Sigh. Just a quick series of scattered thoughts for you today.
World of Warcraft is feeling a bit chaotic at the moment, because many different new things are causing ‘Game experience may change during online play’ syndrome.
For one thing, I did finally reach 70 with my Hunter… and my ‘just for fun’ hunter alt I just soloed with is now seeing almost as much action as my main. Thanks to some nice synergy with another player, he wants Cenarion rep while I want some Beast Lord gear from Steamvaults. This has led me to run Steamvaults more on my Hunter this weekend than I think I ever did on my Druid.
Which would be fine, if I had ever grouped with anyone on my hunter before, ever. Or intended to.
Thanks to BRK and his ‘Gearing up for Kara’, and my Wowhead scanning and plotting, and boredom and extra cash, my Hunter is actually geared well enough to be a viable team player…. lacking only, oh, I dunno… some player skills, maybe?
However, also thanks to BRK, I am not completely ignorant of basic Hunter skills… I am just unpractised in them. Chain Trapping, Kiting, pullshot macros… I may not be able to write a symphony, but I can hum the tune.
So I had some chaotic fun getting my act together. You’ll be happy to know that the most grevious errors a hunter can make, such as leaving a pet on growl and sending him after a tanks’ target, or using Scatter Shot into a Crowd Controlled group, were not made. There WAS this one time where the Warlock had some cthulhu squidboy all up in his face, and I sent Moonclaw in and activated Growl to pull it off, and then I MIGHT have forgotten to take Growl off again on the next pull, but hey, shit happens. Cry me a river, liberal. (That was a joke/movie quote, there. Big Bear points for naming where it came from.)
I had the most fun learning ‘on the job’ how to Chain Trap. I had read BRK’s posts on it avidly months ago, and visualized what he descibed, but never actually did it. Yes, that’s right, I never practised it.
But in practise, it didn’t take long before I was dropping my trap in prep for the pull, having my cooldown be up, using the pullshot macro to grab my mob and lock him down, get my pet on the main tanks’ target, with Hunter’s Mark overhead, move my happy butt way on the other side and into a safe zone and dropping a second trap, then applying sustained ranged DPS with Aimed Shot and Kill Commands (which seems to be constantly up, BTW… my Hunters gear ain’t that good, so why the hell am I always critting? WTF?) and as soon as my mob breaks trap, whammo, back he is in da trap… adn I’m scampering my butt back where I came, changing Moonclaws target and sending him back into the fray and reapplying a Hunters Mark and then looking at my Trap cooldown and swearing.
There were a couple times, during the last pulls on our second Steamvaults run just before the final boss (the big ass room with all the water tanks) that I managed to get enough space to triple trap in a chain… but other than that it was trap once, trap twice, cooldown not up and beastie in my face. Annoying. Time for more research on BRKs site.
I’d like to say that, as far as playstyles are concerned…. playing my Tank feels like being a surgeon, or perhaps a ballet, where each move is synchronised, precisely made and instinctive. Each attack or movement follows naturally from the one before, reacting to the enemies’ actions. Rage at so-and-so, Threat at so-and-so, mob is here, other mob is there, that one is CCed and has been for x amount of time, I do THIS. Booya!
It all just flows naturally. The fun is in making it smooth. And when shit breaks down or someone dies or pulls too much aggro and gets one shotted, that is when you get to have REAL fun as you improvise, adapt and overcome.
I’m sure the vast majority of it is unfamiliarity in a group setting, but playing the Hunter feels chaotic, clumsy and confusing. I’m running around keeping track of my trapped mob and positioning myself, and realize that my pet is beside me instead of on a target because his target is dead, so he came back to me. He’s patiently waiting on orders, and I’m like… “Weren’t you supposed to be clawing faces? Go get ‘em, and let me alone! Can’t you see I’m trapping here? This is SRS BSNS!”
Oh yeah… and biggest goofs I made while learning this stuff?
- #1 – Put pet on Passive, so he doesn’t attack the mob I shot that got one hit in before getting trapped, breaking my trap. damn it.
- #2 – Take Growl off, ALWAYS. If you put it on to save a squishie, ALWAYS take it back off.
- #3 – The pullshot macro is critical… GOT to stop shooting before the damn mob hits the trap.
On to other things… I did do a bit of playing on my Druid. Enough to run several Heroics, including Blood Furnace. Where, I might add, I simultaneously got enough Badges to get Slikks’ Cloak of Placation, and also guess what dropped? That’s right… Mantle of Shadowy Embrace. As far as I can see, except for Idol of Terror, all of my gear is as good as I can reasonably get it without tons of Badges, and Karazhan or higher Raiding. Wow, and it only took me about 8 months to get it that way! Wahoo! LOL.
The most frustrating thing right now, is I can’t get Antiarcs’ Signature Generator to work at all, and haven’t for the last week, so I can’t update my picture up there.
You’ll have to just take my word for it… my stats with NO buffs (including Mark of the Wild) is 27100 armor, 13500 Health, 39.97% Dodge and 421 Defense. And that Defense is with zero Enduring Talasite. So, maybe I’m not ready for running with the big boys, but I got Karazhan just fine.
