4xHunters and 4xShaman - PvP Comparisons (BG only for now)

[Boylston]

Background: I am a long-time 4xShaman multiboxer who has been reasonably competitive in arenas (1700-1750 with a less than well-geared healer) and very successful in battlegrounds, where I have > 92% win record in AB, AV, and EotS and an 81% win record in WSG. (Solo BG win percentages for Horde are significantly less than that). I have recently completed leveling up a 4xHunter team with a Priest. (Priest ignored for this comparison, since he's dead in about 0.0023 seconds most of the time if he's in the BG)

Gearing (Shamans): Mix of S4+S3 gear, with the odd S2 piece thrown in where rating requirements are high (e.g. shoulders/weapon). About 1000-1050 spell damage, 350-400 resilience, 10.5k health pre-buffed. Talent setup is standard 40/21 NS Elemental build.

Gearing (Hunters): Freshly-minted-L70s. They have Valanos Longbows, other blue quest/instance gear, and the 4-piece Stalker�s gear (starter PvP rep-based items). 8500 HP, 120 resilience, mediocre attack power due to the Stalker�s gear. Talent setup is heavy Beast Mastery with other points in Survival and Marksmanship (picking up Aimed Shot, GftT, Trap Mastery, and enabling 41yd shots).



I wanted to compare and contrast my very early experiences with both setups in BGs, and intend to add/revise this document as I get more experience and gear with the hunters. It�s an unfair comparison, and I will try to counterbalance that some by being a little �optimistic� about the 4xHunter setup given their gear situation and my relatively short experience with them at L70. I will try to avoid �theorycrafting� too much without backing it up with some real BG experience. I will try to divide the comparisons up into several common BG scenarios:



BG Situation-- Taking a defended node with 4 or less people:

Advantage: Tie

The hunters do pretty well here. They have some nice perks with being able to track humanoids, sick pets on a target from long range, and do some nice ranged DPS on people who may be capping a flag. Stealthers can present somewhat of a challenge while a flag cap is going on, but staggered use of traps can allow double-CC on a single stealthed class who is harassing the team while 4xCaps are being attempted.

Shamans are also very competent, although they do best if a full totem farm is deployed. They obviously have good ranged DPS potential, and clearly have the edge if taking a node becomes a protracted battle. They can stand at the flag, alternate heal and DPS, and deal with a wave of rezzers much easier than hunters.



BG Situation-- Taking a defended node with 4+ people

Advantage: Shamans

The shamans seem to do better with larger numbers of opponents due to their ability to heal and play defensively with totems. Trying to assault a larger group of opponents generally results in some number of them coming out away from the node, and the shamans have a clear advantage with dealing with people infiltrating the group at melee range.



BG Situation-- Holding a choke point

Advantage: Hunters

The hunters are amazing at being able to defend a choke point (e.g. AV bases and narrow passages, the EotS bridges, WSG tunnel) if they have the time to lay down an appropriate series of traps. A well-laid line of traps can result in 60+ yards of 60% snare for anyone going through (with chance to root, if talented). Combined with a nice range and pets, it is possible to fend off very large numbers of people. AV experience has shown that hunters do very well on base defense with this tactic. Shamans can slow some small numbers of people using frost shocks and earthbind totems, but the hunter traps are far superior for slowing large numbers of people over a large area. Both teams can be overwhelmed by very large numbers (10-15) people, however.



BG Situation-- Back-capping an AV tower:

Advantage: Shamans

Both teams do well against light defense, obviously. Shamans have the clear advantage due to their ability to deliver full DPS at point blank range. Tricks like EM+NS+CL and Fire Elemental totems provide extra oomph when you really, really, really need to retake a tower.



BG Situation-- Being harassed by a rogue while traveling:

Advantage: Shamans

Ghost wolf allows much better travel to avoid being chain sapped by a rogue.



BG Situation-- 1 Melee character attacking your group:

Advantage: Hunters

Traps, pet stuns and instant arcane shots are all handy tools. Rogues are not nearly as troublesome because the physical damage pets/hunters can do is not mitigated by Cloak of Shadows. Non-stealthing melees can be concussive shot effectively or trapped to provide breathing room for the kill. Hunters must be mobile or spread out for maximum effectiveness.



