Stabilized Effort Scope

A Few Things…

First: I will not be doing a post about the Ensidia nonsense on SES. End of story. I have my reasons, and do not begrudge any author who chooses to do so.

Second: About SES strategies for Valithria, Sindragosa, and Arthas, these won’t be published until I see them and down them in person. The information out currently is just too sketchy to try and put together a Hunter-centric guide for them at this time. They’ll be here as soon as I feel that I can compose a quality guide for you guys, because I luff you. <3

Lastly: I has a birdeh at last. :D

Oh, and sorry about the lack of content that’s not “here’s how you kill shit” and “oh, hey, I killed shit”. Low creative resources + not much news = that’s what you guys get :(

Godkarmachine O’ Inary

The perfect of culmination of every potential thing going right has borne into what was, on the whole, a rather clean kill after some crushing wipes at 5.1%, 3.6%, and 0.7%.

Culmination that included the absolute, very best potential Serpent Sting ever. This is MY Godkarmachine.

Nothing that came out of this really alters anything that I’ve written for the Putricide strategy guide. It’s fast-paced, it comes down to the wire, and it is 100% hinged on your Phase 3 transition. Best of luck!

Found Your Weakness!

Many Hunters are starting to access the two-piece T10 bonus, and some are starting to learn the power of this Blizzard-ordained exploit. It grows in power as you add to it further procs, powers, and the like, and is something that you need to learn its potential.

Its brightest gain is what it can do to Serpent Sting. Much like Warlocks who can abuse Crit bonuses from items like Nevermelting Ice Crystal and the like with Everlasting Affliction, we can abuse both +Crit and +Damage% buffs with Chimera Shot. This means that Chimera Shot will lock in the +Damage and +Crit modifiers of any Sting that is active when it lands.

What does this mean for T10 bonus? That means you can permanently increase the damage of Serpent by 18% and increase its crit chance significantly if you re-apply Serpent.

Consider the bonuses given by T10 2P and Culling the Herd, plus the crit chance gain from Paragon and Deathbringer’s Will. That’s 18% more damage and 18% more critical strike chance – critical strike chance that is still very relevant if you retain (and you should be) your 2p T9 bonus. An additional 18% finds me sitting near 90-92% crit raid-buffed – imagine your Serpent Sting having that high a crit for an entire raid encounter. When I line up the stars in this manner, I can have a Serpent Sting that’s ticking for 1200+ and critting for nearly 2700 damage indefinitely, so long as I maintain Chimera focus – all with a near-100% critrate.

Obviously, this requires some mental focus on any encounter that isn’t Festergut. If you use your focus to track your main tank, a macro such as /cast [@focustarget] Chimera Shot can allow you to keep your Chimeras fired at the main target (Putricide) while you DPS an ancillary target (slimes). Alternatively, using the main boss as your focus and doing /cast [@focus] Chimera Shot can accomplish the same concept.

This is one of the many “little things” that can unite to create wonderfully big parses. DPSing is an art of finding these little things and orchestrating them together – aligning the stars, as I call it. Consider this “tip” the Mercury in your own constellation.

Also, it’s required that when you proc 2p T10, you shout “Found your weakness!“. Don’t get spanked by your sister when you do so however.

I love the Power Auras. They’re so bad.

(+5 nerd points if you get the reference.)

So over time, I’ve slowly learned to stop worrying and love the bomb Power Auras. As you’ll see below, however, mine aren’t the convoluted mass of glyphs, funny icons, and whatnot that others use – mine are more subtle.

A far cry from most Hunters’ Power Aura setups, eh? :P But they do exactly what I need without becoming a screen-devouring monster. There’s three tiers, with one “emergency” marker (you can tell because it’s bigger and red), and I’ll explain them all.

Big Red RF: This is my emergency marker, that is actually a combination of three Power Auras at once. Two of them are invisible – they are markers that say “Is Readiness Not Usable?” and “Is Rapid Fire Usable?”. The third one, the one that fires this big red RF that you see, says “Do I Have the Rapid Fire Buff?”. If all three are true – Readiness is not up, Rapid Fire is, and I don’t have the Rapid Fire buff, this pops up to say “HEY, FUCKWIT, FIRE YOUR SECOND RAPID FIRE!”, but in less letters.

