A Hunter's Story

Ok, so I’ve been in ICC quite a few times, but interestingly enough, I hadn’t downed Rotface (on 10 man) until last night. Done him on 25, done him on my healer, but never on my main on 10 man. Well, tried, but never succeeded. So I find it interesting, ironic, and funny that what do we do differently to make it work? Have the Hunter tank!

Now, these tips will probably help other tanks too, but I figure I just have to share as a reminder that yes, Hunters can DPS. Yes, Hunters can Heal (well, ok, never done a raid as a healer, but we can at least tank-heal things where our pet is tanking! lol). And yes, Hunters can Tank. HUNTERS FTW! Haha.

Ok, now the actual details, before someone thinks I mean that a hunter can run up and Mele Tank the Lich King. So I was actually in a good PuG. Run with these guys before, and this time happened to be on 10-man. Actually, we started one night, wiped on Rot a couple times, called it a night, and scheduled to go back in and try again later. So we did. Part of the problem was that neither of our tanks had ever succeeded in off-tanking Rot. So those of us who had seen it done were offering pointers, and no one really minded wiping because they were learning. They were listening and learning (such a different dynamic than the other day!). So we tried a number of times. Then we decided to change it up and I’d try tanking. Well, kite-tanking. And on our first try, we got down to the dreaded 0% wipe. Yes, Rot had less than 60k health left when the last person died. ZOMG! So then next try we had a healer DC, then another random prob, and then we successfully downed him. Yay us! Hunter tank FTW!

Soooooo onto the how. It’s actually pretty simple, and very reminiscent of Nax. Basically, it’s a combination of Distracting Shot, Disengage, Frost Trap, and strafing. So basically, the tank in plate armor keeps Rot’s attention in a simple Tank & Spank. The tank in mail armor starts off as DPS. As the fight goes on, Rot will create a small ooze. Whoever gets it runs out near (NOT ON TOP OF) the Hunter. When the next person gets a small ooze on them, they run out and merge it with the other one. They create a Large Ooze. At this point, the Hunter uses DS to get the Large Ooze on him/her. They then just kite it around the outer edge of the room. AotW will help mitigate the dmg of the green circles of death on the floor, but avoid them when possible to help the healer. Remember though – healers can heal you through the green circle of death. They can’t heal you if the Large Ooze hits you. Quite simply, the Large Ooze will kill you if it catches up. This is also why you need to have it merge near, not on top of, you. In one of our pulls, it merged almost directly on top of me, so when he went after me he killed me dead real quick. Where as sometimes when kiting, I had to run through the green goo. My health got low and I had to pop a health pot, but I lived. So word of advice – avoid the green goo of death on the floor, but avoid the large ooze more.

That’s really all there is to it. When I had the opportunity, I threw some extra DPS on Rot, but mostly just kited the ooze. Eventually it breaks apart, and periodically a new one will spawn. So don’t stand near Rot when it breaks up, and if a new one appears, grab it. If the ooze is getting too close, use Disengage to get away. Drop Frost traps to slow it down (well, I don’t know if it actually does, but it makes you feel better at least, lol). And that’s basically it.

So for that first wipe we had when I was tanking, it was all just bad coincidence. Somehow, our ooze just broke up, but then 2 new ones spawned at the same time that green goo came out. So I was standing in an area that was clear, saw an ooze pop up and grabbed its agro. Of course, that was the same time the goo appeared underneath me, and the other ooze appeared on the opposite side of the one I had. So it cut through the group as I tried to side-step in order to get a clear shot at the other one, and the heals just had no chance to keep up on either the group or I. So once I went down the 2 oozies went amuck and decimated the group. Still not really sure how we had the 2 pop up so close together, but seriously – less than 60k health! And no, 2 large oozies is not the end of the world. On our successful attempt, at one point the second ooze came up. Everyone’s initial reaction over vent was “Oh no, we’re gonna wipe” basically. Then those comments were followed by “Oh, nevermind, he’s got both of them!” because I quickly and calmly picked up the second one and kited it as well. The first one soon after broke up and I was back to kiting just one. No biggie, lol.

