Leveling Hunters from L60-70

[Boylston]

Now that my RAF 4xHunter+Priest squad is L61 and in the Outlands, I'm curious whether folks would simply do Outlands quests or try to level in instances. I did a pretty hefty amount of instance running with my Shaman team, but questing with the Hunters seems to go very fast-- mostly due to not needing much mana in order to kill and Aspect of the Pack, which I have running on one Hunter constantly (REALLY speeds up traveling from kill to kill).


I have a set of Boar tanking pets in the stables, but have been using Ravagers now that I hit Hellfire. To be honest, I don't really have a ton of macros set up for putting individual pets on targets. It's mostly a zerg of pets that I can put on a different target than my hunters, if needed. This team is primarily going to be for BG/Arena, so I don't really want to instance with them end-game. PvP is largely a non-issue since I haven't run into too much trouble (and have already killed a handful of L70 players who thought they could gank me easily... Big Red Ravagers FTW!)


Anyhow, should I continue questing or head indoors (and suck it up and actually write some instance-macros)....?

[shaeman]

Head in doors, beat your head against the wall trying to figure out how to trap, feign death on the hunter that's got aggro, realising that no matter how you try it they can't instance like your shammy's.

Then head outdoors again. :)



Of course it could be - Head in doors, beat your head against a wall, then finally succeed in determining tactics and setup that works, then come back and gloat smugly at a negative asshat like me :)

Either way - at least head indoors and give it a try.

[accretion]

If you plan to use Hunters for PvE, I would recommend leveling primarily through instances. In doing so, you can fine-tune your knowledge of the class, work on your macros and farm gear all at the same time. I leveled up my Priest/Hunter team generally as follows:
60-62 - HFP quests (for gear) and Ramparts -- Lots of good hunter gear in Ramps (mail legs that will last to 70, leather belt & wrist items) 63-64 - Blood Furnace and Zangarmarsh & Nagrand quests
65-66 - Slave Pens, Underbog and Panda runs - Terrific boots on Panda, but it took me ~30 runs to get them. On the bright side, I also earned the PvP helm (from shards), which was a nice tide-me-over until the lvl 70 Shadowmoon quests
67-68 - Mana Tombs and more Nagrand quests
69-70 - Auchenai Crypts and Netherstorm & Shadowmoon questsIf I had to do it over again, I'd spend more time in Auchenai Crypts. Hunters totally destroy those mobs and it was by far the easiest instance I encountered.

One other thing -- Screech. You need it. Boars are terrific and ravagers do wonderful dps, but with a priest in instances, it's all about aggro management, and nothing handles that better than screech. When I finally grabbed 4 ravens, my instance runs became MUCH easier and the sacrifice I made in dps and durability was easily worth the improved aggro management.

[ciscokid454]

I've really never understood why people crap on hunter's so much.
I've lvl'd several from 1-70 without issue, i've multiboxed most of my in instances without a healer.
With 4-5 hunters grouped we have multiple traps and timed properly, you have more than enough time to blow the focused mob up.
We also have 4-5 tanks at that point and in reality, each hunter could use an MD macro with Multi shot for added threat gen against all mobs.
Our tanks also can be healed easily by us. In event of a bad pull/placement, we can FD.
Granted nothing beat's having a healer to heal our MT.
When BC came out, I ran 4 hunters and a Priest in instances up until everyone started doing there quest's after soft capping their reputation.
I did this with my hunters and a friend playing the priest, as well as bringing three other hunter's.
It was by far the best instance farming we had ever seen.
I understand where everyone is coming from with the shaman, but there's plenty of capability for everyone depending on class.

[Ticks]

I agree for the most part that hunters are pretty effective in instances. It's just a matter of learning the class and thinking outside of the box. It also helps putting the time in to create efficient and useful macros.

[accretion]

I've really never understood why people crap on hunter's so much.
I've lvl'd several from 1-70 without issue, i've multiboxed most of my in instances without a healer.
With 4-5 hunters grouped we have multiple traps and timed properly, you have more than enough time to blow the focused mob up.
We also have 4-5 tanks at that point and in reality, each hunter could use an MD macro with Multi shot for added threat gen against all mobs.
Our tanks also can be healed easily by us. In event of a bad pull/placement, we can FD.
Granted nothing beat's having a healer to heal our MT.
When BC came out, I ran 4 hunters and a Priest in instances up until everyone started doing there quest's after soft capping their reputation.
I did this with my hunters and a friend playing the priest, as well as bringing three other hunter's.
It was by far the best instance farming we had ever seen.
I understand where everyone is coming from with the shaman, but there's plenty of capability for everyone depending on class.I'll agree with you in part. Hunters are very capable and can run instances effectively, but, it's completely different boxing 4 hunters versus 1 Preist + 4 hunters. Completely. Without having to pay attention to a healer, you have plenty of time/space to manipulate traps, heal pets, target effectively, etc. Of course this is still possible with a healer, but efficiency drops a lot. Secondly, hunters are very different in 65+ instances, especially with their pets. Bosses in upper instances chew through pets in 2-3 shots and no amount of Mend Pet can keep them up for long. Kiting and ping-ponging can allow you to kill some bosses, but it ain't easy to drop the big boys unless you're geared to the teeth.

