Hunter Grouping Strategies

Grouping strategies

General

• Watch your pet. Your pet should almost always be set on Passive mode. Growl's autocast should be turned off, and if you have a boar, Charge's autocast generally should be as well, since the skill is bugged and will break Crowd Control if present.

The biggest dangers a pet can pose is when chasing after runners (make sure you call your pet back when a mob begins to run) and when jumping off of cliffs. When you jump off a cliff or a ledge, your pet will take the long way and will trigger every mob on the way and bring it to you and your group (note that this only applies when you drop onto a ledge accessible by another route; in the case of a ledge only accessible by dropping from above, the pet will drop down with you). When you need to jump off a ledge, either dismiss your pet or use Eyes of the Beast to force your pet to jump off. Better yet, put your pet on stay and move forward yourself, calling your pet again once it is out of range. This allows you to avoid the happiness penalty normally incurred by using the Dismiss spell. Let your group know that you will be watching your pet.

Hunters have caused groups to wipe through poor pet management, so they will be frequently asked to put their pets away. As long as you are able to control your pet, use it and assure your party that you WILL be watching it closely. If you're uncertain whether you can manage it or not, it might be best to put him away.

• In pre-wipe situations, a Hunter is expendable, whereas the healer most especially, and preferably the main tank, are not. What this means is that you should have no hesitation about dying if, by doing so, you can keep a healer alive.

A Hunter's equipment generally also costs far less to repair than that of plate wearers. For plate wearers, this cost is a powerful incentive against tanking. Although you should by no means do this when things are going well, if the tank is having to deal with multiple mobs, and his health bar indicates that he is about to die, don't be afraid to use Distracting Shot to pull one of them onto yourself, but make sure it stays on you. The healer can always resurrect you afterwards, and it may just give the tank the few seconds he needs to survive, and avoid further increase to his repair bill.

• Oftentimes there is great contention over what items a Hunter is allowed to roll on. It might very well save a lot of headache if you confirm the loot rules before you start adventuring. Otherwise you may find that the one piece of equipment you've been searching for and find yourself denied on rolling for it. As a general rule of thumb, in addition to your ranged weapon of choice, daggers and polearms are the only two melee weapons a Hunter should roll on. An occasional exception is the axe class, but be wary.

• If your party is engaged with multiple mobs, it's useful to make sure all mobs which are not currently polymorphed, or crowd controlled in some other way, have active Serpent Stings on them. The additional damage adds up very quickly.

• Remember to "assist" the Rogue or other damage dealer, if you have one in your group, to ensure you focus your party's firepower on one mob. You can do this by selecting the damage dealer (use the F1-F5 keys to target group members) and then pressing "F". This way, mobs will die faster because everyone is concentrating their firepower on a minimum of targets. Whatever you do, do not assist the tank (Unless said tank is a Paladin. Due to the reflective nature of the majority of their threat, they will rarely, if ever, need to swap targets to hold aggro). A Warrior and Druid tank must do a lot of target switching in order to hit all the mobs he is tanking. If a Warrior or Druid tank is being assisted, it will most likely result in everybody attacking a different mob.

• Sometimes it is more efficient and expedient for one of the crowd-control classes to root, or otherwise slow down an add's ability to reach the group until tanks are free to deal with it. An assisting tank or other designated group member may be assigned the task of handling adds while the majority of the group continues to follow the MA and cut down the main target(s).

• If you don't have a pure tank in the group, agree amongst yourselves who to assist and follow the procedure above to insure that everyone correctly assists that character. Although assist may not seem all that important as a concept at low levels, it's an important habit to train oneself in for later levels, some of which are going to be tough to get through solo.

• Explain to your group that you use mana. Direct them to Thottbot if needed. It's absurd how many other players assume Hunters do not use mana and refuse to give them buffs like Arcane Intellect, give them water, or even allow them time to drink. If you are low on mana but don't have time to type it out in Party Chat, type "/oom" to announce it like any other emote.