So anyway, I hope that helps people tanking on Rot. It’s not that it’s really hard to do, you just have to nail 2 things. 1 – land the taunt. 2 – don’t get hit. And that goes for whomever is tanking the oozies, whether Hunter or other. And no, you cannot taunt the little oozies. Don’t even waste the GCD on them. Just wait until it combines with another and forms a large ooze. Then taunt the large one. And all the while? Let your pet stack some nice deeps on Rot! Might as well give him as much damage as he’s giving out, right? Hunter tank ftw – we tank and dps at the same time! Lol.

So I generally don’t raid 25 mans a whole lot. From having done it many times before, I’ve discovered a few things. First, I don’t want to organize one – not really worth being the one who has to deal with the idiots, the impatients, etc. Yes, the loot is better, but spread across more people, so taking probability of receiving gear into account, generally not really worth it. And lastly, and most important, they’re a LOT easier than 10 mans. However, from time to time I do run them because they can be fun.

Dispute me if you want, but as someone who does 10 mans regularly with skilled players, and who does 25 mans periodically… 25 mans are easy in comparison. Especially when you can PuG a successful 25 man without much trouble and yet coordinated 10 mans are tough to get through. Even when the average gear level is about the same. How to explain my position and how I come at this viewpoint… Hmm… One of the bars near us, we had a bartender who played WoW and did 25 man raids while bartending. Why? Because he could get up during the raid (during a boss fight or trash fights) and give us beer, and the group would still succeed no problem. Aka, his groups could pull the weight without trouble when a member or two were NOT EVEN THERE. So there’s a reason – in 25 mans you can have a player or two not there (run as 22 to 24 without trouble) while in 10 mans if you lose 1 player (9 man) you’re pretty seriously gimped. It’s a scale thing, but if you lose 10% of the players in 25′s, it’s not as detrimental as in 10′s, from my exp.

Another reason is that a few good people can carry the rest. In a 10, if you have a good tank and good healers… You still need good dps to get through the fights, or else they take forever and even good healers run out of mana on boss fights, even if the tanks are doing perfect jobs of keeping all the mobs on them. But in a 25 man? If you have a good tank, good healer or two, and decent dps or two? They can carry the group real well. Even for the bosses that require situational awareness – let the idiots die, then carry on. The fight’ll take a little longer, but it’ll still go down, lol.

I say this from experience, but you are free to disagree. Especially if you’re uber geared and a 1337 player who takes no crap from someone who doesn’t do 25 mans every day… But if you sit and think about it for a minute? You might agree. Not that this is anything new, considering I felt the same thing back in BC too.

But anyway, I digress. Last night was actually my first GDKP run, so I was curious how it worked. So I’ll share, in case anyone else is wondering. In our group, the Loot Master had an addon that made it easier. It was, quite simply, an auction. LM would post the item in chat with a minimum bid and with a 5 sec countdown. People would /raid a number (3600, for example) and LM would call it the high bid and then countdown. Whoever posted the highest when the countdown hit 0 won. LM would then do the next item. If you won, you went to LM and traded them the amount. When all items were done, the addon did the math to add it up & divide by # of players, then ask everyone to trade LM for their cut.

So the cool thing is that I actually won a drop. Deathbringer Saurfang dropped 3 pieces worth rolling on (worth rolling on for anyone in the raid I mean, not just Hunters). One went for 10,000g. Another for 6k. And the Protector’s Mark of Sanctification? 2,750. Add in that the split shares were 750g a piece, and I only dropped 2k on my mark. Pretty darn awesome! Half the raid was amazed/commenting/complaining that that’s the cheapest they’ve seen a mark go for, lol. Guess I was just lucky we had no warriors or shaman, and just like 4 hunters who haven’t yet figured out how to play the AH. Well, that and that none of them went over 3k which I think was going to be my limit, lol.