Oh yeah, and by all means, if you want to chuckle, knowledgeable Hunters be my guest and Armory my Hunter… check out his gear, and then let me know what, besides the Beast Lord armor pieces that I AM running instances to get, I could do to upgrade. Right now, I’m looking at running to get Beast Lord pieces, maybe the Sonic Spear from Shadow Labs, and I’d have more jewels but I am dead broke… enchants and Arcane Tomes to upgrade my new Shoulders wiped me out. Plus mats for the Felstalker armor that I had a friend in the guild make for me. As fast as the cash comes in… poof! It’s vanished!
I do so love being able to make my own Adamantite Shells… and I loves me the 24 slot Ammo Pouch!
Take care, and have fun you-all!
Gratz on the Mantle BBB ^.^
FYi… I’m still trying to figure out how the hell you have so much gorram dodge…
Sasha needs dodge T.T
And those shoulders. The salad bowls… look awful. Just… ick XD
~<3 Cay
Heya BBB,
If you keep breaking your own traps (don’t worry – we’ve all done it while learning!), take a look at my post here – this is how I manage targets to make trapping much easier.
(end shameless plug of own blog *chuckle*)
Hunters are fun, yeah? Mine was created to be my “bank guy” originally, until I took him out for a bit to “have a laugh”… :)
Thanks Stephi… as far as the dodge, it might be because I weight my gems towards Agi/Stam instead of just flat Stam.
I need to remember to log out with bear gear equipped.
Jabari, I checked out your blog article, and I have to say that I like the sound of it… I think that I’m going to try a variation of yours and BRKs methods.
Namely, I like having my assigned trap target be the focus, and have Arcane Shot/Distracting Shot with stopcasting on a macro with focus as the target, because I can obviously see the benefits of being able to pull the guy off anyone if a trap breaks.
I like the idea that I get assigned my square, I use macro to make him my focus, I set my trap, adn then I actually target the tanks’ kill target.. the skull. And when the tank pulls aggro on the mobs, I can whack my pull shot macro to get my mob to me… and then hit my petattack/hunters mark macro and CHOOSE to start shooting when I judge the tank has enough aggro.
And I can keep my TARGET on whoever the tank is going after next, and keep using the petattack macro to keep the pet on the right mob without letting him waste time coming back to me, but at the same time keep control on my designated pull target with that pullshot macro.
All in all, thank you very much Jabari. Between you and BRK, I feel like I got lots to play with this week.
My wife loves having her petattack function bound to a mouseover macro on the middle click button. Really useful for speeding up targeting in multi-mob pulls.
Yup – adding a stopcasting there certainly doesn’t hurt anything. I usually send pet first and wait until the “turkey” gets into the mix and then fire away at it (so there is a slight delay at the start, but my pet is engaged at least). The big part is using the focus, so you don’t have any of the messy target switching.
Thats funny, I’m a feral druid with a Hunter as an alt. Must be we think the same? any way, it is strange to go from a tank to a ranged attacker with a pet to control as well. Completely different ways of thinking from a tank, but still similar to a druids way of thinking as well. Druids can be tank, dps or ranged attacker. we don’t have the added tasks of having a pet but we can do some CC.
Congratz on the Mantle. I need to get to Heroics, but time seems to be against me. Just getting some of my daily PVP quest and daily quests done is hard enough right now.
Conquernfool.
Heh, another Feral Druid with a Hunter alt here XD.
Have you got Karthas’ (sp?) Hunter Timers add-on yet? It makes chain trapping supereasy by seeing exactly when your trap is due to break. It gives you time to target, cast concussive shot, which gives you a few more seconds grace (along with your distance across the room) for your cooldown to be up for the next trap.
I really enjoy playing my hunter, I actually find it quite zen. Instead of my bear button-mashing, I’m carefully and calmly weaving my specials with my auto (no, I don’t macro that).
First time I went into Kara, I’d been PVPing most recently, and I was running by that elite group you bypass into to Moroes’ room when I suddenly realised my pet was on aggressive! lol – huntard.
One thing to be careful of these days in Kara tho is the way pets try to get behind mobs – if there’s a ramp/wall, they’ll go dashing off at lightspeed in the complete opposite direction to try to get behind if they can’t get there normally. We had one pet fetch uncleared mobs from 4 rooms away one time. So as a tank – pull your mobs away from walls, or even some ramps. As a hunter – watch for those leeroy-kitty dashes.
I am the exact opposite to you. I am a hunter main with a feral druid alt, and I find that Feral tanking is complete chaos. Especially when I get multiple mobs and the dps manage to pull the kill target of me whilst I’m still trying to gain aggro on the second and third. I’m getting better tho. Hunter, on the other hand, I find chilled and relaxed. Just gotta worry about one or two targets at a time, nice and easy.
If you have any interest in the view from a survival hunter, I shall shamelessly plug my blog.
Anyway, keep up the good work, your blog is a favourite of mine.