Row 1 – C, R, A: This is tracking for my major abilities – Chimera, Rapid Fire, and Aimed. These will fade in as soon as the ability’s off cooldown – even if I’m in the GCD or something – so as soon as a letter pops up, I know to start mashing that key to get my next one fired off. These are good because, even if I can’t look at my action bars, these are right in the middle of the screen, right on my character, so they’re easy to spot.

Row 2 – H, S: This is for tracking debuffs against my current target – Hunter’s Mark and Serpent Sting. The Hunter’s Mark one is more mutable – it tracks any Hunter’s Mark on the target at all, so long as it’s there – but the Serpent Sting one is very strict, and ONLY tracks my stings. These two not being lit up = I’m losing DPS = something is going wrong here.

Row 3 – E, F, C: This row tracks major short-duration buffs on me – Exploit Weakness, Fatal Flaws, and Culling the Herd. All of these indicate that it’s time to start really rocking the damage, and Exploit Weakness is unusually important to track – I want to try and line up EW with a Culling proc and a Deathbringer’s Will-Crit proc to re-apply my Serpent Sting for a massive sting that does 18% more damage and has a 17% higher chance to crit, which then gets rolled indefinitely with Chimera Shot. Other bloggers have touched on this, but I’ll reinforce it – if you have DBW or 2p T10, watch these buffs intelligently and try to apply a new Serpent Sting during the best combination – EW, Culling, and a 600 Crit proc. (600 Agi procs are okay because you still get more crit.)

Now, let’s say you like my Power Auras setup. Hell, I do. You’re probably asking “hey, Rilgon, how can I steal that from you?”.

You can steal it by grabbing this text file and importing its contents into Power Auras, that’s how! You’ll need to adjust the Culling the Herd one to use your name instead of mine, however.

As always, comments/suggestions/questions/Chromie smut are always allowed and appreciated.

Icecrown Citadel: nom nom nom nom blood nom nom

The second limited attempt boss, Blood Queen Lana’thel, is the naughty love child of Lord Jaraxxus and Mother Shahraz, with the need for high levels of communication, an extremely high DPS race, and tons of raid healing needed. Spreading out is required, but there’s a lot of need to move. Oh, and you turn into vampires. nom nom.

Short version: Nom on fellow raider neck, spread out unless called on to collapse, and DPS/heal your brains out.

Lana’thel will test your ability to carefully balance movement, spreading out, collapsing, and running nasty debuffs out of raid. You’ll also need high levels of coordination and communication – the spreading of Essence of the Blood Queen needs to be spread intelligently. There’s a lot of things to be aware of at once.

Twilight Bloodbolt: She fires out a few of these every so often; I don’t remember how many or how often, but it’s the main source of potential death and chaos. It does 10k-ish Shadow damage, and splashes to anyone within 6 yards of you, meaning you need to be at least 6 yards spread out from everyone. Does not sparkle (thank god).

Pact of the Darkfallen: Mother Shahraz Mk.2! If you remember Mother’s Fatal Attraction, this is Fatal Attraction in reverse. Three people (two on 10-player) will be linked, and be doing large amounts of Shadow damage to themselves and everyone around them until they are within 5 yards of each other, at which point the Pact will be broken. You have to immediately collapse towards the other Pact members, as this will quickly obliterate your raid if not severed as quickly as possible.

Shroud of Sorrow: Raid-wide damage, which increases over time as more people have Essence of the Blood Queen.

Blood Mirror: The person closest to your MT will take 100% of the damage that the MT takes as Shadow damage. Your OT/Mirror soaker will need to gear for absolute max HP.

Swarming Shadows: It’s Legion Flames.

Essence of the Blood Queen: This is where the fight gets fun. About 20 seconds into the fight, Lana’thel will run over and bite someone. This person will gain the Essence, doubling their damage output and causing them to heal themselves for 15% of the damage they deal. After 60 (75 on 10 man) seconds, you will enter a Bloodfrenzy for 15 seconds, forcing you to bite someone or be permanently MC’d by Lana’thel. The Bloodfrenzy will replace your normal action bar, so target your designated bite target and spam the first button. Once you bite someone, you will have the Essence again, meaning that the soft enrage for this becomes running out of necks to gnaw on, since you can’t bite another vamp.

