It’s interesting that Onyxia was one of the first big bosses to be solo’d, and now that she’s ressurected as a lvl 80 raid, she’s awarding soloing loot! I’m very much looking forward to getting my hands on these.
The first piece that I’m looking for is one of the quest rewards for turning in her head. Sure, you could take the neck (Sparkling Onyxia Tooth Pendant), however there are equivalent necks available elsewhere. I already have the Collar of Ceaseless Torment from 10-man beasts heroic, so I’m not worried about the Ony neck. No, I’ll be taking the tanking trinket, Purified Onyxia Blood Talisman.
Obviously I’m hoping that defensive stats transfer to pets in 3.3 with the “all stats but armor pen transfer” promise we’ve had – and that’s a lot of defensive stats! But in addition to that, it regens 101 health every 5 seconds. That’s actually a very substantial extreme solo advantage.
One of the big limiting factors in soloing is bosses that deal damage to you, the hunter, instead of just your pet. We just don’t have a lot of ways to restore our health. But hello Ony! And that’s not all she has to offer either…
10-man Ony drops Purified Shard of the Flame — 501 health restored every 5 seconds? That’s huge! The 25-man version is Shiny Shard of the Flame.
Now the only downside here is that I will be the very last person to get these items. I mean, just about everyone actually wants their quest item as an upgrade. I want it to play around with soloing, meaning I have to stand at the end of the line. However I know within 10 runs I’ll have it. The other trinket is a bit tricksier since it’s a random drop chance (and I don’t think we’ve seen it yet) and I have to let the healers get it first. It’s a really weird trinket, and I don’t know enough about healing to know if the set bonus makes it worthwhile. If I’m lucky, no one will want it as an upgrade 
A good 500-600 self healing per 5 has the possibility of opening up some new doors, and will surely make some already attainable soloing locations much easier.
Which reminds me — something I talked about in the podcast — does anyone have any suggestions of what they’d like to see my try to solo next?
Never thought much about using Hp5 gear for elite soloing stuff…. good idea!
i would like to see if attumen the huntsman in kara is soloable without t5 2p bonus. i dont seem to ever get these.
Wow, if you get both trinkets it seems to be a pretty awesome set up. The set bonus is:
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=69733
for the self heal that is pretty good, 2.2-2.7k (for the 10-man, 25-man is 2.5-3k) heal at most every 45sec plus the hp5 you get. Probably doesn’t scale with SP or can’t crit but you really don’t need it to crit.
Hmmm I need to get these for my druid AND hunter now…
I would love to see how far you can come inside Kara. (i ended up just past Opera when my time was up.)
Would also like to know your thoughts about Zul’Aman and Kiting the first boss in SSC (BC warlockstyle)
Ow and have you solo killed Headless Horsemen?
Ulukai, attumen the huntsman is solowable without the T5 bonus, best choice of pet is a Warp Stalkers because of his:
Warp
Teleports to an enemy up to 30 yards away and gives the pet a 50% chance to avoid the next 3 melee attacks. Lasts 4 sec.
hey Frost, really promising gear for soloing, I might get my hands on it easily eheheh. tbh I would like to see if you can do any boss from the 25man of BC, like SSC (it drops T5) or Mount Hyjal (Beast Tamer shoulders anyone? :p) tho I think its just to hard to do those atm. Maybe try to do Blackwing’s lair or Zul’Aman would be nice.
Ryfft’s Mom
Oh yea…I went there.
How about AQ20? I tried, but could only down the first two bosses, the others seemed to require a lot more raid coordination than I could muster by myself.
ive come real close to doing AQ 20 final boss. i never been there so i wanted the achievement. i went straight for Oss, so i solod Kurinnaxx and General Rajaxx.
