OutDPS!

In 4.3.2 Deterrence will gain a 30% damage reduction over the course of its duration in addition to its current effects.  This post discusses how to take advantage of Deterrence and its new buff.

General Tips

Deterrence causes attacks on the hunter than can miss to miss.  It basically adds a 100% chance for melee and ranged attacks to miss and for spells to be deflected (but not reflected unless you have the SV talent).  This is simple in principle but sometimes weird in practice.  Deterrence seemingly offers immunity toward whatever Blizzard wants, including AoE attacks like Valiona’s breath, Elementium Blast and Hour of Twilight.

Deterrence disables all weapon-based abilities.  This means no shots, no stings, no Raptor Strikes, no Wing Clips. As such, you will still typically only want to use Deterrence for its mitigation in those situations where the damage reduction is more important than DPS.  If you plan to combine the damage reduction of a glyphed Raptor Strike with that of the new Deterrence, you will of course want to Raptor Strike first.

Deterring some source of damage is not an excuse to twiddle your thumbs. Abilities that do not require functioning weapons still work under Deterrence. Here is a list of things that work under Deterrence that I am stealing from another one of my posts:

• aspect switching
• bandages
• Disengage
• Feign Death
• Flare
• Healthstones
• Hunter’s Mark
• Kill Command
• Lightwell activations
• Master’s Call
• Mend Pet
• moving
• Readiness
• Rez Pet
• Scare Beast
• Trap Launcher
• traps

You do not even have to stop DPS when Deterrence is up.  You can cast Kill Command and launch traps.  You can also refresh your Hunter’s Mark, potentially saving yourself a global down the road if you are BM or SV.

Only keep Deterrence up for as long as it it useful.  You want start it right before it is required and cancel it early if its job is done.  For that, I recommend the following macro:

/stopcasting
/cancelaura Deterrence
/cast Deterrence

With this macro, the first hit starts the aura and the second hit cancels it.  The /stopcasting line is there so that being in the middle of a cast does not stop you from using Deterrence when you need to.

If you are prone to spamming the Deterrence key when you need it, you may wish to use this macro instead so that you cannot cancel Deterrence without holding a modifier key:

/stopcasting
/cancelaura [mod] Deterrence
/cast Deterrence

The new damage-taken reduction buff to Deterrence will cause it to work like Barkskin, Divine Protection, Shield Wall (etc.), so when the raid calls for players to use such abilities they are calling you to use Deterrence.  The key difference, though, is that Deterrence causes the hunter to stop most dps and so that should be kept in mind and weighed against the benefits of the damage reduction.

Fight-Specific Tips

Morchok

The primary use for the new Deterrence here would be for reducing damage taken from Stomps or crystal explosions (more important on Heroic mode).  If, for some reason, you end up having to take one of the double shares on a Stomp, use both Deterrence and a glyphed Raptor Strike (obviously RSing first).

Zon’ozz

The new Deterrence buff will help for surviving a ball bounce, be it when the ball has gotten too big, when you have to bounce it back by yourself or when you are low on health from just receiving a dot dispel.

On Heroic Mode you may wish to save Deterrence for black phases, particularly the phase transition.

Yor’sahj

Your dps is generally more important than damage reduction on Yor’sahj so I don’t see real regular opportunities for use here, excluding perhaps eating some red damage on Heroic mode.

Hagara

I see a few potential uses for the new Deterrence here:

• the lightning phase when you’re not dpsing anyway
• right before you are frozen in an Ice Tomb (so as to reduce the damage you take inside a tomb)
• for eating an Ice Lance (you might save it for when you’re eating a lance and you think Shattered Ice is about to occur)

Ultraxion

Deterrence of course works to negate Hour of Twilight.  The fight in general is a dps race, though, so using it to reduce the aoe damage does not strike me as a worthwhile tradeoff.

Warmaster

We finally have something to use for the Twilight Onslaughts.  If your raid has set up an Onslaught on which players use personal cooldowns, that would be the one to save Deterrence for.

Deterrence should also be of use in phase two for those occasions when you screw up and are stuck in the middle of Shockwave.

Spine

Deterrence can help with the damage coming from exploding Bloods.  It will not break your grip while standing in a socket, so you can also use it to mitigate some damage taken during a barrel roll.

Madness

Deterrence immunity works for Elementium Blasts and the new damage reduction should help with Shatters.