Having said that, it was still a ton of fun doing 4 Hunters + Priest and I think Hunters could be a terrific all-around class in WotLK.

[Stealthy]

Running 5 hunters, I've done all instances up to Crypts without any mjor problems. Occasionally I lost a pet, and on bosses its usually 3-4 pets - but they are just meat shields after all. The only cost is some mana and food. :P

Will be having a go at Old Hillsbrad tonight, will post up my results tomorrow...

Cheers,

S.

[ciscokid454]

I've really never understood why people crap on hunter's so much.
I've lvl'd several from 1-70 without issue, i've multiboxed most of my in instances without a healer.
With 4-5 hunters grouped we have multiple traps and timed properly, you have more than enough time to blow the focused mob up.
We also have 4-5 tanks at that point and in reality, each hunter could use an MD macro with Multi shot for added threat gen against all mobs.
Our tanks also can be healed easily by us. In event of a bad pull/placement, we can FD.
Granted nothing beat's having a healer to heal our MT.
When BC came out, I ran 4 hunters and a Priest in instances up until everyone started doing there quest's after soft capping their reputation.
I did this with my hunters and a friend playing the priest, as well as bringing three other hunter's.
It was by far the best instance farming we had ever seen.
I understand where everyone is coming from with the shaman, but there's plenty of capability for everyone depending on class.I'll agree with you in part. Hunters are very capable and can run instances effectively, but, it's completely different boxing 4 hunters versus 1 Preist + 4 hunters. Completely. Without having to pay attention to a healer, you have plenty of time/space to manipulate traps, heal pets, target effectively, etc. Of course this is still possible with a healer, but efficiency drops a lot. Secondly, hunters are very different in 65+ instances, especially with their pets. Bosses in upper instances chew through pets in 2-3 shots and no amount of Mend Pet can keep them up for long. Kiting and ping-ponging can allow you to kill some bosses, but it ain't easy to drop the big boys unless you're geared to the teeth.

Having said that, it was still a ton of fun doing 4 Hunters + Priest and I think Hunters could be a terrific all-around class in WotLK.I am talking 5 full hunters.
aggro management is fine, we have are pets on taunt, we have fd and MD.
We have too many traps, for whatever we need.
Personally i love snakes, it's added aggro vs multiple mobs.
and pets, if they die, I FD, or RLAB.
It's all about the execution. I understand it's not easy.

[accretion]

Ahh, I must have misunderstood your first post. I thought you said you ran 4x Hunters plus a friend running a Priest, which would be awesome, IMO. Priests have plenty of toys to keep pets up for almost any fight. The only problem I have doing Healer + Hunters is dividing my attention between the two, which creates some inefficiency for the Hunters (I err on the side of less dps and survival, heh).

One of these days, I may level up my other 66 hunter to replace the Priest, just to see how it works. I should have done Draenei instead of NE, tho, for the extra HoT =\

[Jheusse]

I've really never understood why people crap on hunter's so much.

Simply put because of how many hunters there are out there, and more specifically how many BAD hunters there are out there.

Hunter is an extremely solo friendly class and level lightning fast, but soloing on a hunter teaches you squat about being a good groupmate.

A regrettably large portion of the hunter population is flatly put terribad at their class, and the massive number of hunters means tons of the bad hunters.

Between the classic cliche of the ADHD teenage player /needing on everything in sight, constantly feigning onto the healer or trying to tap race farm spots and the old cliche of the Ni Hao set, the hunter class has a rep.

A well-played hunter is a thing of beauty, but they're achingly rare.

Personally I was scarred dealing with hunters while leveling my main, too many cases where a hunter would monopolize a quest mob spawn by placing a trap there, too much boorish behavior from them.

I saw one hunter lock down the Greench spawn for an entire evening, forcing anyone who wanted the spawn to group with him or never get the kill.


My 0.02 anyway.