Ossirian the Unscarred is definitely solable, ive seen a vid of a hunter doing it with a gorilla. thing is, when i tried it, i had a great system, but i found the crystals bugged. they would pop up, but when i got near them, they wouldnt take off his buff. with the buff on, you cant heal a pet through it, so the bugging out crystals frustrated me to quit. havent been back.
as long as they dont bug out (or maybe its a mechanic im not aware of), then i definately say AQ20 is soloable.
i assume mend pet wouldnt proc Cauterizing Heal (i figure hot is technically different than a direct heal, but idk, im not privy to healer lingo), but either way, would the t5 2 set do it? that would be a LOT of chances for that instant heal. that would certainly open up more soloing opportunities if its not on some internal 45 or whatever.
Pit Commander
Hmm seems quivering might be right. I don’t think we can get the healing proc since it says “direct heals”, but that might just mean it excludes AoE heals. Wish my priest had it so I could test it out.
Solo ZG, all of it especially the tiger boss. I’m sure alot of hunters would love to see how you can do it
About the hunter stats transferring to pets. I’ve heared the rumor too, but I’ve not seen it in any of the ‘official’ blogs. Sure a blue comments that they are planning in doing that, but sofar the only acknowledged thing is resellience.
Also, why would ArP not be transfered? Blizzards will remove it in the next upgrade, but that is almost a year away. And in the mean time it is putting more and more ArP on our gear. I mean, they are not putting their money were there mount is on ArP
For me the greatest stats to transfer would be haste and crit. The latter is stronger (as it doesn’t deplete your focus), but I’d love to get the haste in the pet as it doesn’t have a minimum GCD like its master does. (Of course the pratical issue still being that Blizzard fell in love with ArP during Naxx, and all post-Naxx gear has no haste, but ArP
) More pet-haste would mean a lot more treat.
However, as I see it 3.3 will only transfer res, and no haste and leave crit dependend on pet agility only (and talents and bufs).
Anyway, as a commical note, if crit transfers, it will probably be the final blow to the ArP MM and will also put SV as undisputed raid-dps over the Agi MM.
There have been multiple blue posts promising all stat transfer to pets in 3.3, however a recent one noted that armor pen would not transfer because it’s technically very difficult for them to do. And since the stat will be going away anyway, they didn’t think it was worth trying to fix.
My hunch is that this won’t affect the MM/SV balance much at all (keep in mind transfer rates are likely to be like 10%, and most MM does not stack armor pen anymore), however it has the potential to do huge things to BM. It will also be the killing blow to MM armor pen builds.
I’ve done the tiger boss, without any extreme gear, just ulduar/toc10 gear. Used a bear to tank. keep the zealot that heals with lower health then the others and keep viper sting up on her. No bug exploits just normal tank & spank.
Well, I disagree. That is, ofc if crits only scale like 10% it would be bad, but that would be non meaningfull to do IMHO. (Which of course is not a compeling argument perhaps, why Blizzard may still go forward with it
)
Now it scales with pet agility, which means it is static for the pet level. If it scales only 10% (on top of pet base crit), it is less than 1% difference for most end-game hunters, as their crit usually differs less than 10%. If there is no serious transfer, they could as well leave it as is. Also for BM it will be meaninless. Even more as they (will continue to) gem for AP …
If they do a serious transfer, it is different. The current dps difference between MM and SV in agi build is very small. If crit realy transfers – which is pretty much the only useful hunter stat that doesn’t transfer yet – this will favour SV hunters as they have more crit for the same gear.
However I’m still not conviced that stats will transfer. I’ve seen too various blue postings hinting that they plan it, but wowhead for instance doesn’t acknowledge pet scaling yet …
Anyway, for me the big issue with pets is IMHO not so much the stats not transferring, but their special attacks not scaling at all. The pet does the same damage with special attacks if you have just leveled your pet to 80 or are in full T9.245+ gear. Crit and haste are the only two stats that affect it and both of them are fixed (except for buffs, which are fixed as well). Haste being absent on post-naxx gear, means transfer won’t matter here. If crit indeed only transfers with 10% it means that in essence pet total damage still does not scale with its master.
What they ‘need’ to do is have the special attacks scale with AP and have crit scale in serious amounts. Only then will our pets scale with us. Sure they would have to nerf the master a bit to compensate our dps compared to other classes, but it will make our pets more meaningful again.
Most of our pets special attacks do scale with AP.
