Grouping with Huntards! Follow

Why come here and complain about it? Do you not think that maybe, just maybe, we hear it all the time? Just a tip for you: Huntards do not come here. If they did, they wouldn't be Huntards anymore. You're preaching to the converted.

Tentatively, my first ever post (I've been paying attention, quietly...):

I walked out of a BRD group yesterday, after a barrage of whispered abuse for meleeing a mob with my hunter - rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise hunters. Sometimes, a mob will get through to melee - sometimes there's nowhere to go to get range. In this instance (no pun intended) that was very much the case - our warrior was afk and we were closely surrounded by mobs we couldnt afford to aggro. I already knew I was likely to generate more threat than the remaining members of a pretty poor pug, so I'd rather lay a fire trap, set the pet on him and put some big swings in with my polearm, rather than risk a bigger pull by trying to keep my distance. He went down quickly enough, the little damage I took heals up quickly. I keep my melee weapon skill up, because there will be times when it's necessary.

So there's two good reasons for meleeing now and then - it keeps your skill up for when a mob gets through and you have nothing left to keep them at bay, and it comes in very handy when you have nowhere to get reliable range. But my favourite reason is how much it annoys people who live by rules like 'hunters don't melee'...

Let's face it, those guys were unprepared and probably not used to running instances. After all they are like what, Lvl. 40ish.?! I sincerely doubt they have alot of party time under thier belts. Simple as that.

The hunter class does have it's challenges and is not as easy as it looks. For some, trapping, keeping range, attacking without aggroing other mobs and directing the pet properly can prove a daunting task while all hell is breaking loose. Cut the nubs some slack or send 'em packin'.

While I can sympathize with your group gone wrong, don't take it too hard.

I use a Sonic Spear with capped Polearm skill and I can put out some pretty chunky crits with it (I've landed 1800+ damage Raptor Strike crits on numerous occasions). That's one big number for a Hunter, but spread that out over the time between swings and it's not the least bit impressive. With the recent changes to Hunters, you only need 10 yards tops in which to run back and forth and you can Wing Clip joust a mob, land those chewy melee smashes *and* tag the mob with the occasional auto/Arcane shot. I was goofing around outside Kara tonight waiting for the raid group to form up. I had my pet put away and I was joust-kiting the undead mobs near the entrance (level 69-70 non-elites). It was tons of fun and good practice for those situations where I need to get distance from a mob. If for whatever reason you've got a mob focused on your Hunter, melee combat is frequently inevitable... but if the goal is to take the mob down quickly, ranged is always going to be your best option.

When you hear Hunters here saying, "Hunters don't melee," what they're getting at is that in any situation where you need to bring the highest possible level of dps to bear on a target, you'd best not be toe-to-toe swinging at the mob. There are always going to be grey areas, and in any given case, it's not the method that tells the tale...it's the results. In your example, the results were satisfactory. All too often, however, we find ourselves in groups with melee Huntards who, for whatever reason, refuse to bring their full potential dps to bear on a target. Istead, they opt to let fly with a flurry of neon-glowing enchanted dual wielded crap weapons. It's in those cases that the wisdom of the phrase, "Hunters don't melee," takes on its full meaning.

But running out of arrows is very much the same as all the other classtard examples listed in the original post - yet hunters are clearly destined to be the class that everyone else gets to kick. And yes, of course range works fine in most situations in BRD - I cleared that first big cavern, with all the dog pats and the groups of dwarves, solo while I was waiting for a pug to form. I say 'solo' - full credit to my wolf, who died three times during that slow (and expensive) exercise. I didn't die at all, though I did come very close - and I did do a fair bit of melee there too...

(Where I should I put my rant about 'tards of every class who can't be bothered to brush up their first aid? Or their cooking? And then blame the healer when they die?

EDIT: for Kompera's post above, which arrived while I was posting.

Maybe it wasn't clear, but we had our backs to a corner, so that left me one direction to seek range...and again, it was a pretty poor pug and either I was going to get the aggro or someone squishier was going to. If I'd gone in the direction open to me I risked pulling adds - or I could run to and fro in a small area, getting a wingclip and a shot in occasionally, while the rogue tried to catch the mob to get his own licks in. Oh, or I could keep my dps down so I didn't pull aggro from my pet - but if I'm not going for maax dps, I may as well melee... It was at least as good an idea to stand still...and if that pisses off a bunch of people who read 'hunters dont melee' and take it as gospel, so be it. They're the 'tards who are pissing me off in almost every pug, imagining that they're playing well and I'm not, based solely on our respective class choices.

Your second and third remarks are just dumb - clearly I didn't do it just to get the skill up, and if you were reading you'd have been aware that with the tank away and a pretty poor pug, I was going to get the aggro. Yes, we wanted as much dps as we could get - and we got enough. We'd have got less from a wingclip and a group trying to connect with a careering mob. So, in that situation, melee was the best thing to do - but the group fell apart because some 'tard couldn't accept that 'hunters dont melee' is a guideline, not a rule.

Edited, Dec 18th 2007 7:51am by jiggeryqua

I think where you might be misunderstanding is where you're saying that choosing to melee the mob was "at least as good" of an option as ranged. That implies that in your mind, it may even have been a better option. What we're saying is, prolonged melee combat with a mob is so rarely your best option that it never really comes up. Even in the tightest of quarters, there is always room to maneuver to range since 2.3 removed the deadzone. Unless your entire party was standing literally one on top of the other, I can guarantee you that you had room to get your pet on the mob and get to range.

In this case, your alternative was acceptable, but please don't make it out to be on par with (much less better than) a pet tank + ranged assault. If you could survive the mob's attention, regardless of your spec your pet would have also survived quite easily. People get very, very nervous when they see Hunters melee, and for good reason...our melee dps blows. There's no getting around it. You can load up on the high tooltip dps melee weapons and enchant them to the tits, but the almost complete absence of yellow damage options means that you're missing out on 90% of what a Hunter can do in the dps department. No stings, no shots = crap dps.

I don't know why I am getting a rate-down for this, I think everyone has experienced a group where a bad hunter causes multiple wipes or aggro adds for no good reason.

DO not take this post as dissing of the hunter class, my main is a hunter, I love the class. It just bothers me to see some people play it so horribly!