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 Shotthis 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 (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

[ElectronDF]

Some thoughts. I have 5 hunters and I LOVE them. I love pet classes. I play defensively more than burst offense. Random thoughts.

I chose Draenei since the GotN is really nice heal for hunters or pets. I put it in a castsequence so I can put as many or as few as I want on a player/pet.

I have 2 sets of pets. PVE/PVP. PVE is now (I will skip the past ones), 3 bears (swipe, thunder, tenacity), 1 carrion (screech) and 1 worm (armor debuff should make melee pets and normal shots hit harder.

The PVP set is carrion (to tag people so you get HKs from them and never hurts to have annoying, flapping, loud pet in someone's face, hyena (hamstring), tallstrider (AOE tagging again mostly, but 1 free miss isnt so bad and nice to have a weird pet just for personality), core hound (slow casting is nice) and wasp (sting for rogues---no stealth). All ferocity.

Having 2 sets of pets lets you pick different talents like dash for PVP, but that is wasted in PVE. Increased is wasted in PVE, but better armor/healing is better for PVE (won't help in PVP).

I aim pretty much for most gear that has stam/agi/int on it. It is helpful that the extra stam on hunters won't keep them alive, but does let pets stay alive pretty long. The int is for longer times without viper and MM talent for INT-->AP.

I didn't have any problems in PVE except when a boss would ignore the pets (tanks) and go after a hunter. One that you had to heal through to win pretty much made me cry. Blizzard would think they would always have a healer in the group, so the boss putting a debuff on a player that does slow but long damage isn't so bad. But without a healer, I didn't have a way to deal with it. I gave up after potion, heal trinket, bandage, etc. and just sent in pets and LOS the boss and the pets killed the boss and the hunters just popped around corner and tagged (pets only doesn't count for kill) and mended. It took longer, but no one died.

For PVP, the normal people that screw with grouped up people hurt me. Bladestorming warrior, rogue (only kills 1, and he dies, but still hate it), shammy boxer (if they get in range), and disc priest (since, I can't do enough DPS to counter their fear, heal, penance, bubble, by that time, fear again). I use my pets as grenades and throw them at 70 yards. They really can kill people before they get to you. I usually just run away and let my pets chew on them, most people don't want to stop to kill a pet, so they just run at you and die.

My most success is in AV, I guard and back-cap stuff. Nothing like 5 pets, mean, mend pet rolling on them going after a player to make them poop their pants. Go ahead and DOT my pet, he has the health to live through it and his mend not only heals him, but takes your DOT off also. I can see you coming for about 60 yards away and with my tracker (SPY/Stalker), I don't even have to see (LOS) you to send my pets at you. Up a hill and feel safe, guess what, my pets can climb where I can't. Want to run away and feel like you have me vulnerable? It takes me .1 secs to get my pets back and they are full healed (nice trick, thanks Blizzard). Again, my vulnerability is when people ride up (fast mount) and AOE fear me or become unstoppable. If I was a HKer, I would be more mobile and that wouldn't be a problem, but I like to defend. It make me feel like I am helping instead of just HKing.

[anna81792]

thanks for your input.

good hints there.

can you tell me how did level 80 heroics go? I know pets keep dying but it only takes a little bit longer than 3 seconds to get them back up.

[ElectronDF]

You can hate me, but I don't do heroics. I am more into fun than a grind. I don't want to grind out gear. To me a LOT of people say that so-in-so heroic place is hard. Duh, it is supposed to be hard. Heroics were invented to be a progression place for people that graduated normal dungeons. If heroics are too hard, then do normals. Heroics were invented to be hard. If they are super easy for people, then you are probably outgearing the place.

I don't like platforming games. I don't want to jump at the correct time, run left, then right, then back then left again. If I wanted to do that, I would play World of Super-Mariocraft. I don't mind if a boss has a special ability, but 3-4 and uses them to make you fail, that isn't fun to me. I don't really like WotLK dungeons. For me, it is spending more time worrying about how to do the fight, then the actual fun of killing things.

