature and objectives of the fight. Keep in mind that I play 25s, not 10s. The fights are as follows:

1. Jin'rokh, a very quick single target encounter.
2. Horridon, primarily an AoE encounter with two single target burns at the end.
3. Council of Elders, a cleave fight with multiple targets that die one by one.
4. Tortos, a single target encounter with important AoE mechanics.
5. Megaera, a single target encounter with multiple interruptions.
6. Ji-Kun, a single target encounter with important AoE mechanics.
7. Durumu, a single target encounter with a few distracting mechanics.
8. Primordius, a multiple target fight where you will primarily be single target.
9. Dark Animus, a single target encounter revolving around add control.
10. Iron Qon, a single target encounter.
11. Twin Consorts, a single target encounter.
12. Lei Shen, a mixed but primarily single target encounter with a few AoE mechanics.

When I look through logs for brief analysis', I look for (a) the name and location of the player, prioritizing US and EU performances;  (b) the DPSe; (c) consistent timestamps. I assume, for 25s, that all buffs are present and don't nitpick further. I also keep in mind the number of pages present for parses and how many guilds have killed the current boss. For example, there is significantly more data and competition for the first half of the instance than there is the second half. Therefore, I assume that the standard deviation for the lesser played specs is going to be larger than the more popular ones, and thus not entirely accurate representations of the specs potential. Rather than averaging or using the medium of a set of data comparisons, I'll eyeball it based on my own knowledge of the encounter, the spec, and what data is available.

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JIN'ROKH
For Jin'rokh, it's a complete wash. The nature of the fight means that luck in your opening rotation plays a large factor. For most people, the encounter doesn't last longer than four minutes. As a result I don't even take the fight that seriously. It's a cute introduction to the tier. All three of the specs, then, are doing roughly the same amount of damage, given the inherent streaks of the encounter. Even on heroic, most of the data so far is pretty consistent between the three specs. For Jin'rokh, I suggest just playing whatever you are most comfortable at playing. Survival has the least complicated play style  so I imagine most will choose Survival. I'm also slightly suspicious that the water buff isn't fully transferring to all BM pet abilities, but I haven't actually looked into it.

HORRIDON
Horridon has very important AoE segments of the fight, where keeping adds suppressed is a large factor between winning and losing. It's also rather long, averaging out at about ten minutes. You're going to see about a 40k DPS increase using survival over MM or BM, both of which have similar pieces of data. This is for a few reasons that are beneficial to the raid:

  1. Most of the fight is going to be AoE. You can also still focus primary large adds / dinomancers and lay some thick into them while still effectively suppressing with said AOE.
  2. Only the last few minutes of the fight is a single target burn, and a short single target burn is the best kind of single target burn for SV.
If you're playing as marksman or BM, chances are you'll be focusing on Horridon more than the adds. A beast master would either leave his pet on Horridon, to avoid all the downtime of running around and to whittle the dino, OR would bring his pet into the AoE conundrum to help beast cleave. Either way, you're just straight up going to see more contribution laying on some real AoE with Survival. When I did this fight as Marksman, I did a lot of target swapping, focusing most of my single target into Horridon as he gained more cracked shell debuffs while balancing my AoE when I thought I'd get the most time efficiency out of bombardment. If bombardment is constantly going to be dropping because it's less throughput to use multishot until 5 seconds in the future, it just doesn't seem worth it. Definitely recommend only SV for Horridon.

COUNCIL OF ELDERS
This is a cleave fight with multiple targets, and it's not particularly important that they all die at once. Whenever you have multiple targets you're going to see more throughput by speccing into Survival. Once again, the same holds true here, and with one of the cleave targets also summoning adds, it's pretty much the same no brainer regarding Survival and the other specs. We can't even really help contribute to single targeting Kazra'jin, since other classes will do single target focus far better than any of our specs will while depending on a moving pet as any sort of damage input. Cleaving with survival and AoEing the sand adds is the way to go.
One note I hadn't mentioned before, Master's Call can get you out of a sand trap.