BG Situation-- Multiple Melee characters attacking your group:

Advantage: Shamans

2 or more melees infiltrating the Hunters gets to be pretty ugly. I have no doubt this will improve with gear (just like it did with Shammies), but shaman have great AoE damage tools and healing ability to slowly turtle through the damage. More work is needed with Feign Death+Pets to see if that strategy can buy enough time for a victory.



BG Situation-- Mass battles in open terrain, or most types of AV offense where the team is part of a larger force:

Advantage: Hunters

Being able to fire away at 41 yards will keep you from ever becoming the other team�s �TAB-target�. Hunter shots and autoattacks are much less flashy than Shaman lightning and tend to be overlooked as well. Hunters can lay down traps as they advance, providing an easy escape route if the tide of the battle turns and a retreat is in order. Pets provide a nice way to deal with incoming people who are closing distance with your side as well as people who want to break through your front lines.



On the whole, it�s been fun so far. While I definitely feel gear limitations, I can see that the hunters playstyle will be very different than shammies in many ways. Casters are very fun to burn down, while plate-wearers can be a little tougher (very opposite of shamans, to be expected). Hunter burst damage can be significant, but there are some tradeoffs associated with not playing a hybrid class that can heal. Pets are very handy but are definitely needed to deal with fear-bombing classes and melee classes infiltrating your team.



More later as I put more hours under my belt:

[Boylston]

(reserved)

[merujo]

nice work Boylston :)

[twobztwop]

Great write-up. My 4x RAF Hunter team is just a sliver away from 60 with the 5th (old main at level 66) waiting for them to catch up. I have a lot of experience playing my solo hunter pre-BC, but so much has changed since then and I'm not entirely sure what to expect. The strenght of a hunter team in BG's as I see it would be the ability to put a good amount of burst DPS on a target instantly, before you are even within their range.

In anycase, I'm pretty sure I'm going to need have much better movement control of my hunters vs. the shamans. Standing in one spot with the followers all lumped together probably isn't going to be a workable strategy.

[Boylston]

It is very nice to be able to instant-cast someone at 41 yds range, no doubt. That 2-3 seconds that I would normally spend winding up a spell and waiting for it to land with the Shamans is gone. I still want to play with some nice big suprise/bursty combos, like 4xAimed Shots followed by an instant arcane.

Unfortunately, a lot of the uber-DPS-maximizing techniques (e.g. proper steady shot rotations) for PvE don't hold up too well while multiboxing. With even the slightest bit of lag, I can't really do much better than "hit steady shot every so often".

I really, really like being able to do some mana-less DPS as well. Nothing sucks more than being OOM on my shammies after a long series of fights.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Interesting. I was trying to decide if I wanted to do another hunter team to 10-box hunters. I'm interested in seeing how your progress goes.

[Ajuga]

Unfortunately, a lot of the uber-DPS-maximizing techniques (e.g. proper steady shot rotations) for PvE don't hold up too well while multiboxing. With even the slightest bit of lag, I can't really do much better than "hit steady shot every so often".

You probably already know, but in Wrath (perhaps even in next patch) Steady Shot will not stop Auto Shot from firing. So no timing is necessary.

[Mokoi]

I am so glad I read this =)

I have 4 70 shamans with the same gear as you, and 4 hunters @ 66 now working up to 70.

I have had more fun, even at lvl 61-63 in AV than I have had in a long time =) it can be REALLY fun to stealth and watch your 4 pets go crazy on a poor mage / priest / lock and then multishot them and their buddies when they get close enough

I have had a GREAT time on my huntards so far, and I look forward to more of your writeups =) Im catching up, but wont be able to play much before the xpansion XD

-Dan

[Boylston]

4x Feign Death followed by putting pets on a rogue/melee with the pet stun has been very effective for me in BGs. I immediately drive all hunters backwards and plink away and it ususally kills them. In some ways, it's a nice refreshing change. I am learning to deal with multiple melees a bit better too with a combo of frost traps.

Capping a node with 1-3 people frozen in traps is hilarious... although I tend to die soon afterwards. :(

I am considering running my Holy Pally as a lead instead of the priest for added durability and some top-off ability.

[Boylston]

You probably already know, but in Wrath (perhaps even in next patch) Steady Shot will not stop Auto Shot from firing. So no timing is necessary.

