That’s Magmadar. Yes, as in that Magmadar.

Solo-tamed him. And yes, I know, he turns into just your average core hound pet once the tame is complete, but there’s something awesome about knowing what he used to be:

A 40-man raid boss.

Can you get much cooler?

…what’s that you say? Taming druids would be cooler?

Way ahead of ya:

Did I mention I’m running Karazhan once a week now? The necklace I’ve wanted from Attumen since Burning Crusade has yet to drop. This and other earth-shattering announcements at eleven.

Long-time readers can probably guess what this post is gonna be about. Newer readers, let me introduce you to a little raid called Karazhan:

Let’s start from the beginning: entering this place. Let’s see if I can properly do this justice.

You hit 70. You do a bunch of regular instances. You get all your rep up to Honored (or, for a little while, Revered) by doing said normal instances. You try a heroic but it kicks your butt so you do more regular instances for a while. Then you finally start doing heroics.

And then you start to think about Karazhan.

The questline for the Karazhan key– which at one point, everyone in the raid needed to have to get in– sent you flying all over the place, solving puzzles and mysteries about this mystical tower.

Then you have to do an instance. Shadow Labs. Not a huge deal, everyone is doing this instance.

Then you have to do a second instance. Steamvaults. A slightly more irritating instance (for me anyway), but still not bad.

Then you have to do a third instance, called Arcatraz. The catch is that you have to be keyed for Arcatraz, and to do so, you have to complete two other instances: Botanica and the Mechanar.

Done yet? Oh no. Then you get to go do Black Morass. Meaning you get to go back in time and help Medivh do bad things, like let the orcs into Azeroth.

Then, and only then, do you get the key.

Oh, and what an adventure awaits you then, and what further quests, because that’s right, the quests don’t stop with the key. They send you into the tower, and then they send you in again, and again, and again. They’re there to help you get keyed for the later dungeons and get you your Violet Eye rep ring, but in my mind, they were fantastically interesting in their own right.

Everything about this place is magical. Not only are the aesthetics and design beautiful, but the bosses are, as well. An undead horseman. A castellan entertaining his dinner guests, just a bit miffed that you barged in unannounced. An opera, featuring three completely boss fights of which one was chosen at random each time you did it. A chess game wherein you took control of the pieces. The ghost of Medivh’s own father, mad with grief and guilt. A giant arcane guardian, reminding you in painful fashion that you are not where you should be. And these are just a few.

And the fight mechanics themselves were, in my mind, unparalleled. I hadn’t seen any of this stuff before, and most of it I haven’t seen since. Moroes involved an ungodly amount of crowd control; priests shackling and hunters trapping, gloriously trapping.

Curator, a gear check if there ever was one, and the source of more in-jokes with my longtime WoW friends than pretty much anything else in the game.

No, really:

Shade of Aran was, without question, my favorite boss in the instance. Explaining it to somebody who had never done it before was always hilarious, because it took so freaking long and you knew the new person probably wasn’t going to live anyway. Flame Wreath jokes abounded, and the ceremonial “Playing of the Chant over Ventrilo” before the fight was held sacrosanct.

Prince Malchezaar, that infuriating fight that liked to drop infernals on your head, and quite arguably one of the most difficult raid bosses I’ve ever bumped up against for an appropriately geared group. Oh gosh. I remember the first time my guild downed him. At the end of the fight one person was still alive: the tank. We had a priest in Spirit of Redemption form, and the tank. That was it.

Sadly this promptly turned into massive quantities of loot drama and QQ regarding the T4 helm, but we won’t speak of that.

Have I mentioned though that Prince is still fiendishly difficult at 80 sometimes? Sheesh.

And chess, good ol’ chess, the one fight that actually gets harder as time goes on because you tend to bring fewer people into Kara these days so you have fewer people controlling the pieces. Chess, which once pooped me out into Curator’s room after the piece I was controlling died, and since I was the loot master and didn’t get back in time we couldn’t loot the chest. Everyone had their loot a few days of GM tag later, including a new pair of boots for me.

And the best part is that somehow, the magic of that place hasn’t disappeared. Oh supposedly Medivh sucked it all up at the end of “The Last Guardian” and all that’s left are specters of the past and some other bizarre creatures. I call shenanigans on this. Because somehow after all this time I go in there and Karazhan is just as magical as it was the first time. The mere music makes me teary-eyed.

