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Below is a brief synopsis of our latest heroic kills, Tortos and Megaera.
Below is a brief synopsis of our latest heroic kills, Tortos and Megaera.
Third Heroic was TORTOS
I was playing as SURVIVAL
I don't think it's any surprise for most people to lean towards survival on Tortos. There are two main strategy options for this fellow, and both involve how the bat spawns are handled - on one hand, you can bring them into melee and AoE them down. Alternatively, you can kite them around the room. Kiting the bats around the room is how we have been doing Tortos.
The video I have is an unfortunate display of my ineptitude. Through it, you are more likely to learn what not to do. So let me cover that quickly: Tortos is a clusterfuck and if you come in late or you're still recovering from your terrible/fantastic day, this fight can quickly overwhelm you. Make sure everything is set up and you know what your role is. For me, while we were kiting the bats, I was still primarily a utility function. We are, as our class, set up to be the utility of Tortos. Bat waves will make or break your heroic attempts, so making sure these waves go to the tank is imperative. I was half an hour late for our raid the day of our kill, so the raid spent half an hour trying to do Tortos without any misdirections. I was missed, to say the least. It becomes very hard to manage the bats towards the end, especially if you are unable to keep up on each spawn of turtles.
So here's what you need to know: The only difference on heroic is that you need to shoot humming crystals along the walls of the room in order to place a shield on yourself. This shield will become full upon the healers mechanics, whereby this shield will prevent you taking damage from large abilities throughout the encounter. You want to maintain this shield by reapplying it any time it falls off. Reapplying before you are at full health is okay, because the shield will still protect you. One it falls off, though, you could potentially be one shot due to bad timing, so only do this if it's an emergency. I recommend a targeting macro with an ability cast to do this. I used arcane shot, but in retrospect you could probably use an ability that doesn't use focus. Concussive shot would be a good choice, but I haven't tested to see if that works to applying the shield. Regardless, it should force cast an auto.
Beyond this, I was DPSing whirl turtles. I left my pet on the boss, partially because of the wasted run time having him chase turtles and partially because I was using a tall strider to give sunders to the melee - and the melee stuck to Tortos. I also macro'd my Murder of Crows and Black Arrow to apply to Tortos, regardless of my current target. This is still beneficial for MoC, I feel, but have since kept Black Arrow on the whirl turtles in later kills.
One hunter is sufficient in misdirecting each wave of bats to the tank. You should have Glyph of Direction, so you can continuously use MD. It has a different spell ID, so the cooldown isn't in effect. Essentially, so long as you have the minor Glyph of Direction, then you can infinitely recast misdirection any time its effect has worn off. Knowing my damage burst isn't comparable to other available DPS classes, I built myself around utility and convenience for the raid. That means my primary focus on Tortos is making sure that bats happen correctly, that I take as little damage as possible from moving around, and that I prevent rockfalls being near downed whirl turtles by watching where my mobility is taking me. At one point the other week, I crowd surfed eight whirl turtles to ensure a bat wave went to the kiting tank. Pretty sure the healers hate me now!
Barrage is your friend. I picked this up and saved it for every bat spawn. It lines up relatively close. If you're not paying attention, you will use it right before a bat spawn, and then you're left having to aim your camera up to target a bat and making sure you have enough focus to Multishot enough threat away from healers / the main tank. Barrage is the equivalent of throwing everything but the sink at a target and has the added benefit of hitting everything else in the cone in front of you (ie, Tortos and whirl turtles). Save this for bats, MD your bat tank, then blow them up. Guaranteed they will go to them every time. So long as you are in range and pointed the right direction, you don't need to change targets.
Your damage will be split between Tortos, turtles and bats relatively evenly. Since we had our melee on Tortos and ranged on turtles, my damage looked concerning to the raid leader. I was asked if this fight was bad for me, because I seemed a lot lower on designated targets than I normally am in comparison to the other DPS. If you are kiting bats, this is how it will appear. Make sure they know you are a utility service, that MD is important, and you are doing the function you should be. When all else fails, be half an hour late and let them see how it goes without the MD! :) [not really. that was poor humour. I'm sorry.]
