[Healer+4xHunters] Pet/Spec Options with WotLK incoming (slightly long)

[Boylston]

Like a lot of you know, I've been playing my hunters more lately as my shaman team got somewhat gear capped. They initially leveled to 70 in instances as BM spec with Boars and a Priest healer. Going to probably level them first with the WotLK launch, since I can stay inside instances and avoid the crazy gankfest in the open world.

I am considering mixing my group up a bit... Here's some background:

Since the 3.0 era, my preferred instance-tanking pets have been Worms, which is a little counter intuitive to solo play where the Gorilladin is a great pet. Worms have some amazing advantages for my multibox situation, in that:

* Their special attack, acid spit, stacks 5 times for a nice chunk of armor reduction. This stacks "cross-worm", meaning I can sick all 4 worms on the same target and it will get a 4xSpit debuff on it almost immediately. (That's -2000 armor now, which is impressive).
* Additionally, it's a ranged attack that the pets can do to grab initial aggro. Normally, I designate targets with 4 keypresses before a pull and then start a pull by either just sending the pets in to attack or by launching a scorpid sting to pull as the pets are told to attack. This second method allows the fight to happen away from the initial pull zone and reduces the chance of getting unwanted adds. With the worms, they can move towards the pack of mobs and pause to spit at 20yds, which pulls the mobs to each pet tank and avoids the hunters building undesirable early aggro.
* The AoE features of the Gorilla or the Bear are liabilities for my setup, where I really only want 1 elite mob per worm. (If I get a pull that's larger than 4-5 mobs, I generally lay down traps in order to deal with the extras). Although I haven't tried it, I can imagine a 4xGorilla group might end up accidentally distributing mobs 2-3 to an individual gorilla if there was some RNG action taking place to produce misses or crits at awkward times.

A typical pull for me involves assignment of targets, sending the worms loose, then DPSing down the individual mobs. Multi-shot is used when available, but most of my DPS is a rotation of Steady and Concussive Shots (I've posted on my reasons for that elsewhere...). Volley, unfortunately, is not practical for most pulls because it requires mouse clicking to target. I will sometimes volley with 1-2 hunters, but it requires that I become defocused from healing.

3.0 did break some aspects of my team, namely that I used to benefit from stacked 4xFerocious Inspirations. While I miss that mechanic, it is nice that they changed the way Defensive works for pets. Pre 3.0, I had to manually re-target the pets onto mobs if their pre-assigned target had been killed-- now the pets that were tanking will automagically snap over to the next focus-fire target once their original target is dead. Overall, I am thrilled with the changes to pets, especially tenacity pets.

Here are my questions:

1.) I've never run with a "mixed" group of hunters. For example, there are obvious benefits to going 3xBM+1Marksman. Trueshot Aura on one hunter would have a nice impact on the entire group's DPS. 2xBM,1xMarks,1xSurvival would add some nice mana regen to the mix as well. The main reason I have never had a split group is that I need Beastial Wrath protection from fear-bombs when I PvP. It was very nice to be able to pop 4xBW and not worry about CC for a while. Fear is a multiboxers worst nightmare (other than a pre-nerf Ret Pally, that is!). For WotLK instances, I am strongly considering going the 3xBM,1xMarks route for TSA.

2.) I've *rarely* run with different pets, mostly for aesthetic reasons. However, I can see the advantages of a mixed-pet group. The Worms are great tanks, but it might be nice to have a Bear in there for more AoE DPS, a buffing/debuffing pet, or even a Gorilla to nab any loose mobs and deal with non-elite AoE trash pulls. It is my preference to include at least 3 tenacity pets, since my playstyle is generally 1 pet/mob. I am strongly considering going with one Wolf in the group for Furious Howl, however.

Based off 1.) and 2.), I think my first step is going to be 3xBM with Worms and 1xMarks with a Wolf. Feel free to let me know if you have a great theorycraft idea for the perfect pet group (that can still tank well).

3.) Lastly, I have a choice of 3 healers at my disposal. I have played 95% of my time with the priest, but I do have some Heroic experience with the post-3.0 Druid and Pally. Priests are dominating in this setup because of the power of Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending. Fort buff and Inspiration are also nice. Downsides of the priest is that he can be very squishy if something goes wrong. The Pally is the most "work" for me to manage, since there's still no great AoE heal, but the upside is that 8xBlessing of Might is a lot of extra AP to throw at targets in a 5-man instance. The pally is incredibly durable, to boot. I escaped a few very bad pulls by popping Bubble+Feign Death and letting the pets re-acquire targets. Pally is a very flexible buffer/healer that is insanely durable with the cost of having heals that are challenging in my setup. Druid is somewhat of a middle ground-- he's more durable than a priest, has decent AoE healing with Wild Growth, can quickly rotate HoTs across multiple targets, and can CC certain problem targets if needed. Druid downside is that their buffs are the least useful for my specific situation. Proper healing of the pets on a boss is also tougher since I tend to let the pets fight each other for aggro during a boss fight to split damage around the team. (It's not uncommon to lose a pet or 3 on some fights... I treat them as one 40,000 hp tank that can be broken apart in stages).

