The Inuzuka Squad (5 hunters) are back!

[davidmage]

Here is my first Legion video with The Inuzuka squad!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJaqkUHet2Q

During the Legion Beta I concluded that a 5dps setup would not have the same success in Legion as in WoD. I based that by the pet tank-nerf and looking at the DPS of my beta hunter, comparing it to the health of Normal 110 bosses. (Sadly the burst dps was even lower than what I did during Maalus burst in WoD).
Even if we excluded the tank problem, we were looking at much longer fights. And without a healer, that doesn't work.

However, since that some things seems to have improved. My hunters are now about equally geared as my beta hunter. They do at least 33% more dps.
Also, the tanking pet is not quite as worthless as the severely nerfed pet in the Beta. The turtle shell shield is back! (50% reduced dmg 12 sec). And it feels a bit sturdier in general.
And even if it dies, the BM hunter team could anticipate that, and spread some of the MD threat to a second pet. (I just dumped all on Terror in the video). Hunters can also battleress their tanks indefinitely.

So in general, hunters ended up much better in Legion than I dared to imagine! I'm not saying it's going to work even close as good as 5 prot palas. But apparently they can at least do the easiest heroic in scrub gear :)

I needed this dungeon for the hunter campaign. So I entered it in normal, didn't get my hopes up. It just crumbled at the sight of The Inuzuka Squad (and the addition of their white wolves, which they missed in WoD and should have, if anyone knows the name reference).
Surprised by the potency of this team, I did it in heroic right after. In the video, all the boss kills are first attempt kills. The only things I cut was some of the more boring trash and some disastrous triple pull wipe.

At first, I never intended to run any dungeons with this team. Focus would be on world quests and supporting my main team with some gathering and other professions. And maybe use some of the hunters as dps for a mixed team. But after this, I will definitely push this team to see how far they can go in dungeons!

[Lyonheart]

Here is my first Legion video with The Inuzuka squad!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJaqkUHet2Q

During the Legion Beta I concluded that a 5dps setup would not have the same success in Legion as in WoD. I based that by the pet tank-nerf and looking at the DPS of my beta hunter, comparing it to the health of Normal 110 bosses. (Sadly the burst dps was even lower than what I did during Maalus burst in WoD).
Even if we excluded the tank problem, we were looking at much longer fights. And without a healer, that doesn't work.

However, since that some things seems to have improved. My hunters are now about equally geared as my beta hunter. They do at least 33% more dps.
Also, the tanking pet is not quite as worthless as the severely nerfed pet in the Beta. The turtle shell shield is back! (50% reduced dmg 12 sec). And it feels a bit sturdier in general.
And even if it dies, the BM hunter team could anticipate that, and spread some of the MD threat to a second pet. (I just dumped all on Terror in the video). Hunters can also battleress their tanks indefinitely.

So in general, hunters ended up much better in Legion than I dared to imagine! I'm not saying it's going to work even close as good as 5 prot palas. But apparently they can at least do the easiest heroic in scrub gear :)

I needed this dungeon for the hunter campaign. So I entered it in normal, didn't get my hopes up. It just crumbled at the sight of The Inuzuka Squad (and the addition of their white wolves, which they missed in WoD and should have, if anyone knows the name reference).
Surprised by the potency of this team, I did it in heroic right after. In the video, all the boss kills are first attempt kills. The only things I cut was some of the more boring trash and some disastrous triple pull wipe.

At first, I never intended to run any dungeons with this team. Focus would be on world quests and supporting my main team with some gathering and other professions. And maybe use some of the hunters as dps for a mixed team. But after this, I will definitely push this team to see how far they can go in dungeons!

Im looking forward to it.. i just got my Gnome 5 BMs artifact quests done. I need to level my shaman team next because they have all the trades represented. But i cant wait to level the hunters!

[daviddoran]

What ilvl are you at approximately? I leveled my hunters as MM, so I don't have my BM artifact yet and I'm running 8.

[ebony]

i got really board of my hunters, and did not really have the push to get them though much end game stuff so :(/

[Andreauk]

Looking at your health bars makes me glad to have a healer with my Hunts.

[davidmage]

What ilvl are you at approximately? I leveled my hunters as MM, so I don't have my BM artifact yet and I'm running 8.

They are at 820ish with no third relic, enchants or gems. Artifact weapon is poorly developed.

[davidmage]

Looking at your health bars makes me glad to have a healer with my Hunts.

