that sucks as a bug Paladin. I only ever have 2 pet skills on my bar. Growl and the highest damage I am using, right now it is bite.
When I added Dash I had no probs.
Guys - gotta keep the stuff coming. Here's the newest - excellent article - hope the rest of GWJ looks at it.
http://www.nuklearpower.com/hunter.php
To his credit, Leaping seems to understand this very well, and he uses the hunter when he sees fit the best of anyone I've seen in a group - ie, mark the mob that he will sheep, etc. Its always frustrating when people want the warrior to pull (at lower levels, I love to watch warriors run in, pull aggro of mob plus adds, and the party gets wiped...when a simple arrow could split the mobs easily.) Gents, especially non-hunters on BH - hope you read this, because I think using this strategy, plus the hard link one on the previous page, will enable us to, albeit more slowly, take on tougher raids with fewer GWJ only numbers.
I think the real problem lies not in people not understanding the role of a hunter, as per the article, but that fact that you have not always mature gamers, and the concept of standing back while the hunter runs up to pull a mob, is considered boring and downtime to them. Whereas to me, the thought of, for instance, doing what Bort and I did by pretty much soloing RFD with just us two, using a mixture of strategy with pets and pulls, was about as much fun as I've had in a game!
As for DASH (or DIVE) - love it - the fix above works well, get dash, put on your menu, then put cower over it - dash will be automatic now, which is a good thing - so its crappy you have to fix that, but it works easily.
Good luck hunters...
As for DASH (or DIVE) - love it - the fix above works well, get dash, put on your menu, then put cower over it - dash will be automatic now, which is a good thing - so its crappy you have to fix that, but it works easily.
The other option (and what I'm currently doing) is to replace Bite. I never ever take bite off auto-cast (why would I?) so having it permanently auto works fine. This leaves Dash on my taskbar so I can click it when I need my pet to chase someone down. Weird things still happen though. The other day my pet was unable to chase down a priest who was on foot despite using Dash. Really not sure how that's even possible (priest was running, not using fear or mind flay).
That article is full of some Warrior hate. I really disagree with two of his points and think he overlooks one huge point...
1. FD being resisted is a VERY VERY bad thing. To simply state only the Hunter will die is ignorant beyond words. If the mob aggro's out to the party now you're down a party member and the mob's are pissed.
2. His maligned Warrior/Mage Aggro/Sheep combo is one of the most effective aggro management techniques in the game. Why? Because Sheeping/Sapping/Seducing is damn effective and is meant to be. There's no reason for the mage not to sheep along with a hunter pull. He seems to be terrified that someone other than him may draw aggro by an additional action to the hunter pull. That's the risk you take. I could argue that the 30 seconds spent on an elaborate hunter pull/trap scenario is another 30 seconds against the instance popping or a patrol coming. There's up's and downs to everything.
Can the hunter pull very well? Yes. So can any other class with a ranged attack. We may not have the flashy, colorful attacks but we can pull. It depends on a given situation when a person wants to pull. Sometimes it's better for the hunter to pull, a warrior to charge, a rogue to sap, or warlock to mass fear... oh wait... that's never good. 
I have found that I prefer to use Bite and/or Disengage rather than Growl.
As long as Bite is kept current, it works like a decent taunt, I get damage for my pets focus spent and I can use the Growl slot for some other skill. I use Disengage for when Bite doesnt work and Ive decided I dont want to take any more hits for my pet.
It will be interesting when they do the pet revamping. I hope some/all pets do get a ranged attack.
Reaper, your bottom line is right on...there are different situations - you have two guys sitting there, why wait for the hunter to pull - I agree. Also, if you reread the article, he says once the hunter pulls, the mage will sheep that add and the warrior will charge to hold aggro - to me, this is just crowd control.
Where I see the hunter as best is in a dicey situation - for instance, in RFD that one night, some warrior (grin 
) kept running in, and we almost wiped 2-3 times with several deaths of party members in the back - whereas two hunters took down the whole instance through patience and planning.