A few of my sisters, who have actually played WoW for longer than I have, but considerably more casually, recently transferred servers to Silver Hand; one of the things that I think enticed them over the most was my promise of “I’LL TAKE YOU TO KARAZHAN. I WILL SO TAKE YOU TO KARAZHAN.” because they had never been. And the other day I did just that; took one of my sisters (the other isn’t quite a high enough level yet) through the entire place with the help of some buddies. She made out like a loot bandit, since she’s sitting at level 70 but WotLK-less, but even better, she got to go on a tour of My WoW Happy Place. (And no, Attumen didn’t drop it.)

(Yes, she’s in a guild called < Tawyn's Pet >. No, it was not my idea. I swear. Why are you looking at me like that??)

And after all this time, even when I am in my temporarly Tree disguise rather than my hunter one, I still stand by my man:

My oldest group of friends in WoW is about five- or six- people strong and we all met in some random Zul’farrak run a long time ago when we were all level 40ish. Burning Crusade was our fifteen minutes in the sun and Karazhan was our peak. Some of us have stopped playing WoW, or play it much less, but we all keep in touch outside of the game, and the near-mythical status that one raid– just one raid– has reached within our little group is undeniable. Scarcely a group AIM chat goes by where someone doesn’t bring it up, and one of my friends has started posting a weekly Karazhan “comic” (more like a graphic novel, really) starring our characters on a forum that we frequent; it’s quite amazing so far and has me awaiting each Friday the way a kid would await getting his comic books in the mail.

There are other really good raids.

But there is only one Karazhan.

P.S. What was your personal “ZOMGAWESOME” raid or instance? Comment about it here or post about it on your own blog– I’d love to hear! ^_^

…I say that’s a big falsehood! =D

Five of us who had done Karazhan together “back in the day” got together and went in and it was… so much fun. Favorite raid instance, always and forevah. <3 We hope to do "alt runs" in the future, where we pull together some 80s and some 70ish alts and nab said alts some gear. That would make my druid happy because so much caster leather dropped today that it was silly. Speaking of which...

/grin!

On Friday I sort of got unexpectedly pulled into a semi-guild/semi-PuG Karazhan run. At first, I was admittedly kinda wary about it. Mostly because the last few semi-guild/semi-PuG runs I’ve been in have been complete disasters and I was tired of dealing with feeling like a failure in the raid I love. Still, I went, because I haven’t gone in a long time.

It was… a surprisingly good run. Shade of Aran was the farthest we got because we were sorta taking our sweet time and people had to go, but I did successfully see Nightbane downed for the first time ever, which means I have gone back and edited him into my Karazhan guide, video and all! (FileFront instead of YouTube this time, because the YouTube limit is ten minutes and I couldn’t cut our movie down past about 10:30.)

Overall though, it was nice to be able to go back to the place and do it justice; it’s been so long since I’ve been in there with a good group. Oh, raid-buffed, I topped both 2000 AP and 30% crit throughout /flex Not bad for someone who still has a few blues. (Though in all honesty, Badge Epics do crazy gear-score-skewing things like that.)

I did learn a couple lessons. Lesson the First: Using crazy tricks to unfairly defeat bosses sucks. See, we ran into Shade of Aran the first time and did quite well, getting him down to 15% and only wiping because of bad timing with the elementals. On our way back, one of our PuGs asks us if we’ve heard of “The Door Trick”. The Door Trick goes like this: you all stand right outside the door, and a hunter sends their pet in to aggro Aran and then they immediately pull their pet back. The door shuts (with everyone standing outside) and you trigger the encounter, and basically all you have to worry about is Flame Wreath because all his other stuff stays inside the room. Aran himself mostly stays inside the room, too, but every so often he comes outside for a little and you DPS him until he disappears again.

We tried it. About five minutes later Officer Chat was filled with all of us talking about how heinously boring this was (because at this point he was only down to like 95%) and how we were never going to it this way again.

The “Door Trick” actually wound up failing because a fellow player and I somehow managed to get knocked off the ledge outside his door where we fell to our deaths, and I think that reset the encounter. At this point we were all begging the PuG to just do it the normal, fair way, and she obliged (although she seemed somewhat mystified by how we’d rather have wipes and repair bills over a “safer” method; maybe we’re the only people she’s run into that are like that?) Seriously though, don’t do the Door Trick, it’s lame and takes forever.

Lesson the Second is that during the run, the fact finally sunk in that I am super burnt-out with Tawyn. There are a couple reasons why I never log onto her anymore, one of those reasons is admittedly my work schedule but another reason is because I honestly do not find her as fun to play as my alts right now. Don’t get me wrong; I love raiding and heroics and level 70 Alterac Valley* but after a few months of it, it has burned me out. The whole time we were in Karazhan I was thinking “Huh, this is pretty fun, I still love Kara, but… I’d really rather be playing one of my alts.”

