ICC Hunter Strats and Tips
 

So I successfully acted as the range tank for 25m Blood Princes since our warlocks are fail. I found it actually worked out quite well. I was able to grab huge amounts of aggro on the boss simply bc he is already in kill shot range. Also with disengage and the large amount of instants i was able to pick up the adds and they stayed on me like glue. Deterrence also worked on Keleseth's empowered shadow lances!

My question is if any other hunters tanked him on 25m and any other tricks or talents we could use to do it more efficiently.

Also an added bonus is I was able to just set my pet on a kinetic bomb, and my pet ALONE would keep it from hiting the ground. It was a pretty fun fight.


Mod note: Ongoing list of abilities per boss here.

I'm the tank for my guild on it and I generally don't have any trouble keeping a Nucleus on me full time just by a single auto shot. As such, I also respecced into a 1/55/15 specc to get both Survivalist and some extra 6 yards range which I found helped tremendously for gathering the Nuclei that were either far away, or saving a Kinetic Bomb or what else might need a shot (51 yards on Kill Shot is crazy fun at the end of the fight I found out when shooting a boss on the opposite side of the room much to the delight of my guildies that saw the shot). I generally do several tasks at once and will probably be focusing on doing more damage to the Empowered prince next time as threat is never an issue on Keleseth himself.
As for something else we also set up mages that focused on Kinetic Bombs and whenever they had spare time they would bring a Nucleus to me from the opposite side or so. Tanking with 7-8 of them at once was hilarious.

All in all, I love the fight, especially as a tank in it.

On the topic of hunter's Prince Keleseth tanking (Luponero & Zilir), may I ask whether you are using a dedicated stam/PVP gear to do the tanking? Or, regular 100% PVE gear is sufficient to do the task? Currently we are trying to use a DK to tank Keleseth, but it seems to be a little bit taxing on the tank as melee.

I tanked him in both 25 and 10 man version (10 man post-hotfix with earlier spawning Dark Nucleus), and used pretty much standard PVE-Gear except a Flask of Stoneblood and bracers enchanted with Fur Lining - Shadow Resist (which I normally use for orb duty on heroic Twin Val'kyrs). The only time you are in real danger is when Keleseth is empowered first after Valanar, though the hotfix pretty much made this a non-issue as the Dark Nuclei now start spawning as soon as the princes are engaged (instead of ~15-20 seconds into the fight). Watch out for Taladram's Conjure Empowered Flames in 10 man, it gibbed me a few times because there weren't enough people to soak the fire damage before it reached me (Deterrence works great here).

So, is the resistance granted by the dark nuclei quite enough to tank all the empowered shadow lances (even on 25-man)? Is deterrence needed to tank those lances? Because another poster (Luponero) mentioned that he used deterrence to tank empowered shadow lances (however, the duration is probably only enough to tank 2 of them at most).

Another question is, I am a bit confused on the dark nuclei's aggro table. Some mentioned that it uses regular agggro table (and as such, if someone wants to help bringing the nucleus to you, you have to surpass the carrier's initial aggro). Others mentioned that it is solely based on who hit the nucleus last, and as such 1 autoshot is probably enough to grab the nucleus from the carrier, no matter how big is the carrier's initial aggro.

Another thing is, does MM offer any special benefit to Keleseth tanking. The only thing I can think of is double-deterrence, but even then it is pretty limited. Otherwise, I will change to survival due to: higher HP, lack of JotW during non-invocation phase (fear of OOM), better kill shot (faster aggro boost during non-invocation phase).

You don't need Deterrence to tank the Empowered Shadow Lances (neither 25 nor 10), but it helps mitigating some of the damage spikes, like when you are targetted by the empowered version of Faladram's fire orb. As far as I could tell, the Dark Nuclei followed whomever damaged them last, so tagging them with an Auto or Arcane Shot works most of the time (unless someone DoTs them by accident... if that happens, they will reaggro after every DoT-tick until the DoT runs out).

