Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Lovemontes' raiding advice!

Hi guys! Time for a constructive post. As a level 85 hunter I am sure that you are at least somewhat interested in end game content! The game never ends at level 85! It starts there :) So, what kind of information do you need to know? Well, there's stacks to learn! There are heaps of websites (I use only www.warcrafthuntersunion.com for my information) to help you out in-depth. So I'll provide advice from a high end perspective.

Lovemontes... raiding... you.... purples.... GET OUT OF THE FIRE!

Now before you raid, there's something that everyone must do and that is understand how to optimise your role in a raid. As a hunter your primary role is to deal damage, widely referred to as DPS. DPS stands for damage per second. DPS is the best indicator of showing how much damage you can do, how hard you hit per attack is not the concern in DPS. To optimise your dps you need to do a couple things:

1) Gear correctly. Gear is where all your stats come from. At this stage agility, haste, crit, mastery and (most importantly) hit all come from the gear you obtain. The best gear you can obtain before raiding content is from Heroic Dungeons, Reputation Factions and your Justice/Valor Point vendors. Better gear means more DPS which means you do more damage which means bosses die faster! It's that simple! Find the best gear that you can and get it. Enchant it and gem it!

2) Enchants & gems. These increase your dps stats like gear does, make sure you gem and enchant correctly!

4) Be hit capped! That means 8% for us hunters! It's really easy to get and I don't want to hear or read excuses about hunters not being hit capped. Missing shots means missing damage which lowers your DPS! Get it or get out of the raid! I mean 8% and not 7.99%! OK! Ok :)

3) Spec Correctly & Dual Spec. Hunters are an interesting class at the moment; our specs benefit us in multiple ways. As I write this BM is the best spec for high movement fights (where your pet can wail on the boss constantly). MM is a great spec for those fights where you're standing still most of the time, dealing damage to a single target for a long period of time and SV is the best spec for when you need to use multishot a lot! So make sure you have two specs! I currently raid as MM and SV.

As for individual specs it is important that you spec correctly. The points are an investment in to increasing your DPS so it is only logical that you get skills that are going to increase your damage output!

Now that you're geared, spec'd, gemmed and enchanted for raids you're ready to get in there and run through some scripted encounters that requires you, as a raid member, to do your best possible and if your best is good enough you'll be able to kill some bosses and hopefully get some items! In turn these items will increase your damage output! Thus making the next bosses easier! WOOT WOOT!

Where do we go from here? Our DPS is optimised and that should mean we can kill bosses now, right? WRONG! JUST WRONG! There are factors in boss fights deliberately put in there to test our reflexes. Being a previously sponsored gamer (nothing special, ok! But I was!) I would like to toot my own horn and say that my reflexes are higher than the person's but that does not give someone else an excuse to stand in the god damn fire that will wipe us and get us killed and give us a repair bill which means we have to start the boss all over again instead you could just do the right thing and not stand in the damn fire like you're supposed to and go stand somewhere else! END RANT.

Here's my advice for raiding:

1) Get out of the fire, unless ordered to stand in there! Jump into Aspect of the fox on the run and get your hunter ass outta ze fire!

2) Misdirection, Feign Death, PEW PEW. Not really in that order. Use misdirection as long as the tank is having threat issues. Macro's help. MACRO's, that's another mini tip! Cooldown blowout macros, misdirection macros, tranquilizing shot macros! They are good. Use them!

3) Use your cooldowns as often as possible! I think this one's a simple one but it seems that people seem to skip my point too often! Let me give you a hypothetical scenario. Boss RaG1n for your guild is typically ~7 minutes long. At ~6 minutes your raid leader calls for heroism! What does heroism mean!? BLOW MY COOLDOWNS FOR HUGE DPS BOOSTAGE OMG LOOK AT THOSE BIG NUMBERS AND OMG I AM SHOOTING LIKE SO FAST RIGHT NOT EVEN A GM COULD TAKE ME ON! But for god's sake, man! In 6 minutes you can use all your dps cooldowns! So what do you do? Misdirect, blow your cooldowns and pump into that boss immediately! Show everybody who's boss in your raid during Careful Aim range with a ~97% crit change on Aimed Shot! AIMED AIMED STEADY STEADY AIMED STEADY STEADY AIMED STEADY STEAD AIMED AIMED AIMED... if you're MM the start of the fight will do something like this until the boss is under 80%. With heroism and that rotation I have reached ~29k DPS on the Omnotron Defense System. Back to Boss RaG1n though! Youv'e blown your cooldowns and they're ready to go again. Do you have time to run through another set of cooldown blowage of uber dpsingness!? Well, that's up to your judgement. At 3 minutes into the boss fight Readiness will be ready to go again. But you're not 100% sure if at 6 minute mark your raid will blow heroism! Well, that call is up to you, my friend. If you have some DPS down you will take longer to defeat Boss RaG1n and acquire his awesome purple itamz! Well, in that case blow your cooldowns again! WOOT LOOK AT ME SHOOT AT THIS BOSS WITH EXTREME SPEED PEW PEW PEWPPEPWPWEPEW!

4) Listen to instructions, whether you like it or not. As a leader of various teams in my time it's tough to coordinate people, especially because people are independent beings; they want to do their own thing! The problem with this is that in a team where everyone is reliant on coordinating with each other there is no room to go rambo. You're a part of a team and need to act as a team. If you want to go do your own thing go play pokemon or something. In boss fights where target switching, stacking and spreading are common you need to listen and react quickly and according to your raid leader otherwise wipes can and will happen. There are too many instances I can think of where team mates doing the wrong thing (i.e. doing what wasn't instructed) have failed the team in that instance. Work as a team! Be a team member, not just a person that's part of another team!

5) Research boss fights, patch changes. Enough said.

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