12-24-2016, 04:29 AM
Gnawbone's Hunter PVP Guide
I hope you, the reader, are able to make use of this guide. A lot of this is content I wrote, but there is a lot of research I have done over the years and I have included many of my sources, meaning that I cannot take full credit for this guide, only its assembly. Be mindful most of this will be expanded and updated periodically.
Table of Contents:
Preface- Key Terms (Glossary)
1. Stats
2. Important Abilities
3. Race and Spec
4. Pets (WiP)
5. Macros (WiP)
6. Gear, Enchants, and Consumables (WiP)
7. Rotation and Tips (WiP)
8. Kiting
9. Class Tactics and Battleground Tactics
10. Addons
11. Keybinds
12. PvP Attitude and the Meta-Game (WiP)
13. 1.12 Hunter Videos
14. Known Hunter Bugs (Server Specific)
Key Terms:
You will notice throughout this thread, that a lot of jargon is used. For those that don't know all of it I'll post some key terms here:
-Crowd Control (CC)- Stopping or slowing an enemy from casting or moving.
-Best in Slot (BiS)- The best gear or enchant you can put in a specific slot. This is not static for pvp, and mostly depends on your spec.
-Burst- Referring to the act dealing extremely high amounts of damage in a short amount of time.
-PUG- Pick Up Group. Refers to groups of players randomly assigned to the same team.
-Prem/Premade- The opposite of a PUG- a pre-made group of players who are typically well geared and well coordinated.
-Proc- "... an abbreviation that refers to a weapon, item or ability activating with the 'Chance on Hit' or 'Chance on Use' effect (an ability or a spell)."
-GY- Graveyard.
-Damage Per Second (DPS)- How much damage you average per second.
-Line of Sight (LoS)- LoSing a player means running behind an object or wall, at which point it will cancel their cast, or not allow them to cast until they can see you on their screen again. A commonly used tactic in a pvp environment.
-Beast Mastery (BM)-Hunter talent branch that focuses on your pet.
-Marksmanship (MM)- Hunter talent branch that focuses on your ranged damage.
-Survival (SV)- Hunter talent branch that focuses on traps and survivability.
-Area of Effect (AoE)- AoE spells are spells that do not target a specific player, but rather a specific area. This is useful for getting enemies out of stealth. Our two AoE spells of note are flare and volley.
-Kiting- Running away from an opposing player, while continuing to dps or cc them.
-Diminishing Returns (DR)- “Diminishing returns means that certain spells and abilities become less effective against a target if used frequently within a short period of time” (wow.gamepedia.com). This affects how long your freezing trap and wyvern sting lasts on opponents if you continuously are putting them in a trap.
-Backpedaling- Walking backwards while facing forwards. This is counterproductive in pvp, if we're trying to back away from someone, we should run with our back to them as we will be able to get away faster. Using a mouse to turn instead of arrow keys or WASD will both increase your speed and free up more keys for you to bind abilities to.
-Out of Mana (OOM)- Self explanatory. Running out of mana.
-Cooldowns (CD)- Really the only cooldown we need to worry about as a hunter is our Arcane/Aimed shot cooldown, as they share one. As a rule of thumb, don’t fire an arcane shot if you think you can get an aimed shot off before the CD is up, you’ll be lowering your overall dps if you do.
-EFC/FC- Enemy Flag Carrier/Flag Carrier. Whoever is carrying your or the opponents flag in WSG, respectively.
-Clipping- The delay between your shots. You can tactically "clip" your shots to maximize your burst in PvP. In regards to PvE, clipping is terrible and should never be done to maximize your DPS, however, the situational nature of PvP does not always mean that you should be focused on maintaining a constant uptime on spells/pouring out all your dps at once. "DO NOT OVERLAY AUTO SHOT WITH MULTI OR AIMED SHOT. MEANING WAIT IF YOUR AUTO SHOT IS ABOUT TO FIRE BEFORE USING SPELLS. Now this will take some practice but try to cast Aimed shot as your auto shot is being fired, you will shoot during your aimed shot casting - it takes a while to master don't be discouraged if you can't get it first time. This will boost your dps significantly however once you get it."
-Interrupt- Using a CC ability which stops the enemy from finishing a cast. As a hunter, you have 4 possible interrupts: Scatter Shot, Freezing Trap, Feign Death, and Intimidation.
-Flytime- The hidden delay in certain shots. You can see this when you see your arrows or bullets flying toward your target, hence the name. From a retail bluepost: “This is also good time to clear up some of the confusion about hunter shot cast times. Essentially, ranged attacks in World of Warcraft have always had a built in 0.5 second delay to their cast time. Since this does not apply to instant attacks, for hunters it only really applies to Aimed Shot, Steady Shot and Cobra Shot. Prior to the 4.0.6 changes, Aimed Shot was listed with a 3.0 cast time, but due to the delay, in reality it had a cast time that amounted to 3.5 seconds.”
1) Stats:
Hunters are great because they’re one of the few classes that can benefit from every stat, although some lose and gain importance in a pvp setting. So here is what I look for in gear (in order of importance):
1) Hit: hit cap for hunters is 5% in pvp (higher for pve but we don’t care about that now). Get this before anything else, then focus on others, because with your hit % lower than 5, your attacks will miss, softcapped (meaning you may miss once in a blue moon) you will be landing almost all of your shots/attacks. You don’t want your shots to miss when it matters most!
2) Agility or Stamina: this depends on your gear and play style, so if you prefer greater survivability, go for stamina, if you want to pew more stuff, focus on agility. That being said these should be your two highest stats. I personally prefer to have more agility than stamina, but you would be hard pressed to gear yourself to the point where your stamina is greater than your agility.
3) Crit: As always, critical strike % is important in pvp. Look for crit with your gear because there’s nothing better than scoring that vital crit and downing an efc, and pvp is all about burst damage.
4) Ranged Attack Power (RAP): Increases your ranged base damage. Pretty much the same mechanic as attack power, except useful to us. THIS IS THE SAME THING AS ATTACK POWER (AP), THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT AP BOOSTS BOTH MELEE AND RANGED, WHILE RAP EXCLUSIVELY BOOTS RANGED DAMAGE. BUFFS TO AP ONLY AFFECT MELEE AP.
5) Intellect: Intellect affects your mana pool, which is important for obvious reasons, you’re mostly shooting on the run as a hunter and sitting oom auto shooting people won’t get you very far. Additionally this affects your spell damage (read: arcane shot, serpent sting, and fire traps). This is important, but I wouldn’t sacrifice agility, stamina, or crit for intellect.
6) Strength: Strength is a very minor stat for hunters- we won’t get much use out of it, and it isn’t worth stacking (in my opinion), but if an item has good aforementioned stats, and contains strength, don’t exclude it as a possibility, because it can improve your pets stats and it can improve your raptor/mongoose strikes.
7) +Dodge %: Not important, not necessary. You should look for this when you have absolutely no other options for an item, or an enchant. That being said, this will help you in evasion tanking in PvP: although you can also get +Dodge % from stacking agility.
8) Armor: Reduces damage taken by melee attacks. Do not look for this over other stats, you'll get all the armor you need from your gear.
9) Spell Power: Spell power SHOULD affect a very small portion of our attacks: Arcane Shot (? Some people say that it is a physical attack calculated with spell power, but I believe that it scales with ATTACK POWER here instead of SP), Wyvern/Serpent Sting, Volley, and Immolation/Explosive trap. However, due to some strange normalization on the server's end in response to spellpower rogues (Speculation), many classes spells do not receive increases from Spell Power. Tested and confirmed that it does nothing.
10) # Mana per 5 Seconds: More useful than spirit, but this is not nearly as important for pvp as it is for pve, due to the fact that you do not have as long of fights in pvp as you do in pve. The alternate version is "Hp5", basically just replace "Mana" with "Health" and it functions the same way.
11) Spirit: I would not look for spirit when gearing a hunter for pvp. If you get enough to significantly improve your mana regen, your damage will most likely be garbage. Again as with strength, do not let it deter you from a piece of gear with good primary stats (agi, stam, crit). Spirit give mana every 2 sec. Even if you cast Aimed Shot (3.5) sec, and Multi-Shot (+3.5 sec), then you will have at least 1-2 spirit tick(s).
