Comments on: Being a Team Player: Hunter

By: ReversionLFM

ReversionLFM — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:30:38 +0000

That is certainly true. Generally it is best to give the tank the time to grab the mob back… but it is unfortunately not uncommon for tanks to simply not see that stray mob at all. Particularly at low levels. It is a tricky balance to strike, saving the healer and making the run work and letting the tank do their job without distraction. Usually it is obvious when a tank is totally fail. Those times a hunter is invaluable for keeping the run alive by saving the healer of storing mobs. The annoying ones were where the tank sucks but does not think he sucks. He only saw you pet tanking the mob and did not see the mob omnomnoming the priest.

By: Hugmenot

Hugmenot — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:43:17 +0000

I am not a proponent of the kill-shit-as-quickly-as-possible strategy; I prefer to minimize risks and as such.

It is perfectly fine to bring a tanking pet to an instance when the tank and/or the healer do not grossly overgear the content.

Do turn growl off but you may want to turn it back on for a few seconds at time if the tank is in danger of dying. Soaking off a few hits to give time for tank’s health to take a significant jump upward reduces the risk of a wipe.

A tenacity pet can tank an heroic; my gorilla did it and my stamina gear score is 1215 according to wow-heroes. I am saying you should have your pet tank instances but if the tank dies, your tenacity pet CAN and SHOULD tank the mobs (OK, I may tank-kite them if I am the only DPSer left but learning this technique on the fly offers some challenges).

If you use distracting shot followed by deterrence and, a few seconds later, feign death can save your party from a wipe.

Peeling off a mob from a pack and kiting it while the group handles the rest of the mobs can be a good strategy. If you want practice kiting, ask your guildies to kill the trash up to the first boss in an instance and then solo it. Or attack a pack of 3 non-caster mobs by yourself in the tight confines of a dungeon. Fun, and usually far from trivial.

A freezing trap can be dropped in front of your healer as a precautionary measure if your tank has trouble holding aggro. It won’t be needed almost always but after 2 or 3 pulls, i guarantee any smart healer is aware of the trap and will make use of it if he or she pulls healing aggro.

Position yourself in a way you can see your healer. If a mob is hitting your healer, pull it away and trap, offtank, or kite it as long as necessary. The tank may complain (“I was taunting it”) but in my experience, healers generally only pull aggro if they heal too quickly in the pull (when mobs have separation) or if the tank has aggro managment issue. The second is far more common and I don’t trust these tanks to always taunt mobs off the healer.

I am not saying her what Reversion wrote is not generally true; it is. All I am saying is be aware of your group’s gear level and capabilities, and decide how best you can complement them.

Sometimes, lowering your DPS to provide much needed utilities is a far better choice.

By: ReversionLFM

ReversionLFM — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:37:18 +0000

Well not really… if the tank knows you are doing it. The problem is mostly caster packs and the fact that if the pull is started before the tank is close or ready the casters mobs and the melee mobs get spread out more. In a tight knit group where they know each other’s play styles all bets are off. As with most group advice these days it is targeted at random anonymous pugs full of people with poor group etiquette.
It use to be that good hunters were the pull masters. I think ever since they changed how ‘defensve’ pet mode works many hunters don’t even know what a pull is. Pull? You just start shooting, right? Heh.

If the tank is ready for it and the hunter knows what he is doing you can still pull off some outstanding things. It is one of those things that is technically better on paper but in most parties, isn’t. Tanks have so few ranged agro options that unless the hunter knows that specific pull really well he is likely to make things harder.

Of course in raids you still see MD pulls all the time.

By: Durathor

Durathor — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:13:45 +0000

Quite a change from the days of BRK and the arguments in favour of hunters pulling over tanks, due to the superior aggro management skills such as aborting a bad pull (FD) and transferring aggro to the tank once the pull is successful (MD / FD etc.)

By: ReversionLFM

ReversionLFM — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:40:53 +0000

Great points. Now that I think on it more I realize there is a lot more to say about the hows and whys of letting the tank pull. I will have to do a whole post on that soon.

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:30:58 +0000

Forgot to add: the other problem with a pack misdirected on you unexpectedly, besides throwing you off your stride, is that the other DPS usually take that as their cue to open up with the AoE too, making things even worse.

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:29:15 +0000

“try not to start shooting just BEFORE the tank engages. Doing that may throw the tank’s pull off.”

YES THIS VERY MUCH

It’s especially bad in Forge of Souls heroic where the mobs have such a large aggro radius, and are quite spread out so you need to pull carefully. I’ve had it a few times where the hunter thought (I guess) he was doing me a favour by raining a misdirected Volley on a pack. Unfortunately that meant they started running towards me before I’d even put DnD down, and were then all over the place because I had no solid threat on them.

I also really need an addon that puts an alert in party chat when a hunter’s pet Growls. The only one I can find is Growl Alert, which apparently stopped working in patch 2.4