Example from the past: Maraudon, princess. If you don't counter here fear, sure #2 on aggro gets attacked, but you can run away, you can off tank her, or you can just eat the damage (heal through it). If you don't counter movement in last boss in Nexxus, you die, no questions.
In Ramps, if you don't watch out for the fire from the dragon, you get hurt, but you can rotate dragon around, you can move out of fire on floor, you can use fire pots. In Nexxus again (sorry for using same place), the mage boss, if you don't have an instant heal, when she picks you up and throws you around, you pretty much are screwed. This was back when GotN was 1.5 sec cast and no Jamba bar for things like potions.
You can make fun of me if you want, just saying for me, I want to have fun in an instance, and WotLK bosses aren't fun. They are work for me as a boxer. Sure, if I was doing things solo, it would probably be a breeze. But trying to do things like longer cast times (pally heals), no dedicated healer (DKs, hunters), or be squishy (locks) isn't much fun when bosses don't play nice.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

The problem here is going to be aggro. With mend pet ticking 100% of the time, you'll quickly outstrip aggro if you're doing enough DPS to finish heroics before mana runs out. I'd love to be proven wrong, though. :)

[Boylston]

I ran 4xHunters plus a healer extensively in WotLK after the launch. It was my first team to hit 80, and I very quickly dropped them afterwards. They were by far the most fun to level up and instance run-- I'll give you that.

Here are the problems:

In PvE: No issues whatsoever until you get to heroic content. I ran a druid healer and BM boosted pets with the extra +healing done, so they all received a continual stream of very strong heals. They rocked normal-mode content, but quickly got eaten for lunch in heroics. They don't mitigate damage as well as a "real tank" , and the health pool of a pet is just too small to deal with the back-to-back hits that a heroic boss can dish out.

Yes, overgeared dramatically for the content, it's possible. But even then, you're going to be having very challenging fights in heroics.

In PvP: My hunters were an incredibly fun AV team prior to WotLK, but the rash of AoE damage increases given to just about every class made them much less fun. They suck at point blank range, and have none of the defensive features of shamans or other compositions. One good rogue or arms warrior can annihilate your whole group and make you feel pathetic. Yes, there are some neat tricks (staggered slowing traps in an AV pinch point + 4xVolley), but they are miserable compared to other comps.

Arena was downright embarassing.

I haven't touched them in ages, really. It was too depressing to see a team that I had such fun with turn out to be so disappointing...

[wougoose]

The problem here is going to be aggro. With mend pet ticking 100% of the time, you'll quickly outstrip aggro if you're doing enough DPS to finish heroics before mana runs out. I'd love to be proven wrong, though. :)

As of 3.3, Misdirection should solve aggro issues as it now lasts for 4 seconds, unlimited hits, and stacks with other hunters. The stacking is huge for 5x hunters, as all aggro they generate all stack on the same pet. The misdirection change alone makes me want to give hunters another shot at heroics. 5 hunters with 4 seconds of being able to go balls out should generate enough threat. Being able to cast it every 30 seconds and combining it with 5x Feign Death to dump aggro...seems like a tasty recipe to me :)

From the 3.3 notes:

Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.

[olibri1]

When your tank pet dies, I'm not clear how all of the other pets aren't going to get owned before the tank pet is ressed. Even then, if they don't die, I don't see how the tank pet will obtain aggro again if the fight has gone on for even a small amount of time.

Keep in mind that tanks have abilities for a reason. Many of these abilities are for overcoming unexpected events or even to deal with certain boss mechanics. A tank pet just isn't diverse enough as a general purpose tank. I'd guess that a very geared hunter could tank some of the ilvl 200 heroics, but no further.

Off the top of my head, some bosses that seem impossible for a pet to tank in your situation:

King Dred
Brann event
Mage-Lord Urom

GL though. I wish you the best in this endeavor.

[wougoose]

If the tank pet dies, I would imagine the other 4 pets should last long enough for you to rez the tank pet (with improved revive and glyph). As far as the pet losing all threat after being rezzed, a simple 5x feign and 5x misdirect should get you back to full throttle. Just thinking outside of the box :)

[genocyde]

I'd just like to add a couple points for thought.

1) aggro on the tank pet will *never* be an issue. With 5x misdirection for normall pulling and feign death to reestablish aggro when a pet is rezzed you'll be fine.

2) didn't see anyone else mention this but in your first post you mention resilience + heroics. Resilience does not function in PvE... It does nothing at all in PvE.

3) with feign death and misdirection and disengage and all the other tools at your disposal I would seriously consider aggro tennis as a viable alternative to pet tanking on tough fights.

Example -

Step 1:
Park pet #1 as far from the boss as the 'stay' command will let you without unsummoning your pet. Use eyes of the beast to cleverly position your pet up some stairs or something if you have too. Learn your unsummon range.

Step 2:
Park all 5 hunters as far apart as you can while still within damaging range of your kill target.

Step 3:
Drop 5 misdirects on pet #1 that is a huge distance from the boss and blow every damage cooldown you can rocking the boss while it runs the 400 yd dash trying to get to your misdirected pet. Slow the boss if you can (almost never).

