1. Thanks for the response. I like fighting rogues a lot better on my Cata bm hunter, lol- that's a much stronger 1v1 spec. A few months ago I saw Dillypoo dueling on Blackrock on his livestream (had the vod saved but he deleted it) and it seemed like he lost a lot more than he won. Didn't exactly give me a lot of hope, though I'm sure he doesn't spend a whole lot of time on his WOTLK hunter.

    I enjoy 1v1 encounters in bgs a lot more- as an 80 mm hunter you can abuse your max range without the annoying "you're out of dueling range" warning. My main gripe in that regard is that it seems like so many people on this server like to fight in a big herd instead of getting in fun 1v1 fights. I'll usually leave a bg if everyone is fighting in a herd, which seems to be the case a good bit.

  2. Yes, the duel range is very small indeed, so hunters are kind of disadvantaged in duels however they still win at least 90% of class matchups!

  3. What do you do if a ret hoj wings freeactionpotion nitro boots ?

  4. Trinket, save disengage until nitros are over. Deterrence if its available when they get to you. You probably dead though unless you have other items/potions/nitros to counter :'(

  5. Yes, the duel range is very small indeed, so hunters are kind of disadvantaged in duels however they still win at least 90% of class matchups!
    I strongly disagree. Not because I don't believe you win 90% of the matchups, but because the reason you're winning a lot is because your duelling opponents don't know what to do. I've been friends with deathknights, warlocks and even mages that have straight up beaten me 50% of the duels, or even more. I have mad respect for them, because as everyone knows, hunters counter mages, and I was winning 100% of my duels (vs the easy matchups) until I met such players.

    Hunters have some favorable matchups as I just mentioned, and some less favorable matchups (every paladin and priest), but the fact you have 90% winrate isn't just due to the fact hunters have really good matchups, it's very likely because you are a better player than your opponent.

  6. I agree to an extent that the skill of players is accountable for winning or losing matchups. It is true that any class can do well against other classes no matter how one sided they may be. However, with equal gear and skill im pretty sure that many can agree that hunters do excel against other classes. I definitely agree with you that a large number of hunters do struggle with some classes that better hunters may not, which is obviously in regards to skill. Excluding healers who gear 1400 resilience and corroded key, the only classes that I see consistently troubling Hunters are the full pve sub rogues, extremely tanky ret paladins who use bubble, and unholy death knight, and even then they aren't hard too deal with if you play well (except rogues of course). I dont really have trouble with shadow priests unless I make a mistake and get VT'd into dp spams. Mages dont really bother me since they never expect Hunters to eat the first deep freeze/polymorph. I will even use a ferocity pet for heart of the phoenix if they try to kill my pet, forcing them to go all in with deeps, etc. As for warlocks, if you havn't had enough practise against them, its true they'll stomp you. But once you get more experience, you should gradually win more duels since you will have better decision making against them.


    Yes, there will be mages warlocks as well as any other class that will beat hunters, but that's the same with any class.

    Would you agree that Hunters have some of the best win rates when you compare duels against all classes? They do have the potential to beat every class.

    When you compare this to..let's say..resilence capped ret paladin with shield against a rogue who only freedoms kidney shots (rogue really can't do anything no matter how pve or hard they try) I would say that Hunter matchups are very favourable all around. Hunters really can beat anything, but it is true to an extent that the Hunter really needs to know how to counter every class, gear wise, spec wise, and skill wise.

    Some other classes that ive considered as dueling heros are Frost mages, shadow priests and unholy death knights, but even they get some really hard matchups.
    Dks > spriest (most cases, not all)
    Mages cant do much against good death knights, priests and warlocks.
    And the list goes on. These are only generalisations so don't take it for certain that one class always wins; its just the consistency of win rates.
    Edited: January 21, 2016

  7. I'll ask a few "devil's advocate" questions/comments, recognizing that WOTLK mm isn't my area of expertise, so my opinion is worth way less than yours. With that said:

    1. I really don't like either the piercing shots or wild quiver talents for pvp. They either randomly make a target non-cc'able (piercing shots) or they depend on auto shots which inhibits movement. I also recall that wild quiver was bugged on retail and would break cc for a long time, not sure if that's the case here.