Which leads me to believe that Tawyn is either going to get unofficially or officially stabled until WotLK. I still view her as my main and I have no doubt that she will be my first character to level 80, but I’m just not feelin’ the spark right now. Currently I’m trying to decide if I want to make an “official” post about it on the guild forums and attempt to pass of guild leadership, or keep going as I’ve been going and log on to her super-casually once or twice a week.

What does this realization about myself mean for you? Nothing, I still love the game and hunters and will continue to write about them just as I always have, I’ll probably just focus more on alts. As for what it means for me, I’m still trying to decide. My pre-WotLK goals have always been clear Karazhan (just Netherspite left) so I can finish my guide, see Gruuls/Mags, and finally get Epic’d out. But at this point, seeing how burnt out I am with that character, I think I may only get around to clearing Kara. But… that’s okay. I guess we’ll see what happens.

In closing, does anyone know of a good way to measure personal DPS? I’m curious about it and my damage meter (SWStats) is silly.

* It’s AV weekend and I actually am feeling this urge to spec something more PvP-worthy and spend the day in there. Hey, last time I was in there, Alliance had finally learned how to cap towers, all we need now is to learn how to tank Drek! Right? Right? Bueller?

Ever had to chain-trap during Moroes? All the way through Moroes? You get a ton of buffer time on your trap cooldown at the beginning so it’s all easy, and then that cooldown dwindles and dwindles as the fight goes on and by the end you’re pulling out all the stops with your Concussive Shot and extra Distracting Shots, and frantically running around hoping nothing stupid happens.

Feels absolutely great afterwards when you’ve successfully pulled it off though. Oh, let the ‘locks and the boomkins and the rogues have the top of the DPS chart for that battle– you, meanwhile, you know that you’ve got that CC on farm and that you’re a big reason why things went so smoothly.

Lemme tell you a lil’ about Karazhan; I started playing WoW a couple months after Burning Crusade was released. I was level 6 and everybody else was just getting to 70 and just getting geared up for raids. I walk into Stormwind for the first time and hear the names of these seemingly mythical legendary bosses being whispered in trade chat. Moroes, Maiden, the Curator, Shade of Aran, Prince Malchezaar. This makes an impression on you. You know nothing about the game but you know about this rogues’ gallery of bosses that, in your tender young eyes, only the greatest of the great are ever going to see. And to down one of those bosses must be an amazing feat of pure unadulterated epic-ness.

And now you’re giggling at me because Karazhan is the Deadmines of level 70, and yeah, I’m giggling with you.

But you gotta put yourself in my shoes for a second and realize that when this stuff sinks into you and makes an impression on you from basically day one– it doesn’t go away. Yeah, it’s just good ol’ KZ and I won’t deny sometimes it does make me want to smack my head repeatedly into the wall, but it holds a special little place in my heart. All these months later the music still gives me goosebumps, and all these months later a successful boss downing still feels special.

Bigger raiders can have their Black Temple or their Sunwell Plateau that they’re all proud of; me, give me my crazy lil’ tower in the middle of nowhere and all its storied villains.

Pike/Medivh: BFF!

(P.S. I originally wrote a poem parody to go along with the title of this blog post. But then I opted not to post it because I think I want to polish it up. Maybe if you poke me nicely, I’ll finish it and post the thing.)

Greta said she was looking for some guides on being a new hunter in Karazhan. Now perhaps ironically enough, I’ve been wanting to write a guide like this for some time, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. But now I’ve got a bigger motivation for it, so… here goes nothin’!

Disclaimers before I begin:
1.) Exalted with the Violet Eye notwithstanding, I’m still a noob who didn’t set foot in Kara until a couple months ago.
2.) Different guilds/groups do things different ways.
3.) This guide is not going to cover Netherspite because I haven’t downed him yet. (See, told you I was a noob.)
4.) Some of the sample movies are not exactly stellar because they are often the first time we downed that particular boss so we were kinda shaky. But a shaky movie is better than nothin’, right?

All that said, in the voice of Barnes… “And now, on with the show!”

“Come Midnight, let’s disperse this petty rabble!”

