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I'm sorry but holy shit you're stupid. So because blizzard does or does not do something that's now the set standard for everyone else? As Zancon said, you'd have just been banned on live servers so I guess you should have been banned instead of a mail. And how does one mail trigger you so hard you need to screech about it on the forums, you could have just asked what they meant and if you didn't do any of the things explained then say so, but at this point the mail is vague (Probably a lazy copy/paste) and nobody in General Discussion would know what even happened, but instead you make a post whinning about a mail you could have totally ignored and make yourself look like a total moron. "It's been in WoW forever" this is Elysium WoW, you seem to keep forgetting different people run this with different rules, "This is happening all over the beta" This isn't classic wow, this is Elysium, you seem to have a really bad time remembering this. "Dedicated playerbase" but also "I for sure know where I'm going August the 27th" So you're not a part of the dedicated playerbase, you're here out of lack of options, because this is the largest vanilla private server but not out of dedication and the second another option, one who you are delusionally thinking is somehow going to not ban you for breaking the game you jump ship. I've heard some powerful dumb things in my years online but this just WOW blasts past the others, god damn.

So let me get this straight. The purpose of a Pet is to add (45-57)*6 = 270-342 damage every 10 seconds (4 others plus Hunter plus the Wolf Pet)? That's literally +27 to +34.2 Damage Per Second if it's buffing 5 Players (assuming they're all within 15 yards of the Wolf when they Howl) for an average of +306 damage per Howl ... and that's before including the effects of armor in reducing physical damage throughput (so you really aren't going to be getting all of that). So ... 3 Lightning Breaths generates 297-339 Nature damage for an average of 318 damage ... and if your Wind Serpent can do this 3 times in 10 seconds then it is by definition inflicting more DPS by using Lightning Breath than a Wolf is buffing a party of 5 by using Furious Howl. Wind Serpents can dramatically increase their rate of fire of using Lightning Breath if the Hunter has the Bestial Discipline talent in the Beast Mastery tree which increases your Pet's regeneration of Focus. Furious Howl gains no such benefits from the Beast Master talent tree (or any other trees, for that matter). Pretty much the only way I see Howl being better than Lightning Breath for a Hunter in a raid is if you've got multiple Hunters in a party group and they all bring Wolves to Howl for them so as to maximize the staggered uptime on Howl and to affect 10 targets instead of just (up to) 6 when there's only 1 Hunter in a DPS party ... except, that's hardly realistic now is it? How many raid groups put 5 Hunters together on one of their party groupings? My point being that to get the "most" out of Furious Howl you have to jump through a LOT of hoops, including both positioning and timing. That's a lot of extra work for remarkably little return on investment. Wind Serpents with Lightning Breath can at least be "parked" (using the Stay command) at range to use Lightning Breath against targets, they can have their "rate of fire" increased by Beast Master talents allowing them to recover Focus more quickly and they don't require careful positioning or timing to deal their damage while staying out of melee range. Which brings me to a question that I haven't seen answered anywhere yet (or if it has been, I must have missed it). Unleashed Fury increases the damage done by your Pets by 4% per talent point (up to 5 talent points). Ferocity increases the critical hit chance of your Pets by 3% per talent point (up to 5 talent points). Frenzy offers a 20% chance per talent point to gain +30% attack speed for 8 seconds after dealing a melee critical strike (up to 5 talent points). Bestial Wrath sends your Pet into a rage for 18 seconds that causes +50% damage. These are the Pet Damage talents from the Beast Mastery tree. Now obviously, Frenzy applies only to melee attacks by your Pet, but can it also proc off melee Pet Skills like Claw and Bite and Charge and so on? Do PBAoE Skills like Screech or Thunderstomp proc Frenzy? Or is it the case that Frenzy only procs off auto attacks by your Pet? Does Unleashed Fury only affect auto attacks, or does it also apply to Pet Skills like Claw, Bite, Lightning Breath(!) and so on? Does Ferocity apply only to melee auto attacks, or does it also apply to Pet Skills like Claw, Bite, Lightning Breath(!) and so on? Is Bestial Wrath a "true" All Damage buff of +50% that also applies to Pet Skills and not just merely auto attacks only? Reason I ask is because it looks like going Beast Master with a Wind Serpent offers a greater amount of synergistic buffing than going Beast Master with a Wolf does, in "pure" min/max terms.

So, let's break this down. What makes Broken Tooth so desirable over other Pets? 1.00 attack speed offers greatest synergy with Frenzy talent, which is 26-30 talent points deep into Beast Mastery, and the greatest degree of pushback on spellcasters. Is Broken Tooth the only Pet in the game with a 1.00 attack speed? NO. The Bloodseeker Bat and the Frenzied Bloodseeker Bat found in Zul'Gurub also have a 1.00 attack speed too. What can Cats do that Bats can't? Cats can Claw and Prowl. Claw is a Focus Dump skill that will drain Focus as fast as it can be recovered, leaving your Cat with low amounts of Focus at nearly all times. Bestial Discipline in the Beast Mastery tree will increase the rate at which Claw will be used on autocast. What can Bats do that Cats can't? Screech. Bats don't have a Focus Dump skill and will thus always have plenty of Focus available to them since their Focus Recovery will always exceed their Focus Costs over time due to cooldowns, so Bestial Discipline in the Beast Mastery tree is essentially wasted on Bats. What's the difference in Diet for Cats and Bats? Fish and Meat for Cats ... Fruit and Fungus for Bats. In PvP, fast kills are often given the highest priority so putting Claw on Broken Tooth is the way to generate the greatest damage in the shortest amount of time while ALSO causing the highest amount of spellcasting pushback possible. This then explains why Broken Tooth is so highly prized for PvP, while also being particularly good for PvE as well, especially for Beast Masters. Broken Tooth is an "all in" on Offense styled Pet that is just about completely optimized for PvP. Extra bonus points for having Broken Tooth Prowl for a Night Elf Hunter using Shadowmeld so as to ambush from stealth. The two Bloodseeker Bats from Zul'Gurub can Screech, which offers a significant Attack Power debuff, making these Pets a bit more "defensive" in nature than Broken Tooth's "all in" on offense capabilities. The Screech debuff is MUCH more effective against NPCs than it is against PCs, due to the way that the Attack Power calculations differ greatly for NPCs and PCs. This difference makes the Bloodseeker Bat types better in PvE than in PvP relative to the performance profile of Broken Tooth.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070221051250/http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/skills_list.shtml#dive Dive 1: Pet Level 30 (15 TP). Increases movement speed by 40% for 15 seconds. Kraul Bat (30-31 Elite, Razorfen Kraul) * Cower 3, Dive 1 Greater Kraul Bat (32 Elite, Razorfen Kraul) * Cower 3, Dive 1 Shrike Bat (38-39 Elite, Uldaman) * Cower 4, Dive 1, Screech 2 Young Mesa Buzzard (31-32, Arathi Highlands) * Dive 1 Mesa Buzzard (34-35, Arathi Highlands) * Dive 1 Wayward Buzzard (35-37, Badlands) * Dive 1 Dread Flyer (36-37, Desolace) * Dive 1 I simply waited until Level 31 and Tamed a Young Mesa Buzzard in the Arathi Highlands in the vicinity of Refuge Pointe. Much easier than messing around with the contents of RFK and trying to convince a group of 4 other people to NOT attack a Bat I'd want to Tame during a run.

