Faction Champions Advanced Tips!

I’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

1. 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.
2. 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]“.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. edit: Don’t stand in fires! The lock puts down a particularly nasty hellfire you should work at not standing in.
6. 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.

1. Attack the focus target.
2. Never ever stop attacking. If you don’t know what the next kill will be, guess, and change targets if you’re wrong.
3. Include tranq shot in your rotation. I know I said it already, but it’s that big a deal.
4. 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.

Posted in Hunter, Marksmanship, Survival, World of Warcraft Tagged: 3.2.2, aimed shot, chimera shot, coliseum, crowd control, distracting shot, dps, faction champions, focus fire, freezing arrow, heal over time, list, lock down, macro, Marksmanship, melt face, mouseover macro, pet attack mouse over macro, pve, raiding, scare beast, scorpid sting, silencing shot, Survival, tips, toc, totem, totem stomp, trial of the crusader, tricks, wyvern sting