A fairly easy guy who is basically a tank-and-spank, although poorly geared groups can still wipe on him pretty easily, so beware of that. You begin with just his horse, Midnight, which you is what you will be attacking at the beginning of the fight. Eventually Attumen will come out and join up with Midnight and you’ll fight them as a single entity. Really the two most important things to remember are:

1.) Stand on the horse’s butt when the two merge. Okay, not literally. Stand about as close to the horse’s butt as you can get and still shoot. This is still pretty close since the dead zone is gone now. Otherwise he will charge you and bad things will happen.

2.) Upon the merge, do not attack for a few moments to allow the tank to re-establish aggro. A misdirect may be in order, but check with the tank first.

Other than that, this is a straightforward fight that should not cause many issues. If the DPS is a bit on the short side then it can develop into a long fight, though, so have a Mana Pot or two ready just in case. (Use it when you get down to about 50% mana.)

Sample Movie: I don’t have one available one for this fight. Sorry!

Possible Hunter Drops: [Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation] (leather); [Stalker's War Bands]; [Steelhawk Crossbow]; [Worgen Claw Necklace]; [Schematic: Stabilized Eternium Scope] (engineer-only-BoP)

“Hmm, unannounced visitors? Preparations must be made.”

Depending on your group makeup, this is the fight you may have to do some trapping on. Basically Moroes is accompanied by four people (who are randomly picked each time from a pool of six) and you have to take out all five; this, of course, means lots of crowd control while you take them down one at a time. Most of the time, you will not be asked to trap for very long because if all the DPS is focused on a single mob then all of them (except Moroes) go down pretty quickly, and most groups opt to take out the trap before Moroes to prevent any issues. Don’t worry too much about it; wait for the trap cooldown before the pull starts, make use of your space in the room, and you should be good.

Basically the only other thing to worry about in this fight is that Moroes might toss a heavy-hitting DoT on you called Garrote. There’s not a lot you can do about this except make sure the healers know about it– so as not to bug them, check before the fight if they want you to maybe call it out or if they’ll know/somebody has Deadly Boss Mods.

As always, watch your mana, keep your traps out the way of where everybody else is fighting, toss more than one distracting shot on your mob just to be safe (they really like to lose aggro on you and go after the healer instead), and you should be good to go. Now is a good time for a pull shot macro if you don’t have one so you don’t accidentally break your own trap.

And yes, Moroes has a tendency to disappear and re-appear, it’s normal.

Sample Movie: Entelechy vs. Moroes

Possible Hunter Drops: [Edgewalker Longboots] (leather); [Emerald Dagger] (if you’re into one-handers– also please do not roll against a rogue on this)

“Your impurity must be cleansed!”

I won’t lie, Maiden can be tough, but once you figure her out she’s not that bad. Also: pally healers will make your life super easy in this fight thanks to Blessing of Sacrifice. Give yours a thank-you hug today!

Our guild does it like this: before you initiate the fight, everybody runs around the room she’s in, hugging the wall, and finding a spot that isn’t particularly close to anybody else. Then, after the tank engages the fight, everybody moves up to the bottom step of the little platform she’s on and DPS’s from there. Every so often she will toss Holy Fire on somebody which will kill them pretty quickly if they’re not cleansed; again, you will want to check with your healers or the “cleanser” beforehand if they want you to call it out or if they will be notified some other way. Also every so often Maiden will stun everybody that isn’t in her little inner circle… just sit it out.

Keep Mend Pet on your pet the entire time because he is going to be taking some damage the whole time, and you should be all set. (Now is a great time to mention that you will definitely want to look into getting at least a couple ranks of both Arcane and Fire Resistance for your pet, those are the types of magic you will be running into most in Kara).

Sample Movie: Entelechy vs. Maiden

Possible Hunter Drops: [Bracers of Maliciousness] (leather); [Gloves of Quickening]

“All the better to own you with!”

Opera works like this: there are three possible different boss fights you can do here, and they are random and you won’t know which one you’ll be doing until you actually do it. There are tricks that will let you figure out which one it is in advance (pally bubble, hunter feign death, etc.) but other people just run in full-speed-ahead, so you’ll have to find out how your own guild or group likes to do it.

The Big Bad Wolf fight is a fun one and probably my favorite of the three Opera events. For the most part it’s a tank’n'spank with a twist: Big Bad Wolf will randomly turn people into a Little Red Riding Hood Gnome and chase them around the room, and if he catches you, well, you’ll die. But guess what, you’re a hunter! When you turn into a little gnome, just Feign Death. He’ll forget about you. That’s all. You’ll still be a gnome and can’t attack, but at least he won’t be attacking you.

If the Feign Death is resisted or if it’s on cooldown: run around the room in a pre-designated way (I’ve always gone counter-clockwise myself); hug the wall and do not stop running until you aren’t a gnome anymore.

