So I have been playing 3 hunters at the moment. Level 85, level 50, and level 33 They are all marksman,
My 85 was really Pvp only until I run out of stuff to buy with honor ( unless I got into Arena) so I started trying dungeons when I got some ok Pve gear ( chanted and gemmed of course.) I realized I never really learned to pve on her outside of questing and Wrath dungeons that were pieces of easy cake. So I dug out my then 40 odd hunter, and started rearranging bars, and relearning to play. Then I rolled yet another one ( on another server to help get me money for another alt project) and got a bit more comfortable in the lobie dungeons where there is less pressure, and I felt I now have the knowledge to try real Pve on my 85.
It might sound like a long way to go about it, but I have too many alts and specs running through my head and muscle memory, and so many damn buttons on all them.
I did a couple of Normal dungeons at 85, and was feeling confident so I thought I would try a Heroic. I got Blackrock Caverns.
Dps wasn’t exactly special, but it wasn’t shameful in comparison to the group, I wasn’t the idiot that died on the 1st boss, I remembered to kill the chains and run away, and I was thinking this is ok when we took the shortcut to the 2nd boss. Instead of going around, and down the ramp, we jumped down a very small distance to the rubble and it wasn’t until my pet died, and I lost sight of him I realized he was going the long way. I wiped the party, and so I was a ‘F’ken noob’ and ’3 min till we kick your ass’ person and yes I knew I could have dismissed. What I didn’t know was that for that particular part I should have. I found the entrance, and left the party as I figured it was the polite thing to do. But I wasn’t feeling dejected. It had been a learning experience ( yes an annoying one for everyone else ) but I knew now that, in that particular dungeon when we go that particular way I should dismiss my pet because in Blizzards wisdom they decided that the path wasn’t good for pets. Even our companion pets ran the long way.
I guess I should err on caution. If in doubt dismiss, its only a 2 sec cast now, but can I at least protest that this ‘gap’ in caverns is stupid at the very least for making me look like noob.
I know from past experience in Gnomer when you should dismiss you pet. The first Jump. If you don’t you bring all the Troggs down just as your fighting that water elemental boss under the cog, but you can do the second jump after the mechanical spider boss, and your pet won’t pull.
I thought the polite thing to do was to leave my Caverns group anyway – so I did rather then them kicking me. But I que’d up straight away, and 15 or so min later subjected another Heroic group with my nubness, and got Lost city, and did fine. Didn’t do stupid things, kited the fire bird even, misdirected, and had growl off.
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Just remember that if you are CCing mobs that there is an activation time on your freezing trap. Meaning if you launch it at the mob at the same time the tank pulls it will run over the trap and not activate it. Also distracting shot and using LoS to pull a mob you can do separate a mob that needs to be cc’d and then you can just aoe away on the rest without worry.
It’s also worth noting that for pvp or kite scenarios that your traps are on their own GCD. Meaning you can macro deterrence and snake trap for instance together. Though I should add that traps of the same type like immolation and explosive trap share a cd on use.
Also keep your tranqualizing shot handy. You’ll be amazed at the number of things we actually can and should dispel. The fact that you didn’t mention it worried me. This is also true for pvp. Think of when an enemy fc is escaping with a healer and you are the only one on him. Along with constently slowing him and trying to cc the healer, tranq every buff you can off of them.
Also as a more pet wise suggestion, hop on over to wowhead and do a pet search. Mouse over every ability they have and write down which ones you would like/ cover needed buffs/debuffs. I believe they still have a “raided buffs/debuffs for 4.0” up in their raiding section of the forums. Pretty much it will say who covers all available buffs and debuffs and you just cross that list with your pet’s abilities and that it what will decide what pet to bring. On the pvp front generally spiders, silithids, crabs, wasps and corehounds are the best. Personally was using wasps mostly coupled with intimidation because with the wasps sting and intimidation you stun them for nearly 5 seconds which will kill any healer stupid enough to go below 25% withough any hots up.
In additon scare beast works on druids. Flare + traps are the best way to secure yourself on a node like the BS one in AB. Also I suggest checking out http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com. Gevlon added it on his blog at some point and I checked it out. It looks really well done and might have touched on some of the things I missed.
Gl and future hunting. Kelindia
Wow, Thanks will look into the union. Hoping to get a better feel for when tranq shot is useful in pve but I do use it and widows venom in pvp , I’ve tried to trap in the 85 dungeons but the tanks so far have broken it straight away and ive been trying to convince the dps in the dungeons my 50 and 33 do not to break them. but if I see caster standing away from the group the tank has I will trap them, the more I run / read up the more confident I’ll get.
