Without question Violet Hold gave me more trouble than any other soloing project to date. Part of it was the timing requirement — if you don’t kill the adds (and bosses) fast enough more of them spawn. And part of it is that I’m only able to solo about half the potential bosses – so I needed to get the right two of the random bosses.
But thanks to the damage increase that pet expertise scaling with hunter hit brought us, and some dogged willingness to wipe repeatedly, Violet Hold is officially on the solo’d list!
How to Hunter Solo Violet Hold
Talents: Max Health Extreme Solo Build
Pet: Bear
Pet Talents: Extreme Solo Pet Build
Gear: 2 pieces of T5, and 2 pieces of T7.5 (see full Extreme Hunter Solo Gear article)
Note: I can solo Erekem, Ichoron, Laventhor, and Cyanigosa. I have not found any way to solo Xevozz, Zuramat, or Moragg. The first two bosses are random, so the odds of getting two soloable bosses are about 20%. I can’t tell you how unlucky I was at getting a beatable combination.
The first challenge in VH is the trash. They don’t do much damage, and it’s not hard to clear it – but they’re spawn on a timer. If you take too long clearing one portal, another will open before you’re done. And each portal (except for the elite dragonkin packs) continues to spawn more adds the longer you take.
To balance the pet health needed to handle the bosses and make sure my damage was up to par, I used the Max Health talent build, but then used a bear instead of the usual turtle for the added damage — better dps on the boss as well as on all those little adds that spawn. I also wore mostly raid gear, but I used two piece of the T7.5 set to get the 5% pet damage as well as the standard 2 pieces of T5 set for pet healing.
As a reference with buff food and scrolls I was at 25k health and my pet was at 24k health.
Trash
If the dragonkin elite spawned, I fought them down on the floor, or by the entrance regardless of where they spawned. They are the easiest mobs – just take down the sorcerer first, and use viper to end near full mana.
On the others, which actually summon adds from their portals, I got into a pretty standard pattern. I’d run into position, MD to pet and start dpsing. I’d switch into viper almost right away to stay at full mana. As soon as MD was ready again I’d go into Dragonhawk, MD to pet, use Beastial Wrath and multishot, then volley the area down to keep the adds under control. Then I was back to viper until MD was back up again – rinse and repeat. Obviously you want to keep Mend Pet up most of the time, and FD if you do pull aggro while volleying.
When you finish off one portal, the next will open almost right away, regardless of how fast you are. Use cheetah if the next portal is far away to be in position before the spawn – remember you’ll be regenning mana at the beginning of the next fight anyway. Eventually I fell into a pattern with the trash that made it all a matter of habit.
Ichoron
For Ichoron keep in mind that he’ll take almost no damage until you get rid of his bubble – so you might as well fight him in viper for the first chunk of the fight. Keep mend pet up all the time as his damage is a bit high without getting much benefit from your T5 set. Then switch back to dragonhawk for the adds.
I dpsed down the first two waves of adds, then used the nearby levers to obliterate the 2nd two waves of adds. After that he has no more bubble and you can finish him off. It’s certainly also a viable strategy to use the levers every time. The main reason I didn’t was in case a portal got out of my control and I needed the levers to deal with the trash (which I never did).
Lavanthor
This core hound is pretty much just a tank & spank. Assuming your pet health is high enough and you have the T5 set, he’s easy. If your dps is low and you take a lot of damage from his fireballs, just go ahead and bandage yourself – just be sure to do it right after a fireball so you don’t get interrupted mid-bandage.
Erekem
The arokka – boss and 2 adds. When I got them I would usually kill 1 add and then focus on the boss. I used my frost trap as often as possible to keep one of the arroka out of the fight as the damage from all three can get spikey. I also played around with trying to be out of LoS of Erekem to limit the direct damage I too.
Cyanigosa
The final boss is fairly straight forward and mostly a tank & spank. She will target you with her aoe frost area fairly often and you just need to walk out of it asap. Her other trick is to dump aggro and port you to her — she may get in a couple of swings against you depending on your pet’s growl status and your mend pet ticks – but I didn’t find it to be much of a problem.
Again, if you’re taking too much damage, just bandage immedately after avoiding an aoe zone.
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Very impressive! A+ to solo VH
Dues Payer
Big congrats Frost i thought this instance might not be soloable due to the amount of spawns on the timer and off course they spawn portals all over the place making it hard to prepare yourself. Very Impressive indeed!!
I’ve learned more on this site in the past two days than I’ve learned in over three years of playing WOW. Keep up the good work!
Member
Thank you for making a WoW video with music that is not electronica.
Admin
Heh, I used to wonder why so many wow videos had techno music tracks… and then I started making them
Techno is usually the only songs long enough for the videos. Also, YouTube now automatically detects certain music — half the time it puts an ad to sell the song on (as it did with this video), and the other half the time it just shuts the audio off completely, which sucks.
Techno almost always bypasses those filters.
Dues Payer
I know Led Zepplin has some really long songs and Pink Floyd if that helps
love your videos, with your help i am able to solo mostly everything in MC ( don’t have T5 yet. ) and yeah, it’s going great:)
just would like to know what addons your using, i like the one in the middle but can’t find it anywhere :S
Admin
That addon is Power Auras. You can read more about my addons in our Addon Guide in the Guides page.
thx so much mate, been wanting your settings for a long time!.
just love watching your videos and how you do it, myself i soloed a bit in MC today, my gear isn’t the best.. mostly 200-219 items.
i use the brewmaster trinks for some bosses in Mc, usually only take the heal one, i also tried ragnaros, my friend just stood back, wen’t very good untill he CBA’d to wait any longer and rushed in..
can’t wait to try though.
also failed hardly at garr /: but i don’t have 2 pieces of T5 yet.. hehe.
anyhow, thx again mate, i can’t wait for your next videos!
can’t come up with any good suggestions other than AQ 20..
me and a friend has 2 manned it ( when my mage was really bad geared rofl ).
he was some epics.. 219-232 i think.
wen’t very good except for some fails, and we skipped second boss ( due to the time it takes to do all those mobs )..
i suggest you try it sometime, first might be very hard cuz he silences for a long time and has some nifty sand traps..
but should be doable i guess ( always something to reduce silence timer ).
thx again for the addon help!.
Cheers
think i forgot to mention, sometimes i put all your videos on quicklist and just put them on autoplay^^
your music is very very good mate:)
Smart roller, very instructive. My congratulations to the author. Will not prompt executors of soundtracks?
Heya Frost. I attempted this the other week. I got Xevozz (the guy you have to kite) first up. I managed to down him, but I was in strife when the next set of trash started spawning. I was near dead and struggled to keep my turtle up. I finally got overwhelmed by the second lot of trash becasue I couldn’t recover fast enough. I quit there (was pinching pennies to buy ICC boots)
I really need to get my 2 piece T5 so I can go have some real solo fun. Thanks for all the awesomesauce you put into the soloing projects
excellent strategy, i cant help but wonder if you ever took the time to solo ony before it was revamped, used to be a big source of income and free stuff before the money nerf =P
I soloed VH the other night – I got Xevozz as the 2nd boss. Using a turtle, T5, frost badge tanking ring, and T10/ICC gear managed to down him. Trickiest part was allowing my pet to hit Xevozz a few times, then put her on follow, the hit Xevozz a few more times, rinse and repeat, allowing me to kite him around. When he draws everyone in to a central point I disengaged out and kept walking backwards while shooting, giving myself enough range from his damage. Made it through VH w/out dying
Found it much easier than soloing HoL!