Raiding as a Hunter

From BA Wiki

-Note- Much of this guide is liberally stolen/paraphrased from the Hunter boards in the World of Warcraft Forum. I've put my own spin on things, and added and subtracted where I felt it was helpful. --Aural 17:53, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

N00b Level

If you don't know this crap, how did you get to 60?

• Do not pull aggro. Feign early. Feign often. Do not go nuts with burst damage when there is 1 sunder on the mob. Don't open against Vael with Aimed shot (Do as I say, not as I did!)

• Don't suck up healing if you can avoid it. As a general rule, you shouldn't be taking much damage compared to the rest of the raid. You wear mail. You stand at range. Bring bandaids and take care of your own damn health.

• Die if you have to. Dead hunters deal no DPS, but they don't wipe raids, either. If you pull aggro and your FD resists, chances are you're taking one for the team. Run TOWARD the tank. Remember Disengage? Spam it and you might possibly live. If not, then learn to cope with the shame of your repair bill. You earned it.

• Get healthy. In many fights, you're going to take damage due to AOEs or randomly targeted effects. In general, you are low man on the totem pole when it comes to heals. To a first approximation, the best thing you can do is get stamina gear. If you are setting foot in MC/AQ20/ZG for the first time ever, 3200 health is a good target number. If you're setting foot somewhere tougher, 4000. You can never, ever have too much health.

• Repair and resupply. Do not show up for a raid with less than a full bag of ammo. Do not show up for a raid with less than 100% durability. If you're using Hurricane or some other insanely fast bow, plan accordingly and have extra arrows. Having to trade you arrows during the Ragnaros fight (true story) will just annoy me.

So, you're a functional individual now? Let's move on to...

Basic Level

"I killed Gehennas once! But I got outdamaged by a healing shaman..."

• Learn the 10-second rotation. Start an Aimed Shot immediately after an Auto Shot. Multishot when the cooldown is up. Wait for Aimed Shot to cooldown. Wait for an Autoshot to fire. Repeat. That's all there is to it, and in most fights, this will maximize your DPS. And yeah, toss in Feign Death and Rapid Fire whenever they're up.

• Stand at range. Several bosses have AOE damage spells, curses, debuffs, or fears. Many of these have a 30 or 40 yard range. With Hawkeye, you have a 41 yard range. Shoot from 40.9 yards. The RangeHelp mod helps greatly with this. http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-1549-1-rangehelp.html

• Know your specs. If you want to maximize raid DPS, the cookie-cutter spec is 5/31/15. If you are wearing blues and you're new to raiding, this is the simplest, highest-DPS build out there -- especially if you take into account the DPS boost that your party members get from Trueshot Aura. That said, 5/31/15 that is a very one-dimensional spec, and it doesn't solo or PvP well. Most raiding hunters actually use a 0/21/30 spec, myself included. Your DPS suffers a little comparatively, but you're vastly more effective in every non-raid situation. This is not to say you can't have some other kind of spec and still raid (except Beast Mastery) , but don't kid yourself that your raid DPS is going to top the charts. For further reading, Rainfalle has written a nice analysis of talents. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-hunter&t=913006&p=1&tmp=1#post913006

• Keep Hunter's Mark up. On bosses, every hunter in the raid is going to be focusing fire on a single target. Rank 4 Hunter's Mark is 110 RAP per hunter. With 5 or so hunters in the raid, the added DPS from a Hunter's Mark is on par with the highest ranks of Corruption or Shadow Word: Pain and costs a fraction of the mana. Do not let it drop.

Intermediate Level

I kited Dragonkin for Razorgore and all I got was this lousy trinket... maybe I shouldn't have meleed during this fight...

• Get resist gear, keep it repaired, and use if when necessary. As Median once told me, "100 dps is always greater then 0 dps." http://www.wowwiki.com/Mail_Resist_List

• Feign and Drink. During boss fights, you're better off drinking mage water rather than waiting for mana regen while autoshotting. Drinking is more effective than autoshotting on any fight that lasts over 2 minutes.

• Get +hit gear. For PvP encounters, you want 5% of hit gear and/or abilities. For instances, the generally agreed-upon number is 9%. That means that in addition to resist gear and DPS gear, you should have a set of Tranq Shot gear too. Get SimpleTranq, buy a Warmonger or get a couple Tarnished Elven Rings, and you probably won't miss as much.