Here is how your stats are going to affect you (Source)
"Stamina: 1 Stamina gives 10 health.
Agility: Gives 1 Melee Attack Power and .02 Melee Crit.
50 Agility = 1% Melee Crit.
53 Agility (52.91) = 1% Ranged Crit. (Outside Source)
Strength: Gives 1 Melee Attack Power.
Attack Power: Makes you Swing Harder.
Critical Strike*: Increases your Chance to crit.
Normal Hunters value this around 30 Attack Power.
Melee Hunters value it around 20 due to Savage Strikes.
Intellect: 1 Intellect is 15 Mana. (Not important on gear)."
On Crit:
Here comes some math try to follow along:
(Lets say we hit 100% of our shots, so we dont have to take misses into account.)
-Our shots hits for X, and our crits hit for x+x*130% = 2,3X
-With 0% crit our shots would hit for 100*X
-With 1% crit out shots would hit for 99*X+1*2,3X = 101,3X
-So the difference between 0% crit and 1% crit is: (101,3X-100X)/100X*100% = 1,3%
-That means if we go from 0% crit to 1% crit, we would see and dps increase of 1,3%
-The problem is that we most likely have around 25-30% crit. So lets look at the math when we go from 25% crit to 26% crit.
-With 25% crit our shots would hit for 75*X+25*2,3X = 132,5X
-With 26% crit our shots would hit for 74*X+26*2,3X = 133,8X
-So the diffence between 25% crit and 26% crit is: (133,8X-132,5X)/132,5X*100% = 0,98%
-You could make a graph or a sheet, where you can see your % dps increase with 1% crit, depending on your crit level.
So as you can see, the more % crit we have, a 1% crit increase will give a smaller % dps increase.
So lets say you want to really calculate how your stats are feeding into other stats (i.e. how much crit you get from your agility). This page is a comprehensive guide on how your stats are calculated into other stats, and really can help you understand the importance of certain stats based on your spec/gear:
*Auto Spam Replacement*://wowwiki.wikia.com/index.php?title=Critical_strike&oldid=366674 (accurate for patch 1.12).
2) Abilities:
Here are SOME (not all) important abilities for me as a hunter. As there is not really a rotation in pvp they can vary in importance, they can all be game breaking/making given the situation.
So before we get into the meat of this guide lets do some math! Here are the equations that allow you to calculate damage of various abilities: (found here):
"-Auto Shot = SlayingMod*(AmmoDPS*WeaponSpeed+RWSMod*(RAP/14*WeaponSpeed+Scope+AverageWeaponDamage))
-Aimed Shot = SlayingMod*(AmmoDPS*WeaponSpeed+RWSMod*(RAP/14*2.8+Scope+AverageWeaponDamage+AimedShotBonus))
-Multi-Shot = BarrageMod*GSMod*SlayingMod*(AmmoDPS*WeaponSpeed+RWSMod*(RAP/14*2.8+Scope+AverageWeaponDamage+MultiShotBonus))
Here is what you replace the jargon with:
AimedShotBonus = 600
MultiShotBonus = 150
MortalShotsMod = 0.30
SlayingMod = 1.03 if Slaying Talent, 1 if not
RWSMod = 1.05 if MM spec, 1 if LR spec
BarrageMod = 1.15 if MM spec, 1 if LR spec
GSMod = 1.15 if 8/8 Giantstalker bonus, 1 if not"
Basically you need to do a lot of math in order to accurately test your damage. If you are further interested in testing, this is a good resource,. You can also download various damage meter addons (sw_stats is good) to test the damage of specific spells based on your gear.
Aimed Shot: Aimed shot is our bread and butter as a hunter. It takes a while to shoot, but causes devastating damage. Make sure you don’t sit in an open spot and start casting aimed shot unless you have a sufficient amount of allies in front of you, otherwise players will probably get in your dead zone (read: area where you can’t shoot or melee attack them) and make your long cast pointless. 980 to 1024 Damage. 6 second cooldown, 3 second cast.
Scatter Shot: Disorients your target, stopping casting and making them wander around in a "circle" for 4 seconds. 181 to 203 Damage, 30 second cooldown.
Multi-Shot (MS): MS is another high damage attack with virtually no cast time. While it shows up as an instant cast on the tooltip, it actually won’t fire unless you’re standing still (you don’t have to stand long, just long enough until you see the shooting animation). Hits 3 Targets for 458 to 508 damage.
Feign Death (FD): Pretend you’re dead! The main use of this ability in pvp is that it causes everyone to lose you as a target- meaning that if they are casting a spell and you cast FD, they will have to stop cast. The other primary benefit here is that it takes you out of combat, and we have to be out of combat to put down our traps!
Freezing Trap (FT): When hit, causes the target to freeze, making them unable to move or cast. Lasts 20 seconds.
Frost Trap: Puts down a blanket of frost on the area around the trap, slowing all enemies that stand on the affected area. Lasts 30 seconds. Slows enemy movement speed by 60%.
Serpent Sting: A damage over time spell. Note that serpent sting is not a significant amount of damage in relation to how much mana it uses, so I try to save it for when an enemy is low. Serpent sting is also handy vs mana users when the enemy is very low on health and cannot heal (don’t serpent sting a priest with full mana and low health unless you have another player with you, they may be able to outheal the damage making your serpent sting essentially pointless). 490 Damage over 15 seconds.
Viper Sting: Viper Sting is one of the most overpowered hunter moves. It allows us to drain huge amounts of mana from our opponents and is easy to reapply. I have this up 100% of the time I am fighting a mana using class. Drains 1108 Mana over 8 seconds.
Scorpid Sting: Not too much use here, but not a bad debuff if you’re fighting a melee class. Additionally this is a good tool to use if you're fighting against a group with a competent druid/shaman/paladin, in that it adds another debuff slot to dispel, making them struggle to dispel other debuffs (crippling poison for example), generally wasting their time and running them OOM.
Rapid Fire (RF): Increases your ranged attack speed by 40% for 19 seconds. Useful all around, but I like to save it to pop right before my aimed shot, or along with an attack power increasing trinket for more burst.
Wing Clip (WC): slows the target. always use when an enemy gets in melee range.
Concussive Shot: slows the target. again, use it on any melee class, or on an enemy such as a mage, who may blink away from you once you get his health low enough.
Flare: Forces stealthed enemies out of stealth within a 10 yard radius. Put it down ANY time you see an enemy rogue. (Secret tip: The duration of flare is slightly longer than its cooldown time.)
Hunter’s Mark: VERY USEFUL. Hunters mark essentially does 3 things. It increases your ranged attack power against the target, it allows you to see the target if he goes into stealth (When used right, no rogue can kill you), and makes the target affected appear on your minimap (this is nice if it’s a druid and you don’t want to be bothered with changing between track humanoids and track beasts).
Deterrence: 25% Dodge and Parry for 10 seconds. Pop it when you ENTER in a tough melee battle or during close draws where your enemy could finish you off easily close-range: USE THIS WITH ASPECT OF THE MONKEY.
Aspect of the Wild: Increases your nature resistance by 60. I occasionally save this when fighting elemental shamans- It WILL make a small difference, and an even bigger difference if you have chromatic flask and Mark of the Wild.
Rapid Fire: Increases your ranged attack speed by 40% for 15 seconds.
Track Humanoids: self explanatory. Keep this up almost 100% of the time. This is where hunters really shine in battlegrounds- we can tell our whole team where the enemy flag carrier goes!
Track Beasts: Useful for chasing druids- this allows you to track them on your minimap if they change into cat/bear/travel form.
Track Hidden: Allows you to see hidden players that are within a certain range of you, does not show up on minimap. Useful for rogues and druids.
Aspect of the Hawk (AotH): Keep this up most of all. Increases your ranged attack power. +110 Ranged Attack Power.
Aspect of the Monkey (AotM): Keep this up any time a melee class gets in range, or if a hunter sends his pet after you. It will increase your dodge chance by 6% and you can easily switch back to Hawk once you get out of melee range.