Step 4:
The boss will either aggro one of your hunters once you out aggro your misdirected pet, or he will run out of your hunters range. At this point begins the tennis game... Hit dash on your pet and give it the pet follow command to shoot past the boss back to your hunter or run it out to it's unsummon range and do an instant resummon at your hunter. Engage the boss as you normally would but with your hunters still spread far apart as directed in step 2.

Step 5:
When the boss closes into range on an aggro'd hunter feign death causing him to pick up aggro on another hunter and take off running again. Keep doing feign death until you drop aggro back onto a pet and then begin your pet tanking strategy hoping you can down the boss before all 5 pets die and the boss is back after your hunters.

I dunno how well I explained this but I have seen a well played game of aggro tennis by individually played hunters kill a boss without a hunter or pet taking any damage at all. Just a thought for bosses you can't beat the easy way.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Interesting. Didn't see that note about the changes to misdirection. Might actually have to go level my hunters on up from 60 when I start up again. :P

[wougoose]

2) didn't see anyone else mention this but in your first post you mention resilience + heroics. Resilience does not function in PvE... It does nothing at all in PvE.



Resilience gives reduction in crit chance, which helps attain uncrittable status for your pets. Normal tank classes achieve this by hitting the defense cap, as it is a much more efficient usage of item points than using resilience. Thankfully since 3.3, hunters have the option of at least using resilience :)

I found some good discussion from a hunter that tanks many pugs from this blog: http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/12/pet-tanking-in-3-3/

Quote from his post:

And with the 100% resilience transfer to pets now, we only need 132 resilience to d-cap our pets (including the 4% crit reduction from their spec). Any tank set worth its salt should probably include some PvP gear anyway, so this should be a breeze.

[wougoose]

For those into some nice pet tanking reading, here are the blogs that I've found to be the most helpful:


http://bigredrhino.wordpress.com/
http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/category/pet-tanking/ (Lots of pet tanking guest posts)

I'll add to the list when I find more goodies :)

[genocyde]

Resilience gives reduction in crit chance, which helps attain uncrittable status for your pets. Normal tank classes achieve this by hitting the defense cap, as it is a much more efficient usage of item points than using resilience. Thankfully since 3.3, hunters have the option of at least using resilience :):

I guess since you only need 100 and some and you have no other way to obtain uncrittable / heal through damage it might be worth it.

I personally ignore uncrittable on all of my tanks since heroic content hits like a joke but you don't have a healer so I can see your desire to lower pet spike dmg...

[Boylston]

I just don't get it, but maybe something has changed that I'm missing.

Multi-hunter teams are pretty mediocre at best in PvP. Good damage output at range, but many, many classes have a way to tear you apart SOLO. Hunter defenses don't translate well to multiboxing, unlike multiple other classes, so as soon as someone makes it into your group, you're hosed. It can be very, very frustrating.

In PvE, you can make them work, but why on earth would you go through tremendous effort to be marginally effective. In great PvP gear, stacking stamina and some resilience, and using multiple tank pets, you can eek out some heroics. It's a really dismal choice for heroics, honestly.

So, again, I just don't get it. For PvP, they're a crummy choice. For PvE, also a crummy choice. Maybe if you really, really, really like hunters and are fine to suffer through gearing them inefficiently so that you can be mediocre, I'd recommend them.

Few things have made me smile as much as sending in 4 Gorillas to work over pull after pull of normal mode instance content as I leveled from 70-80. What a rush. It was so much fun! But after the fun of leveling was over, they've been shelved ever since.

Proceed at your own peril. Almost no one in the community that started 4-5x Hunter teams a year ago plays them anymore. There's a reason!

[Stealthy]

I just don't get it, but maybe something has changed that I'm missing.

Multi-hunter teams are pretty mediocre at best in PvP. Good damage output at range, but many, many classes have a way to tear you apart SOLO. Hunter defenses don't translate well to multiboxing, unlike multiple other classes, so as soon as someone makes it into your group, you're hosed. It can be very, very frustrating.

In PvE, you can make them work, but why on earth would you go through tremendous effort to be marginally effective. In great PvP gear, stacking stamina and some resilience, and using multiple tank pets, you can eek out some heroics. It's a really dismal choice for heroics, honestly.

So, again, I just don't get it. For PvP, they're a crummy choice. For PvE, also a crummy choice. Maybe if you really, really, really like hunters and are fine to suffer through gearing them inefficiently so that you can be mediocre, I'd recommend them.

