Tag Archives: Raiding

First night in Antorus

I enjoyed Antorus quite a bit. It reminded me a lot of Ulduar — not any specific bosses, but just the big epic areas and general style. It was just normal mode so most of it was one-shotted (including Argus), but we were overgeared so I wouldn’t read too much into that. Though from what I hear, Heroic is also a little easier than ToS Heroic was (I won’t be doing that til later in the week). Hopefully that translates into Mythic as well, because I did feel like ToS (especially Mythic) was too hard in general. I thought Nighthold was a lot better in terms of overall difficulty.

My favorite boss was definitely Argus — it’s a visual feast and has really cool mechanics. One of my favorites ever. Plus it felt cool that I was briefly rank 1 of all Hunters on that fight (I had to screenshot such an occasion). Ah, the perks of raiding on day one before the EU and Koreans get in there.  😛

My least favorite boss was Varimathras. The entire fight seems like it’s on the tanks, and everyone else is doing patchwerk. I actually like having a patchwerk fight once per raid, but this one just wasn’t fun. A fun patchwerk fight to me is something like Krosus from Nighthold.

The dumbest boss was the Portal Keeper because hunter pets are completely bugged on it. Here’s a tip: Don’t take the portals to the platform because Blizzard forgot to implement pet pathing up there. It’s a complete mess. Tell your raid leader you need to stay down.

Another thing worth mentioning is that several bosses have an emphasis on CC, which is pretty cool. Tar Trap, Freezing Trap, and Binding Shot will all get a lot of use in this raid.

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Antorus gear for Beast Mastery: Trinkets, set bonuses, and more

If you haven’t heard, tier sets are going away in Battle for Azeroth. So Antorus (Tier 21) will be the very last tier where we get class set bonuses. It’s also the final tier of the expansion, so that must mean Blizzard is going to give the system a nice send off and give us some truly cool bonuses to enjoy while we wait for BfA, right?

Oh, sweet summer child. No.

Updated Feb 6, 2018: Updated set bonus section for small hotfix buff to T21 4pc. It now reduces the cooldown by 3.0 sec. See the Set Bonus FAQ for discussion on this.

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Hunter spec disparity in Emerald Nightmare

Alright, I knew Survival would be the unpopular Hunter spec going into Legion, but I didn’t think the disparity would be quite this severe. After a week of Emerald Nightmare, the numbers are in and it’s not pretty for Survival. As I write this, there are ~48,000 Hunter parses in Heroic Emerald Nightmare on Warcraft Logs thus far. Only ~660 of those are from Survival Hunters, along with ~36,000 Marksmanship and ~11,000 Beast Mastery. Those Survival numbers are pretty appalling.

First of all, yes, not all guilds upload their combat logs (or even keep any) but I think in the first week the vast majority of them doing Heroic content will be doing so, and these numbers should be fairly representative of what’s going on. When you add anecdotal evidence about seemingly never seeing Survival Hunters in the wild, it becomes pretty clear: Hardly anyone seems to be playing Survival.

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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.

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