Yes now we are forced to have some longer fights, and deal with encounter mechanics regardless of a x5 dps burst. If I added a healer to this team it would only become stronger. I don't have my priest now, but I'll grab one of the paladins :)
With a healer the tanking pet will survive, and as BM I do not think maintaining aggro on the pet will be a problem.

[Andreauk]

I like my holy Priest as she has at least a couple of heals on the move, plus the staff ability is passive that heals.

I also use this macro on my hunts.. works to the pet if no tank, and to the tank if it's on focus:


/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] Misdirection; [target=pet,exists,nodead] Misdirection
/cast mend pet

[Multibocks]

Now that mend goes to Revive if your pet is dead does anyone have trouble with it working right? I have a macro that summons my pet, heals and res's as needed, but if they get interrupted on the first cast of res the icon goes back to mend pet.

edit: Are you using a priority system for their dps? I have a step for just cobra shot (so it doesn't go off too often and delay Kill Command) and it doesn't seem to work right.

[Andreauk]

Now that mend goes to Revive if your pet is dead does anyone have trouble with it working right? I have a macro that summons my pet, heals and res's as needed, but if they get interrupted on the first cast of res the icon goes back to mend pet.

edit: Are you using a priority system for their dps? I have a step for just cobra shot (so it doesn't go off too often and delay Kill Command) and it doesn't seem to work right.

I have mend pet on it's own button, but only use it for rez when needed.

My Bm 1 button macros seem to work ok for me:

single


/castsequence !Bestial Wrath
/castsequence reset=7 Dire Beast,Cobra Shot,Kill Command,Cobra Shot
/cast [combat] A Murder of Crows
/castsequence reset=120/combat Aspect of the Wild


aoe


/castsequence !Bestial Wrath
/castsequence reset=7 Dire Beast,multi-Shot,Kill Command,multi-Shot
/cast [combat] A Murder of Crows



I use these because I lead from a Priest healer using the Healium addon.

[davidmage]

Now that mend goes to Revive if your pet is dead does anyone have trouble with it working right? I have a macro that summons my pet, heals and res's as needed, but if they get interrupted on the first cast of res the icon goes back to mend pet.

edit: Are you using a priority system for their dps? I have a step for just cobra shot (so it doesn't go off too often and delay Kill Command) and it doesn't seem to work right.

I don't think I'm having any problem with the mend/ress ability. I just press it every now and then, and specifically if i see a pet die.
I have no prio system for my rotation, just mash buttons as usual. It's probably not the optimal solution.

[Xeneres]

I don't think I'm having any problem with the mend/ress ability. I just press it every now and then, and specifically if i see a pet die.
I have no prio system for my rotation, just mash buttons as usual. It's probably not the optimal solution.

I would add a GnomeSequencer or priority macro via isboxer. It takes a lot off of you to manage if you can at least get the core rotation down to a one button macro or a few different one buttons for different scenarios. It also helps by making sure you are still putting out solid numbers as you handle mechanics. I used to box hunters around the middle of WoD and would get caught up in doing the rotation I would forget to handle mechanics or use my utlity spells and CC

Hunters now are now even easier to one button. BM is probably the easiest spec to play in the game.

You lose a lot of damage because the stat difference like haste on your toons and varying procs. Think of something like avenger shield resets. Over 4 minute fight that could be the difference between not firing 10+ avenger shield procs.

[davidmage]

I would add a GnomeSequencer or priority macro via isboxer. It takes a lot off of you to manage if you can at least get the core rotation down to a one button macro or a few different one buttons for different scenarios. It also helps by making sure you are still putting out solid numbers as you handle mechanics. I used to box hunters around the middle of WoD and would get caught up in doing the rotation I would forget to handle mechanics or use my utlity spells and CC

Hunters now are now even easier to one button. BM is probably the easiest spec to play in the game.

You lose a lot of damage because the stat difference like haste on your toons and varying procs. Think of something like avenger shield resets. Over 4 minute fight that could be the difference between not firing 10+ avenger shield procs.

Thanks for the advice. Yeah I will have to look into setting up some kind of prio sequence using ISBoxer. Both my hunters and paladins lack any kind of logic as to how they use their abilitys. Wish I really enjoyed setting things up, as some others who seem to enjoy configuring more han actually playing the team :P

[Andreauk]

Yes now we are forced to have some longer fights, and deal with encounter mechanics regardless of a x5 dps burst. If I added a healer to this team it would only become stronger. I don't have my priest now, but I'll grab one of the paladins :)
With a healer the tanking pet will survive, and as BM I do not think maintaining aggro on the pet will be a problem.