That’s it on him, most of the fight will be spent doing pure unleashed DPS so just be careful not to grab aggro from the tank.

Sample Movie: Entelechy vs. Big Bad Wolf

Possible Hunter Drops: [Big Bad Wolf's Paw] (if you’re into one-handers); [Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle] (aka Sexiest Thing You Will Get Out of Karazhan); [Beastmaw Pauldrons] (will drop from any Opera Event)

“Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy!”

This is probably the most technically difficult Opera fight but as such I find it to be very intense and rewarding. Basically you fight Julianne first, then Romulo, then both of them at the same time. Sounds easy right? Well here’s the catch: During the last phase, Romulo and Julianne both have to die within ten seconds of each other or they will rez each other.

This is how my guild does it: We have two tanks (as you hopefully will too), throw one each on Romulo and Julianne, get one down to 15% or so, stop all DPS, unleash a bunch of DPS on the other one, and then finally come back to the first. We’ve got this pretty “down” at this point and we can usually have them dying within three or four seconds of each other.

All you really have to remember is to take your pet off of one and put it on the other when the time comes to switch DPS.

Sample Movie: Entelechy vs. Romulo and Julianne

Possible Hunter Drops: [Blade of the Unrequited] (again, more of a rogue thing); [Romulo's Poison Vial] (personally I think there are better trinkets out there unless you need the hit); [Beastmaw Pauldrons] (will drop from any Opera Event)

“Will she survive? Will she prevail? Only time will tell.”

Wizard of Oz is pretty straightforward, you have a bunch of characters that need to be killed and the group you are with will tell you what order they want to accomplish this in; Dorothee and Tito are typically the two you will want to dispose of first. After all these guys are taken care of, the Crone will show up, and she’s also pretty straightforward so long as you don’t stand in her tornado. Pretty simple overall.

You may be asked to help chain-fear Roar via Scare Beast if you don’t have any warlocks or anything, but other than that you probably will just be DPS’ing.

Remember: don’t start DPS on the Crone until the tank has a hold of her. Misdirection works nicely.

Sample Movie: Entelechy and Blood and Tears vs. Wizard of Oz

Possible Hunter Drops: [Legacy] (aka Basically The Entire Reason You Are In Karazhan); [Beastmaw Pauldrons] (will drop from any Opera Event)

You can only fight Nightbane if you have somebody in your group who has a quest item who can summon him. Once he is summoned, he flies down and you begin the fight. As a hunter, you will often be asked to Misdirect on to the tank here, and every time he comes back down to the ground from here on out. The fight is mostly a tank and spank except that sometimes, Nightbane will summon Charred Earth, which means that a particular area of the ground turns red and does all sorts of horrible damage to you, so you want to get out of it by running to the other side of the wall– pretty straightforward. He also fears every so often, but it’s no big deal (unless he fears you into the middle of Charred Earth… just run really fast to get out of it.)

One important thing, though, is to keep an eye on your pet’s health, because sometimes Charred Earth will pop up underneath your pet and it does about 2000 damage every couple of seconds and there’s no way you’ll be able to keep him alive– so pull him back to you until it’s safe again.

Now, every so often, Nightbane will take to the air again, and a bunch of mobs will show up sort of in the middle and you’ve got to AoE them down. Mostly I just leave this up to the mages/warlocks/boomkins but I’ll try to help out with my Explosive Trap/Volley/Multi-Shot. When he comes back, remember to Misdirect onto the tank.

And, well, that’s about it for Nightbane! Not as scary as he looks originally.

Sample Video: Entelechy and some P

uGs vs. Nightbane

Possible Hunter Drops: [Chestguard of the Conniver] (leather); [Ferocious Swift-Kickers]

“Gallery rules will be strictly enforced.”

Oh Curator. He has been known to make grown hunters cry either tears of pain or boredom, depending on how well things are going.

Okay, overview on this fight: There are going to be these little sparks flying around called Astral Flares that need to be DPS’d down. (This can be made simple with an easy /target Astral Flare /cast Auto Shot macro.) Every two minutes or so Curator is going to Evocate and take twice as much damage as usual, that’s when the DPS should be focused on him. (But make sure there aren’t any more fuzzballs!) If you have this fight down then you should be able to finish Curator off on his third Evocate, though I’m sure it can be done even sooner.

