Archive for the ‘Class 101: Hunter’ Category

2
May

The (basic) Habits of Cohesive Dungeon Teams

   Posted by: WoWGrrl

Focusing Damage In Party Play

One of the big differences between a Pick-up Group (in-guild or through other Looking For Group methods) and a cohesive team is coordination when it comes to taking down packs of mobs in party situations.

The standard “stamp” of an unexperienced team is that the tank ends up running around a lot, pulling mobs off of leather and cloth-wearers who have “pulled aggro” on an enemy target that wasn’t focused on the mail and plate wearers well enough yet, due to ill-coordinated targetting. If they’re lucky, the healer doesn’t run out of mana keeping the cloth and leather-wearers alive. If they’re not lucky, the healer does run out of mana, and then doesn’t have enough to keep the tank up, and the party wipes.

Simple explaination of Pulling Aggro:

Each attack against an enemy builds “threat”. Enemies determine who they are attacking by these “threat points”. If an enemy does not have the tank building threat on it, a caster or non-tank DPS party member may find themselves the target of the enemy’s attacks and at risk of death or draining of healer mana which may wipe the entire party.

A team that gets to play together more often than in some random Pick-up Group is one that can start to coordinate efforts more, because while the teammates learn their own capacities and that of their team partners, the absolute basics of successfully progressing through a dungeon become easier, and in turn, new “order” can be added to the team’s understandings.

The Strategy of An Assist Macro

One of the easiest ways to begin coordination within your team is to get each member to set up an “assist” macro which is hot-keyed for quick execution. You can find quick-and-easy information about how to set one up in this entry.

At the beginning of each party, discuss and agree upon who everyone will configure their ‘assist’ macro for. Usually I find it’s best to designate the Off-Tank (whether it’s player or player’s pet) as the one players will assist, as a good Main Tank switching targets regularly and wouldn’t reliably be a good one to assist at any given moment.

Once the macro is configured and accessable by hot-key, every “squishy” wearing cloth and leather should hit that macro before firing off attacks, and hit that macro again after every mob is downed until the entire group has been taken down.

The Strategy of Raid Icons

Raid icons augment the ‘assist’ strategy as above, giving the Main and Off-Tanks instruction as to “burn-down order” of mobs being pulled, as well as giving Crowd Control party members a chance to reduce the number of attackers for a while early in the fight.

The first step in a successful strategy with Raid Icons is to decide upon and communicate what each icon being used means. The person in charge of assigning Raid Icons (called the “Main Assist” or MA) can assign any symbol as long as it is explained, but consistent teams will generally find themselves developing a consistent symbol order no matter whether this Main Assist job is always done by one or if it switches around.

Something To Remember About Raid Icons:

Less is better than More. Too many symbols gets confusing. Consider using three or four symbols at the most until your team is very comfortable and wishes to increase complexity or Crowd Control practices.

Here are some suggestions:

Skull: Pulling target, First to die
Red X: Second to die
Moon: Sheep
Square: Ice Trap

Also, check out this thread in the Official Forums: Marking Targets.

With icon-marked targets, it’s much easier to avoid breaking of the various forms of Crowd Control designed to make multi-mob fights easier, and with focused assisting from all partymates, healing can be focused as well - on the tank, where it’s likely to be the most efficient.

Good luck as you gel with your online buddies!

1 Comment
2
May

Creating an Assist Macro (for coordinated party play)

   Posted by: WoWGrrl

Simple process:

  • Create Macro
  • Drag it to your Action Bar
  • Use Macro
  • Update Macro

Create Macro

The macro editting area can be reached by typing /macro in your chat window.

In the popped-up window, create a New Macro, select an icon to represent it, and in the text window, put this:

/assist SomePlayer

Drag it to your Action Bar

For quick accessability, drag the new macro icon to your Action Bar, and make sure it’s hot-keyed for quick execution.

