NiM Huntmaster
NiM Huntmaster
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The Huntmaster encounter changes drastically from the Veteran/Hard Mode version of the fight. There are many strategies for handling this fight. Most range from do we kill the adds, or do we push them into the lake.
Our team has always taken the path of feeding the adds to the lake in hard mode, so this is the direction our strategy went for the Nightmare encounter.
Recommended Raid Composition
2 Tanks (We used Guardian and Shadow)
4 DPS
-1/2 35 meters classes helpful
-1 DwT Helpful
-1 Vanguard helpful
2 Healers - At least 1 Sage Recommended
The group composition can vary based upon what your group can be comfortable bringing. Essentially your group will need 2 players on sages or shadows for thier force wave (best for add knocks). 1-2 players with strong AoE stuns (vanguards) and 2 players with reflects. 35 meter classes such as sniper and sage will be have high utility during the hold out phase of the fight.
We divide the room up into the labeled quadrants to better communicate where players are standing, or where mechanics are happening.
We have further numbered the possible egg spawn locations.
Prepull, assign your players to egg/bird aggro duty.
1 Player needs to pull the bird to the lake after phase 1. 4 players will need to aggro birds and bring them to the lake after phase 2.
"Phase 1"
"Phase 1"
If you have pulled Huntmaster before, you know he is a buggy mess off pull. Do not gap close to Huntmaster until he has teleported into the light. Doing so seems to guarantee he will bug out, making targeting him difficult and making his position desync.
The fight is extremely scripted and follows the same flow for phase one 9/10 times, so this fight is largely learn the steps. Every so often the steps will get out of order. Fire Grenade always seems to come after Power shot volley, but pen shot and scatter blast have flip flopped on us. Watch for this and just know that he will do all of the attacks, then egg snipe.
This fight introduces extreme RNG through who Huntmaster chooses for his attacks and the direction that the flare (white circle) moves. The flare moving closer to the lake at the end seems to make it more manageable.
Here is the basic flow of the fight:
Pull the boss w/o using a gap closer
Eggs Spawn, Raid lead calls out their location and marks the Egg to be CC'd, and the Magic player calls out which direction the fire grenade goes to.
In the pictured example here, I would call out 1 and 4, to let the sage healer CC'ing the bird where the eggs have spawned at.
I also like to mark a far (from lake) egg to help point it out to the CC'ing player. Note that the maker will not carry over to the bird once it hatches.
I find this easy do do as the Guardian tank as I stand back and wait to jump in for Power Shot Volley. Eggs spawn immediately after the boss is pulled.
The call out for the first fire grenade placement is made here as a reference to the above quadrant system. We find it helpful to place a marker down where we want the grenade to go.
Tip: Watch the direction that the light circle is moving. Whichever direction it moves to when it first spawns in is the safe direction to take the fire grenade to. Move it as far as you can get it. If you find yourself running out of the circle, you are probably going against the movement of the circle and the wrong direction.
Boss channels Power Shot Volley
Guardian's need to leap in (using the utility point into unremitting) as he starts his channel or about 1.0" into the cast so that our 4" of immunity does not wear off early, that and the damage from this does not start until 3" into the channel, so do not leap in immediately.
Use Saber reflect (and your DPS adrenal if you like DPS) while standing 0.0m on the boss. You will likely get knocked down by the last shot from the channel. As the Guardian Tank, I stayed back and waited for power shot volley, while my shadow cotank and the rest of the raid engaged the boss.
Commandos - Use Hold the Line and Echoing Deterrence and stand 0.0m on the boss to intercept and reflect the hits
Not reflecting this? Well, I do not recommend it, but basically the player targeted by the channel needs to hide in the back of the group while everyone else takes the hit. One player taking multiple hits from this will die.
Note: If a player dies, Huntmaster will re-channel and do Power Shot Volley a second time. This will tend to change the flow of the fight.
Fire Grenade
Next Fire Grenade goes on a "random" Target, yes he will pick on people. "(There is some demonic "magic" at work with calling where the first fire grenades should go. I believe this to be largely based off of witchcraft and animal sacrifice.)" Make sure that the grenade goes toward the designated direction.