After a certain period of time (it felt like 2 minutes), Lana’thel will fly into the air after doing an AoE fear. Once the fear wears off, she will spam Bloodbolts every 2 seconds for about 8 seconds, doing a HUGE amount of raidwide damage. Everyone must absolutely ensure that they are 6 yards apart from everyone, as two bloodbolts at the same time on two people that splash to each other is guaranteed death.

The crux of the encounter is careful placement, quick severance of Pacts, and intelligent communication and distribution of bites. Anyone with a on-crit bleed effect or DoTs that they can roll will benefit extremely heavily from the Essence – this includes Shadow Priests, MM Hunters, Warriors, and the like, but everyone should get bitten by the end, as she has over 11m HP on 10-man and a whopping sixty million HP on 25-man.

Achievement: Once Bitten, Twice Shy – DOES count towards Drake meta – A personal achievement, which simply requires you to kill her twice; once as a vampire (having the essence), once as a mortal (without the essence).

Shinies: Stakethrower (10-man), Seal of the Twilight Queen (10-man, does not make you sparkle), Bloodfall (25-man), Protector’s Mark of Sanctification (25-man).

Blood for the Blood God!

As usual, strategy post forthcoming. This is a very fun fight, and you guys will have fun with it when you get there, I’m sure. :)

Lower Your Defenses

It would seem that the Vaelastrasz Effect is making a comeback in Icecrown Citadel. More and more, I see people on Twitter commenting that tempers are flaring in their raids, people flinging accusations at lower-performing raid members and the ones being called out are retaliating and becoming overly defensive and emo about it.

This is a plea to everyone who may be on the receiving end of these sorts of accusations – please lower the defensive attitude and take the statements for what they are: constructive criticism.

I know that, in my post about the Dungeon Finder system, I stated that I did not expect raid-caliber performance of anyone but myself in these random, one-off encounters with people who I don’t know. That all changes when I step through a green portal, be it in a PUG or with my guild. I expect you to know what stats your class/spec should pursue, and why. I expect your gear to be enchanted with the best enchants available, within reason (things like Cat’s Swiftness are a fringe thing that I personally consider better but the cost is often ridiculous prohibitive); gemmed in all slots with appropriate epic gems (and if you look like a bonus-chaser, I expect you to mathematically justify the chasing); and consumables for all purposes – the bare minimum to raid at your class’s best potential. Gear is something that is dependent on that almighty bitch known as the RNG, but everything other than that is within your control.

But it goes beyond that. It goes to, if you can’t immediately use an item, don’t take it over someone who can do so. Recent example: I saw a healing-oriented caster dagger go to one healer over another healer who was still using a dagger from ToC10, while the healer that won it wields a 245 staff from ToGC10. To date, the healer that won the dagger is STILL using the staff, quoting lack of access to a supporting offhand. In that situation, why on earth would this person not defer it to the second healer who could immediately use it? Optimize yourself, yes, but also work for optimization of the raid. One very-geared person and nine/twenty-four other sub-geared players does not a successful raid make. This concept also holds true in the idea of scale of upgrade – a Hunter friend I know lost FOUR Trophies of the Crusade which they intended to use for a T9 245 helm – a helm that we all know is BIS until either 277 Tier 10 4p or, barring that, Cataclysm. I know I’ve deferred 258 weapons to someone with a 232 while I had a 245 – because it was a better benefit for the overall raid group.

When you are called out for violating these tenets, do not immediately throw up your Shield Wall and start trying to deter the conversation. Take what they are saying at face value – not any sort of attack – and analyze yourself and realize what you are doing wrong. When you enter into a raid dungeon with a group, you are making a social contract with nine or twenty-four other people saying “I am here to perform the role that my class and spec represents, and will do so to the absolute best capacity that it can be done by my class and spec.” Doing anything less is, quite honestly, an insult to those other nine or twenty-four people, and it should come as no shock at all when they become frustrated and hostile at you for doing so.

In the words of a very wise cow, be a raider, not someone who simply raids.

