Posts Tagged ‘hunter tips and tricks’

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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15
Jan

Level 10 Hunter Pet Quest, Made Easy, Part II

   Posted by: WoWGrrl    in Adventures In Azeroth

Continuing from Part I, here are more tidbits about the Level 10 Hunter Pet Quests, “Taming The Beast” and the whole process surrounding securing the ability to Tame, Call, Dismiss and Feed your Hunter pets.

How You Know If The Tame Is Working/Works

After step 2 as above, your toon will assume a funny pose and you should start to see a “hearts” animation appear over the boar’s head. You’ll get a Channelling bar, and the boar will begin to attack you.

Once the channelling bar runs out, if the boar keeps attacking you, your attempt to tame has failed, and you’ll likely do better killing this particular boar and starting on another from a distance. If it has succeeded, the boar may change size as it assumes its position on your left side and follows you about.

Turn In Each Quest

Now that I’ve got a Dire Mottled Boar tamed, I should go out and hunt things and use my new pet, right??!

Well, sure, you can do that, but unfortunately the pets tamed during the Taming quests only stick around for 10 minutes and then they dissapear. You’re better off to run through the Taming quests and completing them all before worrying about actual play-time with a pet.

When you turn in your quest, right-click on your Pet’s picture in the top left of your screen, and choose “Dismiss”. You cannot tame the next beast until you’ve released the first, so you might as well do it right away. Be ready for a fight, however, as your pet turns back into an angry wild animal when you dismiss it!

Resetting Action Bar Slot For Taming Wand

Note, every time you start a new stage of the quest, your old Taming Wand is removed and you are given a new one. This means you’ll need to re-drag your Taming Bar onto your Action Bar each time.

Replacing Your Taming Wand

Hopefully you won’t have to worry about this, but if you begin the taming process for a specific quest beast and have it disrupted three times for that same stage of the quest, you’ll use up the three charges your Taming Wand has been alloted for this stage of the quest. If this is the case, drop the quest from your quest log and return to Razor Hill to re-start it with a fresh wand.

Tauren working on the “swoop” portion of the Hunter Taming Quests may find themselves needing to take this step, as the Swoop has a “knock down” ability that disrupts the taming process and uses up a Taming Wand charge.

Staying Alive During Taming

The automatic reaction of every beast you’ll ever attempt to tame is for it to attack you. Generally, the beasts that are a part of the Hunter Pet Quest series are not able to kill you, but every hit they land lengthens the channelling time it takes to complete the tame, so even light but quick hits could result in death before taming is complete.

There’s not much you can do to avoid death while still channelling for the tame - you can’t drink potions, can’t bandage yourself, can’t cast spells… so what can you do? Here are some ideas:

  • Start the tame from as far back as the range of the Taming Wand will allow.
  • Use Concussive shot before starting the tame, to slow your target’s approach.
  • If you have a Priest friend, have the Priest cast Shield on you.
  • If you have the ability, or have a friend who can help, lay down a freezing trap between yourself and your taming target, so the target gets caught in the trap for a while.

Finishing Up The Pet Quest Series

Once you learn the new spell Tame Beast, and the two new abilities of Call Pet and Dismiss Pet, you’re not done yet! The trainer will then offer you another quest, called “Training The Beast”, which you’ll want to get done before heading out to tame your first real pet. Without completing this last quest, you won’t be able to Feed your pet, and a Happy pet is a much more effective companion than an Unhappy one (read: Happy Pets Hit Harder) - nevermind the fact that Unhappy pets left unfed for too long have a habit of running away!

Finding Hunter and Pet Trainers In Major Cities

The cities are huge and confusing to a newcomer, just like cities are IRL. Thankfully, there are friendly NPCs about whose job it is to both protect the city from invaders from the other faction (Alliance if you’re Horde, or vice versa) but also to provide information to those from its own faction about where to find things in the city.

You’re welcome to wander around aimlessly and explore yourself if that’s the way you like to do it, but if you want to find the quickest way to get to the Hunter trainer to turn in this last quest piece and get on with taming your own pet, then talk to any of the Orgrimmar Grunts within the city limits. I chose to talk to the ones that are right at the doorway entering Orgrimmar from Durotar.

When chatting with them, you’re looking for ‘A Class Trainer’ (second from bottom on the list) and then you’ll choose Hunter from the top of the next list. The Grunt will give you a little bit of information about what Valley this trainer is in, but even if you don’t pay attention to that information and just click ‘Goodbye’ you’ll be okay - take a look at your map now (’m’ on your keyboard) and you should see a red flag marking a position near the top right, in the Valley of Honor. Find your way towards that flag! When you get close, it’ll appear in your minimap as well.