Okay, since I've been messing with my Hunter macros since yesterday, and there's enough of a modification to them to be worthy of an update, I figured it would be easiest to just consolidate everything here for easy reference (and to time capsule them). At the present time, I'm using 9 macros specifically on my Hunter, while most of my other 7 Alliance characters have either one or none. Hunters are VERY macro hungry as a class for effective character management. For ease of reference for everything that follows in the macro scripting below, this is NOW (as a result of writing up this posting which resulted in a lot of general housekeeping on top of everything else) what my Pet Skills Bar looks like in-game by default when using my Screech Pet. For anyone new to playing a Hunter, these slots from left to right are: Attack Follow Stay Cower (toggled ON while Growl is OFF) Screech (toggled on) Dive (toggled off) Growl (toggled OFF while Cower is ON) Aggressive Defensive Passive Screech is toggled on at all times because if my Pet is attacking I want it to be Screeching. Dive is toggled off because I really only want Dive to be invoked when there is distance to target for my Pet to travel. No point in using Dive while in melee range of a target. Cower and Growl "oppose" each other in their toggle states, such that when one is on the other is off (until they both switch). Because of this, and to avoid "Mode Confusion" I've moved Cower and Growl to be as far apart from each other as is possible within slots 4 to 7, thereby placing Cower in slot 4 and Growl in slot 7. This then makes it very easy to tell at a glance which "mode" my Pet is in with respect to either autocasting Cower or autocasting Growl. First up, the melee attack macros. All three of these, coincidentally enough, use 163/255 characters each for casting Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack respectively. All three of these macros are designed to make use of Raziya's formulation of Pet Attack macros for lines 2-4, although I'm using /run instead of /script in order to save on character counts just in case I ever want to add even more functions to these macros later on. Beyond that, I'm simply pairing those functions (Pet Follow in line 2, Pet Passive in line 3, attack my target in line 4) with using either Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite or Counterattack in line 1. The last of code determines if the target is 10+ yards away from my Hunter, and if the target is 10+ yards away to have my Pet use their slot 6 Skill, which I've standardized on being either Dash or Dive ... but if the target is less than 10 yards away from my Hunter then Dash/Dive does not need to be cast by my Pet, which will often be the case when my Pet is fighting beside me while my Hunter melee tanks. This makes these macros functionally "Pet agnostic" with respect to use of Dash or Dive so long as I reserve slot 6 for either of those Skills, which I was planning to do anyway. Note also that this particular formulation automatically gives me the proper tooltips and cooldown graphics for Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack icon on my action hotbar. Technically, my Disengage macro is part of the melee group of macros, since all of the skills it references are melee range skills (both for my Hunter and my Pet) but it can also be used at range and without a target selected simply to flip the toggles on Cower and Growl. This macro weighs in at a hefty 245/255 characters used, so not much leeway to do much more with this one. At first I was using UnitIsUnit for this one, but then I noticed in the Vanilla APIs that Raziya was so kind to link to that there is a UnitIsEnemy function, which when parsed right with "target" as the second parameter will return a nil value if there is no target selected. For my purposes, this basically does the job of UnitIsUnit for checking to determine targeting matches AND limiting the valid matches to enemies only. This means that if I have an ally or nothing targeted then the dependency prevents spells/skills from being cast. This then guards against an edge case of two allied Players targeting each other (for whatever reason) and getting a complaint that I can't use Disengage on that target, or using the macro while targeting an allied NPC and getting a complaint that I can't attack that target (even though it would be the Pet attacking). I can do this because both Disengage and PetAttack are fundamentally "enemy only" uses of abilities that are not germane to use on allies. So line 1 determines both if my target is targeting me AND if my target is hostile or friendly ... and if my target is targeting me and hostile will cast Disengage (if my Hunter is in melee range of my target, otherwise Disengage will fail to cast due to range) ... else nothing happens. Because line 1 contains Disengage in it, that then determines the tooltip and cooldown appearance of the hotbar icon. Line 2 puts my Pet into Passive stance. Lines 3 and 4 toggle switch Cower and Growl on my Pet. Line 5 is a "sanity check" for whether or not my Hunter has an enemy target selected, and if so send my Pet to attack that enemy using Dash or Dive regardless of tactical positioning or distance. If I'm switching aggro between my Hunter and my Pet, I want my Pet getting into melee range with my target to potentially Growl as fast as possible. Incidentally, I was mildly surprised that the PetAttack(target) CastPetAction(6) combination appears to work just fine, and I suspect that there are no issues simply because commanding your Pet to attack your target does not invoke any global cooldowns, making it possible to "fall through" directly to the next call for an executable (in this case, slot 6 holding either Dash or Dive). I tested this macro on a hostile Ashenvale Wolf at beyond Bow range to see if my Pet would attack and use Dive correctly, which they did, so this functionality is tested and working at this point. The purpose of the Disengage macro is to "change postures" on my Pet between Cower and Growl, with use of Disengage thrown in conditionally to help facilitate transfer of aggro from my Hunter to my Pet (when my Hunter would be the target of my target) but to NOT use Disengage when trying to transfer aggro from my Pet to my Hunter. The utility of this macro is that it allows my Hunter to switch from melee tanking to ranged spanking (and back again) whenever circumstances warrant it. This should make my melee tanking (Cower ON/Growl OFF) much more successful and versatile, since I'll be able to shed aggro onto my Pet (Disengage+Cower OFF/Growl ON), Bandage and then after I'm done bandaging, switch back into melee tanking (Cower ON/Growl OFF) using a single macro. Additionally, this macro can even be used while at range as a sort of (poor man's) "Kill Command" for my Pet to go into fast pursuit of a runner, or to attack from either a preset Stay position away from my Hunter or from Following at my side, regardless of range to target (due to the distance conditionals I've implemented on my Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack macros to prevent use of Dash or Dive while within 10 yards of my target) with the intent of keeping the aggro on my Pet through use of Growl, instead of on my Hunter through use of Cower. This then lets me One Button Switch from being a Melee Hunter to being a (in my case) Bow Hunter with ease in situations where I don't necessarily want to Face Pull hostiles myself or need to keep distance between myself and my Pet. I use Raziya's Follow and Stay macros for what amounts to secondary Pet controls, usually to prevent my Pet from "going rogue" to attack something I wasn't intending for them to attack. In both cases I substitute /run for /script again to keep the character count down, saving 3 characters per line and simply reserve slot 6 on the Pet Skills Bar for either Dash or Dive. These two macros are 107/255 and 207/255 characters respectively. Line 1 commands my Pet to go into Passive mode, so stop whatever you're doing Pet. Line 2 commands my Pet to Follow my Hunter without needing to edit in my Hunter's name. Lines 3 tests to see if my Pet is in Combat or not, and if so, to have my Pet cast Dash or Dive (in slot 6 of the Pet Skills Bar) to return to my Hunter at best possible speed. This is basically Raziya's Stay macro for Pets, which will tell them to Stay. If your Pet is not in combat, it tells your Pet to Stay where they are. If your Hunter is targeting your Pet, it tells them to Stay where they are also, allowing you to "park" your Pet in a particular spot, even in combat. But if you're NOT targeting your Pet and your Pet is in combat, then it will have them Dash/Dive in Passive mode back to the point you originally had them Stay at as a sort of Retreat From Combat to a preset location. The only meaningful change from Raziya's macro is that I'm assigning a specific Pet Skills slot to either Dash or Dive, in this case slot 6, so that I can tighten up the macro scripting by calling for a Skill slot instead of calling for a specific named pair of abilities from the Pet Spellbook. Additionally, this also means that my Pet(s) have 3 of their 4 Skill slots taken up with Cower (4), Dash/Dive (6) and Growl (7) ... leaving only a single Skill slot open (5) for that particular Pet type's "signature" Skill. Since the vanilla Stable is extremely small, where you're never going have more than 2-3 Pets under any circumstances, this isn't really a problem, since a broad diversity of Pets isn't much of an issue. At the present time, I've still got my original Owl from atop Teldrassil, gained at Level 10, which is my mainline "all around" combat Pet for leveling ... but I also managed to find and Tame none other than Lupos in the past week, who I've now got at Loyalty 5. Both Owls and Wolves can Dash/Dive, so "reserving" a slot for these skills on "all" of the Pets I have isn't exactly an issue. I'm sure that once I reach Level 60 and have learned all of the Pet Skills and don't need to Tame anything else in vanilla, I'll almost certainly pick up a 3rd Pet which can also Dash or Dive, so again ... non-issue for me to reserve a Skill slot for this particular class of skill on all Pets. You can see all of this on the image of my Pet Skill Bar posted above. I use this macro for Scare Beast, and it weighs in at 63/255 characters, which by the standards of what I've been writing about until now is positively petite. Pretty straightforward here action here really. Line 1 puts my Pet into Passive mode. Line 2 commands my Pet to Follow my Hunter. Line 3 has my Hunter cast Scare Beast. This then coordinates my Pet such that they don't keep attacking any Beasts that I've Scared so as to protect against edge cases of having my Pet "accidentally" do damage to my target and break the Fear effect of Scare Beast prematurely. Last but certainly not least is everyone's favorites ... Feign Death and Ice Trap, which really pair together in too many ways. Rather than combine these two into a single macro, I've simply made separate macros for each and then cleverly put them "functionally adjacent" to each other in terms of keybind locations on my hotbars so that I can easily invoke one or the other or both very simply/reliably. This Feign Death macro uses 77/255 characters. Line 1 determines if my Hunter is in Combat, and only if I'm in combat will Feign Death be used. This helps prevent "accidental" use of Feign Death out of combat when it shouldn't have been used, wasting the cooldown (and generally being a DERP move). If I really need to Feign Death while out of combat (for like a roleplay or something?) I'll just open my spellbook and cast it from the spellbook "manually" and very deliberately. This is the macro I'll be using for Freezing Trap, modified from Raziya's Freezing Trap macro to remove the proximity distance conditional, and it costs 116/255 characters. Line 1 checks to determine if my Pet has a target at all, and if my Pet and my Hunter are sharing the same target. If my Pet and my Hunter share the same target then my Pet is put into Passive mode. Line 2 casts Freezing Trap after making sure that my Pet won't (keep) attack(ing) the target my Hunter has selected and break the Freezing Trap effect prematurely on the target I've got selected. This formulation then allows for a "directing traffic" situation where if my Pet is attacking something other than what I'm intending to Freeze, my Pet can keep right on attacking that target. This means that I need to have selected the target that I do want to Freeze in order to keep my Pet from attacking THAT target specifically. I agree with Raziya that it's by no means a perfect solution, but it's certainly better than nothing. As you can see, an awful lot of the character count "crushing" on these macros has come from "standardizing" what Pet Skills I want to have on any (and every?) Pet that I Tame for use in combat, and where those skills will appear on the Pet Skills Bar. That then allows me to, in effect, be more flexible on casting spells by name at the expense of needing to cast spells by skill bar slot. Still, when you've got macros running over 200+ characters long, staying under 255/255 while being able to shoehorn in as much functionality as you need in a single macro can sometimes push you to make compromises outside the macro text itself. In this case I've opted for a "structural" response to the challenge of not having enough room to "name (spell) names" in my macros to fit them under the 255 character limit otherwise.

Hardly. More like a log of experiences progressing through content using an off-meta build. So far, for leveling at least, playing as a Melee Hunter has been both quite enjoyable and also remarkably successful for me. Your mileage may vary, of course. If you're looking for raiding stats from a Melee Hunter build, it's going to be a while before I can provide anything like that. My Hunter is still only Level 32 and is currently progressing through quests in Darkshire. At the moment, my Hunter is dual wielding a pair of Glinting Steel Daggers simply because those are the best melee weapons I can obtain/craft at my Level and they get the job done in a hurry ... although they'd hardly count as BiS for raiding purposes. Additionally, as a result of (finally) reaching Level 32, I was at long last able to "travel the world" on a personal mission to Tame a whole bunch of beasts for new Pet Skills, including Screech 2, which I of course put on my Owl almost immediately. The upgrade from Screech 1 (25 Attack Power Debuff) to Screech 2 (50 Attack Power Debuff) is already making a difference in mitigation to incoming damage I have to tank as a Melee Hunter running a Survival spec. The only other stat of relevance that I can provide is that since switching to Razor Arrows at Level 25, I've only used just shy of 200 of the 1000 I'd bought over the course of 7 Levels. I basically only use my Bow to pull things at this point, which results in mobs bumrushing into my Immolation Trap (now talented for extra damage and reduced chance to be resisted) followed by the "buzzsaw" of my dual wielded Glinting Steel Daggers laying into them with Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack while my Owl attacks and Screeches right alongside me. The whole thing feels like a (fire+physical) DoT drain combo, given how fast the damage piles on, resulting in a sort of "you are already dead, you just haven't gotten the memo yet" type of performance.

General Online players will now gain rested experience inside cities and inns Creatures will no longer appear smaller than they should, eg. Dragons of Nightmare, Molten Core trash, etc. Events The Dragons of Nightmare event has been reworked Dragons will no longer spawn with incorrect abilities Dragons will now spawn within the proper window, 4-7 days after the last dragon was killed Dragon locations should be properly randomized once more Dungeons Blackrock Depths Emperor Dagran Thaurissan has built a better rapport with his court, and they will now come to his aid after combat has begun The Deadmines Edwin Van'Cleef has learnt some new lines of speech Wailing Caverns Bosses now play an associated sound effect when they are engaged Naralex will now yell when he awakens Raids The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj Huhuran now randomly targets players for Noxious Poison rather than only casting it on the highest aggro target Azuregos Azuregos' Cleave now only hits one additional player, rather than chaining to nine players Upper Blackrock Spire The Father Flame event now has correct spawn points for Rookery Hatchers and Solakar Flamewreath The first Rookery Hatcher now has speech when the event starts Blackwing Lair Blackwing Technicians will now behave more consistently with regards to aggro and player death PVP It is no longer possible to miss melee attacks against sitting targets A message is now correctly sent to all group members when a group queues for a Battleground Using the /who command inside a Battleground will now only show a list of players inside that Battleground The Warsong Gulch flag respawn time should now be more consistent after being captured Classes Hunter Pets with stacking abilities now continue to use their spells at max stacks in order to maintain debuffs rather than letting them fall off before casting again Pets with the 'Screech' ability now correctly generate aggro Pets can no longer be instantly dismissed using script functions Paladin Multiple ranks of the same Judgement can no longer be stacked on a single target Judgement of Command now scales base damage depending on whether the target is stunned rather than scaling the bonus damage Judgement of Righteousness now scales at 50% spell power bonus Warlock Healthstones can no longer be created if the player has a full inventory Warrior Flurry ranks one to four will no longer trigger on ranged attacks Quests Corrected the level requirement for Cuergo's Gold to level 40 The Torch of Retribution will now spawn for players again upon accepting the final quest in case they missed it at the first opportunity Quest rewards will no longer sometimes appear twice in a player's chat log The 'Seeking Spiritual Aid' quest and associated event has been improved 'Harlan Needs a Resupply' has received improvements to the event NPCs Garran Vimes now offers gossip to players hinting at a quest location Spirit of Kirith now has a shorter spawn duration (no more ghostly lines) The Tarantulas in Redridge Mountains now have a more zone and level appropriate health pool The swimming Theramore Deserter has relocated himself and his cauldron onto dry land. Having a cooking fire in the ocean is not very productive, as it turns out Adjusted the damage and school resistances for Devilsaur monsters Reduced the damage on Engineer Whirleygig, his dagger was too sharp Items Diamond Flask will now stack with other strength buffs Mighty Rage Potion will now stack with other strength buffs The Jom Gabbar trinket no longer triggers an excessively long cooldown on other similar trinkets Crystal Charge is now usable on all mob types Force Reactive Disk will correctly proc again after the player dies and is resurrected Goblin Jumper Cables can now be used on players that have released their spirit Misc Tabetha's Sign is no longer invisible, it was a bit too spooky even for a witch The API command SpellStopCasting() will now correctly interrupt next-swing melee abilities