Below is our first kill of Tortos. In the first half of the fight, I failed to /focus Shandaren, the bat tank. I am, essentially, being an idiot hitting every bat spawn and not noticing my MD isn't going off. Eventually this kills me when half a bat spawn comes for my face. I was even too angry at myself to say anything about my death on Mumble, and received a silent battle res probably for a similar reason. If you are using a /focus macro for your misdirect here, remember to set it. Normally I right click their names on my Vuhdo, but clicking was not as efficient for how often MD is needed. There is no excuse for my poor play in this video except that I was playing poorly. Off night. Just a shame I had to record it. Then post it publicly. Then write a blog post about it. Oh my god.
May 21st edit: Concussive shot definitely works on the humming crystal and is a better use for getting the shield than arcane shot, since arcane shot is wasting focus. Also fixed the macro to be a target = macro rather than a bulky target/lasttarget, since that makes infinitely more sense and I don't understand why I didn't do it like that in the first place. Thanks for pointing that out.
The video I have is an unfortunate display of my ineptitude. Through it, you are more likely to learn what not to do. So let me cover that quickly: Tortos is a clusterfuck and if you come in late or you're still recovering from your terrible/fantastic day, this fight can quickly overwhelm you. Make sure everything is set up and you know what your role is. For me, while we were kiting the bats, I was still primarily a utility function. We are, as our class, set up to be the utility of Tortos. Bat waves will make or break your heroic attempts, so making sure these waves go to the tank is imperative. I was half an hour late for our raid the day of our kill, so the raid spent half an hour trying to do Tortos without any misdirections. I was missed, to say the least. It becomes very hard to manage the bats towards the end, especially if you are unable to keep up on each spawn of turtles.
So here's what you need to know: The only difference on heroic is that you need to shoot humming crystals along the walls of the room in order to place a shield on yourself. This shield will become full upon the healers mechanics, whereby this shield will prevent you taking damage from large abilities throughout the encounter. You want to maintain this shield by reapplying it any time it falls off. Reapplying before you are at full health is okay, because the shield will still protect you. One it falls off, though, you could potentially be one shot due to bad timing, so only do this if it's an emergency. I recommend a targeting macro with an ability cast to do this. I used arcane shot, but in retrospect you could probably use an ability that doesn't use focus. Concussive shot would be a good choice, but I haven't tested to see if that works to applying the shield. Regardless, it should force cast an auto.
Beyond this, I was DPSing whirl turtles. I left my pet on the boss, partially because of the wasted run time having him chase turtles and partially because I was using a tall strider to give sunders to the melee - and the melee stuck to Tortos. I also macro'd my Murder of Crows and Black Arrow to apply to Tortos, regardless of my current target. This is still beneficial for MoC, I feel, but have since kept Black Arrow on the whirl turtles in later kills.
One hunter is sufficient in misdirecting each wave of bats to the tank. You should have Glyph of Direction, so you can continuously use MD. It has a different spell ID, so the cooldown isn't in effect. Essentially, so long as you have the minor Glyph of Direction, then you can infinitely recast misdirection any time its effect has worn off. Knowing my damage burst isn't comparable to other available DPS classes, I built myself around utility and convenience for the raid. That means my primary focus on Tortos is making sure that bats happen correctly, that I take as little damage as possible from moving around, and that I prevent rockfalls being near downed whirl turtles by watching where my mobility is taking me. At one point the other week, I crowd surfed eight whirl turtles to ensure a bat wave went to the kiting tank. Pretty sure the healers hate me now!
Barrage is your friend. I picked this up and saved it for every bat spawn. It lines up relatively close. If you're not paying attention, you will use it right before a bat spawn, and then you're left having to aim your camera up to target a bat and making sure you have enough focus to Multishot enough threat away from healers / the main tank. Barrage is the equivalent of throwing everything but the sink at a target and has the added benefit of hitting everything else in the cone in front of you (ie, Tortos and whirl turtles). Save this for bats, MD your bat tank, then blow them up. Guaranteed they will go to them every time. So long as you are in range and pointed the right direction, you don't need to change targets.
Your damage will be split between Tortos, turtles and bats relatively evenly. Since we had our melee on Tortos and ranged on turtles, my damage looked concerning to the raid leader. I was asked if this fight was bad for me, because I seemed a lot lower on designated targets than I normally am in comparison to the other DPS. If you are kiting bats, this is how it will appear. Make sure they know you are a utility service, that MD is important, and you are doing the function you should be. When all else fails, be half an hour late and let them see how it goes without the MD! :) [not really. that was poor humour. I'm sorry.]
