User:Kathucka/Hunter's Guide to Karazhan/Raid Preparation

You have your key. You have set up your pet, add-ons, macros, spec, gear, enchantments, and gems to raid. You're almost ready to go. This section discusses a few last-minute things to do.

Consumables
Consumables are the stuff you use up as you raid. In the case of a hunter, that means buff food, water, ammunition, flasks or elixirs, pet buff food, regular pet food, health potions, mana potions, and bandages. Bring all of these. You need them. They make a big difference in the raid's damage output and survivability. Really, it is huge.

It is part of your job as a raider to bring all the consumables you will need. Do it.

Bring extras for the other folks in your raid, and offer them up when the raid starts. The raid succeeds or fails as a whole. Having someone else use the consumable helps the raid just as much as using it yourself helps.

If you are raiding with a new group, you will wipe a lot. Bring enough consumables to survive through at least ten wipes. That is about the outside tolerance for wipes for most raid groups.

You can use either one flask or two elixirs at a time. Flasks cost more, but they last two hours and the buff does not disappear on death. Because of this, using flasks can be cheaper than using two new elixirs every time you wipe.

Buffs and grouping
Your performance as a raider is greatly affected by the abilities of the other members of the raid. Make sure that you get the ideal hunter buffs before starting any boss fight.

Types of buffs
There are three types of buffs that other characters can give you. Raid buffs can be cast on you before the fight, improving your stats directly. Group buffs are passively given to you during combat by other members of your five-man group. Debuffs are cast by anyone in the raid on your target, and make your attacks on that target more effective.

Grouping for buffs
Because group buffs only help you when the players are in your group, you want to arrange the raid groups to get those players in your group and helping you. In particular, the raid should be arranged to put feral druids, shadow priests, marksmanship hunters, beast mastery hunters, warriors, and shamans (especially enhancement shamans) in your group.

Beast mastery hunters give a group buff to any player dealing damage. Marksmanship hunters give a group buff to hunters, and melee damage-dealers, including warriors, rogues, retribution paladins, enhancement shamans, and feral druids.

Paladin blessings
Paladin blessings are special raid buffs. While paladins have a wide variety of blessings available, each paladin can apply only one blessing to each target. The most useful blessings for hunters are Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, and Blessing of Wisdom. For Karazhan, it is usually best to take Might. Take Wisdom on fights where you will run out of mana, and take Kings on fights where your health is important.

A special note: Blessing of Salvation on a hunter is harmful to the raid, because it reduces the effect of Misdirection. It is not helpful, because hunters can just use Feign Death to manage threat much more effectively. Any paladin that gives it to you is either uninformed or is insulting you. Every time you get this buff, immediately right-click on its icon to remove it.

Buffing your pet
Buffs on your pets help the raid just as much as buffs on regular characters. Make sure that you pet is fully buffed before you start any boss fight!

Most raids re-buff everyone right before boss fights. Make sure that your pet is out at this time. Otherwise, you will have to call your pet and have everyone take the time to buff it. Avoid delaying the raid like that.

Paladin buffs are a headache for pets. Greater blessings, when cast on one character, also get cast on every other character of the same class in the raid. For this purpose, hunter pets are considered warriors. This is stupid, but there it is. As a result, your pet will get blessings when the warriors get them, but they may be the wrong blessings.

Your pet should have Blessing of Might. If you have two paladins, it should have Blessing of Kings, too. The remaining blessings are not particularly helpful, although Blessing of Sanctuary is marginally useful.

Before the fight starts, click on your pet and check its blessings. If it has something useless like Greater Blessing of Light instead of Might, ask the paladins to cast a single-target Blessing of Might on the pet. Getting blessings set up right is a pain, especially with multiple paladins, so be patient and polite with the paladins. Do not insist on perfect pet buffs until you get to a boss fight. You may find the following lines useful in getting the job done:

"Could whoever put Greater Blessing of Light on the warriors please put a single-target Blessing of Might on my pet?"

"/point" (This points at the pet so that the paladin can find it more easily.)

"The pallypower add-on should help you find the pets. Otherwise, go to the raid window and drag out the pet tab.  It's near the bottom on the right side."

"Blizzard thinks that hunter pets are warriors, so you have to use the single-target blessings on them instead of the greater blessings."

Finally, if you have to revive your pet during a fight, ask for it to be re-buffed, if the buffers have the time and mana to do so.

Raid buffs
Here is a list of raid buffs. These buffs can be applied to every member of the raid. They are all useful for hunters.

Group buffs
Here is a list of group buffs useful to hunters. A character must be in the same group as yours to give you a group buff. The most useful group buffs come from feral druids, beast mastery hunters, marksmanship hunters, shadow priests, and shamans.

Raid debuffs
Here is a list of raid debuffs useful to hunters. You will benefit from these any time you attack a target with the debuff. The character that applies the debuff can be in any group in the raid.

Target assignment
Raid leaders and assistants can mark targets with raid markers.

Before the raid starts, figure out what your raid marker assignment is. For many raids, the target with the skull symbol gets killed first, and the target with the red X symbol gets killed second. If you will be required to trap anything, make sure that you get a symbol assigned to you. The blue square is a common freeze trap marker.

Tank and assist frames
Ask the raid leader to assign the tanks in the raid window. Once he has done that, open your raid window, and drag out the tank tab to your main display. it will give you a list of your tank targets and what they are targeting. This makes it easy to select the tanks for Misdirection and to select their targets for killing.