[ciscokid454]

I've really never understood why people crap on hunter's so much.

Simply put because of how many hunters there are out there, and more specifically how many BAD hunters there are out there.

Hunter is an extremely solo friendly class and level lightning fast, but soloing on a hunter teaches you squat about being a good groupmate.

A regrettably large portion of the hunter population is flatly put terribad at their class, and the massive number of hunters means tons of the bad hunters.

Between the classic cliche of the ADHD teenage player /needing on everything in sight, constantly feigning onto the healer or trying to tap race farm spots and the old cliche of the Ni Hao set, the hunter class has a rep.

A well-played hunter is a thing of beauty, but they're achingly rare.

Personally I was scarred dealing with hunters while leveling my main, too many cases where a hunter would monopolize a quest mob spawn by placing a trap there, too much boorish behavior from them.

I saw one hunter lock down the Greench spawn for an entire evening, forcing anyone who wanted the spawn to group with him or never get the kill.


My 0.02 anyway.That's pretty well said.

[Boylston]

Simply put because of how many hunters there are out there, and more specifically how many BAD hunters there are out there.
There is nothing unique to hunters being bad at understanding class mechanics and playing their class poorly. You can insert any other class name in there and it's still a true statement.

Hunter is an extremely solo friendly class and level lightning fast, but soloing on a hunter teaches you squat about being a good groupmate.This is also true for almost every other class. Tanks don't have to worry about threat generation while solo, healing classes solo in a completely different manner than how they heal in instances. DPS classes like mages may use the same spells but don't have to worry about CC pull techniques or aggro to the same degree.

A regrettably large portion of the hunter population is flatly put terribad at their class, and the massive number of hunters means tons of the bad hunters. I might concede this "raw numbers" point. But on a percentage basis, all classes are probably equally "terribad" in terms of (bad players of a class) / (total players of a class).


Between the classic cliche of the ADHD teenage player /needing on everything in sight, constantly feigning onto the healer or trying to tap race farm spots and the old cliche of the Ni Hao set, the hunter class has a rep.The hunter class' reputation is probably more largely influenced by a series of inside jokes (e.g. Hunter Loot ('http://www.wowwiki.com/Hunter_loot')) than anything else. While hunters were used by gold farmers at one point, it was somewhat scientifically shown ages ago that gold farmers actually utilized a wide variety of classes.


Personally I was scarred dealing with hunters while leveling my main, too many cases where a hunter would monopolize a quest mob spawn by placing a trap there, too much boorish behavior from them.
I saw one hunter lock down the Greench spawn for an entire evening, forcing anyone who wanted the spawn to group with him or never get the kill.
The class does not have the monopoly on boorish behavior. It sounds like you've had some bad experiences, but I don't think your very small number of bad experiences are enough to say that "Hunters R Bad" with any kind of significance.

[Jheusse]

My experience with hunters is obviously only relevant to me, anecdote does not equal data. I've also mellowed substantially in regards to the class over time.

But even if you start with the basis that those "I want to drown the little bastiche" players are scattered evenly across all classes, there are over a million hunters (literally), so you'll seem to encounter more of them. And I'd pose the hypothesis that those defenestration candidates tend to gravitate to the dps classes somewhat. Hunter and rogue being #1 and #2 ranked in raw numbers I doubt happened by accident.

I'm just posing potential contributors why hunters have such the rep they do, the nerve I obviously touched wasn't my intent.

No class is as easy to get a basic grip on and level to 70 as a hunter, though locks are close on mechanics, because both have a pet tank. And all classes can solo to 70 (thank god, DAoC was horrid that way), but hunter is one of the fastest, especially compared to warriors and pallies as two examples.

Hell a contributor may be the "get out of jail " card that hunters (and rogues) have. Large dps with an aggro wipe is great solo but gets healers killed and groups wiped. Causes resentment when the hunter doesn't even get a repair bill out of it.

The tactics that a solo hunter uses successfully are in some respects counterproductive in groups, used indiscriminately.

You could even pose the thought that many relatively new players have a bad opinion of hunters (and rogues) because of experiences getting slaughtered by twink hunters and rogues in WSG when they were very new.

Pick a theory, I dunno. The rep is there, the reason is anyone's guess.

[crazycat]

dont take me wrong here, but id recoment geting an turtle pet by 1-2 of ur hunters, as turtles are the best tanks u can get for ur hunters

[Bravo]

realising that no matter how you try it they can't instance like your shammy's.I love my shamans, but taking 5 hunters into instances was 10 times easier with hunters.

point, click, dead.