Great Hunter Race

Long time WHU member Vael had this interesting story in the comments:

My guildies are currently putting together a 5-man Pally VS. Druid race thru UK, and I want to play along. Think a group of Hunters who know there stuff (and have some bad ass tenacity pets in the stable, of course) could compete?

UK is soloable by a single hunter, so hunters could certainly do this; however, beating the pally’s will be hard as heck. Possible? Maybe — hardest part is getting 5 good hunters together.

Since this is a fascinating thought experiment, I thought it’d be worth looking into. Let’s see if the combined brain power of the WHU can find a winning strat for Vael. Here’s how I would do it:

The Team

I’d have 2 BM hunters with tenacity pets, tank builds, and tanking glyphs (mending, beastial wrath). You probably only really need 1, but I figure it’s worth it to have a backup since you can’t afford any lost time. The other 3 hunters would be MM or SV, with optimal single-target dps builds.

The Set Up

Assign one BM hunter as your main tank, and the other is a backup. All pets should have some kind of speed boost – either Charge or dash.  The MM/SV hunters should have Heart of the Phoenix on their pets for instant rez.

All the hunters should have their MD macros set to the main tank pet – except one MM/SV with one dedicated to the offtank pet. Everyone should be flasked with Endless Rage, have well fed food, food for the pets, and also have health potions, mana potions, and bandages.

Ideally all hunters would have the PVP trinket, and would have the minor run speed enchant to pick up their movement a bit.

There will be no time to stop and drink — that spells failure. Viper and pots should cover your mana regen needs, and as you will see, you won’t be fighting that much anyway.

The General Strategy

My overall strategy, which is pure evil, is what just might make this winnable for the hunters. Here it is:

Don’t fight the mobs.

Seriously, you just can’t gather up as many to aoe as the pallys or druids can. Here’s what you do: you get in the instance, and a BM hunter sicks his pet on the mobs inside the door, then you just run past. The next BM hunter sicks his pets on the next group of mobs, and you all run past. Keep doing this.

If you toss a mend pet on your pet before running past, your pet should stay alive long enough for you to get out of range and the pet will vanish. Once you’ve cleared a good amount of space, all of the hunters FD, and the mobs will reset. Note: this will only work if there are no pets for the mobs to go after! It’s probably best for the MM/SV hunters to have their pets dismissed and only call them when needed.

The reason I say the BM hunters send their pets in first is this: the first couple you are guaranteed to get far enough away that the pet will vanish. The later ones the pets might still be close enough to not vanish and could get killed. The MM/SV hunter pets are disposable and if they die, oh well, you got Heart of the Phoenix for insta rez.

The hunter sending in his pet should have a misdirect on it to tag any mobs the pet misses. Also the hunters should leave a trail of frost traps to slow down anything that does come after them.

This general strat will let you make crazy fast progress through the instance and you should only have to actually kill the mobs right before a given boss.

Boss 1: Prince Keleseth

Kill the 4 mobs immediately before the boss. Then all hunters should dismiss their pets except for the main tank. Send in the pet and cycle your misdirects. When the first wave of skeletons comes – all hunters need to FD and stay FD for a bit. The skeletons will leave, and never come back.

Then bring out all the pets and blow the boss away. This fight is helped if you have the PVP trinket to break you out of the frost trap. Big red pet will also break you out.

Boss 2: Skarvald & Dalronn

You’ll have to round up and aoe down the mobs before the twin bosses. Send main tank pet after Skarvald and backup tank pet after Dalronn. Split your dps between the two and blow all cooldowns, go all out and burn them down. It should be very short and very easy.

Boss 3: Ingvar the Plunderer

Kill the last set of mobs before the boss — you may have to deal with the ones before that as well. This boss is super easy for a pet tank to handle. Just send in the main pet tank, misdirect cycle, blow all cooldowns, and he’s done. It’s a cakewalk.

Be Flexible, and Practice

The running past the mobs thing is the key to doing this fast. And, on occasion, things will go wrong. You’ll screw something up, have a pet chain the mobs to you, etc. A good group of hunters will only lose a minute or so from this, with the pet tank gathering them and 5 hunter aoe downing them in no time.

However, it’s important to stress that you cannot be cautious at all. You must send in the pet, and then FLY on through. You should know your pet order so people are ready. You should never be standing still waiting while you’re going through mobs except for when you all have to FD. Some kind of vent is probably very helpful in making this work.

Most important is getting in there ahead of time to practice. The bosses are the easy part — it’s managing to skip over the mobs at full speed that will take some work.

And Vael — I hope you have 4 other hunters in your guild capable of doing this, ’cause I’d love to hear how it goes!

Anyone else have suggestions to add? (Note: please no suggestions involving profession-specific things. Let’s find a generic hunter strat).