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World of Warcraft: A Quick Look at the Hunter
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com World of Warcraft Correspondent Randall Head writes this quick look at hunters in Blizzard's World of Warcraft.
The World of Warcraft is one of numerous possibilities. Players can take on many roles, including: healing, tanking, and damage. The hunter class is one of the most popular DPS classes in the game. Many new players choose the class because it is the “coolest” in their opinion. Who wouldn’t want to have a gun or bow, and have a badass pet fighting for them? The hunter class offers new players a fun and fairly simple experience for their first character. I’ll admit, my first character was a dwarf hunter, and I played him for about two years. I love the hunter class! However, the main problem is the unfortunately named hunt@#d stereotype.
Definition of ‘Hunt@#d’ from www.urbandictionary.com: “A derogatory term used to refer to dumbass hunters in the MMORPG ‘World of Warcraft’ who are clueless about their class and how to play.” While not particularly the nicest way of putting it, that just about sums it up. While killing monsters may be simple for hunters due to their high damage shots and help from a pet, playing a hunter efficiently with groups and achieving maximum DPS (damage per second) is much more difficult. However, if you can play the class well, you can do some serious damage.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Now, I didn't read the entire article, but to start, huntards suck imo. I play one (lvl 68 atm) and i want to stab myself repeatedly in the eye. I stopped reading when you said Tauren have no pvp ability other than increased health. Uhhh thunderclap saves lives. (dont forget about that coveted herbalism boost!) Don't forget about the mighty Cows!
They say a captain goes down with his ship, so when the world ends, will God go down with it?
Did anyone else recognize a complete lack of information pertaining to the mistakes and follies that the article listed at the beginning? I found some rather simple tips on how to pick a character, and then the rather obvious advice to stick to the best armor possible (leather and then cloth). I think Wood may not have played a hunter at all.
One example would be not dismissing your pet when jumping from ledges.
If a hunter doesn't put his pet away, while a raid decides to do some technical jumping, the pet will then start looking for an alternate route to get back to his masters side, which typically involves the pet running through the entire instance aggroing everything in sight, just to 30 seconds later have 20+ elite mobs tea bag the raid.
Another example would improper use of Misdirect, as in having the wrong misdirect target when you fire at a boss, I have witnessed a hunter have the healer targetted and not the tank, and misdirect the boss onto the priest just to have the priest take one to the grill and go down like a chump.... very nice hunter.... very nice indeed.
I have seen hunters lay down the wrong traps before cause extra pulls/adds to come into the fight.
The list goes on and on, but hunters can either be very handy in a raid, or a bloody nightmare depending on who is on the other end of that line.
The problem that Wow has always faced with the hunter class, they are the most soloable class, hence many of the players whose avatars are hunters do poorly in a group environment. I have booted more hunters out of a group or left because of them, than all the other classes combined.
I guess the best advice I could give a hunter is learn to play in a group early and when you have a chance to either group or solo, make sure you group.
I never get tired of hearing hunter fail stories. Everyone that plays has them. I was doing Nexus once and had to stop the group to ask if the hunter was ok. The problem was this guy was only doing about 300 dps. Not a huge problem since we had plenty to spare. It was the "I'm outta bullets" line after the 1st boss that started the uncontrollable laughter. I suggested they should go stand in the corner and let the rest of us do the work. I know I should have booted them, but it was just too funny and I didn't want to miss out on what the next mishap.
Trevor Goodchild - Traveler - Crafing/Pistols
Sapo Loco - Rifle/Melee
Hell yeah, the "I'm outta bullets/arrows" never gets old. Hell I prefer them to run out while in the middle of a raid so I can laugh at them.
On the flipside I have seen one not send his pet in to the fight, and only shoot his gun, and when we asked why the hell he wasn't using his pet, he said "Cause he might pull aggro from me...."
WTF!?
Hehe, bring em huntard stories. I love how so many hunters do stupid shit in groups. When you level through normal dungeons, it's often somewhat entertaining to have them in the group to see what stupid stuff they pull next. There are good hunters in wow though, but they are far between. It's the same with the dork knights. For every good dk, there's atleast a 100 bad ones.
Anyway, I don't see the point in making articles like this. Everyone know WoW now and alot even know what classes the game got and the strength/weakness of each class. If not, there's always forums and webpages with tons of tips. Instead make articles about the content, especially at endgame. Alot more interesting than some comments on a class.
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Grammar nazi's. This one is for you.
