Might Heroic-Mode Lei Shen + Ra-Den [ToT Raid]

This has been a long time coming and over a month late in terms of actual kill dates. However, for sake for archive I figured it was best to quickly finish up and summarize the final two bosses of Throne of Thunder. If for whatever reason you want more thorough information or you're doing this after 5.4, feel free to drop a comment with your questions and I'll elaborate on anything for you. 

Twelvth Heroic was LEI SHEN

I was playing as BEAST MASTERY

This was one of the main progression fights I knew pre-emptively that I would be playing Beast Mastery on. The burst cleave it provides outshines anything Marksman could have provided and outshines any of the single target Survival could have provided. On this first kill, I'm running with Dire Beast and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera. If you were watching the stream the past couple weeks, though, you'd know I swapped these out for Fervor and Posthaste. Fervor can line up nicely with ball lightning, and with our niche here being our fantastic burst this is a major plus to helping out the raid.

You can solo soak just about anything Lei Shen throws at you, which is particularly useful for transition phases. How you handle this will depend on your strategy. If your strategy has significantly more AoE than ours, it may even be beneficial for you to swap to Survival for Serpent Spread.

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Thirteenth "Heroic" was RA-DEN

I was playing as BEAST MASTERY

Ra-Den is a piece of cake and you should have no problem with this. I played as Beast Mastery for the same reason I played it for Lei Shen: It is the strongest niche burst we have. Handling it correctly we can top the meters for whichever target we're assigned to, be it stalkers, orbs or the boss itself. Alternatively, we can provide a nice and even spread between several targets due to the nature of our pet mechanics. Don't let raid leaders be fooled into thinking you're not carrying your weight if you're doing a spread, though.

Survival is far easier to perform with on this fight. As Beast Mastery, our best performance is leaving the boss on Ra-Den and only helping out on Stalkers if melee need help or Orbs if casters need help. For subsequent kills I had a /petattack macro set to my arcane shot ability because we frequently needed help on orbs more than anything. Preferably, your casters can handle this on their own, or at least can do so only with the help of the hunters' portion of the damage while the pet remains stationary with the melee. Nonetheless, come to Raden with a /targetmacro for:
/target Crackling Stalker
/target Essence of Anima
/target Corrupted Anima
And probably with some sort of micro-management control for your pet. Other than that, the BigWigs Ra-Den assist addon makes this one a breeze and all you have to do is watch your name in the list.

Finally, here is the link to our final Lei Shen and Ra-Den kills of the tier: http://www.twitch.tv/nakauri/b/456511304

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Might Heroic-Mode Entries, Twin Consorts, Durumu + Dark Animus [ToT Raid]

Held this post off for a wee bit too long: the first reason being that separating the last few bosses into groups of two would've meant an aeon for dark animus, the second being that I hadn't managed to get a video of a twin consorts kill. Now that I have both, here we are. 

Ninth Heroic was TWIN CONSORTS

I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

Note that the first kill we had done of Twin Consorts I was actually playing as Survival. Generally for new bosses, with the exception of Beast Mastery as I hadn't had the spec, I put preference on the specialization that other hunters seemed to favour for the fight. Since Twin Consorts has an AoE segment, and that as a result most everyone was favouring Survival for its burst, that's what I used for our first kill.

As you can see, in retrospect, I decided the AoE factor of the fight was a severe non-issue and went back to my single target spec for further repeats. If, for whatever reason, you are having trouble with the Dark of Night AoE intermission, then by all means - but I found bombardment to be perfectly strong for this quick phase. In other words, very similar to Ji-Kun, only without the damage buff and only occurring once.

Twin Consorts is not a DPS fight. There is nothing special you need do here except for stand away from everyone else and show how good your throughput is. Every once in a while Suen will pop up, whereby a Survival hunter has a nice edge being able to multishot an ISS onto her each time. Since she no longer retains DoTs when she disappears, though, I'd almost wager that the Marksman swapping to her for a reactivation of their Careful Aim phase to be better spent.

It's important you don't stand too close to an icy comet so as to cause it to melt, but other than that all our job is consists of pewpew and hiding behind meteors whenever alysrazor decides to blow the winds of fire. Er, I mean, stand behind the comet when Suen casts Nuclear Inferno. You can jump and disengage away from Cosmic Barrage, but without good timing and posthaste you are likely still going to be hit by this ability - you can practice doing this, or do so simply to spread away from others, but if you are already in a safe location it's probably best to just stay in range of your healers.
As you'll see in the video, it's very important not to be clumped up right before a Cosmic Barrage, even if something else is about to happen. Oops!

If you're the unlucky soul who has to run through and activate the Celestials, keep in mind your timing. Here's   my original video of the Celestial constellation drawings followed by some notes from our Celestial runner:

Heroic constellation timings -
Went down with 15 seconds roughly on the transition from p1 to p2, started running roughly 10 seconds remaining. Popped about a second into the phase. This leaves plenty of time for them to reactivate before the next.
Ox was next - timed this one with about 20 seconds left on the nuclear inferno timer. Lasts 30 seconds, complete it asap.
Serpent - 15ish seconds on timer, because its quick to run. Try not to land it before about 3 seconds on the timer.
Xuen - Same thing, 15ish on the timer.