Not saying it CAN'T be done, just that being a Main Tank on a Hunter will be a bigger challenge than you'd have if using a different class for the role, that's all. We just lack some of the skills that other aggro magnet classes get built into them. Sure, our Pets can tank, with Growl, but that's the Pet tanking and drawing aggro, not the Hunter. One side effect of asking this question though is that I'm trying to figure out if there's a way for a Hunter to set up a sort of Threat Rotation where they "trade" aggro back and forth with their Pet in a predictable way. That way your Pet tanks the adds while your Hunter sequentially DPS engages targets one by one in melee rather than at range. Obviously, this is a more complex problem than the standard "plink from a distance" strategy, where your Pet holds ALL of the aggro, but in the melee range scenario you want your Pet to hold the aggro of ALL BUT ONE, which is a bit more of a challenge to manage adequately. Now obviously, since the beginning of this thread, I've been advocating for NOT using Growl on a Screech Pet, and instead using Cower (which, apparently, no one takes seriously) and not even bothering to train Growl onto your Pet at all. My current build strategy for Pet Skills doesn't include Growl ... but I've still got room for it, since my plan was to only use 3 trained skills (Screech, Cower and Dive) so I've got the 4th Pet Skill slot empty, and I've budgeted all of my Training Points (except 1) on maxing out those 3 active skills plus All Resistances (rank 3) and the Stamina (rank 1) and Armor (rank 1) skills to make my Pet an all around "hardy" type. So I've got 1 skill slot open upon which I can spend all of 1 training point on if I wanted to ... and Growl could fit into that slot and would cost zero training points, meaning it could be done. Which then begs the question ... okay, genius ... how could you possibly use Cower AND Growl on the same Pet in a way that isn't inherently self-defeating? Well ... this is where things start to get interesting, theoretically speaking. The first thing that comes to mind is that in order to use Cower AND Growl ... together ... on the same Pet (wait, what?) you need to have your Pet use these skills in an intelligent and DELIBERATE fashion to support a strategy of engagement (in this case, melee rather than ranged), instead of just putting them both on Auto Attack and letting them cancel each other out. Now, according to the vanilla database, here's the threat values for Cower ranks 1-6, and the lowest level Beast you need to Tame in order to learn these ranks. Rank 1: -30 Threat (5-6 Nightsaber or Juvenile Snow Leopard) Rank 2: -55 Threat (15-16 Savannah Patriarch) Rank 3: -85 Threat (25-26 Crag Stalker) Rank 4: -125 Threat (36-37 Ridge Stalker) Rank 5: -175 Threat (50 Jaguero Stalker) Rank 6: -225 Threat (55-56 Frostsaber Cub) And here's the threat values for Growl ranks 1-7, learned from the Pet Trainer every 10 Levels. Rank 1: 50 Threat (Level 1) Rank 2: 65 Threat (Level 10) Rank 3: 110 Threat (Level 20) Rank 4: 170 Threat (Level 30) Rank 5: 240 Threat (Level 40) Rank 6: 320 Threat (Level 50) Rank 7: 415 Threat (Level 60) So obviously, at any given Pet Level, you're looking at needing to Cower TWICE in order to shed the Threat generated by 1 Growl (roughly speaking). Now, just for shizzle, let's throw in the Hunter (melee) skill Disengage. Rank 1: -140 Threat (Level 20) Rank 2: -280 Threat (Level 34) Rank 3: -405 Threat (Level 48) And just for the sake of completeness, here's the (ranged) skill Distracting Shot. Rank 1: 110 Threat (Level 12) Rank 2: 160 Threat (Level 20) Rank 3: 250 Threat (Level 30) Rank 4: 350 Threat (Level 40) Rank 5: 465 Threat (Level 50) Rank 6: 600 Threat (Level 60) These are the Threat talents that Hunters have to work with, NONE of which do any damage at all, so for people wanting to top DPS meters, these control skills do not directly aid you in your quest to secure the #1 DPS slot. It's also plenty obvious from these listings that there is a Design Intent for it to be easier for Hunters (and their Pets) to build up Threat than it is to shed it. So now, here's my thought ... Using macros, shouldn't it be perfectly possible to structure a Melee Hunter's attacks such that when your Hunter uses any of your three bread'n'butter melee attack skills (Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite or Counterattack) your Pet is commanded to also use Cower on your target ... AND ... at the same time create a different macro such that whenever your Hunter uses Disengage (which only works in melee), your Pet will use Growl on your target? In both cases, both Cower and Growl are NOT on Auto Attack ... nor is Dive ... but Screech is kept on Auto Attack so that it gets used as often as possible on the target your Hunter is fighting, to do damage to that target and debuff the Attack Power of all other hostiles in melee range of your Screech Pet. This would then create a sort of Push/Pull dynamic in both adding to and subtracting from Threat. It creates conditions under which your Pet is minimizing its Threat on the target your Hunter is melee attacking, while continuing to Screech at it (and any adds nearby), so as to encourage that specific target to engage your Hunter so as to proc Mongoose Bite and Counterattack. At the same time, it creates a "tag team switch" option in which your Hunter can successfully Disengage simultaneously with your Pet using Growl to draw aggro away from your Hunter and onto your Pet, so as to free up your Hunter to do anything from Bandaging to Mend Pet to repositioning to begin attacking from range and "move" the battle to a new location, including use of Distracting Shot to pick apart the dogpile on your Pet. It would mean that the use of Cower would decline from the Auto Attack scenario, due to "inefficiencies" of timing in the use of Hunter melee skills relative to the cooldown of Cower on the Pet. Now, one of the factors that isn't clearly understood in all of this, mainly because both Petopia and the vanilla database are "silent" on the matter, is ... are Growl, Cower and Disengage effectively single target skills, or do they have a melee range PBAoE (like Screech does). I'm reasonably certain that Growl is a PBAoE skill that adds Threat to every target in melee range of your Pet, but I have no information confirming that either Cower or Disengage have a PBAoE associated with their Threat reduction. An alternative to this formulation would be to keep Growl off Auto Attack and key it such that it is only to be used as part of a Disengage+Growl macro, while keeping Cower on Auto Attack. This would then produce a situation in which "on demand" your Hunter can try and shed the aggro of adds onto your Pet, while continuing to DPS your main target which should remain (mostly) focused on your Hunter. In this case, use of Growl is meant to moderate incoming damage from multiple hostiles by splitting it between your Hunter and your Pet. That way, your Pet is tanking everything that you're NOT targeting, while your Hunter "solo tanks" every target in melee in a sequential rather than parallel fashion, such that your Pet holds onto the attention of everything BUT what you're trying to DPS down. The key here is that Cower is on Auto Attack to shed Threat against whatever your Hunter is fighting in melee, while "on demand" (rather than "on auto") Growl keeps everything else focused elsewhere (on your Pet). With proper positioning of yourself and your Pet, you ought to be able to debuff most (if not all) of the hostiles in parallel so as to suppress their damage production and extend the survivability of both yourself and your Pet, giving you both time and opportunities to win the engagement. Yet a third possibility would involve turning the Auto Attack for Cower ON/OFF depending on whether the last melee skill used was an offensive (Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite or Counterattack) or defensive in nature (Disengage), while making Growl still only used in conjunction with Disengage, for possibly the best/simplest melee Threat management that doesn't require extra skill slots on your hotbars. Using this third possibility as a theoretical basis, here's how the various attack macros used by the build would need to be edited. Well ... just tried it in game and ... apparently the /petautocaston spellname formulation isn't supported in the vanilla version of Darrowshire, even though I'm using Supermacro and CastModifier add-ons. I even tried... /petautocaston Cower ... from the command line while I had the skill off auto to test it, and all I get is a chat window message implying that I've used an unregistered command and would you like to see a list of commands? I even found This Post from January 2007 strongly implying that the command ought to be supported, but I can't get it to work. Would anyone more knowledgeable about creating macros (that work) be able to tell me how I should edit to be able to make use of /petautocast on/off scripting in macros? Or is this something that only came out with TBC and thus we'll need someone to come up with some sort of LUA scripting extension or something in order to be able to support the functionality of turning Pet Skill Auto features on/off using macros? Raziya? Help?

Hellow there :) When I saw the post above me, it was "a minute ago". Now it is more than an hour LOL So yes, I've read all those (neat) walls of text and found them really interesting. Thanks for the dedication and the explanations here. I once thought about making myself a "Beast o' Melee™" but never really tried it. With this post, I now should be able to start one a day, for sure ^^ Here are few questions : - Can you confirm that you got no mana issue while leveling ? What is a classic rotation (hunter and pet) ? - You have a full coverage of the professions between your characters, but what are the ones of the Hunter ? Is Engineer require for this build ? - Have you try the chest enchant "Lesser Absorption" on him ? I've read that the proc could reduce multiple sources of attacks at the same time, so with "Screech" it should be really nice :p

I'm sitting here laughing, not because of the request, but because I've never made a video of gameplay before and have honestly never had an inclination to make one. Also, at the moment, because of my insistence on playing all 3 campaigns on each of my characters (for rep and cash/item rewards) I've gotten somewhat overleveled for the content that I'm playing, so a lot of stuff is green/grey to me right now in Stonetalon Peaks and out in The Wetlands. That of course changes when fighting against Elites. The gear I'm using on all my characters is (relatively speaking) weak crap that either drops, is a quest reward, or is something I've crafted. So it's all totally leveling gear/experience/play for me right now. I've still got BFD and the Stockades to do once I finish up with Stonetalon and The Wetlands. But yeah, I can definitely understand the desire for visual/gameplay evidence of the differences that bringing all of these disparate elements to bear can bring. It is one of those things where you need to SEE it in action to really begin to understand and grasp the potentials. It's also easy to argue that playing as a Melee Hunter is a good bit more ... complex ... than playing a Ranged Hunter who simply goes through a rotation of Shots. There's a slightly different emphasis on choosing where to fight and how to fight what you're up against, and how much prep work you want to invest before starting an engagement. Until you SEE it in action, it's all theoretical. The true CORE talents of a proper Melee Hunter build are, I would argue, are composed of a 10/0/30 talent mix with a Screech Pet, with the remaining 11 points being free to fill out the build with whatever floats your boat. In this context, 11 talent points "leftover" makes for a pretty decent mix of opportunities for personalization. You could spend those points in Beast Mastery to really buff up your Pet with Unleashed Fury and Ferocity (putting 5/5 into each) and still have 1 point left over for either Bestial Swiftness (outdoor pursuit speed) or Intimidation (3 second stun plus Pet Threat) or Wyvern Sting. If you absolutely must have Aimed Shot (in a melee oriented build?), you've got the 11 talent points you'd need available to you to get that deep into the Marksman tree. Or you can do what I did/will do and spend 5 points on Survival, 2 on Feign Death, 1 on Wyvern Sting and 3 on Thick Hide. Point being, there's a goodly bit of Nice To Have™ rather than Absolutely Necessary™ "leftover" talent points at the end of things, so arguably the build ought to be "filled" by Level 50, with the last 10 Levels simply being augmenting/refining the core of it.