I'd welcome any feedback on my best healer choice as well. I am leaning towards the druid for other reasons (he'd make a nice boomkin to go with my shamans!!), but there may be some hunter/pet/instance mechanics that I'm missing.

[wowphreak]

With boss fight specifically using target-target for targeting would make healing allot easier if the boss switches target often.

One of the negatives about going with a spec besides BM is that the pet is fairly squishy compared to BM.

[Nak]

I'm currently leveling 3x hunters with a druid healer. They are 69 at the moment.I run a mixed set: 2 BM hunters and 1 MM hunter with a Gorilla, Core Hound, and Wolf respectively. This allows one to be the main tank, one dps, and one buf pet who helps with dps. Only the Gorilla runs with with Growl on. The plan is to have my 70 (main) hunter join them at 70 (with a Devilsaur) and swap out the druid for a resto shammy. The druid is an effective healer, but I prefer the simplicity the shammy. And, well, shamans are just fun. At that point I'll respec the druid to Boomkin and put him in my current shaman team.

There are pluses and minuses. Targets go down quick, the core hound is amazing against casters, and even when the gorilla dies I can usually have the core hound pick up the remain mobs and tank for a short time. The wolf is squishy, and my shot rotation is the same on the BM and MM hunters. I speced the MM down to Silencing Shot, but it does seem like he's not being utilized in the best way. I don't think I'll be able to AoE tank everything, but it works so far.

I was initially worried about managing shot rotations and cooldowns with the hunters, but that hasn't really been a problem. Both Dotimer and PAB track things will enough, and a simple auto/steady/kill macro works out well (for the BMs at least).

At the moment, I'm just leveling as fast as I can and occasionally helping a friend out with something they need. So not really comparable to what you're doing, but there you go.

I'm curious how you're targeting for pulls. To target 4 is it mouse click key press, mouse click key press, mouse click key press, mouse click key press?

[Boylston]

I target with a series of 4 macros bound to U-I-O-P, where each key is only bound on one client. It effectively changes the hunters target to what the leader/focus target's is and casts Hunters mark. (I get visual confirmation of what target was acquired that way, plus a buff). A lot of times it is mouse click + key press, mouse click + key press, etc, like you describe below. I can also use keyboard or TAB-targetting since I don't pass those keys to all clients.

With 4 targets marked and active on the 4 different hunters, I can just send them in with a common /petattack macro. This is a different key than my normal /petattack macro, and it doesn't have them go to the focus target (since that would screw up their "assignment"). Usually, I have the hunters pull with a scorpid sting+/pet attack macro using a shift modified macro-- this gives me the option of having the pets fight the mobs between their original position and ours. After that, everything is focus fired again.

I have a series of four other keys that will change targets to the leader's and immediately /petattack. This is useful for picking up targets in the middle of a fight.


I have switched to running with my main hunter as a Marksman+Wolf for the extra group AP. I have not been disappointed so far. I simply put the wolf on the first target to die, and he doesn't really need to "tank" much. I need to respec him so he isn't any faster than the other tank pets-- this can be a real problem when I send them all in. I have also picked up some Gorillas and have been trying them out. So far, so good, but they're not L70 yet and I'm not really fighting tough instances. They definitely do a nice job on threat-- very little makes it back to the hunter+healer group. I am a little concerned about them picking up more than 1 target each, but so far it hasn't been a problem.

I have also been trying out a paladin healer, since I have the least experience with running one in my group. Healing isn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I'm not fighting super challenging stuff yet. The buffing flexibility is great, and there's no doubt that Blessing of Might is fantastic for this group. 382 AP buff x 8 is another 3000ish AP that is given by that one buff. Wolf's howl is another 1120 (140x8), and trueshot aura compounds everything. I'm running the same instances I leveled my worms with, and stuff is dying a LOT faster. I do find that I'm using 4x Mend Pet more at the end of fights to top off all the pets, but the pally's strong single target flash of lights are really pretty awesome on pets with the huge "healing received" buffs.


The proof will be in my ability to level in WotLK dungeons, but for right now I am thinking that I am going with:

1xMarks Hunter with Wolf
3xBM Hunters with Gorillas
Pally Healer (with Druid a second choice)

The priest's ability to be amazing with CoH is going to get nerfed, and the same nerf doesn't really affect the druid that much since his AoE is a HoT anyhow. I really like the buffs the pally can give, and his healing with clickcast flashes of light has been no problem to manage (so far).