Trueshot Aura

There are a several strategies we can use to manage threat successfully. The first thing to do is no doubt to pick up and start using a good threat meter, which I've already covered and will not bore you with again. This time we're going to focus on what we can do before, at the beginning of, and during a battle.

Okay. So here we are, all set up for the fight. Targets are marked, traps are down (if applicable), you and your party are all at full health and mana, and ready to lay the smack down on that first pat. We want to do this right. First and most important, is don't generate more threat than the MT in the first place. This is easier said than done. As a DPS class, when we start shooting, what we really want to do is unload on the creep we're fighting. Unfortunately, starting out like this is the best way to make sure that you take and hold aggro. (Whoops--not what we want to do!) Give your tank a few seconds to do some damage, gain enough rage, and get a few sunder armors in. Then send your pet in and start shooting. Another thing to keep in mind at the beginning of a fight, is that if your pet is supporting a tank or offtank and not actually offtanking, turn growl off. This will keep your pet from pulling aggro off of our tank, and keep the threat right where we want it. Start slowly, then ramp up your DPS as your tank gathers aggro.

Now, in a perfect world, this tactic would always work flawlessly. Unfortunately, the world we play in is far from perfect, right? So eventually, we're going to get either one massive crit, or even several in a row (pewpewpew!). It's fantastic damage, which is great, but it also generates fantastic amounts of threat, which is not so great. This spike in threat can be enough to unbalance even the most carefully set up, slow-and-steady aggro gain, and we've gotten the attention of the mob we're fighting. Whoops. What now? We need to ditch aggro, and FAST. This is not the time for hesitation, hunter. Feign death NOW. Don't wait a few seconds to see what happens. Tumble to the ground, wait a second, then get back up and keep on DPSing.

Seriously, feign death as soon as you see that mob target you. This is easy since, being the sensible hunters we are, we've configured WoW so that we always see the target of our target. If it switches to us, we ditch aggro ASAP. Feign Death is made for this situation, and the faster we use it, the better the outcome. Proximity factors into threat. Feign immediately, and your aggro drops while the mob is still right by the tank, who can easily pick up the aggro. Wait a few seconds, though, and that mob is now right in your face, and not only is your feign more likely to be resisted the closer the mob is to you, but now the players closest to said mob are the healers, who've also been slowly and carefully building aggro by healing your party members, and the casters, who've been DPSing right along with you, thus building aggro. The mob can tear up your casters before your tank has time to run over and re-establish threat. This can wipe a party if it happens at an inopportune time, and this is why hunters as a class can come off looking...um...not smart. What do we do if our feign is resisted you can't/didn't feign death fast enough? The answer is actually fairly low-tech. Just run back to your tank, and they can re-establish aggro. Yes, you'll get beaten on. You may even die on the way back. But please believe Aura when she tells you it's better for you to die than for the healer to be taken down. Really.

Let's face it up front--playing a hunter well is not easy. Hunters have a fantastically bad reputation in WoW, and I'm sorry to say that it's been well earned in most cases. Yes, I'm saying it: over 50% of the hunter community doesn't play their class well. I'm not saying it's you, but everyone can improve, right? Let's make sure we're on the same page here.

The most important and least common skills among those of us who play hunters are good threat management and solid crowd control. The first thing I'm going to talk about here is (you guessed it!) threat. To be an effective hunter, we have to be able to dish out the damage without pulling aggro off of our tank. Not only does good threat managment make grinding easier and cut down on ghostwalks, it's fantastic prep for instance runs or raiding, and when you are high enough level to get into one of the better guilds, you'll be more likely to get that guild invite if you can run an instance without once making your tank try to chase down a mob.

Please realize, here: hunters aren't tanks! We do NOT melee unless we're up against a wall, as it were. And as a hunter, it's a sad but true fact that you won't be up at the top of the healer's keep-alive list (they're usually concentrating on your tank, and rightfully so), so it's of primary importance that you use your skills to keep aggro off of you and your pet (unless your pet is offtanking), and on your tank. Pulling off of the tank is always a bad idea. Pulling aggro is likely to end in our pet's death at best, and a wipe at worst. Now, this gets easier at 70 with Misdirect, but by then you should already know how to manipulate your aggro like a pro. Get friendly with Disengage (I'll bet you've been ignoring that entry in your spellbook--dust it off!) and learn when and how to use Feign Death (more detail on that to follow). Scatter shot will give you a few seconds to back off and drink a healing potion, which can make the difference between living and dying in a battle. Feign Death is a fantastic tool, but before you feign, always consider who is nearby, and who is likely to take up all that aggro you dump. If you're going to feign in a battle, do it either as soon as you pull the mob off of a tank, or run over to a tank and feign. Keep in mind that your feign death ability is far less effective at melee range, so if you're going to do it close to a mob that's attacking you, you want to do it close to a tank that's pulling aggro. You want to get that aggro back where it belongs, not dump it onto a healer or mage!

