A Fistfull of Arrows: Hunter course 101 (Stings, Pets, and Crowd Control)

(This guide was created by Cutrean, level 70 Tauren hunter, of the Baelgun server. Date: 09/25/2007 )

Senior Level

14. Stings
15. Pets
16. Crowd Control


14. Learn what stings to use and when. Serpent Sting is a horrible investment of mana, and a terrible investment of a debuff slot. Serpent Sting is absolutely horrid compared to almost every other debuff, the only benefit is that if you have multipule hunters, each hunter can drop a Serpent Sting on one mob, which would be good on the Mulgar fight where we ranged-tank Kiggler. Important to note here, that is the ONLY sting for which that can happen, you will not be able to stack 3 Viper Stings with 3 hunters for example.

In 5-mans and raids, a better sting than Serpent would be Scorpid. This reduces the hit chance of the enemy mob by 5%, this will get many tanks into the "uncrushable" area, and if you know anything about tank mechanics, this is great, if you don't, ask your MT if it will help. Garentee he'll say "YES!!". If you're the only hunter, try to keep it up for the big fights, it's not that important on trash mobs. If you are with more than one hunter, the person that doesn't have IHM gets to do Scorpid Sting.

Viper Sting is useless against boss mobs, just too large of a mana pool. Now for PvP on the other hand...it's very nice and it'll be even better with our Arcane Dispeling Shot. Goodbye Arcane Intelligence..goodbye mana :)


15. Use your pets, they add a significant portion of our DPS and are fairly easy to keep alive. With the new avoidance ability and Kill Command, their damage and survivability is much easier to maintain, especially since our Mend Pet is now a HoT. If your pet is getting jacked up, pull them back (CTRL + 0) heal them up, and send ‘em back in. They are also a very nice, "get the hell off my caster" critter. This is especially true if they are BM. A good hunter will also know when to use their pets "growl" ability, our pets can off-tank, but should be a last resort only, and when they do....please all healers reading this, for the love of the gods, TOSS 'EM A HEAL OR TWO DAMMIT!!! Thanks...


16. Crowd Control. I've noticed with the inclusion of being able to drop traps in combat, hunters are now responsible for a respectable amount of dependable CC, baring resists, being able to keep that 3rd, 4th or 5th mob tied up in traps or kited around between traps. A good test would be to give a hunter a mob to control for an entire fight, this would be for a 3-5 mob pull, and have that target be the last one taken. Proper use of traps can save a group. If a healer / caster is getting beat on....run over and trap 'em. A nice test is to give a hunter 2 targets and have him double CC them. Ice trap one, wing-clip – concussive shot the other and juggle your trap cool downs. Fun times.

Also of note here is that our traps are on a 30sec. cooldown (much less with talents / gear) and a 1min. arming time. Keep this in mind when you are chain trapping. Please remember that no one likes getting thier CC broken prematurely, if you think your multishot is going to hit that trap/sheep/seduce don't fire it off, plain and simple.

For the love of all that's holy, when you are given a target to trap, don't put the trap anywhere near the front line of combat! This kills me when I see it. As someone responsible for cc'ing a mob you need to make sure that the mob stays cc'd! This means getting it away from the nasty Thunderclap and those pesky AoE's (including your own). Keep in mind that this also gives you room to run if you get a trap resist, of forbid, the dreaded double resist and are forced to kite for while, but you know how to do that right..? This also applies if you are assigned to trap a ranged mob, given that to LoS the caster mob, there's usually a lot of places in the rooms behind you...go fig...