Few things have made me smile as much as sending in 4 Gorillas to work over pull after pull of normal mode instance content as I leveled from 70-80. What a rush. It was so much fun! But after the fun of leveling was over, they've been shelved ever since.

Proceed at your own peril. Almost no one in the community that started 4-5x Hunter teams a year ago plays them anymore. There's a reason!

On the link posted in one of the posts above there is a video of a hunter pet tanking heroic FoS... if you can pet tank that instance, I'm pretty sure you can pet tank any heroic.

There have been a few things that have changed recently that have made pet tanking more viable...

- MD now lasts for 4 seconds (no longer uses charges), and works with Volley - which makes AoE tanking quite viable. Especially when used with Crocodiles who have this nice AoE threat ability - Bad Attitude (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=52398)
- Pets get 90% AoE damage avoidance
- Pets get 100% of master's resilience, and with talented 4% crit reduction, they only need 132 res to be uncrittable in heroics.
- Cower now causes 40% damage reduction for 6 secs (45 sec cooldown) and doesn't affect threat

You're still going to need a dedicated healer of course, but from what I've been reading it seems disc priests are the way to go.

I haven't looked at PvP hunter teams for a while...but solo hunters are doing well:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Blackrock&cn=Jhazy&gn=Vicious+Cycle
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Burning+Legion&cn=Nat&gn=F%C3%AERe
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostmourne&n=Ruddia

Interestingly, all three examples are ranked highly, and have completly different specs...I not saying this would make hunters viable for arenas, but if played correctly I think they could do well in BG's / WG.

Cheers,
S.

[Boylston]

On the link posted in one of the posts above there is a video of a hunter pet tanking heroic FoS... if you can pet tank that instance, I'm pretty sure you can pet tank any heroic.


Again Stealthy, I followed BRK and BRR back in the day. Of course all of them are tankable by a hunter pet. But that hunter is going to need to over-gear any kind of heroic content and most likely any badge-reward content that you would get from farming heroics. Also, what's possible and what's regularly doable are two different things.

There's the big question of how are you going to bridge the gear gap between Fresh-80 and tanking heroics. The answer could be arena, but it's not likely to be very successful.



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


Oh, and by the way, the original poster is gonna make this happen sans healer.

At least you had the foresight to see that you'd really need a dedicated healer. (A cool part about this comp is that you actually control the healer and all your tanks are fun little remote controlled pets-- I really liked that about the setup when I ran it).


I haven't looked at PvP hunter teams for a while...but solo hunters are doing well:

That comparison makes no sense. That's like saying that multibox shaman teams will obviously be a bad idea because there aren't a ton of solo Elemental shammies at the top of the ratings. The key difference between a solo hunter and a multibox group is that a solo hunter has complete control of her escape tools and targeting. Things like disengage and trap and feign death and other hunter escape tools are really useful when you can play 1 at a time. They are harder to take advantage of when you have a stack of 4-5 hunters always clumped up.

Hunters are pretty damn useless with someone in your face. It's the tradeoff they have for having the longest range and so many instant abilities usable on-the-move. Post WotLK expansion, there are too many classes that can easily get in your face, stay there, and deal massive AoE. Whirlwind and Fan of Knives will rape you. Unlike shamans, you can't heal and don't get any defensive bonuses of totems. Even without the AoE attacks, anyone who chooses to just infiltrate your stack of hunters can just have their way with you.

So, if you rule out easily doing heroics and PvP in arena (which I think you should), you're left with "maybe this could be a fun BG team". Unfortunately, solo players can take out an individual hunter pretty easily before you can kill them (see above), and with no heals and no rez, you're going to spend a lot of time running your rezzed party member back to you.

This is not me theorycrafting-- I've been there with a real, live team!

If you really, really, really want to beat your head against this wall, my recommendation is to absolutely go Healer + 4xHunters. Priest seems like an obvious choice, but I'd actually recommend a Paladin or Druid-- someone that could potentially have an off-spec as a tank and allow you to tank a boss down if you needed it. (Can taunt off with a pet and buy time for either to self-heal a bit). Druid is a better healer, IMO, since it's not really healing/second that you worry about (pet bonuses are more than enough to make HPS of any healer stellar), it's about coping with burst. You can HoT up a tank target and make sure that there's always a stream of heals coming every second. Pally advantages are the scaling of Kings on both hunters and pets (helps with health pool), beacon healing allowing you to tank-bounce between two pets pretty easily, judgement of light, etc. For farming and BGs, Pally will allow more firepower due to BoMight stacking.

