MOP - Hunter Thread

Seeing we have a thread for shammies and pallys up already I thought I might start a new one for hunters. I have been playing around with hunters a bit on MOP and since Mosg2 put the mozz on hunters in the ret thread, thought it might be a good time to start a thread collecting information for a 4 hunter group in MOP.

Primarily what I'll be looking at with a hunter group is 4 hunters and a healer ideally druid at this stage primarily for the stealth.

Improvements in this comp:

1. Camo now = stealth.

This will be awesome if it makes it through beta. The only weakness here is you have to be renew stealth every minute as camo expires, but the way it works at the moment, if you select camo about 1 sec before it expires, you will get a seamless changeover. Usr this in conjunction with one of the lvl 90 talents for an extremely hard hitting opener from stealth.

2. No minimum range

Hunters have always been strong against other ranged dps but this makes it easier to beat on melee that are all up in our grill. The only issue here is that IWT does not allow for close range dps spam the same way it does with melee IWT. Basically we are similar to all other casters in regard to range with the one benefit that we have autoattack occurring and a good range of instants to use for burst.

3. Pets

I don't have any addons for MoP obviously, but pets (in BM spec at least) are pretty powerful. My cat has 11.5k AP and normal hits are 5.5k, 11k crits then special attacks on top of that. There is a 1.4min cooldown increasing AP by 50% and this combined with BW results in pets getting close to 10k dps. Sending these onto a healer or CC target for interrupts via intimidation would be my initial tactic here.

For PvE, Tank spec pets have the increased armour and stam, decreased crit as well as last stand and now are unkillable whilst under the effects of BW given a glyph. Take 4 of these babies, add a specialised healer and we have the makings of a decent dungeon group. Only issue is queuing for randoms without a tank/healer :/

4. Crowd Control

The reason I have been playing with BM mainly is that they get an extra CC in the form of intimidation. All specs still have scatter for interrupting. All specs can pick up wyvern sting, silencing shot or the new binding shot. Traps are as good as ever, although admittedly harder to use as cc for boxers. The one new thing is a glyph to explosive trap which gives it a knockback effect. RR 4 of these at your feet with an ice trap and melee are going to have a tough time staying on you even if you are stationary. Alternatively, if you choose panda as a race you have an incapacitate to use for anyone in melee range. So al in all, 5 options for either stunning/sleeping/trapping or incapacitating opponents.

5. Survivability

It seems most classes are getting buffs in survivability and so have hunters. I suspect that hunters will still feel a bit squichy at times and the survivability is not as passive as it is with other classes that we traditionally box, but we have some extra tools to play with. Deterrence can be buffed to a 2 min CD immunity with 50% damage reduction via glyphs and talents. Disengage can give a 15% heal or snare every 25 sec and new spirit bond gives 1.5% heal every second. Alternatively we can get a passive 15% dmg reduction through Aot Iron Hawk now. Whilst not quite up there with DR of shadowform or moonkin, it is an improvement.

I think the nicest thing about this combo is the range of CCs as well as the ability to initiate combat through camo. The difficulties are going to be maximising our survivability and working out a way to face targets for IWT to work for easier automatic dpsing.

As long as you're in Aspect of the Fox your Wyvern Sting is instant, so presumably if you're SV or BM all of your DPS is either instant or can be cast while moving. Is that not the case in beta? If so, you basically *can* IWT spam on a target with no issues.

In MoP, will IWT cause a hunter to turn?
On the live servers, pressing IWT will cause the hunter to shoot (and continue auto shots) against anyone within their firing radius...
But will not turn the hunter at all, meaning you don't shoot someone more than 90 degrees off or who is behind you.

If you can IWT, which will turn your toon to a melee who is swarming you, ala Rogues in duels...
Then you can deal with melee and still shoot them.
But if your IWT will not turn the Hunter, like most casters you're going to lose a lot of shots.

Instant is nice; use on the move.
And if your IWT is spammed, and it turns you, that's going to be great.
But if IWT will not turn your character... you're basically going to want to avoid melee range like the plague.
I'd think ranged is preferable anyway, because you're dominant at range... and melee toons are particularly bad against you at 30 yards.

Just tested IWT on beta as a hunter.

If you're not in combat and facing away from a mob, it won't do anything.

If in combat, facing away, and under say 10 feet from the mob, the hunter will turn to face the mob and shoot. If the mob is on top of him, he will turn and point blank shoot, no melee for the hunter. Farther than the estimated 10 feet distance, nothing.

If you are facing the mob, in combat, but out of range, the hunter will run towards the mob just enough to get in shooting range, and shoot.

You're not going to need IWT, except when they're right on top of you and in combat.
Further than 10 feet would be nice, but IWT is off of the GCD...

So you could have IWT + Insta move on every keybind, and spam away.
When they're ranged, you shouldn't have an issue with facing.
And if you happen to get a melee weaving in and out of your party, the IWT will let you land most of your abilities.