Aspect of the Cheetah (AotC): Use this when you carry a flag and don’t have any enemies incoming. Increases run speed. When hit with this on, you will get dazed. 20% Movement speed increase. WILL ONLY DAZE YOU FROM DIRECT DAMAGE (Read: no dots).
Aspect of the Pack (AotP): Use this when you are running with a flag carrier or your team and don’t have any enemies incoming. When anyone with the aura is hit, they will get dazed, very not good, so be careful when you have this aura on. 20% Movement speed increase.
Aspect of the Beast (AotB): Makes you untraceable. This is situational, but handy when the opposing team has a hunter or druid, as they cannot track you. Be sure to dismiss your pet or order it to stay somewhere you aren’t if you have this on, as a hunter could switch to track beasts and find you based on where your pet is.
Volley: Our second temporary flare. This has 2 uses. One, you can cast it if there is a rogue in the room, and occasionally you will surprise them out of stealth (hunters mark and serpent sting him after that and its game over). Two, if an enemy tries to LoS you to eat or re-stealth, your volley can put them back into combat ruining their counter.
Fear Beast: It's a 20 second fear. Our only PvP application will be fearing druids, use scatter shot to stop them from shifting out of bear/cat/travel form so you can get the cast off.
Arcane Shot: Instant cast shot (our only real one), i save this for A) plate wearing classes because this counts as magic damage, so it can eat through plate armor, or B) kiting/chasing, since you can shoot it on the run. 183 Arcane Damage. 6 second cooldown.
Raptor/Mongoose Strike: Hits hard if you have a 2handed weapon. Don’t rely on this for significant dps, but it can sometimes surprise you with a high damage if you’re geared the right way.
Note: All traps have a 15 second cooldown.
3) Race and Spec:
Race:
Don't be racist: You should base your race decision on how you want to play. Here I'm going to break down the beneficial racials for hunters, and how they might fit into different playstyles. Yep, you can also guess what I'm going to tell you next, I'll be saying it A LOT: Do not focus on min/maxing stats and racials if you think you would have more fun playing another race. This game would be incredibly boring if all you saw were Orc and Nightelf hunters (While these have the most racials that will benefit you, there are perks of playing other races, in addition to the fact that even if you min/max based on racials, you can still get rolled by someone who knows the class better than you).
Horde:
Orc: Axe/2H Axe skill +5 (~1% Hit with axes at 60)/ +25% Attack power -50% Healing buff/debuff (buff lasts 15 seconds, debuff lasts 25 seconds, 2 minute cooldown)/ 25% Stun resist (Lol)/ 5% Increased pet damage (Lol)
Basically this is a great spec if you want: Survivability and competitive DPS in close situations (for PvP that is).
Troll: 10-30% Increased attack speed (based on your HP)/5% Damage vs. Beasts (Not terribly useful for PvP/+5% Bow Skill (Should also translate to ~1% Hit with bows at 60, not verified)/10% increased Hp5
Arguably the most stylish Hunter race. The buffs, sadly, don't really do much for us in PvP, unless you can use your attack speed buff perfect, which is hard to do, if you get your 30% increased speed buff, you're probably going to be dead before the first 2 seconds are up.
Tauren: 2 Second stun for up to 5 players/units (2 Minute cooldown)/5% Increased health/+15 Herbalism/+10 Nature Resistance
Hardy and a cool built in stun, Taurens are the mid-tier Hunter class for the Horde. Note that your hitbox as a tauren is MASSIVE, even with Nogginfogger, so it will be slightly harder to kite than say, a dwarf.
Alliance:
Night Elf: 1% Dodge/Stationary stealth ability/+10 Nature Resist/50% Increased corpse speed.
Night Elves make fantastic snipers. You can use your stealth ability in conjunction with a cat's prowl can suprise people at bases/flags you are defending. Your dodge ability and nature resist make you all the more powerful against rogues, and your increased corpse run speed will make world PvP much less boring, increasing your uptime, and overall increasing your dps comparatively.
Dwarf: 8 Second immunity to bleeds, poisons, and diseases, 10% Additional armor (3 Minute cooldown)/+5 Gun skill (Again, SHOULD translate to ~1% Hit when using guns)/+10 Frost Resistance/Treasure tracking.
Dwarves are an outstanding utility class. You can hit stoneform against rogues and it's good game. Alternatively, you can stoneform away pesky viper stings from other hunters. You also have an amazingly tiny hitbox, allowing you to navigate through certain areas that other races cannot (I do not condone abuse of game/class/race mechanics).
NOTE: +5 weapon skills do not exclusively give +Hit%, but also a small amount of +Crit%. Taken from Surelynotdhorn referencing a dead-linked elitestjerks page:
"...those 5 skill should hook you up with 0.24% hit per point and 0.04% crit per point (see *Auto Spam Replacement*://forums.elitistjerks.com/topic/7214-skill-and-ranged-and-you/ ) for a total of 1.2% hit and 0.2% crit."
Specs:
Throughout your time as a hunter you will hear/will have heard people telling you that a certain spec is the best hunter spec. There are a lot of what I like to call “Tunnel Vision Hunters” who think that they’re playing a pure dps class: these are often the people who will /w you “turn on TSA” when you don’t have it, and they are silly. If you don't have fun playing a spec, chances are you won't be playing that spec to the best of your ability, and the great thing about hunter talents is that for pvp, you can get really creative with them (as opposed to dumping most of your talents in one tree, as all 3 trees offer a combination of damage and utility). Deep tree talents such as True Shot Aura (TSA), Beastial Wrath (BW), and Wyvern Sting (WS) will prove less useful than if you had spread more points across different trees, and hunters are all about being useful in pvp. That being said, Scatter Shot (SS) is an essential pvp talent, as is Aimed Shot (AS), I try to take those and either Intimidation or Counter Strike (CS), but the former has more uptime since you don't have to parry to activate it (It is worth noting that if you take CS, you will almost certainly want to spec into Deterrence as well, which will pretty much guarantee you at least one free CS). The one template I would give you is this, it includes the talents that are essential for your burst (your main pvp burst is described in the Rotation & Tips section):
[img]*Auto Spam Replacement*://i.imgur.com/WF7b1fd.jpg[/img]
MM/Surv: This is my current spec, and is good when you have better gear because Lightning Reflexes increases in usefulness the more agility you have. It provides excellent damage output through the marksmanship tree, and great durability via the survival tree. This is a build that isn't afraid to get in close: it provides decent melee damage, I took improved wing clip (WC) because the proc rate is nice (1 in 4 WCs will usually yield 1 proc), and it will make kiting much easier for you. Entrapment is ignored here because as far as I know, it is still bugged on this server, although I would pick entrapment over imp. wing clip once it gets fixed as it provides even more utility (picture trapping a whole team in your tunnel with a frost trap while you run away with their flag).
[img]*Auto Spam Replacement*://i.imgur.com/Fv0CeFs.jpg[/img]
Version II: Very similar spec, this increases your damage slightly and provides a useful buff to your party. While it gives you more uptime with Efficiency, it is wise to use a boar pet to make up for the lowered proc rate from Improved Concussive Shot. *Auto Spam Replacement*://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#cZiVohthtcxbqoh
Butt Mastery: The other spec i like for pvp is a BM hybrid which is better for newer players with preraid bis (but can be fun with better gear too) and provides good cc. I would caution against using this unless you have EXCELLENT pet micro-management skills, as pet pathing is very much broken here, and it can take ages for your pet to catch up with you in fast paced battlegrounds (which is partially why we spec into Bestial Swiftness). I chose Beastial Discipline over Spirit Bond because it allows for more bites/claws, increasing our pets overall dps, while Spirit Bond is too little too late when when in combat. Imp mend pet is optional, but i like it because it can free your pet if it is cc’d, as there is a dispelling tick, meaning you can spam rank 1 mend and usually enjoy a nice proc rate. Note that based on my experience, this spec doesn't hold up in an endgame environment.