MISSION CRITICAL: The Fire Grenade can NEVER be placed in such a way that it will clip/hit the green egg spawn areas. The fire Grenade will Kill the Eggs
Penetrating Shot
This Forces a Tank Swap, is a beam attack that will cleave the group and break any eggs in its path. The tank should stand apart from the group (I find it helpful to mark tanks and for tanks to announced which direction they are standing as the fight progresses). Any players hit with this will take high damage and have an armor debuff.
In this example, my coTank calls out Apex, indicating that he is taking the shot toward the Apex Door, so that everyone else stands clear of it.
Scatter Blast
90 degree cleave centered onto a randomly targeted player. The targeted player has a short amount of time to move out of the group to prevent the entire group from being hit by it.
Scatter blast has a range of 70 meters and we believe it too can break eggs, though we have not seen it happen, we try to aim it away from eggs just to be safe.
Again, we find it best to call out which direction they are heading. Here the targeted healer can respond with entrance, to let the raid know they have seen they are targeted and are destacking.
Note that it can be hard for healers to know they have this. Call outs helpful from the raid leader.
Stack on the Light Point
Right after Scatter Blast, Huntmaster will Holotraverse to the light point. The raid needs to be stacked on the light point right after Scatter Blast goes off.
Be certain to pad the sides of the circle facing eggs with extra players just to be safe.
Egg Snipe
This is a new mechanic for Master Mode, and is critical to clearing the fight.
The boss will target the eggs that have spawned around the room and attempt to snipe them. If he is successful he will lose 4 stacks of master of the hunt as well as kill the egg and thus the bird that would have hatched from it.
Players need to body block the shots, intercepting the damage as well as a debuff that will last the rest of the fight.
The debuff reduces maximum HP by about 50k HP. A second hit from Egg snipe is fatal. If you have been hit by egg snipe, stand further back in the group to allow other players to take the hit. If you have not been hit by egg snipe stand on the boss, or between him and an egg. There are 2 eggs in phase 1 and thus, 2 channels of egg snipe.
Primal Fear
This channel debuffs the adds damage output by 70%. When primal fear goes off, the shadow tank and vanguard (or other combinations of players capable of pulling off the mechanics leave the safety of the circle and head to the lake.
Away Team: Shadow Tank and Vanguard leave the flare and head to the lake (see rest below).
Note that the adds will enrage if they are damaged. An enraged add will deal 70% increased damage. The main damage from the adds come from their leap in, so run your defensive accordingly.
The flare is at its smallest by this point. The team needs to be very careful to stay inside of it while the away team is out, or they may redirect adds to them instead.
Fire Grenade
This fire grenade can get the group into trouble. The call for a safe direction is more challenging to predict here, but watch for the clues and do not leave the flare (white circle) when dropping it, or the adds may jump to you instead of the Away team, completely botching the knock in adds part of the procedure. Stand as close as you can do the white line and drop it as safe as you can. It is 1oo% possible for the Shadow tank to get the fire grenade. They need to safely plant it to the side of the lake (taking care not to hit an egg). Resilience will 1oo% mitigate damage from the fire grenade and should be used as soon as it goes off, as any adds jumping to you late can knock you down inside of the fire grenade.
Away Team: Knock in adds wave one - The shadow tank moves to the very edge of the lake. The adds should jump to you. As you see them coming, use Deflection to prevent the knock down and soak the damage. You can either stun and knock in the adds yourself, or have a player follow you out to assist with the stunning. We have our Vanguard follow and AoE stun the adds so that the Shadow tank can come around and knock them in. As soon as that is accomplished, get back into the light. You need to be back around the time that Penetrating Shot is channeling on the other tank, as you will need to taunt the boss back.
2nd Penetrating Shot
Again, watch that you do not cleave eggs or the entire group. It is very close quarters at this point.
The shadow tank should be back from knocking adds in the lake and will need to take the boss.
2nd Power Shot Volley
The next player tasked to dealing with this mechanic is up. It is a bit more difficult for a guardian to pull off, and can be better handled by a raid aware commando. The second Power shot Volley signals the end of phase 1.
Phase Transition
Phase Transition
Phase Transition starts as 2nd Power Shot volley starts, the guardian tank needs to break out and head straight to the lake. As soon as Power Shot Volley ends (or is about to end) the raid team needs to get to the lake and stand as close as they can to the edge.
There are several actions that need to happen very quickly as the boss finishes power shot volley:
The guardian tank AoE Taunts the adds.
