The Inuzuka Squad (5 hunters) are back!

[davidmage]

Here is my first Legion video with The Inuzuka squad!



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!



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.

[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.

[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]

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]

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?