I forgot to mention proper camouflage also. You can use it to get closer to certain mobs and bypass mobs for ccing. In Grim batol the trash around the forgemaster is most notable for this. For pvp it generally used to attack from behind on trapped players. Set up your three traps and wait for someone to run past you on a commonly used path basically you get an extra gcd off simply because they are facing the wrong direction, not to mention anyone using name plates for targetting gets really messed up by the 12 or so snakes spawned.
Something else most people won’t mention is that some pets seem to have “hit me” sign on them for noobs. Personally I’m amazed how effective a Dragonhawk can be for this. Something about this large winged creature breathing fire on you seems to attract attention. While a wolf on the otherhand seems be ignored more or less. This is just personal opinion mostly but you can see for yourself how much of this proves to be true.
Oh and if you see a Spriest in pvp RUN…Blizzard gave us aspect of the cheetah for a reason.
I did the very same thing the first time I went there. I learnt not to do it again, and yes, agree, that some times its better to dismiss then not to.
There was no need for them to call you out and no need for you to have left.
BRC is hardly the end all of hard modes it may have felt like at the start of this expansion. If a tank/group has time to call you out and swear and stand around waiting for the clock to run down to kick you then they really don’t know how to play. It would be quicker, and more productive to pick up the mobs and kill them. Only the most under geared group will perish to those mobs, and what I never get is that they will wipe any way if they don’t try to save the day, so why not just give it a go. killing them and failing is no more effort then ignoring them and having the grave yard run.
I do not believe that it is not a bad path for pets, but rather “working as intended” I think blizzard have added this pathing pet nightmare for this very reason alone. Like traps back in older Dungeon crawling games (or in ICC) but rather than being a ‘physical’ item or mob it is just one more little ‘part of the puzzle’ as it were, just one more thing to make you think whilst running it
BUT as a hunter, I have never put up with being sworn at, being told I’m going to get kicked, and told that I am using the wrong pet.
IF I’m told that I pulled aggro and its made out to be the worse crime of all time, and I really have had enough, I will misdirect the person doing the shouting/swearing/QQ’ing as soon as they are close enough to a group of mobs for the rest of the group to believe that it was THEM. I will then mirror back the same they said/shouted/swore at me. Sometimes a knowledgeable player will realise exactly what I have done but more often than not they have no clue (LFD is not always filled with the most aware dungeon crawlers in the gaming world)
The pet peeve that gets me the most, as a tank, is hunters that have their misdirect hooked up to macros that spam messages in both /p and /w (and often /r and /s and /y too) I have several chats going on at any one time and I do not need my chat filled with mindless rubbish like that. There is just no need for it and that is one of the only things that will grant you a swift kick from a party that I am tanking. Back in TBC I had the idea to use such a macro whist raiding but simply to allow the tank to know that I was pulling and what target I was pulling for them. One tell in slash /raid for all to see and I do believe it would mark the target as well for us (I have Quick marks for that now but back in TBC the only way I know how to mark things was with macros, I was pretty clueless back then) But them days are long gone and I have not been asked to pull anything since the day they nerfed Kara. (in fact this is something I have been whinging about several times over to guildys and mates this last week)
And yes, Kelindia is right. Huntersunion is filled with good information and guides for hunters. I have not kept up to date with it for a few months now but I see its recently had an update and looks a lot snazzier then ever before.
I don’t use the chat macros – I figure I know I’m doing it and the tank can tell if they need to look. That particular place would be considered a short cut so I understand why it’s working as intended – but wish it would be better predictable as to when pathing will be an issue
There’s actually an addon that announces some of the helpful things you can do (interrupts, cooldowns, resses). I use it, but not for anything that I use frequently enough that it would spam the group. Surely you ask people to turn it off before you resort to kicking? It used to be particularly useful when interrupts could miss, as it would announce misses/resists differently.
Why would you trap though :O there are very few times I can think of when trapping is beneficial at 85.
Really, the only time for the normal Heroics that come to mind is the double healer pulls.
Sure, cc isn’t needed if your tank is raid-geared, but it is always welcome. I can reduce the tank’s incoming damage by 20-25% and I get a LnL proc (which, when combined with Misdirection, is a bunch of threat for the tank.) Why wouldn’t I trap whenever I could? I cc as much as possible in pugs because I don’t know how good the tank and healer are. Anything to help the run go more smoothly.
