A lot of people are rocking their “Jenkins” title. Some still sport Champion of the Naaru or Hand of A’dal. And all of them are awesome. But last night I was able to get the longest title ever. The night before we started official 25-man raiding a group of us headed over to 25-man Malygos and racked up a kill, which finished off the Champion of the Frozen Wastes achievement. While Malygos isn’t on the list, it’s a known bug and is actually required to finish it. And it was pretty cool to get. Hailstorm dropped and it got defaulted to a Rogue. The guild leader says a Hunter will never get a melee weapon over a melee class, which I am OK with in most cases, but apparently this also applies to when the person is upgrading from one epic to another while we are rocking blues. Not sure how I feel about that.
My numbers on Malygos weren’t awesome either, but that one is because 85% of the sparks we killed, which in turn give you a huge damage increase, were killed so close to Malygos I couldn’t stand in the area to get the buff and still maintain enough distance from his HUGE hitbox to to shoot. Sadness.
Shrug that off and get back in the saddle, as I joined an increasingly regular group of heroic runners, which allowed my to finally pick up my Heroes’ Cryptstalker Tunic, which is my third piece of badge gear, going along with the neck piece and the belt. Picking up this bad boy put me in an interesting situation. It put me at 215 hit rating, which was over the cap with 3/3 Focused Aim. But dropping any piece of gear would put me under the hit cap or it was an item that I didn’t have a solid replacement for since I had upgraded it.
So I decided to try something different. I only went 2/3 Focused Aim, which now puts me 14 under the hit cap when only taking those two talents. I then opted to try 3/3 Improved Stings and still took 2/2 Go for the Throat. This still leaves my Rapid Fire at a 5 minute cooldown but I do still have Readiness. I am not sure if I am going to like having the talents spent like this, but if I find myself not needing the reduced cooldown on Rapid Fire Improved Stings may prove to be a decent DPS increase. I guess we’ll see tonight when we head into 25-man Naxx. I just want to make sure I am pumping out as much DPS as possible.
Now this wasn’t the only stuff I did last night either. I set my sights on one other goal. Solo Onyxia. No bugs or exploits. Just me and my gorilla. And boy it was an adventure. I went in for a few attempts and kept getting stuck in phase 2. So I headed back to Orgrimmar and picked a very janky spec. And when I say janky, we’re talking about something like this. If you look at it, I am pretty sure you can see why I decided to spec like that. The biggest problem I was running into was attrition damage from constant fireballs during phase 2.
With only one health potion per fight and Lifeblood on a 3 minute cooldown, I needed ways to survive long enough to bring her down. I specced my gorilla like this (yes, there is a missing point. Genghis is only 79) because I need Roar of Sacrifice to absorb some of the aforementioned fireball damage every 21 seconds (that’s how long the cooldown is with Longevity). And with Mend Pet ticking for 1400, GenghisKong was never in danger as much as I was. :)
In the end, it involved a lot of feigning death, my gorilla (GenghisKong) killing a whole lot of whelps and trying to *not* get feared into the whelp pits when Bestial Wrath was down. It brought in 182 gold and some vendor epics, another 18 slot bag and the enjoyment knowing I solo’d Onyxia without any cheap tricks or bugs. Enjoyable most definitely.
Thoughts, comments, etc etc. Post ‘em!
… Wow… Nice :D Once I hit 80 and start gathering some gear from Heroics and Naxx I'm going to have to try this. That's pretty insane!
As a Draenei Hunter, I've actually run into that position an awful lot.. I'm running to 1H 33 hit weapons (geared out in mostly Rep rewards, heroics hate me) and I've had to swap gear around a lot to try and not be WAY over the cap. I've actually been thinking for a while that the further Hunters get into raiding, more hit will be available and points will get shifted out of Focused Aim. Particularly if t8 and 9 aren't so stacked with haste…
I'm just going to start in on 10m Naxx this week, so I've yet to really test these theories out, but it's interesting at the very least.
I'm tempted to get those same Swords and put two Titanum Weapon chains on them, that is like 3-3.5% hit off weapons alone. just a thought i had since i am a 445 Black Smith and always trying to find a way to beat the system xD
Gratz on the Onxyia kill.
Been on both sides of the Hunter/Rogue coin. My consolation is always knowing that I would feel the burn more if my primary weapon went as a secondary weapon than the other way round.
Ever heard of Analogkid? Rogue that took Thoridal with 2 hunters in the raid without it. Now that's just sad.
I hear ya. That's why I am not trying to think too much about it. But we'll see what happens when Black Ice or something drops and it goes to a Retadin or something. > >
The Analogkid situation made my cry though. :'(
It was definitely awesome. I thought it was a good test of Hunter skill since we don't have innate self-healing so managing pet aggro was crucial during whelp phases. Phase 1 was a push over. I could have been in that phase for days if I wanted. :)
Wow that's much worse than that kid who master looted the Shivering Felspine for his ret set.
Known as Sasee on Black Dragonflight, he's a manipulative 16 years old who server-hops every 3 months and recruits a top tier raiding guild to get gear and mats for himself.
No problem – glad to have been of help :)
Hi, been reading the blog for a bit, thought I'd start off by saying it's been a pleasure to browse =) whiling away the hours till realms are back up here in the good ol' UK.
Just been doing some research this morning, seems the hit cap for lvl 83 bosses is 8%, not 9%. I don't know if you were aware of this; if so my apologies, but it was interesting to me as I can drop some +hit myself.
Links to the threads discussing it:
http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t37714-hit_rating/ (Begins about halfway down the first page, I realise it begins by saying 9% but the evidence appears lower down)
http://ordure2000.free.fr/hitcap.jpg (one of the SS's used to show it; I cannot speak French but it seems self explanatory)
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/2577/hit8pv0.j… (Another SS to back it up)
Sorry for the amount of links, but I was skeptical at first. Just thought I'd mention it as you were talking about hit =)
Cheers,
Väkis
Blood Elf Hunter
Frostwhisper EU
Hmm, that is actually very cool and interesting. I am going to write about this today. Thanks for the heads up!