Hunter Team

Anyone got a hunter team? I have priest and 4 hunters. They are 64 and using all tank type pets (bear & pig). I can pretty much clear any BC instance of appropriate level without wiping. When will my pets no longer be a good idea as a tank? Also do they only get one talent tree? What glyphs and shot rotation should I use as BM? (I currently just spam Steady Shot with Serpent Sting thrown in once in a while.)

I wrote out this long post and then the internet browser monster ate it. That's why this one is so short :cursing:

My hunter team is the same level as yours but I haven't tried instances with them yet. I'm curious about how you do it because I'd rather level in instances than on quests.

How do you heal with your priest? Is it your main and you just do it manually or is there some kind of macroing to it?

Do you just let your pets fight over aggro or is there more to it like chaining intimidation with a macro? Do they keep aggro well off your healer and you hunter's dps?

I "drive" the hunters with the priest. I set healing keys for F1 - F5 and pets are Shift+F1-F5. I have 2 hunters dps buttons and a crap ton of utility buttons (traps, auras, etc). I specced all pets to be tank and just let them all fight for aggro and then I heal whoever is taking damage. With the 75% AE reduction pet talent, they tend to not need much healing unless the boss is massive melee damage. It works out really well. I really have not ever worried about aggro on the healer. I can spam heals as soon as they attack the mob and it still wont come for me. Good stuff :D

edit: oh and this is in the wrong forum, my bad dog!

I leveled my 4 hunter team + druid to 70 then switched in a priest to 80. I could do all normal instances just fine doing the same thing as you. Leading with my priest and just letting my gorillas ping pong the mobs and bosses. In heroics they get eaten alive. This was before all tank pets got thunderstomp. With recent changes and maybe even the changes with 3.2 in regards to pet scaling they may be better. However currently, my pets get hit too hard to stay alive in a heroic.

Im beginning to see this... I failed at the ring event in Nagrand at 65. My pets would just get eaten alive by the chain lightning the last guy does. I did manage to kill him at 66, but my priest died (which is auto fail). I would go back at 67(the recommended level of quest), but I figure that it's a waste of leveling time. I just might spec my pets into that reduced magic damage talents. Or get a real tank, lol.

I recently started a team of all hunters and can now clear every instance up to my level range without any issues.

My favorite feat was clearing ZF. I started the instance @ 41 and dinged about halfway through. Impressive considering most of the mobs are 44-45 in there. My druids and shammys would have had a lot tougher time at the same level due to all the spell resists.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-a...rnate+Universe

Wailing caverns was the big learning curve for me. Everything was very hard until I got smarter with my pet macros. Since then, it's been a breeze. What I do is assign raid targets for each pull (F6-F10), and each toon sets their own focus with the same keystroke allowing me to assign a unique focus target so that I can have up to 5 individual mobs targeted. I'll start the pull by either sending the pets in or firing a single arcane shot if the next pull looks to be too close. All of my attack macros first call my "pet attack" macro, so whenever I attack anything, all the pets know what to do: If they have a focus target that isn't dead, they attack the focus target. If the focus target is dead or doesn't exist, they assist and attack my current target. This makes it so that all of your pets will grab aggro on different targets, allowing you to use multishot and mend pet without having worrying about pulling aggro. In addition, the pets take a lot less damage versus just sending them in as the first pet tends to absorb the brunt of all of the mobs. Once they start to get to around 50% HP, I'll cast mend pet and continue dps switching between aspect of the hawk and aspect of the viper as needed.

As far as going through normal instances, the hunters have been a lot smoother and faster than both my druid and my shammy team. I think a lot of this has to do with hunters being able to hit their targets a lot more than seeing spells resisted on the other classes. I haven't even had to worry about getting tanking pets yet either as I'm using cunning pets (dragonhawks). I can only imagine that tanking pets with thunderstomp would make this even easier.

I've liked the hunters so much, that I decided to roll a set of them (night elves) on a high pop server.

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Also do they only get one talent tree?

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The talent tree depends on the pet family that you tame. The three families are Ferocity (DPS), Tenacity (Tank) and Cunning (hybrid). A lot of good info here: http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/

oh I use all tenacity pets in my setup. That way I dont die if Im too slow on a heal =)

it does limit pet dps though... then again, I can't imagine that it's that huge of a difference.

