Tharia

The pyro hits the one that holds aggro, so your pet will die. This might not be a problem if you are close to 50% already.
I don't know if it is possible to taunt Kael just before he casts his pyro though.

 

Cex

yeah the vid is of me back when i wasnt to amazingly geared. getting him to 50% is nothing, he drops fast. and for the pvp boss, yeah there are a few combos that are rough. the double melee isnt that big of an issue, the one i hate is the one in the vid that can make it rough, the one with the sham also healing. all the combos are doable even more so now with the better gear i have. havent gone back in some time now =/, kinda been burnt out on the game and just havent really cared lol, maybe 3.1 will change that (/pray)

 

Hirgux

Does avoidance work against geddons inferno?
And btw; wowhead seems to be wrong about the Inferno - Spell - World of Warcraft Inferno spell; according to them it does 1k/sec - but the last tic hits my pet for 5000 fire dmg...

EDIT: Thanks for the reply; seems to work - dmg from geddon is now ridiculous.

 

Shandara

It works, pets with full Avoidance and 3/3 Resistance take almost no damage from the pulsing.

EDIT:
In response to Pijn after me. My first Geddon kill was using tier1 3-piece bonus to stand at 60 yards because I mistakenly thought his abilities had a 45 yard range. It worked nicely too, my pet tanked him to death. It took about 30 mins that way (and 2 respawns of trash to kill in between too).

Of course, further kills were done a more normal way. Like other posters, the next patch should make it possible to solo Garr (although I already have his bindings).

WotLK Hunter DPS Spreadsheet

 

Pijn

That´s right, Avoidance and Hawk Eye make Geddon a very trivial fight. Even if you do manage to get the mana burn and/or bomb, it's not the end of the world. Just try to avoid it

EDIT: Ill respond to you then Shandara
I made a long post on page 4 regarding ZG/AQ20/MC bosses. I never thought of the 3x t1 set bonus, but yeah as we both found out, its not really needed. His abilities actually have a 45 yard range, but this distance is measured from the centre of his hitbox which is fairly big. Hence, a hunter with Hawk Eye can easily outrange these abilities, as you obviously found out. I actually soloed Geddon only once, after i read about a hunter having soloed it...he dropped the bindings right away. Took a resto druid in to duo rest of that MC run, and Garr dropped his binding the very same run. Guess i earned this luck after farming Baron Rivendare for over a year to get his mount, only to see half the server with it now they increased the droprate x_x
Ever since that run i just duo MC with a healer to get my last bit of rep with Hydrax. I *might* try to solo Garr at some point, just for the sake of it ><

 

Pijn

Right, i soloed heroic MgT twice now. Couple of comments:

1) What was your exact spec when soloing MgT Cex? I am mostly tank specced (i have 10% hp on pet instead of Imp hawk, Thick Hide instead of FF, and ofcourse Catlike Reflexes) and from looking at your vid, you seem to be mostly dps specced, i see Cobra Strikes which i dont have in my solo spec for example. The reason i ask this is because it seems you either do alot more dps on Kaelthas 100-50% than me, or you were just lucky with some things (as ill ask below)

2) In your vid i dont see any phoenixes spawn in Kaelthas p1, yet when i kill him i get one at least, usually 2 phoenixes spawn which requires my attention. I do see you looking around for them (Kaelthas yells the emote? But no Phoenix?) yet you have no phoenix to deal with. Edit: i watched your vid again, and reading your chat window, Kaelthas makes no emote 'Vengeance Burns' meaning you dps him quick enough to 50%

3) As a result of phoenixes i sometimes have Kaelthas casting the barrier on himself and casting the 50k pyroblast (seen it twice so far). However, both times the pet survived it either through luck (full resist?) or i nuked down the shield which automatically means the Pyro gets interupted i think (its a 5 man instance after all, and not all group setups had a interupt with them, opposed to the 25 man Kaelthas).

