Faction Champions Advanced Tips!
September 28, 2009I’ve had a chance to burn through the Faction Champions fight on 25 man normal mode a few more times, and it’s time for me to redo the guide.
First, a bit of background. Faction Champions is a fight against a large group of mini-bosses, the composition of which changes for every instance ID. An excellent list of the possibilities (as well as a long wall-o-text strategy guide which I relied on when mastering this fight) can be found here. Essentially, this encounter is meant to be like an arena match, except you outnumber your opponents, and they’re each about 50x stronger than your average player. Agro doesn’t matter for long, and the enemy will focus their fire on who they perceive is the greatest threat to them, or is the easiest to take out.
Now I’m going to talk general strategy as little as possible here- the goal of this guide is to help hunters get better at this encounter, but I’m assuming someone else is running the raid and assigning targets.
Basically, you will always want to take down the most dangerous foes, starting with the most dangerous healer. Typically that’s the resto druid or holy priest.
Your first kill is of utmost importance- the enemy will be at full force during this time, and can easily kill someone if they focus their DPS on them. During the time before you kill the first champion, your tanks will be distracting and locking down some of the more dangerous enemy DPS, and hopefully some DPS (like rogues) will be assigned to reducing the healing output of the healers you’re not targeting.
Your job, as a hunter, is simple: you need to be #1 on damage done, last on damage taken, and survive until the end. To that end, I’ve compiled a couple of handy dandy lists of things to do.
Contribute
- Every single time it’s available, all hunters of all specs absolutely must try to cast tranq shot on something. Have a mouseover macro written and keybound for it, and always try to use it on your raid’s focus target first. This will remove enrages (if they happen) and magic effects. Like druid heals over time.
- edit: While you can not use the old totem-stomping macros that had your pet attack totems by name, you can still mouseover pet attack them. This allows you to continue your primary DPS while having your pet take the totems out if you can hover over them. I use enemy nameplates for this, but I find I have to be fairly close- say 15 feet- to be able to mouseover the nameplate. Here’s the macro: “petattack [target=mouseover]“.
- Every single time it goes off cooldown, you need to fire a freezing arrow at the feet some enemy ranged DPS or healer. Try to pick your target wisely- don’t fire it at a champion who is being locked down by a tank. Typically, the hunter and moonkin are not assigned to a tank immediately because their burst is low. If you’re survival, you might get a free lock and load from this. Either way, it’s a possible 10 seconds of reduced enemy presence for the cost of one global cooldown.
- You really should have one of your available specs set up for aimed shot. You should ensure it gets fired as often as possible on the main target of the raid to ensure the healing that does slip through your crowd control is as ineffective as possible.
- Marks and survival have a different set of abilities. Survival gets wyvern sting, which needs to be applied via mouseover macro as often as you can to something that won’t take any damage until it runs out. Marks get the ability to interrupt and lock spells for 4 seconds with silencing shot, as well as potentially disarm with chimera shot and scorpid sting. Be aware that this disarm will cost you DPS, so should be saved for times when something sharp is being used to hurt your healers and nobody else is able to save them.
- You should look into snake traps- I’ve not seen them go after anyone other than the mob that tripped them, so they haven’t been breaking other peoples’ crowd control. If you’re lucky and a healer happens to trip the trap, their heals will be slowed.
- Lastly, if you’re in viper or something, feel free to toss out a quick scare beast on the hunter’s cat if it’s around.
Survive
The opposition will periodically direct all available DPS to a single target, hoping to overwhelm the healers. They will also use crowd control when they can.
- Feign death actually seems to work- they will break off to find another target. Blow this after you’ve soaked a few of their attacks.
- Soak up the soakable attacks with deterrence. This won’t stop unblockable or unresistable attacks, but it will make their melee waste a bit of energy and time on you. It costs your ability to attack, but you can still move.
- Kite them away from the group if you can- this will increase the time they need to spend when they switch to their next target. You can disengage if it wouldn’t send them through the melee on the focus target or healers.
- Your healers are more important than you. Even with your blistering DPS. Distracting shot any serious threat to a healer. Like a rogue. Preferably from far enough away that you have a few seconds to prepare.
- edit: Don’t stand in fires! The lock puts down a particularly nasty hellfire you should work at not standing in.
- edit: Stay at range when you can- right within melee range of the target is the last place you want to be.
Melt Face!
None of the tips so far will actually add to your DPS- these are all important to prevent your group from wiping, but you still have to melt faces or else you’re just blowing cooldowns.
- Attack the focus target.
- Never ever stop attacking. If you don’t know what the next kill will be, guess, and change targets if you’re wrong.
- Include tranq shot in your rotation. I know I said it already, but it’s that big a deal.
- Get the tuskarr’s vitality enchant. In most movement fights, this will allow you to stand still and DPS more often. This can be a very movement intensive fight.
With the recent nerfs, this fight is now easier than ever.
euripidesoutdps
jurgwena
Faeghleis
lemli
eidotrope
Also, make sure that at least one of your smallest raid members dies in this fight. A Gnomish sacrifice is the best way to guarantee your victory.
It’s okay, they’re not people. :)
As an alternative to freezing arrows, I’ve found that a well-placed frost trap can help clothies/healers get away from melee champions or help tanks stay on those melee champions.
Also, some ‘do nots’ should be included I think:
- don’t aoe: it breaks cc and is inefficient
- don’t stand in the middle of things: just like in normal pvp, staying at range helps you target, avoid, redirect, etc.
