No hunter teams?

[Yhanny]

Hello all,

New to the whole multiboxing community, but I noticed that there are not very many teams with hunters on them. I was actually thinking about making a 4xhunter 1xhealer team but seeing as there is not many teams with hunters on them is pretty worrisome.

Does anyone have any experience with hunters on a team? Or even a stacked hunter team? 4 pets doesn't sound too shabby :P

Thanks!

[Mercbeast]

There is someone doing a 5x hunter team, last I heard they were plowing through deadmines at levels my 4x warrior team was chain wiping at. They cleared to the 3rd boss at level 15, I didn't even start in deadmines till 18.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I'm almost up to level 35 with a sham+4warrior team where my 5-hunter team stopped in beta. So far, they are far more resilient than the hunter team to "oops" situations, though the repair costs are 100% more expensive in spite of hunter ammo costs. In terms of DPS, they are also better (for me, I was 5x BM spec) post-30 at AoE damage.

As for general playability, after the 2.1.0 Avoidance ability and instant Mend Pet HoT, it got better, and 2.3.0 effectively removed the deadzone but IMO hunters (BM in particular) really didn't come into their own until the pre-Cataclysm ~4.0.1 patch with Glyph of Misdirect (no cooldown if targeted at your pet). That really, REALLY helped control aggro, especially with adds.

[Yhanny]

Ah, so you are saying that they have aggro problems as well as lower dps? I'm guessing multishot is not as viable as other class aoe?

[Mercbeast]

I'm almost up to level 35 with a sham+4warrior team where my 5-hunter team stopped in beta. So far, they are far more resilient than the hunter team to "oops" situations, though the repair costs are 100% more expensive in spite of hunter ammo costs. In terms of DPS, they are also better (for me, I was 5x BM spec) post-30 at AoE damage.

As for general playability, after the 2.1.0 Avoidance ability and instant Mend Pet HoT, it got better, and 2.3.0 effectively removed the deadzone but IMO hunters (BM in particular) really didn't come into their own until the pre-Cataclysm ~4.0.1 patch with Glyph of Misdirect (no cooldown if targeted at your pet). That really, REALLY helped control aggro, especially with adds.

What pets were you using? The guy 5 boxing the hunters said the team was terrible initially, and asked for pet suggestions, bunch of us suggested bats/carrion birds for the demo shout, and he's said that his threat management has been a joke ever since.

[Purpleflavor]

I've seen several posts about hunter teams, usually doing really well and clearing dungeons early because mob level doesnt effect their hit as much as other classes. Gotta be one of the best comps in phase 1.

[silverback]

Doing 5x Beastmaster Hunter. Cleared SM Cathedral at 38. There were wipes but at 41 now it's almost trivial now. It's not fast but as someone who prefers Hunters, it's the way to go for me. 5 near identical clones (a few different talent choices) makes game play easy.

[Mercbeast]

Doing 5x Beastmaster Hunter. Cleared SM Cathedral at 38. There were wipes but at 41 now it's almost trivial now. It's not fast but as someone who prefers Hunters, it's the way to go for me. 5 near identical clones (a few different talent choices) makes game play easy.

What pets are you using, and how much do you actually heal?

[Yhanny]

Doing 5x Beastmaster Hunter. Cleared SM Cathedral at 38. There were wipes but at 41 now it's almost trivial now. It's not fast but as someone who prefers Hunters, it's the way to go for me. 5 near identical clones (a few different talent choices) makes game play easy.

What pets are you using and how often are you having to mend/rez?

[silverback]

If you try to rush it then mending and rezzing becomes more frequent as does OOM. If you pace it, keep pulls to 1-2 mobs then 3 mobs later, you do a lot less of that nonsense and the gameplay is not too slow.

With my playstyle, generally one pet is in before the rest so he pulls initial aggro and takes a decent beating while the rest go untouched. You can mitigate that by pre-targeting and sending 1-2 pets to separate targets. I did this with the Houndmaster especially.

Optionally, you can just regularly rotate between each hunter so it's their pet going in first and taking the damage whiel the beaten pet regains health. Generally mobs go down relatively fast and it's not much of an issue unless the mobs frenzy.

Probably one of my biggest lessons so far, and slowly learned, was that when you have runners it becomes hard to manage with more than one or two (at least for me). So what I do is pull a group and focus down one at a time (usually) while ignoring the others.

For pets, I started with birds for screech for a little area aggro but at some point their damage didn't keep up and so I switched pets. I am currently using spiders right now and they work well. I don't currently use a mixed group of pets because what I have works.

At 40, you pick up Volley. I haven't bothered to learn how to multibox it but it might enable larger pulls. I think it would also requires more pet assignment (1 pet tanking each target). Not sure if it will be worth it. That might also increase mending or drinking requirements and I'm not sure if the trade off is worth it. It sure would be convenient for those stragglers that roll in after Herod while farming shoulders and and helm.