    It would be one thing if we didn't have other talents to choose from- MM in Cata is kind of in that situation as there aren't great alternative choices- but I think mm hunters do have other choices in WOTLK. Improved hunter's mark, improved arcane shot, and improved barrage all increase damage without the weaknesses mentioned above. I would choose from 2 of those 3 talent choices before I considered piercing shots or wild quiver.

    2. Is there anything to be said for getting a crab pet (+40% healing received) and taking the mending glyph (40% more mend pet healing) and using your pet more aggressively in bgs to try to tank damage? I know you said that keeping your pet back is smart against rets and others, but would it be possible to just let him whack away at your pet and see if you can pump more damage into the ret than he can get back from art of war proc heals? I haven't tried this, but it seems like an interesting way to use your pet which might work if the ret doesn't have a great weapon. Can a ret or a dk with aimed shot debuff on him really self-heal enough by attacking your pet to offset the damage a hunter can pump into him? Just thinking out loud here.

    3. Is intervene reliable in WOTLK? It's an absolute disaster in Cata on Warmane- I tried it on my shale spider, and he kept disappearing (either wandering off or just flat out disappearing) when I used it. They might as well have called it "vanish" instead of intervene, so I'm hesitant to use it in WOTLK unless it's confirmed to be reliable.

    4. You said that if the other mm hunter doesn't trinket scatter shot at the start, he is dead. Why? I can kind of see that in Cata, where you could use the scatter to get off a big guaranteed-crit aimed shot opener, but I'm not really seeing why a scatter opener puts you in so much better a position against the other hunter in WOTLK.
    Edited: January 21, 2016

  8. Hunters could very well have one of the best win rates with moderate to above average skill, but it's definitely not the only class. If anyone still remembers the old AT, I was friends with a deathknight that was a duelling god (he basically did nothing else other than duel, and was a super tryhard, he didn't duel for fun). He won every duelling contest he entered, his win/loss ratio with duels was around 1000-10 (/inspected him myself, it's not just a myth). I'm not even joking, he was ridiculous, I got like 2 wins over him but that was over like 20 duels. And no, he wasn't the #1 player in arena, even though he did well, but he was close to unbeatable in duels because of his very refined tactics. What I'm trying to say is that deathknights can have that winrate. Could a hunter have the same? Possibly, but I think it would be harder. Is it the fact that deathknights are a super OP duelling class? I don't think so, I just think he was the best at what he did, which was duelling.

    I think that if you try your hardest and take it serious, and practice of course, any class can beat any other class just by skill and good tactics (this includes specs, gear, nitro boots and what not).

    To end this, I'd like to say that I've been going in too deep on this subject, making a discussion about nothing really. You're probably right about the fact that your average Joe hunter will win more duels than he would lose, if he knew the basics of hunter and duelling. In my opinion though, as I said before, at the highest skilllevel (and with this I mean the ultimate duelling tryhards out there, not Swifty duelling), any class can beat any other class. This is a bit too specific though, and nobody will really care. I think the point I was trying to get across is that skill is far more important than class, gear, and basically anything in the game.

  9. On the subject of macros:

    1. A scatter shot macro I really like is:

    /targetenemyplayer [noharm]
    /cast Scatter Shot

    You can spam that anytime you don't have a current enemy target and it will acquire the player target for you (and not his pet). Good for the start of duels or if a rogue enters your flare to shadow dance-cheap shot you and every millisecond counts. But you can use the same macro for regular scatter shots since it doesn't change your target if you already have an enemy target.

