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The Hunter's Guide to Being Useful
Greetings! I have written this guide to provide my fellow Hunters with a resource from which to learn how better to play their class in 5-man group and raid situations. Very few people learn the subtleties of assisting a group without painful experimentation, often involving embarassing and spectacular failures. Herein, I hope to eliminate some of this process and give out a long list of tips to help you be the skilled, low-maintenance DPS machine you were built to be.
In the past, a lot of people have mocked the Hunter class and generally viewed them as useless, having no role and offering nothing to a group that other classes don't offer, only better. This is quite untrue, and in my 100+ days /played on this character, I and my Hunter brethren have come up with a lot of useful and interesting tricks! A skilled Hunter is a powerful asset in nearly any group or raid.
In content patch 1.7, the Hunter class underwent many significant changes which allow them to specialize in various directions to offer even more utility or DPS. Since a Hunter now differs hugely from his brethren depending on his talent choices, this guide will often fork in three directions on each subject, offering a Beastmaster's, Marksman's, and Survivalist's perspective on the issue.
Lastly, be aware that this guide is UNDER CONSTRUCTION at all times!
I. What can I do?
A simple question. If a group leader asked you what you'd bring to his group, how would you answer? These are some of the key features of your class and some of the clever tricks you can use to benefit your group.
* You deal excellent, easily-sustained ranged DPS. All of your ranged attack abilities have 36 yards of range (Or 41 yards of range with at least 13 points in the Marksmanship tree) which often enables you to avoid nasty AOE attacks and gives you a great view of the battle, allowing you to see what's going on. What's more, your attacks are never dodged, blocked, parried, or resisted, and they infrequently miss. This gives you very consistent and reliable DPS.
* You have the best de-aggro abilities in the game, which can guarantee that you will not steal aggro from a tank. Feign Death, with a 30 second cooldown, allows you to drop 100% of your aggro as if you'd died. If feign death is resisted and you take aggro, you can use Disengage, a melee range skill similar to the Rogue's Feint, which reduces your aggro with a targeted enemy. If all else fails, you can use your pet (With Beastmastery talents like Intimidation) to take the mob's attention off you until a tank can deal with it.
* Your primary CC skill, Freezing Trap, can have a great effect on battles. It affects any type of mob that is not immune to CC, and lasts 20 seconds (Or 26 seconds with 2 points in the Clever Traps Survival talent). This trap must be placed while you are out of combat, but you can use Feign Death to get out of combat during a fight to drop another Freezing Trap, and then use a skill such as Distracting Shot to pull a mob into it. Since patch 1.6, Hunter traps can be resisted, so always have a backup plan in case your trap fails (You can reduce the failure rate of your traps by 10% with 2 points in the Trap Mastery Survival talent).
* Hunters can give themselves excellent awareness of their surroundings. Using your Tracking abilities, you can monitor the pathing of patrols, determine the size of groups of enemies, or look for rare spawns and other named NPCs. Using Eagle Eyes (which only works in the outdoors) you can send your view ahead to find a good path to your objective or spy on things that can't be seen with tracking abilities. Using Eyes of the Beast, you can send your pet ahead to scout for you. Even if your pet aggros mobs, those mobs will not attack you as long as your pet is killed or desummoned without bringing the mobs back to you. This gives you a zero-risk scouting unit that can go places you dare not. Lastly, using Flare and Track Hidden, you can detect stealthed or invisible enemies before they ambush your group. If stealthed enemies are nearby, flare ahead of you before moving on!
* Your Debuff, Scorpid Sting, reduces a mob's damage output, critical strike rate, armor, and dodge rate. Use it! Tanks will take less damage and enemies will take more damage. Since multiple Scorpid Stings on one mob will not stack, if there are multiple Hunters in a group, designate one to use Scorpid Sting and the rest are free to use other stings.
* Compared to a caster, you and your pet are very durable. Often a healer in your group will take aggro from one or more mobs with heals. In these situations, they will not survive long. You can save them, however! Using your abilities cleverly, you can take aggro from the casters or otherwise stop the mobs from killing them. It's almost always better for you to die than your group's healers. You can use distracting shot to take a mob's attention and then try to tank it or kite it around until a real tank is able to deal with it. You can feign death and place a freezing trap to incapacitate the mob. You can use your pet to take aggro from the mob and tank it while you use Mend Pet to heal it. Be creative! If the Healers survive, the chances that your group will survive are greatly increased.