My fav example is 3 equal elites - the warrior method is charge, hold one or two, mage sheeps one or two - I prefer the hunter pulls, one gets trapped in freeze trap, pet goes on one, others rip the third - then, sheep the frozen one when he thaws, rip the second one, then rip the third one - second way is much safer and conserves more mana for less downtime, and less risk.
I think the bias comes from the warrior mentality of 'charge' - I rarely get called upon in random groups to pull, and I'll say its frustrating when we die from an easy pull situation because of a rogue or warrior 'charge' - very frustrating. If the warrior can hold up, and let the mobs come to you, it works better, but warrior charges, imho, tend to be the largest cause of 'add pulls' that I've seen.
My bottom line, not every situation calls for pulling - by any means, but if you need to pull, you either use a hunter or mage, or you really are just using 'blunt force' trauma versus smart planning and tactics. I think a smart and balanced group of 5 that uses everyone smartly can equal a typical group of 8-10 in terms of what they can accomplish.
Aggro control in WoW really seems to be pretty flexible. Many people will swear there's only one safe way to do things, but I've seen plenty of different things work, it all depends on your group. I've been fighting recently in zul'farrak with either a 3 or 4 man group. The three man is my hunter, a shaman, and a priest. Zul'farrak trolls are in groups of 3 mid 40s elites. I mark the main target (casters first) and my pet charges. I follow with multi-shot at the same time the shaman chain lightnings. Pet keeps aggro on one, the other two charge. One is frozen. The priest then mind control's the third and we all kill the first one. Freeze wears off and we kill that one. Then we gang up on the last one. Works every time with minimal mana and hp drain, so long as we kill the third one quickly (it's hopelessly aggroed on the priest after mind control).
The 4 man group brings the addition of a mage. The only difference is that he polys instead of the priest mind controlling. Even easier. We've even done it with the priest, mage, and myself (no shaman). That gets much more mana intensive since nobody can even remotely tank, but it still works.
My point is simply that people need to get off the belief that there's a single formula that works best in every situation and that deviating from that will get everyone killed. If we had a warrior in our group I'd be fine with him pulling. Better aggro control and it doesn't make it any harder to do my job.
I'm with you, Pigpen, I guess I must have missed his crowd control spiel in the midst of his Zone of Ultimate Safety blathering.
The Warrior mentality of 'charge' is ultimately a WoW gameplay mechanic. Charge is my primary means of building rage. Without charge I'm left to Bloodthirst, Rage potions (bad idea every time), or generating rage through simple combat. None of these three options are particularly appealing to me as they all require time and mana from healers.
I'm not trying to argue against Hunters at all. I guess what I'm really on about is that there are a lot of bad hunters out there that can easily wipe a group in a instance. This is not inherently different from any other class having f*cktards playing it, it's just that a bad pet aggro always seems so much more spectacular in the mob it pulls.
I just love how they seem to imply that in a total horrednously bad pull that the hunter will be the only one to live, but then he goes on to mention the rogue...
um dude, vanish trumps feign death in almost any instance.
there have been several SM runs where the only 2 alive were me and the hunter
honestly though, rogues pulling is vastly superior to warriors pulling. I'd guess hunters are good pullers as well (never really had a chance to party as one yet)
Blizzard loves hunters so much that they have now taken some of the time they use not to finish pet skills, and used it to knowingly introduce a new crippling hunter bug in the next patch. Yes, we now will have our weapon speed added to the cooldown time of all Multishot, Arcane Shot, and Aimed Shot. See official notice here.
Something else about hunters' pulling ability. With Hawk Eye maxed, we get six more yards of range for our weapons.
Can someone explain in laymen's terms what this will mean for the hunters? Less DPS? Crippled? Will my char be useless?
It will reduce DPS since your cooldown time will be greatly extended. Cooldown will not just be the regular cooldown time, but the regular time plus your weapon speed. I use Arcane Shot all the time to get a little extra damage in, and that now will be significantly reduced. I'm using a Burnside Rifle of Agility now, and it has a speed of 2.50. I think my Arcane Shot has a six second cooldown time, which will now become 8.5 seconds due to the bug.
