Updating the Sticky - ProgressFollow

In no particular order:

Add Snake Trap. Added to the tooltip in Patch 2.1.0.
Is this accurate? It's been a long time passed since 10th level and I soloed the quests, but I have has assistance taming Beasts many times since then. Is this a special restriction of the quest?

Another thing which could be added to the "Below level 20:" portion of the Pet taming guide. I've used both Really Sticky Glue and Slumber Sand to assist in taming at low levels. The quests for both of these items is available under 10th level. Really Sticky Glue lasts up to 10 seconds, Slumber Sand up to 20 seconds.

1st: Bump. Don't let the efforts die *g*

2nd: Sorry for the late updates, was a little busy the last days.

3rd: current status...

@Kompera:
Added snake trap; taming is indeed depending on aggro. You can get help, but as soon as you loose aggro, taming breaks. So best advice is to do it alone, it is very much manageable. I also will not include those really sticky glue and slumber sand. I believe we can manage without that and it makes things a little complicated.

@Azuarc: Have adressed your concerns and edited the posts. Also included your MM and SV talent description. Thanks again for the input.

Updated the 2nd and 3rd post, so everything until here is included (or I have forgot it *g*).

Interesting. I'm not sure I believe that this is accurate, as when I tried to tame Trachela I failed twice. Trachela is immune to Freezing Trap and Scare Beast, and may have a knockdown attack that breaks the Taming channel, but I'm not positive on that last. But I succeeded with a fellow Hunter holding aggro with his Pet. Or at least that's my memory of it. My Hunter guildy was there assisting me, and my memory says that his Pet had the aggro while I tamed, but I was more interested in taming Trachela and wasn't caring so much about who had aggro as long as I was successful.

I'll try another tame or two to be sure I've got the facts straight.

My silencing shot is permanently on cooldown. I think it'll be a long time before I spec marks again.



News to me. Why does it still have a timer then?



Is this based on any empirical evidence, or just your gut feelings? I don't think I've ever heard anyone actually recommend a gorilla to others before.



The question was "Why am I *NOW* limited..." because we weren't always. You used to be able to train a cat with bite, claw, growl, cower, and dash. Versatility and variation are important, but this isn't Pokemon. There are only 6-7 possible choices. Some Pokemon can learn 30+ different skills, so in that game, it's a genuine balance factor.



I almost never use Concussive Shot to begin with. Having a 20% chance to interrupt a spellcast as a desperation move isn't too likely to change that.



It's more of a raid talent. In a solo or even group setting, it doesn't get a ton of benefit compared to Trueshot Aura.



What you say is true, and it is how I use it, but honestly I don't need to. And when I crit on an aimed, the 3 seconds I'm not shooting mean very little. The truth is, if it were a late talent, with no side benefit of taking it (like leading to Mortal Shots,) you probably wouldn't find it that essential.



PvP talent.



Funny thing is those guys never seem to even notice Expose Weakness, though it's adding more AP when it's up.


Anyway, your points are well-taken. I'll let Mulgrin decide how he wants to handle them. Alternate viewpoints are always a good thing, especially when I just kinda threw up the marks and surv ratings based on my opinion alone.

Heh, I'm not blaming people for going BM, I've been getting around to leveling one on the side, but I'm just passionate about MM. I've been finding Silence shot useful for when Im dealing with a large group of mobs that have one or more healers in them. Silence the healer, pull the mob, kill the healer, deal with everything else quickly. I suppose ultimatly it matters more on who your partied with and how you use it more than anything else.

On the subject of FD, A friend of mine pointed something out to me thats been a dead giveaway in PvP and has been causing me more deaths than anything else apparrently. Bodies dont have buffs. Is there any way I could make a macro to turn off everything I'm buffed with when I use FD to make it more convincing?

Gorilla; I dont have any efidence, actually, I dotn have fancy numbers to show off to people describing why its better or worse than anyone eles pet, but I just got tired of using cats all the time and wanted to see what the other tameble pets had to offer. Ultimatly, despite being MM and with the new changes to Mend Pet, my gorilla frequently acts as an off tank to trash mobs and can buy the party extra time if someone slips up and the main tank dies. Thunderstomp is, honestly, not that great at breaking spells when its on a 60 second cooldown and spellcasters can just whip out whatever it was they were doing after the interrupt, but its a great way to grab a lot of threat quickly, especially when Im doing pet pulls and I need all the aggro on myself or the pet and/or tank to save the healers a little more time.

In the long run, Gorillas have high HP, high armor but low DPS as far as I can tell. Pretty good in my mind for instances and a little crowd control when in a tight spot, but the only PvP situation I've found he has a great impact in has been being stuck on defense at the bridge in AV. After one or two runs of my gorilla rushing through the offensive force in AV and doing his little AoE in the middle of a group of healers/mages, they tend to start focusing on killing the poor thing before me. Every other PvP situation he's little more than a visual distraction and nuisance.

