The Epic Guide to Melee HunteringFollow

The Epic Guide to Melee Huntering

Melee Huntering

Verb -
1. To fight as the hunter class in melee
2. The process of using only melee abilities as a hunter

Noun -
1. Hardcore Mode


Hunters are normally ranged characters and normally use pets to increase their damage and tank for them. This guide will explore the melee aspects of hunters without the use of any ranged attacks or a pet. Melee hunters will get extremely hard to play at certain points in the game (mainly 6-16 and 58-62) but do not be discouraged by this awesome playstyle. One word of warning before you begin though: DO NOT attempt to join instance groups as a melee hunter as some of the “conservative” players will flame and laugh at you for being a melee hunter and kick you from their group.



Useful Spells


Raptor Strike: This is your basic damage boosting attack. Use it as often as possible.

Aspect of the Monkey: Your basic aspect. An extra chance to dodge is a good thing. Use it.

Wing Clip: Snares the target. Not all that useful unless you want to run away.

Scare Beast (against beasts): Helps you CC or run from beast mobs.

Mongoose Bite: Your basic instant attack. Use it when you can.

Immolation Trap: Adds extra damage to a mob to burn them down faster.

Disengage: Helps you back off an enemy or run from them.

Freezing Trap: Freezes an enemy solid. Great CC.

Frost Trap: Slows a group of enemies. Useful if you need to run.

Feign Death: One of your best abilities. You’re going to die? NP, feign death.

Flare: Reveals rogues and other enemies.

Explosive Trap: AoE trap damage.

Aspect of the Wild: Helps you against things that do nature damage.

Aspect of the Viper: Helps you regenerate mana but cuts your damage by 50%

Snake Trap: Lots of snakes attack your enemies.

Misdirection: Put your threat onto another player.

Aspect of the Dragonhawk: Even more dodge! Use it when you get it.

Deterrence: Good to live a bit longer and to help counterattack light up.

Counterattack: Use it when you can. Free damage? Yes please.



Talents

Cookie Cutter Build: 14/3/49

The last 5 talents can go anywhere you like. It is not recommended that you deviate from this build much at all, because most other talents you could get will not help a melee hunter at all. Most of the talents chosen in this build should be self explanatory.



Important Information

-Raptor strike and Mongoose Bite are your most useful attacks because you have a 20% increased chance to critically hit with them.

-Immolation Trap is your basic single target damaging trap. You should be sure to have it ready for use in a fight.

-Freezing Trap is most likely your most useful trap of all. It lets you stop your foe and take a step back to bandage or wait for CDs if it is not used to snare an extra mob you didn’t need to fight. Keep it close at hand.

-Feign Death. For when you know you are going to die and don’t want to. One push of a button and there go all the mobs! Not recommended against players though.

-Counterattack should be used whenever it lights up.

-Aspect of the Monkey and Aspect of the Dragonhawk should always be used in combat. The dodge it gives helps reduce damage to you considerably.




Dual Wield or 2 Handers?

You receive the ability to dual wield at level 20. As for if you should or not, it is mostly personal preference. I usually use a 2 hander because the 20% extra crit chance with raptor strike causes some fun numbers to pop up on the screen. However, 2 Handers can be somewhat unreliable. If you miss with a heavy 2 hander, you aren’t doing much, if any, damage for about 6 seconds. Dual wielding can help you smooth out that damage loss even though you will miss more often while dual wielding. If you can get two nice 1 handed melee weapons then you might want to go for dual wielding, but if you can’t get anything better than a green, a 2 hander is usually the way to go.


Have fun with your melee hunter while taking him to new heights and facing new challenges. If you get down about your melee hunter, do not despair; Melee hunters are one of the most fun and challenging classes in the game to play right and once you figure out how, you’ll have a blast.

Good luck, and happy melee huntering.


Edited, Mar 10th 2009 9:26pm by Agest

Lol.

Interesting guide...

Well I suppose on the plus side you get an extra bag space.

I'd suggest trying this on an RP server (not an RPPvP one!). At least you'd be among other loonies.

I also don't see why Wing Clip is dismissed as but the build has put three points into making it more useful.

If you try this then you're going to be spending a lot of time bandaging, an immobilised mob could be very useful.


Seriously though why do this?

Did you just fail the pet quest at 10 and forget to buy ammunition?

The hunter class doesn't have serious melee capability. Just roll a rogue or something. At least then you retain some utility in groups


If the "challenge" appeals to you then sure why not. But you are not going to get very far very fast.

As a matter of interest what level is the hunter you have done this with? And give us the armory link

What do we get next?

The non-healing paladin (The Light has gone out!)

The non-stealthing rogue? (I'm just clumsy is all)

The spell-less mage? (I lost the book)

3 points are in that because there is nothing else you can take that helps a melee hunter.



I was thinking of re-rolling on another server. It just feels that I have to play a night elf if I do this. As for the armory link; I only got my other one to level 12 before I quit because role playing servers actually allow this kind of crap.



The only other ones I tried were the naked warrior and the melee mage. =P





Edited, Mar 11th 2009 6:41am by Agest

Which is exactly why I said


What was a bit silly was the "Guide" nature of it when as he has now admitted it was an entirely paper exercise.

He hasn't done it and doesn't realise what it would be like. SO statements like


Were entirely conjecture and have no place in a board that is trying to help people.

Of course anyone is entitled to play any way they like.

What perhaps tells the true story is


So even he considers it "crap" and wants to be attacked for it rather than do it in a place where people would just let it go by.

Attention-seeking ftw

Umm.. this was a serious post? I just LOL'd it the first time and went on my way. Now I check back and people are discussing it? o.O The only time this hunter is in melee is 1) leveling weapon skill and 2) forgot to buy ammo after that late night raid and get caught out in the middle of BFE questing.

*I seriously thought this was just a funny read.... >.<

I don't know but my Mage Tank was kind of fun at lvl 70.

Did it as a lark in Kara, LOL

i mad it bettur

Yeah. I have nothing better I want to do.

Fist weapons = unarmed skill. Fist/dagger is one of the cookie-cutter combat specs. Your DPS was just bad, it seems, or your tank just complained a lot. Did you run a recount?

PS: It takes a LONG time to hit that final point in a weapon skill. I put my druid in dire maul with a dagger and went to bed. I woke up the next morning, 7 hours later, with 399 in dagger skill, a broken dagger, and the final point in unarmed skill (I had been at 399/400). It had taken SO long to get my dagger skill up that I lost all the durability on the item and it broke before I hit 400. Kinda crazy.

It's been done by this guy already, though I think he used a pet. As I recall he did some raiding with his melee hunter, but keep in mind he was already a member in good standing of his guild and he had other characters. Seems his toon has been deleted, though.

But dude, you wrote a guide for something you haven't actually done? Talk about failure. You wrote a "guide" on melee hunter and couldn't even bother to mention Aspect of the Beast? If you're fighting enemies a few levels below you wouldn't that be superior to Dragonhawk?

Anyway, if you want a real challenge, pick any class and make it to 80 without visiting a trainer. That would be truly epic, and you'd be too busy with that to eat any more paint chips.

autoattacking your way to 80 epic?
yeah, right.

Yeah, I totally misread the date. lol