Wow, I can hardly believe I started this thread over 6 months ago. Guess it's time for an update. Still leveling 8 Alliance characters in parallel and playing all 3 Alliance campaigns (Human, Dwarf/Gnome, Night Elf) and I've gotten all of my characters up to Level 28-29 by now. It's been a heck of a lot of fun to replay the game this way. As a side effect of having every single Profession in my stable (army?) of characters, I've been able to level up all of my Professions rather nicely to keep them all current with the content that I'm playing through. Fishing tends to be my second lowest skill on everyone, simply because I only do it while waiting dockside for boats to arrive. My absolute lowest skill on everyone is First Aid, in the 100-115 range (I need so much Wool Cloth!). My highest skills at the moment are things like Mining, Blacksmithing (x2), Engineering (x2), Herbalism and Enchanting, mainly since I've got the resource gathering flow needed to advance all of those skills. Surprisingly enough, the big moneymakers for me (on Darrowshire) have turned out to be Enchanting (of all things) from taking a pile of low level green junk weapons, disenchanting them and making Wands to sell to vendors, Herbalism creating a surplus to sell (my Druid can never go anywhere in a straight line!), Mining + Blacksmithing from either selling off raw ore I don't intend to use or crafting Mail pieces that are cheap in resources to make and then vendor, and of course ... Pickpocketing every Humanoid/Undead in sight (my Rogue "finances" anyone who falls short on cash). At this point, at Level 28-29 on 8 characters, I figure I've got about 100+ gold spread across my 8 characters. Some of them are always in poverty, since their only income is quest rewards and vendor trash, while others are (by comparison) "rolling in it" and are already on their way to saving up enough cash to buy mounts at Level 40. I figure I should have no problem financing 5-6 mounts at Level 40 (Paladin and Warlock won't be "buying" mounts in the usual sense). Anyway, that's neither here nor there for the topic of playing a Beast o' Melee Hunter ... which I have been doing on my Night Elf Hunter. It's been ... interesting. At Level 25, I of course switched over to Razor Arrows and bought 5 stacks of them (for 1000 arrows). Prior to this I'd been using a SINGLE stack of 200 Sharp Arrows since Level 10 and was running low when I finally dinged Level 25 and switched over to Razor Arrows. That's right, I used less than 200 Arrows during 15 Levels from 10-25, including running through Deadmines. Instead, I just spend a handful of copper on repairing my gear whenever I get back to town. Between Levels 25 and now 28, I've used about maybe some 40 or so Arrows. My Hunting Quiver is only half full of ammo, and it STAYS that way ... because I'm playing through the game as a Melee Hunter. I just don't spend a whole lot of time shooting things. There are have been some close calls on occasion, but it's kind of fascinating to see just how capable a Survival Hunter build can be. When taking on multiple opponents or a single elite, I've always got the option of sending in my Pet first to soak up aggro while I stand back and plink away with my Bow until drawing aggro myself and then proceeding to melee. I try not to need to Split Tank between my Hunter and my Pet all that much, but when I have needed to, it's worked pretty well (especially in Loch Modan on Trogg Island when caught by respawns). Most of the time the standard tactic is to "get close but not too close" to the mob I want to take down. I plunk down an Immolation Trap for them (still don't have Explosive Trap yet) before entering combat. I then "nudge" forward to draw aggro and then fall back to stand at my trap. I let my target charge at me, get burned, and then open up with Raptor Strike and start watching for Mongoose Bite procs on my hotbar. Meanwhile, my Owl is Screeching and attacking right alongside me and is doing almost as much damage as I am and the trap is. The whole thing feels like something of a buzzsaw because of how fast it piles on the damage from 3 different sources, instead of just 1 (Trap, Pet, Hunter). The Screech debuff makes a pretty big difference in tanking effectiveness, since it reduces the amount of damage the mobs can generate, yielding a Damage Avoided/Reduced scenario that synergizes really well with tanking yourself as a Melee Hunter. I well and truly believe that THIS is the essential Design Intended behavior pattern for a Melee Hunter build strategy ... the Three-on-One combination of damage sources. I hardly ever have to feed my Owl by this point, after getting my Pet to Loyalty 6 Best Friend, in part because my Pet is hardly ever taking any damage in combat (which can lower their Happiness). Thanks to this, I just feed my Owl any Meat that drops which otherwise would have simply been vendor bait to keep my Pet happy and well fed. As far as weapons go, I'm using a Bow that dropped for me back in the teens (and probably ought to be replaced by now), but since I use it so rarely it hasn't been a big issue for me. It's there, but it's not my go to weapon. I tried using a 2H Axe for a while, to get those satisfying melee crits from Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite, but it was really unhappy camper time if my attack(s) Missed and I then had to wait for the next swing to arrive. I then switched to dual wielding a pair of Axes for a while, which was kinda cool, but I didn't have any good stat modifiers available to me on the weapons themselves, so they were just straight damage weapons. Then my Blacksmith(s) reached a Level where they could craft Pearl-handled Daggers and later Deadly Bronze Poniards which I could of course equip 2 of, for stat bumps. It may seem strange to equip a Hunter like you would a Rogue, with dual Daggers, but they turn out to be surprisingly effective. Since Daggers are so fast, if you Miss an attack there isn't a long lag time before you make another swing at your target and in the overall scheme of things you didn't lose a whole lot of damage throughput. Also, because they're fast, you don't have to wait all that long for Raptor Strike to be used after hitting it on your hotbar. The entire build feels very quick and responsive when using dual Daggers, and in combination with Immolation Trap and a 2.00 attack speed Pet can produce a melee range caster pushback performance broadly similar to using Broken Tooth, simply because of how FAST the damage is landing from four(!) different sources (Trap, Pet, Dagger+Dagger). I have to say, that although the 2H Weapon strategy looks really good from a BIG Numbers perspective when getting crits from Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite, that's more of an RNG "spike damage" strategy and is something which has an "intermittent" performance profile. Sometimes you will, sometimes you won't (crit) ... and when you don't, it's a long wait until the next chance to land a big crit, and that's not even counting what happens when you Miss with your big 2H Weapon (or get your attack Dodged or Parried). Very much an All Eggs In One Basket sort of deal, which is fine ... so long as the basket works. When it doesn't ... it hurts. So sometimes you'll kill faster and sometimes you won't, and it's really all up to the RNG to decide your fate (hit/miss/dodge/parry and crit chance). That sort of lottery chance may be fine for some people, but in my personal opinion it's really not worth it at the Levels I'm playing at. By contrast, using dual Daggers feels more like a "DoT pressure" strategy, where any one Miss doesn't hurt you all that badly (although getting 3-4 in a row do!). This is more of a "chuck LOTS of dice as fast as you can" strategy, which smooths out the edge cases better to yield a more consistent performance over time, even though the RNG is still a factor. Getting to 3/3 Surefooted in tier 4 Survival really makes a big difference here, since it's adding +3% chance to hit both to your Main Hand and Offhand weapons, which effectively lets you "double dip" on making your dual weapons that much more effective at damage generation. Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite are Main Hand Only spells, so the Dual Wield to hit penalty doesn't affect those attacks, so once again 3/3 Surefooted is really working for you to improve your melee throughput. As I mentioned before in previous posts, Raptor Strike merely ADDS Damage to an attack, much like Heroic Strike for a Warrior or Maul for a Bear Druid, rather than being a damage MULTIPLIER on the spell itself. The damage multiplication for Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite is a function of scoring critical hits with those attacks, and in order to do that you have to be in melee range, and to use Mongoose Bite your Hunter needs to have and be holding aggro (so you can Dodge and respond with a Mongoose Bite). Having tried it both ways, 2H versus Dual Daggers, I have to say that at the levels I'm playing in I definitely prefer the Fast DoT over the Slow Spike performance, mainly because the Fast DoT doesn't rely on the necessity of big hits to finish stuff off quickly. I'd have to say that on balance, the Daggers would routinely kill targets faster than using a 2H would, simply because they'd be "whittling away" quickly at targets rather than waiting for the "big swing" to take stuff down by bunches all at once. The Daggers were therefore also less prone to wasting potential on Overkill, yielding a quicker Time To Kill performance profile on average when soloing, which then meant less time needed to recover back to full after defeating a mob and a quicker overall "cruising speed" through the mobs I needed to defeat. Oh, one other thing to mention about playing a Melee Hunter ... mana management. When blasting away with your Marksman spells on a continuous rotation, mana consumption, and its recovery, can potentially become something of an issue. With the Melee Hunter build I've been playing, mana consumption and recovery just isn't that much of an issue at all. Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite are VERY forgiving on the mana costs, which then leaves most of my mana available for doing things like Mend Pet (on the rare occasions that I Split Tank and need to do so). This also improves "cruising speed" of working through content when doing the Trap, Pull, Strike routine. In many cases I'm more concerned about recovering Health after a fight than I am about recovering Mana ... and oh, hey, look, I just so happen to have some Food here in my bags that my Owl hasn't eaten yet (if it comes down to needing to recover Health fast after a fight). So having played my Beast o' Melee spec from 10-28, I have to say that I'm extremely pleased with how it has turned out in actual gameplay thus far. The 13/0/38 build strategy seems to be working out quite well, even if at this point I've only gotten 0/0/19 deep into the build thus far. Between use of Immolation Trap, Owl for Screech and the buzzsaw of dual Daggers for Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite, the performance is definitely in the Melt Faces™ category. I'm already looking forward to reaching Levels 31 (Dive 1) and 32 (Screech 2) and 36 (Cower 4) as well as Level 30 (bump up all Resistances) to start really supercharging my Owl's performance profile for even better melee tanking by my Hunter. Oh ... and one last thing ... special hat tip to Raziya for a couple of macros I've been using. The purpose of these macros is to keep my Owl in combat beside me, rather than letting it range freely. Action 2 is Follow and Action 10 is Passive modes. These actions keep my Pet beside me. I'm using separate macros for Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite so that I can see the cooldowns and readiness status on the icons on my hotbar. I don't have Dive yet for my Pet, but once I do, it'll automatically just Dive to attack. The key here is that Dive isn't kept on Auto but is instead only used under the correct conditionals (to swoop in and attack). The way this works is that since as a Melee Hunter I want the aggro to be on ME and not on my Pet, I keep my Pet in Passive mode at all times, meaning it is only going to attack because I tell it to attack, and using either Raptor Strike or Mongoose Bite are the conditions under which I want my Owl to engage and start Screeching while it's beside me. Once I pick up Counterattack at Level 30, I'll be making yet another macro for that skill. This kind of automated Pet control works VERY NICELY on a Melee Hunter build, since it keeps your Pet from doing a lot of otherwise silly things on its own (just be mindful of your clicks!). The whole idea behind the Melee Hunter + Screech Pet combo is that the two of you fight your opponent(s) side-by-side, rather than far apart from each other. Since I don't advocate the inclusion of the Focus dump skill Claw for Melee Hunter builds, there shouldn't be any problem with being able to pay the focus cost of Dive. These also work quite nicely for commanding my Pet to attack if I'm still at range from my target. I'll get the "It's too far away" announcement when doing so, but my Owl will fly off to attack anyway. Pairing these actions together like this just streamlines and simplifies a whole lot of stuff for playing a Melee Hunter. I'm keeping the /cast Dash in these macros just in case I ever decide to play with a Pet other than a Bat/Carrion Bird/Owl so I don't have to rewrite the macro depending on which Pet I'm using. Raziya, if you're still around, I saw your most recent (April) Pet Tutorial video about Dash/Dive only working when moving to attack but not when returning. So here's another place for people to see these macros. As Raziya explained (around 28 minutes into the video), this is a Dash/Dive to Follow Hunter macro, which will command your Pet to follow your Hunter while also going to Passive mode (and thus not get distracted) and if your Pet is in Combat to activate the Dash/Dive skill to return to your Hunter at best possible speed. This is, of course, useful for getting your Pet out of trouble that you can see coming, or to pull a target mob into a Trap (such as the Ice Trap that he demonstrated). Since my engagement pattern as a Melee Hunter doesn't (often) involve being at a distance from my Owl Pet, I haven't really needed to make use of such a macro yet, but there will probably come a time when this becomes important for tactical positioning reasons later on. And then there's Raziya's Stay macro here, which I'm not entirely sure I can manage to get my head around the tactical permutations of (since there are many when it comes to Pull/Fallback/Ambush tactics), since as you say you can use it to make a Pet retreat from an engagement back to a pre-set (Stay) location, presumably one with a Trap placed at it as you demonstrated in your video. This sounds like something that would be very nearly ideal for use with Eyes of the Beast and Corner Pulling, but I just tested it on Darrowshire and after you stop channeling Eyes of the Beast, your Pet will return to Follow your Hunter, even if the Stay mode is still on ... so that's out (boo...). Still, being able to get your Pet to retreat to a Stay point could be useful when working in tandem at a distance. This could then be an additional enhancement for picking apart mob groups of 3+ to safely handle them sequentially via Wyvern Sting and Ice Trap in combination with strategic placement before starting the engagement (so proper time for a proper setup is required). Still, being able to Split Tank like that from the beginning to take things on sequentially rather than in parallel would seem to offer a wealth of possibilities in PvE, and in the hands of a properly skilled Hunter, a large bag of tricks for use in PvP too (if you have the luxury of setup time to attack from different directions). Putting all of this together does, of course, require a lot of practice and (learned) skill in how to use all of these disparate parts and pieces most effectively. Suffice it to say that I've enjoyed the process of learning just how DIFFERENTLY a Melee Hunter plays from the stock'n'standard Tank & Spank (from a distance) playstyle employed by Marksmen and Beast Masters. Remember, the different talent trees call for different strategies for how to succeed ... Beast Master: Pet tanks (at range), buff the Pet. Marksman: Pet tanks (at range), buff the Hunter. Survival: Hunter tanks (in melee!), Pet offers close support(!). Suffice it to say, that playing as a Beast o' Melee Hunter has been quite the ride all the way up to Level 28 so far ... and there's still more fun to come! *^_^*

I leveling a hunter solo, soo i want a Owl to be my pet and i want the screech skill, but in low levels i can only found in a carrion bird at level 16. My question is: Can i tame 2 pets in the level 16 or i will need to abandon my pet, tame the carrion bird, abandon he and tame a Owl?

Hello! As the title says, I cannot reach rank two with Screech. According to petopia - and other sites - a Salt Flats Vulture from Thousand Needles can learn it, and I have at this point used it manually about 100 times, and automatically for way more than that. Is there something I've misunderstood here, or do I just keep spamming the ability until I've learned to teach it to other pets? Kind regards Faux Edit.: I realized my mistake as soon as I went to bed after writing this thread. I caught a Scavenger, not a Vulture smh. All good now.

