Kara for hunters

So i've been in Kara a while, and a post on Blog Azeroth has preached that we should preach what we practice. Okay, fine. Here's what I know about Kara from a hunter perspective.

Gear

I've already talked about pre-Kara gear. Basically you want the best stuff you can get. There are some things that most hunters should get.
1) Stalker helm of second sight. This is from the longish quest chain in SMV. Its the best helm you'll get south of Kara.
Enchant - Glyph from CE, need revered.
2) Crystalforged War Axe. This is a very common axe in AH, expect to pay a few hundred g for it, max.
Upgrade - consider the S3 axe from Arena for only 1000 arena points (thats about 4 weeks of 2v2). Huge upgrade.
Enchant - Savagery (+80 AP) or +35 agi. I went with savegery, i may be wrong in that.
3) Valero's Longbow or equiv. Also a very common AH item. I found it while questing.
Upgrade - many! I did the crystalforged crossbow from Ogri'la. It will take several months to finish the quests and get to revered, and finally to get those crystals. But its a substantial upgrade. That or hope the wolf rifle or xbow from attuman drops.
Enchant - Definately a +35 crit scope, costs about 350g.
4) other stuff. So many! Do the best you can with a good mix of +hit, RAP, int, agi, sta. I got a few pieces of S1 gear and a bunch of AH stuff. I had a hard time with group/instance stuff but there are alot of instance quests that reward you with nice blues, provided you can get a competent group together. Whatever you get, make sure it's enchanted. You can get shoulder enchants from alder/scryers using the holy dust they give you, essentially its free. Dont forget everyone gets a ring when they enter kara, and the ring increases over time. Plus the badges of justice (although the badge rewards for hunters are practically non-existant).


Numbers

There is no right rule, and honestly i can't even remember my pre-kara gear. But i was floating around 6000 health, 4000 mana, 60ish +hit, 20% crit, 1200 RAP. Now i'm only slightly better, but my +hit is higher, my health/mana pool is larger, my mana/5 is greater, and I'm #1 in damage meters. When i started I was definately in the middle of the pack as far as DM goes. So yeah everyone's gear has improved in the months we've been in kara, but you could argue that my gear has improved the most. I also worked the hardest. Strong correlation. Lots of gold helps, too.


Inside Kara:

Bosses

Attumen is the first boss you'll encounter. He's optional but a good idea. He's a gear/raid check, and drops a decent T4 bracer and the beloved crossbow. Here's the deal. You have 25 minutes from first trash clear to down the boss, otherwise trash respawns occur. Because of the circular nature of the region, the boss will definately pull the early trash mobs if they respawn. So you can not wipe at all. If you wipe, then allow the early trash to respawn and clear again. If your raid doesn't have sufficient skill/gear to down Attumen, there is no point going forward because all other bosses are harder.

For hunters, a few things of note. First be careful with your pet. During trash clears, they will periodically fear everyone nearby, so pop TBW whenever you can. Also equip the PVP trinket and use it when you get feared. Between these two, you should be unfearable. Pull the trash well away from others closer to the boss, so the fear doesnt accidently add. Even well geared raids can wipe here if they are lazy about the trash clear.

The boss himself is very easy, just takes a long time. Get real close to your tank, hit him with MD when the fight starts, and step just outside of melee range so you are both close to your tank and able to fire your weapon. Do a standard arcane/steady/autoshot rotation. Drink pots when you are at half mana. In fact, do this for all bosses. If you worry about OOM, switch to aspect of viper, otherwise use aspect of hawk. (I'm a little higher in mana/5, so I do a multi/arcane/steady/auto combo until i can't do it anymore). I'll also through a scorpid sting on the boss to help the tank out. When midnight is at 5% health, the two (attumen and midnight) will combine. The danger here is the aggro clear. So hit tank with MD again, and be suer you are close to him. Phase three is just like phase two. Rinse and repeat. It will take 2-4 minutes to down this boss.

Moroes

Go up the stairs, and be ready for trash pulls. The timer here is 1 hour I believe. You'll have some AOE pulls, so when the tank pulls these, drop an explosive trap, back off, and launch a volley (assuming tank is paly). You can easily wipe here due to the pet and inproper targetting. Generally i get as close to the top of the stair as I can and attack mobs on the same step, so as not risk targetting mobs on the dance hall floor. You can leave your pet on passive here, the mobs will die so quick the pet wont be useful.

To the left is Moroes. Clear trash, be aware of the very hard hitting Ghostly stewards, which come in pairs. Do scorpid sting, and go balls to the wall dps, FD if you need to. Burn your CDs if you can (ie rapid fire).

Moroes and his adds (from wowwiki)

Hunters can chain-trap one add indefinitely. This is made easier by survival talents or the Beast Lord Armor set bonus. They can also kite.

However, given the importance of high damage output in this fight, it is not always a good idea to trap or kite for a long time. If the hunter is busy trapping, he can't put out as much damage. It may be best to pull a target into a trap, drop a second trap, and trust in an off-tank to pick up the trap target before the second trap breaks.

Hunters can use Misdirection to help the off-tank maintain threat on Moroes.

Hunters can drop a Freezing Trap on any (player) priest that is keeping a target shackled. If the shackle breaks, this will give the priest time to re-shackle the target instead of taking hits.

Hunter pets specced for armor and stamina can tank kill targets, so long as they get heals.

