Advanced Hunting of the Twin Val’kyr!

My last guide to the twins was effective, but is due for a bit of an overhaul. Mainly because it fails to address a very important hunter-specific strategy. Before I continue, go read it because I won’t be going over the basics of the fight, and will assume you know the mechanics already (in terms of orbs, auras, switching targets, penalties for screwing up, etc).

A huge factor in the success of this encounter is going to be in execution. I understated the difficulty last time because I was spoiled by being in a large competent guild. The fight actually presents significant challenges if you have new players (and/or undergeared players) in your raid. If you are riding the thin line of just enough DPS to get their shield down before it heals them back up, then you need to have that much better execution.

The most commonly used strategy for this fight is generally to split the raid in half and have each half fight each boss. As DPS, we want to collect as many orbs of our color as possible, and avoid collecting orbs of the wrong color. As hunters, we have the ability to DPS the boss from just about anywhere in the room. Thus, we have an opportunity to increase our raid’s DPS by altering our positioning.

If you’re, for example, assigned to get a light aura and attack Darkbane, instead of standing with all the other light essence players, you can stand at max range between the dark aura players and the wall, and carefully pick out the light orbs that spawn on that part of the room. This prevents people in that group from having to move to avoid light essences, as well as lets you do more DPS.

The skill of moving as little as possible and picking up as few of the wrong orbs as possible is not easy, however it comes with practice. The advantages are well worth it though. You increase your DPS, and increase the DPS of the people with the opposite color orbs, as well as reduce the raid healing required.

The above image (click for zoom) shows what I’m talking about. The big rectangles are where most of the light and dark players will be standing, the circles are the vortexes that you use to change color, the rectangles are where the bosses are tanked, and the orbs spawn along the wall. The orbs will average out to about evenly dark and light, but when they make their way into the DPS, they can wreak havoc.

Now this is actually a variation of the commonly used strategy for hard mode- in hard mode, however, hunters only collect orbs. They often have a special set of gear they use for it (typically with a lot of stam). This isn’t a hard mode guide, I’m simply taking the idea of a soaker and applying it in such a way that it doesn’t cost the raid DPS.

One problem with this is that when you need to change colors, if you are going to be standing on the top or bottom of this map (and not in the back), you will have a long distance to cover. You need to get good at disengaging for aura swapping, as well as changing your target quickly. As Kripparrian, a recent guest on the hunting party podcast, suggested, the easiest way to disengage is to jump in the direction you want to go, do a quick about-face in the air with your mouse, and then fire disengage. Practice this. It lets you aim your disengage, as well as gives you a couple extra feet of distance.

If you have any questions or criticisms, don’t be shy! Comments are appreciated :)