World First Hunter solo: Ragnaros (firelands)

[Deleted]

More than ten months after my Lich King solo, I finally got Ragnaros - This was made possible the fact that his berserk wasn't an issue, lucky for me, since I lost so much dps rezzing my pet or stalling shots to keep mend pet up/burst adds when they spawned that I did only 75% of my max dps. So it was all about survival, hence the stamina flask, food, scroll and trinket. I did it with 491 ilvl gear, and it took me about 14 hours of tries to refine the strategy until I killed him before my last pet died.

The teaser can be found here:


The full video is endangering the whole of the world's music economy (at least that's what youtube told me), so it's on warcraftmovies
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=226529


Now, for the guide. This is a perfect challenge for any normal-geared hunter who enjoys soloing, all you need is time and money.

RAGNAROS HUNTER SOLOING GUIDE


I-Important points

First words

This fight is a unforgiving battle for survival, and only survival. So gear counts less than on other bosses: you will need health, lots of it, and it scales much slower than dps. Then, of course, the more dps you have the better, since the most difficult part of the fight is killing him before you run out of pets.

Preparation

For pets, you will need 5 beetles/turtles, tank specced. Make sure they are in defensive. You will also want to buff yourself with stamina - I personally used a stamina flask, scroll, food and a stamina trinket. I was so focused on survival I didn't really care about dps - usually delayed kill command, stacked focus or avoided cobra shot - to make sur I would use deterrence/mend pet/rez/fd precisely at the right time. So even 50K dps is enough.
I personally had 491 ilvl on this fight, but it should be possible with less.

For talent you will want Crouching tiger/hidden chimera , so you can rez your pet once every minute , binding arrow for transition phases and your usual talents. I used glyphs of animal bond and misdirection to maximize survivability and make sur my pet got aggro even when fd was on cooldown.

Basic principles

This fight is about pets. You have 5 pets. Ragnaros melees for 60-75K on pet and puts a stacking dot debuff. it goes without saying that your pet won't last very long. So, there are 3 things to know about pet management here.

Rezzing your pet: once every minute, you have deterrence up (unless you use readiness). That means that if your pet dies, you can rez it while taking only 1-2 melee hits. Important: if you are out of melee range and your pet dies, he will cast magma blast on you - and it will do an extreme amount of damage in 6 seconds (300K at least). There are 3 possible ways to rez your pet.
*He is about to cast sulfuras smash (less than 6 seconds): be right next to him, pop deterrence and rez pet, the mend pet and FD.
*He is really about to cast sulfuras smash (1 second or less): rez pet, pop deterrence, mend pet and FD
*He is not going to cast it: stand far from the boss (but still in melee range), pop deterrence, rez pet then spam click disengage to get out of melee range. Then mend pet and FD.

Pet switching: when your pet is about to die and you can't rez him, it's time to change pet. The best time to do it is during a smash - start dismissing 1,9 seconds before (or you will get a magma blast), summon new pet and send him in melee range. If you have to do it right now, make sure you are not in melee range - you will get at most 2 blasts, which hurts less than 2 melee hits. Also FD after the switch, so that you can go in melee range of the boss.

Destacking pets:a pet is usually dismissed with 5-10 stacks. The only way to destack him is to let him die then rez him (bad idea), or making transitions last longer and switch pets to destack them.


II-Phase by phase strategy

Phase 1

Bumps: Ragnaros will sometimes bump you if you're in melee range (can send you in a trap, interrupts rez), and his hand of ragnaros simply does damage, slowing your health regeneration, and makes you jump: it interrupts rez, but it is deflected by deterrence if and only if you're not casting rez at that time. If one of the 2 interrupts a rez, just reset and restart.

Magma trap and smash: magma traps will stay for all the fight, and you won't have the luxury of wasting a deterrence on them. So you want to stack them in a corner of the room. On every try but the kill, he always did them after a Sulfuras smash. So the goal is to know where you want to put the trap, move 10 yards to the right/left, and when he smashes go where you want him to put it.

Pet management: do not use more than two pets this phase. To achieve it with low dps,the best is to do the following pattern:
*pet 1: use cower on the pull. When he cast shell shield, check the timer on cower. Once it's at 15 second, you can use last stand if it's worth it (meaning: avoid overheal at all costs, you'll need every inch of healing here). Then reuse cower after the smash. Once he used magma trap, run to melee range. When your pet dies, rez him (see above for how), and use readiness before he dies again.
The rerez him. After that, you'll want to change pet at the next smash.
*pet 2: don't use last stand until the first death. Rez him, then you'll want to heal back to full before the transition. To do so, use last stand at the last possible moment with stampede, and finish the phase before your pet dies.