In Orgrimmar, the Hunter Trainer you talk to about finishing your pet quest is Ormak Grimshot. Once you finish your quest with him, you learn:

  • Beast Training ability
  • Feed Pet ability
  • Revive Pet spell

Now that you can TRAIN your tamed beasts, venture back towards “out” and visit the Pet Trainer, Xao’tsu, and learn everything he has to teach you, so you can toughen up your pets in various ways as well! From now on, when you reach a new even level (12, 14, 16, etc) you’ll want to visit both the Hunter trainer and the Pet trainer to get all the cool new abilities and skills that make Hunters and their Pets so great.

Stay Tuned For Article on Loving and Feeding Your Hunter Pets

Now that you have the ability to tame and train a pet, go out and get one and fiddle around with it! Come back soon for a related article to this topic, on the successful maintenance and caring for a Hunter pet.

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13
Jan

Level 10 Hunter Pet Quest, Made Easy, Part I

   Posted by: WoWGrrl    in Adventures In Azeroth, Class 101: Hunter

One of the coolest things about being a Hunter is the fact that at level 10, you’re able to tame a pet that will fight and grow alongside you until you replace it with another pet somewhere down the road.

Unfortunately, the level 10 pet quest has some quirks to it that make the process challenging for folks new to the Hunter game. Thus, this entry was born!

I’m writing it from the perspective of a Troll or Orc on the Horde side, but the general premises would apply no matter what race and what area you get your quests from.

Getting The Quest

As a Troll Hunter, I got my quest (”Taming The Beast”) in Razor Hill from the Hunter trainer in the bunker across the street from the Inn. If you’re curious, the trainer’s name is Thotar.

Having gone through this process before, I now know that there are three stages to completing the taming quests:

  1. Taming The Beast - Dire Mottled Boar
  2. Taming The Beast - Surf Crawler
  3. Taming The Beast - Armored Scorpid

and then upon turning in #3, Thotar sends us off to the Hunter Trainers in Orgrimmar to get the last piece when it comes to Spellbook-based pet commands:

  • Tame
  • Call
  • Feed
  • Release

Once all of these steps have been completed and you’re able to Feed your new pets (Feed being the last ’spell’ you learn while in Orgrimmar), then and only then will you be able to head out into the wild and tame a beast who will remain by your side and operate as a full-blown Hunter pet.

Finding The Right (Quest) Beasts To Tame

As with any of the rest of the World of Warcraft quests, the quest mobs in question are very specific mobs. Therefore, trying to tame a Pygmy Surf Crawler is not going to count towards taming a Surf Crawler. I believe it was the Hunter quest that lead me towards my introduction to Thottbot.com, a website with a simple search engine that’s full of mob and item location data (complete with maps) and a plethora of other information.

I strongly suggest you use Thottbot throughout your Warcraft gaming, and for that reason, I’ve made the links up above when referring to the quest mobs. Find a line entry with a high number of kills, and then click on “Map” to the left of the kills number, and you’ll find the most recent places that that type of mob was found and killed by other players. It’ll never pinpoint something for you, but it sure makes finding mobs and specific drops easier than it would be if you had to rely on your friends and guildmates to point you in the right direction!

How To Use Your Taming Rod To Tame Beasts

Now that you know where to find your first beast for the Taming quests, maybe you’ve even got a Dire Mottled Boar wandering around in front of you… how does this “Taming Rod” work?

The simplest way I’ve found to use it is by putting it into my Action bar (bottom bar with the 1 2 3 quickactions), and use it from there, since it’s not required to actually “wield” the rod in order to have it work. I’ve dragged the rod from my bag into QuickAction slot represented by the number 0, and now for the actual taming steps:

  1. Find a Dire Mottled Boar and TAB until you’ve targetted it. Don’t attack, but get close enough that the QuickAction number on your Action bar (number 0 for me because of where I put the taming rod) turns from red to white.
  2. Activate the taming rod through your Action bar QuickAction (for me, the number 0, or by clicking the bar on my Action bar)
  3. Wait until your tame succeeds or fails.
  4. If it fails, repeat Step 2 and 3. If it succeeds, return to Razor Hill to turn in your quest and get the next step.

Summary

Those are the very basics for the process of completing your Level 10 Hunter Pet Quests. In part two, I’ll cover more details, including:

  • How you know if the tame is working/has worked
  • Turn in your quest, or fight with your new pet first?
  • Dealing with Taming Wand replacement and its quirky nature
  • Staying alive during taming

Part II has been posted, continue on…

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