Hunter's Role in a group

A Hunter can fulfill one of many Group Roles. Primarily, the Hunter is called to be a puller, an off tank, sustained DPS provider, pseudo wipe recoverer, and crowd controller.

The Hunter as a Puller

It is debated whether or not Hunters truly pull better than other classes. Many people would disagree and would rather have their Warriors pull so the Warrior can obtain aggro and generate rage. The counterargument is that hunters can employ completely different tactics when pulling than any other class, including an extremely high chance of completely aborting a bad pull. If used properly, this can create a Perfect Zone of Ultimate Safety that completely protects the rest of the party from bad pulls 100% of the time. Hunters can, of course, pull using the same tactics that warriors and other classes are forced to use, but other classes cannot pull using the same tactics a hunter can.

The Misdirection spell, added in The Burning Crusade, allowed pulling as a hunter to become more common, simply because of the longer range when compared to a tanking character. Misdirection effectively puts all the threat generated from the shot fired after applying the spell on the target of the spell. Misdirection is good when used in combination with Aimed shot but even better when used in combination with Multishot when pulling a group of mobs.

When the hunter is given a long enough distance (as in the bridge between Drakk's room and the room before it in UBRS) the hunter can leave mobs behind from clusters. The Hunter lays down his trap where the mobs will run, and opens with Wyvern Sting. When the hunter reaches the warrior, the warrior should charge the mobs that were running free. When the Warrior enters combat, the hunter feigns death. The wyvern stung mob and the ice trapped mob will be too far to aggro onto the warrior, and they will return to their original spots. This means that out of a group of 5 targets, the group only has to fight 3. At this point, the Warrior can either hold every mob, or one of the three can be placed under crowd control. I've done this (in UBRS). -Veldren

The Hunter as an Off Tank / Aggro Manager

In this role, it is the Hunter's responsibility is to essentially protect your casters. This can be done in multiple ways

• Laying a trap between the mob and the caster
• Using Distracting Shot and your pet's Growl to steal aggro from the caster

Once you have the mob targeting you, it is your job to keep it on you and let the main tank reestablish aggro. You can help the main tank reestablish aggro by using Disengage and Feign Death.

• Make certain to remind your party members that if they need a Hunter's help that they should not run towards you. Hunters are weaker at close range, and running right at us forces us to use our limited melee skills.

• Let your party members know that Hunters can pull aggro off of them, but we frequently do so via our pets. If they're running (towards, away, across, whichever), our pet might not be able to catch up with the mob to grab aggro.

The Hunter as Sustained DPS

The Hunter is one of the premiere DPS classes in World of Warcraft. With proper shot rotation and spec, you will top damage charts along with your mage and rogue peers.

Although before the release of the expansion, Marksmanship was generally considered to have the highest potential damage output of the three talent specialisations, it has been overtaken by Beast Mastery as the primary offensive talent spec of choice. Although Survival is primarily a spec for utilitarian and defensive support roles, in the late to end game, when combined with 20 points from the Marksmanship tree, it will surpass pure Marksmanship in damage output.

Shot rotation is the process of rotating between a set of predetermined shots and stings. It also requires you to not only respect your mana consumption, but the five second spirit rule (your mana will not start to regenerate until five seconds after your last use of mana). This is why it's suggested to shoot all of your shots off in bursts, rather than throughout a fight. Here is my shot rotation setup:

1. Apply Hunter's Mark
2. Simultaneously begin Aimed Shot and send in my pet. If timed right, growl and the shot will hit at exactly the same time. If Aimed Shot doesn't crit, growl will hold aggro.
3. Sting (depending on the situation)
4. Steady Shot
5. Arcane Shot

If the mob isn't finished off by this time, I'll just leave on autoshot until it's dead. If they begin to run, I'd suggest a Concussive Shot to slow them down while your pet eats them alive.

Dungeons and solo grinding require a bit different shot rotation. Generally they are the same, but I may shoot off two rotations granted the mobs have more health and armor. Multishot is a very situational shot. Before I consider using multishot, I run this checklist through my head: Is there a possible add I may pull? Is there currently a mob sapped, frozen, or polymorphed? Does the tank have aggro for all possible mobs (also if the OT has aggro)? Use multishot wisely.

