Conqueror Aluna

Faction: Horde

Class: Hunter

Race: Blood Elf

Exclusive Preview by Matt Hyra

Survival Hunters do one thing, and I’ll give you only one guess as to what that is. Yup, that’s right—they kill you. But Conqueror Aluna gets around to killing you in her own sweet time. Against a cloth wearer, it will often take but a single shot to do it.

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With her Lohn’goron, Bow of the Torn-heart, she’ll be tearing hearts from chests right and left . . . and only sometimes right again, because that is one high tick cost attack she has there. It’s the highest tick cost Hunter attack to date, but also the highest number of attack dice as well. While Aluna will never have a problem punching through even the most armored of opponents, her secondary ability allows her to set up the killer shot when she is good and ready.

Feign Death is one of the cleverest abilities in a Hunter’s quiver of tricks. In the online game, it tricks monsters (and the occasional noob) into thinking your hunter is dead. It also makes enemies lose the hunter as their targeted character, so anything the enemy was trying to do to the hunter at the time just ends.

In the minis game, Aluna Feigns around until just the right moment to make her attack, then whammo. But it’s not that easy to avoid being attacked tick after tick. It will take some clock management and good positioning. Note that AOE, non-attacks, and untargeted effects will still hit the poor deceased Hunter, who you could have sworn was lying over there just a second ago . . . and now she’s over there. Hmm, probably nothing.

First up, Aluna’s Feign Death only works against enemies who act after she does during a tick. The easiest way to make sure that Aluna always gets to go first is to make sure your party has fewer characters in play than the opposing team. The side with more characters will, way more often than not, take the last action of a tick, which will mean that Aluna can always go first at the start of the next tick. For this reason, using a pet is not in her best interests.

Next up, proper positioning can really help her. As a Hunter, Aluna doesn’t need to be in the middle of the action to be effective. Range 4 is just good stuff. Even if Aluna can’t be the first character to go at the start of each tick, you can often make sure that anyone who can beat Aluna to death (well, Feign Death) can’t actually get to her to make it matter one iota.

Lastly, it’s not even necessary for her to always go first to cause fits for the enemy. Most players like to focus their fire to take down one target at a time. Aluna’s low armor and resist make her a tempting target, so maybe it’s fine to let her get hit, then Feign before the rest of the enemy team can act. They either attack elsewhere or tick up to try for Aluna again next tick. Aluna’s teammates can then mop up the dumbfounded enemies.

Naturally, all this fake dropping dead has to pay off with the enemy doing it for realsies. Once you’ve got Aluna on a hill next to a VP location with a juicy target at 4 or 5 health in her sights, it’s time to let loose. For the rest of the current tick and the next 3 ticks, Aluna will be vulnerable to attack. With 8 health she can absorb at least a couple of shots, even with low armor and resist. However, if you remembered to pack a Multi-Shot action bar card, 7 attack dice delivered to two targets means that there will rarely be opponents around to realize that Aluna was just faking it the whole time.