    2. I think mouseover scare beast macros are great for fearing hunter pets without having to target them.

    3. A really great macro tool for using the same macro for pve and pvp is to use the [worn:shirt] or [noworn:shirt] conditional and make your pvp equipment set have a shirt but not the pve set (this works with any different equipment sets).

    So assuming you have a shirt in your pvp set but not the pve set you could make the following macro:

    /cast [worn:shirt] concussive shot
    /cast [noworn:shirt] misdirection

    That would use different abilities depending on your equipment set. This is confirmed to work on my wotlk hunter- it doesn't work on my Cata and MoP hunters because equipment sets are buggy and I can't seem to make it remember my shirt or lack thereof.

    You can also use different targetting macros based on the same concept, e.g.

    /targetenemyplayer [worn:shirt]
    /targetenemy [noworn:shirt]

    That obviously targets players in pvp but non-players when you're wearing your pve equipment set.

    4. I use this targetting macro for bgs:

    /cast [@mouseover,harm,exists] Hunter's Mark
    /tar [target=mouseover,harm,exists]
    /cast Hunter's Mark

    I use that to mouseover target an enemy in the distance and it acquires him as my target and marks him at the same time. Really helpful in targetting and marking fast so you won't have to use a gcd on hunter's mark once he's in your shot range.
    Edited: January 21, 2016

  10. I'm proud of you Danny :D
    Really nice guide with a lot of effort.

  11. I can't finish reading this yet, since i'm at work but this guy, he's the best hunter i've seen around, and pretty humble too. Damn sure this will be the best guide i'll read in a while. GJ Multi!

  12. @laethea

    -Piercing Shot does a DoT on your chimera/aimed crits (obviously). You'll be able to rack up a significant amount of damage. It is true that during this time you won't be able to cc. Perhaps you can make a second spec without piercing shots for duels where you want to reset often. However I would strongly recommend this talent.
    Think of it likes this: Your Chimera and Aimed crits deal an additional 30% damage (if they crit). That is pretty huge in my personal opinion. Say you were to crit a 10k Chimera. You'd get a total of 13000 damage from it. Even a 5k crit will become 6500; a free 1500 damage!. Also, consecutive crits actually STACK your piercing shots to even higher numbers. With agility gear, you'll crit often, getting so much free damage from just the bleed alone. It will help you deal with Rogues who vanish too! Even though the ticks may seem very small, just remember they all add up in the end to a very decent amount.


    As for Wild Quiver
    -You won't break your cc since scatter always cancels your auto shot. Even if it were to proc it's an extremely rare case. I assure you that you that it won't occur, and if it does, it's like a one in a million chance. 12% proc equates to about just over under 1/8 Auto Shots which really isn't all that bad. With Rapid fire up you can expect to see at least one proc. The shot scales off your crit modifiers, so if it does crit, it's like a mini chimera shot (80% vs 125%). Imagine the free damage you'd just by auto shotting! You didn't even have to do anything but shoot! The arrow from wild quiver travels EXTREMELY fast, so you wouldn't even get a chance to break your own scatter since it's 21 yds. The moment you scatter, your auto shots cancel. Even if wild quiver procs, your scatter shot won't reach in time since it is much faster.

    As for improved hunters mark and improved arcane shot, they arent all that impressive. Hunters mark would only be useful if there is a 100% uptime. Arcane shot is also not that impressive. If you were to trade wild quiver and piercing shots for them, there would be a clear dps loss. Sure, it is RNG, but its chances are quite impressive as well as their results.

    As for glyphing mend pet
    -Strongly would not recommend, since you would have to miss out on one of the other three great glyphs. It's just not worth it! Mend pet only ticks every 3 seconds, and even then, having the glyph won't mean such an increase. As for sending your pet in against a Ret/DK with Aimed Shot; Yes, the Rets can EASILY outheal it. They'll heal about 3k flash crits with Aimed up, which will proc on almost every second global that they have, which is just going to make it even harder to kill them. Remember you can only do significant damage when Sacred Shield is down. The absorb is very impressive. Against Death Knights, you are able to send your pet against them most of the time, however the Glyph is not enough to keep your pet alive. You'd need an actual healer to keep up with Death Knight DPS. When playing my ret paladin, I would hit the Hunter's pet as I run to them, giving me free heals as well as forcing them to use global cooldowns on Mend pet (Less shots taken). Very strongly recommend you don't let them heal off pet.

