Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Soloing Zandalari Warbringers

I found farming Zandalari Warbringers to be very lucrative and, at first, challenging.  They also have a chance of dropping one of three mounts, but those are soulbound and can only be sold to a vendor for 2.5g.

I believe I started soloing Warbringers at ilvl 520 and while it was tedious in the beginning, since they have huge health pool it is doable and can be done at comparatively low levels by Beast Mastery hunter.  The fight is about survival, not DPS.

First,

Build

I selected Spirit Bond as my Tier 3 talent and highly recommend it for any soloing and even leveling.  Makes hunter's life much easier than a lot of other DPS classes.  Please note I chose it over Exhilaration because I think sustained healing is more important while fighting NPCs, than a boost on a cooldown.

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Animal Bond - same as above, healing;
Glyph of Mending - same as above and above, sustained healing;
Glyph of Misdirection - with Misdirection macro that misdirect to pet is one of the aggro mitigation tool with Feign Death being the second one.

Minor Glyph

Glyph of Revive Pet - this allows me to revive my pet without interruption even if Warbringer is banging on my head.


Strategy

Pull up a Turtle, set it to passive and turn off the automatic Growl.  Engage Warbringer, bind it to the pet and make sure it ignores you.

General tips


  • Stand behind and away from Warbringer at all times;
  • Monitor threat levels to make sure it targets pet at all times;
  • Watch out what it casts (see Abilities).

Warbringer Abilities and Mitigation

Each Warbringer has four out of five abilities:

  • Thunder Crush - frontal cone of damage.  Make sure you're not in it, Mend Pet.
  • Meteor Shower - meteors are dropping all over.  Dance to avoid a hit (you may survive a hit or two), I believe you may be able to stay outside of the affected area and still DPS the Warbringer, but I never bothered to prove it.  Mend Pet often.
  • Horrific Visage - keep Bestial Wrath on cooldown to interrupt, but even if you don't it is usually not critical, except for the Warbringer in Krasarang Wilds which tends to reset if you allow it to scare your pet too far away.
  • Scarab Swarm - bunch of scarabs tries to get you or a pet, I usually Multi-Shot them down as soon as they appear or Glaive Toss through them if they are already on me.  If you miss them, don't sweat, they hit like kittens.
  • Vengeful Spirit - Summons Vengeful Spirit.  This thing hits like a truck and can 2-3 shot your pet.  Fortunately it is extremely slow, so use Distracting Shot as soon as it shows up and step away, if it gets too close - change position.


Bare Minimum

So at the bare minimum a BM hunter needs to use:
Mend Pet
Misdirect to pet (I use macro which I use in place of the regular Misdirection)
Feign Death for threat mitigation

And, if Warbringer has Vengeful Spirit ability:
Distracting Shot

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