Hunter - Soloing Slabhide for the mount! (other classes possible)

[Chomsky]

Yo! Been farming Slabhide (Stonecore) on Normal in order to get the Vitreous Stone Drake mount () on my Hunter.

Required:

A level 85 Hunter. Honestly, nothing special is required here as far as gear goes. You should probably have heroic (iLevel 346 gear) in order to handle this but to be honest it isn't THAT difficult.

Spec required:

Survival 7/3/31
I suppose I shouldn't say it is required. You could easily use many of the specs that Hunters have for soloing, however I used 7/3/31 and felt it was rather easy.

Glyphs:

Prime -
Glyph of Killshot
Glyph of Explosive Shot
Glyph of Serpent Sting/Glyph of Arcane Shot

Major -
Glyph of Misdirection
Glyph of Mending (Thanks Goldschakal, forgot that)

Minor -
Glyph of Feign Death
Glyph of Mend Pet

Pet talents:

Turtle

The reasoning for the turtle is simply the ability Shell Shield. Its a shield wall on a 1 minute cooldown which means that every other landing phase you can use the shield wall if needed.

Strategy:

There are 3 trash packs before Corobus (I am not counting the packs of roaming Earth Elementals, they can be 1-2 shot by any remotely geared 85 Hunter). All of which include the following mobs;

Stonecore Berserker: Will randomly charge, a good choice for your first target.
Stonecore Warbringer: Will cast Rage, increasing it's damage but slowing it's movement speed. Can be Tranq Shot'd.
Stonecore Earthrager: Will cast "Force of Earth" turning it in to an Earth Elemental which will channel an AoE that does a solid amount of damage. Should be trapped.

The first pack also includes Millhouse Manastorm (someone you might remember saving in Arcatraz back in Burning Crusade). For the start we're going to ignore this pack. Run around it (killing earth elementals on your way). You should soon see a 2nd pack with 4 elites. Skip that (using Camouflage if you feel it necessary) and move on to the 3rd pack of elites. There will be one Stonecore Earthshaper, this should be your target for a Freezing Trap. If you are spec'd Survival then you should Wyvern Sting a Stonecore Berserker when you pull. Misdirect the other two (hopefully Warbringers) to your pet. Kill one quickly and once you do dismiss your pet and Feign Death somewhere safe (if you feel you can finish off the pack without needing to reset, feel free to do so). If the Warbringers are being tanked by your pet, Tranq Shot their Rage. If you are kiting them the Rage will cause them to walk, making them easier to avoid. The Berserkers will charge you but if you keep moving they won't get more than one hit on you. Repeat until the Earthrager remains. The Force of Earth damage isn't too bad, however you might as well avoid it as much as possible when trying to kill the Earthrager. Interrupt the first cast of Force of Earth with a Scatter Shot, second with a Wyvern Sting and third with Freezing Trap. If the 4th cast gets off the mobs should die before doing any real damage to you.

Slight update to the trash strat (for packs 2 & 3):

The first few times I didn't get a variation of trash mobs in each pack however I've now realized that you will have one of each of the 3 different trash mobs + a random duplicate of one of the 3. Its not always going to be Warbringer x2, Berserker x1 and Earthrager x1. If you keep your CC up none of them are harder than the others.

Also, the Berserker's Charge can be outranged.

Move back towards the entrance and repeat the process with the 2nd pack of 4 elites.

After clearing the 2 packs of 4 mobs you should be back at the entrance where there are 5 mobs including Millhouse. Your objective here is simply DPS Millhouse until he runs away. You do NOT need to kill the other elites in this group, simply dismiss your pet (or let it die) and then Feign Death or even run out of the instance.

Millhouse strategy improvement:

So this part gave me troubles, however I've figured out a method of handling him without a problem. His pack includes himself, Warbringer x2, Berserker x1 and Earthrager x1. Put your pet on stay as far away from you as possible without allowing it to despawn. Misdirect it and run towards the pack. As quickly as possible (gotta do it before MD wears off) Trap the Earthrager, Wyvern Sting the Berserker and then use the Lock and Load proc to Misdirect the 2 Warbringers down to your pet. Then simply unload on Millhouse (use Rapid Fire). As soon as he runs away, just run towards the exit. Your pet will despawn because you got too far and you can just FD and reset the pack.

Once Millhouse has run away and you're safely out of combat, run towards him. Corobus will smash out of the wall, knocking Millhouse and the other ~10 mobs around him in to a pit. Simply Camouflage past the boss and move in to the cave with the Giants/Ravagers and Shale Spiders. Hit Aspect of the Cheetah and Camo past everything. Eventually you will reach the gauntlet of falling Stalactite caused by Slabhide.