I really don't get this idea that one class is better than another. To me, you really have basically two class types. You have a choice of warrior/tank classes or magic user classes. I don't see any real difference in how they play aside from a couple of useless abilities. I usually play magic user classes simply because I prefer ranged combat. One major exception is the hybrid class of the Paladin(and possibly the Death Knight but I haven't played one yet) which is a true hybrid. But for most of the classes WoW characters tend to be either physically crappy or magically crappy. Not to rag on those who enjoy the game but I have played every basic class and do not see any differences. Just my personal observations after having played is all.
My favorite piece of information in that guide was to go to other places to search.
Well, second favorite, since ignore strength was pretty funny; but that merely teaches huntards how to hide from armory checks.
That's significantly easier now with the unlinking of auto-shot to change rotations in 3.0. Personally, without that, it's not the fun it used to be; of course i raided MM though out the majority of BC, purely because i liked playing into that complexity.
Dranei having no racial bonus to benefit a hunter amused me. 1% hit was something i had to make sure i was grouped for (with someone who wouldn't die) quite often.
But yeah, i was hoping for a lot more huntard horror stories for my amusement too.
Actually the +Hit of the Space Goats are the best Alliance racial for a Hunter. Much better than a Dwarf. With Stoneform a Dwarf is great for PvP'ing.
lol, space goats ftw.
Trevor Goodchild - Traveler - Crafing/Pistols
Sapo Loco - Rifle/Melee
Hell yeah, the "I'm outta bullets/arrows" never gets old. Hell I prefer them to run out while in the middle of a raid so I can laugh at them.
On the flipside I have seen one not send his pet in to the fight, and only shoot his gun, and when we asked why the hell he wasn't using his pet, he said "Cause he might pull aggro from me...."
WTF!?
Running out of bullets can happen even to the best hunters. It's how they deal with it that determines their worth.
Every class has it's oops where you forget to do something that should come naturally and do not realize this until you are in the middle of a boss fight. Heck, I once had a tank start swearing five seconds into a Naxx boss fight becasue half his abilities stopped working. It turns out his shield broke the first time the boss hit him. Since we had not wiped up to that point he never had a chance to repair mid-raid. He swore to us that it was at 100% when we started:)
Pallies often forgot to turn their auras back on after a death
That was a pretty useless article over all. I especially enjoyed the part where you stated that being a Night Elf hunter is mainly cosmetic, but you chose a Dwarf because he looked cool!
Here's a couple of tips for you about the racials that you forgot to mention:
Dwarf - Stoneform. Invaluable for removing Rogue poisons. Removing slowing poisons combined with an adequate skill of Aspect swapping between Cheetah and Dragonhawk can keep you at permanent range.
Night-Elf - Shadowmeld. It isn't just an aggro dump. Consider using it when when a caster is 85% through their cast. It drops target causing the cast to cancel. Combine this with Feign Death, Readiness + FD, and you can keep a caster beffudled and not casting for a good 8 seconds. And in a fight between a hunter and clothie, that's a death on the casters part.
Also, Im confused about why you mentioned having a cat to level with. You want to get a tenacity pet, the cat shouldn't be on the list as a tanking pet. On that note, you don't "definetly want to level beastmaster." You definetly want to level how you enjoy leveling. Personally, I've leveled both my hunters as Marksman, and with Chimera Shot its even easier. You're pet doesn't have to hold aggro the entire fight. It has to hold it long enough that when it loses aggro, the mob is dead before it reaches you.
As for raiding as survival, this is also another situation where you're telling people what you think is the best dps regardless of the other 2 specs. Can survival be the top dps? Of course it can. It can also be the lowest dps, depending on the player. A hunter in my guild, his alt mind you, currently pulls in around 4.3k dps in 25 man naxx, and hes a Marks hunter. Considering thats his average for a 3 hour instance, you can imagine his dps being much higher on boss fights like Thaddius and Lothaeb. Imagine fights like Hodir. Marks is just as good an alternative if you know how to play it correctly. I take no exception to saying Survival is a great dps spec for raids, but don't make it sound like its the only option.
As another tip for a breakdown between Survival and Marksman raiding specs, remember that the 2 specs gain more or less benefit for Agility or Attack Power. A survival hunter ends up having talents that increase his Agility by 14%, therefore its good for them to Gem Agility gems, as the higher your agility gets, the more benefit you get from that percentage. Marksman however recieves a percentage of Attack Power gain, therefore making it more appealing to Gem Attack Power gems / enchants. This doesn't mean that Agi isn't a good stat for Marks hunters, it just means you should be looking at getting it through your gear and not your enhancements.
All in all this article has felt like a lot of dribble. It didn't really have any truely useful tips. It was more of a "My experience with a Hunter" article, which would have been a decent read had it been titled appropriatly.
Thunderclap????????????