TORTOS
Tortos is interesting because you would assume that, even though he summons adds, it would be a hunters primary contribution to single down the boss. It's the opposite, however, since Tortos will only really be taking damage when he is afflicted by Shell Concussion. Any other time during the fight, you will be single target/cleaving down whirl turtles or AoEing bats.

For the most part, ranged will be set to turtles and melee on bats, but it's rather important to make sure those bats go to melee in the first place. They spawn from the roof, which can make them difficult for a tank to pick up prior to them getting healing aggro from multiple points in the room. It's also important that the bats die before the stomp, so the melee can actually escape from falling rocks.

Therefore the progress of Tortos is going to be primarily cleave/AoE with brief periods of focused single target. This is still going to benefit Survival, allowing you to misdirect and unload onto bats when they spawn and to help get them down low with survivals great AoE burst.
You'll also have plenty of opportunities to cleave each of the turtles, or onto the boss from the turtles.

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The first four bosses of the tier, for the most part, highly favour survival. This is why you see the general consensus that survival is the new best spec for hunters, regardless of the situation. This is sort of true - from what I can tell, survival is just the best spec for AoE by a land slide. Yet it can still keep up on single target, thus making it the most effective choice for *throughput only* in multiple target encounters. An experienced player should still see a single target damage increase playing as beast mastery or marksmanship. As I said before, in terms of difficulty and forgiveness, I feel the specs rank Survival > Beast Mastery > Marksmanship. So if you're not confident with your Marksman abilities or fight foresight, or you never really took to the whack-a-mole nature of Beast Mastery, Survival is going to be your friend. Nonetheless  any hunter looking to push their DPSe in the first third of ToT is going to be looking at Survival. I'm actually a little disappointed in this, since I find survival to be the driest to play, especially after the black arrow proc rate increase.

The next two thirds of ToT, as there are eight more bosses, may change that prioritization.
After Tortos is Megaera, Ji-Kun, Durumu and Primordius. Of these four, only Ji-Kun and Primordius involve significant importance of other adds besides the boss, and in Primordius' case most involvement is still going to be single target beyond padding for numbers (or some weird AoE kiting strategy).

MEGAERA
I like Megaera. In terms of fight progression, it feels like doing Jin'rokh several times over and over in waves of three. This is annoying and invasive for a rotation, which can throw off a marksman. It also requires a lot of running around for the pet, which can throw off a beast master. Its simplicity doesn't really bother the survivalist. Therefore, I found most of the three specs performing relatively equally. For the timestamps I was looking at, they all hovered around 110K.

The marksman will find Megaera more unforgiving than usual, since their cooldowns can line up inappropriately and the Careful Aim phase - while repeating - doesn't last long enough to give the benefit it usually does.
Beast Mastery will be inconvenienced by the running around of the pet each rampage phase, but for the most part this isn't a huge deal and won't be such a huge detriment as it will be to marksmen. Both marksmanship and Beast Mastery have the ability to lay down traps during each intermission when they're standing around with no targets. Survival won't want to do this, though, since it will put black arrow on cooldown.

My suggestion, again, is to play whichever spec you're more comfortable with. However, between the two specs I consider as single target, I'd suggest beast mastery as being the more effective. Most people, I imagine, will decide to continue playing as Survival. I will probably use Marksmanship for heroic, but we'll see when we get there.

JI-KUN
Ji-Kun is a disaster for Beast Mastery. Not only does your pet tend to despawn when jumping around to the platforms, they also don't appear to benefit fully from primal nutriment buffs. They also cannot help you if your juveniles fly away and you need to chase after them in the air.

