I saw this post on Rapid Fire and felt compelled to attempt all of the challenges I had not yet already completed. I’m re-writing the list in order of difficulty rather than by level. [* = haven’t tried it yet]

This is basically a compliation of my experiences in soloing content. I try to link to any/all resources I used to give credit where credit is due. I’m not the first one to do any of this and am VERY thankful to all the Hunters who forged the paths for me to follow!

EASY

Temple of Ahn’Qiraj — Qiraji Battle Tanks [guide]

Managed to get this one without having to solo it… found a couple people from my guild who wanted AQ rep and we 3-manned AQ40. It was actually pretty fun, my pet and I managed to solo one of the twins while the warrior and druid killed the other one. ^_^

Stratholme — Rivendare’s Deathcharger [guide]

The only part of this place that really sucks is when you get stuck in the gate and have to kill the plague rats since we still are afflicted with minimum range issues. Also, the 1% drop rate feels a lot more like .001% after you run back to reset the instance for the 10th or 15th time in a row. :(

Magister’s Terrace (heroic) — Swift White Hawkstrider [guide]

I consider MGT to be possibly one of the easiest ones to solo since you can essentially walk right past the entire instance without even bothering to camo, don’t need a pet for ANY of it and if you blow cooldowns can kill KT before he levitates you.

Karazhan — Firey Warhorse [guide]

The hardest part of this one is getting in to the raid if you’re not attuned. I’m interested to see how this changes when they remove keys in 4.2.

Sethekk Halls (heroic) — Raven Lord [guide] [guide]

This fight is easy, the only pain in the butt is trying to kill the adds because they’re a little hard to target. Pretty faceroll otherwise.

Utgarde Pinnacle (heroic) — Blue Proto-Drake [guide]

Hardest part of this one is camo-ing past all the mobs in the narrow hallway in the beginning. Try to clear all adds before Skadi lands… it’s not impossible to do if there are adds, but it’s easier if you can focus Skadi down instead of dealing with adds.

HARD

The Vortex Pinnacle — Drake of the North Wind [guide]

Once you get the damage mitigation routine down to avoid/minimize the damage you take from Chilling Breath, this fight is actually pretty easy. Some tries will be easier than others depending on RNG and how much the wind changes direction, obviously the fights where the wind switches to the complete opposite direction every single change will be harder than the ones where the wind shifts only slightly each try. I suggest going in “fully buffed” with a fort scroll, agi food, kings drums, prismatic elixir, cobra elixir and have a healing pot on hand. You shouldn’t have to use it and having all the buffs leaves room for error… I have gotten a lot sloppier with my kills as I farm this because I know I can eat several Chilling Breaths without stopping DPS or changing position and I still don’t die. Altarius takes about 2.5 minutes to kill and the entire run is just under 9 minutes.

The Stonecore — Slabhide [guide]

The trash is the reason this one is rated “hard”; Slabhide itself is incredibly easy. The trick is to CC the Earthshaper while your turtle holds aggro on the other mobs and you DPS Millhouse Manastorm down to 50% so he runs to the next set of adds. It took me about 10-12 tries to get the trash mobs “down” on my first attempt in here. Another problem you’re going to run in to is the adds will randomly charge you, even when your turtle has aggro on them. Liberal use of Feign Death is key to killing these mobs. It also helps to be a Draenei and bring health pots with you. A good idea is to stealth past mobs #1 and 2 and kill the 3rd set first, then go back to the first set so Millhouse doesn’t have a third mob to run to [I didn’t do this on my first try… should have taken Out DPS’s advice!] You have to kill set #1 before #2, or both mobs will aggro on to you. Once you have all 3 mobs down, camo past the first boss and the cave of adds and you’re in the clear. Slabhide takes about 4 mins to kill solo and the entire run is about 12-15 minutes depending on your skill with killing the trash.