Below is our first kill of Tortos. In the first half of the fight, I failed to /focus Shandaren, the bat tank. I am, essentially, being an idiot hitting every bat spawn and not noticing my MD isn't going off. Eventually this kills me when half a bat spawn comes for my face. I was even too angry at myself to say anything about my death on Mumble, and received a silent battle res probably for a similar reason. If you are using a /focus macro for your misdirect here, remember to set it. Normally I right click their names on my Vuhdo, but clicking was not as efficient for how often MD is needed. There is no excuse for my poor play in this video except that I was playing poorly. Off night. Just a shame I had to record it. Then post it publicly. Then write a blog post about it. Oh my god.
May 21st edit: Concussive shot definitely works on the humming crystal and is a better use for getting the shield than arcane shot, since arcane shot is wasting focus. Also fixed the macro to be a target = macro rather than a bulky target/lasttarget, since that makes infinitely more sense and I don't understand why I didn't do it like that in the first place. Thanks for pointing that out.
/cast [target=humming crystal] Concussive Shot
/target Tortos
/cast A Murder of Crows
/targetlasttarget
/cast [target=focus] Misdirection
Fourth Heroic was MEGAERA
I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP
People seemed surprised that I used Marksmanship for Megaera. This isn't going to be the right choice for a lot of people. Survival is great AoE, and it's great burst AoE, so if you are asked by your raid leader to blow up the wyrm adds then survival is a very strong choice. It's also a very strong choice if you are misdirecting any wyrm waves to the wyrm tank, as it will apply all those ISS DoTs. However, I was not on wyrm waves, and our Brewmaster tank had no trouble picking them all up himself. I tossed out a few, especially towards the later spawns, but beyond that - I was straight tunnelling the heads.
Head damage is important. If you don't hit a certain threshold, you will get an additional breath, and this additional breath will probably kill your tank. While it's all well and good to have big numbers AoEing the adds, they are secondary to the actual boss itself. AoEing the adds is still important, but it is not the most important. For us, we had warlocks set to do the wyrms. They are exceptional at AoE, surpassing a survival hunter in most cases, and this AoE actually helps their single target (for the most part). As a result, my AoE was just extra fluff and unneeded.
There really isn't too much to say about Megaera. Shoot the heads, make them die before the fourth breath, misdirect any loose wyrms to where they should be. if you're using warlock portals to handle the beams and debuffs, try to be extremely mindful of space real-estate. Be behind portals, not near the front, as close to other ground markings as possible, etc. Move if someone near you has the beam. Common sense sort of things. Situational awareness sorts of things. Then, do whatever will provide the most single target into a hydra head. For me, this was Marksmanship. For you, it might be Beast Mastery. Or, for you, it might even be Survival, if that is the spec you are the most comfortable playing.
I am really, really sorry about the music on this kill video. Normally I leave my audio player off during progression kills, but I figured since I was doing them more quickly this tier until important fights and the fact that 95% of my music is instrumental, there wouldn't be a problem. Turns out, the one time I did this was the one time my audio player decided to play My Little Pony fan rock and Korean pop. Yeaahh... This is a good blog post.
Head damage is important. If you don't hit a certain threshold, you will get an additional breath, and this additional breath will probably kill your tank. While it's all well and good to have big numbers AoEing the adds, they are secondary to the actual boss itself. AoEing the adds is still important, but it is not the most important. For us, we had warlocks set to do the wyrms. They are exceptional at AoE, surpassing a survival hunter in most cases, and this AoE actually helps their single target (for the most part). As a result, my AoE was just extra fluff and unneeded.
There really isn't too much to say about Megaera. Shoot the heads, make them die before the fourth breath, misdirect any loose wyrms to where they should be. if you're using warlock portals to handle the beams and debuffs, try to be extremely mindful of space real-estate. Be behind portals, not near the front, as close to other ground markings as possible, etc. Move if someone near you has the beam. Common sense sort of things. Situational awareness sorts of things. Then, do whatever will provide the most single target into a hydra head. For me, this was Marksmanship. For you, it might be Beast Mastery. Or, for you, it might even be Survival, if that is the spec you are the most comfortable playing.
I am really, really sorry about the music on this kill video. Normally I leave my audio player off during progression kills, but I figured since I was doing them more quickly this tier until important fights and the fact that 95% of my music is instrumental, there wouldn't be a problem. Turns out, the one time I did this was the one time my audio player decided to play My Little Pony fan rock and Korean pop. Yeaahh... This is a good blog post.