I’m sorry to say this, but if you knew about the ledge in Gnomeregan you really should have seen this coming. This is how it works on all ledge jumping shortcuts in dungeons AFAIK. There are two of those jumps in Nexus, too, pets will always take the longer but “correct” path.
I don’t really recall, but I must have done the same once with my Warlock at that ledge. I just can’t classify that as an “honest” mistake as you seem to point out, being an experienced player with 3 hunters. When it happened to me, I thought to myself “Of course, I should have seen this coming…” and not “Oh, I have to dismiss the pet for this ledge, mental note for next time…”.
I’m not trying to call you a noob, far from that, but even experienced players make noob mistakes sometimes, as I said I made the same mistake once myself. Everyone messes up some time. I just think you’re not being honest to yourself if you think you couldn’t have avoided that. That mistake is definitely one of “Sorry, I messed up” or “Sorry, I forgot” than “Sorry, I didn’t know”.
One thing that I have found to work (more often than not) when having to jump down from a ledge/platform with your pet is to hug the left wall, if there is one, and not jump down from the center or right. Your pets path to the left side of you, so if you hug the wall to your left you have taken away the spot your pet would normally be. Your pet will then be standing right on top of you and should follow you down. If your pet isn’t on top of you then it most likely won’t work. If in doubt, it’s always best to dismiss your pet.
As far as how the group reacted to how your pet took the long way around, a simple “I’ve not taken this shortcut before and thought pet would follow” should have diffused the situation. But, seeing as how they reacted so poorly in the first place is probably a good indicator of how the rest of the run might have gone. It was probably a good thing (for you) to have left and not had to have dealt with what could have turned into a nightmare run anyways.
In regards to Shiva’s comment, that is the type of thinking that has degraded the state of pugs to what it is today. Why would you want to possibly add more stress/work to your tank/healer when it’s not needed? It’s that kind of thinking/acting that has made less people want to tank/heal…and why dps ques are so long. It’s not dps’ job to just stand and go “pew pew”. They are to use whatever tools they have to help the run go successfully. It’s not only the tank’s/healer’s job to keep everyone alive during the run. It’s EVERYONE’S job. If using cc helps accomplish this goal, why not use it? By using cc it may add a little more time to the fight. But it’s a lot less time than a corpse run/rebuff session.
I play tank and healer almost exclusively. There just rarely is a need to actually cc anything in the normal Heroics. The only reason cc is viable for double healer pulls is because people rarely interrupt.
Although, a warrior tank can get by with their 4 interrupt/stuns.
Don’t ever feel bad for aggro mob or dying or wiping when tanks are taking short cuts. Unless they explain what they are doing.
Tanks and healers have a stupid sense of entitlement about doing things and thinking everyone is on the same wavelength.
Dont ever be held for ransom by an emo tank, use your pet tank, kite mobs, use your traps. Tanks think they leave the group, it will fall apart, not true as a hunter, you can keep a run going thru hunter tricks.
I once had a tank join the group, then leave when the healer and dps said the hunter pet was doing a better job then the tank…
re: the mistake, everyone makes mistakes, its how you react to them and deal with them that makes you better or worse then everyone else.
Tanks are the “man of the house”, even if they are female in or out of game. They set the tone and make the rules because they are the most needed, just like men are in real life. Except for turtle pets, that’s different of course!
Turtle-women in RL should be avoided at all costs, however.
wat.
I don’t really know any turtle women – where do u find them?
I have done exactly the same thing you did there; I jumped down, and my Imp ran all the way round and pulled the big guy on the ramp as well as the group of cultists. The thing is, it is only a little jump, not a 10 yard fall. You don’t expect your pet to wimp out and go look for another way around; I’m sure almost everyone who goes that way for the first time will get caught out.
As for being kicked or having to leave the group over it, what nonsense.
My mage hit 85 last week and I’ve been powering through some regulars/heroics to gear her up. In every group that I have been in with a player with a pet this has happened. I even started calling out warnings, “Warlock make sure and dismiss pet or you’ll kill us all.” And it still happens. One of my guild tanks and healers was running me through and we actually lived. I have to say it was way more fun then the mindless repetetion that dungeons can sometimes be.
That group shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss you. Everyone makes mistakes.
Did it once, fortunately in a guild run, not done it again! If the tank asks for it, I tend to trap a lot, sometimes do it when not asked, but I’ll stop if people constantly break the traps from random AOEing.
Camouflage, Misdirect on tank, ice trap to pull – sorted! If for some reason tank still hasn’t grabbed aggro, Feign Death should do it.