Hunter Tricks I’ve Learned: Keep your pet on Curator the entire time so he can proc Ferocious Inspiration while you focus on the sparks. Oh, and don’t forget to conveniently use The Beast Within when Curator evocates; if you time it right you will have one ready at each evocation. (This is the secret to doing yards more DPS than anyone else in this fight, by the way). Also, you may opt to have Blessing of Salvation on this fight instead of Might or Kings simply because if the flares aggro on you, you just have to kind of sit there and take a bunch of damage while you flail around and do stuff like Raptor Strike, which is just embarrassing.

Arcane resist gear/trinkets (like the one you get from one of the Kara quests) will help here if you have it, otherwise it’s not a particularly huge deal.

Keep an eye on your pet and use Mend Pet as needed, and also keep an eye on your mana because it can be a mana-intensive fight.

I’m going to go ahead and toss this fight in a unique category known as “Hard to learn, easy to master”, because if your whole group is new to him you will probably wipe a bunch of times but once you figure out how to do it, it’s really pretty easy.

Sample Video: (Note, this was made when we were still learning the fight and as such it doesn’t include any of the fun hunter tips I mentioned earlier): Entelechy vs. Curator

Possible Hunter Drops: [Gloves of the Fallen Hero] (Hunter tier 4 token); [Garona's Signet Ring]

“I am not some simple jester! I am Nielas Aran!”

I dunno if this means I’m insane or not but this is my favorite fight in the dungeon. It’s crazy, it’s hectic, it’s hard, I love it.

Pet control is absolutely vital in this fight if you want to keep your pet alive the entire time. It’s difficult but it’s possible.

Here’s the deal with Shade of Aran: He has no aggro table. He randomly attacks anything and anybody including you and your pet. For this reason, watch for pet aggro and be ready to toss up Mend Pet at a moment’s notice. (If he is really feeling malicious he will kill your pet pretty easily but hopefully that won’t happen.)

He has a lot of special moves that require special action. Blizzard is going to throw beams of ice down around the edges of the room so you should be standing somewhere towards the center. Arcane Explosion goes like this: no matter where you are standing you will be pulled to the center. When this happens, immediately turn around and run to the wall. You are going to be moving really slowly unless you happen to be big and red at the moment; it’s okay, you’ll make it, just keep moving and bring your pet with you. This is vital. If you don’t take your pet with you immediately he will die from Aran’s explosion. Another trick: turn slightly to the right which will force your pet to the outside of you so he has even less of a chance of getting hit with the explosion.

Flame Wreath is a pretty infamous move of Shade’s where the room is going to be filled with fire and if you move, the raid will blow up. Not exaggerating. Do not move during Flame Wreath. You can keep shooting and you can keep doing your shot rotation, and it’s okay if your pet moves (though I don’t tell him to, just to be on the safe side), but do not move an inch until the fire goes away.

Partway through the fight elementals will show up which will need to be taken care of in some way; ask your group how they plan on doing this.

For many groups, it won’t be long after that Aran is going to sheep everybody. You really can’t do anything to get out of this but immediately after the sheep effect wears off he’s going to hurl a giant fireball at you so have a health potion, healthstone, or band-aid ready to save your healers a lot of grief. (Don’t forget Mend Pet). If you are super fast than you’ll have Aran down before he gets to this part, but I’ve yet to see that myself.

One thing that is always fun to do during this fight is to always have a Snake Trap in the middle of the room. Aran is going to see the snakes as targets to attack, which means he won’t be attacking the raid and will buy everybody a little extra time.

…yeah, see, told you it was a crazy fight. It’s so fun though. Just keep an eye on your pet and on your health/mana (be prepared to self-heal if needed, your healers will be stretched pretty thin), and don’t worry too much if you die at first, it’s a little hard until you really learn all the tricks Aran has up his sleeve.

Sample Movie: Entelechy vs. Shade of Aran

Possible Hunter Drops: [Drape of the Dark Reavers]; [Rapscallion Boots] (leather); [Saberclaw Talisman]; [Steelspine Faceguard]

If you have never done this before than let somebody else take control of the King and the healers. Just move your piece around and attack things. Preferably the other king if you can get to him.

Sample Movie: …

Possible Hunter D

rops: [Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless] (leather); [Fiend Slayer Boots]; [Girdle of Treachery] (leather)

“Ah, you’re just in time. The rituals are about to begin.”

So long as you have the AoE to keep the imps off of everybody, this is a straightforward fight that can get pretty long if the DPS isn’t all there so have Mana Pots ready.