Phase 3:
Xuen first. Start running with roughly 13 seconds before tidal force, and you should make it just before.
Ox next, same as p2, 20ish seconds on the inferno timer.
Serpent third, I think that one actually lined up with the next tidal force, I can't remember exactly.
Cranes whenever after that.

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Tenth Heroic was DURUMU

I was playing as SURVIVAL

Again, this was another fight where I returned to the scene as Marksmanship after our first kill. Bombardment is not as strong as Serpent Spread ISS, but combined with Barrage I found it to be perfectly up to par. Regardless of spec, the usefulness of Barrage's cone will win out here. More often than not, it seems, the high AoE numbers on Durumu ice walls are simply from people AoE padding onto all three of the wall segments rather than just bursting down the first one in your way. If you have the AoE burst to still get them all down, this is obviously the best route - but when you're first learning, sometimes it's best to play it safe.

Heroic Durumu is essentially the same as normal Durumu, minus the inclusion of tri-angled Ice Walls that are set into six segments per wall. These six segments have a shared health pool, meaning that AoEing each of the six segments of a single wall will cause the whole wall to collapse very quickly. Since they spread from the center of the room, with Durumu as the origin, it's more throughput to AoE each of the first few segments of all three ice walls along with the boss. However, if you're not making the damage par on time for a particular wall, switch only to that wall. Your damage will look lower, but you'll just have to explain why this lower damage is actually more damage to the right place giving the time restriction. Preferably, however, you can just AoE them all down from the center without issue. If you're moving through the main ice wall, you are safe to hug this ice wall as the maze approaches. If you're going through the opposite wall, however, bare in mind that the maze will be directly under it and hugging this wall will kill you swiftly. Watch the swirling in the maze to know what sections are next to dissipate.

Do not underestimate the usefulness of emphasizing boss mechanics. This is one fight where "keeping an eye" on things is truly important. Make sure you have lingering gaze emphasized, because there is no larger sin than not noticing you had a lingering gaze to drop on the outside edge. Besides lingering gaze, which is what drops the purple puddles, I suggest also emphasizing the five second countdown to the tri-beam phase. This lets you be prepared with some peripheral vision action to spot the add spawn points.

Finally, if you're a beam carrier, do be aware of this.  You will have the tri-beam phase emphasized, so you will have a reminder to check if you are carrying a beam. Here is the post I made on the Might forums about Durumu beam handling:

If you KNOW WHERE THE RED ADDS ARE then you can just cut across the circles in a diamond shape to each spot. But if you DON'T KNOW WHERE THE REDS ARE then one of two things happen:
1. You move too quickly.
2. You move too slowly.

By being in these relative positions you are ensuring two things -
1. You will not move too quickly because your beam is moving at average (50/50) speed.  It is the most efficient spacing because you have twice the width of an add to work with.
2. You will not move too slowly because it is the most efficient movement both for finding at 50/50width squared AND anyone either behind or in front of you will have relatively equal chances of keeping up in the radius.

You are also only three spaces away from the toilet buffer, so if you get a shit on you you're not going to mess it up. Anyone behind you is also still going to have enough time to reach the edge of the toilet.

The two WORST THINGS YOU COULD POSSIBLY DO EVER are:
1. Over shoot the red beam. I was grilling people to Aszh on our first week of normal modes for this, go ahead and ask him! I won't forgive you if you do it in heroic and I guarantee it's because you were too close to the boss and whipping your dick around too fast. Now that I've said that it'll happen to me.

2. Move too slowly.  Being afraid of committing number 1 is twice as bad as actually doing so. You're not going to do so because you know what to do already, so don't be afraid of something you already know. We are all gamers and I guarantee you that you have the reaction speed to stop when you get the alert (unless you're whippin' dicks).

Do you have to do it exactly like this? Probably not. But I think you'll be surprised how much calmer and nicer things are when you treat it like a well oiled machine.

---

Eleventh Heroic was DARK ANIMUS

I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

Ah, Dark Animus. The one fight where our pets do something useful. First of all, I have an interactive map for you to download of the Dark Animus' room with each Anima Golem being click-and-draggable. As it's HTML5, this will only work offline in the Firefox browser. If you were to upload and host these files somewhere, you would be able to use it in Chrome. Since I am only providing a download link to my Google Drive, though, you will have to use this in Firefox if you want to do so.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7oy4ukn56teN3IxMnBkbGFYdk0/edit?usp=sharing

This will allow you to make positional diagrams with a little bit less effort. If you would like to see what it looks like before downloading, it was made from the map below (just without the player names, obviously).

