Hunting Tortos - Tips and Recommendations for Hunters

Level 60 and 90 talents are vital.

First my disclaimer:  I've only killed him once and it was close.  Well actually the previous attempt we got him down to 0.01% health so that was closer.  But you get the idea.  I'm not an expert.  And everyone's raid needs are different.  But I am able to do 150-170K dps over the course of the fight so I do have some advice to share.

Now let's talk talents.  You want to be doing this fight as Survival.  Serpent Spread is just too useful here.  I have done a lot of tinkering with trying to optimize Beast Cleave for BM, but it really doesn't compare.

As Survival and AoE heavy, you want to take Thrill of the Hunt.  You'll be doing a fairly ridiculous number of  multishots and it doesn't hurt to make that easier.  And if it procs when multiple targets aren't around, regening focus while tossing arcane shots isn't bad either.  You also really really want to take Barrage.  The cooldown on it is perfect for it to be available once for every bat phase.

Can you tell when the bats are out?

Now since I just mentioned a boss mechanic, let's talk about some fight info.  Most likely, you'll need to be misdirecting bats to a tank so they don't insta-kill your healers.  This means you have to do it with a misdirected multishot or a barrage.  You want to always have some focus for this.  I was running with another hunter in our 10man so we split into sides of the room.  If you're by yourself, you may need to be closer to the middle.  The reason is that it seems like the bats don't always spawn within range of all locations.  The other trick is that there isn't a very good timer for when the bats really appear.  So you'll want a targeting macro you can slap a lot.

Here's the video.  I'm not dead on the ground for the whole fight. ;-)

Looking for Pet-Tanking Trinket Recommendations

I'm looking for better trinket options for pet-tanking than these (slot1 / slot2) stamina ilevel 365s.  My unbuffed pet health is quite good (185K) but I don't think I should give up 1,000 stamina.  I am considering the alternative stamina trinkets and pondering how -- and how difficult they would be to get.

Pet Tanks Can Dodge Like Mad

Damage to tanks is supposed to be more even (less spikey) and generally lighter. In making it less spikey they killed avoidance with the Chill of the Throne debuff. Every character gets it in the party or raid. All the tanks are quite familiar with this debuff.

Pets do not get that debuff.

Really.

Go Flash! Go Fluffy!

How to Heal a Pet Tank

What You Need to Know

1. A pet tank should not be taking critical hits.
2. Pets have decent armor mitigation but low dodge.
3. Pets have 90% reduction in AoE magical damage.
4. Pets should be able to take two big hits but three should kill them. This should be one less than a normal tank.
5. Pets have less OMG panic buttons. They have one Last Stand. And turtles have an occasional Shell Shield.
   
6. Hunter pet tanks get +54% to incoming healing. They get this thanks to the hunter talent, Spirit Bond, and the pet talent, Blood of the Rhino.

What Does This Mean for a Healer?

1. Pets tanks will take steady damage so they need steady and frequent healing.
2. Pets can shrug off all but the worst stuff on the ground. A tank-killer 50k magical hit will only be 5k.
3. Pets don't have many panic buttons. A normal tank can be liberal about using them because they have a couple more. A hunter may be more tentative about using it because they only have one.
4. Pets will not become immune for a while in an OMG event and wait for you to cast a big heal.
5. Pets add 54% to your healing. Fifty-four percent. Because they can't take more than a couple big hits, use smaller heals with short or instant cast times. HoTs are good too.
6. Pet tanks need a dedicated healer so they get that steady healing. However they may not need more than one if they get short spam heals.
   

New Pet Resilience Levels for Pet Tanking in 3.3

Pets can avoid crits from mobs and bosses either by: a) the hunter stacking a fair amount of resilience or, b) by the hunter wearing some resilience gear and the pet taking the Grace of the Mantis tenacity talent. For any real pet tanking, you need to use a tenacity pet. In the tenacity trees, GotM is a prerequisite to Wild Hunt which is not an optional pet talent. So tenacity pets get 4% crit avoidance off the bat. Now comes resilience from gear.

With patch 3.3, pets inherit 100% resilience from their masters. Previously this was only 40%. So hunter pet tanks do not need to wear as much resilience gear as before to avoid being critted. Here's how much:

Mob Level	Chance to be Crit	Hunter Resilience Needed to Avoid Crits on Pet
80	1%	82
81	1.2%	99
82	1.4%	115
83(Boss)	1.6%	132

Because PvP gear is readily drawn from to put together a pet-tanking set, you will most likely over-shoot your resilience needs by a wide margin. Previous levels were easy to arrive at. Now they are just a couple pieces.

I probably wont do too many changes with regard to gear. However, these low numbers made me look into other talent options. More on that tomorrow.

Pet Resilience Considerations and Pet Tanking

I haven't tanked or OT'd any raid content. It's a little disappointing. I'm sure I could OT stuff easily if threat isn't an issue. Talking about hunter pet tanking always will raise eyebrows. And I'm in a new guild. I tanked the brewboss a few nights. Once we didn't have a healer or tank. It's pretty amazing how fast he can go down with 4 damage dealers, plus me dps'ng, tanking, and mend-petting. (I had the two-set T-5 on the first time, but it wasn't necessary while using hard shell.)