I will say since about two patches ago, I went from being the only gorilla user to suddenly seeing a lot mroe of them from lvl 43 (when you can tame them in STV) and onwards. The only major complaint and drawback I find with the gorilla is there's no Rank 4 of thudnerstomp. There arent any gorillas in Outlands at all, which I think is a shame considering all the other animals they've got grouped up in Netherstorm. *Shrug*

Four Active Abilities;
Okay, so I didnt play long enough to know about the 6-7 skills, but I still belive its part of the 'balence' thing. I think ultimatly I'd have to find out about how often Cower is used on peoples pets these days to really try and make an informed response, as when I picked up the game it was being downplayed as a useless skill and a waste of space. On the other hand, it could be an attempt to keep pets from getting too overpowered and letting hunters have the game engine do all the work for them (Like a friend of mine who used to sit there and cap all the WSG charts every game by placing a bright pink forest stalker in the tunnle and let it solo people while he sat there and read a book, shadowmelded in a bush).

Improved Stings;
Yes, I'm going to touch on this again. Mostly because outside of keeping a rogue from cloaking again, I dont find stings useful in PvP at all. It was a nice effect in the lower level battlegrounds and when I was getting ambushed by equal levels in, say ashenvale (rare, its mostly 65+ attacking the towns these days), but when your facing off with a player that actually knows what he's doing, stings really arent going to be much more than a waste of time and cooldown that could be used for something else.

Further perspective; The only mobs I've found that consistantly resist my poison shots are elementals. Very few bosses have resisted my stings, and they're nice counters for the bosses that like to HoT themselves during fights or are immune to my stuns and silence attempts. The only drawback is a hunter whos using the sting on trash mobs has to be aware that you cant put a poisoned mob in an ice cube or the damage will let it break free immediatly.

Ultimatly its still going to be just a matter of personal opinion, but I have a beleif that if it was completely useless, it woudlnt be in the talent tree at all.

Raid Hunter;
Actually, I'd like to know more about this. I need to spend more time looking through the forums but so far it mostly seems to be personal experinces and viewpoints in the normal instance/BG/farming discussions. I've been running my guild and a few other guilds through ZG for the sake of practicing teamwork and support so we have a better idea how to work together and respond to eachothers needs when we get into Kara and beyond, so I have had my hands full with being the raid Leader rather than just another hunter.

Do other hunters get stuck with the old 'point and shoot' routine? How effective is trapping crowd control in the BC raids? Why are Crosolisks banned from so many raid groups? Do other raid members even pay attention when Im talking about what Im tracking on the radar?

I suppose Im going to be stuck on trial and error for these questions in the long run. I like to think of MM hunter as a scalpel, cutting away at the offenses weak points more than anything else.

Edited, Jul 23rd 2007 1:59pm by TheLetterD

FD will not trick most players in PvP.
It is not only buffs. You cannot target an already dead player as far as I know. At least when trying to attack a dead player, I get the message "Target is dead" or something like that. On a feigned hunter I simply shot arrows, so that won't work very well *g*.



Never tried a Gorilla. However they are interesting looking pets and few hunters have one. That might be the reason why so many have one.
As for DPS pets, scorpids are currently highest dps pet due to the extremely good scaling of scorpid poison.
There are other pets doing good dps. Those are mainly wind serpents, ravagers and cats.
But as long as you do not try to max your dps to the last point of damage all pets will do fine.


Must have been really bad players who loose against a pet. However one never would top the charts by using only his pet and doing nothing else.


1) Elementals usually are immune against poisons. So your serpent sting will have no effect.
2) In PvP stings are sometimes useful, but not essential, and they can mess up crowd control (like mage trying to sheep a stinged mob)
3) To counter a hot on a boss, you (or your group) either silence/stun the mob beforehand, or you just do damage to him. You do not have to match a hot with a dot. You can simply cover the hot with damage *g*.


Umm, improved stings actually is completely useless. It is not the only example of a useless talent however. Go and visit the priest forums and ask them about useless talents. I'm sure every class has some utter crap talents.
Hunters have improved aspect of the monkey which is next to useless. We also have improved stings...



Doing raids is a rather great experience (I really enjoy it). If you look around here you will find quite many like raiding and share with some of their experiences.


Crowd control is not an essential for hunters. On some encounters you may do it, but mostly there are other means of crowd control available, and to be honest, crowd control is not that essential for the early raid instances (and unfortunately I do know next to nothing about the higher raid instances).
And no, most players do not want to hear about what you track.
Normally you move from group to group and fight in "secure" areas where you will not draw extra groups into the fight (as that is almost always a wipe). In tight areas, someone coordinates when the group moves, in other situations there is someone responsible for pulling. That one announces incomming groups and stuff, but there is no need to inform the whole raid about roaming mobs.



