making 5x hunters work (gather tips here)

[anna81792]

right, another frontier to be conquered!

remember when they said that more than one melee wouldn't work when multiboxing? proven false countless times already

I'm about to try and prove another myth to be false as well; 5 hunters doing heroics

I'll be having Beast Mastery tank spec and also points from Survival

pets will be Warp Stalkers (turtles have slow cooldown on their ability) because a good deal of the time they have a 50% chance to dodge melee attacks

with a secondary focus on haste, I can bring Revive Pet down to 3.5 sec or even lower, bringing my pets from the dead a breeze

here's my ATTACK MACRO that I will be spamming (Hotkeynet handles the shots)

#showtooltip
/target pet
/cast [target=target,exists,dead] Revive Pet
/assist focus
/startattack
/petattack
/cast Auto Shot

this way, each time a pet is dead and could be Revive Petted, this will happen instead of attacking the target

all pets have this way increased healing on them:

Blood of the Rhino - 40% increased healing on pet
Improved Mend Pet (mana cost of Mend Pet is now only 80%)
Spirit Bond - 10% increased healing on pet

EDIT: ALSO THESE GLYPHS WILL HELP IMMENSE! Mend Pet (Mend Pet's healing power increases by 40%), Freezing Trap (when freeze breaks, 30% decreased running speed on enemies), Bestial Wrath (well dug, of course)
MINOR GLYPHIES: Feign Death, Revive Pet (pushback REMOVED from Revive Pet, this is AWESOME to the MAX!!) and of course Mend Pet (one hunter has of the Pack, so that 55 yards will be faster to move on)

with the change of pets having 100% of the master's resilience, this set comes handy: Furious Gladiator's Pursuit http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=-93

gem sockets will be filled with stamina and other sockets that help the pets

AoE really is not a problem at all

careful pulling is necessary as to only battle the minimum amount of enemies as necessary

before level 80, Freezing Traps will be used effectively and at level 80 Freezing Arrows will be fired (Trap mastery hayhayhay) to freeze enemies and only focus on those that are currently unfrozen

slowly but surely, through trial and error, I'm sure I'll be able to accomplish something

please post hints and tips and what not here if you've already tried this and what have you found out

PS. it's said that a tank and healer and 3DPS are required for heroics, well, in essence the hunters work as DPS and healers, and pets will work as tanks.

EDIT: also, usually not considered a hunter item, the Shard of the Crystal Heart (www.wowhead.com/?item=Shard of the Crystal Heart) gives 512 haste on use with a 2min cooldown. I will not be using the haste from this item for any other purpose except to panic-Revive Pet, like so:

#showtooltip Revive pet
/stopcasting
/use 14
/cast Revive Pet

where item slot 14 holds Shard of the Crystal Heart aka Panic Revive Pet Item

usually, weapons such as Armor-Plated Combat Shotgun are _not_ huntard items, but seeing as the increased stamina is beneficial, I'll be hunting for both weapons (hunter DPS gun and warrior tank gun)

[anna81792]

as far as RACES go, there's only two options for me

five night elves (with Shadowmeld for PvP)
one draenei and four dwarves

because if not all are night elves, the others who do not have Shadowmeld are targers in PvP when others simply fade away

four dwarves because of Gun Specialization and one draenei for Heroic presence (1% increased chance to hit on all)

discuss this and other things.

[anna81792]

it's also possible to change one of the pets to a carrion bird for Demo screech that'll lower the attack power of nearby enemies by about as much as what the warrior ability can lower

while not being a tenacity pet, it'll still have abilities such as increased stamina and armor.

[Solon]

I would suggest 5 draenei, as healing is your weakest point at this time, and 5x instant (on the move) HoTs from Gift of the Naaru is far more important than gun spec. AoE spells and abilities are going to be hell on your pets. Does that 50% miss include those?


As far as your macro goes, at first I thought it was fatally flawed, and as I look into it, there is a certain elegance to it. Seems that it would work, yet with the target switching twice on every keypress I'm afraid it would have trouble as it flashes through targets. Now I'll be spending half the day trying to improve it. Vyndree had some good pet assignment macros. Hunting link...
Aww hell, it was lost on the new board and my bookmark to it no longer works.

