Hunter Instance TheoryFollow

So I was pondering a theory for an all Hunter instance group. To clarify, a party of 5 hunters and their pets making their way through an instance. For those of you who have played FFXI, this theory has been derived from the concept of a manaburn party. In theory, it would work (to a degree) but having never tried it, I was hoping that someone might have some insight to my idea. Here's the way I would envision it working:

Starting Necessities:
5 Hunters (around the same level)
Tanking Pets (Gorilla being the ideal because of it's AoE attack, I think)
All hunters being specc'd BM
Each player being able to cure/bandage themselves in times of need.

General Thoughts
-All hunters will be responsible for their own CC (utilizing Freeze Trap, Feign Death, Disengage, etc).
-All Hunters will be responsible for their own hate (utilizing the aforementioned abilities including Misdirection, Deterrence, Intimidation, Bestial Wrath, etc).


Battle Plan
1. Team leader will mark each enemy within a single encounter (all enemies that will need to be killed before the players can rest again) with a symbol.
2. Each Hunter is assigned a symbol.
3. On the team leaders command, each hunter sends their pet to engage the mob with their mark.
4. All Hunters engage the same single target with their ranged attacks (defined by the leader).
5. After killing one mob, you move onto the next.
6. Continue until all have been defeated.
7. Rinse and repeat.

Possible Alternative
Instead of engaging mobs one at a time, every Hunter will use Volley.

Ending Thoughts
A few things to keep in mind.
-I have no idea if this has already been tried, tested, etc. and I apologize if I have just beaten a dead horse!
-I am NOT in any way an instance master. Hell, I probably haven't even done the majority of them.
-I am not a Hunter master either. I'm currently only level 71 with crappy gear :).
-Their may be much better ways to do this and I am open to hear all thoughts!
-I'm not sure if this is even practical/feasible and would love to get feedback!

In nutshell, that's the theory I was thinking through. What do you all have to say?

Hmm I think this could work in theory on lower level instances but not on higher ones. Even tank pets can get eaten pretty good if getting smacked on all the time. I think your best bet, being all hunters would be to down each one at a time, rather than slowly drain all 3 if you drain 1 really quickly then that's 1 less you have to worry about in a shorter period of time. Just my thought.

From my experiences trying to solo world elites this is going to hit some problems.

First your heals are your own pet only and from experience don't keep up with incoming damage. After the patch this may be different though.

Second I find that if I turn up the dps my pet cannot hold aggro which results in a chaotic fight.

I thought Deterrence was a melee damage limitation buff rather than anything to do with hate. Although you stop attacking which must help.

Don't forget Shadowmeld for NE which I believe lowers aggro too. For me it seems to work like Fade for priests. If anything else is hitting them they forget me, if not they carry on chewing.

You would want to gear for max hp I think to give your pets any chance at all.

And while you're being this prescriptive how about they all have to be engineers and bring jump-leads?

Another strat for some fights would be pet offtank and total burn dps on each mob then FD, res pets and do next. But this would be horribly slow.


It is absolutely amazing to see how a real tank can soak up damage and hold aggro compared to our pets.

Now if they were all Draenai hunters you could have a Gift of the Naaru rotation

Now this is boosted by AP (and I can't find the formula for that boost but articles talked of a mage with 2k spellpower getting a 4.8k HoT. With an L80 at 4k AP it could be interesting - my highest Draenai hunter is only 64 but I'll try a test) it might actually make a significant difference. 3 minute CD makes it hard for a solo but with 5 there you have maybe 3-4k over 15 secs and effective 36 second CD.

I know the pounding boss in heroic mechanar was kiteable even without this mechanic. I know this because one time everyone aside from me died at 30% about and I kited him for that last chunk of health. It was awesome. You'd have to have an exceedingly well coordinated group of hunters, probably on vent, to do the boss ping ponging. Could be fun though.