Since you are AoEing platforms of hatchlings, people are once again favouring Survival for its superior AoE. This is completely valid and entirely true. Making sure your hatchlings die is imperative for this fight. I will point out, though, that the majority of the fight does not include AoE and that players with similar primal nutriment buffs, playing survival and marksmanship, are only about 20K apart. The main difference here giving survival better numbers is the moments you are AoEing, and the beneficial nature of percentile damage buffs to crit potential DoT classes. Take, for example, a move that hits for 60 000 - a 100% damage buff presumably adds another 60 000 (not actually that simple). On the other hand, a move that hits for 60 000 in three parts will get that 100% damage buff three times to 20 000, which also adds up to 60 000, but gives three extra chances for crits. If the first 60k burst doesn't crit, then just a single tick crit in the three segmented 60k will result in higher damage.
Basically, what I'm saying is that because survivals single target potential is still fairly good, the nature of its DoTs being able to crit makes damage buffs favour survival in the long span of things. The actual math of such occurrences won't be as simple as I made it out, nor may it even apply since the specs don't do similar amounts of damage per move set (chimera, explosive shot and kill command all hit for different values), but I hope you understand my logic a bit nonetheless.

Good throughput on Ji-Kun is going to depend on how good you are at maintaining your primal nutriment buff and making the best of it while you have it. Survival is the most forgiving in this regard, and also will ensure that you have the most success at clearing out your nests.
Once again, recommending Survival.

DURUMU
Durumu is a different beast entirely. And when I say beast, I mean it'll favour beast mastery. Even if you're focusing REALLY, REALLY HARD on avoiding the maze during death beam, your pet isn't going to care. It will happily continue focusing Durumu down while you run around. On the other hand, Marksmen and Survival hunters will probably see some sort of downtime distraction during this phase.

The same holds true during the tri-beam phase, where target swapping will be annoying for anyone besides the beast master. Recommend leaving the pet on the boss for the tri-beam phase, the down time for running isn't really worth it unless you're struggling to kill adds. Which you shouldn't be due to their low, low health pool. Generally issue in this phase comes from other huddles.

I will probably continue using Marksmanship for Durumu, but recognize that I'd have better throughput as Beast Mastery. Depending on the usefulness of Marksmanship in heroics and with higher gear sets, especially without the t14 bonus, I may reforge back to a BM/SV setup and weep sad tears for marksmanship once more.

PRIMORDIUS
While Durumu seemed to favour beast mastery, Primordius seemed to favour marksmanship. Sure, it's nice to sit on him as survival and just spam multishot onto everything around it, but that doesn't really matter if the adds aren't actually dying. Each spawn point is too far away to AoE, and you want them dead before they're in range of other things so you can pick up the mutation buffs. As BM or Marksmanship, you can kill your own adds without issue, even if you didn't catch them right at their spawn point. The faster single target you sink into adds, the faster you can sink single target damage into Primordius.

That said, the disadvantage to beast mastery is how dependant you are on having your pet with you for that single target focus. It looks like the pets are getting the fully mutated buff, but I'm not actually sure about if it's seeing any noticeable increase. As a marksman, you don't need to wait for your pet to catch up to do half your damage. I recommend making sure you get a mutated buff as soon as possible to get onto Primordius before he is out of Careful Aim phase. If you let someone else go before you, you're wasting the 75% crit marksman hunters get by not fully utilizing your first 2 minute mutation buff with CA.

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The second set of four bosses is a mixed bag. For the most part you can continue playing as Survival, and will definitely want to be survival for Ji-Kun. If you're a BM/SV mix, you will probably want to play BM for Megaera, Survival for Ji-Kun, BM for Durumu and Survival for Primordius. Again, Survival is just overall easier to play. Any time you see multiple targets, your throughput will increase being Survival. However, if adds are not an issue and you feel you can play your single target spec up to par, then you may as well switch for the extra single target focus. '

If you're a MM/SV mix, you'll probably want to play MM for Megaera, survival or marksman for Ji-Kun depending on what you're having the most difficulty with (if your adds are fine and you're bad at timing primal nutriment marksmanship is an okay choice; still recommend survival nonetheless). Then marksmanship for both Durumu and Primordius. Once again, the standard deviation for Survival is lower and far more forgiving.

The final bosses of the tier are Dark Animus, Iron Qon, Twin Consorts and Lei Shen.

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DARK ANIMUS
Again, the same as Primordius - it's nice to cleave around you and pad and have fancy numbers, but you don't actually want to AoE down a whole bunch of adds (or maybe you have some strange strategy and you do; in which case nevermind). I saw this fight primarily as a single target burn with a few smaller adds that I'd have to help with in between allowing myself to be the target of matter swaps.