[img]*Auto Spam Replacement*://i.imgur.com/4evwk3g.jpg[/img]
Fun Specs: To adequately demonstrate the versatility of a hunter’s spec choice, I’m including some goofy, creative, or at the very least interesting specs that may not be the most viable in PvP or PvE:
Spell Power Hunter: *Auto Spam Replacement*://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#cZVVqAthzcbfi
Melee Hunter: https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=28163
Tank Hunter: *Auto Spam Replacement*://www.wow-one.com/forum/topic/99076-knifells-hunter-tank-guide/
Flag Carrier: This spec is ideal for carrying flags if you still want to roll with beast mastery. You can switch points between either Deflection, Improved Aspect of the Monkey, Ferocity, and Thick Hide depending on your play style and how often you get focused in a battleground. Improved Cheetah/Pack is useful for running flags, and Spirit Bond was chosen for using LoS and eating, for a faster regeneration time. *Auto Spam Replacement*://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#cVcMdtroZtVohthZ0h
4) Pets:
Some pets here are buggy and do not retain their original attack speed as they do in true 1.12- although many have been fixed and are correct currently. Consequently, you should always check your pets attack speed against a 1.12 pet database to make sure you’re doing all you can dps-wise. You can use any pet, but I recommend these:
Boar- Charge ability gives you another free root. Sadly, boar dps is relatively small, so charge is really the only useful ability. As a hunter, you need all the cc you can get in order to maximize your usefulness as well as your damage, so this is my #1 pick for any non BM hunter. Other pets are a better option for BM due to their significantly higher dps.
Cat- Cats are nice because they can dash (sprint), prowl (stealth, increasing attack power of attack used right after stealth fades), claw, and bite, meaning that they are arguably the best dps pet you can get in a pvp setting.
Bats- Bats have bite, the flying equivalent of dash, and a good melee debuff spell. The best thing about bats is that they look unique and they are big enough that they can significantly distract an enemy player once it gets up in their face.
Wolf- Furious howl and dps abilities, the only reason I see to take a wolf pet is making a furious howl/aimed shot macro to increase your damage. IMO the buff is too small and more useful for raiding.
Wind Serpent- Lightening breath (A wind serpent-only ranged nature damaging spell) should (But currently does not) scale with your spell power, so if you have a good amount of gear from AQ40 (T2.5, etc.), you could have a relatively strong attack coming from your flying snake. Another good reason to get one of these guys is the ranged attack- if both you and your pet get cc'd while an enemy attempts to run away from you, lightning breath could be the game changer you need. I never personally use one, but it isn't the worst choice out there in terms of pvp.
Pets learn spells in a strange way. In order to get the highest rank of certain pet abilities, you need to tame a pet that already has the ability at the rank you want, and use it enough in combat until it is added to your spell book (roughly 5-10 times). I don’t want to take all the time to list where you can learn specific abilities, because I'm incredibly lazy, so I will post the resource I always use and a corresponding one for the correct pet attack speeds in 1.12.
You can find a more in-depth guide here (although there are two places where it lacks info: Most obviously it is missing info for special mobs under raptors, as it makes no mention of ZG raptors, same with the turtle family, as there is a faster-than-normal attack speed turtle available to those who seek him to tank) The real charm of this resource is that it describes the reasoning for getting a particular pet in an outstanding fashion.
Important PvP Pet Abilities:
Bite (Rank 8)- Learned from Bloodaxe Worg in Upper Blackrock Spire
Claw (Rank 8)- Learned from Winterspring Screecher/Elder Shardtooth (Both from Winterspring)
Keybind both claw and bite if your pet can learn both of them- Alternate the attacks based on the fight: claw is great for interrupts due to the higher dpf (damage per focus), while bite will hit harder.
Dash (Dive for flying pets) (Rank 3)- Learned from Bloodaxe Worg/Many others/Plaugebat in Easter Plaguelands for dive. Increases movement speed.
Charge (Rank 5)- Learned from Grunter in Blasted Lands. Functions like a warrior's charge, but has a root on the target for a very small duration.
Screech (Rank 4)- Learned from Monstrous Plaguebat in Eastern Plaguelands. Melee debuff to your enemies- great when used in conjunction with Scorpid Sting.
Pet Scaling: Another item in my massive to-do pile, pets will scale differently across various servers. To determine if your pet's stats will scale along with yours, you need to know if your server is using a TBC core (I think most do), and if so, if they have disabled pet scaling. PETS DID NOT SCALE IN RETAIL VANILLA. Here at Retro I'm fairly confident that it is run through a TBC core, but have yet to test if they removed scaling (My initial thoughts point to no, but that is unsubstantiated.)
The Scale:
26% of your stamina
45.7% of your armor
1 armor and .5 attack power for each point of agility you have
18.75% of all your attack power
0.33 attack power for each point of strength you have
38.8% of your resistance(s)
(source)
*Make sure to micromanage your pets, having them on aggressive by accident can ruin setups if your team has CC’d an enemy.
Special Pets:
Snarler: A cool tame that retains the resistances that it has as a mob (100 resist each). He is primarily useful for pve as Lupos can out damage him. He does not retain his resistances at this time on Retro-Wow. *Auto Spam Replacement*://db.vanillagaming.org/?npc=5356
Broken Tooth: Fastest cat in the game with a 1.0 attack speed. With prowl, sprint, bite, and claw, his damage output in top-tierhttp://wow-one.com/database/?npc=2850
Lupos: A cool wolf that does shadow damage rather than physical damage, which is great for eating through plate wearers along with Serpent Stings and Arcane Shots. Lupos’s shadow damage DOES currently work on the server. (It should be noted that on some servers, Lupos's attack will eat up warlock debuffs on enemies, although I haven't confirmed this.)
Bloodseeker Bat: Fastest bat in the game, boasting a 1.0 attack speed (Not tested on this server). *Auto Spam Replacement*://wow-one.com/database/?npc=11368
Razzashi Raptor: Only found in ZG, this raptor has the fastest attack speed of any pet, at a ridiculous 0.9. I personally reccomend Broken Tooth over this pet due to it having greater utility. *Auto Spam Replacement*://wow-one.com/database/?npc=14821
5) Macros:
I have already posted a thread with macros, and there are many good places to find macros.
Note that in the "Addons" section of this guide is an addon called "Classic Focus", in which you can make simple macro commands to add a focus functionality to your attacks. The list of commands can be found here.
I’ll include the "bread and butter" in here for posterity (Most of these macros will only work with the addon Supermacro):
-Feign Death+Freezing trap (This will also call your pet back to you so they don’t break your trap) Additionally, neither of these feign death+trap macros will cast feign death when you are not in combat (so if you aren't in combat, it will just place a trap):
/script PetFollow();
/script if UnitAffectingCombat("player") then CastSpellByName("Feign Death") end
/cast Freezing Trap(Rank 3)
-Feign Death+Frost trap (your pet won’t break frost trap, so there is no pet follow script here):
/script if UnitAffectingCombat("player") then CastSpellByName("Feign Death") end
/cast Frost Trap
-Scatter Shot (This will also call your pet back to you so they don’t break your scatter):
/script PetFollow();
/cast Scatter Shot
-Melee Macro (This will cast raptor strike, and mongoose strike when it is available, you can include wing clip in the line, but I personally keep it as a separate ability):
/script if (not PlayerFrame.inCombat) then AttackTarget() end
/cast Mongoose Bite(Rank 4)
/cast Raptor Strike(Rank 8)
Call/dismiss Macro (not super important but it's a good idea to free up as much action bar space as possible):
/cast Call Pet
/cast Dismiss Pet
-Auto Shot (targets enemy in front of you, and will attack your target based on distance away from you [auto attack or auto shot]. This won't turn off if you spam it, and you need to replace "3" in the line "IsAutoRepeatAction(3)" with the corresponding location of your auto shot hotkey:
/script if GetUnitName("target")==nil then TargetNearestEnemy() end /run if CheckInteractDistance("target", 3) and (not PlayerFrame.inCombat) then AttackTarget() elseif not IsAutoRepeatAction(3) then CastSpellByName("Auto Shot") end[/i]
I hope you, the reader, are able to make use of this guide. A lot of this is content I wrote, but there is a lot of research I have done over the years and I have included many of my sources, meaning that I cannot take full credit for this guide, only its assembly. Be mindful most of this will be expanded and updated periodically.