    I have played cata hunter (Had a 409 iLvl Hunter before wipe) and I agree I had the same problem. My pet would run away after intervene and I had no idea why. However it's not the case on Wotlk. It casts perfectly fine, requiring range as usual. The ONLY thing wrong with it is, is that your pet casts intervene on you, but doesn't actually go to you, but you get the buff. You can fix this with a /petstay macro after intervene though. Just the animation is a tiny bit broken but it doesn't bother me too much.

    If another Hunter does not trinket a Scatter Shot, you can get a FREE serpent sting and Chimera Shot which will automatically leave them with no chance to retaliate if you Deterrence as soon as they try to burst you (Hit and Run tactic). Imagine being 2-3 global cooldowns ahead of a Hunter, it's huge! Even being one global cooldown ahead gives you such a huge advantage over the other Hunter. So when a Hunter eats scatter shot, expect them to get shot 3 times for free (serpent>chimera>auto>maybe more shots). It's like asking your opponent to wait to retaliate until after you've gotten to use a free Serpent Sting into a guaranteed Chimera Shot. You MUST trinket the first cc against Marksmanship mirrors, which is usually the Scatter Shot because you rarely will get trapped. Like you said on cataclysm, you get a free shot, which would be equivalent to Serpent + Chimera. Same concept here. You will probably chunk them down at least 5k health, and much more if shots Crit. You might even force roar of sacrifice extremely early, meaning it will fall off much quicker.



    Yes, the macro for scatter is pretty useful. However the only time it's not ideal is when you might want to scatter a Succubus (as a last resort to get your partner out of cc). This is applicable to all pets too. Perhaps have a separate bind for this since you don't always want to ignore pets.

    Scare beast Macro is definitely useful. Just be careful not to get interrupted or silenced if anyone notices you casting it xD

    You are free to use the shirt macro as you wish, however it isn't too hard to have a few extra keybinds xD Personal preference!

    Hunter's Mark Macro also useful :)
    Edited: January 22, 2016

  13. Thanks. This could become an even more epic thread if you keep answering questions like this. Really appreciate it.

    WOTLK seems like a nice challenge for me, with its high skill cap, which I can work on while I'm not facerolling on my Cata BM hunter. This thread makes it way, way easier to do.

    I do semi-disagree or just wonder about some of your suggestions, though.

    1. You recommend starting with snake trap against warriors, anticipating a spell reflect of a freezing trap. First of all, that assumes that the warrior is pretty good, and you may know that from dueling him before. But as Danaik showed in his epic video, a lot of warriors either are total noobs who don't know they can spell reflect traps or it may not have occurred to them that they can bloodrage-charge-spell reflect to start a fight. Danaik repeatedly traps this warrior's charges/intercepts in this clip:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLjTRifi6dE&t=26m19s

    So I think dropping a freezing trap still makes a lot of sense in certain situations if a warrior hasn't proven to you that he's good. By using a snake trap you're kind of giving him credit that he's good before he's proven it to you.

    I also think you might be able to predict a warrior's spell reflect and react accordingly. In fact, the warrior might know that you like to drop snake traps and decide not to spell reflect at all if he sees you making the trap drop animation. So I think it makes sense to try to predict his actions.

