making 5x hunters work (gather tips here)

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Originally Posted by genocyde

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.

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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/...anking-in-3-3/

Quote from his post:

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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.

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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/...y/pet-tanking/ (Lots of pet tanking guest posts)

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

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Originally Posted by wougoose

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 :):

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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...

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!

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Originally Posted by 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!

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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
- 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-s...=Vicious+Cycle
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...t&gn=F%C3%AERe
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...ourne&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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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).

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

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Stealthy

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
- 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.

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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.

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!

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Originally Posted by Boylston

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

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