Event a 10% transfer would be significant, if our pet was suddenly getting 10% of our crit, haste, agility, strength — that would add up to a very nice dps boost!
Frost, my point is not that an extra would be nice. All extra’s would be nice, but that if you have only 10% transferred, our pets still don’t scale. At this moment, with every tier-gear, our pets do % less damage, as their dps doesn’t scale with our gear. Since we are all hit-capped, only additional AP scales. With a 10% crit transfers this will not change.
Just do the math: We have a ballpark-estimate of 50% crit, and each tier of gear gives us again ballbark estimate 3% extra. This means our pets will have a whopping 0,3% extra crit when we are full T10. (Assuming they don’t lower the base crit and all transfers are indeed extra). At T11, they will have 0,609% more crit. Oh boy
Our pets will still not scale in terms of total dps percentage, meaning they will continue to become less and less importtant. (Worse, this applies also for BM …)
The transerring of stats is a potential means to make our pets scale, but just having more stats transferred doesn’t make them scale automatically.
Actually, having all stats transfer would, by definition, make our pets scale. The percentage of the stat transfer just sets the baseline.
Frost, sure they make it scale, just so little that is would almost be just as if it wouldn’t scale.
Still our pets wouldn’t scale with us in the sence that the total dps % our pet does, stays equal. Now with each tier-upgrades our pet dps as percentage of our total dps goes down.
Briefly had the Purified Shard of the Flame last night. Dropped in our Ony10, and my guild leader and I were on the same page. If it helps our raids, we want his priest to have it. And it would help my soloing, which is personal fun (and sometimes gearing 60ish guildies). He let me hold it while we checked stats and talked.
First stop, checked for World Dragons. Emeriss was up in Feralas. Perfect place to test the trinket. Invited my guild leader’s priest and a 60 holy pally to watch my attempt.
Three times during the Emeriss fight, he casts Corruption of the Earth, which is a Shadow DoT that deals 20% of the player’s max health every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. It cannot be dispelled and has a 100 yard range.* If you don’t heal during those ten seconds, each time, you are completely dead.
My request was that they let me solo if I could, healing me only if needed. Cleared patrols, and began the fight. Got to the first DoT, got hurt, lived, healed up. Same for the second DoT, with just about 1020 health remaining. My mistake was on the third DoT, where my turtle took too much damage and died. I immediately have aggro on a rather large dragon, ask for those emergency heals, and pull a few tricks to survive. Successfully Revive Pet, drop aggro on the second or third Feign Death, and finished off Emeriss with a sleepy turtle.
This time I didn’t solo Emeriss, but once I get either Shard of the Flame, it will certainly happen. Passed the trinket off to our priest with time to spare, and smiled over the new opportunity.
Note: Dragons of Nightmare are actually easier with other players nearby, even if they do nothing except stay alive. The wandering sleep clouds randomly switch targets, which means when entirely solo you need to completely avoid sleep, or you may be sleeplocked while your pet dies. Ysondre and Lethon are relatively easy. Taerar is hard, with Fear and adds haven’t soloed yet. Emeriss used to be nearly impossible, now becomes soloable with the trinkets.
* wording from WowWiki, http://www.wowwiki.com/Emeriss
I’m wondering if Heroic Pit of Saron trash can be farmed by a solo hunter build. Solo grind for the battered hilt for one of your alts or to make some money on the AH would be very cool.
Just a thought.
Wirhl – No, but there’s a caveat here. Heroics can’t be solo’d (too much damage, can’t be healed through) but they can be 2-manned. I actually have plans to post some articles to this affect. Find yourself a good healer and it should be possible. The 3.3 heroics will obviously be a bit harder, but start with FoS and see if you can do that.
So if you want to farm for a hilt, you can find a healer buddy and agree to split the winnings.
Wirhl: Yes, you can solo the trash there. I’ve done it in Firelands raid gear. It is not too bad at all.
Well, I have tried and succeeded at soloing blackwing lair and serpentshrine cavern. its easy there is a trick to blackwing lair first boss u disengage up to the banister and it resets. very nice
.