Basically you are going to spend this fight DPS’ing Illhoof (sometimes his big imp buddy, too– check with your group to see how you want to handle him) but every so often Illhoof is going to “sacrifice” somebody and stick them in a circle of chains, and you want to get all your DPS onto the chains immediately to get that person loose, or they will die in about three seconds. Granted, the person in the chains can be there for quite a while with sufficient heals, but the longer the player is in there, the more Illhoof will get healed, hence why the fight can really drag on and on if your DPS isn’t on the ball. You can alter your Curator macro here to say /target Demon Chains which will make things quicker.

If you are being sacrificed there’s not a lot you can do and Feign Death isn’t going to help (there seems to be a rumor I hear sometimes that it will get you out of it– it won’t) so just calmly say that you’re being sacrificed (unless Deadly Boss Mods is announcing it) and wait it out.

Your pet might get hit sometimes, just toss Mend Pets on him as needed.

Sample Movie: Entelechy vs. Illhoof (aka “See What Happens When The Fight Drags On Forever”)

Possible Hunter Drops: [Girdle of the Prowler]

“All realities, all dimensions are open to me!”

Probably my least-favorite fight in the the instance just because a lot of it is so random and out of your control. All it takes is a bad infernal placement to wipe the raid even if you were doing great up to that point. Regardless, there are things you can do to minimize the potential pain.

This is a pretty intense fight with three phases: during the first phase you really just have to worry about the random infernal drops and Enfeeble which will temporarily bring you down to 1 hit point unless you are standing at max range (which you should be, as a hunter). Don’t worry about it, your health will shoot back up after a few seconds. Usually a caster will have a raid symbol over their head as the person you have to stand behind during Enfeeble, as long as you are next to him or behind him you are good.

During Phase Two Prince starts chucking random axes at people and starts throwing DoTs on people, and during Phase Three he introduces even more annoying things like that. Fun fun!

Typically you will be standing sort of near the door and Prince will be tanked along the left wall because it minimizes crappy infernal placements as much as possible. You may or may not be asked to open with a Misdirect. Be very careful if you do this because he can see you almost at max range, so hit him with an Arcane Shot or something similarly instant cast the second you are in range, or he’ll see you first and come one-shot you. (Trust me on this one. …yeeeeah.)

If an infernal lands on your head or anywhere near you, you MUST move or you will die in about five or six seconds. When in doubt, follow the person with the raid symbol over their head, they’ve probably done it before.

If an infernal lands right next to Prince, you’re safe, but your pet is not. Recall your pet to you because you can’t Mend Pet him through it. It is better to have your pet alive and by your side giving you an extra 2% damage through Focused Fire, than having him dead and being unable to use him later on.

And once again check with your healers to see if you need to announce if axes on you or if they’ve got another way of being notified.

This fight is really very luck-based, so pray that the Infernals will be nice to you and hopefully you’ll be on your way to a shiny new helmet.

Sample Video: Entelechy vs. Prince (kind of a bad movie because you can’t see a lot, and because I was still learning the fight so my pet died and then I died… but dang if the ending wasn’t epic. Longest 1% on a boss ever.)

Possible Hunter Drops: [Helm of the Fallen Hero] (hunter Tier 4 token); [Farstrider Wildercloak]; [Malchazeen] (but seriously, give it to the rogues/fury warriors); [Ring of a Thousand Marks]; [Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix] (not quite as good as Wolfslayer if you are BM and use a hand-woven 1:1 rotation).

Sorry guys, I’ve actually yet to beat this one because I’m fairly new to the game (didn’t start playing until after Burning Crusade and all) and because I refuse to be “run through” Kara by bigger guilds– we’re doing this the good ol’ fashioned way and I love it. But trust me, the second we get to him I will come back and edit it into this guide.

In the meantime, there have been a couple comments left about any bosses I didn’t cover, and Loronar wrote up a guide to them as well, which is very much worth a look!

Aside from the obvious full ammo pouch of bullets and the stack or two of Pet Food, this is what I usually bring for myself to a fresh Kara run:

[Super Mana Potion] x 10-15
[Super Healing Potion] x 5-10
[Fel Mana Potion] x 5
[Elixir of Major Agility] x 15ish
[Elixir of Major Mageblood] x 15ish
[Warp Burger] x 20
[Kibler's Bits] x 20
[Sporeling Snack] x 20

And if I’m feeling adventurous, a [Flask of Relentless Assault] or two.

I try to have an Agi Elixir, the Mageblood Elix

ir, and a Warp Burger on me at all times, and Locke is always buffed with Kibler’s Bits or Sporeling Snacks depending on the fight/part of the instance. Just use your judgment.

