Hunter Tanking ICC: Darnavan

Solaryn, Hunter tankWell we’re back and we’re randomly tanking things in ICC today. For those who have had the opportunity to do most of the weekly ICC quests, arguably the most annoying one is Lady Deathwhisper’s. Done in a conventional way, you remove an entire player from your team to go OT/babysit Darnavan, to keep him alive without letting him slaughter your raid. Fortunately your raid has a hunter with a properly specced Tenacity pet! Or at least it should.

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Hunter Tanking ICC: Prince Keleseth

Hunter TankAhh… ICC is a marvelous thing, every encounter a new mechanic, every encounter a different way for a hunter to shine!

Today I’ll be talking about one of the ideal bosses to plop a hunter on as tank, Prince Keleseth.

Prince Keleseth is one of the three Blood Princes, and the only one that doesn’t need a conventional tank. A hunter is an excellent choice for him for a variety of reasons. We have several instant ranged abilities and Kill Shot, which is a fantastic ability to generate a lot of initial threat upon him.

This guide is going to presume you have a basic understanding of the encounter. We’ll be focusing on the role of a ranged tank exclusively.

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Hunter Set Bonuses

Frostheim’s put together a fantastic analysis of hunter set bonuses in his Scattered Shots column over at WoW.com. For those of you curious as to which set bonuses to go for, this is a must read.

I imagine most of you are familiar with his work over there, but if not, do yourself a favor and catch up on his column. There will never be another BRK, but Frost is pretty damn close. As I’ve said before, I can’t think of a better representative for the hunter community. Well… except for Pike. She’d be pretty damn good. 😉

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Hit Rating

Hit Rating overdoneThis is a topic I’ve covered many times in the past, but I feel compelled to revisit it today. Why, you ask..?

It’s been brought to my attention that many hunters these days are grossly exceeding the hit cap, and therefore are wasting precious DPS. I figure this is due to a few reasons…

  1. The misunderstanding of what hit rating is, and being unaware of how much is actually needed.
  2. The allure of higher ilvl shinies.

Hit rating increases your chances of “not missing” when attacking enemy mobs or players. All players have a built in mechanic which causes them to miss 5% of the time when facing mobs or opponents of the same level. This “miss chance” is increased by one percent for each level beyond that. Therefore, level 83 raid bosses have an 8% chance to be missed when attacked by a hunter with a ranged ability.

So how do we combat this chance to miss, and ensure that we’re always hitting with our shots..?

Hit rating.

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