The Sage healer moves to and Whirlwinds the bird that hatches out of the far egg spawn, if both were close to the lake, pick the best positioned to be out of the way. The assigned player needs to aggro the other bird, pulling it to the lake with them.
The raid team gets to the lake, the first player designated with stunning the adds AoE stuns them
The first player tasked with a knock back knocks the adds in (Shadow or Sage)
Second stun, followed by second knock in. Trouble shoot any adds (or birds) that do not go in, or come back out. Use stuns, then knocks to prevent the adds from getting back out of the lake.
The DwT can head over and taunt the bull to get the yellow arrow on them instead of the healers (they are busy and while they can run this mechanic as well, we find it easier to have a DwT take care of this.
The bull, as in hard mode, can spawn from either the entrance or what we label as "bull" side.
Once the adds are in the lake and the bull has smashed into huntmaster, everyone needs to jump on the bull (someone needs to shoot/hit the bird to wake it up from its CC. It will eventually go for Huntmaster. Getting hit by the bird applies trauma to the target. Huntmaster will heal for a significant amount of his HP during the hold out phase. We use the bird to hit Huntmaster to reduce his healing during this phase.
Hold out Phase
Hold out Phase
Just like in veteran mode, Huntmaster retreats once hit by the bull and sets up operations by the lake. The only difference is that now Huntmaster will heal at an amazing rate (if not debuffed by the bird) and now 50% of all damage dealt to Huntmaster is reflected back to the source of the damage. 35 m Ranged players should still engage huntmaster, in an effort to outpace the low amount of healing he is doing and to continue to push the fight along. We want Huntmaster around 60-65% at the highest coming out of the hold out phase. Any higher will be difficult to handle.
The raid should largely stack up, with the 1-2 fire grenades going straight to the apex door (do not put them anywhere near the green textured areas as eggs can spawn there.
Healers should focus any DPS doing damage in this phase as well as the tank with huntlaster's aggro. DPS should stop DPS if their HP gets low. Do not kill yourself for damage.
Master of the Hunt - Huntmaster starts the encounter with 25 stacks of master of the hunt. If he is allowed to hit 0 stacks, he essentially enrages and kills the group by channeling "cull". This is a one shot kill. He will continue to cast cull until the entire raid team is dead. If you are entering the hold out phase at low stacks of Master of the Hunt, he will likely enrage. He loses stacks by killing adds (1), eggs(4) and players(3). We typically entered the hold out with 20-22 stacks of master of the hunt and had 10-12 remaining when it concluded.
Phase 1 again, so lets call it Phase 2
Phase 1 again, so lets call it Phase 2
Phase 2 mechanics (typically) execute in a different order, but are handled the exact same way as in phase one. The only major change are the addition of 2 eggs and thus 4 egg snipes. Players with the egg snipe debuff need to be extra careful not to get hit by it. Players w/o the debuff need to be sure they are getting closer to the boss to protect the eggs, and their teammates.
I have outlined the pattern we had for phase 2 below, keep in mind that it can flip flop around.
Note that Huntmaster cannot be pushed early. Your team should watch DPS at 38%, as pushing Huntmaster to 35% will force him to the lake, spawning Shelleigh. We need time to push more adds in the lake and to get all 4 birds in.
Getting all 4 birds in this phase will pretty much guarantee that Shelleigh will spawn, eat huntmaster and then die.
Scatter Blast
Pen Shot
Grenade
Power Shot Volley
HoloTraverse (Note that all 4 of the above abilities will play out before the holotraverse, the order above changes pull to pull)
Egg Snipe x 4
Primal Fear
Shadow tank leaves to Knock Adds In (Note that this can happen while Egg Snipes are going off)
Pen Shot
Grenade (caution, the boss is likely nearing 38%)
Scatter Blast
HoloTraverse
Primal Fear
Push Adds in Lake
Flying Fortress
(Mechanics Continue) - Get all the birds and adds in the lake, then push the boss to 35%.
Once the adds (and birds) are in the lake, resume damaging Huntmaster to push him to he lake. While huntmaster is in flying fortress, DoT abilities cannot be applied to him.
IF a bull spawned, it needs to be handled by a DwT, but largely pushing huntmaster needs to remain the focus.
One last note: Protect your healers during the transition phases. All dps should be doing what they can to keep the adds from chewing them apart. Any extra knocks, carbs, taunts, stuns, stun grenades ect should be used to keep them alive. Tanks only have so many taunts...
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