It's just a weird team. It is mediocre or downright bad at almost any aspect of the WoW game. It's a deceptive enough theorycrafting exercise that Vyndree, Myself, and others all tried it for some portion of time. Ellay and I chatted at length about some of the possibilities during BC time, and I actually stuck with mine from 70-80 in hopes that they would work out. (I leveled them BEFORE my shaman team, counting on a time advantage to get quickly geared up in arena). I should have seen the writing on the wall for them during the last patch before WotLK hit, when we had a lot of the new talents and abilities. I figured it would get better.

It didn't.

[Fursphere]

I had a TON of fun with 5x Nelf hunters w/ 5x Cats in STV doing nothing but hunting and ganking rogues.

Sending in 5x cats prowling then pop bestial wrath right before they connect = PRICELESS

Although in WPL/EPL as the quests got a little harder / more complicated (around level 55), the lack of a healer class in the group really started the stand out, and I abandoned the project. :(

EDIT: My hunter team has since been split up into various other group makeups - with some getting leveled up to 68-75, and some staying at 55. I think about getting them all sync'd up again, but then I realize there isn't a healer, and its rather pointless. Even if you could get a pet "strong" enough to tank heroics WITH a dedicated healer, they can't react the same way a *real* tank does if something goes wrong. One stray mob in a heroic = 5 dead DPS players. There is just no way around that fact.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

There have been a few things that have changed recently that have made pet tanking more viable...

- MD now lasts for 4 seconds (no longer uses charges), and works with Volley - which makes AoE tanking quite viable. Especially when used with Crocodiles who have this nice AoE threat ability - Bad Attitude (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=52398)
- Pets get 90% AoE damage avoidance
- Pets get 100% of master's resilience, and with talented 4% crit reduction, they only need 132 res to be uncrittable in heroics.
- Cower now causes 40% damage reduction for 6 secs (45 sec cooldown) and doesn't affect threat.
QFT. And the 90% AoE avoidance in PVE has been moved out of the pet talents and into a passive ability for ALL pets, freeing up those important talent points.

These changes make me want to revive my hunter group.

[Boylston]

I also have some fond memories pre-WotLK. The old-time Explosive Shot was badass... I alternated between 4xBM for all-party BRK and 4xSurv with ES. The AoE damage that was possible was awesome.

I also once wiped a wave of about 30 alliance at the start of an AV map with a line of snaring traps at the uphill ramp choke point leading to the horde base. Best part is you get tower archers backing you up there... arrows galore. I just kept pummeling the snared alliance with explosive shots while they ran through molasses. Was a thing of beauty.

Makes me sad to have to dissuade people from the group setup, because it was so much fun for a while!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Makes me sad to have to dissuade people from the group setup, because it was so much fun for a while!You never know. Melee 5-boxing used to be crap, too. ;)

[Fursphere]

You never know. Melee 5-boxing used to be crap, too. ;)

It only changed _specifically_ because Blizzard implemented the "interact with target" functionality. The fact that it benefited multiboxers was pure side effect, because it was not the intention of the function.

The shortcomings of a 5x hunter group (no tank, no healer, horrible pet AI) cannot be solved by blizzard adding a new UI input function.

So your comparison is not only inaccurate, but misleading as well.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

It only changed _specifically_ because Blizzard implemented the "interact with target" functionality. The fact that it benefited multiboxers was pure side effect, because it was not the intention of the function.

The shortcomings of a 5x hunter group (no tank, no healer, horrible pet AI) cannot be solved by blizzard adding a new UI input function.

So your comparison is not only inaccurate, but misleading as well.
We sorta got away from the 5-hunter thing a few pages back in the thread, but I concede your point about core game mechanics vs class balance.

[Boylston]

You never know. Melee 5-boxing used to be crap, too. ;)


It only changed _specifically_ because Blizzard implemented the "interact with target" functionality. The fact that it benefited multiboxers was pure side effect, because it was not the intention of the function.

The shortcomings of a 5x hunter group (no tank, no healer, horrible pet AI) cannot be solved by blizzard adding a new UI input function.

So your comparison is not only inaccurate, but misleading as well.

Let's say something fundamentally different was changed (a la IWT and Click-to-Move enabling melee boxing), like pets were given significantly more HP or abilities that allowed them to sub in for tanks in 5man heroics easily. Then all the past history might be invalid. However, a few minor changes is not a fundamental shift.

And, even if they were given very beefy pets (compared to today), it wouldn't change the PvP scene much...

[Stealthy]

There's the big question of how are you going to bridge the gear gap between Fresh-80 and tanking heroics. The answer could be arena, but it's not likely to be very successful.