The process of this fight is going to change based on the strategy your group is using, but for the most part the hunter is going to be placed somewhere in the room, probably away from the massive golems, and told to hold two little anima fellows with their body and their pets body. As a result, you will probably prefer having a tenacity pet with you. Thus, you'll have to make a decision regarding glyph of stampede: On one hand, if you use this right away you will still have your tenacity pet out, so you will likely not want glyph of stampede. On the other, if you only are able to use it later, then glyph of stampede once your ferocity pet is back out will reduce the tenacity downgrade by one pet. Either way, not a big deal: I was in a position to unload on the boss immediately after getting set up and therefore ran without the glyph. 

Chances are you will play this fight as Survival, since I can't imagine Beast Mastery is that great with your pet distracted for half the fight. Careful with killing others' golems if you're trying to assist with DoT spreads. 

To simplify things, here are a few of the posts I made regarding the Dark Animus:

Hunter Dark Animus Check List

• PICK YOUR PET. It doesn't matter. You can swap. Best choice for add-tank part is TURTLE or BEETLE. Really doesn't matter though.
• TURN THAT PET TENACITY .
• Turn ON Charge, Claw, Cower, Growl.
• Turn OFF Thunderstomp. (optional, depends on positioning)
• KEYBIND: Pet Attack, Move To, Last Stand.

Things to Remember For After Pet Tank

• SWAP pet if you're using tank pet back for buff pet. FEROCITY  PET CHAMPION.
• TURN OFF GROWL. Animus is not tauntable but if your pet is tenacity you will be so sad when "oops I wrong target SQUISHED MY FRIEND." No Heart of the Phoenix on tenacities.

PROCESS FOR KEEPING THING ON PET

• Use Move To to position pet. Not a big deal because Blink Strikes but prevents one step.
• Click PET TARGET. Have NAMEPLATES ON. Hover mouse over your target.
• When Nameplate appears SLAM FACE ON PET ATTACK.
• Click down on mouse to get your target. SLAM FACE ON ARCANE SHOT.
• Mend Pet because your pet is probably now cowering and crying. As in it literally probably cast cower.
• Stand in awe as pet growls and nothing happens and you're bored and what the fuck is this fight even.
• Use MOVE TO to reposition pet as need be. Remember to tell PET ATTACK again after every MOVE TO. Wait for golem to reach new location before PET ATTACK because Blink Strikes.
• If pet is dying USE AWESOME LAST STAND CAST. Must be in a macro. Macro below.

Or simplify everything with this mouseover macro. Click your target. Hover mouse over pet target. Nameplates appear, press macro. Profit. 

/petattack [@mouseover,harm,nodead][harm]

/cast Arcane Shot

You can see the above macro in action in this video. However, please note that if you are using this macro for the Dark Animus fight itself, then you MUST wait for both health bars to appear above your two anima golems. If there is no health bar, then there is no mouseover target, which means your pet will just go onto whichever golem your attacking. Wipe ensues. 

Last stand Macro:
/cast Last Stand(Tenacity Ability)

You must dodge anima font! There is simply no excuse to stand in these as a hunter. If nothing else is happening, then yes, you can survive standing in one: but standing in this should be a mistake. These hurt like hell and nine times out of ten someone's death on this encounter is directly caused by being hit by an anima font + something else.  Here is a video clip on dodging anima font:

One more thing... If you're being a rebel like me and standing off in the middle of no where, make sure you are in range of healers, dispels but not in range of slam. Your deterrence will block all damage from Matter Swap, but only for you - the other target still takes full damage. 

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5.3 "Focus Fire Frenzy Bug"

I've been reading a lot of reports regarding hunters experiencing a bug involving their frenzy stacks as Beast Mastery. To summarize, these reports are primarily as follows:

 - As BM, hunters pets will not use their special abilities (claw/bite) and therefore will not gain stacks of Frenzy. 

 - This lack of frenzy causes a decline in Focus Fire. 

 - Macroing the special abilities will alleviate this discrepancy, meaning the pet is simply not autocasting appropriately. 

The interesting part to me is that they claim it is only on some bosses, or that it works fine on a target dummy. Furthermore, there are Survival hunters who claim to be experiencing the same thing. Others still claim that swapping their pet out fixes the issue, or that it stops with Blink Strikes. Moreover, others claim that it works sometimes and doesn't others - meaning that for 30 seconds it won't work, but suddenly will again after and so forth. 

As a Marksman hunter I'm in a unique position to offer another alternative to what this bug is caused by primarily just because our damage ratios are different per ability. 

Might's second hunter expressed interest in going Marksman in 5.3 when Binding Shot was swapped to spec only. Prompted by this interest, I started doing some napkin math regarding hunters and noticed a very unfortunate issue. Further down I'm going to share a portion of the post I made on the Might hunter forums regarding this, but to get to the nitty gritty:

Murder of Crows.

edit:  [This is the bug report thread] I've been trying to discuss this problem in. It may not be solely a result of Murder of Crows, but they both may be facing similar cause and effect from this bug affecting all "types" of pets.

