Ela's Guide to Hunter Skills Part 2

Continuation of Ela's Guide to Hunter Skills Part 1
Date: 04/21/2007


7. Jousting – Though this is largely a pvp skill, it does have some utility in pvp when you can’t or don’t want to feign death. In most cases, you should be able to take one hit from a mob (or player opponent, but let’s call it a mob for simplicity). You’re shooting a mob, it aggros on to you. As it gets close, rather than back away, charge it as if you are going to ‘joust’ it. You only need to hit it once…with a wingclip. Don’t ever stop running…go right through the mob, and another 20 yards up (or so). Jump shot conc shot, and burn again. Master this, and you can kill ANY warrior/druid, etc (combine w/ traps, etc).

8. Misdirection – This is easily one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated hunter talents in the game. Putting 3 shots of threat onto someone else in your party every 2 minutes is a remarkable gift. Educate your tanks…make a macro. “Misdirect! Threat going to DeathTank!” Use it to pull, or save it for when an add gets pulled by your healer. Rather than pulling it off for yourself to tank…if you have your macro set up, pop that, arcane shot the mob...send it back to your tank. End of problem. To start a bossfight, Aimed Shot misdirect (arcane/steady after that). Means everyone (casters included) can start their burn that much sooner. In endgame raids, 3 or 4 hunters can chain misdirect bosses…meaning mages and warlocks can let the leash off their dps without worrying about pulling. The cooldown is 2 minutes, so a rotation is possible…and necessary on some bosses (Gruul comes to mind). Also, multiple hunters can start the nasty 3 pulls in Gruul’s lair or Mag’s lair by each getting a “send this mob to this tank” assignment. Far safer than risking a tank getting 2-shotted and wiping your raid on trash.

9. Advanced Misdirection – Naturally the opportunities for using this to your strategic advantage abound. One easy example would be to misdirect a fast, normally un-kitable mob to another hunter, who has put down explosive traps and has a 30 second head start on the mobs with you shooting for him. Or…if you really want to be creative, he could “eyes of the beast” his pet and you could MD onto the pet as it runs (with dash!). I intend to try this on the 7-pull going into the first Black Temple boss. Or more simply, making your pet “stay” a ways away while you misdirect to him is an easy way to pull 3 mobs away for 30 seconds (though your pet is going to die in a hurry!).

One interesting use of misdirect is in Heroic Mechnar. The second boss summons 4 invincible fire adds, who proceed to chase you and your party around. A VERY hard fight, especially considering Blizzard at this date has not itemized it for heroics. Most groups skip it. So…do skip it. But after you kill the last boss, if your group wants a quick extra heroic badge…try this. Tell them to stay where they are. Bring your tank halfway back, misdirect him and send him back to the group. Then go back to the second boss (go cheetah go) and misdirect her to your tank sitting at the end of the instance. Since she moves FASTER than her adds, she’ll leave them behind…giving your team a clean 30 second shot at her. Depending on the dps in your group you may have to still kite a few adds around at the end, but this makes the fight a great deal simpler.
If your group is struggling with a particular pull…find ways to make traps, kiting, and misdirection simplify your problems. Make yourself essential as a problem solver, and you’ll be asked back to instances. Enough runs, and you’ll have the gear so they’ll want you for your dps.

The last two aren’t as sexy, but are probably the most two important skills a hunter has, so they bear a bit of discussion: Aggro and Pet management.

10. Aggro Management – Hunters are masters of mob threat. You should know where you are in the threat scale. You should be able to pull mobs off of healers without breaking stride, you should know how to NOT pull a boss off a tank. You should know when to (and when not to) feign death.

Properly managed, (and not over-managed) you can do incredible damage against a mob when other dps classes have to slow down, simply because you don’t have to. Though some hunters feign death every 30 seconds (when it comes up) this is rarely necessary for those who understand where they are on the treat scale.

What helps tremendously, and should be a part of every hunter’s arsenal (and tanks) is the mod KTM, which is a threat meter which will tell you clearly where you are relative to your tank and others in your party. It isn’t perfect, but it is a tool to let you know when you need to worry, and when you can burn hard.

Every tank generates threat differently. Pay close attention early in an instance of your tank’s ability to hold aggro. This will give you a baseline, and by the time you get to a boss fight you should have an idea of where the lines are, how hard you can push. Your key to doing well on the dps chart is to intelligently push the line. When you are close to pulling a boss, feign, and come up as you blow your cooldowns (rapid fire, trinkets) and climb the threat scale again. A well geared hunter should catch the tank again, feign again, and in most cases can blow full steam from there until the end of the fight.

By the way, be sure you go into your interface options and turn on “target of target”. This will tell you right away whether you have aggro on a mob or not. You’ll see him looking at you. This is critically important to have on at all times.

11. Pet Management – Particularly in 2.1, pets will be a huge part of endgame. If someone says that “you just shouldn’t have your pet in this” be ready with a reason why you can. Shade of Aran and Gruul are two fights where pets are forbidden by many, but I understand that both can have pets present without issue. (anyone want to confirm?) We hunters are highly stigmatized due to pet mishaps from many careless hunters. Make sure you ALWAYS keep your pet on PASSIVE, and macro your pet attack. What may be less obvious is to macro your pet RETREAT. For me, I have 0 on my number pad as attack, and shift-0 for my “passive”. Be able to aggro and de-aggro your pet effortlessly.