I'm lvling up my team right now. My main hunter is a 74 BM hunter sitting up resting till I get my new team up to match him. My team now is a Priest leading on main account and 3 BM hunters. All have bears and I don't pull aggro as long as I keep Aspect of the Viper up. First I send in the bears, then tag the mob with viper stings, then multishot. Right now, they're all lvl 33 and the only instance I've cleared with them is the Stockades at the same level. Grab some bears if you want a good tanking pet, they have Swipe and can get Thunderstomp now. With these two, you won't have many problems with them holding aggro as long as you don't go over board with your shooting spells. Aspect of the Viper may cut your damage in half, but you won't have to make so many breaks for mana and it helps keep your damage down from drawing aggro off your pet. Once you get volley, read up on how to use 'Click-on-Ground' AoE spells. Set a button of your choosing, then set your cursor on your slaves to about where your pets are. Toss up AoHawk, send in pets to pull mobs, run in and lay down your Explosive Traps for the AoE, then cast your Volley over your head for major damage. Go Discipline on your Priest to drop your threat from spells and cut the mana cost and increase healing. Mine hardly even heals as long as I keep Mend Pet up on my bears. Put Concussive Shot on a single button on all toons and put that button on Round Robin. Same goes for any other spell they have with a cooldown greater than 30seconds that puts the target to sleep or dazes them for x amount of seconds. Get talents that boost your pet's damage, armor, healing on them, and reduces any damage against them. I also never go above 50% on the AoE resistance on my pets cause there are not that many bad guys that cast AoE spells that won't last long enough to pop off 3 in a fight unless it's a boss or PvPer. But this is where Concussive Shot on round robin comes in handy. Once you down one mob, you'll have atleast one of you're toons CS spell ready for the next mob. Try this macro for your dps:

Hunter 1:
/assist focus
/castsequence reset=target: Viper Sting, Arcane Shot, Concussive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

Hunter 2:
/assist focus
/castsequence reset=target: Viper Sting, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Concussive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

Hunter 3:
/assist focus
/castsequence reset=target: Viper Sting, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Concussive Shot, Steady Shot

Hunter 4:
/assist focus
/castsequence reset=target: Viper Sting, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Concussive Shot

I'm gonna try this on my hunters, haven't just yet, so let me know if it works out well without pulling aggro. This is similar to my 73 BM Hunter I use for his DPS rotation when soloing, just modified a bit.
Another thing you could try is putting the Concussive Shot, Steady shot macro rotation in it's own macro on a separate button, so incase you wanna use this on a boss, one toon ain't standing there getting the error message saying "That Spell is not Ready". But for small mobs, they should be dead in less than 10seconds with this.

Be mindful that if you cast Hunter's Mark, you could end up increasing your chances of pulling aggro off your bears as well, but if you want to us it on mobs, this macro might work:

Hunter 1:
/targetenemy
/cast Hunter's Mark

Hunter 2:
/targetenemy
/targetenemy
/cast Hunter's Mark

Hunter 3:
/targetenemy
/targetenemy
/targetenemy
/cast Hunter's Mark

Hunter 4:
/targetenemy
/targetenemy
/targetenemy
/targetenemy
/cast Hunter's Mark

Make sure you hit your /assist focus button first so you don't end up pulling something that's further than you intended to pull. Since HM has a long range on it, chances are, this will cast on mobs out of shooting range you don't mean to tag yet. Good thing tho, this won't start up a fight.

Armory was down while typing this, but once it's back up, my main hunter is Brummly over on Earthen Ring. Talent spec and glyphs are being applied the same way to my hunter party I'm working on. Gonna respec one of the trees to a Surv/MM for max DPS for the instant shots for PvP once they all reach the same level. Priest will be parked up at that point. My hunters are intended to be one of my end-game PvP teams. Not too worried about instances for them unless it's a 10-25man.

Some awesome tips, thanks ians83.

My (currently 3man) team of a priest as main, backed up by 2 hunters with tenacity pets, are still low level but I cannot wait to begin experimenting with different pet pulls.

I have a 5 hunter team 72 (4) and one lvl 80. best pet for tanking is trurtle by far. bubble helps on dps reduction. get improved pet res. Run 4 hunters and 1 disp priest now until grp is 80 then 5 box them. for pvp run AV at 5 hunters. great exp for 4 and 5th is just there to take damage. all Hunters are dual spec. BM and surv. surv is for pvp