If you've been experiencing this pet auto attack bug, I'd like to ask you to share your experience with me so that we can decipher whether or not my hypothesis is correct. Murder of Crows is a strange DoT as the crows act like "pets" - the DoT does not snapshot and the attacks are read separately. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that if "pets" are bugged that it would be affecting MoC in a similar fashion. Alternatively, if it's just MoC that is broken, perhaps it would affect other things with its glitch. That is, Murder of Crows  was savagely brutalizing my proc rate on Capacitance, so my theory is that Murder of Crows is also savagely brutalizing our pets auto casts of Claw. I did try to replicate this on a test dummy, but I was still getting Claw casts with Murder of Crows as Marksman. 

So some questions for you folks with the bug:

1. Are you using Murder of Crows or Blink Strikes?

2. Is your pet not using Claw/Bite AT ALL or only when Murder of Crows is up?
3. Does this other wise work UNTIL you cast Murder of Crows, breaking it indefinitely until swaps?

Here is the snippet from my post:

[...] Which is only half relevant, because during this time I had my hunter autoshot casting on a test dummy in the background...
...And that's the part where it gets extremely infuriating. The Capacitance metagem has an RPPM of 21 with an additional coefficient of 1.1 for marksman and 0.95 for both BM and SV. Despite this, whether as MM or SV all and any autoshots procced one stack of capacitance - which is cool. No other abilities whatsoever procced capacitance - it was only proccing on autos, but it was proccing on any auto regardless of specials, extras, etc used in between. In practice that meant capacitance was stacking once on any auto no matter what, regardless of if haste was 20% or 300%. Where this fucks up in the recent 5.3 changes is here:  Murder of Crows delayed Capacitance regardless of autoshot fires by half the amount.
If you're following with me here, it means this:
lightning strike -> 5 autos -> lightning strike -> 5 autos ad infinitum.
At regular (approx 20%) haste rates this is around 12 seconds from last strike for each 5 stack.
With domestic hunter haste it continued per 5 autos, thus around 8 seconds from last strike for  each 5 stack.
Once MoC was applied, regardless of haste, you were guaranteed to achieve only 5-6 stacks of capacitance during the full 30 second duration. The cooldown on MoC is balls so I sat around all morning dumbfounded testing this in a stupor of this can't be real.
But it was, and the 12-8 second interval between lightning strikes was turned into a 25-28 second interval on any MoC at any haste level. This is TERRIBLE for any hunters opening running MoC because our opening is the best opportunity for our capacitance uptime. The proc is easily as much damage contribution as steady and arcane, so losing it at those  critical moments is extremely unacceptable. Especially when you consider that MoC is not dynamically affected by haste: it will hit 30 times each time no matter what.
On the flip side, the new Blink Strikes works in an opposite manner. It is absolutely affected by haste - and, in fact, haste itself provides the focus regeneration needed to ensure the Wild Hunt. In other words, in the same 30 second time frame regardless of haste, your pet will still land roughly the same amount of Claw/Bites. Which at first makes it seem similar to MoC - both readjust based on agi and proc values, but don't gain "ticks" from haste - when in reality, Claw is being bolstered both by these proc values AND gaining at least a 50-60% uptime on an additional 100% damage. The result of this is an average unbuffed claw sitting at 12k, increasing to 18k under strikes, and again increasing to upwards of 70k under wild hunt.
Putting that against MoC worked like this:
Over 30 seconds and domestic haste buffs from 20% gave an approximate 3.75 lightning strikes. With none, it was 2.5. At an average hit of 65k, thats ~244k under 30 seconds of domestic haste or ~162k without.   MoC, averaging 10k * 30 ticks with a maximum of one strike regardless of haste is a maximum total 365k.
An unaffected Blink Strikes sequence would average 8 claws @ regular damage for 144k plus the free reign of strike procs: no haste being 144 + 244 or a maximum total around 388k.
In other words, under no affect the maximum of MoC was around 365 versus Blinks 390. It's still pennies in the long string of things, until you consider that these 30 second time frames are in MoCs favour. Blink Strikes, unlike MoC, is active throughout the  entire fight - therefore, a 7.5 minute encounter will only have 4 * 30 -> around 2 minutes of up time for MoC with an alternative 100% uptime for Blink Strikes .... And, of course, it would be dynamically boosted by haste. This is otherwise unimportant for hunters not running with the Talisman of Bloodlust because they have predictable uptimes of haste above and below 60% with Rapid Fire having a similar cooldown to MoC (3min for 15s vs 2min for 30s). Berserking only helps. Counterpoint a static 15% haste increase with Steady Focus and ---
Basically, what I'm getting at is fuck murder of crows.

edit:
Some relevant bug report threads:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8891579796
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8874267604
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8874267590
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1536255491
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8874267590

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Might Heroic-Mode Entries, Primordius + Iron Qon [ToT Raid]

Seventh Heroic was PRIMORDIUS

I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

Primordius is a strange and terrible mix of several hunter options. On one hand, we have the capability of doing the highest damage to the boss over nearly every other class. On the other hand, we are capable of providing decent AoE to blow up adds, especially including barrage being a cone that will hit all targets in front of us. Yet, on a third hand (mutant powers, stay with me here), we're also still fantastic utility capable of target swapping to where ever we're needed most with the highest form of DPS mobility.

