Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Mana Regen Guide for ICC

Recently on the Hunting Party Podcast the question was asked what the best way was to regen mana on the Lady Deathwhisper fight, Viper Sting or a few cooldowns onto Aspect of the Viper, And I thought to myself this isn't the only fight mana can become an issue (Note unless you have a really unfavourable 25 man group make up, the only times one would run into mana issues would be on 10 man).
 So I'm going to go through all bosses and write up a few strategies.

First of the important thing is to look at the fight and use it to your advantage. Make use of what Blizzard gives you in each fight.

Marrowgar
Marrowgar is very straight forward. If you should run into any mana troubles, plan ahead and before you run out use a bonestorm phase to switch to Aspect of the Viper and refill. If an MM hunter make sure you don't lose your Serpent Sting though.

Lady Deathwhisper
In going with use what Blizzard gives you, well here Blizzard gives you big fat mana battery in Deathwhisper herself. In this fight its not about how much dps you can do anyway, and depending on what your role is it may not even matter at all. So just relax and if you see yourself dropping low in the first phase just switch to her in between the adds and pop of a singular Viper sting Chimaera Shot combo, and then continue on the adds. Make sure you have enough mana before going into Phase 2 though because this is the burn phase where you do want be able to DPS as much as possible.

Gunship
Gunship is the easiest encounter in here and for the hunter one of the easiest to top the dps meter as long as you aren't jumping or in a cannon. Just Volley to your hearts content and refill in Aspect of the Viper on the Axethrowers.

Saurfang
Saurfang is a fight where, if you're running out of mana you just gonna have to bite the bullet and switch aspects. As a hunter chances are you'll be asked to look after the beasts (as all ranged should) and you want to dps them down as quick as possible. I suggest once the beast you were focusing on is down, switch in to Aspect of the Viper and see if you can get a few shots off, on someone elses target that may still be up. Just make sure you have enough mana before he goes into his soft-enrage at 30%, because that's when he needs to be burnt quickly.

Festergut & Rotface
Festergut is effectively a pimped up Patchwerk in my opinion, and Rotface a tweaked Grobbulus. There aren't really any phases which would be more useful for mana regen then others, so just switch when required.

Professor Putricide
professor Putricide is also a boss that doesn't really have any phases that are more suited to switching Aspects than others, but you do want to be mana up before he hits the 3rd phase at 35%.

Blood Princes
For your average raid guild and maybe even your not so average raid guild this is going to be utter and pure chaos. You will be spending a lot of time running, you will spend a lot of time switching targets and sometimes you may be spending a lot of time dpsing Kinetic Orbs. Don't worry about what your DPS is and just refill your mana when you need it.

Blood Queen
If this is done properly this fight will be over before you could possibly run out of mana, and if it isn't done correctly you will most likely wipe.

Valithria Dreamwalker
This goes back to what I said at the start, use what Blizzard gives you, and in this case Blizzard gives you regular Mana Power-ups in the form of Risen Archmages. So if you see yourself running low switch to an Archmage and fire off the old trusted Vipersting Chimaera Shot combo, then continue as you were.

Sindragosa
Sindragosa is a fight where you never really want to give up dps on her, so the best time to regen is during her air phase. Switch to Aspect of the Viper, dps the ice-Cubes then switch back when she lands and be on your merry way.

The Lich King
The same applies here it does to Sindragosa, you again don't really want to drop any dps during the main phases, so use the intermission phases at the edge to switch into Aspect of the Viper and refuel. Then when you are manaed up or the phase is over and you have to run back in switch back and DPS to your hearts content.

So there you have it. These are the strategies that I use when it comes to regenerating mana. feel free to comment on them and let me know if you think there are some better strategies, I will be more than happy to update this guide to include your tips.

So keep on hunting, and next time you see the Lich King steal his polearm for me :)

Serebihm

4 comments:

  1. On Putricide I switch into Viper when he's casting Tear Gas so I can regen some mana while I'm frozen (assuming it's on normal mode of course). It works quite well.

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  2. Nice guide! It's refreshing to see something original amongst all the different hunter blogs :)

    Mana is becoming more and more of an issue these days for me as like most hunters raiding ICC I'm Marks and entirely gemmed for ArP (With some leather boots) meaning mana regen is absolutely appauling. This also means switching to survival for regen is not really an option (Although I have read in full 25hc ArP values higher than Agi for a Survival hunter??).

    Whilst regenerating mana I would suggest only hopping into viper for the steady shot part of your rotation, switching back to hawk for Chimera and Aimed, then back to Viper for the next steady shots. It's a pain to do, but it means you'll lose a lot less dps.

    I would also suggest on LK using viper in p2 after val'kyrs die as you want to get as many raging spirits dead before you jump back into the next phase. (Getting at least 3 out of 4 dead in p2 transition is a big advantage). Likewise if you're short on mana in p3, use viper steady shots on LK himself and switch to hawk for multishotting vile spirits as they are much more important to DPS.

    On Blood Queen you can hop into AoTV just before the fear for an extra 1k or so mana, it's not a lot but if it means you can get an extra killshot or chimera in it's worth it.

    It can be hard to calculate but if you're near the end of a boss fight (Take LK in p3 for example) and you're OOM to the point where you'll have to go Viper for regen it's actually more of a DPS boost to pop a mana potion and stay in Hawk than a haste pot in viper.

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  3. thx for the comments Hafoot, and I agree with your points. I should have pointed out that most times I only use Steady Shot a couple times to get a bit of a recharge (unless I'm too lazy and just pop whatever) :)

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