[Elixir of the Mongoose] is often cheaper than the Major Agi one and will actually get you slightly more pure crit but I like the Agi myself because it stacks better with Kings and also gives me more AP than Mongoose. I wouldn’t fault you for using this one, though.

And please don’t forget your water.

Alright, there you go. And because according to my clock it’s taken me over three hours to write this post, I think I’m going to wrap things up. Greta, I hope that you found this guide to be a little helpful, go have fun in Karazhan! And as always, lemme know if you’ve got comments or questions!

Lemme tell you all a quick story.

Way back in the day when I was like, oh, level 25 or 30 or so and first stumbled across BigRedKitty… he did a lot of talking about a little weapon called Legacy. How much he wanted it and how long it took him before he finally got it. I was still a newbie and knew very little about this game but I knew that this must be one heckuva weapon. I started seeing other hunters with it and thinking any hunter who had it must be one epic hunter. How I longed to be an epic hunter someday like that, but it wasn’t ever gonna happen, I was sure, because I was never gonna see Karazhan.

So all this time, ever since I was level 30, I’d longingly inspect those Legacy-sporting hunters, certain they’d forever be out of my league.

This is a happy day in Hunterland.

Edit: Well, I wound up doing even more gear-switching than I thought. I finally equipped my [Violet Signet] (I am 2% of my rep away from Exalted, by the way) to make up for the Hit Rating loss I got from equipping Legacy. Then I went to put my badges in the bank and discovered that you can only have a stack of 200 badges and I had 201. So I splurged and bought [Scaled Drakeskin Chestguard]. Next stop: Choco-Bow. In the meantime, buffed only with Aspect of the Hawk, I have jumped from 538 to 560 agility, from 1659 to 1705 attack power, and from 24.66% to 25.21% crit.

It has been a good day.

On Sunday I did the Chess Event in Karazhan.

But then it decided to glitch and afterwards we all got pooped into Curator’s Room instead of back into the Chess Room.

We ran back, but much to our dismay, it meant we could only see the loot and badges inside the chest… we couldn’t actually take them because we apparently hadn’t run back fast enough.

Ya know what I saw in there?

[Fiend Slayer Boots].

Mmmyep.

After much whimpering and clawing at the glass, I sent in a ticket to the GMs, and about an hour later one popped up (mid-crazy-pull) and I informed him of the glitch. He asked a couple questions about it, then told me that everybody in the raid should send in a ticket about their lost badges but that he would have to escalate the issue of the unlootable-loot to a higher power, and that they would get back to me. I said “Sounds good!”

We downed Prince for the first time. It was an epic battle. By the end, the tank was the last one standing; the priests (post-Spirit of Redemption form) having hit the bucket mere seconds before Prince. It was also the longest 1% on a boss you’ve ever seen in your life. Yeah… it was intense. We decided to call our Karazhan a big success for the week.

But I stayed around and waited a while for the GM. He didn’t come.

I kept waiting. No GM.

Finally, after staying up much later than my bedtime, I went to sleep.

The next morning I got online; my ticket to the GM was still in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. But alas, there was still no response.

It’s Tuesday night now, and still no word from the GMs.

This is killin’ me, you guys. /twitch

Boots.

Boots.

Boots.

(Really though, I’ve no right to complain; I got a nice new cloak from Shade of Aran, not to mention my shiny new rifle. …but… you guys… My current boots are level 67 rogue blues. /whimpers again, and contemplates various ways to bribe the GMs)

P.S. Are Felsteel Stabilizers really that hard to come by? I swear, I’ve been stalkin’ the Auction House for days. How is the kind Mr. Flinthammer ever supposed to make me my scope at this rate, as he so generously offered to do?

/asplode

“This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My rifle, without me is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than any enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will….

My rifle and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit…

My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will…”

- Rifleman’s Creed

So yeah, cookie for the first person to guess what exactly about this picture is making me grin like a lunatic!

/continues grinning like a lunatic

That’s me. In a raid group with one other person so I could run into Karazhan for two minutes.

And that’s… that’s another raid group in the same instance with me.

After a lot of confusion and pondering over whether we actually could 11-man Karazhan, the one final member of the other raid group realized he couldn’t get into the instance because the “raid was full”. Ah, so that was it. Ten people with the same Raid ID can all get into the same copy of Kara, regardless of groups. That’s how it seems, anyway, because I’d earlier been called in to help on Curator with two of these people a couple days ago… so I was, in fact, sharing a Raid ID.

Still, I can tell you right now, after months of playing this game, it is downright surreal to be in an instance all by yourself and suddenly run into a bunch of other players.