PVE x4 hunters vs x4 warlocks ? (plus a healer)

[DeathRush]

I have been boxing for a while, I dont post much, but I was wondering which pets can handle PVE trash vs bosses, Or should I not bother trying this?

I mean can the hunter pets handle bosses better than warlock pets? and Can the hunter pets handle trash better than warlock pets?
Keep in mind there will be a dedicated healer on them, probly a shaman with chain heal. I just dont want a tank in my group, I dont know why :)

Has anyone tried 4 locks and a healer in instances?

Thank You

[Enndo]

Voidwalkers used to be capable since they had huge health pools but that was nerfed. I would probly try the locks anyway since keeping track of 4 ammo bags would annoy me lol.

[falsfire3401]

No more need for ammo bags. Haste is built in to auto-shot now and ammo stacks to 1000 so just keep it in your normal bags.

Unless you meant keeping track of how much ammo each hunter has.....which leads me to think wouldn't you have to keep track of how many shards each lock has?


I think that if you got 4x crab pets on the hunters, properly talented starting at L20 when pets get talents, that crabs make the best single-target tanks. You can even talent them into thunderstomp which is basically like warrior's thunderclap a bit deeper in the tree for AE tanking.

Then again gorilla's start with a thunderclap-like ability...

[Enndo]

Well for leveling the only thing I would ever use a soul shard for is to summon my pet if i died, so I wouldnt really need to keep track of the shards ;) But yeah that thunderclap talent is nice, its also alot of fun in pvp.

[CommanderChaos]

Check this thread: Questions about 4x BM Hunter + 1x Healer or 1x Boomkin + 4x Shaman ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=21236')

Follow Olipcs link to bigredrhino and see the story of the guy soloing ZG with a couple different pets. Cool stuff.

[mikekim]

so how about splitting it?
2x Locks, 2x Hunters and a Shammy :thumbsup:

[Jubber]

Survivability wise, hands down my 4 hunter druid team. I had used 3 gorillas and 1 wolf for my team before 3.1. For fun my 4 locks + priest team. For outlands both teams just destroyed everything. Once I got to northrend though it's a different story. instance mobs and bosses just hit for much harder. You can do the normal instances but doing heroics is out of the question.

One thing with the lock team while questing. It took a little getting used to at first. You have to use a spell that deals direct damage first. Many times I would dot up a target and my 4 felguards would kill them before the dots did any tick damage.. so I would not get credit for it. Immolate is great but 4x immolate from my locks would almost kill anything anyways. You gotta find areas where mobs are packed nicely then you can just dot once and run.. let your felguards pick up the pieces.. and they do an awesome job of that.

[Negativ1337]

Never tried hunters but they seem really fun.

Anyways, check out Toxicmoon's Army (Xtox) he uses 1 priest 4 locks and does instances, pvp, everything. Movies of him can be found here or on warcraftmovies.com

He inspired me...

[Aethon]

Well, with 4 locks, you can always have a doomguard out. Some people think that's worth it. Plus, you usually won't have to worry about the healer dying (soulstones) often. Although 4 FD's and engineering can usually zap a healer back to life. If only you could DI yourself, a pally would be perfect with hunters.

Those are my 2c

[Catamer]

I have 4 warlocks/priest and 4 hunters/shaman.

I found the hunter/shaman team to be much more powerful than the afliction warlock/priest team.
for me personally, one heal from the priest and she took aggro and died... team wipe.

so for anything pre-WoLK the hunters were great and the pre-WoLK afliction warlock/priest were just so-so.
I ran several instances with the hunters in BC content, they were great.
I think I should have respect the warlocks to demon spec.

Once I got to Northend and I tried UK and hunters weren't any better than the warlocks ( for me that is ) and I never made it to the first boss at 71 :cursing:

[Zerocool2024]

I personally have both teams in mid 60's, 5 locks, or 4 with a healer (shaman, Priest, Druid, Paladin) or 4 Huntards with (Shaman, Priest, Druid, Paladin).