4) The Fireballs. They hit pet for about 5-6k and about 50% of these fireballs are fully resisted. However, it is still a huge amount of damage. Would you agree with me when i say this is a luck factor since having 2xt5 and Mend Pet ticks is not enough to outheal 4 fireballs hitting pet in a row? So far i have had to FD quite a few attempts after pet died due to too much damage on him. You mentioned not having 2xt5 in this Kaelthas kill shown in the vid, which makes me believe it is a luck factor even more. But even if this is a luck factor, it is not a big problem. If pet dies i just FD and go again

As i said, i have killed the four bosses in heroic MgT twice now.

First boss is fairly trivial, i dont even bother with destroying the crystals anymore, i just RoS through the explosions (half of which i resist anyway)

Second boss i handle exactly like in your vid: first 2 sparks, i myself kill one, pet the other. The sparks after that are all for my pet. The first spark gives me +50% damage which also means more healing for pet naturally. I first tried with all sparks going to pet = dead pet. All sparks to me = dead me, or me pulling aggro. But doing it the way you did it in your vid, its the perfect balance of threat, incoming damage, outgoing damage and healing.

Third boss: i now check at start of instance if the male naga (arms warrior) is part of the combination. For me personally, he is the hardest one with a charge, a hamstring and a Mortal Strike. The shaman is fairly trivial, he goes oom quickly while kiting all 5 of them towards the entrance, just like your vid. A very fun and interesting way to do this boss indeed, kiting them to the entrance

And well Kaelthas first 50% is the critical phase, after that it's a very trivial fight, i just use RoS on myself to mitigate some of the damage, bandage after the first air phase (yes i get two, seems you only *just* get a second one, which makes me think you solo MgT with a full dps spec with tank pet). Another thing i just noticed watching your vid again, didnt realize this before; Feign Death actually make the bubbles in air phase fly to pet for a second

 

Nandei

Joining in on the Heroic MgT soloing talk. I have now soloed all the bosses three times.

I use a tankish spec with Cobra Strikes: (56/15/0). My pet is also specced for tanking, but I have skipped RoS: Pet Calculator - Wowhead. I've been meaning to take one point out of Spiked Collar and move that to RoS, but so far I have never remembered to do that while I've been at the trainer. As to gear, I use T5 gloves and shoulders, and switch my chest for T7 chest to keep the T7 2 set bonus too.

First boss is quite easy, I have so far not had any trouble with him (apart from one time where I managed to pull him while clearing the trash in the room). My tactic on the second boss is a bit different from the one shown in Cex's video: of the first two sets of sparks, I kill one myself and have my pet kill the other. After this I pop my cooldowns (BW+RF) and just nuke the boss down ignoring the rest of the sparks. So far, the boss has died before the sparks have killed me or my pet. I've been using also what arcane resistance gear I have, the cloak with enchant and the trinket from Karazhan quest, which does help.

At the third boss I have actually had the MS warrior every time. The other adds have never been melee though: engineer, mage, warlock and hunter in some combination. I put my freezing trap as close to the mobs as I dare, wait for the cooldown and then use MD and send my pet at Delrissa. The MS warrior has trapped himself each time at the start when he charges, leaving me free to kill the priestess. After Delrissa dies, I try to keep the warrior trapped and kill the casters first. So far this has worked, since the naga warrior has been the only one to try to come in melee range of me and trapping him has been quite easy. I haven't even needed to kite the mobs further than the previous room.

At Kael'thas I've gotten one phoenix each time, but have had no trouble meeting the time limit before he starts to cast pyro. I put a frost trap between the stairs and KT, to get a bit more time to kill the phoenix before it reaches me. I have not had my pet die to the fireballs, but that really says nothing about how dangerous they are, I might have just been lucky.

At my first clear the trash actually caused me more trouble than the bosses. I had forgotten the abilities of each and what I should kill first (the magisters do hurt a lot if they get to stack their buff). Getting better at it each time though, and having lots of fun clearing the place on my own.