Table of Contents:
Preface- Key Terms (Glossary)
1. Stats
2. Important Abilities
3. Race and Spec
4. Pets (WiP)
5. Macros (WiP)
6. Gear, Enchants, and Consumables (WiP)
7. Rotation and Tips (WiP)
8. Kiting
9. Class Tactics and Battleground Tactics
10. Addons
11. Keybinds
12. PvP Attitude and the Meta-Game (WiP)
13. 1.12 Hunter Videos
14. Known Hunter Bugs (Server Specific)
Key Terms:
You will notice throughout this thread, that a lot of jargon is used. For those that don't know all of it I'll post some key terms here:
-Crowd Control (CC)- Stopping or slowing an enemy from casting or moving.
-Best in Slot (BiS)- The best gear or enchant you can put in a specific slot. This is not static for pvp, and mostly depends on your spec.
-Burst- Referring to the act dealing extremely high amounts of damage in a short amount of time.
-PUG- Pick Up Group. Refers to groups of players randomly assigned to the same team.
-Prem/Premade- The opposite of a PUG- a pre-made group of players who are typically well geared and well coordinated.
-Proc- "... an abbreviation that refers to a weapon, item or ability activating with the 'Chance on Hit' or 'Chance on Use' effect (an ability or a spell)."
-GY- Graveyard.
-Damage Per Second (DPS)- How much damage you average per second.
-Line of Sight (LoS)- LoSing a player means running behind an object or wall, at which point it will cancel their cast, or not allow them to cast until they can see you on their screen again. A commonly used tactic in a pvp environment.
-Beast Mastery (BM)-Hunter talent branch that focuses on your pet.
-Marksmanship (MM)- Hunter talent branch that focuses on your ranged damage.
-Survival (SV)- Hunter talent branch that focuses on traps and survivability.
-Area of Effect (AoE)- AoE spells are spells that do not target a specific player, but rather a specific area. This is useful for getting enemies out of stealth. Our two AoE spells of note are flare and volley.
-Kiting- Running away from an opposing player, while continuing to dps or cc them.
-Diminishing Returns (DR)- “Diminishing returns means that certain spells and abilities become less effective against a target if used frequently within a short period of time” (wow.gamepedia.com). This affects how long your freezing trap and wyvern sting lasts on opponents if you continuously are putting them in a trap.
-Backpedaling- Walking backwards while facing forwards. This is counterproductive in pvp, if we're trying to back away from someone, we should run with our back to them as we will be able to get away faster. Using a mouse to turn instead of arrow keys or WASD will both increase your speed and free up more keys for you to bind abilities to.
-Out of Mana (OOM)- Self explanatory. Running out of mana.
-Cooldowns (CD)- Really the only cooldown we need to worry about as a hunter is our Arcane/Aimed shot cooldown, as they share one. As a rule of thumb, don’t fire an arcane shot if you think you can get an aimed shot off before the CD is up, you’ll be lowering your overall dps if you do.
-EFC/FC- Enemy Flag Carrier/Flag Carrier. Whoever is carrying your or the opponents flag in WSG, respectively.
-Clipping- The delay between your shots. You can tactically "clip" your shots to maximize your burst in PvP. In regards to PvE, clipping is terrible and should never be done to maximize your DPS, however, the situational nature of PvP does not always mean that you should be focused on maintaining a constant uptime on spells/pouring out all your dps at once. "DO NOT OVERLAY AUTO SHOT WITH MULTI OR AIMED SHOT. MEANING WAIT IF YOUR AUTO SHOT IS ABOUT TO FIRE BEFORE USING SPELLS. Now this will take some practice but try to cast Aimed shot as your auto shot is being fired, you will shoot during your aimed shot casting - it takes a while to master don't be discouraged if you can't get it first time. This will boost your dps significantly however once you get it."
-Interrupt- Using a CC ability which stops the enemy from finishing a cast. As a hunter, you have 4 possible interrupts: Scatter Shot, Freezing Trap, Feign Death, and Intimidation.
-Flytime- The hidden delay in certain shots. You can see this when you see your arrows or bullets flying toward your target, hence the name. From a retail bluepost: “This is also good time to clear up some of the confusion about hunter shot cast times. Essentially, ranged attacks in World of Warcraft have always had a built in 0.5 second delay to their cast time. Since this does not apply to instant attacks, for hunters it only really applies to Aimed Shot, Steady Shot and Cobra Shot. Prior to the 4.0.6 changes, Aimed Shot was listed with a 3.0 cast time, but due to the delay, in reality it had a cast time that amounted to 3.5 seconds.”
1) Stats:
Hunters are great because they’re one of the few classes that can benefit from every stat, although some lose and gain importance in a pvp setting. So here is what I look for in gear (in order of importance):
1) Hit: hit cap for hunters is 5% in pvp (higher for pve but we don’t care about that now). Get this before anything else, then focus on others, because with your hit % lower than 5, your attacks will miss, softcapped (meaning you may miss once in a blue moon) you will be landing almost all of your shots/attacks. You don’t want your shots to miss when it matters most!
2) Agility or Stamina: this depends on your gear and play style, so if you prefer greater survivability, go for stamina, if you want to pew more stuff, focus on agility. That being said these should be your two highest stats. I personally prefer to have more agility than stamina, but you would be hard pressed to gear yourself to the point where your stamina is greater than your agility.
3) Crit: As always, critical strike % is important in pvp. Look for crit with your gear because there’s nothing better than scoring that vital crit and downing an efc, and pvp is all about burst damage.
4) Ranged Attack Power (RAP): Increases your ranged base damage. Pretty much the same mechanic as attack power, except useful to us. THIS IS THE SAME THING AS ATTACK POWER (AP), THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT AP BOOSTS BOTH MELEE AND RANGED, WHILE RAP EXCLUSIVELY BOOTS RANGED DAMAGE. BUFFS TO AP ONLY AFFECT MELEE AP.
5) Intellect: Intellect affects your mana pool, which is important for obvious reasons, you’re mostly shooting on the run as a hunter and sitting oom auto shooting people won’t get you very far. Additionally this affects your spell damage (read: arcane shot, serpent sting, and fire traps). This is important, but I wouldn’t sacrifice agility, stamina, or crit for intellect.
6) Strength: Strength is a very minor stat for hunters- we won’t get much use out of it, and it isn’t worth stacking (in my opinion), but if an item has good aforementioned stats, and contains strength, don’t exclude it as a possibility, because it can improve your pets stats and it can improve your raptor/mongoose strikes.
7) +Dodge %: Not important, not necessary. You should look for this when you have absolutely no other options for an item, or an enchant. That being said, this will help you in evasion tanking in PvP: although you can also get +Dodge % from stacking agility.
8) Armor: Reduces damage taken by melee attacks. Do not look for this over other stats, you'll get all the armor you need from your gear.
9) Spell Power: Spell power SHOULD affect a very small portion of our attacks: Arcane Shot (? Some people say that it is a physical attack calculated with spell power, but I believe that it scales with ATTACK POWER here instead of SP), Wyvern/Serpent Sting, Volley, and Immolation/Explosive trap. However, due to some strange normalization on the server's end in response to spellpower rogues (Speculation), many classes spells do not receive increases from Spell Power. Tested and confirmed that it does nothing.
10) # Mana per 5 Seconds: More useful than spirit, but this is not nearly as important for pvp as it is for pve, due to the fact that you do not have as long of fights in pvp as you do in pve. The alternate version is "Hp5", basically just replace "Mana" with "Health" and it functions the same way.
11) Spirit: I would not look for spirit when gearing a hunter for pvp. If you get enough to significantly improve your mana regen, your damage will most likely be garbage. Again as with strength, do not let it deter you from a piece of gear with good primary stats (agi, stam, crit). Spirit give mana every 2 sec. Even if you cast Aimed Shot (3.5) sec, and Multi-Shot (+3.5 sec), then you will have at least 1-2 spirit tick(s).
Here is how your stats are going to affect you (Source)
"Stamina: 1 Stamina gives 10 health.
Agility: Gives 1 Melee Attack Power and .02 Melee Crit.