    As best I can tell, a warrior needs 3 things in order to spell reflect at the start of a duel: 1. Battle or defensive stance- if he's in berserker stance no worries about spell reflect 2. He needs to have a one-hander and shield equipped and 3. He needs to have 15 rage, which he won't ordinarily have at the start of a duel unless he uses bloodrage, which has an easy-to-see animation. Until all 3 of those things are true, you don't need to worry about spell reflect. It seems to me that this opens up the possibility to drop a freezing trap and wait to see if he is doing the things listed above, in which case you know a spell reflect is coming and you can try to think of a plan B - maybe drop a snake trap behind the freezing trap then.

    I think using bloodrage in battle stance at the start is the dead giveaway that he intends to spell reflect- I'm not an expert on warriors, but I can't think of any reason why he would bloodrage before charging, since that gives rage anyway. Bloodrage is off the gcd, but it has its own keybind, so it should give you a little bit of time to know what's coming. Correct me if I'm wrong.

    2. You mentioned starting mounted against rogues, but is it not an option to start on a flare while spamming the

    /targetenemyplayer [noharm]
    /cast Scatter Shot

    macro I mentioned earlier? I say that because I watched a skill capped video from Neilyo about dueling hunters and both he and the hunter assumed that that's what the hunter should have been doing at the start of the duel. To counteract that, Neilyo sprinted onto the flare while spamming gouge (I assume he was assassination so didn't have shadow dance). The fact that he sprinted kind of implies that the hunter's strategy would get the rogue with scatter shot if he just ran normally onto the flare. This was in Cata so the hunter had camo, and maybe that changes things- let me know what you think about this strat.

    3. I'm still not completely convinced about trinketing blind. On retail, I made some level 85 bm hunter world pvp videos, and at the end of this video I talk about trinketing blind being situational, but that having your pet attack while blinded can stop re-stealths.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du-FI5gH--E

    By situational, I really meant that I'd only trinket blind if he had blinded my bestial wrath or if I was sure I could get a kill. In all the fights I had with rogues in Cata- and there were a bunch of them - I never had a single rogue manage to get a restealth on me while I was blinded. You mentioned gouging my pet, but gouge doesn't last long enough to drop combat. You also mentioned the rogue could prep-vanish, but it seems to me that he could find an occasion to do that without blinding you. Rogues normally hope to get a restealth from blind alone, and in my experience you can prevent that.

    In this video, a 2400 rogue I was fighting (no idea why I had a wolf out- maybe I was afraid he'd kill my pet) did what I found most good rogues did in this situation- namely build combo points on my pet for a re-direct kidney shot.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SQYRhZaveQ&t=36s

    I didn't have trinket in that clip, but if I had, I still wouldn't have used it until he actual kidney shotted me, since that would have made him waste his combo points, energy and kidney shot cooldown.

    In long experience in fighting rogues on Cata, I've just never had much negative happen as a result of not trinketing blind- maybe it's different in WOTLK, but I'm hesitant to trinket blind when there's so many kidney shots you have to worry about from rogues.

    4. I disagree with you on not using spell pen, especially for bgs. It's pretty safe to assume your target in bgs will have mark of the wild/blessing of kings on him, and if he does, your chimera shot, serpent sting and arcane shot are going to hit 15-20% weaker with no spell pen. Check the combat log. If you could use 3 gems to make those shots hit 15-20% harder, why wouldn't you do it? Maybe for duels you could min-max by changing gear sets depending on your opponent, but I don't have different gear sets like that.
    Edited: January 22, 2016

  14. Just want to quickly say that wotlk differs with cata when you look at how hunter pets work - when you're blinded your pet will stop attacking in wotlk and the rogue can restealth. It's better in cata. That's why trinketting blind is a good option, because it denies the free restealth.

