HUNTER GUIDE FROM PLOPS FOR WOTLK

PLOPS wrote this with the help of Jekuto and Megatf.

Q u o t e:

I have been working with Jekuto (a very good hunter) who has also been working with Megatf (who we all know) as to how to play hunter at it's "peak" in WotLK, and how well casual play could compete. We also discussed how well hunter peak/casual play would measure up with that of other classes.

Currently, myself in my Recorded "forays" into rated 80 arenas, was probably playing hunter at about 70% of it's potential, using about 43 bindings.

Here are the things hunters are required to do, in order to truly be playing the class at "peak" arena potential. For some this might be a review, for others it could be a guide. For blizzard, it should be a WARNING as to how easy it might be to play other classes at a reasonable level of arena effectiveness compared to hunters:
______________________________________________________

** Tenacity pets are a complete requirement, as RoS is simply too necessary for any hunter comp. RoS must not be ignored, and it must not be auto-fired. It must be macroed to a reaction hotkey and prioritized during perceived times of heavy incoming burst, on either the hunter or on teammates (such as using a mouseover macro)

The same goes for Intervene. This should also be keybound, and used for the hunter and teammates.

** Because of RoS's heavy use, pet health must be closely monitored. RoS will kill pets in arenas, and hunters must be pumping constant mends into pets to attempt to keep them as close to topped off as possible. Hunters and teammates must always be micromanaging pet health.

** Roots from pets are more important than even Viper masking. Root should not be auto-firing (must be keybound) and should instead be used during "clutch" times to attempt to compensate for our lack of ways to deal with our targets LoSing us. Likewise with charge, which is also paramount.

** Aspect-dancing should not be done simply when OOM. Hunters must be able to recognize when they have opportunities to fill back some mana during times when damage would not otherwise matter much. Mana management is a major issue because going OOM when opponents are vulnerable will prolong games that could have been won.

The best use of rapidfire (due to hunter's pathetic burst), may be when an opportunity to chain auto-steady's presents itself to assist with refilling mana as quickly as possible. Hunters should always be paying attention to mana effeciency because of our penalty on AotV.

** Hunters need to micro and maintain viper stings on healer or caster dps same as always because the outlast role of TBC will continue.

** Hunters need to look for opportunites to CC offensively/defensively. In order to best land our ranged baseline CC, we will need to look for opporutnities to land freezing arrow ---> compensating for it's grenade mechanic, arm time, and tiny trigger radius.

This means hunters should be spending less than 1-2 seconds mid-fight aiming a small grenade-size radius on a 1-2 second "lead" as to where they think an opponent "will be". Either that or they should be looking for the opportunity to chain freezing arrow behind leading scattershots or pet roots set up specifically so that freezing arrow can be ensured success.

** Because they have no raw %damage mitigation, invulns, or stun breaks, Hunters must compensate for low survivability with raw short-cooldown reaction time. For most builds this will mean defensive scatters, wyverns, or silences, and possibly complicated Readiness chains such as disengage + deterrence + Readiness + disengage cooldown chains similar to rogues.

** Hunters will need to be maintaining a MS effect on one target to compensate for their lack of burst, prioritizing this with all their other globals.

** Hunters must be maintaining effective trapping. They will need to make mid-fight decisions as to whether to use their trap cooldown on frosts to help teammates stay on or escape a target, or whether they have a chance in hell in landing a freeze trap instead.

Likewise hunters need to spend extra attention to consider whether or not to HOLD their scattershot cooldown to wait on their trap cooldown so that they can chain scatter + freezing trap/arrow, instead of using scattershot for other offensive or defensive use.

** MM build hunters will need to use GCD's to prep stings to make chimera shot worthwhile. This means spending a GCD to prep a very mediocre effect (scorpid) on a potential disarm target.

** All hunters must always be looking for attempts to "plant" their feet while kiting in order to make use of autoshots, the one thing that keeps us from being able to lower our GCD with haste gear like casters can.

Hunters must always be aware of their internal autoshot cooldown either by instinct or through the use of a mod to ensure maximum "on the run" autoshot DPS during any arena match.
_______________________________________________

Hunters need to be doing all of this at once. The more of these things a casual hunter "skimps" on, the more his success and rating will suffer.

I'm going to be blunt..........with all of my prior hunter experience, I still cannot do all of the things I listed above at once. Maybe if I played enough, I would be able to much later into S5. As it stands now I am attempting to set up 48 keybinds for a MM build.

I propose this as a warning to Blizzard and casual hunters, the class is arguably the most complex to play at an equal level of success to more "casual" play by other classes.