*Vault of Archavon (10 man) — Grand Black War Mammoth [guide]

*Eye of Eternity — Blue Drake (10m), Azure Drake (25m)

*Tempest Keep — Ashes of Al'ar [guide] [kill video p1] [p2]

*Onyxia’s Lair (10 man) — Onyxian Drake [guide]

PET

Turtle is the ultimate tank pet. Why? SHELL SHIELD. You can do most of the easy stuff with whatever pet you want [some of these challenges don’t even require the use of a pet] but for the tough stuff, turtle up. 

Turtle build I’m using: 

SPEC

MM build I’m using:

Most specs I see put 3 points in Hunter vs. Wild, but I chose to stick one point in Improved Mend Pet because of the chance to cleanse harmful DoTs off my pet. I can easily stack stam via consumables, so I think one point from Hv.W can be spared elsewhere. It’s also personal choice as to whether or not you want to try and find a point for Silencing Shot somewhere. Maybe 1 point from MFD could be spared there?

Glyphs are tricky here. For once, there are more glyphs that we want than we have room for… as opposed to when I raid when my Major Glyphs tend to be random picking since I only really need 1 or 2 specific glyphs.

• Glyph of Misdirection is MANDATORY. This is obvious.
• Glyph of Mending is highly recommended. You will want to keep Mend Pet up as often as possible and this will help that HoT tick harder.
• Glyph of Raptor Strike is very, very useful on fights where you are going to be taking unavoidable damage and will be able to melee something to mitigate some of that damage.
• Glyph of Deterrence and Glyph of Disengage are also insanely useful. You will want to swap these in based on the mechanics of the fight you’re doing.

GEAR

You will need 2 pieces of T5 to successfully run most of these. The harder ones, at least. Why farm Rift Stalker gear?

(2) Set: Causes your pet to be healed for 15% of the damage you deal.

I think helm/legs is the best way to go with your 2pc set since you can maximize the BiS enhancements you add to your “low level” [aka inferior stats] gear on these pieces. T1 3pc set gives a buff to mend pet but I wouldn’t use that set bonus because the loss of other stats would be too big, at least with current T11 gear. Maybe at level 90 in T15 you can lose 3 pieces of gear to pick up that bonus for level 70+ raid content… but not now. Both of these pieces drop in Serpentshrine Cavern and if you’re lucky, you can get both in a single run.

I don’t see any reason to modify your regular PvE set beyond sporting two pieces of T5. As of this writing, I’m currently in mostly heroic T11 gear [equipped ilvl 366] and wearing T5 did not impact my DPS to the point that I felt that I would be doing better without the 2pc set. Sure, I’m only doing 10-14k on a boss, but what’s the point of doing 22k+ DPS if your pet is going to die before you kill the boss? The whole point of extreme soloing is to survive and eventually kill things. As Frostheim put it: for the most part, we don’t care how long a fight lasts — as long as we can heal our pet for more damage than it takes, we win.

Long story short, since we are now using focus instead of mana… as long as the boss doesn’t have an enrage timer, we have nothing to worry about.

Gear enhancement:

• Meta: Shielded Skyflare Diamond [+32 Stamina and Reduce Spell Damage Taken by 2%]
• Gems: Solid Majestic Zircon [+30 Stam] [x2 to activate meta]
• Legs: Charscale Leg Armor [+145 Stam, +45 Agi]
• Helm: Arcanum of the Earthen Ring [+90 Stam]

Consumables:

• Flask of the Winds [+300 Agi for 1 hour]
• Drums of Forgotten Kings [+4% stats, 52 Magic Resist for 30 min]
• Prismatic Elixir [+90 Magic Resist for 1 hour]
• Elixir of the Cobra [+225 Crit rating for 1 hour] 
• Runescroll of Fortitude [+468 Stam for 1 hour]
• Mythical Healing Potion [+18-23k instant heal]
• Potion of the Tol'vir [+1200 Agi for 25 sec]
• Dense Embersilk Bandage [35k heal over 8 seconds]

More reading:

Frostheim’s WHU post on extreme soloing updated for Cata

Eidotrope @ Out DPS on extreme soloing Wrath-specific, but still good info

***** This post is accurate as of patch 4.1.0 — Happy Hunting! *****