50 Agility = 1% Melee Crit.
53 Agility (52.91) = 1% Ranged Crit. (Outside Source)
Strength: Gives 1 Melee Attack Power.
Attack Power: Makes you Swing Harder.
Critical Strike*: Increases your Chance to crit.
Normal Hunters value this around 30 Attack Power.
Melee Hunters value it around 20 due to Savage Strikes.
Intellect: 1 Intellect is 15 Mana. (Not important on gear)."
On Crit:
Here comes some math try to follow along:
(Lets say we hit 100% of our shots, so we dont have to take misses into account.)
-Our shots hits for X, and our crits hit for x+x*130% = 2,3X
-With 0% crit our shots would hit for 100*X
-With 1% crit out shots would hit for 99*X+1*2,3X = 101,3X
-So the difference between 0% crit and 1% crit is: (101,3X-100X)/100X*100% = 1,3%
-That means if we go from 0% crit to 1% crit, we would see and dps increase of 1,3%
-The problem is that we most likely have around 25-30% crit. So lets look at the math when we go from 25% crit to 26% crit.
-With 25% crit our shots would hit for 75*X+25*2,3X = 132,5X
-With 26% crit our shots would hit for 74*X+26*2,3X = 133,8X
-So the diffence between 25% crit and 26% crit is: (133,8X-132,5X)/132,5X*100% = 0,98%
-You could make a graph or a sheet, where you can see your % dps increase with 1% crit, depending on your crit level.
So as you can see, the more % crit we have, a 1% crit increase will give a smaller % dps increase.
So lets say you want to really calculate how your stats are feeding into other stats (i.e. how much crit you get from your agility). This page is a comprehensive guide on how your stats are calculated into other stats, and really can help you understand the importance of certain stats based on your spec/gear:
*Auto Spam Replacement*://wowwiki.wikia.com/index.php?title=Critical_strike&oldid=366674 (accurate for patch 1.12).
2) Abilities:
Here are SOME (not all) important abilities for me as a hunter. As there is not really a rotation in pvp they can vary in importance, they can all be game breaking/making given the situation.
So before we get into the meat of this guide lets do some math! Here are the equations that allow you to calculate damage of various abilities: (found here):
"-Auto Shot = SlayingMod*(AmmoDPS*WeaponSpeed+RWSMod*(RAP/14*WeaponSpeed+Scope+AverageWeaponDamage))
-Aimed Shot = SlayingMod*(AmmoDPS*WeaponSpeed+RWSMod*(RAP/14*2.8+Scope+AverageWeaponDamage+AimedShotBonus))
-Multi-Shot = BarrageMod*GSMod*SlayingMod*(AmmoDPS*WeaponSpeed+RWSMod*(RAP/14*2.8+Scope+AverageWeaponDamage+MultiShotBonus))
Here is what you replace the jargon with:
AimedShotBonus = 600
MultiShotBonus = 150
MortalShotsMod = 0.30
SlayingMod = 1.03 if Slaying Talent, 1 if not
RWSMod = 1.05 if MM spec, 1 if LR spec
BarrageMod = 1.15 if MM spec, 1 if LR spec
GSMod = 1.15 if 8/8 Giantstalker bonus, 1 if not"
Basically you need to do a lot of math in order to accurately test your damage. If you are further interested in testing, this is a good resource,. You can also download various damage meter addons (sw_stats is good) to test the damage of specific spells based on your gear.
Aimed Shot: Aimed shot is our bread and butter as a hunter. It takes a while to shoot, but causes devastating damage. Make sure you don’t sit in an open spot and start casting aimed shot unless you have a sufficient amount of allies in front of you, otherwise players will probably get in your dead zone (read: area where you can’t shoot or melee attack them) and make your long cast pointless. 980 to 1024 Damage. 6 second cooldown, 3 second cast.
Scatter Shot: Disorients your target, stopping casting and making them wander around in a "circle" for 4 seconds. 181 to 203 Damage, 30 second cooldown.
Multi-Shot (MS): MS is another high damage attack with virtually no cast time. While it shows up as an instant cast on the tooltip, it actually won’t fire unless you’re standing still (you don’t have to stand long, just long enough until you see the shooting animation). Hits 3 Targets for 458 to 508 damage.
Feign Death (FD): Pretend you’re dead! The main use of this ability in pvp is that it causes everyone to lose you as a target- meaning that if they are casting a spell and you cast FD, they will have to stop cast. The other primary benefit here is that it takes you out of combat, and we have to be out of combat to put down our traps!
Freezing Trap (FT): When hit, causes the target to freeze, making them unable to move or cast. Lasts 20 seconds.
Frost Trap: Puts down a blanket of frost on the area around the trap, slowing all enemies that stand on the affected area. Lasts 30 seconds. Slows enemy movement speed by 60%.
Serpent Sting: A damage over time spell. Note that serpent sting is not a significant amount of damage in relation to how much mana it uses, so I try to save it for when an enemy is low. Serpent sting is also handy vs mana users when the enemy is very low on health and cannot heal (don’t serpent sting a priest with full mana and low health unless you have another player with you, they may be able to outheal the damage making your serpent sting essentially pointless). 490 Damage over 15 seconds.
Viper Sting: Viper Sting is one of the most overpowered hunter moves. It allows us to drain huge amounts of mana from our opponents and is easy to reapply. I have this up 100% of the time I am fighting a mana using class. Drains 1108 Mana over 8 seconds.
Scorpid Sting: Not too much use here, but not a bad debuff if you’re fighting a melee class. Additionally this is a good tool to use if you're fighting against a group with a competent druid/shaman/paladin, in that it adds another debuff slot to dispel, making them struggle to dispel other debuffs (crippling poison for example), generally wasting their time and running them OOM.
Rapid Fire (RF): Increases your ranged attack speed by 40% for 19 seconds. Useful all around, but I like to save it to pop right before my aimed shot, or along with an attack power increasing trinket for more burst.
Wing Clip (WC): slows the target. always use when an enemy gets in melee range.
Concussive Shot: slows the target. again, use it on any melee class, or on an enemy such as a mage, who may blink away from you once you get his health low enough.
Flare: Forces stealthed enemies out of stealth within a 10 yard radius. Put it down ANY time you see an enemy rogue. (Secret tip: The duration of flare is slightly longer than its cooldown time.)
Hunter’s Mark: VERY USEFUL. Hunters mark essentially does 3 things. It increases your ranged attack power against the target, it allows you to see the target if he goes into stealth (When used right, no rogue can kill you), and makes the target affected appear on your minimap (this is nice if it’s a druid and you don’t want to be bothered with changing between track humanoids and track beasts).
Deterrence: 25% Dodge and Parry for 10 seconds. Pop it when you ENTER in a tough melee battle or during close draws where your enemy could finish you off easily close-range: USE THIS WITH ASPECT OF THE MONKEY.
Aspect of the Wild: Increases your nature resistance by 60. I occasionally save this when fighting elemental shamans- It WILL make a small difference, and an even bigger difference if you have chromatic flask and Mark of the Wild.
Rapid Fire: Increases your ranged attack speed by 40% for 15 seconds.
Track Humanoids: self explanatory. Keep this up almost 100% of the time. This is where hunters really shine in battlegrounds- we can tell our whole team where the enemy flag carrier goes!
Track Beasts: Useful for chasing druids- this allows you to track them on your minimap if they change into cat/bear/travel form.
Track Hidden: Allows you to see hidden players that are within a certain range of you, does not show up on minimap. Useful for rogues and druids.
Aspect of the Hawk (AotH): Keep this up most of all. Increases your ranged attack power. +110 Ranged Attack Power.
Aspect of the Monkey (AotM): Keep this up any time a melee class gets in range, or if a hunter sends his pet after you. It will increase your dodge chance by 6% and you can easily switch back to Hawk once you get out of melee range.
Aspect of the Cheetah (AotC): Use this when you carry a flag and don’t have any enemies incoming. Increases run speed. When hit with this on, you will get dazed. 20% Movement speed increase. WILL ONLY DAZE YOU FROM DIRECT DAMAGE (Read: no dots).