If I was doing it, I would grind honor gear from WG/ BG's. With Season 8 of arena arriving in a few weeks, you're going to have Furious (ilvl 232) set pieces and Relentless (ilvl 245) off pieces available to buy with honor only. For the weapon, start with Nesingwary 4000, run hunters solo through heroic PoS to get this Felglacier Bolter. If you had money to burn, you could go for these BoE pieces: Carapace of Forgotten Kings, Draconic Bonesplinter Legguards, Rock-Steady Treads, Crusader's Dragonscale Bracers, & Belt of Dragons.



That comparison makes no sense. That's like saying that multibox shaman teams will obviously be a bad idea because there aren't a ton of solo Elemental shammies at the top of the ratings. The key difference between a solo hunter and a multibox group is that a solo hunter has complete control of her escape tools and targeting. Things like disengage and trap and feign death and other hunter escape tools are really useful when you can play 1 at a time. They are harder to take advantage of when you have a stack of 4-5 hunters always clumped up.


Just to clarify, I wasn't saying that just becuase solo hunters do well in PvP, that will make boxing them great. I was saying that it was interesting that solo hunters were doing well accross all three trees. Normally classes have 1 or 2 trees that do well, it's unusual to find 3.

I agree that Hunters would be very hard to PvP box - all their big DPS skills require range. And their "oh shit" abilities (deterrence and disengage) are on long cooldowns. You would need to play them as a run and gun style (similar to druids) rather than a turret defense style like shammies. Pets would play a big part, since they now have many desirable PvP abilities, depending on the pet type - stun / disarm / slow / root / snare / interrupt.

I think as far as PvE goes, without a healer, you'll get nowhere in heroics. With a healer, heroics would be hard but possible. I think the biggest issue would be agro management between pets and the healer, but with MD, traps and pet taunt it should be manageable...

As to why you would want to do it...if you're looking for a challenge mabye? Or if you have serveral teams at 80 already and want to try something different? Becuase Boylston said it can't be done? (kidding! ;))...who knows?

Question for you - how geared did you get your hunters before you stopped playing them in PvP?

Cheers,
S.

[anna81792]

tank pet? as in singular? I was thinking that all my pets are specced tank, and for Blood of the Rhino (increased healing)

damage will be slower, sure, but survival is key

[Boylston]

tank pet? as in singular? I was thinking that all my pets are specced tank, and for Blood of the Rhino (increased healing)

damage will be slower, sure, but survival is key

I tried a variety of hunter combos, and 4xBM with tank pets worked best. Mixing specs to get TSA and Replenish was OK, but it wasn't any faster for instance clearing (and was much less safe).

[anna81792]

I actually have had a group of five hunters, got them to level 70 in a short time.

couldn't kill the first two mobs on heroic Hellfire Ramparts, supposedly the lowest level heroic there is
the other mob ALMOST died, but then I ran out the door

and the worst part is, if one hunter dies, it's always a trip back from the graveyard. with shammies, only one shaman needs to survive (and why wouldn't they, with Reincarnation) to revive the whole group

there' sjust something profoundly evil with five red (BM on) pets doing autodamage while the nelves are shadowmelded. just for the fun, and there's a lot of fun to be had.

[anna81792]

I tried a variety of hunter combos, and 4xBM with tank pets worked best. Mixing specs to get TSA and Replenish was OK, but it wasn't any faster for instance clearing (and was much less safe).

I was thinking that as well but realistcally 10% more attack power is not worth it. not for solo, not for 5 hunters. I did excessive testing and BM hunter is better (x5 bm)

[Boylston]

Some entertaining blasts from the past:

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=17152

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?p=120868



Drop your 5th hunter and add a healer already! Jeez!

[anna81792]

Drop your 5th hunter and add a healer already! Jeez!

see, what's what everyone's doing, and I wanted to do something new (yet old) and make it work

I'll progress as far as I can and update this thread as I move on. I won't be saddened if I can't do heroics. but I damn well am going to try. :D and who knows what Cata will bring to pets.

when replying to my original post, you forgot that I'm going to use Warp Stalkers, which have 50% chance to miss next 4 melee attacks a good deal of time, and with the Great resistance talent, magic damage is reduced by 15% (not holy damage)

[Boylston]

Mend Pet can only do so much...

[ElectronDF]

Even if it is a complete failure, please let other try. He didn't ask everyone to bash him, he asked for help. GotN (Draenei HOT) is a help. Food (pet food, kibble and mammoth) is a help. Scrolls of fort are a help. Tenacity pets and talents are a help. Things can add up to just get by. So they didn't work for you or as fast as you wanted, fine. Just let other try without bashing them.