 

Pijn

How would you handle the combination of the arms warrior (male naga), fury warrior AND rogue (2 blood elf males). Not entirely sure if all 3 can be in one combination, but i do know at least two of these can be found in one combination. Naturally you could find out what combination Delrissa will have by looking downstairs before killing first boss, but just hypothetically speaken; how would you solve 3 melee adds then without kiting?

 

Nandei

To be honest, I have no clue, kiting is the way to go with 3 melee. I was not saying that you should always do the fight without kiting, merely that it can be done if the combination of adds is right. Also depending on the combination, the naga warrior is not necessarily that bad an opponent. I actually think he is preferably to the rogue or the monk with the casters, his charging makes trapping him easy.

You say you are now checking that the naga is not one of the group and reset until you get such a group. I think I am going to do that too, but I would rather check if there are more than one melee and then reset until I get such a group.

 

Gaj

Is T5 necessary for MgT? I was on a break during T5 content and went right into BT/MH.

 

Pijn

For MgT? most definitely. For lvl 60 content its debatable, but i would recommend 2xt5 (any 2 pieces will do ofcourse) for that as well. For the lvl 70 heroics though you *really* need 15% of your damage to heal the pet, you do not want to depend on Mend Pet ticks alone. In addition to MgT, i have recently started soloing several other TBC heroics, mostly out of boredom, waiting for Ulduar. Slave Pens, Underbog and Sethek Halls bosses did not pose many problems, in fact the trash hits alot harder than bosses in most cases.

First boss SP (the totem guy) is a joke, 2nd boss (Mr. giant crab monster) went down first try as well (though pet died with boss on 10%). Final boss SP wasnt that challenging either.

Hungarfen in Underbog is easy as well, the 2nd boss killed my pet around 10% (again) but was a kill nonetheless. Third boss started out fine, until the bear pet put a nasty debuff on my own bear (reducing armour by 82%) resulting in an almost instagib Final boss Underbog was easy.

Some of Sethekk Halls trash can be a nightmare (only the two-guard packs - which hit *very* fast and hard - just after first boss, expect quite a few pet deaths there). The 2 bosses in there are a joke though. The room before final boss, where you need a druid friend to summon the bird boss, has 4-5 trash packs which you can clear just fine, just nuke the caster adds first.

For all this, i would say 2xt5 is mandatory, it saves alot of frustration. My advice, get some friends to take out Void Reaver and Leotheras, imo the easiest t5 bosses.

Edit: Speaking about set bonuses, there are few more that might be worth taking, though it all depends on what you intend on soloing ofcourse.

Beastmaster set (t0.5) (the question is ofcourse, is it worth it losing lots of your own statistics (dps and survival) when gaining these 'minor' pet buffs?):
t0.5 boots: +3% damage done by pet
t0.5 helm: +3% health to pet
t0.5 gloves: +2% crit to pet
t0.5 chest: +10% armour

Giantstalker set (t1) (same question, is it worth losing lots of dps + survival to get these situational boosts?)
3 set bonus: +50% range, +10% effect, and -30% cost to Mend Pet. Sixty yard range might come in handy when clearing Ossirians trash, their meteors hit for 14k and while you can reset the mobs as soon as you find out they throw meteors on your pet - you can watch from a distance - this way you can just stay far away and let pet finish them off.
5 set bonus: +30 stamina and +40 resistances to pet. I cant think of a boss where i would want to wear 5 pieces Giantstalker only to give him these minor buffs, but i mention it just for the sake of completion.
Edit: 5 set bonus Dragonstalker (t2) gives +40 stamina and +50 resistances, so 5xt1 goes out of the window, but same thing still stands, the loss of stats is probably not worth the gain of these pet buffs

Riftstalker set (t5)
2 set bonus: heals pet for 15% of your damage done. May sound like alot, may sound like nothing, but it will be a lifesaver and this bonus alone is responsible for hunters being able to solo many bosses that they probably could not do without it. As i said somewhere else in this topic; you not only save mana and global cooldowns on Mend Pet directly, but you have more mana and cooldowns available for damage which in turn is healing ofcourse. Also, 2-2.5k Volley crits on 20 mobs gives impressive healing numbers It should be obvious that the loss of stats is worth the gain you get from this heal.