Transitions

You'll want to have bestial wrath up here - and use a bandage while he's casting splitting blow if needed.
*middle split: the hardest by far. You'll want to one shot a son near the hammer and use binding shot to slow the 2 nearest sons on the other side, use bestial wrath kill them and kill the 2 last - so that 3 sons will pass on a side and 0 on another. You won't have time to destack 2 pets, the best is to take your 1rst pet back so that last stand is up.
*side split: let the 2 nearest sons pass, and make sure you kill the 3rd son asap, then use bestial wrath to kill/damage the sons; making sure to slow them first then finish them. Binding arrow is best on the 5th or 6th son. The best way to destack pets is to dismiss your pet just before they spawn, summon the first one one, leave a son alive (but under 50%), then once the first one is at full health with no debuff, get the current one back. Kill the son once he's destacked. If done right, only 2 sons will pass and 2 pets will be destacked.

In the second phase 2, the low-gear strategy is to fd when the big adds spawn, the high-gear is to blow everything up If you get Ragnaros + adds, you'll have to use last stand + stampede.

Phase 2

Abilities: You won't get bumped anymore! This phase is the easiest. Ragnaros will now randomly blow up a third of his platform - don't stand in the fire. He will also cast molten seeds. When he does, immediately move near the boss, and your pet. The elemental melees quite hard, and you really don't want him alive when your pet is dead, so kill it quickly. Make sur not to send your pet on it until he has arrived in melee range.

Pet management: Here again, do not waste pets. The best thing is to rotate pet cooldowns, and rez him when he dies. He can last a minute, but it's tight, so use readiness if he dies too quickly. If readiness isn't up, use last stand to last the minute. If it isn't up, it's time to switch pets. Once the boss hits 45% and your pet is dying, use stampede + last stand and finish the phase with as much health as possible.

Phase 3

The final phase! You will want to have 4 pets destacked, and start the phase with one who still has last stand up. Because, this time, no rezzing. Rotate Cds, use last stand and switch before they die.

Meteors: they are exactly as fast as you are (remember you have aspect of the cheetah!), and spawn every 45 seconds. You want to put them at the back of the room. Make sure you fd pretty quickly, or they'll hit you and continue following you. If one starts doing that, you'll have to run while being in healing range of your pet but not reaggroing another meteor while avoiding the fire and smashes and pet switching becomes a lot harder. But then, had I killed him cleanly, it wouldn't have been as exciting for me.

In the end, stampede + last stand and buuurst!

Now you've solo'd Ragnaros, a perfect challenge for normal-geared hunters.

[PBitt]

Wow...well done. Congrats on the kill!

[Roshar]

Awesome job. Congrats.

[Mormolyce]

Congrats! Nice strategy guide too

[Deleted]

Congrats, but use keybinds its burning my eyes then watching you click every spell in rotation

[Noujou]

Congrats, but use keybinds its burning my eyes then watching you click every spell in rotation

while normally i'd agree with someone in the whole keybinds > clicking but if someone was able to solo rag, period in general....it's amazing regardless how he plays

@op, a tip of the hat and a pat on the back!! GJ sir!!

[Wheater]

Well done =) You seem to play really well, I recommend taking it to the next level and using keybinds.

[Deleted]

Impressive gongratz.

[Puerto]

Grats and I'm impressed, but I still do not understand why people claim world first on these type of things. There is no way of actually knowing this is world first. Some kid in his parents basement could have gotten it 3 months ago because he did it for the lawls and didn't tell anyone lol.

Again, grats.. takes a lot of skill and dedication to pull this off. Especially for a click lol.

[lazypeon100]

Just wanted to say grats man! Your videos always impress me. I wrote up a soloing guide on the US hunter forums to help out others, I have a link to your channel simply because I think you and Caribald are the best at soloing.

Hope you find other challenges to entertain yourself with!

[Terielx1]

what music were you using for this vid? cuz it was pretty epic

[Deleted]

For the music, I used Crimson tide OST (phase 1), the rock OST (end phase 1, end of phase 2, transition 2), Mystica (epica) (transition 1, start phase 2), Unholy trinity (Epica) (phase 2), Here comes the king (X-ray dog) (phase 3), New allegiance (Kamelott) (phase 3), Kid Icarus chapter 23 Lord of the underworld music (end).

