[7.3] Azortharion's Hunter Guides

[eschatological]

see the problem with this is that, if the ring is popped at the start of the fight, likelihood is that you'll miss the RF on the rings later in the fight.
Remember both a 2 min cd and 15 second buff, they line up perfectly.
Using RF with the ring produces a much higher overall dps gain over delaying it for focus depletion.
And when you'll likely only be delaying it by maybe 3-5 seconds, it becomes a bit of a muchness.

The recommendation to wait to pop RF should be seen in this light: unless you get godly ToTH procs, it'll delay RF minimum 2 GCDs (ChS into 50 focus AiS), and on average maaaaaybe 5 GCDs. Worst case scenario your melee pops it immediately on CD on 2m, and you get only 10s or so with RF up. But most fights have multiple reasons why you would want to wait, even a few seconds, before popping the ring, like heavy movement. In truth, the ring proc ends up being "on CD-ish" on most fights when it's popped on CD....if you're using it right. I guess if you pop it right before heavy movement, then that's the fault of your ring-poppers.

[Azortharion]

120 focus and no ToTH procs will give you CS into AiS into AiS when you account for passive regen across those 3 globals, which is definitely more than 15. Therefore the minimum is 3 GCD's.

[Deleted]

Will the guide be updated for 6.2.3? Mainly the trinket section, I'm interested to see if upgrading the X Y Z trinket might give us some better choices, particularly if anyone is lucky enough to get a 725 drop, or maybe even the heirloom trinkets might be pretty good.

[Deleted]

Its unlikely that the new Mythic dungeons trinkets will be good endgame. Afaik if you compare mythic dungeon trinkets they are way behind equal ilvl proper raid gear. They are more like raid finder trinkets, bad for their iLvl. But then again if you got a 725 mythic dungeon one and only have normal raid lvl trinkets they might become better.
For trinket upgrades its probably the same as before if they fully scale linear. I'd assume current best trinket for a fight will remain best trinket after the upgrades if you had upgraded all trinkets equally.

[Effinhunter]

The new Kihra's should be better than any heroic raiding trinket except blademaster. It's also better than most mythic trinkets. Here's a quick preview that uses Blademaster as a control in trinket 1 slot, but I'm working on a comprehensive trinket list after the Simcraft devs help me out with XML results for custom item level requests.

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/forum...omment=2282477

The others are nowhere near as powerful, but this kind of huge mastery on use which lines up with ring use is going to be very nice for MM in most fights. Gorashan's should be within striking distance of heroic Felspring Coil, but still behind.

[Azortharion]

So it doesn't decrease AS gcd?

No, Hunter GCD is locked at 1s for most abilities, Haste has no effect.

[Deleted]

If i spec Glaive Toss (got no tier), do i use it on cd or do i only let it go when/if the boss spawn an add?

[saistain]

which fights in HFC is it best to use mirror?

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If i spec Glaive Toss (got no tier), do i use it on cd or do i only let it go when/if the boss spawn an add?

you shouldn't have GT on any fight with adds

[Orthios]

which fights in HFC is it best to use mirror?

All fights that aren't mythic gorefiend, as the guide says.

[Dossou]

Super excited that I get to farm a 725 trinket from Mythic dungeons

oh wait

[Tehterokkar]

Kihra's 725 is good on paper, bad in practice, especially for those progressing still. If you are forced to move for more than 3s, you lose absolutely all value from the trinket.

[Effinhunter]

I'm not aware of a fight where rings are popped during constant movement for the duration of a ring use. Even Tyrant can manage this in the last phase. With Kihra's, you don't have to maintain mastery the whole fight. You just would need to maintain sniper training during the 15s ring buff at the minimum and the 20s use at maximum, which is preferred. If people are not maintaining their sniper training during ring uses, then they need to fix that.

Edit: And by "fix that", I mean that it's important you correct this behavior whether you are using Kihra's or not. Sniper training provides a multiplicative effect with mastery/crit interplay. On fights like Tyrant and Gorefiend with an explicit damage multiplier during certain phases (P3 and Feast of Souls phases, respectively), sniper training with high mastery is going to be even better than outside the multiplier phase. This can be huge during progression on these encounters (again, whether you are using a mastery trinket or not).

[Deleted]

"This means that when roughly ~48% passive Crit is reached (buffed)" just want to check out the actual number since I'm a bit slow. I have 39.4% on armory not counting buffs or anything right, which correspond to critical strike 2717.
What number does ~48% correspond to?

[Azortharion]

Edit: And by "fix that", I mean that it's important you correct this behavior whether you are using Kihra's or not. Sniper training provides a multiplicative effect with mastery/crit interplay. On fights like Tyrant and Gorefiend with an explicit damage multiplier during certain phases (P3 and Feast of Souls phases, respectively), sniper training with high mastery is going to be even better than outside the multiplier phase. This can be huge during progression on these encounters (again, whether you are using a mastery trinket or not).