Both work, and very well at that.
Best part of my locks right now is (Demo) ('http://thottbot.com/warlock/t#/OWPTq.TU8') I will send my pets in (2 Doomguards, 2 Voids, 1imp), have them tag 2, 3 sets of mobs, pop DE, then Meta, then my aura and I KILL EVERYTHING in seconds... 450 to 550 AOE a second *5 = on average, 2500 a tick to all mobs in the area... on a 2:10 CD, that makes for some nice room clearage, throw in a Rain of fire, and a pet rain of fire and OMFGBBQSBUTTSEKSHURT...

Cleared Slave Pens the other nite with a little bit of diffculity (pets like to attack a mob, then the mob runs away, pet give chase, I die.) Only boss that I had a hard time with was the first one. (Lack of macroing made pets not attack totems and when I told them to attack it, I would cast a spell which would tell them to attack the mob...)

Have not done Slave Pens with hunters yet, but with 3 Gor, and 1 Wolf, and a healer, it will be simple sauce (sustained DPS from pets/hunter, and 3 "tanks".

I personaly like the Locks more because of the coolness factor. I used both in PVP (BG) and both seemed to be a team to not Fuk with inless you have more than 5 people, or just 1 Paladin /DK, lol.

[DeathRush]

How gimp are the voidwalkers against PVE content now since the nerf? DO you guys just use felguard instead?

And I know what you mean about the coolness factor with the 4 locks :)

I did see an article and a video of a hunter tanking NAX 25 with his gorilla, they had 5 healers in raid.

[Zerocool2024]

How gimp are the voidwalkers against PVE content now since the nerf? DO you guys just use felguard instead?

And I know what you mean about the coolness factor with the 4 locks :)

I did see an article and a video of a hunter tanking NAX 25 with his gorilla, they had 5 healers in raid. Well, with the new talent (or maybe it’s been there a while) Fel synergy, all I have to do is DOT the boss up and blast him with Incinerate.

His empowerment is on a 42 second CD, then add in the 20 seconds of it on UP time. For 22 seconds, he is only sitting at 8.8K HP and for 20 seconds he is sitting 10500 HP or more (give or take a few hundred).
This is of course with me only sitting at 64 with “decent” gear, but once I hit Wrath, I will be crafting and doing everything I can to get the best gear I can get to beef up my pets to take the damage from the harder hitting dungeons.

Fire Stone my weapon, and I am sitting at almost 30% Crit raiting, so Imm and Inc crit a lot and for a good amount of damage which then heals my pet. Throw in my Meta with it’s insane amount of damage and that heals the pet for a lot as well. I can of course throw in Hellfire and my DPS peaks with some fucking insane dps.

Just last night, I reached the 2800 DPS mark with Meta, Hellfire and pet Inferno, and
2600 to 2700 without Inferno.

I don’t know of the hunter pet tanking 25 mans, though, with enough buffs and healers, any class could tank, lol.

[DeathRush]

Progress:
Now I have 4 hunters at 60 all have gorilla pets. I have 3 questions:

1) Do I keep all my hunters as BM or switch around with the specs?
2) Which healer class would be the most beneficial for this team to run instances (shaman seems like the best choice so far as chain heal can take care of my pets), let me know if you have any other ideas
3) Which pets to use, Should I go with a turtle or a gorilla for main tank, and what other pets should my hunters have?

Keep in mind I haven't played a hunter to 80, so I dont have a good experience with them for now :) (Played all classess heavily before, except for hunters)

Thank you.

[Korruptor]

In my prior experience I ran a 4 hunter / 1 Priest combo and this is what I did:

1) 3 BM (left over in Marksman) hunters and 1 Trueshot Aura (Marksman/ left over in BM) hunter
2) I felt the priest did more for group healing and if I'm not mistaken (it's been a while) the group heals covered the pets as well. The reflect bubble/fort buffs help the pets be better tanks etc.
3) I ran 1 tank pet, 1 wolf (this was the Marksman's pet) for the additional AP buff, one other ferocity pet and a cunning (depending on pet specials)

The trueshot aura and the wolf howl do wonders for the groups AP.