[Leggings of Beast Mastery]: a world drop in Outland i believe, some decent stats for pet tanking, and just like t5, the loss of stats might be worth the gain you get from these legs (though some actual math should be done, also depending on what your gear is).

[Beast-tamer's Shoulders]: drops of Kaz'Rogal, third boss in Mount Hyjal. Decent shoulders, they might be worth the gain in pet-threat.

Heroic/Valorous Cryptstalker (t7-7.5)
2 set bonus: +5% damage done by pet. A massive boost to pet threat, with amazing stats for the hunter too, and with half your server doing Naxxramas, anyone should be able to get 2 pieces of this

I think this is about it, but there might be some other gear out there that i forgot right now.

 

Skhope

My build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Pet's build: http://www.wowhead.com/?petcalc=0u0Gdru0boo
I use two piece T5 and two piece T7.5.

Here's how I've done these fights:

* Magister's Terrace:
- 1st boss: Simple tank and spank. You don't even need to kill the crystals, just burn him down.

- 2nd boss: I kill the first two sparks. Pet kills the rest. With my buff, I have enough healing to keep him up. I also use Last Stand and RoS if needed.

- 3rd boss: Basically PVP. I have tried it with all classes and the only one that has given me problems was the warrior. In that case, I CC'd the healer and burned down the warrior. Otherwise, the order is boss, shaman, rogue, lock/hunter/mage/engineer. The last 4 can be LoS'd easily.

- Kael: I just pop CDs and burn him down as fast as possible to avoid pyro. I usually have to deal with one phoenix, but it's simple with either a Frost Trap or a Concussive Shot. Keep pet on boss the whole time and keep dpsing him when he throws you in the air.

* ZG:
- Bat: Drain mana through out the fight. When the adds show up, FD and they will disappear. Save Intimidation for her heal. She shouldn't cast it more than once if you have Viper Sting on her every CD. FD every time she tries to drain you. Save CDs for when the bats come out (not really needed, but goes faster and you don't need to deal with too many bombs).

- Spider: This is probably the second hardest for me (first being her trash), since for some reason she resists most of my FDs. Save your FD for when she goes to Spider form. I don't recall the exact name but the trash drops hearts that you can make poison removers out of. I use them every time she poisons me. If FD is down or resisted, I pop Deterrence/RoS and bandage up when she goes to humanoid form again.

- Snake: Kill the adds and mana drain the boss. Move pet out of poison clouds in phase 2.

- Raptor: As others have mentioned, try to evade the raptor. I keep Thunderstomp on my gorilla, so he pulls aggro on the raptor time to time, but if he gets low, I Distracting Shot it to give him some breathing room. Never pull aggro from the boss or he will port you in front of him. Keep mend pet on the boss and MD the boss to your pet time to time.

- Fish: Save FD for when he does knockback and let your pet do most of the damage. Stay in water, so in case you get blasted in the air, you don't take fall damage.

- Tiger: I skip him, although he will be pretty easy with Pummel and Intimidation on gorilla in 3.1. I tried him a few times, but every time, I would be without Intimidation when one of the adds would land a heal at sub 10%, so I gave up.

- Panther: Park your pet in one of the corners by the entrance. Hit the gong, MD boss to the pet, throw mend, pop KC while running back to the entrance and FD in the oppsite corner from your pet. You want to avoid getting marked. When she vanishes, heal your pet and let it deal with the panthers. Throw an Explosive Trap down and use Volley if you get overwhelmed. When she returns in panther form, use all your CDs and burn her. As soon as she switches to human form, throw a mend and FD again. You should not have to deal with her vanishing more than twice if you burn her down fast enough when she's in panther form.