Not really, because damage during Feast and to an extent, during Tyrant's last phase (mostly a healing check, with the DPS check being p2) is far from "huge" during progression, or any other stage of play for that matter. If anything, it'd be "huge" for farm if you care about your DPS, and substantially less important during progression, where add control (and breakout strategy/system/execution) on Gorefiend is by far the biggest contributor to killing that fight, and DPS on Tyrant during phase 2 where there's no such damage bonus is way more important than maximizing DPS in the last phase.

Additionally, the argument does not really apply to Gorefiend's Feast since you're stationary for most of it, except when you have to soak, which is mostly just once and can be done without losing uptime (and depending on what pair you're assigned to, can easily be done after the trinket has worn off and such). Tyrant's phase 3 is moderate movement, there's optimization in Mastery uptime to be had there I suppose.

[Gaarashatan]

that moment when you dont pad even on farm cause you just want to kill the fight and get to more progression

#goodraiderstuff

[Effinhunter]

Not really, because damage during Feast and to an extent, during Tyrant's last phase (mostly a healing check, with the DPS check being p2) is far from "huge" during progression, or any other stage of play for that matter. If anything, it'd be "huge" for farm if you care about your DPS, and substantially less important during progression, where add control (and breakout strategy/system/execution) on Gorefiend is by far the biggest contributor to killing that fight, and DPS on Tyrant during phase 2 where there's no such damage bonus is way more important than maximizing DPS in the last phase.

Additionally, the argument does not really apply to Gorefiend's Feast since you're stationary for most of it, except when you have to soak, which is mostly just once and can be done without losing uptime (and depending on what pair you're assigned to, can easily be done after the trinket has worn off and such). Tyrant's phase 3 is moderate movement, there's optimization in Mastery uptime to be had there I suppose.

Regardless of your mastery level, having 0 uptime on mastery during ring is going to be thousands of dps. Most of the individual suggestions you or I give to people are rarely going to result in thousands of dps difference. This is one of those rare ones that will. This is roughly the equivalent of suggestions to people asking for dps help when we notice that their Chimaera Shots are not on CD, and they are delaying them significantly resulting in multiple lost CS during the fight.

As someone who has recently gone through both of these progressions with the type of guild that tends to be struggling on these bosses right now, I can tell you with some certainty that both of these phases are important dps checks as well. P3 Tyrant is a healing check mostly because the longer the 2nd add stays up the more ridiculous the damage that goes on the tank. Your ability, as a dpser, to get that add down quickly is greatly aided by what you do during that ring. Many guilds do lots of micro movements instead of large stride movements for despoiled ground. These micro movements may be happening every 2s during P3 instead of every 3-4 (where you can maintain sniper training) and are usually, from my experience, tanks trying to adjust the positioning of the boss and the add since the AI of these guys results in wild swings of the boss/add positioning. As a hunter, during ring, you may want to kick out of the group for 15s to allow for full sniper training or anticipate where the tanks will go every 3-4s (rather than being reactive with the tanks) and move there in anticipation to keep your sniper training up.

Gorefiend adds are important, and keeping up your sniper training as best you can, even outside of the ring/or potential kihra's is going to be very useful toward killing adds. However, it's also important, especially for first kills, that you maximize dps during the feast phase. From my experience on this boss, it helps to get the boss below 60% during first feast if you want to have a chance at your first kill. The only reason a hunter should not have 100% sniper uptime during the ring in feast of souls is if 1) someone pops the ring before constructs are down and the hunter needs to kite a construct, and 2) if the raid leader has assigned the hunter to soak a spirit in the first or second wave. The solutions to this, in my experience, are 1) disengage to a respectable distance and trust your co-raiders to help you kill the add. Wait for sniper training to refresh and then move back into the group. 2) Ask the raid leader to assign you to wave 3-6 rather than wave 1-2. It took considerable explaining, in our raid, to remove the hunters from the first 2 waves to allow us to have sniper training during ring in Feasts. Our healers tend to think everything is a dps problem, and it took a lot of explaining and linking other guilds' logs to convince them that they were perfectly capable of going in wave 1-2 in groups of 2-3 healers and still be able to keep everyone up. The reason the dps check for most guilds still progressing through this fight is important is because of the caliber of raider that tends to be in the types of guilds going through Gorefiend and Tyrant right now. Essentially, you have to expect that after that first feast phase, you're likely to have 1-3 deaths per non-feast phase, and if you want to get a first kill, you need to absolutely burn through those feasts as best you can. It's a battle of attrition.

The reason that these probably don't seem like dps checks to you is because you are not used to raiding with guilds that tend to have 40-70% of their dpsers below the 75th percentile marks consistently in all raids, even farm. The majority of people currently in guilds that are still progressing through content are in situations where you have like 2-5 dpsers who are consistently above the 50th percentile mark, and the rest are just not getting it. Because recruiting is so difficult for this type of guild that is still progressing right now, you just have to keep those dpsers and do whatever you can, whatever is under your control, to carry the dps through dps checks like these two. Maintaining sniper training is one of those small things that can make a considerable difference, especially since most of the guilds still progressing tend to have 3 and sometimes even 4 hunters. Each hunter working on keeping sniper training at maximum, especially during ring procs, may help push the guild over the hump that has resulted in dozens to even a hundred extra pulls on Gorefiend and Tyrant.