The Hunter as Crowd Control

Your job in this role is to take adds out of the combat for a while. You can do this by utilizing Freezing Trap. Freezing Trap can be used for this purpose to take a mob out of combat for at least 15 seconds, with a maximum of 20 seconds per trap. With the Clever Traps talent Freezing Trap can be as viable at crowd control as a mage's Polymorph, taking a mob out of combat for up to 26 seconds. The cooldown since Burning Crusade has since decreased and can be used in combat, much to the boon of Hunters everywhere. A trap can be laid, then once the trap has sufficiently cooled down, the hunter can place another, effectively chain-trapping a mob. Hunters can also learn the talent-ability Wyvern Sting to sleep any non elemental (targets that are immune to ice trap are also immune to Wyvern Sting) targets for 12 seconds, then causing mid-level nature damage once released.

Since The Burning Crusade, Hunters have become one of the most versatile Crowd Controllers in the game. Armed with Wyvern Sting, a hunter can trap one mob, fear one beast, and sleep one humanoid, while pet-tanking one more -- all at the same time. A chain-trapping Survival Hunter with Readiness is also capable of freeze trapping a total of three mobs simultaneously.

The Hunter as Pseudo Wipe Recovery

Hunters as a class have no resurrection ability. However, there are two Engineering trinkets available that have the possibility to resurrect another party member out of combat: Goblin Jumper Cables (requires Engineering 165) and Goblin Jumper Cables XL (requires Engineering 265)

The Hunter in question must have the appropriate level of Engineering skill, and must Feign Death in a safe location in anticipation of a party wipe. Once out of combat (s)he may approach the corpse of a resurrecting class and use the cables. Both cables share a 30min cooldown and a low success rate (the XL cables work 50% of the time, the other is close to 33%).

The cables are not soulbound and may be passed to another player who has the appropriate level of engineering skill and who has not used the cables in the last 30 minutes.

If a Shaman is in the party, the cables should be tried before resorting to Reincarnation.

It should be noted the Rogues can employ a similar tactic with vanish.

Multiple Hunters

If you happen to party with multiple Hunters make sure each of you knows which Sting to use. Each Hunter can have only one Sting active on the mob at a time. If you have two Hunters, that's two Stings that can be on the mob. Ask your fellow Hunter to cast one Sting while you cast the other. Both Hunters should fight away from each other so if the mob attacks one of you, the other Hunter can still fire from range.

Multiple Hunters of different talent specialisations also synergise extremely well. Have a Beast Mastery Hunter in your group focus exclusively on ranged damage, which is Beast Mastery's forte, while a Survival Hunter could be the dedicated crowd controller for a group, as Survival's damage output is not as strong as that of Beast Mastery, but it's crowd control options are among the most effective in the game. Marksmanship's specialty is extremely high powered burst damage over short periods, but it is not sustainable over time, due to that tree's mana efficiency issues.

Stacking Stings

Multiple Hunters can stack stings on an individual target with a few limitations. Get to know your stings and in what situation to best use them.

A combination of different stings will stack together however, with the exception of Serpent Sting, the effect of more than one sting of the same type will not stack.

Use common sense to work with other hunters for maximum effect. If there are two hunters, designate one hunter to stick to Serpent sting and the other to choose between Scorpid Sting , Viper Sting or Serpent Sting based on the mob being attacked.

Runners

Hunters are great at dealing damage to mobs that try to run from the fight. Mob flight is a major concern because fleeing mobs may call friends to come help them with the fight. You can simply shoot a fleeing mob (their HPs are so low one or two shots will probably finish them off) or hit it with Concussive Shot to slow it down. If the DoT effect of the Stings and all the rest hasn't killed them by now, Wing Clip them and keep them from running away.

It has been stated that hunter’s pets aggro adds if they pursue a fleeing mob. This is incorrect. As most mobs in instanced dungeons are social it is the fleeing mobs that bring the adds. Not the hunter’s pet.