- Jin'do: My pet usually dies pretty quickly, so I kite him most of the fight. Takes very long, but it's doable. I have only done it once successfully and see no point in killing him, so I skip him.

- Hakkar: Tank and spank. With tiger up, he enrages time to time. No need to tranq him, since he barely does any damage to my pet.

 

Shandara

Drain the healer with Viper Sting and this fight is very easy. As long as you keep re-applying it just whittle em down to low health and then finish em off.

I don't have T5 and for me it's basically impossible to keep my pet alive unless I spec for it (i.e. full BM with tank talents).

WotLK Hunter DPS Spreadsheet

 

Skhope

Thanks for the info. It worked perfectly. I focused mostly on keeping my pet alive till the healer was OOM and DPSed the adds down afterwords. Phase 2 was a complete joke!

 

Pijn

I don't even viper the healer add; you can just let her heal, although i have to say i am specced for Aimed Shot in my solo spec. The exact mechanics of the heal have been explained earlier. She will only heal if either she or the other 2 priests are below 50% hp (the two tigers at the pull are included too, she will try to heal them as well as you kill them first), and she will always prioritise herself over her companions.
So what this means is, you dps them down to 10% while letting the priest heal herself (preferably with Aimed Shot debuff on herself). Nuke her down first (if she starts casting the heal at 1% you will not be able to kill her, she will just heal herself.) and after that the last two should not be a problem.

Also, on spider boss, i don't kill trash, but now you mentioned them dropping those venom sacs, i might actually do that in the future, since her poisons did pose some problems in the past. These days, i just RoS through any poisons though, and i save FD in case she casts Life Drain on me (Mend Pet can cleanse it on pet naturally). In Spider form i use FD right after her aggro reset, and let pet grab her again (yes, he is webbed, but that is why i hug my pet in that phase ), followed by another MD to be sure.

On panther boss i noticed some sort of bug, which i havent seen mentioned here before. I park the pet near the entrance of the room, bang the gong, MD boss to pet and run to that side myself as well. I actually let her mark me once, then i Mend pet and FD, waiting for boss to vanish. Let pet finish off any remaining panthers and just wait, stay dead on floor. When boss appears again you can stand up, and no more panthers will harass you for some reason. I have tried making the bug recur many times, and the only way for me to see it happen again was to let her mark me at the start, after which i FD, she vanishes, and stand up only when she comes back. This might have been a random bug, so i will try to do some more experiments on this when i see her next time.'

Edit; come to think of it, someone mentioned here already that the mark makes all the panthers in line of sight aggro you. When you FD and boss vanishes, and pet has finished off all the little panthers remaining, the rest of them will stay in their two pens, out of sight. When boss appears you might still have the mark, but with no panthers in sight anymore they will not leave their pens anymore. Strangely though, if you did not have the mark the panthers would leave their pens almost right after you left FD mode. So perhaps its not a bug, but a simple mechanic of the fight that we never saw before at lvl 60, and no other class can see since they cannot escape combat without resetting the fight. The only reason we hunters can, is ofcouse our pet (Also the reason why we can easily solo bosses that do a Mind Control, like Hakkar and Dr. Weavil)

 

Zeel

I have to disagree a bit on this drain tactic. I've noticed that even with low (or seemingly empty) mana Lor'Khan
gets healing done unless you happen to be very lucky with Intimidation.
As Intimidation still is the only interrupt for a BM hunter (no pummel until tomorrow...) it just cannot be relied on
with the cooldown it has.

After a lot of practice in that fight I've managed to get a "perfect strategy" for me.

I focus on Lor'Khan alone. All the time.

As has been mentioned, Lor'Khan heals only himself if he's < 50% health. Multishot, Volley and Thunderstomp are
needed to damage Zath and Thekal, but all the single-target dps should go on Lor'Khan.
He will die 2-3 times and is resurrected by others. Then you just need to burn him down fast to 50% again to ensure
he is not healing others.
Once Thekal and Zath are at about 10% health, lay off from AoE and burn Lor'Khan to 10% too to take them down
together.