Here is my modification of one I know I got from one of her posts. I can't remember what I changed long ago, and I am pretty sure I changed all the target= to @. It lets you assign pets to various targets before combat, and as each one dies, the pet that was on it goes to help another. I would pick a target for each pet, send them in with a /petattack macro, and have this one in my /click spam macro. I saw I still have /castrandoms in my macro so this one is a bit dusty.

/petattack [@playerpettarget,harm,nodead][@party1pettarget,harm,nodead][@party2pettarget,harm,nodead][@party3pettarget,harm,nodead][@party4pettarget,harm,nodead]

I still think that pets are too squishy, and no amount of hunter healing will be enough, but I hope against hope that you succeed.

Oh, and don't you want
/cast !auto shot
? Does that even work?

[Bigfish]

I did 5-hunters back in Vanilla WoW. Got them to 60, and had Ellay rock me in AB a few times with 3 mages.

My experience with it was that it worked up to a point, but really starts to get to be impractical once things start hitting really hard, and once AOE damage starts getting really bad.

But that's my experience from like 3 years ago. A lot has changed in the mean time.

Leveling is a joke, but I think that happens regardless with 5 DPS.

Hunters do have huge bundles of tricks though, so setting it up may be fun or a pain, depending on your view of thing.

[anna81792]

in pseudocode, it would work like this

 1. target current hunter's pet
 2. if the current target (pet) is out, but dead as a corpse, cast Revive Pet
 3. target the target of focus
 4. start normal attack
 5. send pet in to attack
 6. start Auto Shot

yes, !Auto Shot means it would not constantly toggle on and off.

and no, it would not flash because the system is intelligent enough to look ahead on what's planned, consider this

 /target Huntard
 /cast Lesser Healing Wave
 /cleartarget

now this would not even bring the portrait of Huntrad visible, the only thing you would see after using this macro is that you begin casting Lesseer Healing Wave and you have no target currently selected

so in essence that would work, toggle between pet and assist focus

that is, there's no CAST THIS IF PET IS DEAD as far as I know.a

[anna81792]

why are you saying AoE is bad?

there's a new passive skill to all hunter pets called Avoidance and it reduces all AoE damage from mobs by 90% but does not reduce AoE damage from players

so it requires 10 hits of AoE to do the damage of 1 AoE to the pets.

[Solon]

I'm saying the AoE is bad because it is more difficult to keep your pets out of the AoE range. Check your facts as I thought avoidance only meant 75% avoidance, which is a huge boost, still leaves a lot of damage, generally in a hurry on bosses.

As far as flashing through targets, no, you wouldn't see anything on your unit frames, but I have built macros before where the /petattack was triggered on the wrong mob without conditions placed after it.

In fact I am tempted to dig out my old hunter team and see how they feel. I don't think pets even had talents last time I played a hunter.

Do you really need to target your pet first?

/cast [@pet,dead] Revive Pet
/assist focus

Or does that hang the macro if the pet is dead and revive is on CD? Isn't that what your current macro would do in that situation?

EDIT: I see, avoidance has been replaced by culling the herd and a natural passive AoE avoidance was implemented. Neat.

[anna81792]

I'm saying the AoE is bad because it is more difficult to keep your pets out of the AoE range. Check your facts as I thought avoidance only meant 75% avoidance, which is a huge boost, still leaves a lot of damage, generally in a hurry on bosses.

As far as flashing through targets, no, you wouldn't see anything on your unit frames, but I have built macros before where the /petattack was triggered on the wrong mob without conditions placed after it.

In fact I am tempted to dig out my old hunter team and see how they feel. I don't think pets even had talents last time I played a hunter.

Do you really need to target your pet first?

/cast [@pet,dead] Revive Pet
/assist focus

Or does that hang the macro if the pet is dead and revive is on CD? Isn't that what your current macro would do in that situation?

EDIT: I see, avoidance has been replaced by culling the herd and a natural passive AoE avoidance was implemented. Neat.

yes, if that would work then fine
also, the /stopmacro should be cast if channeling I think it goes like this

/stopmacro [channeling]

yeah, 90% less damage from AoE, with Mend Pet CONSTANTLY ticking means basically zero damage from AoE.

[anna81792]

with Intimidation and Freezing Trap and Distracting Shot to control the enemy is a must be doable

with round robin style, the enemy can be moved from leftmost hunter to rightmost hunter and in the middle Frost Trap will slow its movement and DPS can dig in