This is all largely true, however my uber-pig couldn't tank the adds well at all, there wasn't enough healing to go around. If you are hunter heavy you can through two or three high armor pets on an add, and work as a team to freeze-trap another. But by and large the best approach is two priests shackling adds, an OT tanking moroes, and the MT tanking two adds (usually healers). Intially I will do the following in such a case. Lay a FT down at a designated priest. MD the MT for the first add. Watch and wait while MT adds go to MT, and the shackle adds get shackled. If the shackles are resisted, the FT should work. If that doesnt work, turn growl on and have pet tank the add briefly (but at this point you are pretty much SOL). Burn down the two MT adds quickly while playing backup CC for the priests. If you can get all this down in the beginning, it should be cake.

Dwarves are particularly useful here as they can get rid of the garrotte attack of Moroes (once). Usually we have holy palys to help w/ garrotte. I almost never die from garrotte, but instead due to the initial startup dance. Once two adds are shackled and the MT can handle two adds plus maybe moroes, you can do it.


Maiden

Maiden is an optional boss. The trash clears should not prove difficult for you as a hunter. Occassionally the trash will seduce the party and that could be problematic. But generally just sit back and dps. When you get to maiden, there are a few things you need to know. First, positioning. Have everyone hug the wall and pick one pillar per person. Be smart and get close to a healer for what's to come. Grab healthstones (cookies) and a restorative pot

MT will start the event, and move to the exact middle of room. When she gets there, start dps. The only thing you have to worry about is Holy Fire, it will kill you in seconds. The resto pot or any type of debuff (outlined in wowwiki) will cleanse it. During repentance you cant move, but your pet will still take damage. At end of repentance, throw a mend pet on it. As long as you can cleanse holy fire you wont have issues. Your tank/healers may but that's not your problem. If the tank dies its a wipe as usual.

Opera

One of three events: Oz, BBW, or R&J. We almost always get Oz for some reason.

Oz is somewhat like Moroes where you have a bunch of stuff you have to do at once. Your primary job is dpsing the kill order (Dorothy, Toto, Roar, Straw, Tinman). Roar and Straw you can swap. The second job is helping tank Straw. Put a immolation trap by the mage, and hit the mage with MD, first thing. Second, send pet to Dorothy. Every CD, drop another trap on Straw. Burn down the kill order as quick as possible. When you get Tinman (or whoever) down last, Crone will spawn. You can eat/drink if you are quick right after tinman goes down. Crone will need to be aggroed, so try a MD to tank here. More impt, watch out for cyclones, move out of the way at first. When she appears its sometimes best to do nothing and see which way the wind is blowing (meaning the cyclones).

BBW (Big Bad Wolf). Pretty easy. DPS the wolf, if you are LLRH, kite the wolf by wall hugging the stage. Don't let him get too far away or he will cut accross. Stay alive as long as possible, dont draw aggro.

R&J. Not much for you to do here except dps. If you are MM it will help for silencing J. The main issue here is interruptign her big heals. if you can't do that the the fight is significantly harder. You really need a rogue or warrior here. Once she's down, R comes in, he goes down, they rez, and you need to take them both down at the same time. We only did this once and I wasn't around to see it successful. Pray you dont have this event.

Curator.

This is where ranged dps becomes very useful, and is a gear check for the raid.

Killing the Curator is basically a gear check. It's not a coincidence that this boss drops the first class set tokens - they really want to be earned. There's not much strategy or room for fancy maneuvers - either the raid has the required DPS and the necessary mana endurance, or it does not.

The fight consists of four possible phases. Most of the fight consists of two alternating phases: a Flare Phase (which lasts 90 seconds) followed by an Evocation Phase (which lasts 20 seconds). Once the Curator's health drops below 15% it enters the Enrage phase, when it stops summoning Flares and Evocating, but melees and casts Hateful Bolts more rapidly. If it is still alive ten minutes after the pull, it enters the Berserk phase and wipes the raid in a few seconds.

Use the wowwiki macro for targetting flares. Your main job is downing flares asap. We found it useful to have all dps on flares until evocation starts, at that point have one dps down the last flare while everyone else is on curator. Positioning is critical again, don't get too close to each other. Its helpful to have Hawk eye to get the extra 6 yards of range. (Deadly boss mod helps here again) Good raids can down him in two-three evocations. At the end he enrages and really starts to increase damage. Scorpid and burning CDs is a good idea here, we will wipe half the time (when we wipe) during enrage. Generally if you can down curator you have enough dps to take down remaining bosses. You just need skill to learn each boss.

Shade

Shade is all about positioning and knowing what he does. The main points for hunters are to watch the phases (use the deadlyboss mod addon). These are:

1) Blizzard. Best thing to do is stay close to middle of room and dps when you can. More important thing is to stay ahead of the blizzard, which goes clockwise. Do not plant and dps here.
2) Flame wreath. Very simple. Don't move, for any reason.

3) Arcane explosion. He'll draw you to the center. At this point you run quickly back to the door (you should stay near the door always during this fight, unless moving around due to #1 and #2). DON'T FORGET TO BRING YOUR PET (hit passive).

Interrrupts are again critical, you really need a rogue to pull this off. Once you get the fight down it's easy (I guess, the raid has done it but not in my presence).

Illhoof

For hunters its pretty simple, just dps Illhoof. When chains appear, target them again with macro, and dps them. You may want to get close to illhoof so you can visually see the chains.
I haven't cleared this boss (the raid has). There are other strategies such as targeting his imp companion or the trash spawn imps.

Prince

Again this is a easy fight for dps. Positioning is important. We did him successfully by tanking him in the far corner from the door. Take a left and go straight back. Tank should have him facing a wall. The main issue is the spawns, which you have no control over. Do your CDs when he hits 60% health, go really hard until 30% health. Throw scorpid sting on MT (important!). Hope you get lucky with the spawns. We downed him once.

End

That's all I know about kara, that's as far as I got. Hope this is useful.