Icecrown Citadel: Edward was a terrible Council member

Council encounters are always pretty fun. They typically involve moving out of tons of shit on the ground – the Illidari Council are often regarded as the Super Bowl of Not Standing In Shit – and the Blood Princes are no exception to this. A ranged tank (probably a Lock) will be entertaining one while the other two are tanked traditionally, and there’s plenty of shit to kite, not stand in, and divert attention to. A fun, if somewhat easy on normal, execution fight.

Short Version: Juggle the bombs, kite the fireballs, and ensure your ranged tank has a gaggle of nuclei. Chase the vampire with more than 1 HP, and try to DPS from max range.

So the Blood Princes is a trio of cockbags that have harassed us in the past – Prince Keleseth from Utgarde Keep, Prince Valanar from Borean Tundra, and Prince Taldaram from Ahn’kahet. Lore-aware Draenei will immediately recognize Valanar as Councilor Talbot, the shit-sucking prick that turned away a squad of Hand of Argus members at Valiance Keep who were trying to enlist due to them being potentially “untrustworthy” and possibly “scaring the existing conscripts”. For me and other lore-aware Draenei players, this is a revenge battle.

The gimmick here is Invocation of Blood – all three Princes are attackable, but only the one with Invocation of Blood has a discernible HP pool – the others sit at 1 HP and attacking them does nothing to dent the total HP pool of the council. Be aware that, however, you CAN still generate threat while a Prince is not Invocated, so you can easily use Misdirection to coax Keleseth onto your ranged tank. Valanar will be the first Prince to have the Invocation, and after that, it jumps randomly on a time-related basis. Each Prince has a few abilities, each of which get more powerful when they have the Invocation.

Valanar:
*Shock Vortex/Empowered Shock Vortex: Normal version will put a vortex under a random raid member’s feet that does damage and a MASSIVE knockback to anyone within 13 yards of it. It’s pretty obvious, so stay away from it. Empowered version is a long cast that will hit everyone within 30 yards of Valanar for some decent damage and a small knockback. As a Hunter, you should try to outrange this, but if you can’t, Deterrence says no to it.
*Kinetic Bomb: These are glowy light orbs that float down slowly. If they touch the ground, they explode for like 15k damage and do a two hundred yard knockback. Your objective as a Hunter is to prevent that by shooting them – this bounces them up into the air, higher and higher. They persist for one minute, at which point they dissipate harmlessly.

Keleseth:
*Shadow Lance/Empowered Shadow Lance: Generic shadow damage spell. Does about 15k damage normally, or 80k damage when Empowered on a 1.5 second cast. To survive the Empowered ones, you need…
*Summon Dark Nucleus: Keleseth summons these little purple balls that float about and harm themselves (think Collapsing Stars on Alglaon). However, these are good for you – do a quick instant on one and it’ll float to you and resonate near you, doing a teeny bit of Shadow damage over time and giving you a three-times stacking debuff that decreases the shadow damage you take by 35% per stack. This is absolutely critical to keep three-stacked to both survive the empowered shadow lances AND to get you the achievement for this.

Taldaram:
*Conjure Flame Sphere/Empowered Flame Sphere: It’s a orange ball of fire. You kite it. The longer you do so, the less damage it does when it lands, and if you kite it long enough, it winks out of existence. Regular version starts at 10,000 damage, Empowered version starts at 50,000 damage. It does AoE damage when it lands, too, so MAKE SURE YOU KITE THE DAMN THING. The Empowered one loses its damage by “bleeding” it off onto the raid as you kite it around, so make sure you (counter-intuitively) drag it around the raid a bit to sponge off some of the damage.
*Glittering Sparks: lololol twilight reference which is a frontal cone attack that does damage, applies a DoT, knocks you back, and does all kinds of nasty shit. Much like Slime Spray, avoid this, but Deterrence it if you can’t.

Your job as a Hunter is simple: Bounce up the Kinetic Bombs, provide MDs for your ranged tank when Keleseth is Empowered, and stay 30 yards away from Valanar when he’s empowered. Otherwise, DPS your brains out.

