[June 2008 edit: This post may be a moot point. These days for most PUGs I'm in, the Tank pulls, and if the Hunter does anything other than DPS, they pull one of the mobs in the group in order to trap it for some Crowd Control. Now it's the Tanks who have to know how to LOS pull, where before the expansion and the introduction of Misdirect, it used to be the Hunters]

As a player with a primary toon of a Hunter, and with a general “leadership” style of play (ie: it tends to be that a lot of players seems frightened of leading and would rather klutz around in chaos until “someone else” takes up the lead, and I’m not patient enough for the klutzing around), I’ve been the main puller in my groups for the most part.

But, when I started playing a Warrior, I found myself being the main puller there, too.

And, even when I started playing a Mage, I found myself to be a main puller there, too!!

In other words, I’ve had a wee bit of experience with pulling myself, and I know that some of the pulls I’ve done haven’t been all that great.

I’ve got my personal opinions about pulling, as a Hunter with a quick trigger who can pull quickly without a half or full second delay on the arrow going out (unlike on my Warrior, who has that delay because I’m throwing knives or doing a single crossbow/bow shot), but I find that my opinions are swayed by one thing:

Is the group good or not?

A good group can do just fine with a Hunter pulling - in fact, a Hunter with its extra range of attack (if spec’d for it) and its immediate shot output is what I prefer IF THE HUNTER IS GOOD at their job.

If a Hunter is good at their job, and the rest of the team is good at supporting, a Hunter pulling can work out really well - pull, run back behind the group, or out of Line of Sight if it’s on a caster, and battle can be done away from the next group coming up.

If a Hunter is pulling, the Warrior can gather some rage and threat by charging in and doing a Thunderclap before starting the standard switching-off of targets to ensure they’re all tapped by the Warrior and thus continue attacking the warrior.

If a Hunter is pulling and there’s a mage who is on the ball, the sheep can be left far enough away from the main group being tanked that it doesn’t get broken by a Thunderclap, some AOE like Frost Nova or a Hunter’s high-damage Multishot.

But I do agree, if the Hunter doesn’t know what they’re doing, it might be better for the Warrior to do the pulling so that initial threat is on the tank… but then the Warrior is going to be scrambling to get proper threat with all of the targets since they don’t likely have any rage built up for their skills, and it’s likely in the mean time someone else is going to pull aggro from one of the mobs in the group.

The thing I hate the most with my Warrior is chasing the stupid mobs around when the clothies pull aggro. The thing I hate the second most is that most of the clothies either stay put or run AWAY from me, so I’m coming towards them STUNNED because I’ve got stuff on me from behind, and I can’t pull aggro off if I’m not in range.

My personal moral of the story is to find a GOOD hunter, one who knows how to pull, who knows how to ICE trap (not snakes, not explosion, not fire - use those while soloing please), who knows when to multishot and when not to (DON’T BREAK THE SHEEP!!!).

What do you fellow hunters and warriors think?

Tags: azeroth hunter guide, beastmaster hunter, don't break the sheep, good hunter skills, hunter and tank chemistry, hunter dungeon guide, hunter pulling guide, hunter trap guide, hunter trapping guide, line of sight pull, line of sight pull strategy, los pull strategy, los pulls, world of warcraft