Aspect of the Pack (AotP): Use this when you are running with a flag carrier or your team and don’t have any enemies incoming. When anyone with the aura is hit, they will get dazed, very not good, so be careful when you have this aura on. 20% Movement speed increase.
Aspect of the Beast (AotB): Makes you untraceable. This is situational, but handy when the opposing team has a hunter or druid, as they cannot track you. Be sure to dismiss your pet or order it to stay somewhere you aren’t if you have this on, as a hunter could switch to track beasts and find you based on where your pet is.
Volley: Our second temporary flare. This has 2 uses. One, you can cast it if there is a rogue in the room, and occasionally you will surprise them out of stealth (hunters mark and serpent sting him after that and its game over). Two, if an enemy tries to LoS you to eat or re-stealth, your volley can put them back into combat ruining their counter.
Fear Beast: It's a 20 second fear. Our only PvP application will be fearing druids, use scatter shot to stop them from shifting out of bear/cat/travel form so you can get the cast off.
Arcane Shot: Instant cast shot (our only real one), i save this for A) plate wearing classes because this counts as magic damage, so it can eat through plate armor, or B) kiting/chasing, since you can shoot it on the run. 183 Arcane Damage. 6 second cooldown.
Raptor/Mongoose Strike: Hits hard if you have a 2handed weapon. Don’t rely on this for significant dps, but it can sometimes surprise you with a high damage if you’re geared the right way.
Note: All traps have a 15 second cooldown.
3) Race and Spec:
Race:
Don't be racist: You should base your race decision on how you want to play. Here I'm going to break down the beneficial racials for hunters, and how they might fit into different playstyles. Yep, you can also guess what I'm going to tell you next, I'll be saying it A LOT: Do not focus on min/maxing stats and racials if you think you would have more fun playing another race. This game would be incredibly boring if all you saw were Orc and Nightelf hunters (While these have the most racials that will benefit you, there are perks of playing other races, in addition to the fact that even if you min/max based on racials, you can still get rolled by someone who knows the class better than you).
Horde:
Orc: Axe/2H Axe skill +5 (~1% Hit with axes at 60)/ +25% Attack power -50% Healing buff/debuff (buff lasts 15 seconds, debuff lasts 25 seconds, 2 minute cooldown)/ 25% Stun resist (Lol)/ 5% Increased pet damage (Lol)
Basically this is a great spec if you want: Survivability and competitive DPS in close situations (for PvP that is).
Troll: 10-30% Increased attack speed (based on your HP)/5% Damage vs. Beasts (Not terribly useful for PvP/+5% Bow Skill (Should also translate to ~1% Hit with bows at 60, not verified)/10% increased Hp5
Arguably the most stylish Hunter race. The buffs, sadly, don't really do much for us in PvP, unless you can use your attack speed buff perfect, which is hard to do, if you get your 30% increased speed buff, you're probably going to be dead before the first 2 seconds are up.
Tauren: 2 Second stun for up to 5 players/units (2 Minute cooldown)/5% Increased health/+15 Herbalism/+10 Nature Resistance
Hardy and a cool built in stun, Taurens are the mid-tier Hunter class for the Horde. Note that your hitbox as a tauren is MASSIVE, even with Nogginfogger, so it will be slightly harder to kite than say, a dwarf.
Alliance:
Night Elf: 1% Dodge/Stationary stealth ability/+10 Nature Resist/50% Increased corpse speed.
Night Elves make fantastic snipers. You can use your stealth ability in conjunction with a cat's prowl can suprise people at bases/flags you are defending. Your dodge ability and nature resist make you all the more powerful against rogues, and your increased corpse run speed will make world PvP much less boring, increasing your uptime, and overall increasing your dps comparatively.
Dwarf: 8 Second immunity to bleeds, poisons, and diseases, 10% Additional armor (3 Minute cooldown)/+5 Gun skill (Again, SHOULD translate to ~1% Hit when using guns)/+10 Frost Resistance/Treasure tracking.
Dwarves are an outstanding utility class. You can hit stoneform against rogues and it's good game. Alternatively, you can stoneform away pesky viper stings from other hunters. You also have an amazingly tiny hitbox, allowing you to navigate through certain areas that other races cannot (I do not condone abuse of game/class/race mechanics).
NOTE: +5 weapon skills do not exclusively give +Hit%, but also a small amount of +Crit%. Taken from Surelynotdhorn referencing a dead-linked elitestjerks page:
"...those 5 skill should hook you up with 0.24% hit per point and 0.04% crit per point (see *Auto Spam Replacement*://forums.elitistjerks.com/topic/7214-skill-and-ranged-and-you/ ) for a total of 1.2% hit and 0.2% crit."
Specs:
Throughout your time as a hunter you will hear/will have heard people telling you that a certain spec is the best hunter spec. There are a lot of what I like to call “Tunnel Vision Hunters” who think that they’re playing a pure dps class: these are often the people who will /w you “turn on TSA” when you don’t have it, and they are silly. If you don't have fun playing a spec, chances are you won't be playing that spec to the best of your ability, and the great thing about hunter talents is that for pvp, you can get really creative with them (as opposed to dumping most of your talents in one tree, as all 3 trees offer a combination of damage and utility). Deep tree talents such as True Shot Aura (TSA), Beastial Wrath (BW), and Wyvern Sting (WS) will prove less useful than if you had spread more points across different trees, and hunters are all about being useful in pvp. That being said, Scatter Shot (SS) is an essential pvp talent, as is Aimed Shot (AS), I try to take those and either Intimidation or Counter Strike (CS), but the former has more uptime since you don't have to parry to activate it (It is worth noting that if you take CS, you will almost certainly want to spec into Deterrence as well, which will pretty much guarantee you at least one free CS). The one template I would give you is this, it includes the talents that are essential for your burst (your main pvp burst is described in the Rotation & Tips section):
[img]*Auto Spam Replacement*://i.imgur.com/WF7b1fd.jpg[/img]
MM/Surv: This is my current spec, and is good when you have better gear because Lightning Reflexes increases in usefulness the more agility you have. It provides excellent damage output through the marksmanship tree, and great durability via the survival tree. This is a build that isn't afraid to get in close: it provides decent melee damage, I took improved wing clip (WC) because the proc rate is nice (1 in 4 WCs will usually yield 1 proc), and it will make kiting much easier for you. Entrapment is ignored here because as far as I know, it is still bugged on this server, although I would pick entrapment over imp. wing clip once it gets fixed as it provides even more utility (picture trapping a whole team in your tunnel with a frost trap while you run away with their flag).
[img]*Auto Spam Replacement*://i.imgur.com/Fv0CeFs.jpg[/img]
Version II: Very similar spec, this increases your damage slightly and provides a useful buff to your party. While it gives you more uptime with Efficiency, it is wise to use a boar pet to make up for the lowered proc rate from Improved Concussive Shot. *Auto Spam Replacement*://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#cZiVohthtcxbqoh
Butt Mastery: The other spec i like for pvp is a BM hybrid which is better for newer players with preraid bis (but can be fun with better gear too) and provides good cc. I would caution against using this unless you have EXCELLENT pet micro-management skills, as pet pathing is very much broken here, and it can take ages for your pet to catch up with you in fast paced battlegrounds (which is partially why we spec into Bestial Swiftness). I chose Beastial Discipline over Spirit Bond because it allows for more bites/claws, increasing our pets overall dps, while Spirit Bond is too little too late when when in combat. Imp mend pet is optional, but i like it because it can free your pet if it is cc’d, as there is a dispelling tick, meaning you can spam rank 1 mend and usually enjoy a nice proc rate. Note that based on my experience, this spec doesn't hold up in an endgame environment.