So once you have Dark Animus activated, whatever is going to let you patchwerk him the best is what you want to be. Marksmanship and Beast Mastery's potential seems very, very similar to me here, while Survival will do slightly less but have an easier play style.

IRON QON
Four phases, each at about equal length. The only thing that will really interrupt your playing is the tornadoes. Your pet should still be able to hit him. A rough estimation of the three specs for Iron Qon, right now, is at about 100k SV, 110k MM, 115K BM, after taking into consideration the number of statistics provided for data. The only deviation regarding skill will be between marksman and BM, whereas SV is easiest to play but still not coming out on top. Once again, your choice will be what you can play best, favouring either BM or MM as your single target.
If you get slowed from the third phase, you can use Master's Call to clear it. Deterrence will be your best friend if you're bad at tornadoes. Disengaging is safe if you're going forward to the stage, but I kept walking myself into a tornado when we swapped to go the other direction. Don't be brain dead like me! I sabotaged my uptime. 

TWIN CONSORTS
Exactly the same story as Iron Qon, except in two phases rather than four. This will give marksman slightly longer to take advantage of Careful Aim with its buffs up and give more leeway to execution. I was killed when I did this fight and feel that I easily would've done the same amount or more damage as Beast Mastery. Once again, your choice will be what you can play best, favouring either BM or MM as your single target. If you're worried about any mechanics or messing up, SV is still a safe choice. Beyond spreading out, this is more or less just a burn for us.

LEI SHEN
Lei Shen is a fun fight, and it does have some AoE mechanics, but for the most part they are inconsequential. If you want to look like you have crazy amounts of damage, then go ahead and spec Survival. If you're having trouble killing ball lightning, then it's a valid choice regardless.

The AoE on MM and BM seems efficient enough to handle it, though, while providing more single target focus onto Lei Shen. I feel single target on Lei Shen is more important, especially if you're trying to push him before he uses certain abilities. I didn't play perfectly but was able to push 96K into just Lei Shen, focusing a bit more heavily on helping with Ball Lightning despite being Marksmanship than otherwise was necessary (24k). In contrast, the highest ranked BM hunter with a similar timestamp put 91k onto Lei Shen and 17k into ball lightning, with the highest ranked SV hunter with a similar timestamp putting 96K into Lei Shen and 37k into ball lightning.

So, ultimately, once again, they are all very close. There is significantly more data for Survival than the other two specs, and therefore, while the specific numbers I provided makes it look like survival will do just as much or more single target while also providing more AoE burst, it's my opinion that the marksmanship and BM hunters could play better than they did and easily surpass the 96k performance - while, on the other hand, I feel survival will be stuck along that plateau.

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The final four bosses of the tier, then, are all primarily single target and will favour whichever of the three specs you feel you're best at playing. Beast Mastery will be the easiest to maintain strong single target with, while Marksmanship should perform just as equally or slightly better if played particularly well (which is hard to do, especially at this gear level). Survival is a good fall back point because it will still have its uses, especially on Lei Shen, and can keep up pace with the other two specs single target. Played at an equal level it will be a downgrade, but played at a better level than you'd play the other two you'll see an increase.

TLDR summary:
  • If you're an orc, you're going to want to stay BM/SV.
  • If you're a troll, you're probably still going to want to stay BM/SV, but you have the option of also playing as MM/SV. The latter can perform just as well, but is more difficult.
  • You will absolutely want to keep survival and will see use out of it any time there is more than one target. Your decision will be based on which of the targets is more important: multiples or a singular.
I'm going to keep running with Marksmanship as long as I can to see how it's shaping up in comparison, but I'm worried about its longevity. The downsides to the playstyle isn't made up for in its throughput, especially considering BM/SV share similar reforge needs (crit>mastery) while MM/SV does not (crit>haste vs survivals crit>mastery).