* Wing Clip and Concussive Shot provide you a great means of slowing down fleeing mobs. If you know a mob will run at low health, run up and Wing Clip it before it does. If a mob starts fleeing before you can do this, use Concussive shot. It only lasts a few seconds, but that buys others time to catch up to it. Beastmasters can use Intimidation to stun the mob for a few seconds, and Marksmen can use Scatter Shot to do the same.
* When your group must fight numerous enemies, you can use Explosive Trap and Volley to damage them all at once. Normally a Mage or Warlock will do the majority of the area of effect damage in a group, but that doesn't mean your help won't be appreciated. Stay out of combat until the caster starts to AoE, then drop an explosive trap right in the middle of the group of mobs you're fighting. Afterward, back off and use Volley on them. Sometimes your Mage might prefer that you drop a Frost Trap to slow the mobs down so he can AoE kite them. If you have the Survival talent Entrapment, this can be a very effective tactic.
* Organization and communication turn a bad group into a good one. Hunter's Mark can greatly assist with communication. Before a pull, use Hunter's Mark to designate the first enemy you want your group to kill, while everyone uses crowd control abilities on the remaining enemies. As your group kills enemies, use Hunter's Mark to designate each mob you want killed in turn. This will greatly reduce the number of CCs broken early and help keep everyone on the same mob, ensuring that the battle is won quickly.
* If you are the main puller for your group, you have the ability to completely abort a bad pull with no casualties. Create a macro which yells out "BAD PULL! ABORT!" and then triggers your Feign Death ability. If you accidentally pull more mobs than your group can handle, you can use this macro to let your group know to stay away from you. That way, even if your Feign Death fails, you'll be the only person that dies. In order for such an abort to succeed, you must make sure your group leaves space between themselves, you, and the mobs you're about to pull. If you don't mind sacrificing your pet often, you can ensure safety even for yourself by using your pet to pull. As of patch 1.7, Hunters and their pets do not share aggro, so if you send your pet to attack an enemy but you do not attack it yourself, those mobs will not come after you when your pet dies or is despawned.
* Feign Death offers you more than a chance to lay traps and shed aggro. You can use it to leave combat during a fight and eat, drink, or resurrect people using Goblin Jumper Cables. A potential wipe can be averted through use of this tactic, and as such, Hunter Engineers are highly valuable in instance groups. On the subject of eating and drinking: Some people will consider it selfish of you to eat or drink while they are still fighting, and in some cases, it's not worth cancelling Auto-Shot to regain mana. Use this technique wisely and try to understand other players' jealousy :)
* Scare Beast is a very powerful and resilient crowd control ability. It allows you to fear a Beast class mob for up to 20 seconds, and usually takes a considerable amount of damage to break. Mobs feared by this ability tend to run very far away from you, so make sure if you choose to use it that there are no other enemies nearby which might be alerted by the fleeing beast.
* With the ultimate Survival talent, Wyvern Sting, you can cement your role as the main puller in a group. It puts a mob to sleep for 12 seconds, and when the mob wakes up, it suffers a strong DOT. The affected mob must be out of combat, so you HAVE to be the first person to attack in order to use it. A great way to use this ability is to Wyvern Sting the first mob that you intend your group to kill, CC the remaining mobs, and kill the Wyvern Stinged mob when it wakes up. With Wyvern Sting and Clever Traps, you can crowd control two mobs in one pull, making it much easier to sort out CC in large pulls.
* If you are properly Beastmastery specced with a resilient pet such as a Crab, Bear, or Turtle, your pet can very much survive tanking even powerful mobs. It will never tank raid bosses, but it makes a very capable offtank. Learn talents such as Thick Hide, Endurance Training, and Improved Mend Pet. Train your pet with abilities like Natural Armor, Great Stamina, and various resistance boosts. A Hunter Pet can easily end up with 5000 Health and 6000 Armor, and he has his own dedicated healer... You![ post edited by Gedrah ]
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