This will be awesome. I am using Arcane Shot a lot in PvP though... It's a really awesome "41-yard shock+purge", even if the purge part won't last much longer.

[shaeman]

When I first pvp'ed on my hunter I read some stuff and tried the most mana efficient route on my hunter (solo).

This ended with me being dead more often than not. I realised I really need to be doing everything I can to keep the enemy off me, so worry less about mana and up my dps.

I also found that hunter melee can do a decent chunk of damage too.

I used a macro something like (working from memory).

/cast kill command

/cast wing clip

/cast raptor strike

/cast mongoose bite

If something is in my melee range then I spam that button, with a bit of gear you see some nice big chunks of damage coming up as a result.

It also allows you to get on your toes if need be after wing clip is applied.

[daviddoran]

So, I take it that the ultimate group would be to 8 box, and do 4 hunters and 4 shammies?

[Boylston]

So, I take it that the ultimate group would be to 8 box, and do 4 hunters and 4 shammies?Only for AV maybe. The problem with adding more people (even going from 4 to 5, in my opinion) is that you end up being a larger percentage of the battleground. I really prefer both 4xShamans and 4xHunters in EotS, AB, WSG. 4 characters is usually enough to secure a moderately defended node, and it's a good number to have defending a node.

[Jaws5]

the main advantages for the hunters is mana management. I run 4 and 5 man teams of hunters

They can own any grp up to 10 in av. for tower off, 5 pets kill a lone defender easy.

I only play one lvl 70 shammy rest if grp is parked at 60(RAF)

but I love palying hunters

[Boylston]

I thought I'd update this thread a bit with some observations that are either new, or confirmed after having some time to play with the team. I may merge some of this back into the main post over time. Here goes:

UPDATE: 10/08/2008 (BGs only, still)

The team has a couple of key upgrades, but they are still very much undergeared relative to shamans. However, since my first post, I have a bunch more playtime with them and can confidently say a number of things:

Being feared is not as big of a concern as I thought it would be-- the classes that can fear are generally cloth wearers (priests/warlocks) that can be killed very fast or warriors, which must get into trap range in order to do their thing. Warriors are by far the more deadly. Death coil or a singly fear on your main can be a little problematic, although less so since Steady Shot breaks follow-- a side benefit of this breakage is that your alts often don't follow around your feared main and can continue to kill their target. Fear is absolutely a concern, but I have learned to prioritize fearing classes and take them out first. The number of times that I find my team running around feared is relatively small, now that I'm used to the team.

However, Bestial Wrath is not as useful as I thought it might be. I do use it when I'm expecting a big zerg, or if I see a warrior that can fear-bomb me, but I still feel like there's a disconnect between it's theorycrafted uberness and my actual results. I do think that WotLK talents that will make it available almost continuously will be a big help. Part of my problem may be that I'm trying to "save it" for when I really, really need it.

A mage can be brutal. Unlike shamans, I can't do full DPS to a mage that bounces around inside the dead zone and I can't chain heal my way through it. Frost nova + Arcane Explosion is pretty dominating. Granted, putting pets on the target and using stuns is helpful, but the time between an intimidation button press and the actual stun is not immediate. Most solo mages can't actually kill my team, but they can certainly take everyone down to 20-50% health without much difficulty at all.

Auto-shot is nice and was not something I thought I'd consider an advantage. However, if your target is in range and in the 180 arc, your guys are always throwing some DPS at it if they can. The auto-turn of steady shot helps out some too.

I miss shields. Warriors and Ret Pallies hurt, even with mail.

Pets are great DPS, especially BM spec. It is also fantastic to be able to swarm a person with 4 pets and either tie them up or DPS them down. I have killed many opponents on tower defense that I was able to tab-target, sick pets on, spam a couple intimidates, and just watch them die. Even if I never actually saw the player. On the other hand, pets having such decent DPS means that I don't do quite as much damage with ranged attacks. A lot of people die by ranged attacks before the pet can even close with them.

The no or low cast-time abilities with fast travel times are great:
Multi-shot is awesome. I wish its timer was as short as Chain Lightning, but it is very effective.
Arcane shot is awesome. It's a Shock type instant with a 41-yd range that is very helpful against almost any class. I'm sad their taking its dispell ability away, but it's still great.
The new Aimed Shot that is Instant cast will also be awesome. It will allow a very quick and potent Aimed+Arcane+Multi combo in ~3 seconds. That's a lot of burst at long range.