    And I agree that spell penetration is very strong, considering wild quiver, arcane shot, serpent sting and chimera shot - serpent deals non-physical damage (so those abilities benefit heavily from spell pen). It only takes up 3 gem slots too, which is not that much compared to the amounts of agility/attack power you have in total.
    Edited: January 22, 2016

  15. @Laethea

    Warriors
    -----------------------------
    -Yes, it is true that some warrior won't reflect Freezing Trap. You will probably get away with it on these warriors. However, as for the warriors that do, you would have to change things up since they will easily trinket scatter shot if they know they reflected trap. In addition, you free up a Frost Trap since they share the same cooldown. Frost Traps will help you kite them for longer durations or even force cooldowns here. I always assume the worst (warrior is super skilled) and try to cover all weaknesses in the opener, which in this case would be reflect; and as mentioned in the guide - intercept bladestorm jk disarmed on intercept. I'll wear high resilience against Warriors and Bauble of True Blood (they won't mortal strike if you kite well) since you just need to outlast shield wall, Enraged Regeneration, shield block, and a bunch of charges/intercepts. Just my personal preference though, since going more pve doesn't impress me enough to lower my survival.


    Rogues
    ----------------------------------------
    I did mention that you can dismount and flare against assassination rogues since you are able to deny that cheap shot because they have no shadowstep/shadowdance.

    Your scatter macro is useful for assassination and combat, but subtlety rogues will be able to deal with it quite easily. You can try this against the average rogue though, and I'm sure you can get away with it in a number of duels. As for better rogues, they have macros to target only you for cheap shot, so feign death is countered.

    The main thing against sub rogues is to Flare that Vanish! Rogue who gets away = rip hunter.

    If you do dismount and flare against sub rogues, make sure your pet is right in the middle of flare, since they can simply sap it without getting caught if your pet is not in the middle. If they sap your pet, you will eat every ambush crit and you'll have to trinket first Kidney or die, which they can easily just run away and vanish (now you'll have no flare since you used to before unless you readiness). You don't trinket blind against sub rogues often, only if you can guarentee that you won't get caught again after it and land a kill (intervene yourself and disengage/deterrence after blind works well). Sub rogues just do so well :'( because they can simply Sap your pet, then shadowdance cheap shot you, all with evasion and sprint, and will actually mess you up hard if you miss your scatter shot because of the evasion. You also won't have a flare to catch them out of vanish. You can try flare and mount though, but it's still a free shadowdance cheap shot.

    As for gouges, it is enough time to go restealth (5.5 seconds). UNLESS you already have snakes out to hit them with, they will easily restealth or simply Preparation vanish if you do manage to catch them. Remember they can only kill you with cc and restealths, which they will do anything for. There's no redirect on wotlk, so if they gouge your pet, they drop all their combos on you, since keep a good track of that too however Sub rogues can get away with it. Cheap shot generates 3 combo points, which they should use with premeditation to easily get a free 5cp Kidney :'(.

    Some cheeky Rogues will even blind you to try get you to trinket and vanish away and wait for another stun to come up :'(

    A further note against assassination rogues - they will get messed up if they sprint in for a gouge on flare like that, since they can't follow up with anything but a mutilate (or a 2 second kidney which is absolutely a terrible choice). The moment they deal damage, you should Deterrence and place traps for Entrapment. Explosive Trap works well to if they ever try to vanish on it. The only thing I can think of assassination countering you is with Gouge>Dismantle>Cold Blood (for critting mutilate for extra combo)>Mutilate>kidney. Even then you will simply trinket the kidney, since you know they won't be able to blind you because of Deadly poison. Don't trinket until you see deadly poison on you though, since a full blind after trinket is just as bad as subtlelty's. A super perfect opener for the assassin would be to sprint sap you the second the flare expires, which is impossible if the Hunter has good latency. RIP cheap shot :'(.

    Another note against that assassin's tactic is - Gouge doesn't last long as assassin (unless specced which is usually not the case). You can also dodge gouge with your 35%+ dodge. A good way to counter this is to turn your character often so that they can't pick a side to sprint in to straight gouge you.


    Spell Pen
    ----------------------------------
    Yes, I would recommend it if you can afford to have multiple gear sets (easily done with 2x Belt and Legs or Hands). I'll update the guide to mention it.
    Edited: January 22, 2016

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