So now comes my only problem… I need more frost badges so I can upgrade a piece of gear. I mean, I could upgrade a piece now since I have enough badges, but the bad part is it wouldn’t be a piece I want to upgrade. My shoulders are 251 off an ICC-10 drop (Gunship), for example. So I really want to upgrade a 232 like my pants, except there’s another upgrade or two out there for them I could get instead. But I think what I’ll actually go for, is my chest. I already broke my 4 piece set bonus because I deemed the gear better than the bonus (or at least roughly equivalent, knowing I’d upgrade at some point). So this would get me on the road towards a second 2 piece bonus. Plus the new chest will be teh awesome! LOL. I just need more badges since it’ll take 95 to get the one to upgrade…

But anyway, it really did just reinforce my belief, again, that 25 man’s are easier. Especially when a 25 man pug can down Saurfang in 1 shot easily when our coordinated 10 man struggled to take him down. I know, I /rant. I just occasionally (well, Lady X would probably say “often” instead of “occasionally” hehe) get tired of people who are loud mouthed about “I run 25′s so I’m better than you” and then they start quoting their DPS or some other number. And they always forget about how you do more dps in a 25 man because of the buffs and all. Giving your Heroic DPS numbers would be a better baseline, but people don’t want to give the lower number, lol. Of cource, Heroic Dungeon fights are different from Raid fights, so I guess it’s a no-win situation. Ok, I know I know… /rantdone, lol.

So thx to Z for asking if I wanted to join in on the 25 man ICC run! It was fun, easy, quick, and I got a drop!

Ho hum, vacation over. Always reminds you how much fun not going to work is. Guess that means I should schedule the rest of my vacation for this year. I’ll tell you though, WoW has been pretty crazy. Fun, was finally the opportunity to get into ICC for some rep runs. Even got high enough that now I can make my own Awesome Arrows. New Gear was cool too, from ICC.

Also got the PuG achievement, and of course the fun new pet. We still think that there should be an achievement for 100 pets, which would give you your 101st pet – a dalmation… I’m not quite there, only like 2 more to go, but my wife is. So from all the PuG’s, I’ve realized/learned a few things. I guess a reminder is that I really don’t care for PuGing. I like it when you meet nice people, but more often than not, it’s a bunch of jerks. Like the tank who was already pulling trash before the healer had even zoned into the instance, let alone changed specs, buffed, or done anything else necessary to start. Or the ones who try to just chain pull the entire place without a pause or a break. Also – how hard is it to say “hello” before getting started? Or make a comment or two along the way, just to keep it fun? PuGing has really become a chore, rather than fun. It seems that with the ease of picking up gear far above heroics, that the point of a heroic now is to see how fast you can get the badges. Not to go in and have fun, not to use any mechanics other than straight AoE DPS, and so on. And if the healer makes a mistake (or if the tank is stupid and blames it on the healer, or vice versa), or if DPS makes a mistake, etc – what is the response? “You’re an idiot, I have an XYZ alt (or my boyfriend has one) and it’s so easy.” Seriously dude – just chill! Remember, Xanther says play nice! It’s ok if one or two chars die. It’s ok if everyone wipes once or twice. It’s only your character that dies – not you! And don’t forget, many people are chaining heroics to get gear. So yelling at someone to “get better gear before you run heroics” when they’re running heroics to get better gear doesn’t make you cool – it makes you an elitist jerk. Lighten up and help them. Oy!

So all that aside, ICC was fun. Why? A practical use for an ability mostly just used when bored – Eyes of the Beast. It’s fun to run around there as your pet, looking for traps. It also makes hunters feel useful for something other than simply MD, since everything is AoE’d and not CC’d anymore. Though we have been using it a little on the 2 5-pulls right after Ick. Still hate those guys tho, lol. But anyway, I should probably get back to work, since I’m at work…