making 5x hunters work (gather tips here)

[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