Tanathiel - Beast Mastery Hunter
Armory
WoWProgress
Who are you?
Mark, 26 year old software developer living in Cape Town, South Africa.
To which Raid Group are you Applying?
RG1
Experience
I rolled this hunter on Defias Brotherhood in December to join the guild of a real life friend, after starting with a warrior a month into Legion on my old server. I was able to get raid-ready just in time for Nighthold and have cleared up to 1/10 mythic with the guild.
My primary previous heroic-tier raiding experience is from Cataclysm. I started a little late in the first raid tier and joined a 10 man guild with some real life friends, playing a Death Knight (DPS). I started raid leading the guild soon afterwards and got to 7/13 heroic kills before Firelands released. Around that time one of the tanks left and I leveled a Paladin to tank in Firelands. I continued raid leading the guild to 6/7 heroic kills pre-nerf in Firelands across three characters (Paladin tanking, Death Knight DPS on single tank fights, undergeared alt Shadow Priest for Baleroc).
Raid Role
DPS, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. Half of the reason I'm playing Beast Mastery is its suitability for taking on mechanics responsibilities, between mobility and turtle aspect and the occassional usefulness of snares, so hand them over.
I prefer to understand all mechanics, for all roles, in encounters, so I spend a lot of time reading about them and various tactics to handle them. Always willing to share opinions on tactics, but I'll shut up if you tell me to
. This research also extends to tips/tricks/tactics specific to my class, and any relevant spec/gearing choices, and generally comes from the hunter Discord channel, MMO Champion, IcyVeins and analysis on WarcraftLogs.Your Spec
Beast Mastery hunter (hit artifact level 41 a couple of nights ago). I chose BM (switched from MM) in 7.1.5 because:
1) There are already too many melee around (survival still not desireable despite now bringing viable DPS)
2) Between BM and MM the DPS is fairly even and BM has a significant advantage on mobility (although worse target switching). Mobility = more favourable for mechanics, and I like doing mechanics.
Skill priorities are largely driven by some fundamental principles, which have some minor conflicts:
- Try to avoid wasting focus regen by capping.
- Maximise usage/uptime of long cooldowns (Bestial Wrath, Murder of Crows, Titan's Thunder, Aspect of the Wild). This generally means using them as often as possible, and prioritising Dire Beast/Dire Frenzy casts to apply the cooldown reduction to BW.
- Try to overlap cooldowns for the multiplicative effects, without sacrificing extra uses.
- Maximise average damage per focus spent by trying to spend as much on Kill Command (or Multi Shot when there are many targets) as possible, and less on Cobra Shot, and trying to spend more focus during damage-increasing cooldowns (BW, AotW) by pooling focus outside of them. This leads to casting KC on cooldown, and only casting Cobra Shot when it will reset the cooldown on KC during BW or when high on focus to prevent capping (but still keeping focus high in preparation for the next BW).
- When multiple targets are in cleave range prioritise maintaining Beast Cleave.
Plus some smaller optimizations depending on talents:
- Try to maintain stacks of the Dire Frenzy buff when possible. Also consider these stacks for their interaction with the new Thunderslash trait/when to use AotW.
- If using Dire Beast then wait to use Titan's Thunder until just after you cast Dire Beast.
That's the generic approach. Variations on this arise from things like encounter-specific opportunities to exploit the cooldown reset of AMoC, or priority changes due to the need to focus on specific burst windows.
There's a lot of variance in talent choices for BM, depending on the composition of the encounter (single target vs sustained cleave vs burst cleave) and potentially even depending on which legendaries you use.
My current top single target spec is Way of the Combra, Dire Frenzy, Bestial Fury, A Murder of Crows, and Killer Cobra (with Prydaz/Roar legendaries).
For multiple target fights any of Dire Stable, Stomp, Blink Strikes, Volley, and Aspect of the Beast could be better choices, but which ones change would be based on number of targets, how often multiple targets are up (which determines the balance of Cobra Shot/Kill Command vs Multishot), and which parts of the fight are critical DPS checks.
Gear choices are mostly based on simulation with sanity checks against other sources (Discord, MMO Champion, Warcraft Logs). Currently that puts mastery and haste roughly equal as the top secondary stats, but things will likely change as more of the new traits are earned.
Off-specs and Alternative characters
As seen in my Cataclysm experience I enjoy playing multiple characters, but I haven't had the time to maintain a second viable character in Legion. I do want to level a holy paladin, as I've never healed serious content before, but time is not on my side...
Communication
Greyville#21689
I have a microphone and plenty of experience having people go AFK and miss all of my explanations while raid-leading
(Yes, I am comfortable talking and enjoy encounter tactics discussions)
Combat Logs
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 0947111/11
I haven't really been able to raid this week, so the 7.2 logs are some random pugs. I might be able to get some more of those before the reset.
Your UI
http://imgur.com/n4ACo7k
Nothing too unusual. Started with ElvUI just to have something while leveling, but I don't its default unit frame/bar positions. So I installed different addons for frames, bars, debuffs and cast bars to customize them and move them more towards the center of the screen. Plus WeakAuras for buff and focus tracking, and DBM.
Guild History
As mentioned earlier I rolled the hunter to join a friend in Tactical Magic (my warrior that I started Legion with being in some random leveling guild). He's subsequently stopped playing and I've found that I have different raiding ambitions to the guild, which is why I'm here writing all of this.
Why my interest in The Raven Council?
Based on my reading (having found it through WoWProgress) and mild stalking on WarcraftLogs it sounds like what I'm looking for in raiding. A friendly environment outside of raids is always valuable too.
I also liked the fact that Tichondrius was your fourth mythic boss kill -- it has more tactically interesting decisions than some of the other encounters.
Raid availability
No conflicts with raid times. The only caveat is that approximately every 8th week I am on-call, which means that there is a (relatively small) chance I will be unavailable on short notice.
References
I found the guild on WoW Progress
About you
Coming back to WoW killed any time I had for playing Dota 2, but I still find time to play board games and tabletop RPGs. I'm also prone to making terrible (or terrific -- it's a matter of perspective) puns.
Miscellaneous
I've probably written too much already.