Everyone told me not to do locks, and I didn't. They are very fun for me and I love them. I like pet classes. I don't care if I can't do hard mode raids. That isn't what I was asking for. I just wanted a fun group with pets. Sure if I had to do it again, I would put a druid with my hunters just for PVE, not PVP.

Don't give up on a group that you like. I wish you well.

[anna81792]

Even if it is a complete failure, please let other try. He didn't ask everyone to bash him, he asked for help. GotN (Draenei HOT) is a help. Food (pet food, kibble and mammoth) is a help. Scrolls of fort are a help. Tenacity pets and talents are a help. Things can add up to just get by. So they didn't work for you or as fast as you wanted, fine. Just let other try without bashing them.

Everyone told me not to do locks, and I didn't. They are very fun for me and I love them. I like pet classes. I don't care if I can't do hard mode raids. That isn't what I was asking for. I just wanted a fun group with pets. Sure if I had to do it again, I would put a druid with my hunters just for PVE, not PVP.

Don't give up on a group that you like. I wish you well.

thank you :) very inspiring

and it's somewhat also about skill and patience.

pets have immense magic resistance, and other things are done to increase physical resistance. and it only takes three seconds (with active haste token) to bring a pet up, and Thunderstomp will divide threat evenly to all pets

and some are forgetting that this is a game, and nothing is wrong in a game if you can have fun with it. even two rogues and three hunters is okay. :)

[Multibocks]

two rogues and three hunters?!

Where do I start??

;)

[anna81792]

two rogues and three hunters?!

Where do I start??

;)

I was just making the most impossible five-man group I could think of in such a short amount of time

the joke of course is that rogues need to be close to do their thing and require micromagement. and hunters _require_ to be far away to do their damage. sure, it is possible, and it could be fun, but damn will it burn your patience.

[Boylston]

I was just making the most impossible five-man group I could think of in such a short amount of time



You came pretty close to it with 5xHunters... =P

[anna81792]

here's another thing to consider that will help

a round-robin casting of two spells, so that one hunter in order casts spell A and second hunter in order casts spell B, like this: hunter 1 spell A, hunter 2 spell B, and eventually hunter 5 spell A, hunter 1 spell B

what are these spells?

A: Concussive Shot
B: Distracting Shot

with two points in Improved Concussive Shot on all five hunters, both of these have an effective duration of 6 seconds, meaning that you could always keep at least one enemy running towards a hunter with only 50% speed and not doing any damage to anyone (works only for melee). when the enemy is close to that hunter who cast spell B, that hunter will just feign death. rinse and repeat. :)

what do you guys like?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Ping-ponging aggro usually ends up being more trouble than it's worth.

[Stealthy]

On multi-mob pulls, I think the idea would be to cc as many as you can, so your pets can deal with them one at a time.

To that end, I'd envision a pull going something like this:

1. Spread hunters out before pull, drop freezing traps (note - if freezing traps are too close together they overwrite each other).
2. Send in pets, MD on one (or two pets depending on strat), let them build some agro.
3. Have hunters DS additional mobs to freezing traps, leaving pets on single mob.
4. Once initial mob has been killed, sic pets onto next mob.

If you can't kill all the mobs before the freezing traps expire, you should be able to re-deploy the traps and DS adds again - DS doesn't doesn't cause any agro, so once the freezing traps break, mobs should head back to the pets first.

FD should be saved for any mobs that resist freezing trap.

Obviously, this wont work on caster mobs (without some kind of slience / interrupt) and mobs immune to freezing trap.

One thing that should be noted for an all hunter group - Mend Pet does not scale. It heals for a fixed amount every time. You can improve the amount healed with Spirit Bond, Blood of the Rhino and Glyph of Mending to give you 2264 per tick over 15 seconds. Silverback and Longevity will give you 2% healing every 3.5 secs (which scales at least), and Spirit bond will also give you 2% every 10 secs. I doubt if this will be enough healing to cut it in heroics.

Cheers,
S.

[Fursphere]

Ping-ponging aggro usually ends up being more trouble than it's worth.

If you're using TAUNT to ping-pong (with pet growl) - after #3 the boss will be on DR, and taunt will be useless.

So, this doesn't work. Try it and you'll basically set the boss free to kill whoever he pleases, completely ignoring taunts.

[Svpernova09]

If you're using TAUNT to ping-pong (with pet growl) - after #3 the boss will be on DR, and taunt will be useless.