Might Thursday Patch Summary [ToT Raid]

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Continuation of my quick summary of the three raid days as of the 5.2 patch landing. Thursday was our third day, after pulling Megaera and Ji-Kun on Wednesday. As mentioned in the other post, we hit a brick wall at Durumu and had to come back for the next three bosses on Thursday.

The trash on Durumu has some important mechanics. First, the four adds patrolling the room will also summon eyes that need to be burned down by the raid. Don't just sit and watch the few people pulled in burn it down - there is no reason for you not to help except that you're afraid of doing the arena maze wrong. There are empty places for you to stand. Taking one tick of the maze will not kill you,  but make sure you know where the safe zones are. It's easier to zerg the eye than hope the few people pulled in know what they're doing.

After clearing the patrols, four larger adds will roll out along the sewers on the sides of the room. The first three you can burn down and deal with the smaller adds after, but the fourth add should be moved around so as to reveal the smaller adds with his Harsh Light. The reason for this is as soon as that large fourth add dies, the boss shows up. If you're in the middle of the room, you pull him and wipe. This will despawn the smaller adds, but you may as well save the repair bill by making sure everything is dead and you're not in the center for the boss spawn. 



Seventh boss is DURUMU
I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

Durumu is simple once you understand him. This is a single target fight with three rotating phases. At the start of the fight you will be killing Durumu, avoiding the knockback (Force of Will) and depositing your Lingering Gaze debuff out of the way. Simply disengage this debuff to the back.
 On phase two, multiple beams will spawn. The goal is to use the red beam to reveal the three red adds so that they can be killed and end the phase. The blue beam should hold still and not reveal any blue adds. Any add that is revealed but then is unrevealed will do massive damage to the raid and probably wipe you. You have a second to see where the adds will spawn - you can use traps to indicate these locations as they will still go off despite the mobs being hidden. Hunters are good to help soak the red beam due to their high mobility.

Phase three was where we had our most trouble, as people were unable to understand the maze. Once you are in the maze it's easier to stay safe, but getting in it is the tricky part. Lots of people will say "oh, just stand in melee" or on the edge or so forth, but these lanes do not always spawn. Simply understand the mechanics rather than relying on luck. I will probably make a post specifically for the Durumu maze, but the short answer is this:  The safe area starts between the first purple segment and the death beam. Lightning will be on the ground to indicate what side this is. Start off on the far side near the purple segment (away from the beam). This safe area will be filled in five segments. The first two will  generally always be entirely unsafe. The third will reveal the first part of the maze. Backtrack and enter this safe lane. The fourth will close off the lanes from each other as the maze begins to progress.

Sorry about the audio track - Youtube did some manual editing around the music it falsely detected, so it's a computer generated guesstimation leaving in Mumble voice chat and some game sounds. It's a little distorted, but it did alright. I might upload another version at some point, but for now this'll do. I'm also trying to get the original audio restored on this video, because the manual editing is a little annoying, so we'll see. 




Eighth boss is PRIMORDIUS
I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

Get five stacks of mutations, kill the boss, repeat. That's it. Some people were complaining about not being able to kill their add by themselves:  You can, and a hunter can especially. Have your pet help you kill adds. You can go Survival to AoE, but I feel single target will be more useful. If the boss is being kited and you need to kill adds for more mutations, pick an add from behind the boss so that you're not losing time as the boss is brought closer to your kill target. Make sure you manage your cooldowns correctly: Chances are you will want to line them up with the mutation buff to hit the boss rather than hitting adds.

You can get multiple stacks of mutations from one red pool. Strafe back and forth. You'll notice I get 4/5 mutations at one point during this video doing that. Also make sure you are aware of where the red pools are when you have been mutated, as being hit by more will remove one of your helpful mutations and prevent someone who needs a mutation from picking it up. 





Ninth boss is DARK ANIMUS
I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

I have no idea what this boss does besides port me around like crazy. I was tired by this end of the night and just allowing myself to be used as a Matter Swap bitch. As a hunter, the principle of the fight is very easy: Get aggro on the mob you need to have aggro on, kill the kill targets being brought to tanks' animus', then make sure your animus never goes within range of another. Use the range finder to manage this. Hunters are fantastic kiters and should be able to judge distances appropriately, so you should have no issue keeping your add in the proper spots even if you are constantly Matter Swapped like I was doing. 