Not having to worry about a grounding totem eating a ton of your DPS is fantastic, as is having a huge advantage against clothies with low armor.

Hunters are even more suited for big BGs (like AV) than shamans. They really shine when you can be slightly off the front lines and use your long range to decimate the other team. They have no where near the survivability once swarmed that shamans do. There's a way to deal with fear, there's tricks to deal with mages/rogues/warriors, but you can't do all those tricks at once. Hunters must be played more conservatively in order to do well in BGs, since a single "suprise" event can be troublesome.

If hunters lack the survivability of shamans, they gain some of the amazing territory control advantages. I have pulled off some amazing AV defenses by stringing frost traps together along a choke point and having all the time in the world to blow people off (having an army of tower archers backing you up also helps). Myself, a druid healer, and a mage (6 people total) killed a total of 31 people in AV in 2minutes in two closely-spaced waves. Frost traps are some of the best CC for a ranged DPS team... period. They can't be trinketed out of well, they have an intense slow and large area, and they persist for a nice long time. It will be nice if the ranged frost trap shot makes it completely into live.

Anyhow, in short, the Hunters are still very fun. I don't regret leveling them at all. I do wish that I had a S3/4 geared set to play with to compare them identically to the shaman, however.


In arenas, I still think they have potential, but I am not foolish enough to think that they could be as competitive as shaman. I have yet to win an arena game with them, although I've really only played 3v3 (by myself) and 5v5 (by myself with a holy priest in even worse gear) matches to date. My guys are definitely in the lose 10 and get points mode for the foreseeable future.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

The new Aimed Shot that is Instant cast will also be awesome. It will allow a very quick and potent Aimed+Arcane+Multi combo in ~3 seconds. That's a lot of burst at long range.
Aimed and Arcane are supposed to be on the same cooldown in LK, according to a Blizzard poster. They want you to pick one or the other.

[Boylston]

The new Aimed Shot that is Instant cast will also be awesome. It will allow a very quick and potent Aimed+Arcane+Multi combo in ~3 seconds. That's a lot of burst at long range.
Aimed and Arcane are supposed to be on the same cooldown in LK, according to a Blizzard poster. They want you to pick one or the other.Well, poo!

[Kaynin]

Wait wait...

Did you try 2x hunter 2x shaman?

Think about it.

2x tremor at 2 sec interval, 2x pets which can annoy the healers during a focus, traps to snare melee, not as much insta nuke as 4x shaman, but with the added cc you can provide on healers, it might be able to work in arena!

4x shamans work because you can tunnelview and burn through any healers without having to bother with the healers, but 2x bm hunter and 2x elemental shaman do have that little extra something that can more easily interrupt a healer, or annoy a healer. Which might mitigate the lack of dps, 2x tremor should be just about enough.

I'm not saying it's a 2k+ set up, but I do think it has some potential, and quite possible, a lot of fun. ^^

[FtGeno]

I believe it's supposed to be the new aimed shot and multishot that share the same cd (correct me if I am wrong), and as a MM Hunter I don't particularly care for it as multi is a prime source of our dps. As it stands with the way aimed has been reworked the only point of using it will be for the healing debuff and though they say its dps now is comparable to multi, my own tests put it more in line with arcane shot. Looking at it from the devs point of view the new aimed was meant for those pillar humping healers who like to try and los us in arenas and it should help a lot but I wouldn't put it into my dps rotation just yet.

Very nice write up btw, interesting reading. I agree with you 100% regarding choke point defense, I can't think of a single class I'd rather have than a hunter defending a choke point. I'm sure it felt wonderful standing atop those towers while alliance basically just fed themselves to you. :love:

[Boylston]

I thought I'd update the folks following this thread on my experiences with the 4xhunters in patch 3.0.2.

Spec:

I dropped Beastmaster spec in order to pick up Explosive Shot with a 0/10/51 Survival build.



Gear:

2 piece Merciless, the blue PvP stuff, arena hands. Merc weapon. About 9k HP, 150 resilience, 1650 AP. Nothing special, clearly not S4 geared... Main has some purple PvE gear from Kara/ZA in spots.