Heck, if you want to look at something concrete that isn't Blizzlike, just look at hunter pets. From release until Patch 1.7 the abilities of hunter pets was limited to Bite, Claw, Cower, Dash, Dive, and Growl. Patch 1.7 added Furious Howl, Prowl, Scorpid Poison, Screech, Great Stamina, Natural Armor, and the Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, Shadow resistances. Patch 1.8 added Lightning Breath Patch 1.9 added Charge, Shell Shield, Thunderstomp. As a player of a hunter, I happen to enjoy using a Boar with Charge and am quite thankful that Elysium isn't 100% Blizzlike.

Greetings to both my fellow underlings… er, hunters and anyone else visiting this thread, welcome to the Hunter Tactics and Strategies corner of our forums! There are hunters among us, who are new to Vanilla and may be unaware of the fact that gameplay mechanics have undergone many substantial changes, as the game developed to whichever expansion you might have played in the past. And so I've decided to begin with explaining the basics – you can read here about the proper build, spell rotation, you'll be able to find here a list of pre-raid BiS, as well as a list of regular enchants (and how to get them) and required raid consumables and much more. I went through many hunter Vanilla guides while writing this, but I didn't get the impression that the majority of them is correct at all. You can find the list of the sources below. I'm gonna keep this thread updated, feel free to leave any comments here or contact me in-game / on discord anytime for any questions. Covered so far: Hunter Stats & Conversions Hit & Crit Cap calculations PVE Builds for current raiding content Spells, Cycle & Rotation Pre-raid BiS items Enchants Raid Consumables & Buffs Professions Solo Hunter Epic Quest – How to get your Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers (see Dhralla's Ultimate Leaf Guide) Coming soon: Pets Macros & Addons Hunter is a unique class, as the only one in the game deals ranged physical damage. This fact is also reflected in how hunters benefit from individual stats and how the stats convert – which will differ alot from both melee physical damage dealers and spell casters. Primary stats benefit hunters in the following order: agility > stamina > intellect > spirit > strength. Agility increases attack power with melee weapons by 1 and ranged weapons by 2 per point increases critical strike chance by 0.0189% (0.0217% for SV spec) per point @lvl60 (1% critical strike chance requires 53 agility or 46 for SV spec) increases dodge by 0.0377% (0.0444% for SV spec) per point @lvl60 (1% dodge requires 26.5 agility or 22.5 agility for SV spec) increases armor by 2 per point Stamina increases health points by 10 per point Intellect increases mana pool by 15 per point increases chance to criticaly hit with spells increases the rate at which weapon skill improve Spirit increases health regeneration while out of combat increases mana regeneration while not casting („not casting“ refers to „five second rule“, which means whenever mana is expended for any purpose, mana regeneration is interrupted for five seconds) Strength increases attack power with melee weapons by 1 per point Among the secondary stats that are beneficial to hunters belong: attack power (or ranged attack power), hit chance and critical strike chance. Attack power is the stat that increases dps the most – both, white attacks and most special abilities scales with it so it basically translates into raw dps. For a deeper overview of the other two important secondary stats pls check separate section below (Hit & Crit Cap). Whereas some of our abilities scale with spell power (e.g. Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting, Traps), we also benefit from it, but since those abilities do not participate in your dps, you don’t have to worry about having zero at all. Which stat to stack depends on several factors, mostly on your current value of individual stats, because some stats are subject to the caps (namely hit chance and critical strike chance, see separate section Hit & Crit Cap below). Priority should be given to the hit chance until reaching the cap (9%) and agility should be prioritized over attack power, in terms of 10 agi > 21 ap. The additional critical strike rating from agility will increase your dps more than the attack power and the profit is getting bigger, the more agility versus attack power we compare. Here is also worth mentioning that agility, unlike attack power, is influenced by buffs that increase stats by %, for instance Spirit of Zandalar. Regarding preference for attack power or critical strike rating, there is no uniform conversion, because the profit from attack power is affected by your current dps and the profit from critical strike rating is subject to the cap, or rather „diminishing returns”. To determine how much attack power corresponds to 1% crit, check this Excel sheet – the table on the left shows by how much every additional 1% crit increases your dps; the table on the right shows attack power conversion to % increase in dps – you can adjust the calculation by changing the value of your current average dps in the yellow highlighted cell. For overview, these are the approximate hunter agility equivalence points (stat conversions): 1 agility = 2 ranged attack power 53 agility (46 for SV spec) = 1 % critical strike chance, 106 ranged attack power 14 ranged attack power ≈ 1 DPS Secondary stats that require special attention are hit chance and critical strike chance. These stats are very important to hunters and both of them are weighted down by reaching the cap at some point. For a more detailed explanation, read the following paragraphs. Hit chance & cap Ranged attacks cannot result in a parry, dodge or glancing blow, which means that ranged attacks can only hit normally, crit, miss, be blocked or result in a crushing blow (NPC only). Unlike other physical damage classes, hit cap for hunters is the same for both auto attacks („white damage“) and special abilities/shots („yellow damage“). Since missing an attack results in the greatest dps loss, reaching the hit cap should be priority no. 1 for every raider. There are several ways of increasing your hit chance – mainly through gear, then enchants (ZG enchants – Falcon's Call, see Enchants section), a scope (Biznicks 247x128 Accurascope, see Enchants section) and last but not least, your talents (Surefooted, see PVE Builds section). But what exactly is the hit chance and what specific amount is needed? Hit chance decreases the chance to miss and in PVE its‘s determined by the difference between player‘s weapon skill and the target’s defense skill. In addition, the effect is not linear and there are actually two different formulas built in the Elysium open source code (see /src/game/Objects/Unit.cpp; line 3077-3130): line 3083: Base miss chance is set to 5%. float missChance = 5.0f; line 3101: skillDiff is weapon skill minus target’s defense skill (gives negative value when target’s defense skill is higher than player’s weapon skill). int32 skillDiff = int32(GetWeaponSkillValue(attType, pVictim)) - int32(pVictim->GetDefenseSkillValue(this)); line 3106-3107: If skillDiff is higher than 10, use code on line 3107 for missChance calculation. else if (skillDiff < -10) missChance -= (skillDiff + 10) * 0.4f - 2.0f; // 7% base chance to miss for big skill diff (%6 in 3.x) line 3108-3109: If skillDiff is less than or equal to 10, use code on line 3109 for missChance calculation. else missChance -= skillDiff * 0.1f; This means that the calculation depends on the actual difference between player‘s weapon skill and the target‘s defense skill. The above equations can be expressed as follows: [1] If the difference between player‘s weapon skill and target‘s defense skill is > 10, then the formula for calculating base miss chance is: missChance [%] = 7 + (defense skill – weapon skill – 10) * 0.4 [2] If the difference between player‘s weapon skill and target‘s defense skill is ≤ 10, then the formula for calculating base miss chance is: missChance [%] = 5 + (defense skill – weapon skill) * 0.1 If we take in account base weapon skill, i.e. 300, applying these formulas gives us base miss chance 5% against lvl 60 mob (applying formula [2]) and 9% against lvl 63 mob (boss), (applying formula [1]). Note that the above applies to ranged / 2H melee weapons, considering melee dual-wielding, there is additional 19% miss chance penalty, which gives 24% and 28% miss chance, respectively. Considering troll (or dwarf) racial bonus, that is additional +5 weapon skill to bows (guns), base miss chance against lvl 60 mob remains unchanged, i.e. 5% (applying formula [2]), but against lvl 63 mob (boss) it‘s only 6% (applying formula [2]). If you don’t like playing troll / dwarf and still want that badass hit cap reduction, you might be interested in items with +ranged weapon skill, but note that you won’t find such kind of gear among the end-game pieces. You’ll find the list of those items bellow. As already mentioned, the calculations of the hit (or rather miss) chance is not linear, but it’s dependent on the actual difference between player’s weapon skill and the target’s defense skill. This means that adding the same +weapon skill amount at different actual weapon skill rates, won’t result in the same miss chance reduction. For a better overview of the miss chance against lvl 63 mob (boss), i.e 315 defense skill, according to the current player’s weapon skill, see the following table: gear with +ranged weapon skill: Stoneshatter (Dire Maul West – Prince Tortheldrin) Flawless Arcanite Rifle (Engineering crafted) Sash of the Grand Hunt (BRD – Emperor Dagran Thaurissan) Trueaim Gauntlets (LBRS – Shadow Hunter Vosh'gajin), (note that this item has undergone stats and quality changes in patch 1.10 so if you’re after it, check what version corresponds to the patch you’re currently playing on) Marksman Bands (BoE Dire Maul East Drop) Infernal Trickster Leggings (Maraudon – Lord Vyletongue) Crit chance & cap Critical strike chance is a secondary stat which improves your chance to get a critical strike with melee and ranged weapons. In general, physical critical strike refers to 100% bonus damage (twice your normal damage) that occurs as a result of an attack. Since a large majority of hunters use 5/5 Mortal Shots talents, which increases ranged weapon critical strike damage bonus by 30%, the resulting bonus is even greater, namely 130%. Besides that, critical strike chance appears on gear as a separate stat, it‘s also increased by agility, where you gain 1% for every 53 agility points (note that base critical strike chance from agility gives you 5%). We also have 5/5 Lethal Shots talents, which increase critical strike chance with ranged weapons by 5%. If we put all this together, we can come to the calculation of „soft“ crit cap. „Soft“ because unlike the hit cap, it’s not a fixed value in the sense that you’ll still benefit from additional critical strike chance even after reaching the cap, but the profit will be more and more negligible. For a better understanding, see the following table and chart: As the „soft“ crit cap we define the point where additional % of critical strike chance will increase your dps by less than 1%. You can see that the „soft“ crit cap is around +24 – 25% critical strike chance and if we take in account the bonus from 5/5 Lethal Shots talents, it will leave us with only + 19 – 20% critical strike rating required from agility / critical strike chance as separate stat to reach the cap. Beyond that point, you should focus on stacking mainly attack power. Even though the default Vanilla Character Info in Vanilla doesn’t display your current critical strike chance, you can still check it out in the Spellbook & Abilities, in General tab, upon mouseovering the Attack ability (note that the tooltip doesn’t show Lethal Shots bonus, since it’s ranged only), or use one of those stat enhancement addons. Regarding hit and crit chances, there is very important note Blizzard made in August 2005: „The way WoW calculates crit rate is over ALL attacks. Crit rate is not based on hits only. In other words, if you have a 5% crit rate, that 5% chance includes misses.” The post made by Thundgot, Blizzard English Community Manager, also contains other important information about crit rate adjusting and critical strike in relation to defense: „All crit rate adjusting abilities, items, and talents add the flat % to the base % crit rate. So if I have a 5% base crit rate and then use an item or talent that increases that crit rate (let's use Improved Backstab talent for example - +30% crit), my new crit with backstab is 35%. Regarding how defense decreases the rate of critical strikes, each point of defense that a target has over the attacker, the attacker loses 0.04% chance to crit. So, for example, if a level 60 Rogue is attacking a level 60 Warrior who has 25 defense, the rogue's crit rate will be decreased by 1%.” And also for a better understanding of how the chances are added together, there is another interesting knowledge here how the hit chance is subtracted from the miss chance: „+toHit items subtract from your miss%. So, ignoring all defensive actions (Block/Parry/Dodge/etc..) if I have 20% crit chance, 20% miss chance, and 60% hit chance and I equip an item that gives me +5% toHit and +5% crit, my stats become 25% crit, 15% miss chance, 60% hit chance. New hit chance = (Original hit%) + (toHit modifiers) - (crit modifiers) 60% + 5% - 5% = 60% New crit chance = (Original crit%) + (crit modifiers) 20% + 5% = 25% New miss chance = (Original miss%) - (toHit modifiers) 20% - 5% = 15%” Basically, there are two viable hunter builds for raiding: MM/SV 2/31/18 (or rather 5/31/15 – explained below) and BM/MM 20/31/0. BM/MM is theoretically capable of giving higher damage output as long as your pet is able to dps, but since that is not always an option – we have our pets dismissed / on passive during raid encounters, either to prevent them from interfering with tactics, or simply to prevent them from dying, I prefer the former choice of talents. MM/SV 2/31/18: 2/5 Deflection (Increases your Parry chance by 2%.): Those are just points needed to be spent to unlock the 3rd tier, if you wish, feel free to go for 2/5 Imp Wing Clip instead. 2/2 Savage Strikes (Increases the critical strike chance of Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite by 20%.): Useful while we're “melee hunters” e.g. on Lava Surgers in MC / High Priest Thekal in ZG. 4/5 Survivalist (Increases total health by 8%.): As long as there is no viable dps option I highly recommend to get increased health over Clever Traps / Imp Wing Clip, because it gives you better survivability, which implies, surprise… higher overall dmg output and lesser stress on healers. If you feel like you are able manage just fine, feel free to go for the alternative talents mentioned above. 1/1 Deterrence (When activated, increases your Dodge and Parry chance by 25% for 10 sec.): Just great utility spell, comes handy in some situations (e.g. at High Priestess Jeklik while you “tank” her Screech ability and you're on low hp, you have better chance to survive one of the charges when Deterrence activated). With how the talents align, there really isn't a reason to not have it, unless you're autistic and obsessed about filling talents to 5/5 and just have to have max out Survivalist. 3/3 Surefooted (Increases hit chance by 3% and increases the chance movement impairing effects will be resisted by an additional 15%.): Absolute necessity until you get enough hit for the cap (9%) from your gear. You lose a lot of dps on misses, moreover you don't wanna miss utility spells e.g. Tranquilizing Shot. There's a separate chapter on hit cap calculations (see Hit & Crit Cap section), but to put it short: just get hit capped or be banished to the depths of dps-meter lists. And be glad you don't have to bother with glancing blows like the melees have to :D. Zul'Gurub Important note: Any hunter, participating in ZG raids: I don't want you to use the Entrapment talent (Gives your Immolation Trap, Frost Trap, and Explosive Trap a 25% chance to entrap the target, preventing them from moving for 5 sec.). The reason is following: we are supposed to use Frost Trap to slow down + kite around the Withered Mistresses, they must not be prevented from moving, otherwise they (which would in fact mean you) wipe our melee folks and then you answer to me. Non-hunters reading this (haha, you have no life if you read this) pls just don't use immobilizing stuff on those thrash mobs (mages don't use Frost Nova on those packs etc.) I think most of the talent choices are obvious and don't really need any explaining, if you have any questions feel free to ask in-game / on disc anytime. MM/SV 5/31/15: Once you have enough hit chance from your gear to reach the hit cap (9%), you should drop Surefooted talents and put those into Imp Aspect of the Hawk for better dps output. So, the simplest method commonly used is that you basically just move those 3 talent points between Surefooted / Imp Aspect of the Hawk to accommodate your hit chance needs. BM/MM 20/31/0: If you can control your pet well and want to keep him up most of the raid time, you might wanna go for this hybrid BM/MM build. Then I'd recommend taming ZG Serpent over Bloodaxe Worg because in that case you'll want your pet to actually do dmg and Serpent does definitely more dps than Bloodaxe. I prefer to keep my pet on passive during raid times because otherwise he dies so very often from aoe and ends up not doing any dps anyway. With the 5/31/15 build and Bloodaxe you can just keep his Furious Howl ability up all the time and keep him on passive, at least that's what I do. Note: If you go for this build be sure to max up fire resistance on your pet to keep him alive. (Btw, since our main content is MC/BWL atm., I recommend to get FR for Bloodaxe as well, but we're gonna discuss this in the pet thread later.) There are some other viable builds that are supposed to have good dps output as well, e.g. MM/SV 0/21/30 (Lightning Relfexes, Killer Instict talents), which however require certain requisite to become advantageous, like stacking certain amount of agility. If anyone is interested, we can discuss / make some research about this later. It should be considered at least one of the guild hunters taking 5/5 Improved Hunter's Mark instead of 3/3 Hawk Eye for increased dps of all the hunters, especially in the 40-man raids. Obviously, effect of presence of this talent in the raid group scales with the number of ranged physical dps = hunters, so it can be negligible if there are only a few hunters, but strengthens the more the more hunters there are. Also it should be noted that Hunter's Mark has by default the lowest accepted raid debuff priority (16th debuff – you can't add more debuffs on any target, this should be clear), and as such gets substituted with other more usable debuffs on some encounters, if that's the case, don't use it. Spell Books: In Vanilla, not all the spells can be learned from trainer, but some skills (or maximum rank of some skills) have to be learned from spell books. This includes Tranquilizing Shot and with the 1.9 patch coming out also Aspect of the Hawk, Multi-Shot and Serpent Sting: Tranquilizing Shot – can be learned from Tome of Tranquilizing Shot (drops from Lucifron in MC) Aspect of the Hawk (rank 7) – can be learned from Guide: Aspect of the Hawk VII (drops from bosses in AQ 20) Multi-Shot (rank 5) – can be learned from Guide: Multi-Shot V (drops from bosses in AQ 20) Serpent Sting (rank 9) – can be learned from Guide: Serpent Sting IX (drops from bosses in AQ 20) No! – Serpent Sting You won't use Serpent Sting. Ever. Well, almost. Unfortunately Serpent Sting doesn't make it to the list of 16 default raid debuffs, which means you won't get to use it in your normal rotation. At least you'll enjoy it all the more when you can use it at Ony's flying phase and a couple of more encounters, but by default, don't use it. No! – Arcane Shot In terms of dpsing, just don't use it, except in one of those rare encounters when you need specifically magic damage – it deals arcane damage and so bypasses armor, but can be resisted. It shares cooldown with Aimed Shot and doesn't scale with