I tried a dungeons with my hunts and priests and I have to say it was bad.. md has too long a cd, my Priest got aggro the second she started to heal anything.. I'm sticking with my Pallys

[davidmage]

I tried a dungeons with my hunts and priests and I have to say it was bad.. md has too long a cd, my Priest got aggro the second she started to heal anything.. I'm sticking with my Pallys

I tried to add a paladin to heal in my team. I did not have a problem with aggro, but rather with the healing output itself. I still think it feels like the pure healing specs are healing way to little.
I'm going to play my hunters x5 in the future. I will keep doing world quests and increase their item level and artifact. When they are strong enough I will enchant/gem them, flask them up and just Hero/pot-burst the bosses which are killable without any encounter mechanics which drags the fight out (Helya for example).

[davidmage]

My hunters now have much better gear, stronger relics and decent advancement in the AP traits. Also with the introduction of the cheap 1 minute potion of prolonged power, it's time to see what x5 hunters can do.

I'm going to use 1 Tenacity Turtle (TT). The rest will be Ferocity. I will always use 1 nether ray for the heroism, and 1 Ferocity turtle (FT) as secondary tank. The remaining 2 pets will be a mix of cranes and turtles, depending on how hard the boss hits and cycles through the pets. Turtles have the turtle shell, even if they are ferocity which is very useful. Cranes are nice with battle ress, either in a fight, or just out of combat when you cant be bothered running in again. I only have 1 engineer with cables and miss guild ress a lot. All 5 hunters can have cranes, and just summon them for the ress when needed, and dismiss after.

I will be using 4 MD on TT, and 1 MD on FT (I may tweak this and split it to 3 turtles instead). When TT dies FT can last a while with shell cooldown, allowing ress of TT and hopefully some time for new threat generation/MD on TT. If a few ferocity pets die before TT gets aggro, it's easy to just ress them again. As BM it feels like without any MD, the pet will still get aggro before the hunter most of the time, so keeping the hunters from being targeted does not seem to be an issue even if a boss cycles pet tanks at a quick rate.

I'm going to switch between the heirloom tank (shield trinket) and pure dps trinket depending on what I feel will help most at each specific boss encounter. My alchemist will be creating a lot of healing pots. I've decided to not bother with spirit beast pets healing, because it felt so low anyway and not worth the trouble.

By no means will 5 hunters ever compete with 5 tanks, and some encounters will be just impossible to survive. But I know fights that should be doable. It would be cool to find one or a few dungeons which can be completed in mythic, and +1 just for getting the weekly chest. Most bosses would most likely require heroism to kill. Also the lack of a healer makes the group very vulnerable to wipes/deaths and requires perfect execution all the time. So beating anything within a timer may be some ultimate challenge for the future. But for the weekly chest we are not required to beat the timer right?

I kind of miss the excitement of x5dps, where the challenges and perspective on fights/mechanics are totally different than from a x5 tank setup which is much slower and more forgiving.
Is there anyone who have gotten serious with 5 hunters (or other 5 dps setups) in heroic or even mythics and have some experience or tips to share?

[davidmage]

Anyone who is still running 5 dps for dungeons, or have everyone rerolled x5 tanks? :)

I did some things with the plan described in the last post. It worked well for the encounters I had chosen, which I already knew had no impossible mechanics for this setup. I recorded everything, and will be compiling a updated (legion) presentation video for my hunters. Hopefully I can upload it this evening :)

I will start making some time for advancing with my hunters, and steal some of the already limited time from my paladins. I also have have most of suramar to do with my hunters, which will hopefully be a bunch of AP when my research now is lvl 10.

I did my first single character gameplay in Legion yesterday. My casual guild did our first run into Emerald Nightmare (normal). It went well and we killed a bunch of bosses. I played 1 hunter and do not intend to multibox this. I would rather perform 100% on 1 character, and have a couple hours of chill, instead of 3 hours of pain dealing with raid mechanics as a boxer. If the interest in the guild stays for this I will probably be doing this up to 6 hours each week. So we will see how much time that will leave me for everything else. But it was fun and I had missed the social interactions. Multiboxing can become very lonely :)

[Multibocks]

Let's see the video (soon)!