And before I get asked, I was allowing myself to get Matter Swapped so that the tank in that corner was not. You're in for a rough time if your tanks are being ported about. You should not be AoEing other targets around you, as it's important to control where and when animus' die. 


Might Wednesday Patch Summary [ToT Raid]

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Continuation of my quick summary of the three raid days as of the 5.2 patch landing. Wednesday was our second day, after pulling Jin'rohk, Horridon, the Council of Elders and Tortos on Tuesday. We finished up Megaera fairly easily, had an interesting experience with Ji-Kun then hit a brick wall on Durumu. There's nothing overly special about the trash between Megaera and Ji-Kun, but the sewer trash leading to Ji-kun has gotten a reputation so here's a quick note about that:

The snails will probably rape your pet. They kill anything they walk over, so I recommend not sending your pet in to fight these if there is another target. Or at all, really, unless you like ressing them. I was playing as Marksman for the second and third day, so the pet dying was probably less infuriating then if I had been Beast Mastery. Don't stand in front of spiders, their web is a frontal cone. 



Fifth boss is MEGAERA
I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

Simple fight. Run out for the majority of it to stay away from melee and ranged poison bombs. If Ice beam is on you, run it backwards or over Cinders if they are out. If Cinders is debuffed on you, run it over Ice beam debris or out of the way. Clump up in front of a head for Rampage. Repeat from right to left until dead. You'll notice I didn't pay much attention to the percentage of the boss and had horrible cooldown use in this video. This was my first boss pull as Marksman, though, and it felt decent regardless of my inattentiveness. 





Sixth boss is JI-KUN
I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

Lots of people were having problems with Ji-Kun. I don't know what those problems were specifically. For the most part, I assume people were unable to kill their nests. Make sure you know where, when, who, and what nests you're taking care of. Survival will be a more useful spec for this than Marksman, as it will do significantly more AoE damage to the important part of the fight: The hatchlings in the nests. If you get caught on a nest by yourself without a healer during Quills, you will die - as I do here. Make sure your group knows what it's doing and when. You'll also notice I never receive any primal nutriment buffs. Don't do this - time your flight back from a nest appropriately so that your flight buff will last in time to catch a primal nutriment (Feed Young timer). You'll also have two extra casts of your wings, so long as you're only covering one upper nest.  

Adds are easy to clean up completely in normal mode. The only chance of not clearing your nests is if people assigned to that nest do not go. Make sure this is communicated properly and your damage intake will be much easier to manage.





Might Tuesday Patch Summary [ToT Raid]

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Figured I'd do a quick summary of the three raid days as of the 5.2 patch landing. The patch went out Tuesday, as did the raid instance, Throne of Thunder. Several of us had been on the PTR, so there wasn't too much issue in the first section or with the trash pulls. 

Unfortunately I didn't have the foresight to keep my twitch stream or fraps files from the trash. The basics of the information you need to know about the infamous bridge trash is to pull one ghost back at a time. Let your debuff fall off before you pull the next ghost. Hunters are excellent for going ahead and misdirecting one of these back to the group, because if we get the attention of the second one we can just feign it off. The first mob will still go to the raid, but the second one will reset. Not sure how effective this would be on the first bridge since the wind blows sideways, but it works great for the second bridge. Disengage back on if you ever get blown off by a spirit. 

First boss is JIN'ROHK
I was playing as BEAST MASTERY

Summary of the fight is to stand on the edge of the pools as they expand. Run the orbs out if they're targeted on you. Don't run an orb over a fissure. Don't let an orb hit you while in a pool. Stack in the center for healing cooldowns during storm. There's nothing hunter specific here, just a straight single target burn. You'll notice my Skada is off. Stampede was causing lag issues with combat log parsers on the first day. 