Shinies: Taldaram’s Soft Slippers (10-man, LEATHER, EXERCISE TACT AND GENERAL RAID ETIQUETTE), Blood-Drinker’s Girdle (10-man, kinda side-grade-y to Night Raven), Hersir’s Greatspear (10-man), Treads of the Wasteland (25-man, worse than Rock-Steady IMO, but they have hit)

Achievement: The Orb Whisperer – DOES count for Drake Meta – No one can take more than 23k in a single hit, spell-damage wise. Don’t fuck up the fireballs and keep a proper gaggle of Nuclei on your ranged tank when Keleseth is empowered and you should be golden!

Icecrown Citadel: The Only News is Good News

Putricide is the master of the flesh beasts Festergut and Rotface, and requires the same prowess from both – Festergut’s DPS burn speed and Rotface’s finesse and execution requirements. He borrows Vezax’s Shadow Crash and covers it in ooze, forces constant tank kiting, and culminates in the most intense 35-0 burn phase that I can remember in recent history. You will need three very solid tanks, an intensely powerful healing team, and super-solid DPS that can minimize movement and maximize pew pew. Are you prepared?

Short version: There is no short version.

Putricide is a three-phase encounter, with several elements that must be paid attention to at all times. I’ll break each phase’s abilities down per phase.

Phase 1 – 100 to 80%: This is the simplest phase of the Putricide encounter, and will get you ready (sorta) for Phase 2. The mechanic is relatively simple – Putricide is tanked by one of your three (on 25) tanks, while another chugs a potion from Putricide’s table, turning him into a Mutated Abomination. The third… does whatever. Every so often, Putricide will perform an Unstable Experiment, calling down either a green Volatile Ooze or a brown Gas Cloud, with the Ooze being the first thing spawned.

The Volatile Ooze will, once it aggros, target a random person and cast Volatile Ooze Adhesive on them, rooting them in place and doing a roughly 4k DoT to them. It will then make a bee-line for this person – while doing so the, Ooze is unsnareable by anything but the Regurgitated Ooze attack of your Abomination. If/when the Ooze reaches its target, it explodes for a big amount of damage – about 50k, split evenly between all people within 8 yards of the person targeted. Once the Ooze is near its target, abandon DPS and just get in close to share the damage. Once you’re exploded and knocked away, turn the DPS back on – you want to aim for one explosion (or none) per Ooze.

The Gas Cloud, on the other hand, is relatively easier for DPS, but harder for healers. When it spawns, it selects a target and applies 10 stacks of Gastric Bloat to them – this is a hard-hitting DoT that starts at about 15k damage a tick, but loses 10% of its power every tick, as a stack of the debuff falls off. The Cloud will chase whomever it has Bloated, and they must kite the Cloud – should it reach its target, it will explode the whole raid for something like 18k damage per stack of Gastric Bloat on the target – basically, a guaranteed wipe. As Hunters, we’re uniquely suited to be Bloated, since we should be good at kiting things and still do reasonable damage. :P Priority #1, however, is not getting hit, so put that as your main goal. The Clouds are also unsnareable except by the Abomination’s Regurgitated Ooze attack.

Throughout all phases (1/2/3), Putricide will throw green vials on the ground that spawn puddles of ooze that will grow fairly quickly over time. The only way to remove these and prevent yourself from being totally overrun is to have your Abomination eat them. This gives him power to do his Regurgitated Ooze attack, as well as just getting rid of the damn ooze so you have room to move around.

Phase 2: 80 to 35%: At 80%, Putricide will throw down a vial of Tear Gas, pausing the encounter. Adds and ooze piles will not move or grow, DoTs will not tick on you (but will tick on enemies – try to refresh Serpent going into a transition), and the like. This is a GREAT place to hit Viper, as you’ll be sitting there doing nothing for nearly 20 seconds – might as well get free mana. When the Tear Gas fades, the encounter starts back where it left off, with a few hitches – Oozes and Clouds will muck around for a bit being very confused until they decide to pick a new target – take this time to lay into them HARD. Oozes and Clouds will continue to be spawned in phase 2, so ensure that you’re killing them as a priority. Do be quick about the DPS on Putricide, though – he’s only got a roughly 10 minute enrage timer, and you gotta push him into Phase 3 with about 2 minutes left on the clock if you’re gonna beat it.