You mean "WARSTOMP"
I thought this article was going to be an interesting read, since I played a hunter, but it was quite a disappoint no matter which perspective you look at it. Aside from a lack of knowledge about the different races and how that would affect gameplay, this article offers neither insight into the hunter class in general nor is it an informative personal viewpoint from the author.
I enjoyed the beginning the article, when a term was defined, and what seemed to be the reason for this article. However, I find it lacking in pointing out those common Hunter follies. It wasn't until I read comments posted by other players that I truly understood the term of huntard. Some of those stories are pretty funny, and it raises the question of "how have you survived this long?"
I do have my peeves about this article too.
There's more than one way to max out the potential of a class. There's different strategies for leveling, which was covered in more details, as well as end game content such as PvE (raiding) vs PvP (arena). Like the previous post has mentioned, there's two ways of playing PvE, and you'll find that there's differing opinions in how to play PvP as well.
P.S. - I applaud those who play outside-the-box and gain respect for it. It shows that you are willing to take risks, take the time to learn to class and a different strategy than what's considered the norm, and has done a good job of it.
The circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It's what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.
has it really come to this? A hunter PSA? I cant believe that there are no decent volunteer writers producing half interesting stories for this site to post instead of these silly content fillers. With 364 games listed you'd think there would be something mor einteresting to write about? But i guess not. epic yawn!
I thought it was also mis-information to say the Blood Elf was just cosmetic as well. They have an ability to seal mana and silence, that can come in handy against casters. I do have to admit my Night Elf has a cat though, 1st and only pet, it's a loyalty deal.
I like to Shadowmeld at pvp objectives and pop off a shot right before it's captured, all the while telling peeps the objective is going to be under attack. Viridian (my cat) also has stealth for those situations. Oh, and I leveled as Marksman.
lol some of the comments here are so typical of the kind of people your get playing warcraft these days . i do agree some hunters dont get it right . in such situations rather than throwing a hissy fit or booting them out a group like some spoilt little kid explain to them where they are going wrong .thats the mature thing to do. its not just hunters that get it in the neck in WoW healers and tanks also get the same moronic attitude towards them . just typical of the WoW community . its like being back at school . no wonder so many are leaving it these days .
Worse than that, he viewed the Blood Elves as merely cosmetic which they were at the start of TBC as hunters, but they have since been changed. They now have quite a nifty little ability that although silences those around you it also restores 6% of your mana.
Now is he honestly trying to tell us, that the abilty to restore 6% of your mana is useless to a hunter? ....yeah i ignored his article after that, you can find better information in a 1.2 second search on google.
This guy knows very little.... and most of the information is useless, really start using mail after 40 and don't use cloth... wow.. yeah... who'd have thought. sigh.
Is MMORPG really that desperate for articles they allow this... to be posted.
"nothing actually matters, we're just slightly evolved monkeys clinging to a dying piece of rock hurtling through space waiting for our eventual death." - Frankie Boyle, Mock The Week
I have been a hunter since I started wow back in 2005, there are plent of huntards about, hunters who raid without a pet, hunters who use basic ammo, and before the spell change hunters who used rank 1 spells. hunters who have no idea how a pet works, ie, shot at a mob and then malee the mob and only then get the pet to attack.
But its all learning, dont mean they sux just they need some guidance.
I rox0r as hunter if I do say so myself =D
Heres a video of me being a huntard back in pre-TBC.. enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHvaJ1jiC48
Dwarf also has +1% crit to guns.
I play my Hunter well... it's funny when other Hunters get called Huntards, though.
Level 80 "Space Goat" blowing stuff up with Explosive Shot and a wolf pet. What's not to like?
The game is a hundred years old. Why post a "quick look" at any of the classes at this point?
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im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
Nothing new under the sun. All those Huntard stories and a million more like them could have been told about Magicians or Rangers in EQ ten years ago.
I'm playing a Hunter at the moment. One of first characters, after I recently started playing WoW 5 years after everyone else. Having begun by trying a Priest and then a Warlock, I can certainly see why Hunters are popular. They are powerful, versatile and fun and they level quickly and painlessly. That combination is going to attract a lot of "line of least resistance" players, who are likely also to have a narrower experience and understanding not only of their own role in a group, but of everyone else's too.
On the other hand, there doesn't seem to me to be much that's unique to the hunter that long-time MMO players haven't seen and done countless times before. I find it plays like a cross between a Beastmaster and a Ranger in EQ, for example, but I imagine most MMOs have an equivalent class or three.
Personally, I won't be doing any raiding, and probably not much grouping, so I don't care too much about the class's reputation, only it's ability. So far it seems to do what I want it to do and I plan on sticking with it to 80th, after which I will probably start over with another class.