Just my experience.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

A couple of things I would note about the differences between normally-geared (i.e.: if you're in full raid epix, STFU and go farm something, noob) hunters and locks at 80.
Warlock's Health Funnel heals for more than mend pet plus it reduces damage taken by the pet by 30% while active, which is HUGE during an enrage or whirlwind, etc. Voidwalkers can tank hard elites even while specced mostly affliction, whereas hunters must spec BM to effectively tank a hard elite for any length of time without kiting and pulling aggro every 3rd shot. Which means your lock's DoTs are doing excellent damage, your drain life/siphon life are healing you very well and your mana/health basically never drop enough to worry about. Warlock's have effectively infinite mana while not having to reduce DPS as affliction.
Hunter pets do a better job of AoE aggro control, though neither is anywhere near a consecrate or thunderclap/whirlwind tank. Warlocks don't spend money on ammo. ;) Warlock CC isn't as friendly in small spaces with close aggro, whereas freezing trap is. Soulstone x4 > jumper cables. Period. Warlock AoE is honest AoE, whereas nerfed Volley isn't all that hot. (Also, see infinite mana above) Warlocks can DoT on the run and facing away from the target, which means after a fear, you can re-dot the mob/boss and THEN round everyone up while the VWs are tanking it.
Having said all that, most of my 80 experience with them is solo/duo, not multiboxed. But you can extrapolate how well the pets will survive based on this if you think about it a bit. There are some folks who've been blowing up instances AoE and it's hella fun and looks cool, but it doesn't scale. Try that in a heroic and you get eaten. What's the old saw? Slow and steady wins the race (with obvious caveats about certain boss's enrage timers).

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#IdxMbhbAoVVMbkZ0GfbkAdm

That's my lock's spec. He's been able to solo all but the really difficult 5-man stuff in Icecrown with the void and was able to easily duo all of the 5-man stuff with my druid (except Alumeth). Put 4 of 'em together with a healer class and things just die.

[DeathRush]

I see your point, I have two locks at 58, will try and get 2 more.

I tried out an experiment yesterday, I was feeling good after my four hunters hit 61, so I decided to go to Ramps with them without a healer.
I downed the first boss (Gargolmar) on my first try, and lost one pet, all hunters are BM.

I am kind of shocked still, I know this will not fly in Heroics, however I was pleasantly surprised at how well mend pet is healing at this point.

I plan on adding my 65 priest to the group at some point, however this was fun to say the least!

:)

[accretion]

I've been running a priest/hunters group for about a year now and hit 80 a few months back. After the 3.08 hunter nerfs, heroic dungeons will require a ton of skill or superior gear to complete with that group. The pets (even tenacity) simply go down too fast on boss mobs. For trash, or pre-80, it's a terrific team and a lot of fun. It's great for dailies and/or farming, too, so not a complete waste of time to level. However, if you're looking for a path through heroics, hunters need some tanking help. I'm currently working on a Pally to tank for the priest and 3 hunters, which I'm hopeful will work better.

[moji]

Multiple locks are sexxy. I ran with a spriest and 3 lock group up to 55 before wrath, and it was really fast and easy. Afflliction with 3 voidwalkers and shadow priest healing return is able to take down a ton of bosses easily. I have an 80 lock I'll probably go demo and match with the 55's to tank through outland and into northrend, but after that, I'll switch him out for a real tank and spec the priest disc or holy. Affliction is also a pain to macro efficiently, there's a ton of CD's to watch on longer fights. For leveling everything dies so fast it doesn't matter, but for bosses you lose a lot of dps letting dots drop off and meshing CD's. I'll probably go destro at 80 because of this, I'm more comfortable with it already and it's much easier to macro the sequence without overlapping or drop off.

I can't wait for 4x seed of corruption though. send pet, seed, tab seed, tab seed, tab seed, BOOOOOM. Do it right, and most of the trash would be dead right there. It's the reason I chose locks - because you don't have to "aim" a decently big aoe. I know there's mousecloner and such, but I've been able to box effectively without it and would hate to change up a big portion of play just to do some aoe.