That said, I feel all three specs on heroic Primordius have valid capacities. To what degree, I'm unsure. In my case I was filling more of a utility role and my performance is full of smoke and mirrors to the true potential of a hunters single target on Primordius. However, my suggestion is that if it's between Beast Mastery or Survival, go Survival.  Not because you can AoE pad for higher numbers, but because Survival will be the least affected by the random generator that Primordius' oozees provide you with the buffs of and simply because Survival is the most forgiving.

In my case, I was given the sad, dismal bitch job of aiding with Viscous Horrors. But don't get me wrong: Since I was playing Marksman, this was actually a very intelligent move. Each time a new Horror spawned, a marksman hunter is placed back into Careful Aim. Of all the class choices to help "burst" down the first half of a Viscous Horrors health, a Marksman hunter is one of the best.

Therefore, don't expect any magic performance tips from this video on how to make your damage through the roof on Primordius. Also don't expect magic tips on how to get yourself a fresh buff by killing an ooze. In this video, I am fed the first 4 stacks of buffs so that I can get on the oozes faster. Note that I said 4 stacks - if this is what you are doing, then it is better to save that 5th stack for when you are done helping with the first 3 Horror's and are preparing to switch your focus more towards Primordius (until you're needed again). The nice part about this is that you will not have your buffs falling off at the same time as the tanks. If you get 5 stacks right away, the next time the tank calls for your help because his buffs are falling off is the same time you're not going to be very useful since your buffs are falling off too. Delay this by getting 4 at the start instead and you are golden. You'll get more uptime from your 2 minute buff on Primordius.

It is an absolute dismal sin not to have your range finder on. This is the fight where you absolutely have to watch where you are going. It is more unforgivable to walk over people on Primordius than it is to fail clearing out a Ji-Kun nest or AoE padding when your burst is needed. Be very aware of the space around you, the people around you, where they are moving and how much attention they are paying.

Spacing issues seemed to be alleviated once we kept the boss on one side of the room with the horrors in the other, rotating around the same general location. This also made life easy for the add killing team who needed only to turret on the three lanes opposite.

Chances are you are capable of soaking Caustic Gas, and therefore I suggest doing so as often as possible.

I tried to do a brief analysis to gauge how I did on Primordius as Marksman despite having been on Viscous Horrors. Therefore, I went looking for the Survival and BM hunters with the best performances and the most similar timestamps. Here are the two I chose:
Beast Mastery, Bowflxx - http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/6njg0s0kj76c4j4b/analyze/dd/source/?s=1636&e=2104&target=1
Survival, Milky - http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-jsbaa9ocmhp1lcrt/analyze/dd/source/?s=4619&e=5083&target=34

First off, props to the first one for that fantastic performance on the boss target as Beast Mastery. If you're looking for a log to analyze to improve single target on Primordius as a hunter, do a cross comparison with Bowflxx's. Fantastic job and really highlights the potential of all three specs on this fight.

This is what I wanted to know: Their DPSe on the boss and their DPSe on the Horrors in comparison to mine. The BM hunters DPSe on the boss was 150k and 0k on horrors; the SV did 120k to Primordius and 23k to horrors; I, as marksman, did 77k to Primordius and 59k to horrors. That means for pure throughput the BM did the best with 150k focus on Primordius, while the SV's throughput was 143k split between two focuses with a higher prioritization on Primordius and my throughput was 136k split fairly evenly between the two. Since it's not the case that we benefit from target swapping and that part of "damage discrepancy" will result on Primordius from raid environment and buff selection, I'm actually okay with these results. I think, given the opportunity, that a Marksman full time single target could give the single target focus of 150k a good run for its money. In all cases there is room for improvement, and there are definitely things I would do better, but the main thing to take away from this is that there is no clear cut correct path. I don't feel I would play SV and BM as well as I do MM without a least a weeks worth of practice first, so such a small discrepancy between the higher ranking players on a fight between a class spec that is highly undervalued and considered inferior while also being given a disadvantageous job is fine by me. Pick what is the best for you and the best for your raids role.
Raiding is about the raid.
Also: Make fun of Jade for raiding Marksman. Don't worry, I fear for Marksman in the face of 5.3 Blink Strikes. 

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Eighth Heroic was IRON QON

I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

Iron Qon. This was the big one to me because it was the one I was being made fun of the most for still sticking with Marksmanship. My hunter honour was put on the line. To others, it is without any shadow of a doubt the correct method to pull Beast Mastery. Popular opinion, however, should never dictate action. Beast Mastery, for me, is barely a 200 DPS difference in simulation. Indeed, that is a difference: but one I can negate by playing Marksman better and taking advantage of its perks. Iron Qon is another fantastic example of the equality of hunter specs, and also of the dangers of damage padding.

