On Hunters and Huntards

hunters are a subject that is near and dear to my heart. I've played a few of them over the years and currently raid with my 41/20 BM hunter, Harl. when most people think of hunters, "pew pew" is what first comes to mind ("huntards" is a close second, I'm sure). while dishing out MQSRD (Massive Quantities of Sustained, Ranged DPS, as BRK likes to call it) is indeed our primary role, we bring a lot of other useful stuff to the party: crowd control (traps, pet off-tank, scare beast, kiting), agro control (misdirection, distracting shot, feign death), tactical intel (tracking, stealth detection), squishy protection (pet taunt, intimidation, distracting shot, mail armor), group buffs (ferocious inspiration, trueshot aura, expose weakness) and even potential wipe protection (feign death + jumper cables ftw!). a hunter that knows all this, that really lives and breaths it, can be a huge asset to any party or raid.

as with any class, however, there are good hunters and not so good hunters. the class attracts players of all kinds, from those who want to kick ass and take names in any scenario (e.g., Harl) to those who want to live out their fantasy of being yet another Legolas clone running around putting arrows in anything and everything. I think partly due to the strong mythology associated with the hunter class (bow-wielding elves from gods know how many fantasy stories, rangers from D&D, tolkein, etc.) and also in good part due to the ease with which one can successfully level a hunter (you can easily solo all the way to 70 without learning how to use even half of the abilities of the class), the hunter community as a whole includes an above average number of... less skilled members, shall we say.

there are a few key skills and characteristics that make the good hunters stand out from the rest. BRK covers all this in far more detail than I'm going to go into, so if you want more info on any of the topics listed here, head over to his blog and dig around.

Chain Trapping

chain trapping means keeping a mob constantly frozen and out of the battle until your party is prepared to deal with it. to do this well, you have to be aware of your lay trap cooldown, you have to be aware of when your trap's going to expire, you have to be aware of where your trap is relative to the mob's position, your position and the expected location of the main fight (don't want stray AOE to pop your trap), you have to be able to run your mob into your new trap each time the old one expires and on top of all that, you have to be dishing out MQSRD on the main target. is it rocket science? not really. is it easy? hell, no. if you want to have any hope of running heroics and raid instances, though, you better know how to do it.

Pulling

any class can pull to start a fight, but hunters excel at it. we can misdirect pull, pet pull, single-target pull, silencing shot pull (for those pesky caster mobs) and trap pull (lay a trap in the path of a pat), just off the top of my head. what really makes us shine, though, is that if the pull goes bad we simply feign death and everything resets. no deaths, no wipes, no loud cursing in vent. get up, dust yourself off and try again. no other class offers that. now, granted things can still go wrong. feign death can be resisted, maybe the priest panics and drops heal on you when he sees 8 mobs rushing in to eat your face and thereby draws agro, whatever. and yes, there are some pulls where having someone else do it (shackle pull, sheep pull, etc) makes more sense. those exceptions and Murphy's Law aside, however, pulling is a hunter's job.

Pet Management

a hunter's pet is one of the defining characteristics of the class. it accounts for 10-35% of a hunter's overall DPS, can act as a tank and/or additional dps, can act as a decoy, can rescue other party members when things go bad, can act as a scout, can buff both the hunter and the party (BM hunter pets, anyway) and can even attack when the hunter himself is out of commission (e.g, stunned by a rogue). why, oh why would any hunter ever throw all this away? and yet, it's not uncommon to see hunters running around with no pet at their side, especially in instances.

a hunter without a pet is gimped, no matter what spec he is. there's no excuse for not having your pet out and active. there's also no excuse for not being fully aware of where your pet is and what it's doing at all times. pets in PVE should always, always, always be set to passive. not defensive, definitely not aggressive, always on passive. this makes the hunter completely responsible for everything the pet does. that means telling it who to attack when, remembering to turn off growl when you're working with a tank, managing any special abilities it has (charge, intimidation, fire breath) and keeping it alive (mend pet really is a no-brainer these days). and that doesn't mean you just leave it standing by your side the whole time. your pet is as much a part of you as your ranged weapon is; use it.

Kiting

back before Burning Crusade came out, one of the measures of a good hunter was the ability to kite Drakk. the success of an entire 10-man raid group was dependent on one lonely hunter's ability to drag a raid boss halfway through the instance without losing agro (had to pop him every now and again to keep him interested in the chase), getting close enough to get hit (had to stay 30 yards away or get roasted) or getting lost and winding up in a dead end while the rest of the raid dealt with Drakk's guards. not many hunters did it well and those that did were in high demand (UBRS was the shit, back then).

kiting is one of the harder skills to master as a hunter because unlike a lot of WoW, it requires pretty good reflexes and coordination. you really need to master the jump shot if you want to be an expert kiter. you also have to be aware enough of your surroundings to avoid running into obstacles, other mobs, off cliffs, etc. all while also being aware of where your kited mob is and dumping as much damage into him on the run as you can.

this is easily my weakest skill as a hunter, but do not underestimate just how important it can be. case in point: during a recent Illhoof attempt in kara things went sour and by the time we got Illhoof down the entire raid was dead except for me and an out-of-mana pally healer. Kil'rek spawned just as Illhoof ate dirt and the only thing that stood between success and a wipe was whether I could kite him around the room until we wore him down. it was an ugly (on my part; the pally rocked!), tense, 3 minute ordeal but we finally got him. if I'd just held my ground and tried to shoot him, it would have been a wipe in about 10 seconds. needless to say, I went out and did a good bit of kiting practice after that experience ;)

Agro Management

hunters have some of the best agro management abilities in the game. we can selectively give agro to another party member (misdirection), we can build agro quickly to take it away from others (distracting shot, burst DPS) and we can dump our own agro (disengage, feign death). using these tools a good hunter is a master of the agro table. with great power, however, comes great responsibility. good hunters *do not* pull agro from the tank (this includes their pets, when soloing), they *do not* shed agro onto squishies, they *do* pull agro off squishies and they *do* control lose mobs until a tank can pick them up or cc can be established.

Situational Awareness

this one covers a lot of ground, but it really separates the good from the merely average (or the truly bad *shudder*) hunters. a good hunter is aware of what's going on around her at all times. she knows where the party members are, where the mobs are, which targets are for what (kill, off-tank, cc), when her trap's about the expire and how long she has on her trap cooldown, where she is on the agro table relative to everyone else, where her pet is and who's face he's eating and where that pat that's due back in a couple minutes is (tracking ftw!). in the midst of all this, of course, she's serving up all the MQSRD she's physically able to which means she's also watching her shot cooldowns, her sting timers, her trinket cooldowns, her special ability cooldowns, etc.

since she's a ranged attacker, the hunter is in an ideal position to keep an eye on the entire fight and react to unexpected changes. mob breaks CC early and the tank can't see it? send in the pet with a mend pet already cooking to hold it until the tank gets there. mob eating the healer's face? distracting shot to pull agro off the squishie. mob running away? concussive shot to keep it from getting too far too fast. unexcepted add? smack it and walk it into a trap until the party's ready to deal with it. these are the sorts of actions that make players rethink the Huntard stereotype.

all of the skills mentioned here are what make up a good hunter. there's one characteristic that I didn't mention, however, and it's arguably more important than all the rest. that characteristic is the ability and *drive* to learn how to be a better hunter. all of us hunters start off as noobs, but some of us work hard to grow out of it.