[img]*Auto Spam Replacement*://i.imgur.com/4evwk3g.jpg[/img]
Fun Specs: To adequately demonstrate the versatility of a hunter’s spec choice, I’m including some goofy, creative, or at the very least interesting specs that may not be the most viable in PvP or PvE:
Spell Power Hunter: *Auto Spam Replacement*://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#cZVVqAthzcbfi
Melee Hunter: https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=28163
Tank Hunter: *Auto Spam Replacement*://www.wow-one.com/forum/topic/99076-knifells-hunter-tank-guide/
Flag Carrier: This spec is ideal for carrying flags if you still want to roll with beast mastery. You can switch points between either Deflection, Improved Aspect of the Monkey, Ferocity, and Thick Hide depending on your play style and how often you get focused in a battleground. Improved Cheetah/Pack is useful for running flags, and Spirit Bond was chosen for using LoS and eating, for a faster regeneration time. *Auto Spam Replacement*://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#cVcMdtroZtVohthZ0h
4) Pets:
Some pets here are buggy and do not retain their original attack speed as they do in true 1.12- although many have been fixed and are correct currently. Consequently, you should always check your pets attack speed against a 1.12 pet database to make sure you’re doing all you can dps-wise. You can use any pet, but I recommend these:
Boar- Charge ability gives you another free root. Sadly, boar dps is relatively small, so charge is really the only useful ability. As a hunter, you need all the cc you can get in order to maximize your usefulness as well as your damage, so this is my #1 pick for any non BM hunter. Other pets are a better option for BM due to their significantly higher dps.
Cat- Cats are nice because they can dash (sprint), prowl (stealth, increasing attack power of attack used right after stealth fades), claw, and bite, meaning that they are arguably the best dps pet you can get in a pvp setting.
Bats- Bats have bite, the flying equivalent of dash, and a good melee debuff spell. The best thing about bats is that they look unique and they are big enough that they can significantly distract an enemy player once it gets up in their face.
Wolf- Furious howl and dps abilities, the only reason I see to take a wolf pet is making a furious howl/aimed shot macro to increase your damage. IMO the buff is too small and more useful for raiding.
Wind Serpent- Lightening breath (A wind serpent-only ranged nature damaging spell) should (But currently does not) scale with your spell power, so if you have a good amount of gear from AQ40 (T2.5, etc.), you could have a relatively strong attack coming from your flying snake. Another good reason to get one of these guys is the ranged attack- if both you and your pet get cc'd while an enemy attempts to run away from you, lightning breath could be the game changer you need. I never personally use one, but it isn't the worst choice out there in terms of pvp.
Pets learn spells in a strange way. In order to get the highest rank of certain pet abilities, you need to tame a pet that already has the ability at the rank you want, and use it enough in combat until it is added to your spell book (roughly 5-10 times). I don’t want to take all the time to list where you can learn specific abilities, because I'm incredibly lazy, so I will post the resource I always use and a corresponding one for the correct pet attack speeds in 1.12.
You can find a more in-depth guide here (although there are two places where it lacks info: Most obviously it is missing info for special mobs under raptors, as it makes no mention of ZG raptors, same with the turtle family, as there is a faster-than-normal attack speed turtle available to those who seek him to tank) The real charm of this resource is that it describes the reasoning for getting a particular pet in an outstanding fashion.
Important PvP Pet Abilities:
Bite (Rank 8)- Learned from Bloodaxe Worg in Upper Blackrock Spire
Claw (Rank 8)- Learned from Winterspring Screecher/Elder Shardtooth (Both from Winterspring)
Keybind both claw and bite if your pet can learn both of them- Alternate the attacks based on the fight: claw is great for interrupts due to the higher dpf (damage per focus), while bite will hit harder.
Dash (Dive for flying pets) (Rank 3)- Learned from Bloodaxe Worg/Many others/Plaugebat in Easter Plaguelands for dive. Increases movement speed.
Charge (Rank 5)- Learned from Grunter in Blasted Lands. Functions like a warrior's charge, but has a root on the target for a very small duration.
Screech (Rank 4)- Learned from Monstrous Plaguebat in Eastern Plaguelands. Melee debuff to your enemies- great when used in conjunction with Scorpid Sting.
Pet Scaling: Another item in my massive to-do pile, pets will scale differently across various servers. To determine if your pet's stats will scale along with yours, you need to know if your server is using a TBC core (I think most do), and if so, if they have disabled pet scaling. PETS DID NOT SCALE IN RETAIL VANILLA. Here at Retro I'm fairly confident that it is run through a TBC core, but have yet to test if they removed scaling (My initial thoughts point to no, but that is unsubstantiated.)
The Scale:
26% of your stamina
45.7% of your armor
1 armor and .5 attack power for each point of agility you have
18.75% of all your attack power
0.33 attack power for each point of strength you have
38.8% of your resistance(s)
(source)
*Make sure to micromanage your pets, having them on aggressive by accident can ruin setups if your team has CC’d an enemy.
Special Pets:
Snarler: A cool tame that retains the resistances that it has as a mob (100 resist each). He is primarily useful for pve as Lupos can out damage him. He does not retain his resistances at this time on Retro-Wow. *Auto Spam Replacement*://db.vanillagaming.org/?npc=5356
Broken Tooth: Fastest cat in the game with a 1.0 attack speed. With prowl, sprint, bite, and claw, his damage output in top-tierhttp://wow-one.com/database/?npc=2850
Lupos: A cool wolf that does shadow damage rather than physical damage, which is great for eating through plate wearers along with Serpent Stings and Arcane Shots. Lupos’s shadow damage DOES currently work on the server. (It should be noted that on some servers, Lupos's attack will eat up warlock debuffs on enemies, although I haven't confirmed this.)
Bloodseeker Bat: Fastest bat in the game, boasting a 1.0 attack speed (Not tested on this server). *Auto Spam Replacement*://wow-one.com/database/?npc=11368
Razzashi Raptor: Only found in ZG, this raptor has the fastest attack speed of any pet, at a ridiculous 0.9. I personally reccomend Broken Tooth over this pet due to it having greater utility. *Auto Spam Replacement*://wow-one.com/database/?npc=14821
5) Macros:
I have already posted a thread with macros, and there are many good places to find macros.
Note that in the "Addons" section of this guide is an addon called "Classic Focus", in which you can make simple macro commands to add a focus functionality to your attacks. The list of commands can be found here.
I’ll include the "bread and butter" in here for posterity (Most of these macros will only work with the addon Supermacro):
-Feign Death+Freezing trap (This will also call your pet back to you so they don’t break your trap) Additionally, neither of these feign death+trap macros will cast feign death when you are not in combat (so if you aren't in combat, it will just place a trap):
/script PetFollow();
/script if UnitAffectingCombat("player") then CastSpellByName("Feign Death") end
/cast Freezing Trap(Rank 3)
-Feign Death+Frost trap (your pet won’t break frost trap, so there is no pet follow script here):
/script if UnitAffectingCombat("player") then CastSpellByName("Feign Death") end
/cast Frost Trap
-Scatter Shot (This will also call your pet back to you so they don’t break your scatter):
/script PetFollow();
/cast Scatter Shot
-Melee Macro (This will cast raptor strike, and mongoose strike when it is available, you can include wing clip in the line, but I personally keep it as a separate ability):
/script if (not PlayerFrame.inCombat) then AttackTarget() end
/cast Mongoose Bite(Rank 4)
/cast Raptor Strike(Rank 8)
Call/dismiss Macro (not super important but it's a good idea to free up as much action bar space as possible):
/cast Call Pet
/cast Dismiss Pet
-Auto Shot (targets enemy in front of you, and will attack your target based on distance away from you [auto attack or auto shot]. This won't turn off if you spam it, and you need to replace "3" in the line "IsAutoRepeatAction(3)" with the corresponding location of your auto shot hotkey:
/script if GetUnitName("target")==nil then TargetNearestEnemy() end /run if CheckInteractDistance("target", 3) and (not PlayerFrame.inCombat) then AttackTarget() elseif not IsAutoRepeatAction(3) then CastSpellByName("Auto Shot") end[/i]
![[Image: wsg-flag-capture-going-gy-1.jpg]](https://cynwise.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wsg-flag-capture-going-gy-1.jpg)
![[Image: wsg-flag-capture-going-fr.jpg]](https://cynwise.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wsg-flag-capture-going-fr.jpg)
![[Image: wsg-flag-capture-going-roof.jpg]](https://cynwise.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wsg-flag-capture-going-roof.jpg)
![[Image: wsg-resurrection-vectors-strategy.jpg?w=1000]](https://cynwise.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/wsg-resurrection-vectors-strategy.jpg?w=1000)