Posts Tagged ‘hunter dungeon guide’

7
Oct

Hunter Pulling Styles In Group Situations

   Posted by: WoWGrrl    in Adventures In Azeroth, Adventures In Outland

Pets are inarguably one of the very best parts of being a Hunter.

Moving from solo to group situation involves some changes for all classes to work together effectively. Hunters tend to be one of the popular answers for the question “who actually engages the opponent to start the dungeon battle?” but pulling strategies from solo play may not be the best for group play.

For example, what’s the “best way” to use your pet in group situations?

I can’t claim to know the “best way” but I’d really like to hear other people’s opinion on this, even though I’m already stating what I think about the strategies at this exact moment. I learn a huge amount about how to play my class by hearing about how others play their class!

[May 2008 Edit: In the Outland now, generally it's the Tank pulling in instances, from what I can see. Hunters need to be more aware of how to properly trap and re-trap mobs along with DPSing now, instead of worrying about the pull]

My Pulling And Pet Use Style

I don’t remember when it was that I started doing the “main puller” role in most of the parties I was in, but it was probably after I had joined a guild and was going with guildmates. Pick Up Groups at a low level tend to be all about chaos, so if I was a main puller in those situations, I’d have to be fast and familiar with the terrain, both of which I wasn’t since my Hunter was my first toon through the game.

Eventually, tho, I settled into a Main Puller job, and on occasion my pet turtle became the party tank when we couldn’t find a Warrior to join us (back before Druid was a viable alternative and before Pally was on the Horde side too).

The biggest tricks I learned from my playing experiences, with very little “training” from others other than watching other hunters and reading a lot about strategies online, were these:

  • Pull timing is critical. Be patient, don’t rush it.

  • Pull from the edges of the group, not the middle
  • Pull when a nearby mob has its back to the one you’re pulling, if possible
  • Pull with a single low-level Arcane Shot, not with autoshot (especially important if trapping)
  • If there are casters in the group, be sure to run out of range or line of sight after shooting, to drag them back towards your group.
  • Even if there aren’t casters in the group, pull the entire group back before having everyone engage - then if patrols come by or mobs run near the end, they don’t start a whole new fight
  • Warn others if you’re going to be freeze trapping anything so they don’t attack it or DOT it up
  • Pet pulls make people nervous - it’s better to pull with an arrow and immediately send the pet in to meet the mobs halfway, and have your tank ready to intercept. As a hunter you CAN take a few hits without dying, and it’s easier for the Tank to pull aggro off of one semi-durable target than pulling off of clothies who tend to run around panicked a lot.

Are there any I should be adding or considering further on the topic of Pulling as a Hunter?

I know there are a lot of dungeon tricks that are important for Hunters as well, but let’s just start with the pulling topic as it tends to be a hot one between the various roles that CAN pull in a dungeon.

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6
Oct

The Great Debate: Who Pulls?

   Posted by: WoWGrrl    in Adventures In Azeroth

[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?

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