attack power, which makes it mostly unusable. You can still use it for kiting or pulling (especially rank 1 for its low mana cost – 25 mana or 22 mana with 5/5 Efficiency), so don't go and remove it from your keybinds right after reading this. Yes! – Auto Shot, Aimed Shot (and Multi-Shot) As you might have already noticed, Auto Shot cooldown passes while you‘re casting Aimed Shot (which is the ability contributing most to the damage output), which means, that you want to cast Aimed Shots between white attacks so you don't clip your Auto Shots. I'm going to make a little detour here to explain ranged weapon attack speed. It should be apparent that you want your ranged weapon to be as slow as possible. The idea behind this is following: consider the 3 second cast time of the Aimed Shot, obviously, the faster the ranged weapon you use, the more Auto Shots are being clipped (the majority of ranged weapons will clip one Auto Shot, some extremely fast bows can even clip two). So, using simple mathematics, the ideal attack speed of a ranged weapon would be 3.45 (if you consider 15 % increased ranged attack speed bonus from the Ancient Sinew Wrapped Lamina epic quiver) to hypothetically not clip your Auto Shots while casting Aimed Shots at all, but you'd need perfect timing to make use of it. To maximize your dps you should watch your Auto Shots and start casting Aimed Shot right after your Auto Shot launches so that you synchronize Auto Shot – Aimed Shot rotation and avoid any delays, that would cause longer breaks of Auto Shooting than needed. The Aimed Shot is helping you in syncing the Auto Shots, but it's your job to time the Aimed Shot itself. It might take you some time to perfect the timing, but at the end you'll be able to intuitively determine when to start casting Aimed Shot. The best way to learn the timing for casting Aimed Shot is to listen to the sound of the Auto Shot arrow being fired and start casting Aimed Shot right at that time. The Auto Shot animation takes some time to perform so just watching your character might result in incorrect Aimed Shot cast timing. Another dpsing ability you want to use is Multi-Shot (ofc always watch for polymorph, sleep,...). So, if you put it all together, the ideal cycle (with 3.45 attack speed ranged weapon and 15 % increased attack speed from quiver) would take 9 seconds and it would look like this: 0 s: Auto Shot + Aimed Shot cast start 1 s: (Aimed Shot cast) 2 s: (Aimed Shot cast) 3 s: Aimed Shot + Auto Shot + Multi-Shot 4 s: – 5 s: – 6 s: Auto Shot 7 s: – 8 s: – 9 s / 0 s: Auto Shot + Aimed Shot cast start Cooldown of Aimed Shot takes 6 seconds so it fits the cycle just right. A little problem is with Multi-Shot which cooldown takes 10 seconds. That means that in the second cycle you'll cast Multi-Shot at 4 s instead of 3 s and so on. After few cycles you'll get to the point where Aimed Shot and Multi-Shot cooldowns ends simultaneously. At this point you should always prefer Aimed Shot over Multi-Shot. Hunter’s Mark Hunter’s Mark is by default considered the lowest (16th) accepted debuff priority, mainly in 40-man raids. It should be kept in mind that the effect of this ability strengthens the more the more hunters are present in the raid group. For that reason, one of the raid hunters should have 5/5 Improved Hunter’s Mark to maximize all raid hunter’s dps – in that case leave applying Hunter’s Mark on targets to this hunter. Rapid Fire / Berserking (trolls) cooldown management Since attack speed buffs (Rapid Fire, Berserking, Improved Aspect of the Hawk) affect Aimed Shot cast time, there is no reason to not cast Aimed Shots when attack speed buff is up. You want to use Rapid Fire / Berserking together with your pop trinket (if you have any), usually at the beginning of the fight (always wait for 5 Sunder Armors at bosses), unless you need to save your cooldowns for a specific boss phase / mechanic. Using Rapid Fire / Berserking early gives you the possibility to use them multiple times during an encounter depending on the fight duration. Utility spells (e.g. Tranquilizing Shot, Viper Sting) You won’t definitely use these abilities on regular basis, but in some encounters, your team will rely on them. In terms of Tranquilizing Shot, you’ll be asked to use it to remove enrage, for instance, from Magmadar or Chromaggus. Because missing Tranq Shot in situations like this can lead to wipe, I recommend to use Tranq Shot announcer addon to keep a better watch over your misses. Viper Sting comes handy, for example, in AQ where it helps warlocks control Moam’s mana pool. Traps An inseparable part of hunters are their Traps. You won’t definitely use them on regular basis, but at those times when aoe slowdown / kiting is needed (e.g. at Withered Mistresses packs in ZG) don’t be afraid to use your Frost Trap. Also another nice CC ability, Freezing Trap, comes handy for example in situations when there isn’t enough mages for sheeps – keep in mind that a good hunter always watches over his timers, for both, primed and triggered traps, to make the best possible timing for re-traping target via FD (also note that there are useful macros for FD + trap trick which will make it all even easier – see Macros & Addons section). For Bloodaxe Worg users: Furious Howl (FH) buff management Just to be clear, FH gives an extra (flat) 45 to 57 damage to next physical attack of your party members – that means that it doesn't matter if you buff you Aimed Shots or Auto Shots. If you're using a Bloodaxe Worg be sure to keep FH buff up all the time. There is one annoyance with FH you should be aware of: if you receive the buff while an arrow is already in the flight, the buff won't affect the shot at all and will disappear from the hunter without any effect (the shot counts as your next attack but does not get buffed by FH, i.e. a shot must be buffed before it's cast / launched). So, in the mentioned case you'd just waste your pet's FH cooldown. Considering this, you shouldn't use FH during shot casting but you should instead wait for for the moment when Aimed Shot and Multi-Shot are both on cooldown and just buff your Auto Shots (but don't forget to wait until the previous shot hits the target). There is a functional macro for that but I'll get to that in more detail in the Macros & Addons chapter. !Don't forget to watch your KTM and use FD anytime you‘re high on threat! Don't use FD/drink up, when you go OOM during encounters. Better just keep up doing white damage or use Mana Potions / Demonic(Dark) Runes + bandages / whatever instead! Sitting and drinking will drop your dps the most. Here's a list of pre-raid hunter BiS items. I've highlighted one of the possible and quite easily obtainable items of choice that fit with 2/31/18 build. You should always keep in mind that it's important to adjust the gear composition to your needs, generally speaking, with pre-raid BiS you should always focus on reaching the hit cap. Helm: Backwood Helm (reward from The Treasure of the Shen'dralar quest) Crown of Tyranny (Stratholme Live – Balnazzar) Mask of the Unforgiven (Stratholme Live – The Unforgiven) Eye of Rend (UBRS – Warchief Rend Blackhand) Neck: Mark of Fordring (reward from In Dreams quest) Will of the Martyr (reward from Aurius' Recogning quest) Imperial Jewel (BRD – Emperor Dagran Thaurissan) Emberfury Talisman (UBRS – Pyroguard Emberseer) Shoulders: Truestrike Shoulders (UBRS – Pyroguard Emberseer) Black Dragonscale Shoulders (Leaterworking crafted) Back: Cape of the Black Baron (Stratholme UD – Baron Rivendare) Stoneskin Gargoyle Cape (Stratholme UD – Stonespine) Shadow Prowler's Cloak (UBRS - General Drakkisath) Chest: Savage Gladiator Chain (BRD – Ring of Law) Ogre Forged Hauberk (Dire Maul North – Tribute run) Nightbrace Tunic (UBRS – Solakar Flamewreath) Bloodsoul Breastplate (Blacksmithing crafted) Bracers: Slashclaw Bracers (LBRS – Halycon) Bracers of the Eclipse (Dire Maul West – Prince Tortheldrin) Blackmist Armguards (UBRS – The Beast) Deepfury Bracers (BoE World Drop) Marksman Bands (BoE Dire Maul East Drop) Primal Batskin Bracers (Leatherworking crafted) Bracers of the Stone Princess (Princess Theradras – Maraudon) Gloves: Devilsaur Gauntlets (Leatherworking Crafted) Skul's Fingerbone Claws (Stratholme – Skul) Voone's Vice Grips (reward from Warlord's Command quest) Black Grasp of the Destroyer (Blacksmithing crafted) Bloodsoul Gauntlets (Blacksmithing crafted) Belt: Marksman's Girdle (LBRS – Urok Doomhowl – summoned at Urok's Tribute Pile by combining Omokk's Head with Roughshod Pike) Sash of the Grand Hunt (BRD – Emperor Dagran Thaurissan) Girdle of Beastial Fury (BRD – Ring of Law - Eviscerator) Frostbite Girdle (Scholomance – Ras Frostwhisper) Cloudrunner Girdle (LBRS – Quartermaster Zigris) Warpwood Binding (Dire Maul West – Tendris Warpwood) Legs: Leggings of Destruction (Dire Maul North – King Gordok) Devilsaur Leggings (Leatherworking crafted) Blademaster Leggings (UBRS – The Beast) Boots: Windreaver Greaves (Scholomance – Kirtonos the Herald) Pads of the Dread Wolf (LBRS – Halycon) Swiftwalker Boots (BRD – Princess Miora Bronzebeard) Black Dragonscale Boots (Leatherworking crafted) Ring: Blackstone Ring (Maraudon – Princess Theradras) Tarnished Elven Ring (Dire Maul North – Tribute Run), (note it's not unique) Painweaver Band (UBRS – General Drakkisath) Trinket: Blackhand's Breadth (reward from For The Horde! quest) Royal Seal of Eldre'Thalas (reward from The Greatest Race of Hunters quest – Dire Maul book) Devilsaur Eye (reward from The Green Drake quest) Ranged Weapon: Bow: Ancient Bone Bow (Scholomance – Lord Alexei Barov, Lady Illucia Barov, Docotr Theolen Krastinov, Lerekeeper Pokelt, The Ravenian, Instructor Malicia) Crossbow: Stoneshatter (Dire Maul West – Prince Tortheldrin) Carapace Spine Crossbow (Stratholme UD – Nerub'enkan) Bloodseeker (reward from Hero of the Frostwolf AV quest) Blackcrow (LBRS – Shadow Hunter Vosh'gajin) Heartseeking Crossbow (BoE World Drop) Gun: Dwarven Hand Cannon (BoE World Drop) Core Marksman Rifle (Engineering crafted) Flawless Arcanite Rifle (Engineering crafted) Crystal Slugthrower (BoE drop from Chest of Spoils, reward from Abyssal Scepters quest) 2H Weapon: Barbarous Blade (Dire Maul North – King Gordok) Warmonger (BoE World Drop) Arcanite Reaper (Blacksmithing crafted) Dreadforge Retaliator (BRD – Emperor Dagran Thaurissan) Frenzied Striker (BoE World Drop) 1H Weapon: Assassination Blade (BoE World Drop) Tooth of Eranikus (Sunken Temple – Shade of Eranikus) Krol Blade (BoE World Drop) Heartseeker (Blacksmithing crafted) Scarlet Kris (BoE World Drop) Mirah's Song (reward from Kirtonos the Herald quest) Helm: Falcon's Call (+24 ranged attack power, +10 stamina, +1% hit chance) – ZG enchant Shoulders: Zandalar Signet of Might (+30 attack power) – ZG enchant Back: +3 agility Chest: +4 to stats Bracers: +9 stamina / +4 mana every 5 seconds Gloves: +15 agility (for pre-raid BiS items it's just fine to stick with +7 agility) Legs: Falcon's Call (+24 ranged attack power, +10 stamina, +1% hit chance) – ZG enchant Boots: +7 agility / minor run speed Ranged Weapon: Biznicks 247x128 Accurascope (+3% hit scope); it's just fine with Sniper Scope (+7 dmg scope) till you get your Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers (don't forget to adjust your gear / talents once you get your +3% hit scope so you're not overhitcapped) 2H Weapon: +25 agility 1H Weapon: +15 agility (let me know if you can't find any +3% hit scope engineer / +25 agility enchanter, I can give you a reference) How to get ZG enchants: Helm / Legs enchant: Falcon's Call required reputation with Zandalar Tribe: friendly required items: 1x Arcanum of Rapidity, 1x Punctured Voodoo Doll, 1x Primal Hakkari Stanchion required items for Arcanum of Rapidity: 1x Libram of Rapidity (random drop in Dire Maul, or just buy from AH) 1x Pristine Black Diamond (random drop from lvl 55+ instances such as Stratholme, Scholomance, UBRS, LBRS, Dire Maul, or just buy from AH) 2x Large Brilliant Shard 2x Blood of Heroes (can be found at: 25.9, 74.6; 27.3, 64.2; 59.3, 62.3; 64.7, 65.3; 49.1, 35.3; 33.6, 32.6 in EPL and at 49.7, 33.3; 52.4, 55.0 in WPL; respawn time takes 2 hours) Once you have all the items for your Arcanum of Rapidity, go to Dire Maul Library (you need Crescent Key to get there or someone who can open it for you) and turn in the Libram of Rapidity quest to Lorekeeper Lydros. In order to be able to obtain this quest, you must complete the Elven Legends quest first (starts at Sage Korolusk in Camp Mojache). Punctured Voodoo Doll can be obtained from Jinxed Hoodoo Piles in ZG (or you can just buy one from AH – note it's not BoP) and Primal Hakkari Stanchion drops from several of the bosses in ZG. Once you've got your Arcanum of Rapidity, Punctured Voodoo Doll and Primal Hakkari Stanchion, you just simply turn in those for your Falcon's Call enchant at Zanza the Restless. This NPC is located in ZG, at the top of one of the pyramids, directly behind The Venom Pit. Shoulders enchant: Zandalar Signet of Might required reputation with Zandalar Tribe: exalted required items: 15x Zandalar Honor Token there are two ways of obtaining Zandalar Honor Tokens: breaking a Bijou of any color at the Altar of Zanza at Yojamba Isle in STV handing in a specific combination of three Coins to Vinchaxa at Yajamba Isle in STV (Zulian, Razzashi and Hakkari Coin / Sandfury, Skullsplitter and Bloodscalp Coin / Gurubashi, Vilebranch and Witherbark Coin) Once you've collected all your Zandalar Honor Tokens speak to Rin'wosho the Trader at Yojamba Isle in STV and turn them in for your Zandalar Signet of Might enchant. Bringing consumables and other buffs for every raid night should be an integral part of every raider’s practice. Not only does it greatly increase your dps, but particular encounters require specific consumables to be popped in order to increase your survivability during the fight. This predominantly includes magic resistance potions so I recommend to pay close attention to „Raid Specific Consumables“ section. The alchemists have alot of juicy (I’m aware of the fact that often unfortunately expensive) stuff to offer, so until your inventory doesn’t overflow with consumes, you’re not prepared enough. The following list contains pretty much all the consumables & buffs you wanna bring to raids with your hunter. If we take in account the large number of possible options, the fact that some buffs override one another and, of course the way our stats scale, we should prioritize the buff effects in the following order: agility (or attack power) > stamina > intellect > spirit > strength. Note that the said amount is only rough estimate and is intended to last for one raid night. Also note that this list corresponds to the current game version (on Anathema server), i.e. 1.9. and it will be updated as new patches comes out. You can find the link for even more detailed list here – some alternative options are mentioned there together with the list of materials needed for individual buffs and few other notes. Consumable Buffs: Elixir of the Mongoose x10 Spirit of Zanza x1 Juju Might x15 Gordok Green Grog x15 Ground Scorpok Assay (not required) Crystal Force (not required) Food Buffs: Grilled Squid x20 Weapon Enhancement: Lesser / Brilliant Mana Oil x2 (i.e. 10 charges) Battle Consumables: Major Mana Potion x10 Major Healing Potion x10 Major Rejuvenation Potion (not required) Heavy Runecloth Bandage x20 Demonic (soulbound) / Dark Rune x10 Raid Specific Consumables: Zul'Gurub: Greater Fire Protection Potion x2 Onyxia's Lair: Greater Fire Protection Potion x2 Molten Core: Restorative Potion x2 Greater Arcane Protection Potion x2 Greater Fire Protection Potion x4 Blackwing Lair: Swiftness of Zanza x1 Greater Fire Protection Potion x20 Juju Ember (not required) Ammunition: Thorium Headed Arrow / Thorium Shells Other: Pet Food (e.g. Roasted Quail) x20 Even though it doesn‘t have to look like this at first glance, selecting the proper Primary professions is associated with your class and it will affect your gameplay alot. Facing the fact that most of the raiding hunters usually find a suitable safe place and FD immediately after they hear their raid leader call: „Wipe it.“ on Disc, this sense for finding a safe spot became more of an automatic reflex. The capability to resurrect other raid members (or rather res the resser), in such situation, gives your raiding team a great advantage. It shows that a clear choice for your Primary profession should be Engineering and through it the potential to use Goblin Jumper Cables or Goblin Jumper Cables XL trinkets. By using one of those you can not only bring to life one of your healers after a wipe, but you can also „combat-res“ one of your fallen comrades. This is done by double-FD – first to switch the trinket slot to the Cables and the second one to be able to use them (you can notice the tag „Cannot be used when in combat“). Even though there is a separate Macro & Addons topic, I’m gonna drop simple macro for „Cables Combat Res“ here: /script a=IsControlKeyDown() if(a)then CastSpellByName('Feign Death') PickupContainerItem (0,1) PickupInventoryItem (13) end /script b=IsAltKeyDown() if(b)then CastSpellByName('Feign Death') UseInventoryItem (13) end /script UIErrorsFrame:Clear() Ctrl-clicking the macro will cast FD and equip the Cables from your inventory to your trinket slot 1; double Alt-clicking the macro will cast FD and use the Cables; ctrl-clicking the macro again will cast FD and re-equip your default trinket. Note that in order to make this macro work, your Cables have to be in the first slot of your backpack. Another advantage of being an Engineer are undoubtedly Flame, Ice and Shadow Reflectors and last but not least, the ability to craft your own Bullets / Arrows. Regarding the Engineering specialization, I’d choose based on which location you prefer for the extra teleport – pick Goblin for transporter to Everlook or Gnomish for transporter to Gadgetzan. When choosing, I’d take into account several facts. Your Hearthstone most probably leads to Kargath, so Everlook transporter remotely replaces your „default Hearthstone“ to Orgrimmar. In my opinion, generally more usable option is the other one, because transporting to Gadgetzan gives you the opportunity to shorten your travelling time to Silithus, where you‘re gonna spend most of your time these days. Choosing the second Primary profession leaves basically two options – Herbalism or Leatherworking. If you’ve already gone through consumables section, you’ve noticed that participating in raids is quite expensive business. Prefering Herbalism as your second Primary profession will help you alot in this. Hunter with Herbalism is just the best combination for Maraudon gold farming runs – FD gives you great advantage of bypassing most of the NPC’s which will make the runs super fast (especially with Aspect of the Cheetah on). And with Herbalism, the possibility to pick Ghost Mushrooms on your way makes your runs even more profitable. The other possible option here is Leatherworking for a simple reason – to be able to craft your own pre-raid BiS, i.e. Devilsaur set or Black Dragonscale set. Therefore when choosing your Leatherworking specialization, go for Tribal or Dragonscale. Also note that with Tribal you are able to craft Hide of the Wild, which is a quite high in demand cloak for healers, so you can also earn some extra gold in this way. In terms of your Secondary professions, since you can grab all of them and there are no class-exceptions or special class-combination profits, I’m gonna make just a brief note here. As a raider, you’re supposed to skill up especially First Aid (to be able to use Heavy Runecloth Bandages). Skilling up the other two, i.e. Fishing and Cooking is up to you, but being able to fish and cook your own stuff saves you alot of gold. How to Hunter by Buexx How2Huntard by Sorono The Arrow And You by Cruzix Vanilla PVE Hunter Guide by guy_from_sweden Hunter Agility Equivalence Points Formula? threat on Elysium Project forum Vanilla WoW Wiki – Hit threat about hit cap calculations on Vanilla WoW Wiki Stat and damage questions by Thundgot, Blizzard English Community Manager Nostalrius Pre-BiS Lists by Kurthos ZG Enchants and You by HoloDarksbane A big thanks to my boyfriend for all his valuable advice and especially for grammar correction :-*