I stay on max range to buy time (and mend pet ticks) on occasional Gouge's from Zath. Feign Death, reposition and
continue.


Edit: Pijn there above seemed to describe this same tactic.

 

Pijn

Yeah she only needs 100 mana for her heals, plus she has a very fast mana regen, and since we cant keep up 100% Viper uptime, the margin of error is small. Though its perfectly possible to prevent her from healing with viper sting, i stopped using this tactic some time ago and just outdamage her heals (which are on a long enough cooldown, and coupled with Aimed Shot debuff they are trivial).

 

Shandara

This doesn't happen to me. Lor'khan doesn't regen mana fast enough to cast a single heal even with the pauses between Viper Sting. It could be I am incredibly lucky but I've been farming the Tiger boss for many weeks now.

WotLK Hunter DPS Spreadsheet

 

Pijn

Yeah, maybe i exaggurated a bit with saying 'very fast mana regen'

She does need 100 mana to cast a heal though, and it takes her several seconds to get back from 0 to 100 mana, nothing Viper Sting cant handle no. But with the other things going on (pet getting stunned, you need to survive, while still killing the 3 adds), sometimes global cd's overlap and you wont re apply Viper right when you can. My point was that all the people worrying about the priests heal shouldnt be worried that much; tiger boss is one of the trivial encounters in that instance.

 

Skhope

This was my experience as well. I was able to keep him less than 100 mana long enough to get the Viper Sting CD up again. He was rezzed once but I single DPSed him down to <50% asap, so he didn't heal anyone else. I drained Thekal only and interrupted Lor'khan's heal once he was below 50%. I popped all my damage CDs after Thekal was OOM and Lor'khan was interrupted and they all went down without a problem.

 

Iru

Is the following from the patch notes likely to make soloing older instances harder now?

 

McInaction

Growl isn't a taunt, so unless you're trying to do some fancy distracting shot acrobatics it won't matter much. It was a preemptive change to avoid people 'bouncing' ulduar bosses back and forth to avoid their mechanics.

 

• Nagisamuro

I imagine the change does affect the pet Taunt, and (like you said) Distracting Shot.

The taunt is on a 3 min cooldown so the diminution penalty might expire even before the ability cools down. I don't know how they implemented the 'shared diminish category' but 3 minutes sounds excessive. I've had a hard time working this ability into my soloing play style, anyway, and don't spec for it with my tanking pet.

Also, as to the question of it affecting old content - the way the note is written it sounds like they just implemented the design that makes it possible to distinguish between the two categories of taunts, but haven't necessarily flagged all bosses in that manner. That is, they wrote "bosses can be made immune to them" vs. "bosses have been made immune to them". Then again, it never pays to rely on Blizzard's accuracy with words.

 

Pijn

Forgive me if i get this wrong, but if i read this correctly you are draining Thekal? and not the female troll Lorkhan? you refer to 'he' and 'him' and 'Thekal was OOM'. Yet you did mention 'Lor'khan's heal'.

On the topic of taunts; distracting shot isnt an actual taunt like we know that of tanking classes. Distracting shot gives temporary aggro for 6 seconds, with a 8 second cooldown on the ability. Your threat is not boosted permanently to the level of the former unit (pet/player) that had aggro, you only have aggro for 6 seconds. Apart from Kurinaxx where i 'taunt' the boss when pet has 6+ stacks of -% healing buff (even though the stacks reset when pet has 10x debuff, which is -100% healing taken), i only used this ability recently on those Sartharion 3d 10 man speed kill attempts to distract Tenebron when Sartharion was at 25%; it does exactly that, 'just' a distract.
And yeah, i doubt they will make Kurinaxx immune to Distracting Shot now

 

Hink

Distracting shot is actually a ranged Mocking Blow(warrior ability) as far as I can tell, and uses the same mechanic. The permanent threat transfer associated with a proper taunt doesn't take place.