In the first fire phase, there's not much to do as ranged. You spread out and DPS the dog. Every once in a while you might have to break someone out of a cloud, which you should definitely be prepared for. As a  result you will be spread out as ranged to avoid arcing lightning damage. There will also be a tornado being blown around, but it's incredibly difficult to miss and likely won't be aimed at you anyway. For the most part, though, this lets you focus entirely on doing your opening precisely. This is the benefit Marksmen and Beast Masters always hope for at the start of an encounter. Always push damage onto Qon when he hops off a dog: I'm not entirely convinced DoTs stay on him, but it's cheap for a survival to do and he otherwise retains the damage dealt to him when he's on foot.

The second phase provides slightly more differentiation. You can, and should, strafe away from where you were standing when an Frost Spike goes out. There is an animation below your character if it's on you or not. It is also possible to deterrence the ice bolt that goes out, but chances are you'll miss the timing. There are more effective places for deterrence. Windstorm: The only time it will kill you is if you are hit by a tornado. Never, ever play chicken with a tornado. For each lane, wait for the passing tornado to go through. It is far easier to clip a tornado trying to walk in front of it than it is walking behind.  If you watch the video, you'll also see that I dispel the myth that you are considered in the same spot you started disengage until you land. We don't work that way. I have no issue using disengage to get past the final two lanes of tornadoes with my last ticks of health to spare. If this is too risky for you, then play it safe with deterrence instead.

Watch your range finder. There's no reason to walk into someone without/with arcing lightning when you have it/don't simply because you weren't paying attention or weren't being conscientious of available space.  You can avoid doing this most of the time even if you have a spear being thrown on you. Soon after the third dog will show up, and there's really nothing special about this beyond having to sit on your hands if your area of the map gets handed a dead zone.  Jump over Frozen Blood.

Finally, when all three dogs come to play, there's only slight leeway for AoE padding. You must still burst these dogs down so that Roshak does not cause any problems. For sure, take advantage of what AoE you have, but not at the expense of having the raid die when you could have pushed the phase faster by focus targeting. Healing is rough. This is the one bane and criticism I have with most people comparing SV performances. My damage throughput for the encounter was 148k with 6 multishot hits, the best beast master I could find who out paced me did 159k with 7 multishot hits, and the best survival was 165k with 34 multishot hits. It paints a picture when the difference in casts is that high. So, again, my closest comparison was this 159k fella, and combined with a 5 ilevel difference of a few key items worth several thousand DPS and a few mistakes I can polish up, I'm still pretty confident with that result. Going through the several pages of parses for all three specs makes it very clear their potential is all incredibly similar. Always compare to someone who seemed to do better, though. The difference between BM and MM might (will) change in 5.3, but until that data is available: Play what you do best, then play its performance to help the raid.

Deterrence is very good for the final burn. I also suggest saving cooldowns for a bit in order to use them when they're most needed, but ultimately you will have to make that call for the specific timing of your encounter. 

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Might Heroic-Mode Entries, Ji-Kun + Council of Elders [ToT Raid]

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:

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.

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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.

<Macro's here when servers are back up.>

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Might Heroic-Mode Entries, Tortos + Megaera [ToT Raid]

Might is still looking for a hunter. Read about Might in the MMO-Champ recruitment thread.
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.

/cast [target=humming crystal] Concussive Shot

/target Tortos
/cast A Murder of Crows
/targetlasttarget

/cast [target=focus] Misdirection

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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. 

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Normal Mode Jikun as Marksmanship [ToT Raid Specifics]

I touched briefly on all the bosses in previous posts; once in our normal mode clear of the boss and once again in my discussion of the three specializations. In both, I heavily insinuated Survival was the best choice for Jikun. For the most part, I stand by that comment. 

However, I've been spoken to a lot about Marksmanship on this fight and I'd like to share some more specific experience using MM for Jikun. As such, I've gone into my stream and highlighted a video segment from this weeks raid. It's also just a good fight to be thinking about, since it's coming up quickly for heroic content. Though maybe 4AM isn't the best time for me to be doing so?  Ehh.

First of all: Jikun was changed slightly since my posts. Previously, in order to get Primal Nutriment, you had to pick it up from the yellow globules. Not just that, you had to pick it up from the front tip of the yellow globules. The changes have since made it incredibly easier to get the primal nutriment buff. Now all you have to do is touch any globule - and some of the trail residue works just as well. Basically, if you're anywhere in the vicinity of Jikuns mouth / falling globules, you're going to get your buff. 

This is absolutely excellent news because it makes maintaining this buff easier, lines up with timing better and allows you to benefit your damage while preventing a green pool from landing on the platform (just watch your damage intake). You want to grab this as much as possible while ensuring you have enough flights to hit all your nests. I tried to make sure I was able to have my primal nutriment buff before I had to go to my lower platform to benefit my AoE burst as much as possible.

This also has excellent potential for AoE clean up of loose juveniles in the air. You can pop your wings before a Feed cast, grab your primal nutriment, then use the rest of your air time AoEing extra birds in the sky. Hopefully you don't have a lot of loose juveniles, though!

You'll notice in this video that I lag behind on my first nest. You'll also notice that the Feed timer on my Big Wigs is coming up. My waiting was definitely on purpose, because I knew those few extra seconds of down time was going to have a big payload as soon as I grabbed a nutriment from the air. Go too soon and you miss out. Watch out for other casts, though: if Jikun is about to do Quills or Downdraft, the Feed cast will be delayed.