In addition to everything from phase 1 continuing, Putricide gains two new abilities – Choking Gas Bombs, and Malleable Goo. The first, Choking Gas Bombs, are small orange vials that Putricide drops at his feet. Much like the poison clouds on, say, Twin Jormungar, the tank needs to be aware of these (use DXE, it notifies you when they’re dropped) and kite Putricide away from them. They do a nasty DoT if you’re within their 3 yard range and also reduce your chance to hit by 75%. After roughly… 20 seconds (I think), they explode in a 15-yard radius, doing a big chunk of damage and again reducing your chance to hit by 75% for 20 seconds. Clearly, this will cripple any DPSer hit by it – do not get hit by it period. There’s too much going on to lose a DPSer for 20 seconds.

His second ability is Malleable Goo, and the easiest way I can explain it is “Shadow Crash that Bounces”. If you get that, feel free to allow your mind to wander until I finish explaining it for those that didn’t get it. Putricide fires three (one in 10s) Malleable Goos at random people every so often in Phase 2 (and 3). These will bounce twice (unless they hit someone) then explode on the third landing – anyone within 5 yards will take about 15k damage and have their attack and casting speed slowed by 200% for 20 seconds. Again, this will cripple anyone hit by it, so be diligent to avoid them. Also, adding more damage to an already healer-intensive fight is a bad idea.

As you get Putricide closer and closer to 35%, start to analyze the situation and potentially call for a full DPS stop on Putricide. Before you push into Phase 3, you want to ensure that no Volatile Oozes or Gas Clouds are alive, and that the amount of goo on the floor is near-zero. Delay the phase transition if you have to, assuming you’ve got more than 2 minutes on the enrage timer – you do NOT want to go into Phase 3 with a cluttered room!

Phase 3 – 35 to 0%: This is where you make or break your encounter. Success is often defined by the setting of the room when you make the transition – our first wipe this week that got to phase 3 was with Putricide at 200k and most of the raid near death for one very big reason – we pushed him into Phase 3 with a Gas Cloud still alive and at 400k. Had that gas cloud been dead, it would’ve been a two-shot of the encounter. Your preparations before pushing him over will define a lot.

Your tank that was previously in the Abomination will be forced out in this phase, meaning one big thing – Goo on the floor cannot be eaten anymore. This presents one soft enrage to the encounter – you have to kill him before you have nowhere to go. The tanks will have to all be on Putricide at this point, as Oozes and Gas Clouds will no longer spawn. Your full attention must be on Putricide and not standing in shit. He will continue to drop Choking Gas Bombs and fling Malleable Goo, so you must be 100% aware of the whole room at all times. Ensure that you always have a safe spot to go to, be it through running or via Disengage. But make sure it won’t get closed off, too!

The second soft enrage is Mutated Plague. Putricide will apply this to the current tank every so often (10 seconds?). It does raid-wide damage that starts off very small, but triples in power with every new application. 4 stacks does a massive amount of raid-wide damage – 5 stacks is enough to one-shot everyone with one tick. Your tanks will have to trade off tanking Putricide such that you end up with Plague on all of them – first in a 2/2/2 composition, then a 4/4/4 composition (in 10s, just do 2/2 and 4/4). If a tank dies or allows their Mutated Plague to drop off, it’s basically a wipe – Putricide will heal for a stupid amount of HP per stack of the Plague that was on that tank. We lost a tank on our first wipe and he went from 200k to 2.1 million. You will NOT survive this, nor will you survive ANYONE getting a 5-stack of the Plague.

Shinies: Protector’s Mark of Sanctification (25-man). 99% of Putricide’s loot is healer and tank goodies. :(

Achievement: Heartburn, Nausea, Indigestion… – DOES count for Drake Meta – Your Abomination may not use Regurgitated Ooze on anything. This will mean that the Oozes and Clouds will NOT be slowed – your raid will need to be exceedingly fast on killing these to even attempt it. If you can’t kill every Ooze and Cloud before they reach even a single target, you shouldn’t even bother trying.

Good news, everyone!

\o/

I’ll be working up a strategy post with the insights I’ve gained from downing him on 10s soon. Best of luck to everyone doing it!