My experience with 5x hunters...so far.

[turbopinto]

So on the patch day, my normal server was down for a bit... I made a 5x female dwarf hunter team on the Wildhammer server. I spent the last few days leveling to about 20 and wanted to share my experiences.

First the server and the people (alliance of course). I don't think anyone has ever ever ever multiboxed there. I got at least 50-100 WTFs every night. When i was lvl 11 and heading out into ellwyn forest for the first time with my newly aquired boars, I had almost 40 people of all levels follow me to see how it worked out. My nightly following hovered around 10. other than 2 people that weren't supportive, the rest of the population seemed really nice. Problem was trying to explain it all, so i ended up making macros for a bunch of it.

The good part about 5x hunters with pig pets: stuff dies FAST. 1 charge/arcane/auto shot kills nearly everything thats orange even with only using light shot. When you hit 20 for aspect of cheetah, life is good again. Having 5 dwarf females, and a "RIVERDANCE!!!" macro is fun

Things that you would think are good, but not really so: 5x traps - sometimes gets eaten up by 1 mob. While this is ok mostly for explosive trap, when trying to CC multiple mobs with freezing trap , it bites. 5 pigs - at low lvl, my chars ended up pulling more aggro than I thought they would, even specced beast mastery and with growl on autocast.

Stuff that downright sux: not having a healer/ resser. I've become accustomed to being not careful on my lock/ priest grp cause i have soulstones. This has led to many a horrible death and long runbacks with the hunter team. Tab targetting is a NONO - pets end up all over the instance pulling everything they can.

My recommendations: do it! its fun. Be careful in instances, deaths are sucky. Don't be alliance, having to wait till 19 or so to get an instance sux.

[qcumber]

4 Hunters + Shammy is insanely fun for me at 40, and I think will stay fun through outlands instances. Send 4 pets to different targets, intimidation, mend pet then focus fire each mob down. Shammy heal as needed, but at 40 it really isn't needed (cleared everything through Uldaman so far). I am a little worried about outlands instances, not so much for the trash but for bosses. At 70 misdirect x 4 on a turtle tank might work with the shaman spamming heals, not sure. My 70 hunter never had a chance to try anything like that. Can't wait though! Oh and ice traps work well against multiple mobs if you spread your hunters out a little before you drop them, but unless you are pulling more than 4, pets are more reliable CC imo. 8^)

[Tamu]

I also am having a great time with my hunter alt team. I initially thought pet management (feeding, training, etc) would be difficult to manage, but efficient macros make this a non-issue. I use a holy priest + 4 hunters, and really the priest is not really needed unless I go crazy pulling multiple groups. I'm looking forward to doing battlegrounds with them later on.

[shiVen]

Its odd how some of you guys go for boars. Four or even five dps pets is really crazy dps as BM spec. That charge is really not that great.

Good luck though!!!

[Evilseed]

Hey guys,

I'm having some great successes on my 4x hunter team. They are level 62 now and doing quite well. Having pets tank is working out nicely and so far 1 pet can tank mobs well enough for me to focus fire on them. I wrote a post earlier about how I did ramparts and basically I put 1 pet per mob to tank w/mend going nonstop and then I dps focus fire eat mob and things work out quite well. If a pet dies then I can easily refocus all pets on the 1 mob I'm focus firing on.

Traps work out quite well, too. I have a nice formation macro to spread my guys and dropping a trap right afterwards is great.

Battlegrounds is where we absolutely mofoing OWN. I can say this with all certainty that hunters multiboxing in BGs are the most powerful class period. They shine far above shamans due to their ability to whip out whoop ass on the run, their pets being a huge killing squad when focus fired, and they can do some immense CC by spreading out and dropping freezing traps.

One of my favorite things is to run in a BG, hit my formation and spread my guys out to the max distance where follow mode will bring them back, and do 1x frost 3x freezing traps. It literally creates a wall where alliance cannot move past for like 20 seconds. Amazing.

Hunter focus fire is a godly miracle. Much more effective than shaman focus fire due to our instant ranged attacks. Popping BW when multiple priests charge you whereas you cannot kill them all is insanely funny, considering that your pets will chew up a priest almost instantly. I've sent my pets at a priest and had her drop before my guys could fire their attacks :)

[Dinkydau]

Good luck with five hunters. I believe (IMHO) that you'll do great with everything outside of an instance. If you wanna do an instance though, you're probably going to need a healer at some time. It's true that you can kill anything quickly outside of an instance, but some bosses still take a long time to bring down. My four hunter, druid team did well in Uldaman although we pulled off the end boss by the skin of our teeth as he start spawning all the adds near the end.