You can also use your wings to escape from being blown off by Downdraft, which is very useful for LFR.

My performance in this video as Marksman was higher than most people have been seeing as Survival, and since I usually don't rank as survival (usually float around 90-105% of the rank limit for this spec, alas), I gathered this meant I did particularly well and someone could potentially learn something new about timing that would help them.

Watch live video from nakauri on TwitchTV

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Might Heroic-Mode Entries, Jin'Rokh + Horridon [ToT Raid]

So I had the brilliant idea that I'd wait until we'd downed a few heroic modes before writing them. Needless to say, I immediately regretted this decision as heroic progression is always much slower than normal mode first clears. That said, heroics have a completely different, smaller niche from the majority of raiders so I think it's fair if they're a little delayed. Two weeks ago Might killed Jin'rokh; this week we killed Horridon. Below I'll go over both similarly to how I have been, and also include kill videos from my perspective. Usually I do multiple perspective heroic videos, but for the interest of a hunter crowd it seemed irrelevant to merge them. Multiple perspectives/different classes will be on WoWProgress for those curious on that front.

Casually mentioning that Might is recruiting hunters. Preferably someone with heroic or past heroic experience, but if you can talk about your class appropriately then by all means. I'd rather have a hunter I can discuss with and I know plays well than a hunter who can boast about good heroic experience they only played to a mediocre par. Might's site is on my front page. Or read about Might in the MMO-Champ recruitment thread.

First Heroic was JIN'ROKH

I was playing as MARKSMANSHIP

So here's the interesting thing about Jin'rokh. I've expressed before that I think survival is the best choice for Jin'rokh for similar reasons that it was for Protectors of the Endless (damage buffs). Now, I do believe that I play marksmanship at a slightly better level than I play survival, and definitely acknowledge I have room for improvement as both: but I saw better results in this first kill of Jin'rokh with a much lower ilevel as marksmanship than I did on our latest Jin'rokh as survival. I'm skeptical now and will be doing some tests regarding that, but this isn't the place. You may see another post from me specifically about Jin'rokh and the specs in the future, however. For those interested, or those who want to tell me how to play SV, here's a comparebot from this first kill as MM and my latest with a higher gear as SV.

There are very few differences for hunters in the heroic version of this fight. The first and most prominent is Ionization. By now you've probably read enough to understand Ionization if you're doing heroic fights, but let me talk about it two weeks late anyway: As a hunter, you can fully reflect this cast. Prior to ionization going out you can use deterrence, which will completely prevent the debuff from being applied to you. If you miss this, you can still get out of the pool and use deterrence to reduce the 450k damage. Don't miss reflecting the debuff, though. There's no reason not to. This means you will need the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera talent. 

The second most prominent difference is in the intermission Lightning Storm. Instead of simply dealing AoE damage, you now have to dodge a series of lightning balls (four, to be exact) that spawn radially from Lightning Strikes. We decided not to hang out in the middle of the room to continue damaging Jin'rokh, favouring the grate for dodging lightning balls because we figured it would reduce the amount we had to deal with. Your group might not do this. Here's a video showing the process of a lightning strike in slow motion. 

Some less noticeable points that are useful: 

• When people are kiting an orb (Focused Lightning), you can be killed if you're in the path for too long. Take a few side steps to be out of the way.  
• Tend to the side of the pool you need to kite away from. If you're kiting to the left grate, be on the left side of the pool. Be ready to move to the opposite side if someone else is kiting or the storm is coming. 
• If you have the last focused lightning orb of a phase before the storm, take it to the same side the rest of the raid is going for the storm. You don't want to get caught on the other side of an electrified pool, even if disengage is up. Negate if your guild is going to the middle. 
• It is far easier to see the lightning balls during the Lightning Storm from strikes if your camera is pointed directly down. You can then foresight what places will not be safe by judging the directions balls are flying from their strikes. This is very professionally NOT shown in the following video, as I was exceptionally unprofessional at dodging these on our first kill. They are, however, very easy to work around once you know how they work. 
• Do not be where the tank is going to land. It hurts. A lot. You can also wipe the raid if you get a Focused Lightning orb while you are stunned. 

I recommend a Deterrence macro for this fight. This macro will stop whatever cast you are currently doing (particularly cobra/steady shot), check if deterrence is up and if so cancel it, then use deterrence if it's off cooldown. What this means is this macro lets you use Deterrence exactly when you need to use it and cancel it exactly when it is no longer needed. This will increase your damage uptime by removing the need to wait the full 5 second duration and ensure you don't accidentally miss the cast by clipping Ionization too late. One warning though: Do NOT spam this. If you spam it, you will put deterrence up and immediately cancel it. This is not useful, since it's basically the same as not having deterrence. Basically, be tranquil as a forest, but on fire within; once you find your centre, etc etc, sure to win, etc.

