Five down, five to go

Well, last night my group downed our fifth Mythic Blackrock Foundry boss, Gruul. Our previous progression order was Beastlord Darmac -> Oregorger -> Hans and Franz -> Flamebender Ka’graz -> Gruul. Next up is Kromog, then Operator Thogar, and then I imagine Iron Maidens after that. Blackhand isn’t even on the radar yet. So far we’ve been downing 1 new boss a week (and reclearing previous ones), but I won’t be surprised if that slows down as we get to the tougher bosses.

As a bonus, I got the Mythic Meaty Dragonspine Trophy off the first Gruul kill. I’ve also had some other good luck with bonus rolls, getting a Mythic Warforged ring from Oregorger and Mythic Tier 17 chest from bonus rolls the previous week.

As you may have guessed, I haven’t switched away from Beast Mastery since 6.1 dropped. It’s not perfect on every fight, but it’s definitely not bad on any of them. Unbuffed, I actually have more multistrike than mastery, so Survival would be viable too if Blizzard decides to change things up again in the future. It wouldn’t surprise me at this point. WoD has been such a rollercoaster for hunters, but thankfully it’s been mostly quiet on the hotfix front for the past couple of months.

Beastlord Darmac

Beast Mastery’s strength here is oddly not its burst AoE but its single target DPS. I think Survival is far better for spreading around damage on this fight because you can just DoT all the spears and adds at the same time. Beast Mastery is inefficient for spears because of pet travel time, but there are exceptions if say 2-3 spears are clumped up.

However, in most cases I found it better just to stick to the priority target and lightly cleave onto the pack beasts. The end result is doing more boss DPS than anyone else in the raid, while others who are more suited for it can handle things like spears. When Pack Beasts come out I usually only have to throw out a single Multi-Shot before they die, except near the end where things are a bit more hectic.

The only real consideration I give to AoE is delaying Barrage for pack beasts (partially for the damage, and partially for the tank Misdirect). Oh, and you NEED the Glyph of Tranquilizing Shot on this fight. It is UNUSABLE without the glyph. They should have just made the glyph baseline because the ability is unusable in any form without it (it costs 50 focus now). It’s PvP’s fault. I’m just glad they aren’t so quick to nerf PvE damage in the name of PvP like they have in past expansions.

Oregorger

This fight is as easy as Beastlord. It’s basically heroic mode with the addition of the exploding fire walls, and I have my secret sweet spot where I avoid them all anyway. When you’re facing Oregorger’s spawn, it’s the back right corner — you can avoid all fire walls and have plenty of warning for Oregorger’s roll since he can only come from the one direction. In the rare case when Oregorger is rolling there while a fire wall chain reaction is happening, you can just Deterrence. I can also hit a huge amount of ore crates from this location — at least 8 with little movement.

As for Beast Mastery, this is probably its weakest fight in the whole instance. Pet travel time sucks! When Dash is on cooldown your pet basically does a leisurely walk between the crates (though you can get a bit fancy with Master’s Call for extra mobility too). BM does well for putting down the boss itself, of course. Especially after roll phases: save up your Frenzy stacks and Bestial Wrath to blow up the boss as phase 1 starts again.

Hans’gar and Franzok

Screw this fight! It’s annoying and it drops no hunter loot! You may get some pieces in normal or heroic, but once you’re geared enough for mythic all of these items are useless. Ironically, hunters are the best class for this fight because of casting on the move, yadda yadda, the shit every other class whines about.  😛

I’d like to say I have the fight fairly well mastered. I rarely die to dumb stampers, but this past week I had the most stupid brain fart ever. I thought it was dumb stampers next when it was really smart stampers, so I expertly disengaged to my designated dumb stamper location and proceeded to get splat by solo soaking a boss leap. At least I went splat before smart stampers started or else I would have activated like 4 of them. We had just wiped a lot and I was on autopilot. Plus there’s something mesmerizing about those conveyor belts…sometimes I have to blink a few times to refocus.

Beast Mastery is fine for it. You can do a lot of Beast Cleaving during the smart stampers (and the opener), you just have to make sure you are targeting the boss that isn’t jumping around so your pet doesn’t chase it around like a maniac.

I’d like this fight a whole lot more if he dropped useful hunter loot on Mythic. How cruel is it that both of our weapons are from the hardest bosses in the instance (aside from Blackhand)?

Flamebender Kag’raz

Beast Mastery does quite well on this fight. As long as people kiting the dogs keep them near the middle, Beast Cleave can usually hit them all. Kill Shot is also very useful for finishing off the last dog just in time.

My annoyance with this fight is the positioning. Sometimes you have good pulls where no weapons land near you, and other times you just want to Alt+F4 out of there. Either you have to worry about standing too close, or you have to stand so far that you get out of range.

Is the fight hard? No, it took the least amount of wipes out of all bosses, but it’s still a bit annoying for me depending on the RNG.

Gruul

Funny how almost every normal or heroic group I’ve been apart of starts on this boss, but it’s really not the boss you want to start with on Mythic. It’s a DPS check, a healing check, and a tank mechanics check. If more than 1 DPS dies in the fight, it’s likely a wipe (at least when you’re progressing).

I enjoyed this fight though. It’s nice to have that one fight in the instance where you can mostly focus on executing your DPS rotation. There’s a lot to dodge, but for the most part you’re planted in the same area.

Beast Mastery is great for this fight. It has a tight 6-minute enrage which means 2 perfectly placed Stampedes. 6 minutes is the ideal BM fight length, so I wasn’t surprised to be able to pull off my Simulation Craft DPS on the first kill. I definitely had room for improvement (and better proc RNG), so there’s a lot of potential on this fight for destroying the meters.

Multiple raids in one tier kinda sucks

Am I the only one who dislikes the idea of multiple raids with different loot quality in the same tier? For me, Highmaul was almost made irrelevant overnight (and the 5 ilvl hotfix sealed the deal). I would have rather had a single 17 boss raid, or maybe like a 13-14 boss raid with one or two single-boss raids that had the same loot quality — basically like Wrath’s launch with Naxxramas plus Eye of Eternity and Obsidian Sanctum.

It is nice to be able to clear a raid quickly, but I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of this kind of tier.  I think it causes problems within groups too. You get some people who want to go back to get that one single good piece in the whole instance (for hunters it was the trinket), yet the majority of people need nothing or very little. Then if you actually go there, no one is really motivated to perform. Like our group getting owned by Mythic Tectus. We had the gear to stomp it, but no one wanted to be there. These bosses are still hard, but they give no reward. Who wants to do that? Why am I even wiping on this? For Temporal Crystals?

I’m not sure how long the next 5 will take, but I have a feeling we will have some time to get it done. It wouldn’t surprise me if tier 18 didn’t release until August or September.

How has your raiding been going?