Results:

Explosive shot is very nice. It's AoE range is very, very small, unfortunately, but its real advantage is that it has a very high crit rate and it deals FIRE damage, which is useful against all mail+plate wearers. When Lock-and-Load goes off, the ability to quickly spam 12 arcane shots (4x3) or 12 exploding shots into a target is huge fun. This setup continues to play a lot like a regular solo hunter-- you stay at max range and plink away at people. Multi-shot plus Explosive Shot offers a lot of AoE capability in larger battlegrounds.

I picked up spiders for their 20yd, 4 sec Web (root) spell. It's very handy and it's instant-cast, unlike intimidation. It's on round robin and is super duper handy. In larger fights, my pets stay largely out of the fray... I use them only when they're not going to get ret-pally or bladestorm dominated.

Provided you can avoid being swarmed by more than one person, this team is a lot of fun. There is no good way to deal with more than one person who decides to infiltrate your team and AoE attack you. Even with a healer buddy, if there's more than one person who closes the gap and begins to AoE, it's very bad news. I have a whole-team disengage that is fun to use, but it's only really useful against 1 person. (2 if you have a healer) So many classes have strong AoE now in 3.0.2 that it has been somewhat frustrating to play this team.

I can absolutely tear people apart at range, wield extensive ranged DPS (and a lot of it instant-cast), have a good handle on where people are at (due to track humanoid and flare), but can easily go down if I get swarmed. Aspect of the Viper is a god-send for long engagements-- throw it on and multi/explosive shot a couple of times and I have 100% mana in a matter of seconds. The ability to do a lot of damage via instants is nice, and I don't miss my shaman wind-ups when I play the hunters.

Summary:

Pre-3.0.2, I had to worry about being feared as a top concern. Post-3.0.2, the new top concern are those classes with strong AoE. The team is still fun, but it didn't get the PBAoE counter that shamans did in the form of Thunderstorm.



I will probably check out a 51-pt BM build next week with some devilsaurs.

[algol]

Stampede (Rhino) has knockback. While not the usual PVP pet type...are the mechanics such that it would give you an adequate PBAoE counter? Thunderstorm has by far the largest radius of any of the knockback AFAIK, but you take what you can get.

[Jaws5]

I just can't give up the BM , having the news pets is just too fun.

the saurs are doing 900-1300k crit damage every 4-5 attacks under bestal

really fun group.

:)

[Boylston]

I have my team all Beastmaster now, and I'm working on leveling their Devilsaurs and their Worms up for the expansion.

4xWorms is pretty fun. Their acid spit does a 508 armor debuff that stacks up to 5 times, and it stacks cross-pet. Meaning... If I sick all four worms on a target, they instantly drop its armor by > 2000 in the first 4xSpit. I've mostly been PvEing with them in instances to level them up, but the few times I've used them in PvP, it's been crazy how fast I can drop a clothie. My Devilsaurs aren't L70 yet, but I can tell that they do great DPS under BW.

No new news here, but I find that the 4xHunter team is "really fun" as well. I am debating whether the Shamans or the Hunters will get the nod for "mains" when the expansion comes out. I will probably end up heavily utilizing rest XP to level both, but I definitely enjoy the hunters. I don't think they'll be as uber as shamans in arenas, but I enjoy playing them in instances far more and really like them in BGs.

If Explosive Shot had a little bit better AoE range, I'd switch to Survival full-time. Explosive is great against high armor classes, and the high crit rate of Survival can make for some exciting PvP moments. Maybe at L74-75, I'll switch to some Gorillas and Explosive Shot and start mowing down the easier instances. I've been trying out my druid 5th with the hunters to see if he can heal well enough to replace my priest in that group. The priest's Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending are downright awesome, but resto druids did gain some AoE healing capability. Given the gear changes, it's really tempting to utilize my druid 5th for both my shaman and hunter quadbox teams. Same gearset will make him a great boomkin partner for the shammies or a good healer for the hunters.



I'm still a little torn... The hunters have a very high fun-factor, even if the shaman team is more uber in several other dimensions.

[Boylston]

Truth be told, it's still somewhat hard to compare the teams as well, since my hunters are pathetically geared compared to the shammies. Part of my desire to play both to L80 is to get them equivalently geared and make a more fair comparison.