#showtooltip 

/stopcasting

/stopcasting

/cancelaura Deterrence

/cast Deterrence

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Second Heroic was HORRIDON

I was playing as SURVIVAL

Believe it or not, I considered going Marksman for this fight. I didn't because I feel this fight very heavily relies on DoTs to be successful. I said DoTs, not AoE - though AoE DoTs are nice too. Before you declare me as crazy, let me explain.

Horridon is, undeniably, an AoE fight. It spawns multiple little and medium adds in waves in addition to the boss that have to be killed by a specific time and hamper the raid by being alive. They need to die. On heroic, this is still true but includes several complications. For example, the first medium add that spawns for each door spawns alone and it's usually extremely beneficial to have it dead before the next wave of two come. You want to AoE, cleave, etc, but  you also want to sink a considerable amount of single target focus in some areas. If your AoE detracts from your single target, this is hindering that requirement. However, if your AoE applies a DoT, then it is beneficial to apply that single target damage. This is especially true of Horridon himself, as the increasing damage debuff on him makes keeping DoT uptime significantly important. So how do you sink good single target damage into a medium add while also ensuring your uptime on DoTs is good on the boss? Survival AoE, simple. 

I struggled a lot with write ups I was reading about performing as Survival on this fight. Nearly everyone suggested going full AoE, using talents such as Barrage and Thrill of the Hunt to increase cone sweeping and multishots. While I acknowledged AoE was certainly important, and adds definitely needed to die, preferably ASAP, this blatant full on AoE felt like inefficient padding to me. I want to be the most efficient, not simply have the biggest numbers. Thus, it was hard to do my research via rank log browsing because most ranking hunters on heroic Horridon went for full AoE add clean up. It wasn't until I found a hunter who had zero uptime on explosive trap that I realized how I wanted to approach Survival on this fight. 

Heroic Horridon is a DPS race in more ways than just AoE. It's a very real single target DPS race that a lot of guilds have trouble making. They'll hit the enrage, have to kite the boss around and hope they don't hit the next Dire Calls hard enrage. Not to say that add cleanup and AoE is the wrong way to go, because it's certainly a very real element of the encounter. You'll have to decide how you think the best way to go for your raid situation is.

Here's what I did, though: I had Fervor, Murder of Crows and Glaive Toss. I like Fervor over TotH because it gives me very specific control of my focus regeneration. On the first gate, I prioritized misdirecting and DPSing the Wastewalkers until the Dinomancer dropped. Then I swapped to him, upon which I would get right back onto Horridon when the orb was clicked and the shell debuff up. On the second gate, I would stick to Horridon until the Venom Priests came out - I would then try to sink as much single target into these as possible, while also cleaving any add nearby to keep Serpent Sting buffs ticking on those. Whenever possible, I prioritized getting rid of an effusion over anything else. On the third gate I considered add clean up considerably more than the others and barely touched Horridon at all. Fourth gate, same thing - prioritizing getting war bears > shaman > casters down in that order. Every Murder of Crows I had was supposed to go on Horridon. Every Black arrow also went on Horridon. Unless you know Explosive trap is going to get its full duration (ie, the mobs aren't going to be moved OFF the trap area) it's more efficient to use the debuff to your advantage with Black Arrow as your LnL source. That said, explosive trap will give you more LnL procs, so if your strategy allows you to get proper use from this - or better yet, up time on Horridon with it - then go with that. 

I'm happy with the results I saw. Definitely could have better uptime of some of my DoTs on Horridon, though, and having the Dire Horn on me so early was unfortunate too. One thing I wasn't actively considering during the fight was my Glaive Toss. Preferably, I can improve by making sure my Glaive Tosses PRIMARY target is Horridon, and all the little adds are being hit by it on its way there. Remember, each strike your secondary Glaive Toss does increases the primary's target damage. If you're using Barrage, this is a moot point for you.

In regards to Dire Horn management: Snake Trap. It's awesome. Use it for Dire Horns. Be very aware, though, as your snakes are finicky and will not always go on the Dire Horn. If there are no other targets in range except for the spirit, the snakes will not spawn at all. Preferably you put your trap down where it will be in range of Horridon. This way, snakes will spawn and some of them have a high chance of going onto the Dire Horn spirit. Another option is to put your pet on it, but this is a significantly higher DPS loss and will eventually despawn the pet. I do this at towards the end of the fight simply for convenience sake, but you'll notice I have a lot of down time forgetting about it. Worse, I do this while my Stampede is running and lose all my stampede pets. Woops. My Horridon rank wasn't very impressive (142) and I expect it to be gone by next week, but given all my mistakes and the lack of AoE centricism I'm happy with it. 

Finally, I suggest a disengage macro for this fight. At the very end I move to spread out for enrage kiting, but as I am doing this the boss is moved towards me. I die, because I wasn't able to get out of the double swipe in time. Not to say I didn't try - I pressed my disengage button, but I had forgotten to put this macro in my Survival spec. If I had this macro in, I would not have died. 

#showtooltip

/stopcasting

/stopcasting

/cast disengage

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Might Normal-Mode Finalization Summary [ToT Raid]

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).

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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.  

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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)

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