Preparation and tactics: What are the differences between normal raiding and all-hunter one?

[Durendil]

First words:

This is more similar to soloing than raiding. Survivability is more important than damage, and it's up to you to keep yourself alive. You want to check the damage taken meter as carefully as the damage done one. Survival is the worst spec, and healing potions are better than agility ones. I'll list the details in this post, but first, I suggest you take a look at this guide (just to make sure nobody forgets to use spirit bond instead of iron hawk):

Durendil's Hunter soloing guide - Basics

Now that you have the basic info, what you need to realize is that consumables, spec, talents and gameplay can be slightly different in soloing situation.

Roles:

Tanks, dps and healers have different roles, and different specs. Make sure to read each one even if you plan playing only one.

Dps: Similar to raiding, however, the important difference are:

-Survival is a luxury. It has too little self-heal, so if you want to dps, you must know how to play well one of the other specs.

-BM if you have a spirit beast for its self-heal. You must disable its auto-cast and make a macro to heal yourself with it. However, it has a 25-yards range - just make sur you know how to heal yourself with it when needed. Also, tame a Quilen - we could sur use a few battle rezzes.

-Marksmanship allies a good self-heal with the ability to choose any non-exotic pet, so they will be great for bring buffs/debuffs (but then again, dps won't be the main issue).

No special gear here (see addon/consumable section thought).

Tank: A master of pet management - in other words, I'd rather have experienced soloers for this role. They must know how to move their pet, keep it alive, use cooldowns at the right moment... Two tanks are enough for some bosses, but for others eight are better.

They must be able to play marksmanship decently (frankly, it's not that hard - just takes a little training), since they will have to use turtles or beetles. Make sure you have more than one, since last stand has a 6-min cooldown. Personally, I'd suggest bringing 4 tank pets and one buff/spirit beast depending on the dps spec.

Assurance of consequence is great for increasing the availability of quintuple last stand, and a stamina trinket can help too, but pet survivability shouldn't be an issue (see aggro managment section).

Healer: A noble soul. On the outside, he's a simple BM dps, but he also has five spirit beasts, and if needed can cycle through them and heal hunters (not pets-see aggro management section). For some fights, healers will dps, but for others they will have to keep the raid alive. I believe we could need up to five (one for each group).

Remember, healing is linked to your attack power - so the best healing trinkets are the one who increase it (make sur to send a bullet or two between heals to make them proc).

Required addons:

Omen or any other threat meter: threat management is important here, wether you are a tank that needs to know if you need to preemptively prepare cooldowns, or a dps that doesn't want the boss killing him.

Use your usual addons for anything else.

Special consumables:

Scrolls and drums can be brought by some players, but everyone needs to have:

-Healing potion: to save your life in a pinch. Bring tons of it.

-Stamina flasks: you never know when 15K more health is exactly what you need to survive. 

-Purification potions: on some fights, you'll need a dispel. Make sure to have enough for the bosses that require dispels.

Aggro management:

This might sound exactly the opposite of usual raiding, but listen: if the tanking pet dies, it isn't a problem. He can be rezzed in 1,5 seconds. However, the important part is who gets the aggro - therefore, everyone needs Omen. The dps to make sure they won't get instakilled by the boss, and the tanks to know if their pet is next - for some bosses, they will need to use CDs immediately because they can have increased damage on pets.

If all goes well, this is how tanking goes: 

-pet tank 1 is tanking, kiting, or whatever he has to do at the moment. Pet tank 2 has the most aggro.

-pet tank 1 dies. Pet tank 2 gets aggro. If needed, he uses CDs.

-pet tank 2 dies. Pet tank 1 had more than enough time to be rezzed and climb to the top of the aggro list, or there was a pet tank 3 ready to tank. If a dps pet gets aggro, it dies, gets rezzed, and the dps goes back to dpsing.

So pets don't need to be kept alive at all cost - just long enough for the other tanking pets to be rezzed.

Philosophy:

It's probably superfluous, but just to make sure everybody understands what they are in for, I'll explain how I see the raids will proceed.

This is just like usual raiding - if the boss doesn't fall, we just keep trying until we're convinced it's impossible. However, I don't plan on giving up until we tried every idea: just as in soloing, we will have to adapt our strategies, and it can take a lot of tries. Of course, if everyone gets enough of a boss, we can always skip it, but we're not here to see which bosses are easy to down, but which ones are possible. So I hope you enjoy challenge, because that's what we will be facing the most.

Everyone is welcome to give feedback or ideas. During tries, only those who need to talk (mainly to warn if their pet will soon be dead, that they won't have deterrence up when needed, or any other important info) will talk, but don't hesitate to post on the forum beforehand or to make propositions between tries.

So let's have some fun!