Use Macro

If you’re in a party with SomePlayer, as soon as they enter into battle, execute your new macro and begin your attacks. This macro will target the same enemy SomePlayer is targetting, so you’ll join in on her fight instead of bringing another into the fray.

Update Macro

Whenever you get into a party, update your macro so it assists the correct person. No use hitting your “Assist SomePlayer” macro when you’re partied up with SomeOtherPlayer!

Updating your macro is similar to creating a new one: Type /macro, find your existing macro, update it, and exit the Macros window.

Good luck!

3 Comments
17
Mar

Speculating on Specializations

   Posted by: WoWGrrl

I spend a fair amount of time these days, browsing the Official WoW Forums.

I read the Guild Relations board first and with most interest, because there’s often some interesting discussions going on from an Officer/Guildmaster perspective, about the varying challenges of running a guild. And for some reason, there don’t seem to be many inflammatory “trollers” in that forum (just posting inflammatory things to stir people up), which means the “signal to noise ratio” is high. Less annoying, more information.

I then tend to venture over to the General board, just to see what the topics of the day are. Here, I find a lot more trolls and a lot more trash posting (Subject: “Blood elves are ruining the Horde” Body: “Discuss”), but on occasion I find some very interesting reads.

Next, I hit the Raid & Dungeons forum. Everyone’s talking about the heroic and other level 70 dungeon stuff that it’ll be a long time before I ever see, but wow is that board educational. Wanna get the hard and fast on what mistakes folks in your class tend to make while in dungeon groups? Check this forum out. Wanna know why certain spec builds are looked over for the Burning Crusade 5-man dungeons? You’ll get lots of info there.

Sometimes I venture over to different Class forums, to see what’s going on there. Again, there’s some GREAT information about class abilities, tips and tricks for successful solo play vs dungeon instance play vs raiding, and a lot of heated debate in general.

I’ve learned so much just by reading the forums. Of course, for the 10% of good information I glean, there’s 90% I have to ignore outright.

Specializations Before 40 - Skill First, Efficiency Second

One of the big things I’ve learned from the forums is that specializations only really start to matter quite late in the game.

While yes it’s nice to have a “protection tank” and “holy healer”, it’s not required, because at the levels where instances can be taken on by players higher level than required, success is more about the “dungeon party skill” of the players in the party, and less about squeezing efficiency out of the tank or healer’s powers.

That’s not to say that a player can’t slow their progression down by speccing poorly, nor to say that certain specs don’t work better with specific other specs… it’s just to say that learning how to play your class well (in a party situation which is different from solo play) is an important first step, and then fine-tuning your class play through spec(ialization) is something to focus on later.

Purpose of Specializations

First of all, you choose your Specializations by spending your Talent points (’n’ brings up your talent trees). The very basic purpose of a ’spec’ is to allow a player to ‘tune’ their characters so as to be somewhat unique from others within their class, depending on their own play style and needs.

The first time I spent my Talent points as a levelling Hunter, I spent points according to where I felt I needed a boost in my gameplay. Pulling aggro from my pet, or my pet dying too quickly? Put points in Beastmaster. Fights lasting too long? Put points into Marksmanship. At the end, I came out with a predominantly Beastmaster talent spec but I’m sure it wasn’t “THE Beastmaster spec”.

The beauty of Talent specs is that you can get them wiped (for a fee) at any of your class trainer locations, and you can re-allocate the points in a different fashion. If you’ve got the cash to spend and want to try some other talent specs, have a ball!

All Classes Are Hybrid Classes

Some may argue that not all talent point configurations can really be called a “specialization”, due to the true definition of that word. If, after all, you put an even amount of talent points into all three talent trees, are you really choosing a “specialization”?

But at the same time, whatever your Talent configuration is, that’s your “spec”. Funny.

At any rate, because of this imbalance, it can truly be said that all classes can be configured as Hybrid, meaning they’re not truly strong in any one tree of potential specialization. For some players this may be a “gimped” playstyle (especially in dungeon/party situations) but for others it may work perfectly.

That’s all I have to say about that, for now.

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