Best 5 man comps with a hunter?

[Kurkis493]

I am going to 5-box the level grind and hopefully my BiS blues.

My main is a hunter. I've been punching through forums here looking to find an optimal comp to do this. I suppose my first question...

Anyone level 1-60 with a 5 man group or a 4 man + healer group and then do BiS? Is it even possible?

Assuming the answer is negative, so I'm thinking of just doing Warrior / Priest / Mage / Mage / Hunter. I'm assuming that by not having the 3rd Mage in the comp you are really hindering your ability to AoE down the dungeons. So the only benefit I see now is single targeting and this comp gives me a lot of CC to do so.

If I can't AoE then am I just better off dropping the 2nd Mage for another hunter or filling in a Warlock?

Thoughts?

On the other side of the coin, is a melee cleave type group and just go something like 3 Warriors / Hunter / Priest better than the ranged DPS alternative with Mages?

I don't want my comp struggling to level-up but my priority in this is to get BiS pre-raid through the higher tier dungeons. Specifically on the hunter and warrior.

Thanks!

[Hksix]

If I was considering a hunter group, I'd go warrior+3 hunter+ priest. Really strong single target dps obviously, with the 3 pets + 3 serpent sting + SW:P/wand. Also you could make an all night elf team with this, which would be pretty cool for shadowmeld tricks. I suppose you could add a mage for aoe and free food/drinks/portals if you wanted.

Have you multiboxed before? If not, I would avoid going beyond tank + healer + 3 hunters. Mixed DPS groups complicates things.

[Kurkis493]

Thanks for the reply and willingness to help!

I've never multi-boxed on WoW or used ISBoxer. I've manually multi-boxed a lot of games and can pretty quickly getting certain functions into my muscle memory. I have a 3, 27" monitor set-up and right now I've got the warrior set-up on the main screen with the 4 others set-up on another and my 3rd screen there for internet / youTube tutorials.

I would say based on my experiences multi-boxing in the past, the set-up right now feels pretty intuitive if I needed to go manual mode.

After playing with things, I do agree that I probably don't want to get too crazy here with the group comp. I suppose from an efficiency stand-point am I going to be running into issues with a 3 hunter comp in the level 60 dungeons as opposed to a 1 hunter, 2 mage comp. I guess I am thinking it is a lot easier to point click, polymorph than it would be to try quickly and accurately drop ice traps across 3 hunters no?

Are we implying that from an efficiency stand-point, if I wasn't going to be AOE'n that a 3 hunter single target comp is going to out perform a 1 hunter, 2 mage single target comp?

Thinking that having the mage in there for food, buffs and portals would really help with efficiency.

[Quiding]

SW:P/wand.
Maybe abit off-topic, how are you planning on doing this while not having problems with healing with the priest aswell, wanding uses the GCD?

[Hksix]

Maybe abit off-topic, how are you planning on doing this while not having problems with healing with the priest aswell, wanding uses the GCD?

You can have time to do this while your renew / shield are on the tank - especially during trash when not that much damage is being taken. I'm sure there are several ways to implement this. Off the top of my head, you could add a 3 step mapped key. First step casts SW:P, second step casts !shoot, third cast does /stopcasting (to get ready for healing)


I suppose from an efficiency stand-point am I going to be running into issues with a 3 hunter comp in the level 60 dungeons as opposed to a 1 hunter, 2 mage comp.

I think you could be fine with a 2 mage+1hunter+tank+healer.


I guess I am thinking it is a lot easier to point click, polymorph than it would be to try quickly and accurately drop ice traps across 3 hunters no?

Yeah I agree, ice traps would be more effort to apply than polymorph.


Are we implying that from an efficiency stand-point, if I wasn't going to be AOE'n that a 3 hunter single target comp is going to out perform a 1 hunter, 2 mage single target comp?

Thinking that having the mage in there for food, buffs and portals would really help with efficiency.

I think both groups can do just fine. The efficiency differences will be minimal. If anything having at least one mage is really nice. Portals, food/water, and being able to aoe rooms like the one in BRD after the MC portal. Sorry for the lack of a detailed response but I don't really have anything else to add here

[Mercbeast]

You could probably get away with 4 hunters and a healer. I leveled a 4 hunter group pre-cataclysm, and granted I had dwarven handcannon heirlooms, it was pretty simple. The pets were expendable throwaway tanks. You had to be extremely reckless with your pull, to get all your pets killed. Typically you could easily res pets that died on a rotation, all the while just blowing everything away with your hunter DPS. With threat ping ponging between your pets, they rarely died anyways, when they had hunter heals+healer healing them. It's a group I've considered for classic.

Would it work better than having a dedicated tank? Yes and no. Yes in that, you're gonna clear a lot of instances a lot faster having 4 pure DPS, no in that, there might be some boss fights/pulls in some of the higher level dungeons where having a real tank would be better.

[Apatheist]

If your goal is to feed preraid BiS to the hunter to get it geared quickly for MC then warrior, priest, mage, warlock, hunter should a solid PvE group.

Good mix of buffs and utility and no competition for agility gear or ranged weapons.

It's not really that much more difficult running mixed PvE in classic since all DPS rotations are 1-2 buttons. Mages spam frostbolt, warlocks spam shadow bolt. Hunter is actually the most difficult since you have to figure out a macro doesn't clip your autos.

[JeffScott]

Apatheist - I'm keen on running 2 mage/1 warlock. What are the 1-2 spells for each class to spam? Mage would be frostbolt over and over, warlock would be shadowbolt? Would you ignore DoTs with Shadowbolt?

[Apatheist]

Apatheist - I'm keen on running 2 mage/1 warlock. What are the 1-2 spells for each class to spam? Mage would be frostbolt over and over, warlock would be shadowbolt? Would you ignore DoTs with Shadowbolt?

Mage: frostbolt, arcane explosion
Warlock: shadow bolt, hellfire

You can use blizzard/rain of fire if for some reason you're unable to enter melee range. Some mobs have AE silences (the ghosts in RFD, for example.)

At low-mid levels corruption/wand will be better DPS than shadow bolt.

You can use macros to simplify:


#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=3/target Corruption, !shoot, null

#showtooltip
/script SetView(5);SetView(5)
/cast !Blizzard

. . . Or whatever the proper syntax in the current API is.

[Runamuck]

I am going 1 Warrior 3 Hutner 1 Druid. Single target will be over the top and non stop killing. One pet will be a turtle at minimum. I will stream it eventually on mixer. I have multi before did 1 paladin 3 hunter and a priest before during Panda days.

[Lanser84]

Ooh, I like the idea of specializing the hunter pets since you'll have 3. Turtle for an offtank, Owl for Screech debuff, Wolf for Howl buff, etc. etc.