Slabhide-

Abilities (Normal difficulty):
Sand Blast: Short ranged breath attack (15 yards) that is easily avoidable
Falling Stalactite: Will fly up every ~30 seconds and rain shards of stone down, avoid them.
Magma Pools: Dust appearing underneath your character will indicate where a pool of magma will spawn, causing damage.

Every single ability that Slabhide has to attack you is easily avoidable. Use Hawk (or Fox if you prefer) and send your turtle in with Misdirect. Use MD as much as you feel is needed to have your turtle keep aggro throughout the fight. Keep Mend Pet on your turtle as much as possible, Slabhide actually does a decent amount of damage to the turtle but what makes healing possible on this fight is the fact that he will constantly fly up to drop Stalactites throughout the room, causing no damage (as long as they're avoided) during this phase. Avoid the magma pools that will constantly spawn under your character and if you are standing in front of Slabhide then stand further than 15 yards to avoid the breath. When Slabhide does fly up pull your pet back, there is a "bug" where a Stalactite can fall on your pet and it'll get stuck underneath causing it to be out of LoS of you and you cannot cast Mend Pet on it. Once Slabhide lands send your turtle back in.
This is the easiest part of the instance.

Note: The Stalactites block line of sight, keep both the boss and your turtle in sight so that you can both DPS and heal.

The ground and air phases will repeat until Slabhide dies. Just avoid magma and falling rocks, pull back your pet while he's flying and keep Mend Pet on your turtle throughout the fight. The fight itself should take anywhere between 8 and 10 minutes.

As this can be done on normal you can farm it until your heart's content. Enjoy and if you're lucky, congrats on your Reigns of the Vitreous Stone Drake.

One last note; I have read of people doing this with Protection Paladins and Blood Death Knights; therefor Hunters are not the only class capable of doing this. However, since Hunter is the class that I have experience with I can only elaborate on that. Best of luck with whatever you play.

If you have any questions feel free to ask them; apologies for any confusion I am definitely writing this while under the influence of Absolut. Happy hunting.

[Auroralol]

damn.. i did this one time.. but MUCH,MUCH more complicated.. ty for the nice guide too bad i dont know how to +rep

edith says: nice, just found the reputation button when my mouse bugged and pointed on that

[Feenixx]

Wish this was possible with warlocks :c lol

[chandlor23]

Great guide took me some practice to get this down and one thing i noticed that you need to make sure your pet does not get a spike on it because if it does it wont let you heal him and he will most likely die along with you... I also found the mobs are harder than the boss. + rep

[horst]

mhh nice u wrote down what is known for weeks, but i always prefered videos, so why dont link to them?

[AlexioRibonny]

Thanks! Will try it out!

[Chomsky]

Watched the video, he uses a different spec to fight the boss which makes it take like twice as long. BM does almost no damage. Also he seems to over-complicate the trash pulls, you can do them without wiping/pet dying if you watch your CC.

[horst]

yeah i know he used bm, but this vid is like 1 month old.
and as u said

You could easily use many of the specs that Hunters have for soloing

[Chomsky]

Oh I know, but I used Survival as the example since imo its much better for this fight. BM has its place for soloing raid instances, however you can get by without needing all that extra pet survivability on Slabhide.

[horst]

i wont argue with u about that, its just... i really do like moving pictures ^^
yeah, its kinda late have to get up in 2h, so i will end this now.
night

[Sensisativa]

I've also been doing this for a long time, still no mount. I've been going SV for adds and BM for the boss with AQ bug pet. For those saying that BM does no damage, you are very wrong. I found that the extra health of the BM pets more than make up for the very small difference in damage done over all. I tend to have the fight done in a little over 7 minutes every time.

[Chomsky]

Its been a couple days since I've pulled it but I'm pretty sure I don't have to refresh Hunter's Mark when I go as Survival, so the fight is taking less than 5 minutes. Like I said though, the spec doesn't really matter. I just prefer survival personally.

[Janube]

Repost from Elite. =(

[battleblade]

Repost from Elite. =(

Well. If you are referring to the Elite sector on this webpage.
Then I wonder when people without high rank could get their hands on those.
Or even look inside that part of forum.

But beside that. Nice post... Sadly I don't have any classes able to do the run...

[Snowee]

Dont you miss Glyph of Mending ? its quit importand.

Got my mount a month ago with only 27tries

The first 3-4tries will take long, but after this i made in rougly in 15min. Good Luck