When I went from three boxing three hunters to five boxing, I added a hunter and druid to the team. In a longer fight with lots of elite mobs I've had my druid pull agro a couple of times just while throwing up small heals. I'm going to try and fix this problem by adding a Gorilla tank into the mix that has Thunderstomp. I'm hoping to have the Thunderstop Gorilla pull all the agro and having thorns on it, to continue to hold the agro even through some heals. The only problem with this is that Thunderstomp has a one minute cooldown. I think I'm going to have it on a separate button in order to hold it until I've got the entire group of mobs engaged. My other three hunters have Wind Serpents that tend to pull mobs away from other mobs. Only the gorilla will have growl. If the druid does get agro, she can go bear form until someone can pull it off.

There is a lot of setup time or moving between windows if you want to use traps and such with so many hunters. I do have macros have them lay them down separately, but because they are on follow, the traps tend to be behind my main druid all the time and thus don't trap the mobs. I'm keying on the druid so much because typically the hunters don't ever pull agro as all four pets are on their target. In cases where there are too many targets (like the scorpid pits in Uldaman) to cycle through, I just put the pets on agressive and let them wipe it all out. For boss fights I definitely recommend putting your hunters in some type of line formation in order to keep them out of the fray.

The one thing that I believe I'm definitely going to have to do is change my entire playstyle by stop using my keyboard keys for movement and strictly use the mouse. There were several time in BFD where all five of my toons would get frost trapped and the mobs would move behind me. At that point, I couldn't move my main into the direction of the mob in order to have my hunter's target it. If I stop using my keyboard keys for moving the main toon then I can utilize them for spinning all of them around as needed. That's going to take a lot of getting used to though. :whistling: But in the long run, I believe it will benefit whatever type of team I put together.

Good luck with your crew,

Johnny

[Tamu]

Its odd how some of you guys go for boars. Four or even five dps pets is really crazy dps as BM spec. That charge is really not that great.

Good luck though!!!Which pet is your favorite dps pet? I've really enjoyed the boars, but I'm open to try new ones. The thing I like about the charge effect is that things don't live very long anyhow (with 4+ hunters), so the charge keeps mobs from moving in on my hunters and I can open up on the mobs quicker.

[d0z3rr]

I personally like my bears. They have bite and claw which is nice. Raptors are awesome for DPS too. I have a feeling ravagers will be really good.

Wolfs are nice for their buff that they give, I am running 3 bears and a wolf. Will probably switch to 3 ravagers and a wolf once I hit 61.

[qcumber]

I tried 4 turtles in SM library and it took too long to kill stuff but those little guys never die. Gave up and went back to cats since they just tear through stuff. But I am thinking of a turtle team for outlands instances. Shell Shield is amazing. And people seem to love my turtles -- instead of "wtf" I get "lol". I mean, who doesn't love Tooga?

Funniest thing ever is when your 4 pets are shrunk by Grimlock in Uldaman... Kittens 4 sale.... 8^)

[torytrae]

The one thing that I believe I'm definitely going to have to do is change my entire playstyle by stop using my keyboard keys for movement and strictly use the mouse. There were several time in BFD where all five of my toons would get frost trapped and the mobs would move behind me. At that point, I couldn't move my main into the direction of the mob in order to have my hunter's target it. If I stop using my keyboard keys for moving the main toon then I can utilize them for spinning all of them around as needed. That's going to take a lot of getting used to though. But in the long run, I believe it will benefit whatever type of team I put together.

I use the WASD keys and have the arrow-keys set up for this. I only need "turn left" or "turn right" set to the arrow keys and so my toons can circle into any direction by pressing those keys. No need to do it via the WASD.

[shiVen]

Its odd how some of you guys go for boars. Four or even five dps pets is really crazy dps as BM spec. That charge is really not that great.

Good luck though!!!Which pet is your favorite dps pet? I've really enjoyed the boars, but I'm open to try new ones. The thing I like about the charge effect is that things don't live very long anyhow (with 4+ hunters), so the charge keeps mobs from moving in on my hunters and I can open up on the mobs quicker.

Humar, the black lion in the Barrens!! If you don't like the cats, ravanger and raptors all the way. Their dash makes up for the charge.

Gettin Humar x4 would be a pain though...

[Kopitar]

I have 4 different pets, a boar (charge/gore) a bat (aoe debuff) a wolf and a cat. The wolf and boar rarely grab agro , it is usually the cat that ends up with it then the bat.

[Totek]

For instancing I really like wolves. If you use Keyclone set a key to round-robin and make a macro to cast Furious Howl that binds to it. The buff to physical damage on all friendlies in range is really nice and a good AOE threat generator.

--Tot

[Vyndree]

Stuff that downright sux: not having a healer/ resser. I've become accustomed to being not careful on my lock/ priest grp cause i have soulstones. This has led to many a horrible death and long runbacks with the hunter team. Tab targetting is a NONO - pets end up all over the instance pulling everything they can.

I find that binding tab to my assist macro on my alts works admirably. ;)