Hunters have to be added to the list of potentially strong/fun teams.

Curse bloody explorer 9, killing my posts.

IWT works great in melee range for hunters. Exactly the same as for melee classes and as Mosg points out, switch AotF on to get SS casts happening whilst moving too. Might actually consider opening on healers from stealth in melee range so that they can't pillar hump so easily which has always been one of the hardest things to avoid with all ranged dps.

Soloing on beta, have been having a ball ganking from stealth. Even without stealth though, have found BM hunter to be pretty strong solo even against 2 melee at times. Have had most problems with a balance druid and ret pal. The druid just blew me up when he had cooldowns available and staying hotted was hard to dps down. Without cooldowns, I had the wood on him but moonkin burst seems to be pretty crazy. The ret pally just hit really hard and with some strong solo heals and shields was hard to get down without getting the jump on him.

Have also tested out druid healing a bit. Resto's look to be pretty strong and have a few more defensive abilities than before, including deterrence from the hunters. Being able to swap full stacks of lifebloom is also great for switching healing targets more easily. What I would love to try is healing with a moonkin though. Having that burst as an opener from stealth, as well as solar beam plus vortex might be enough to sacrifice healing capabilities.

Anyway, back for more testing, I'm sure things will change once level 90 talents get opened and who knows, the camo glyph might get removed before release which would kill this whole idea a bit.

I'm not sure that Camo makes or breaks the Hunter team concept. You still have a ranged team that works 100% at any range from 40 yards to melee and is 100% mobile. Sure, you can't heal if you're just 4-5 Hunters but... That's the way it is with most pure teams.

I'm really interested in Boomkin since they can, glyphed, cast a few heals while in Boomkin form. My problem is I'm a "So what?" kind of guy--So what that they can heal whilst in Boomkin form? Their burst damage should be no higher than Shaman but with Shaman you don't have to deal with Eclipse. I've spent a few hours in ISBoxer dicking around with different ways to simplify Eclipse for boxers but I've had *zero* positive results. It's just too damn random and complicated to setup properly imo~.

I noticed that Atonement became baseline for all Priests. For reference, that's 100% of all damage via Holy Fire, Smite and Penance converted into healing to the lowest health ally within 15 yards of the target. The burst might not be there but getting all of that passive healing out of your DPS is pretty damned attractive to me :)

mmm Atonement for holy priests with damage chakra sounds nice. I do really like the idea of the shielding heals with disc too.

I guess I was drawn to the druid for the stealth with camo simply as an opener for arena. No other stealth class can heal I guess and while the burst won't be anymore than shammies, the ability to pick the opening conditions of a fight is pretty powerful. The burst may not be enough of a trade off for the lack of healing but tbh, the extra control with solar beam plus vortex probably attracted me more.

On a side not with druids, I'm sure Ualaa will be stoked that all druids get disentanglement (break roots through shifting) by default again now. They are upgrading lvl 90 talents to be something cooler.

I did some reconnaissance and noticed that a Glyph for Priests had slipped by without my notice... Glyph of Dark Binding: Renew, Prayer of Mending and Leap of Faith can be used in Shadowform.

SPriests are now my number one pick for a ranged team in MoP :) Being able to drop Psyfiends who will fear targets for you while you DPS will be like heaven. You get great CC that is instant cast and "smart" in the sense that you just press one button without dropping target or anything and BAM! Fear spam while you blow people up. They get Fear Ward, passive 15% damage reduction, a 3 second duration immunity to ranged damage every ~20 seconds via Fade which ALSO removes roots and snares. Add to that insta-cast smart heals via PoM and 4x Renew... Oh and did I mention AI controlled CC that is instant cast?

Ugh, I just realized I'm totally derailing your Hunter thread Noids. So, on topic:

Hunter burst from stealth will likely one-shot clothies before they can blow a cooldown. They get all the tools to be a ridiculously powerful ranged team and I'm excited to try mine out once the no-minimum-range deal goes live.

Ive got a 5 man hunter team sitting, and waiting. Theyre not leveled. Looks like its time to dust them off and get the PEW PEW cannons out.

A heal / ranged / dot / shadow team (Priests) would be stellar. I also have those not leveled to max. DAMN which one to do?...First

Interesting stuff on the priests Mosg2. Just watched a vid with Psyfiends in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxOMmTAhRck

The Hunters are 81st, as are the Priests...
Both were making a charge for 85th, in case you needed that for Alchemy.

I'm excited for both Feral and Resto Druids.
And for my Pally & DKs.
And like the potential for the Rets.

I also like the Elemental thread.
This thread for Hunters.
Demo Warlocks look good, as a team.
Healing via Penance, Smith and Holy Fire is good.
Haven't even really looked at Monks much.
Now Mosg2 mentions Shadow Priests...

I've always liked Ferals & Demonlogy Warlocks...

Lots of options that all look more than decent.