I generally view hunters as a great DD class with a lot of potential for kiting/crowd control and other supporting abilities.
In raids they are a deadly DD who can sustain there damage a very long time. Not the top notch dps, but still they have the best abilities to control hate and thus can be excellent in hate sensitive fights.

I'll be happy to announce that the 1st step of updating the sticky has been done.

All parts of the old sticky have been reviewed and updated.
You can view the results in the first four posts of this thread.

So please review the whole thing (or any part you are interested in) and check if for errors.

I'll do my best to remove those errors from the texts.

In the next step I want to rearrange some questions and want to add some sort of table of contents with links to the different parts.

After that I'll repost the whole thing in the new format. If you all like it, we can then make it our new sticky.

So please review and give me your feedback.

Edited, Jul 25th 2007 3:34pm by Mulgrin

That would depend on what sort of purpose most people are going to look to the guide for, wouldn't it? Since we can't assume that "EVERY QUESTION" asked is going to be, "What build gives me the most raw DPS?" you shouldn't dismiss these alternates builds right off the bat.

I'll admit that the BM/SV build isn't the 100% focus on DPS that many people can't see past, but it still provides very significant DPS and a wider utility in both solo and grouping. In other words, it's still very effective without becoming a monotonous shot cycle. It's actually an all-around effective build, good at solo, grouping, PvP, and dueling. Cohesion is far from an issue in such a build, since the talents actually sync quite well with one another.

I agree. I also play a BM/SV build. I thought it may be a little challenging but once I started it I realized it makes my life a whole lot easier.

I am not going the 41/0/20 but instead 45/0/16 or something like that. I find it more fun that my BM/MM build I was working with.

While I wouldn't recommend it to people who are mainstream "DPS" oriented only I would say this build does have its merit.

Just my 2 cents.

The question here becomes "what is the mainstream?"

If raiding Hunters are the mainstream, then suggesting BM/mm builds has the most value. But a great majority of the player base will never see the inside of Gruul's lair. That's the point at which Hunter CC skills and Talents become less valuable, or even useless as the mobs are CC immune. Before then, working on Kara and 5 person Heroics, CC skills are not only desirable but I would argue that they are essential to the value a Hunter brings to such an Instance. And the "before then" play field is very broad and includes a very large amount of Hunters. This is the very definition of 'mainstream'.

With a 41/8/12 Talent build and 2 pieces of Beast Lord I am highly capable in the CC arena. And this is completely without IAotM or any other 'melee' Talent. I have items for both slots in which I wear Beast Lord pieces which are 'better' overall for my DPS, but the 2 piece set bonus is very valuable to me, and worth a little loss of DPS.

If I was only interested in bringing massive DPS to the table, I would respec to BM/mm, but right now my raid and Instance partners need my CC abilities, and so I remain at my current spec happily.

To clarify: I didn't have a single point in the "omg mellei rox" talents that seem to come with half the Melee Hunter builds. Hawk Eye, Slaying, various Trap talents and Deterrence for those sticky spots.

The reason it should be considered a viable alternative for any level 70 is that it provides utility and safety. You will be an unstoppable trapper, and your pet will be nigh immortal. In instances you have all the dps tools of a Beastmaster, but you won't be doing quite as much as a BM/mm build. But you have utility to make up for it. You don't have quite as much utility as a pure Surv build. But you have all the lovely BM talents to make up for it.

It is a good build for those who aren't so damned focused on the Damage Meters. Hunters are so much more than DPS.

It should be mandatory for a Hunter to play with all variations of talents. Playing with a BM/Surv build will allow you to do so much NO OTHER BUILD can do. So go "mainstream" in this sticky if you want. But you are neglecting half the class if you don't see a BM/Surv build as viable.

I agree with North. Before I went BM/SV I didn't even consider SV a good match with BM. It seems to be neglected as far as viable in the mainstream.

I switched up to BM/SV and was suprized at how good it was. I don't pull mobs off my pet anymore, I still kill mobs almost as fast as I did before. I have the Imp traps, and to top all this off I survive a whole lot better than I did before, specially when entrapment Procs while I am trying to flee.

I am just trying to say that the people who are always trying to stay with the fad will never consider this even viable option unless it is put up as something that is.

Basically we should show it to them and let them know the ups and downs to it.

I may not make much sense but I know what I am trying to say =P

Please hear me out on this.

Also commenting about the people who want to be top of DPS meters... I am glad I don't usually group with those people. The ones I have grouped with always randomly pop their DPS Stats and I am like... STFU N00b. Wait till the end of the instance to show that crap.

The Hunters in the group that try to top mages and rogues don't seem to ever try to save the healer.

I changed someones views on hunters because I always kept my eye on her and laid traps next to her every time it was up and the other one was either used or timed out.

It's the little stuff that gets the apreciation from the healer that makes them want to group with ya, and I think the BM/SV brings that to a more firm stand.