The first step toward threat mastery is a threat meter. If you're not using one, run, don't walk, and pick up the threat meter your guild is using. My personal recommendation is KLH ThreatMeter. The threat meter will do several things for you. The first thing you should do once you've installed this new toy is go out and grind. Kill things. Kill lots of things. Use your different abilities, and see how they affect your threat. This thing is instant feedback, and the more you use it, the more you'll get a feel for which shots, stings, and other abilities are high-threat, and which are low-threat. Before long, your pet will be tanking like a pro, and you'll be safely in proper range, taking mob after mob down more easily than just last night. Outside of becoming even more proficient with your talents, a threat meter will give you up-to-the-second information about how much threat you have relative to your tank, pet, and party members.

This is fantastic! But wait...why can't I see X on the threat meter? And how did I just pull aggro/lose threat when it said Y had more/less threat? Sadly, threat meters are not infallible. The biggest problem is that if you are out of meter-range of one or more of your party members, you don't get their threat data. How do we get around this? Make sure that everyone in your guild has the same threat meter! When you're all using one meter, be it KLH ThreatMeter or Omen, your meters will sync, keeping the data on the meter much more accurate. So what are you waiting for? Go grab a threat meter, use it, love it, and kill, kill, kill!

I've been MM spec since I respec'd for the first time in my late 20s/early 30s, and I'm currently at 64 and still loving it. I'm running 2/44/9 with the plan to end up something 7/45/9. I wouldn't trade Trueshot Aura (gives everyone in your group +110 AP) and Silencing Shot (silences target for 5 sec and causes 50% weapon damage) for anything. Also, before you ask, this is primarily a PVP build, but it seems to be serving me well in instances and raids so far. But I love to PVP, and it shows.

I love this build for PvP, and it's been working really well for me in the raids my guild has been running. Being able to stop a boss from pulling off one or two of the big spells is a huge help, and I'll admit to using it vindictively in PVP. It's probably not the best solo leveling spec (BM makes your pet a better tank, and depending on your build, gives you a slight DPS edge, as any BM hunter will be only too willing to point out), but even so, I don't have much trouble soloing.

Some quick bullet points ripped from my other journal:

Always use your mark ability. Not only does it tell everyone who you're going for and work like a raid mark, it's practically free AP for your whole group!

In general, keep your pet on aggressive in PVP BGs, defensive in PVE, and passive in instances and raids.

No matter where you are, dismiss your pet before jumping down from something! Otherwise, your pet will run the long way down, bringing you lots of unwelcome company, and possibly biting the dust before or just as the gang of aggro'd creeps gets to you.

Your gear ought to be carrying one or more of the following: AP, crit%, Agi, Sta, Int in order of priority. More armor is not greater than better stats.

Don't get married to one type of weapon. The best one for you could be anything you can train. I used a bow from 1-62, but as you already know if you checked out my armory profile, I'm using a gun these days. Take it as it comes.

I'm sad when I see people posting in LFG that they're looking for NON-HUNTER dps. I try not to get too upset over it, though. Everyone's going to make mistakes, that's a given. It's the people who don't manage aggro, leave their pets on agressive all the time, and don't know how to use their traps and abilities that give us a bad name. Especially the people who demonstrate these horrid qualities in addition to a penchant for bossiness, loot whoring, or whining (and unforunately, they're out there). OTOH, once you demonstrate that you can handle yourself, and play your class well, you'll find that good hunters are very much in demand. :)

So I decided it's high time I remove my Warcraft-related rants and explications from my LiveJournal to some sort of dedicated space. This is the work-in-progress. Hopefully, the information I post here will help my WoW-playing friends, my fellow Knights of Kirin Tor, and someone somewhere who's working on playing the class well. That's what we're about, here.