Second boss is HORRIDON
I was playing as SURVIVAL

This is sort of a five phase fight. The first four involve off-tanking Horridon while dealing with gates that spawn mobs. Basically, you're AoEing a lot, not standing in bad things, prioritizing proper adds to die first then burning the boss at the end. Each gate will spawn a few little adds, a few larger adds and a Dinomancer. Order is in reverse: Dinomancer > larger adds > little adds. Each large add spawns some sort of bad thing to stand in. First gate is sand traps, don't be in those. Second gate are casters that cause poison bombs, don't stand in those and kill the summoned casters as a priority. Dinomancer's only need to be at 50% to drop their orb of control. Third gate summons ice orbs that rotate in a small radius, don't get hit by those. Fourth gate drops lightning nova totems - know the radius and get away before it goes off. If charge is on you, spin the boss so that it won't hit anyone (or wherever you're told to). 

It's a long fight. Horridon will get a damage debuff as each gate is closed. Basically, you won't do as much damage to Horridon at the start as you will later, but because the fight is so long there's no need to save cooldowns. Use them where appropriate, either on adds or Horridon.






Third boss is THE COUNCIL OF ELDERS
I was playing as BEAST MASTERY

I was put on single target duty to whittle away Kazra'jin while the rest of the raid played management with the possesses and interrupts. This was not effective as Kazra's charge was unfriendly to Wolf's melee nature. Recommend a different class for this strategy. Don't have a lot of comments for this one as I mainly just tunnelled. It was extremely easy on normal after PTR experience. Swap to Loa's as required, or to new burn targets as called. You can help with interrupts if you pick up Silencing Shot. 







Fourth boss is TORTOS
I was playing as SURVIVAL

Tortos can pose a problem if you're not ready for him. If no shell is kicked during Stone Breath, it's a wipe. Getting hit by a stalactite will also probably kill you. Note that you still take damage from them if you're within 20 yards, so just being outside of the graphic won't mean that you'll be safe. The damage is significantly less, but if you can avoid it you should. Hunters have good mobility. Ice trap under Tortos' mug will give an initial slow to the turtles. Highly suggest using Misdirect on the bat off-tank every time a bat wave comes out  - they spawn from the ceiling, so multishot them before they split up to hit healers with healing aggro. Don't just stand in the middle of the room, spread out. Binding Shot may prove useful. 





Blog Migration

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Previously I had been working on a website similar to this for the prior tier. I was working through write ups on known information regarding hunter talents, specializations, gear, etc, in addition to several boss guides for each of the three 5.1 raid instances as I went through them of my own accord. The intention was to have a place to upload hunter specific boss kills, as I primarily did multiple perspectives otherwise, and to have a dedicated space for my hunter-only mulling that nobody else cared about. Some of this information is still available on that site, but for the most part it has all been gibbed. 

Restoring the information and catching up on past write ups posed too much issue with my available time, so I put the site on development hold and never finished it nor removed it from its temporary German host. Most of the code is broken, but it is still navigable. To reduce my perfectionist habits and making it easier for me to update information as I please, I've swapped my efforts over to Googles blogger. 

That is this site. This is to act as a landing page for my various warcraft outlets, including the Youtube channel for Mights boss kills, the guild website, my raiding UI and my Twitch stream. Because it also has a blog feature, I will probably use it on occasional for my hunter blather, experience in raid fights or general warcraft observations. 


Now you can have all Jade things at all Jade times in one Jade spot in one convenient Jade sized package.
Or avoid this place like the plague.

The old site can be found [at this address] over on kilu. The write up on Zorlok appears to be the only one intact, whereas the rest of the information primarily exists as small blurbs. Depending on your browser, the HTML5 and CSS3 functions may not work correctly. I've posted the talent write up on kilu to the post topics archive here. The rest will probably drown forever. It's not important to go or to know of this other site. It's broken. I don't even know why I'm telling you about it.  Look away. 

Find further and new hunter information here. They will come in the form of blog posts and probably involve my musings regarding the current raid tier, or specific questions I'm asked by other people that I feel would be appropriate to address elsewhere for referral. I imagine this will no longer involve 5.1 raid tiers. 

Also look for me talking to myself like an insane nut here, since I have no friends and trust exactly nobody in the world. Gary was here, Ash is a loser.