I agree SV is probably better suited for the job, though frankly, every ranged DPS could tank them without too much effort.

I'm not either of those people, but I tank for my guild and I use mostly PvP gear for about a 5-6k hp increase. Personally I think it's definitely needed, unless you have a "PvE tanking set" with stam gems or something. After the fight is going on for awhile and you have 4-5+ nuclei on you I think it becomes trivial (except while he's empowered), but at the start of the fight you're still getting hit pretty hard.

I run with normal gear and a flask. Gives me about 31k+ health. Since you can easily manage to DPS the other bosses at the same time I felt this as the best way to go about it, especially on 10 man. With a disc priest by your side having 30k is not needed, at least when you're fast on getting nuclei, but it certainly helps for the empowered and at any time you might be targetted by an Empowered Fireball.

Although as I said in my earlier post I do have a special specc for it just to get extra range and health, both incredibly useful for the fight. I cannot imagine 3 better spent talent points than 3 in Hawk Eye for tanking this fight.

I tanked Keleseth on 25 and 10 man for my guild, both times I did nothing to change spec or gear. In 25 man I borrowed a tank's stoneblood flask and was sitting at about 29k HP with normal gear on, far more than enough. I easily kept at least 4 or 5 orbs on my the whole fight, and deterrance is always handy if things really go wrong (two deterrances with readiness).

There are difficult to reach orbs, however, and I had dedicated assistants (mages) help bring me out of reach orbs. This may be overkill for some guilds, but I at least found using a different spec or gear set entirely unecessary. Of course, if you already have a PvP or stamina set (say, for soloing raids as BM?), it wouldn't hurt to use it, as my effective damage done was maybe a percent of the raid's damage anyway.

On the subject of kinetic bombs, I hear talk you can put your pet on one full-time. I'm wondering, does it only attack the bomb when it gets near the ground, as if it were out of range when it's in the air? We seemed to have a problem if orbs got attacked too much, they'd hit the ceiling and blow up. If just putting your pet on an orb and forgetting about it for the duration works, I may have found fluffy a new job.

Edit:
Glyph of kill shot works wonders for threat on Keleseth.

yes your pet can solo keep up the kinetic bomb, the pet attacks it when it comes into melee range enough to send it back in the air. Dks and warlock pets do the same. So that will = more dps on the boss, just assign different pets to different orbs and set it and forget it.

As far as spec and talents are concerned. I did what others have done. I ran with normal grear / spec and just used a stoneblood flask. However with the recent changes to the fight it makes tanking it even easier! I would imagine the extra range would be a nice have, but there is no actual need to have talents to tank them.

Quick note on using pets for the kinetic bombs - keep an eye out for when your pet returns to the fight (ie: it's bomb target disappears). You'll have to re-target the next bomb that appears to send your pet onto this new one.

For 10m, you only need 2 pets to keep the kinetic bombs off the floor (as long as no-one dies). Not sure for 25m (as I wasn't counting in our 25m attempts)

I believe I counted 4 up at one time in our 25-Man attempts last week. I am not sure of the duration-per-bomb timer, however.

There are three bombs up at the same time in 25m. We did it with two hunters and an Unholy DK.

Keleseth Tanking

Last night in one of our ten mans, our top hunter attempted to tank Keleseth. The info I've found says that three orbs should make you "immune" in a sense to Keleseth, in terms of their damage reduction. The hunter had no problems tanking him when he wasn't empowered, but when he was, the hunter was still taking 26K+ damage from the empowered attack. Not being there, I don't have a log I can link. Is this normal or is there something else going on?

You actually don't need to allocate so many people to the orbs. For my guild, we just split the room in half, and assign a hunter to each half. When the first orb on your side starts to drop you can leave your pet on it. I've been able to juggle between three to four orbs alone.

You actually don't have to do much dps to the orbs, you just need to stop them hitting the ground. So put 4 - 7 shots on the orb, then switch to another orb that is low, and push that one up, then switch again. If an orb is far away, disengage to it. Picking up hawkeye for this helps a lot.