- don’t keep switching targets: stay on the burn target, and mouseover who you have to. Creating targeting macros can help if you have to switch.
- don’t viper sting: their mana pools are too huge for it to do any good
Yeah, I forgot some of that stuff… /steals
Kheldul has a good point below. Use viper sting if you need the mana, but don’t use it just to try and reduce a target’s pool.
Use Viper sting if your mana is low. They have insanely huge mana pools so you can get all your mana back in no time. All you have to do is put it onto any on the FCs with mana, it doesnt need to be the 1 you are nuking and keep on dpsing without having to use a mana pot.
I know its a old post but still :P
We’ve had the most trouble on the 10 man heroic mode. Can someone please confirm, but I believe distracting shot will not work on the heroic modes.
We’ve often been putting down the shaman healer first. Thoughts on if that’s better or worse then a druid/holy pally? We’ve found the totems he provides give them a big advantage. I try to use a mouse over macro for my pet to take them out, but sometimes you can’t always see all of them. I might add that as a tip to use a mouseover macro for your pet to attack totems
It does, but all taunts share a diminishing return so if the mob has been taunted before, it might get resisted.Your shaman question reminded me I forgot to write about my totemstomping macro! Thanks :)
Hmmm some guildies told me taunts don’t work at all in the heroic version. I’ll need to try it tonight, thanks!
I somehow missed that you were talking about heroic. I have not seen this first hand, but according to tankspot.com, they are immune to “fixate type abilities like taunt”. Thanks :)
/fails at reading
Go ahead and viper sting for the free mana. Just don’t do it on your dps target. ;-)
I’m also a fan of Frost Trap over Freezing, unless you have a few hunters to spread it around. The slowing effect lasts longer than just the 10sec of CC you get from Freezing and there’s always the chance someone will break your Freezing early anyway.
What is everyone’s thoughts on what pet to use for this? I was debating if it is worth having a pvp pet. We’ve had mixed results on the 10 man hard mode and wondering if the extra CC/defensive abilities would be > then the dps of a wolf. Thoughts?
According to Jurgwena (in a
yet unreleasednow released PvP interview) cunning pets are good for real arena because they withstand pressure better. The thing is that in faction champs, the AI tends to ignore pets. My strategy has been to stick with a wolf for the extra self DPS. Also, apparently the pummel ability of gorillas is on their global cooldown so it’s almost impossible to time properly.i’ve personally tried wolf/spider/gorilla on just the 10 man regular mode. we were having the hardest time in this fight until it was nerfed, then downed it pretty easily. I found the spiders web spray, while working pretty well, does anger the mobs a bit so they did tend to kill my spider. the gorilla i would just sick on a healer and when i looked on recount it did still get a couple interrupts off during the fight which was nice. it isnt ideal though since the gorilla obviously shouldnt be thunderstomping around in this fight which will decrease dps of the pet if you care about that sort of thing. so far the dps increase from the wolf is probably the most helpful from what i’ve seen, but hard to quantify what those few interrupts are doing.
Not that it means anything, but for the only attempt I tried my gorilla we finally killed it on H10. Maybe he’s just good luck.
Intimidation does work, if you are a Beast Master– it’s fun to use it right when your target is trying to cast something.
Every time we do this fight I volunteer to spec to Marks for Aimed and Silencing, and every time, my guild wants me to stay BM. Presumably because they already have people doing Silencing and Mortal Shot stuff, and they like my Big Red Raptor ^_^
(and by Mortal Shot I mean Mortal Strike)
* Frost traps > Freezing Arrow/Trap. Frost traps rarely get resisted, but Freezing Arrow/Trap are routinely ignored.
* Drop Frost Traps whenever the cd is up. Make the floor look like Anub’s new digs :D
* Go all-out PvE gear and spec. We hunters have several ways of avoiding PvE damage and mobs. Other classes do not; healers, for example, get beat down in this fight. Because we don’t do much cc in this fight compared to other dps’ers–1 GCD for traps every 30 seconds v. spamming kicks/sheeps/fears/etc–the raid needs our dps.
* As others said, put Tranq Shot in your rotation. Removing druid HoTs is pure juicy, juicy win :D
* I would be wary of snake traps if only because you don’t want to dot a mob that just broke cc. Mages get upset when their sheep target has a dot; whiny glass cannons :D
* Don’t be afraid to use Wyvern as an interrupt.
Snake traps are supposed to only dot up whoever trips the trap. I like going to stand on top of a non-CCed caster and dropping one while DPSing. Of course, sometimes the snakes get loose and go after sheeped targets. Stupid reptilian brains the size of peanuts.
im not sure on 25 man, but at least on 10 man a frost dk with hungering cold helps a lot, I always cast mine in the beginning so the group have like 5s to burn down a single target, after that we just set a stun/silence rotation on it until one healer is down… at least for the group i’ve been the hardest part was to kill one of the healers in the beginning
as a DK myself I always try to keep chains of ice on every melee I can and deathgrip any warrior that’s running loose
I know it’s these tips r kinda noob and they are all for 10 man but I hope that helps someone….
crap… sorry is this post only about hunters? as I was reading the other comments I didn’t see anyone talking about any other class except hunter… sorry if I posted in the wrong place =P
Haha, it’s all good :) We like DKs here!
yeah my bad… I just noticed this site is about hunters, hehehe, good vibrations to every hunter out there! =DDD
I got the link to this post right from twitter so I thought it was some kind of general tips for this encounter heheh
great post by the way, I just linked to all my guildies