• Learn when to use Arcane. In some fights, Aimed Shots are impossible to cast because of constant interruption by damage auras or AOEs. In these cases, Arcane Shot is better for you than Aimed. Again, you have to know the encounters. Sorren's Hunter Timers will add an Aimed Shot casting bar to your UI, which will help you get a feel for these interruptions. http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-2595-1-sorren39s-hunter-timers.html

• Learn when to use Aspect of the Wild. In ZG and AQ20, Nature Resist is helpful. In AQ40 it is absolutely necessary. Aspect of the Wild is 60 NR to everyone in your party, which translates to roughly 15% damage reduction all around. Use it.

Expert Level

How come they always invite you to ZG?

• Scattershot and Feign Death/Freeze Trap. Useless in MC but occasionally useful in BWL. Very useful in ZG and AQ20. You can lock up a mob for over a minute with good timing, the right talents, and a little luck. Especially in 20-man instances, CC is your friend. As a side note, General Rajaxx can be freeze trapped, believe it or not.

• Pet pull. In MC, there are 2 bosses that absolutely should be pet pulled. In BWL and AQ40, pet pulling is used on the Drake bosses. Learn Eyes of the Beast, and experiment with Stay/Follow and Aggressive/Passive. Also, get a feel for the range where your pet despawns.

• Learn when to use Serpent Sting. Serpent Sting is not a bad investment of mana. However, it is a terrible investment of a debuff slot. If you're fighting something Nature vulnerable in BWL, or the class leader calls for it, feel free to cast Serpent. If the mob's debuff bar is full, then don't. Serpent Sting is crappy compared to almost every other debuff.

• If you haven't learned to kite, learn to kite. It's not that useful in MC, but in BWL, there are at least 3 different mobs that you can and should be kiting while the rest of the raid kills things. Kiting is also a necessary skill for your epic bow quest. If you don't know how to kite, go to the Barrens (or equivalent) and try to kill a level 15 mob with Rank 1 Arcane only. If you can do that, then go to southern Dustwallow Marsh and kill Emberstrife. His cave is circular with a nice ramp to jump off of, he is just a tad bit slower than Cheetah, and no one ever goes there. It is perfect for kiting practice. By the way, if you're going to be kiting a lot, keep a set of the AB boots or put a Run Speed enchant on a spare pair of something or other.

Median Level and Beyond

Whoa. - Neo

• Know when to pull aggro and die. Once in a while, the $!@% hits the fan. A healer DCs in the middle of combat. A warlock gets a ZHC buffed Shadowbolt crit on a vulnerable target and gets instantly wtfbloodypulped by a pissed-off Wyrmguard. We have the 3rd highest AC of any class, and we are often in the best place to catch aggro. If something big and nasty is rampaging through your clothies, pull aggro with burst damage and Distracting, and enjoy your brief life as a tank. Even if you have Deterrence, most raid trash is going to kick your ass inside 20 seconds. But sometimes that's all the time the raid needs to get it together.

• Know how to pull aggro and live. Some trash mobs are Wingclippable. If one of them is loose pull aggro, Wingclip, and strafe. If you do it right, you'll still get hit when you're in range, but you'll be in range less than 10% of the time. Because of this, a kite-tanking hunter actually takes less damage than a tanking warrior. The downside is ... there ain't many Wingclippable mobs. And you shouldn't generally expect heals if you try this.

• Use your pet. Not in every fight, but talk to your class lead and figure out when and where you can use your little DoT. Sure, he'll die and it'll cost money. But guess what, raiding isn't cheap.

• Use Mana oils and Nightfin soup. Mana regen means more dps, and more DPS means faster raiding. You can get the +4 or +8 mana oils from relatively little cash outlay, and every little bit helps.

• Learn how to actually maximize your dps, taking into account the 5 second rule and weapon shot timer cycles. For a breakdown of "10 second rotations" for different weapons, look at http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=6798. Good Stuff.

End Note:

If you have any questions, you can ask your Hunter Class Leads. Never be afraid to ask. One bad hunter on a raid reflects poorly on all of us.