It's a bad habit of mine that I keep wanting to challenge the Conventional Wisdom. Sometimes you find stuff, and sometimes there's really nothing there ... but it's better to quest and fail than to have never quested at all, right? That's the curious thing about being an Affliction Drain Tank. You don't CARE if you steal aggro from your Pet. In fact, if you DON'T steal aggro from your Pet, you aren't putting out enough DPS and are (in effect) gimping yourself. The whole point of being a Drain Tank is that you're stealing enough Health that even if mobs do try to pound on you, they can't hurt you fast enough to survive what you're doing to them. The playstyle has a lot in common with the Beast o' Melee Hunter Survival build I posted over in the Hunter Forums, except that instead of trying to Debuff Attack Power (via Screech from your Pet) you're instead just draining Health directly from your Target(s) to "negate" incoming damage. That's because whether or not the Pet has aggro is a distraction, since in either case you want your character to be tanking, not your Pet. For a Warlock, it's cheaper (quicker, easier, more seductive...) to Drain Tank directly than it is to be using Health Funnel to try and keep a Pet healed up. PvP, by its very nature, strongly favors the insta-gib surprise attack where you defeat someone in as little time as possible so as to close off opportunities to counter quickly, thereby securing the victory. Very rarely does PvP favor "the long grind" to victory in which you can win on the margins after applying sufficient pressure. This is why PvP builds tend to be built for "spike" damage rather than for applying a steady load of "pressure" damage over a long enough period of time. It is, in its own way, about as formidable a change as Shadow Form is for a Shadow Priest. It does require a different mentality to make use of it most efficiently though, but when you're doing it right, there definitely is a sense of "I'm Invincible!" To do it properly though, you do need spend 21 talent points in Affliction to get Siphon Life and 5/5 Fel Concentration. I would imagine so ... ^_~ Point of distinction. Are you saying it's "totally not viable" on 40 man raids? Because I'd think that build ought to be plenty viable on 5 man dungeons and other single party content. Also, I'd expect that if 25% of your damage is coming from your Pet (as you cited) but is not being attributed to you on the damage meters that I can see how that might become an issue for certain raiding groups, since it wouldn't look like you're "pulling your weight" in the raid (even if you actually are). That then becomes a "hazard" of empowering your Pet at the expense of yourself, even if the combination is stronger than it looks (on the meters). The thing is, you can get somewhat the same performance out of a Dark Pact build too, and for a lot less talent points invested, than doing a Voidwalker sacrifice. The difference is that you're tapping your "mana battery" (usually Imp) rather than relying on a heightened Health Regeneration to make your pool(s) bottomless. Different means, similar performance (overall). The key is to maximize recovery by adding more recovery methods. Not so much dungeon tanking as solo tanking ... although being able to "pocket tank" in a pinch makes for a really nice fallback option when things go sideways. And yes, being able to figure out how much you can get out of a vanilla Pet that isn't being influenced by the scaling of your character (and thus your gear) is the fulcrum point of being able to decide which option is better. That's all good to know and important factors to consider. The more I look at it, the more I come to the conclusion that deep Demonology is more of a PvP build than a PvE one, where the advantages are intended to be defensive (longer survival time) than they are offensive (higher DPS and burst potential). Ultimately though, I keep coming back to the notion that the Demonology tree is just really ... inefficient. You wind up spending a lot of talent points in the first 3 tiers that you can't use full time, if going for Demonic Sacrifice, or which will only be situationally useful, if going for Soul Link. That's a lot of investment that can't be working for you full time ... unlike Affliction and Destruction.