For the whole keybinding story, know that my only level 90 character is my hunter. So I never really needed to keybind, since you can easily achieve max dps by clicking (on a hunter). For that:
-you need to practice of course, just like keybind where you need to learn not to push the wrong buttons, here you need to learn how to move your mouse and click on spells without spending your time looking at the bottom of your screen.
-still, keybind panic buttons. I personally have c,g and r keybinded to self-heal, interrupt and put pet on passive (deterrence is on 1, right near a (i think it's q on an american keyboard))..
-also have your low-cd dps buttons on the lower row - that way of you need to switch target, click on an off-gcd cooldown or use your mouse for any reason, you can put your left hand on the dps buttons and your right moves the mouse.

The only problem? When you need to move and dps and use off-gcd/seldom used abilities. But it happens so seldom in raids it doesn't really matter. It happens more often in soloing, I admit, but the dps loss can be minimized by moving your mouse really quickly.

So if you don't want to go through the pain of changing your gameplay, I'd suggest learning when you lose dps -to use rapid fire, or when you're concerned on survival, or when you move - and keybind a few selected buttons to deal with that.
Then check your dps and compare to Femaledwarf. If it's much lower, it may be a good idea to try full keybinding. Then, ultimately, there's only one real good choice: the one you're skilled at Perfect keybinding and perfect clicking are the same in my opinion, keybinding is just considered easier to master.

And of course, if you have many toons, keybinding might take precedence - my father played a guardian druid and clicking was impossible here - there were just too many buttons to click at once.

[CasA52]

/salute

Amazing job!

[turtledragon]

I didn't watch the video, but i found your comment, "The full video is endangering the whole of the world's music economy" hilarious.

Good job though and grats!

[Serb]

For the music, I used Crimson tide OST (phase 1), the rock OST (end phase 1, end of phase 2, transition 2), Mystica (epica) (transition 1, start phase 2), Unholy trinity (Epica) (phase 2), Here comes the king (X-ray dog) (phase 3), New allegiance (Kamelott) (phase 3), Kid Icarus chapter 23 Lord of the underworld music (end).

For the whole keybinding story, know that my only level 90 character is my hunter. So I never really needed to keybind, since you can easily achieve max dps by clicking (on a hunter). For that:
-you need to practice of course, just like keybind where you need to learn not to push the wrong buttons, here you need to learn how to move your mouse and click on spells without spending your time looking at the bottom of your screen.
-still, keybind panic buttons. I personally have c,g and r keybinded to self-heal, interrupt and put pet on passive (deterrence is on 1, right near a (i think it's q on an american keyboard))..
-also have your low-cd dps buttons on the lower row - that way of you need to switch target, click on an off-gcd cooldown or use your mouse for any reason, you can put your left hand on the dps buttons and your right moves the mouse.

The only problem? When you need to move and dps and use off-gcd/seldom used abilities. But it happens so seldom in raids it doesn't really matter. It happens more often in soloing, I admit, but the dps loss can be minimized by moving your mouse really quickly.

So if you don't want to go through the pain of changing your gameplay, I'd suggest learning when you lose dps -to use rapid fire, or when you're concerned on survival, or when you move - and keybind a few selected buttons to deal with that.
Then check your dps and compare to Femaledwarf. If it's much lower, it may be a good idea to try full keybinding. Then, ultimately, there's only one real good choice: the one you're skilled at Perfect keybinding and perfect clicking are the same in my opinion, keybinding is just considered easier to master.

And of course, if you have many toons, keybinding might take precedence - my father played a guardian druid and clicking was impossible here - there were just too many buttons to click at once.

First of all: well done with the kill , congrats!

But can't refrain from posting when I read something like this...while I understand some people "master" clicking and become very good at it...it will NEVER EVER be even close to proper keybinding in any way.

Everything else is just plain justifying usage of clicking.

Regardless, and without any intention to "close eyes" infront of your great achievement , GJ again.

[Solzan Nemesis]

Congratulations foll hunter, * salute*.

[Deleted]

Nice one, I wish I could start doing this stuff too, but I'm so impatient it's not gonna happen )

[threads]

That's pretty impressive, grats

[Velfar]

You are proof that you can do pretty good without keybinds:P Awesome job, grats!

[Steliios]

gr8 job tbh
/bow