So, this doesn't work. Try it and you'll basically set the boss free to kill whoever he pleases, completely ignoring taunts.

Actually, this changed in 3.3. It's up to 5 before before immune, and then reduced effect.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Diminishing_returns#Patch_changes


Patch 3.3.0 (http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_3.3.0) (2009-12-08): Taunt Diminishing Returns: We've revised the system for diminishing returns on Taunt so that creatures do not become immune to Taunt until after 5 Taunts have landed. The duration of the Taunt effect will be reduced by 35% instead of 50% for each taunt landed. In addition, most creatures in the world will not be affected by Taunt diminishing returns at all. Creatures will only have Taunt diminishing returns if they have been specifically flagged for that behavior based on the design of a given encounter.

[Stealthy]

Growl isn't a taunt per se, it just adds a fixed amount of threat per usage (which can be boosted through talents) and isn't affected by DR's.

Even the pet talent Taunt (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=53477) isn't like the warrior Taunt, but more like a mocking blow without the added damage and threat generation.

Hunter pets don't have a true taunt in the sense of an ability that places them numerically at the top of the threat table AFAIK.

Cheers,
S.

[Fursphere]

That's why pets with growl turned on rip mobs right off the tank. Rrrrriiiigggghttt.....

[Svpernova09]

Growl isn't a taunt per se, it just adds a fixed amount of threat per usage (which can be boosted through talents) and isn't affected by DR's.

Even the pet talent Taunt (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=53477) isn't like the warrior Taunt, but more like a mocking blow without the added damage and threat generation.

Hunter pets don't have a true taunt in the sense of an ability that places them numerically at the top of the threat table AFAIK.

Cheers,
S.


That's why pets with growl turned on rip mobs right off the tank. Rrrrriiiigggghttt.....

http://www.wowwiki.com/Growl_%28pet%29


Growl is a pet ability trainable by all pets. A special form of Taunt (http://www.wowwiki.com/Taunt), raising pet on the Aggro (http://www.wowwiki.com/Aggro) list by generating a high amount of pure threat. Unlike Taunt, it does not force the target to attack the pet for any duration.

I dunno, I've *never* seen a pet growl *not* pull right off even a tank. But apparently it's not *supposed* to.

[Boylston]

Tanks' taunt really does 2 things: It places you on the top of the threat list, and it forces the target to attack you for a few seconds.

I suspect Growl for the pets only does the first part of that-- top of the threat list, but with no forcing the target to attack.

That would explain the behavior we've all seen.

[Fursphere]

I played a hunter solo for about 2.5 years straight - the pet "growl" during that time was always considered "broken" by the hunter community because of how strong it was.

AFAIK - this is how "taunt" works.

Tank has 100 threat points.
Mage passes tank with 101 threat (101 being the highest number on the table)
Tank Taunts which does "101 + 1" = Tank now has aggro. (this is why DPS should back off for a second as tank reaquires target.

Now pet taunt (AFAIK) works the same way. So tank now has 102, pet taunts now has 103. True tanks can easily out threat pet aggro - but if the pet growls - its "tank aggro" +1 all over again.

Perhaps this has changed over the years - I really don't know. Maybe growl isn't on the DR table as taunt is? (which would seem silly - you'd see end game guilds ping ponging bosses around with pets)

[Boylston]

I suspect that it may not be on the DR table since it probably doesn't do the "forces the target to attack you" behavior.

[Stealthy]

Sadly, Growl doesn't even put your pet on top of the threat table, it only gives you a fixed amount of threat - the highest rank (9) adding 1234 threat, plus scaling factor based on attack power. There's a good article discussing it here:
http://www.wow-petopia.com/html/guides/stats_growlthreat.php

Along with this, having 2 ranks in the pet talent Guard Dog (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=53179) gives you an extra 20% threat per cast, and having 3 ranks in the talent Longevity (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=53264) reduces the cooldown of Growl to 3.5 secs from 5 secs.

Intimidation (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=19577) also generates high threat and stuns the target for 3 secs, and the pet talent Thunderstomp (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=63900) will do moderate AoE threat.

The rest of your threat is going to come from pet DPS, which is why its recommended to use Aspect of the Beast (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=13161) for pet tanking.

I would guess, that if a BM hunter was well geared enough (very high AP), it wouldn't be that difficult to pull agro from a lesser geared tank, especially if they don't MD the tank initially (bad hunter!)...but since growl causes no damage, only threat, there's no need to have it on unless you're soloing or pet tanking.

Cheers,
S