My gear is steadily improving. I got the Koralon PvP pants the other week which was a straight-up replacement to my PvP and pet tanking pants. I also have the two brewboss stamina trinkets if I need stamina instead of threat. Un-buffed I can get to about 30k health and still maintain my important pet-tank stats. I should calculate what they do in raid conditions. It probably can get the turtle pretty high though.

In a future patch it is implied there may be a pet resilience change. In order for pets to be un-critable in the current game, the pet needs grace of the mantis talents and the hunter needs to wear gear with 328 resilience. The change would lower the resilience needed because pets would inherit all of the master's resilience:

We certainly don't think pet resilience is useless. We are considering increasing it to 100% of master's resilience to make up for the increased AE damage pets will take in PvP. We don't want pets to explode on contact (neither do we want pet classes to be twice as difficult to kill) but we did think it was a little goofy and unintuitive that pets could just shrug off AE attacks in PvP. We'd rather make pets tougher against all types of damage than be vulnerable to some and nearly immune to others.

So this would be a lowering of the resilience requirement for hunter pet-tankers. 328 was never hard to meet, and many may overshoot it often anyway because of the other benefits of PvP gear. What this means is that pet-tank gear may allow for more dps and threat generation in the future.

DPS Hunter Talent Specs for Patch 3.2

Updated for 3.3 here.

DPS Hunter talent specs didn't change much in patch 3.2. They did refund our points on Thursday. This is not because of almost-significant changes to the BM tree (Animal Handler and Catlike Reflexes). It is because they accidentally allowed Hunters to take an extra talent point somehow.

So for the round up, here are the recommended hunter DPS specs:

Survival Talent Spec: 0/15/56
Wolf Talent Spec: 16 pts.
Glyphs: Explosive Shot, Kill Shot, Serpent Sting
Note: Aimed Shot available as another instant shot.

Marksman Armor Pen Talent Spec: 7/57/7
Wolf Talent Spec: 16 pts.
Glyphs: Serpent Sting, Chimera Shot, and then either Hawk, Steady Shot, or Kill Shot
Note: You don't fire Arcane Shots. Really. You want Armor Pen 600-800 depending on your ArmorPen-proc'ng trinket.

Beastmaster DPS Talent Spec: 53/18/0
Wolf Talent Spec: 20 pts.
Glyphs: Serpent Sting, Steady Shot, Bestial Wrath
Note: Yes, fire Arcane every uptime. Fire Aimed only when you have to miss a Steady.

There are variations on MM for a non-ArmorPen build and BM for 4 points in Improved Tracking. These are simply the leading hunter talent builds.

If you were looking for your hunter pet-tanking talent builds, the posts made during 3.1 are all geared for 3.2. Hunter talents and glyphs. Pet talent builds.

My Turtle Pet Tank

Flipping to my BM pet tank talent is now a joy. Why? Because I'll summon Flash too. Flash is a rockstar. He's also a turtle. According to a recent analysis -- and re-analyzed by ihlos -- Turtles make up 0.80% of hunter pets. Yes, less than 1%! They are the least owned pet family. Flash doesn't do much damage at all, but boy can he take some damage. Having a real honest pet tanking gear set is also really nice. I'm glad I spent the time doing it. I also can flip in the T5 gear over top of it if I'm solo'ng large things or without any sort of healing. Oh! And Flash can make solo'ng large things fun. My gear lets me push a lot of healing to Flash. Add in Mend Pet and I'm hitting overheals. He can take the groups of 7 or 8 level 80 undead mobs in Icecrown easily. And he's got lotsa knobs and switches. Bestial Wrath. Intimidation. Last Stand. Shell Shield. Oh! Shell Shield is so much nicer than the croc's Snapback ability.

I'm still doing Crusader dailies for the tokens. I still "/General LFG Threat and Citadel". But I really only want the company for the Citadel quest.

Turtle Grinding Levels

Flash is one and one-tenth levels away from level 80. Many mobs have fallen. His prot shield is kinda cute.

That is all. Oh... that and no gun from Kologarn or KT this week. I do need to start doing 10man XT-002 hardmode for another shot at one. Naxx-25 was okay. We got a bunch of new people geared pretty quickly. I should have whipped out level-75 Flash for that run, but hey... I think I even flasked up for it.

EDIT: Flash is now level 80.

Hardshell Uptime

Flash has Arrived

Flash the Turtle met my acquaintance last night before I ventured into Ulduar. He claims to have a hard shell and be able to tank bosses. I'm dubious given that he's only level 75. He says he can work on that. And given certain synergies, the shield will be deployed much more often. He's spunky I give him that. We'll see how well he really can do.

In related news, Chuckles ran off back into the jungle looking to start a family. He will be missed. I hope he finds a special someone that appreciates his sense of humor.