This is a pain in PvE, but liveable until the next patch. In PvP, it is disastrous. Blizzard already has created problems for hunters in PvP. They have officially stated that pets are part of the hunter and the dps they do is expected to be happening in balancing the damage output of a hunter. However, they have never finished the pet abilities/customization (notice all those unused training points you have for your pet?), so pets have none of the planned armor boosts, damage boosts, speed boosts, or resistances. You fight a mage, they sheep your pet immediately and there is no chance of resistance or reduction in the spell's duration. The dps of a dps class is commonly and easily crippled due to missing features.
Now the bug starts to really rear its ugly head. Hunters are a dps class, but only when we stand still at long range to use our regular Auto Shot. When is the last time you saw someone stand still in a PvP fight? Since we can't stand still, and have to constantly run away to maintain minimum weapon distance. If moving, the only shots we can use are Arcane Shot, Multi Shot, Concussive Shot, and Scatter Shot as ranged PvP attacks. With that limitation, a hunter's ranged PvP damage is already maybe 20% of what their PvE dps is. Now, with weapon speed added to the cooldown time, our attacking speed will be significantly reduced again - maybe an additional 30%? I haven't calculated it yet. The end result is that you will be doing maybe 15% of your normal dps when you are in PvP. We're screwed.
Damn. I'm checking out the official thread on the Blizz forums, it's amazing they would let this pass with 1/9th or so of the userbase completely pissed off. Why not add a bit to the other stats to balance it out until the new patch?
For the amount we pay each month, they should address issues that would want you to stop using their service. It's like paying for cable, and telling you that only PBS will be available for a few months - "suck it up".
It's a pretty horrendous customer service move on Blizzard's part, especially considering hunters are one of the most played classes in the game. Well, they used to be, I guess I don't know if that's still true.
What I think is interesting is you KNOW if the bug was subtracting weapon speed from cooldowns that it would be fixed before the patch. The "fix positive bugs now, negative bugs a few patches from now" mentality of Blizzard is driving me crazy.
Edit Edit: If they're going to let this go live, they should increase the damage of the effected abilities to maintain the same DPS. If your arcane shot was doing 115 every 6 seconds (19.16 DPS) then it should do 162 damage until they fix it (assuming median weapon speed of 2.5, 162/8.5 = 19 DPS).
Edit: I can neither spell nor form coherent sentences today. Yay!
Look at this way, the fact that they are letting this go live, means it's pretty much done, which means in all likelyhood Battlegrounds this Tuesday.
So I get to take my newly gimped hunter into the battlegrounds? Yay?
So I get to take my newly gimped hunter into the battlegrounds? Yay?
Suckerz! /shake /moon
So much for my hunter alt. With the new nerf, powerlvling this character will become difficult.
As a frost mage, I actually prefer to pull myself with poly (multiples) or frostbolt (singles). With a poly pull, the remaining critters come after me but the agro can be taken away with one hit from a warrior. I played an Enchanter in EQ, so I have a mental clock that tells me when poly is going to wear off - I often have it timed so well that right when the mob starts to emerge he gets sheeped. The main benefit with this is that the sheep is away from the party, so it will not be dispelled with an errant war stomp, thunderstomp, shammie totem, AE spell or some dumbass pickup group member.
With frostbolt, the warrior has more than enough time to gain agro on the slowed mob, and it allows other casters to dump in a spell right off the bat since the warrior will have so much time to gain lots of agro.
The only downsides here are against ranged mobs and casters, and casters I can either throw a quick imp. counterspell on or have the shaman interrupt. I haven't seen many ranged mobs in instances so that usually isn't an issue - in those rare cases I wouldn't mind either a warrior or a hunter pulling.
My guild is largely hunters. I thought they would like this post, So I tried to post it on our guild site.
I went back to get the url and post it and the page had been changed, it said that there will be NO new bugs for Hunters. This has ALWAYS been there. They say when it is fixed it will increase our DPS significantly.
My question is, why are we still waiting?
I was coming back to post about the change. The original post by the Blizzard rep talked about how this had been discussed with the devs, and everyone acknowledged the bug. Now we find out it has always been there. I'm having a hard time buying this, as it isn't something I've noticed in my climb to level 51. I think I will pick up a Mage Eye Blunderbuss and some grey trash rifle and experiment.