Абилка Screech добывается с Greater Fleshripper и кстати первый уровень абилки требует всего лишь 8 уровень пета, как вариант совы с тельдрассила тоже могут ее поюзать.

I'm playing my Hunter with an Owl right now on Darrowshire, and I have to say that for myself I prefer the sound of Screech to any variety of Bite or Furious Howl or even Growl. It sounds like something akin to an eagle cry style of sound FX on an Owl. Anyway, enough digression into stuff that ought to be said in the Hunter Forum. Back to the Warrior side of the debuffing equation.

Agreed that most likely people will (continue to) skip Screech entirely and continue to bring Wolves for Furious Howl instead, assuming any Hunters are allowed to participate in the first place. But you have to explore the theory before someone will consent to try it out in practice, just to see if there are any advantages to be found, because theory is one thing, but actually playing the game is something else. I would presume that the vast overwhelming majority of raiding parties would have no interest in knowing anything about this possible combo of debuffing ... but a few might ... and the forums here are where the word of things like this gets passed around, and from that inspiration forms to try new things. So even if it doesn't matter to YOU ... it might wind up mattering to someone else ... who presumably would have to be "more adventurous" to even entertain the notion of playing the game in some way other than riding along in the ruts of everyone who has played before. Insert Hamlet quote to Horatio here.

Most likely you will just skip using Screech, but if you realy wanna go 8 points into bm to try it, maybe go for a spec like this ?

In which case either Demoralizaing Shout OR Demoralizing Roar should stack just fine with Screech from a Hunter Pet. Demoralizing Shout rank 4 with 5/5 Improved talent is 196 Attack Power debuff ... add 1x Screech rank 4 to reach 296 Attack Power debuff (total). Demoralizing Roar rank 5 with 5/5 Improved talent is 182 Attack Power debuff ... add 1x Screech rank 4 to reach 282 Attack Power debuff (total). Since the "objective" for a Level 63 Boss is 290 Attack Power getting debuffed, either Shout+Screech OR Roar+Screech ought to suffice ... provided that the Hunter Pet can stay in melee and survive without grabbing aggro (Cower on auto works for that) so as to support the Main Tank. Sounds like a legitimate strategy ... assuming there are 2 debuff slots available to execute it (1 for Demoralizing Shout/Roar and 1 for Screech). So ... 8 talent points into Beast Mastery for Pet Stamina and Armor becomes useful on a Screech Pet?

If you're able to derive a formula that can explain how much Attack Power computes into Damage per Level, that would be most helpful. Although we wind up at Level 60 eventually, there's still a fair amount of content to get through before reaching that point. If the vanilla database is correct for the core we're using, Demoralizing Shout rank 4 is a 140 Attack Power debuff for 30 seconds from a Warrior. 5/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout will improve that by +40% to 196 Attack Power debuff for 30 seconds. Demoralizing Roar rank 5 is a 130 Attack Power debuff for 30 seconds from a Dire Bear Feral Druid. 5/5 Feral Aggression will improve that by +40% to 182 Attack Power debuff for 30 seconds. Screech rank 4 is a 100 Attack Power debuff for 4 seconds from a Hunter Pet which can be reapplied every 4 seconds. There are no Hunter talents that will improve the debuff strength of this Pet Skill. After that, it's just a matter of figuring out what you want to stack to get to 290 Attack Power debuff strength ... is it not?

This got bumped over on the Warrior Forums, and I'm kicking myself for not realizing sooner the documented implications for my build strategy here. Me and my friend are not totally convinced by that. Specifically, do you confirm that the AP does not scale the same way between a Player, a NPC and a Boss. If somebody could confirm this please, it could be very helpful for my guild :) Thanks. Notice the and Screech part of the point about it being profitable to debuff Attack Power in PvE. Well, somebody showed up with confirmation just now ... This makes me wonder if we've (collectively, as a community) been overlooking the potential of Attack Power debuffing for extending the Time To Die of anyone in a Tanking and DPS role who could be taking damage, both in raiding settings but also when soloing. Which then brings up the question ... can Screech from different Hunter Pets be stacked? And if it can, are you only able to stack different ranks of Screech, or does each Pet get their "own" Screech debuff regardless of rank? Would the damage avoided due to Screech be superior (in any way) to the damage buffing of Furious Howl in parties and raids, since the former is a near "perma" debuff while the latter is a "1 attack every 10 seconds" buff? Have we been missing a forest for the trees when it comes to the debuff versus buff side of possibilities? Might there be "room" in raid formats for Warriors, Bear Druids and Screech Pets to synergize together for Attack Power debuffing in a way that reduces demand for healing and thus "shifts" the dynamics of the optimal mix of who to bring? Well, it depends on the debuff cap limit (which tends to be "filled" extremely fast), so maybe not ... but it might be fun to try and find out if there's any potential there since it would appear to be a poorly explored realm of opportunity. Note that in the context of this question concerning Screech, the talent spec of the Hunter matters very little, while the selection of Pet to deliver the Screech debuff becomes much more important. In that respect, the Beast o' Melee spec I've posted here is essentially irrelevant to the Screech question now being posed about the potential of Attack Power debuffing, since the use of Screech is in many ways "spec agnostic" since the debuff isn't enhanced by either Racial Traits or by Beast Mastery traits (aside from the Stamina and Armor ones to make your Pet able to withstand more punishment). So ... anyone else think this sort of thing of using Screech might be worth a look-see?

This is not a bug. Specifically, it is not a bug to be attacked by a Hunter pet while (re)stealthed. ( this mechanic also works with Warlock pets ) Consider the following scenario (which is usually how it happens): - You (a Rogue) attack me (a Hunter). I instruct my pet to attack you. - I proceed to kick your ass (which is what would happen cuz BHOTS). In desperation, you Blind me and Sprint away. I am disoriented, but my pet is still targeting you. - Because you are Sprinting away, you put enough distance between yourself and my pet that you are able to drop combat and re-stealth (Note: this is "manually" re-stealth and NOT gaining Stealth by way of Vanish.) - However, because of "Pet AI", re-stealthing does not break targeting, so until/unless I instruct my pet to cease its pursuit of you, it will continue to track you (even though you are stealthed). - When my pet is in melee range of you, it will continue to auto-attack, causing you to lose Stealth and enter combat yourself. This specific scenario is NOT a bug and is totally "Blizz-like" and this mechanic is one of those lesser-known mechanics that separate the pros from the not-pros. There are also specific conditions where a Rogue can Vanish, but lose stealth because it was hit by a Hunter pet AOE ability immediately thereafter [Notably: Screech (Bats) and Thunderstomp (Gorillas)]

I see that someone's Sense Of Humor was made by Gnomish Engineers and has backfired (again?). https://forum.elysium-project.org/search/?&q=Screech As you can see, prior to the mention in this thread, there were only 10 posts made that (previously) mentioned Screech anywhere in these forums, and I provided 5 of them. Have other people mentioned Screech on occasion? Sure. They even did it before I could bring it up, so I definitely wasn't the first. In fact, you might have noticed that I didn't even claim to be the first to have ever thought of using Screech as a supporting skill for tanking. However, I do think I might have some claim on being the first person on these forums to actually RECOMMEND using Screech and provided a build strategy that could leverage it. Sure, there might be posts elsewhere on other forums (going all the way back to 2004) which go into detail about Screech and how it ought to be leveraged to best advantage, but no one has cross-posted that historical info HERE or gone to the trouble of suggesting "this is why you want Screech" as part of a complete build strategy. To your credit, Meldorain mentioned the possibility in a post (the only post they ever made) that is now over 2 months old which I would not presume a lot of people have read, let alone taken to heart (or remembered). So the way I see it, you've got two options. You can either keep sitting on your High Horse with your nose pointing skyward ... or you can consider the slim possibility that you overreacted to a bit of self-deprecating humor about not wanting everyone to jump on the bandwagon of using Screech Pets just because some n00b wrote a post that suggested it might be useful (maybe). After all, what did I say that offended you so much? Your turn.