[Azortharion]

that moment when you dont pad even on farm cause you just want to kill the fight and get to more progression

#goodraiderstuff

Nothing is really farm if there's still a progression boss waiting on the other side, since any time spent farming is taken out of progression..

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Regardless of your mastery level, having 0 uptime on mastery during ring is going to be thousands of dps. Most of the individual suggestions you or I give to people are rarely going to result in thousands of dps difference. This is one of those rare ones that will. This is roughly the equivalent of suggestions to people asking for dps help when we notice that their Chimaera Shots are not on CD, and they are delaying them significantly resulting in multiple lost CS during the fight.

As someone who has recently gone through both of these progressions with the type of guild that tends to be struggling on these bosses right now, I can tell you with some certainty that both of these phases are important dps checks as well. P3 Tyrant is a healing check mostly because the longer the 2nd add stays up the more ridiculous the damage that goes on the tank. Your ability, as a dpser, to get that add down quickly is greatly aided by what you do during that ring. Many guilds do lots of micro movements instead of large stride movements for despoiled ground. These micro movements may be happening every 2s during P3 instead of every 3-4 (where you can maintain sniper training) and are usually, from my experience, tanks trying to adjust the positioning of the boss and the add since the AI of these guys results in wild swings of the boss/add positioning. As a hunter, during ring, you may want to kick out of the group for 15s to allow for full sniper training or anticipate where the tanks will go every 3-4s (rather than being reactive with the tanks) and move there in anticipation to keep your sniper training up.

Gorefiend adds are important, and keeping up your sniper training as best you can, even outside of the ring/or potential kihra's is going to be very useful toward killing adds. However, it's also important, especially for first kills, that you maximize dps during the feast phase. From my experience on this boss, it helps to get the boss below 60% during first feast if you want to have a chance at your first kill. The only reason a hunter should not have 100% sniper uptime during the ring in feast of souls is if 1) someone pops the ring before constructs are down and the hunter needs to kite a construct, and 2) if the raid leader has assigned the hunter to soak a spirit in the first or second wave. The solutions to this, in my experience, are 1) disengage to a respectable distance and trust your co-raiders to help you kill the add. Wait for sniper training to refresh and then move back into the group. 2) Ask the raid leader to assign you to wave 3-6 rather than wave 1-2. It took considerable explaining, in our raid, to remove the hunters from the first 2 waves to allow us to have sniper training during ring in Feasts. Our healers tend to think everything is a dps problem, and it took a lot of explaining and linking other guilds' logs to convince them that they were perfectly capable of going in wave 1-2 in groups of 2-3 healers and still be able to keep everyone up. The reason the dps check for most guilds still progressing through this fight is important is because of the caliber of raider that tends to be in the types of guilds going through Gorefiend and Tyrant right now. Essentially, you have to expect that after that first feast phase, you're likely to have 1-3 deaths per non-feast phase, and if you want to get a first kill, you need to absolutely burn through those feasts as best you can. It's a battle of attrition.

The reason that these probably don't seem like dps checks to you is because you are not used to raiding with guilds that tend to have 40-70% of their dpsers below the 75th percentile marks consistently in all raids, even farm. The majority of people currently in guilds that are still progressing through content are in situations where you have like 2-5 dpsers who are consistently above the 50th percentile mark, and the rest are just not getting it. Because recruiting is so difficult for this type of guild that is still progressing right now, you just have to keep those dpsers and do whatever you can, whatever is under your control, to carry the dps through dps checks like these two. Maintaining sniper training is one of those small things that can make a considerable difference, especially since most of the guilds still progressing tend to have 3 and sometimes even 4 hunters. Each hunter working on keeping sniper training at maximum, especially during ring procs, may help push the guild over the hump that has resulted in dozens to even a hundred extra pulls on Gorefiend and Tyrant.

Fair enough, I concede.

I don't think anyone was implying 0 uptime on the ring, though. Or even THAT low. In Feast, it's hard to drop much uptime unless you're trying. There's nothing to move for, at all. It's pretty much a non-issue.

For Tyrant, if you don't have the dance of your raid group figured out, you might get pretty shit uptimes. Still, not 0.

Those phases also extend way beyond the actual ring duration where the bulk of the damage lies. Getting even a shitty player to manage their Sniper Training uptime to something like 70% on p3 Tyrant is not something I imagine being a problem. On Gorefiend, I don't see any reason to be sub 98% (that is to say, 100%-unless-you-have-to-soak-first-and-fuck-it-up-slightly).

[durrtygoodz]

Nothing is really farm if there's still a progression boss waiting on the other side, since any time spent farming is taken out of progression..

Wish my guild would understand this.

[Gaarashatan]

Wish my guild would understand this.

were hitting 50% on archie, yay . kinda hope we kill it before the 10 ilvl nerf drops. but each week we end up wiping on some early bosses, council, kilrogg. gore, iskar, tyrant, xhul, fel, you name it. some weeks one shots, other weeks a wipe here or there, and its usually about 4-5 wipes a week i.e (2 council, 1 tyrnat, 2-3 xhul) etc etc.

[trisight]

In the past, I have read that 53% crit is the point you want to switch scopes to multistrike. Is this still the case?