Can you link to where Devs are saying this? Because they're lying or woefully misinformed. Tons of people are playing the game with cooldown timer mods, and have checked on both Live and Test. On Test, cooldowns are significantly longer. Anyone with a stopwatch can figure this out, you don't even need a mod.
I'm pretty sure if it had "always" been this way, people switching between Hurricane and a Carapice Spine Crossbow would have noticed.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...
Cay editied his original post to direct everyone here.
The main benefit with this is that the sheep is away from the party, so it will not be dispelled with an errant war stomp, thunderstomp, shammie totem, AE spell or some dumbass pickup group member.
Ok, ok, ok. I'll be more careful. Yeesh.
They're definately mistaken about the new bug (or rather their belief that it's not new). One of their own in-house testers even confirmed it. Why? Because Hortus said so! And honestly, are you going to believe a dev post that's spouting generalities with no evidence, or a dev post that says "i've been to test server, tested it, and this is how it is?"
*sigh*
Wow!
Looks like they are goign to fix before the patch is released!
Okay, this really is going into general theorycrafting here. If you would like to pick my brain some more you are welcome to, but you should probably necro the hunter specific thread so that we don't bore those who are here to discuss the new hotness. :D
Done and done. (Hey, admins! You really should put a lock on these coffins!)
Anyway ...
I got the wolf out last night. Turns out she's level 77, so there wasn't any point in ditching her and finding something else. (It's Rema, the den mother from Blade's Edge Mountains.)
So we headed out to Dun Niffeldem to do the Hodir dailies ... and aggro is still an issue with her. First, her spec is off -- too much stamina, not enough DPS. (I'll fix that tonight.) Plus I checked the combat log - just as you suspected, Zero, she was missing a lot. Either her attacks were dodged, or she landed merely a glancing blow. Misdirect helped, but it wasn't as much of a sure thing as it is with my bear. If I didn't Misdirect, things would come running at me pretty quickly. The one consolation is that my RAP is so jacked up (3,300 with Dragonhawk and some extra Intel) that things died before they got to me. I still have to be on my proverbial toes, but it's more manageable now.
After 3.1, the wolf ability will always be useful to you. ...
That's a good point. I went back and read the 3.1 notes about how a wolf's AP will stack with other buffs (which is good, because I almost always group with at least one pally) even though the buff will be useful only to me.
And thanks for the tip about Mangle working with Rake -- our tank is now a feral druid, and she's probably appreciate the extra damage. Does Mangle also get a boost from Serpant Sting?
Do you have any suggestions for a PvP pet? I sometimes use an owl (because of Disarm), and some folks swear by Hyena (because of the tendon rip when they're trying to flee.)
she was missing a lot. Either her attacks were dodged, or she landed merely a glancing blow.
Not sure if this was already covered, but I recently listened to a podcast(or read a blog, they blur together these days) explaining how your Hit percent gets applied to your pet - basically, any fraction of a whole percent gets truncated, not rounded. So, all your bonus ToHit gets turned into a percent BEFORE being applied to your pet. So if your +Hit gear is going to give you +5.9% Hit to your base, your pet is only going to get +5%.
If your pet is same level as you, that's usually not a HUGE issue, but something to consider. On the other hand, when your pet is 3 levels below you and you're tackling same-level mobs, not only is your pet's Hit % less than yours due to math, they're also trying to hit above-level mobs.
Disclaimer: My hunter is only level 33, but I have listened to every BRK podcast, read a buttload of hit blog, and watched several of his videos. I'm no expert, but I'm not totally clueless. Hope this helps.
It does help, Ducki, thanks. I normally run about 110 Hit and have 3/3 in Focused Aim, which means I'm about 5 percent of the 8 percent you need to be hit-capped. I've got a neck piece and food that will put Hit at about 150 or 160 or so. I'll see if that makes a difference. Definitely can't hurt.
Like I said in the early thread, I'm a MM hunter, which means my pet is essentially a big furry aggro magnet. When he's not doing any damage, that's a problem.
How did you spec your baby hunter?
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