Who I am and who this guide is for
I am a hunter known as Homerjay mostly on Blackrock (formerly Arena Tournament). I achieved roughly 2950 2s raiting, 2750 3s and 3100 soloq.
Even nowadays i still get a lot of questions every other day that i log in regarding the hunter class and its abilities in arena. Often just "make guide plx?". Therefore this guide is for all those who ask me and i can just refer to it in the future.
I know there already are a whole bunch of hunter wotlk pvp guides on Warmane alone. Yet in my opinion there are small mistakes in each one of them. I aint saying they are *****s for not doing what i do, all im gonna do is say what i do and the reasons for that. They also dont lay their focus on arena yet rather the basics of hunter pvp.
Basic hunter dps rotation in arena, swing timer addon, when to hunters mark and just in general how to pressure
Usual opener in a fight would be aimed --> serpent --> chimera --> arcane --> then you can decide whether you wanna try to get some cc off or just a slow with concussive shot or wing clip or tranq shot a target or, if in good position and you wanna go ham, pop rapid fire and shoot some steady shots.
Note that serpent sting will only tick for 50% of its normal damage when fired in viper mode. This also counts for the serpent sting damage of your chimera shot! and since chimera shot is by far your hardest hitting ability you never wanna shoot serpent sting or chimera while being in aspect of the viper!
Also its good to know that you wanna shoot your chimera shot if possible only when serpent sting is up. Therefore killing cleansing totems or sometimes covering your serpent sting with a silence on the hpala is something you should always have in mind.
Yet to actually do real damage as a hunter you have to realize how powerful your auto shots are. They dont just have a 12% chance to procc wild quiver and giving u an extra auto shot (nature damage. Ignores armor!), they also make up for 20-30% of your damage in arena if treated right! Therefore its an absolut must have for a hunter to have a weapon swing timer addon. Me personaly i use Quartz.
Also your explosive trap is a really nice additional damage boost especially when fighting pillaring teams. The effect goes through pretty much any pillar if triggered and ticks for 400-600 damage each second on everyone behind it! But use it with foresight! It costs a lot of mana (being in viper during the initial trap trigger damage gives u mana back depending on the number of targets hit) and procs unncessary POM proccs from priests which greatly outweighs the single target damage it deals. And be aware you wont be able to cc a target that just stands in the explosive trap. It's especially useful vs teams that dont have an automatic aoe heal like paladins and Rshams.
Hunters mark is a great way to give your damage another push. It fits right in when ever you have a free global. As mm it gives you roughly 7% more damage due to the talent marked for death and the extra 500 ap. Besides that you can and should use it to cover cc of yours or others.
Another underestimated dps boost in arena is your pet. For the most part i have its focus dump ability on auto and have it on my enemy if possible. Pet alone can make up for 5% of your damage total. I have the auto focus dump off when facing a sham team that i wanna trap against. Best way to take grounding totems as a hunter is just to use growl from your pet. Yet sadly it costs focus and it can appear that your pet is out of focus when u wanna kill a grounding totem that pops up 0,25sec before your trap is triggering. Therefore having a macro that either toggles the auto attack or disables it, is really usefull and needed when aiming to avoid a grounding on your trap.
Swaping targets constantly is a good way to relese pressure upon the enemy healer. Especially druid (have to fully hot different target --> oom), hpala (swap sacred shield costs a fair amount of mana) and rsham (swap earthshield costs good mana) suffer from it and let you gain momentum, makes them fall behind and oom quicker. For example against a counter gearing hpal warr where the pala is low resi you can often swap on him and make him use a lot of mana to get out of this situation.
The swing timers from melee and range weps dont influence each other. For more damage you can, when you stand close to the target you are shooting and you aint slowed, run to your target between a global and range wep auto attack, and raptor strike your target (your character auto attack the target insta when in range. Have to spam raptor strike before you reach your target) or just auto attack. With a 2h wep you can easily increase your damage while shooting for example a warr that is tunneling your priest. Then take some range again and shoot your next range wep auto shot that should come off cd shortly after.
Stats I aim for and what to gem
When i play 3vs3 as for example PHD, PHP, ATC i go for 1232 resilience. Reason for that is that the hunters roll isnt necessarely to do the max damage possible. Yet rather being able to keep the healing reduction aimed shot up at all times, being able to leave the pillar for a few seconds and land some cc or just to spare your healer from healing you too much since resilience reduces all damage taken from pvp situations and you as a hunter have barely any passive damage reduction. Although, nowadays I often tend to play a little less resilience as especially caster cleaves often go for my ret instead. TCs also go on my 2h ret or disc all the time, not so much on me. If you feel confident you can drop to 1.1k resilience. In Soloq I mostly even play with only 1k resilience. That is especially a prone choice when being paired with another melee dps. Soloq is filled with stuff like ret + arms + disc which tend to tunnel your fellow melee so being lower resi on your part only benefits your team.
When playing something a little bit more cc heavy as ele/hunt/x or lock/hunt/x i drop a little bit of resi to around 1098. Melee cleaves will most certainly go for your caster mates and against spell cleaves an ele or lock does an excellent job reducing their uptime on you.
In 2s as a hunt/healer comb i play with 998 resilience. With the option to swap to my second 2h wep and drop resilience to around 900 (facing beastcleave that goes for your disc. War pala (if they go for your priest majorly. If not you should swap weps back to pvp infight). Dk/healer. Disc rogue (at start you should stay with 1k resi or even go up to 1.1k via tier 2 pvp wep as they might sap your priest and do a hard opener on you. you can still switch back later)).
If i play double dps in 2s i mostly play with 1232 resilience again for obvious reasons.
In 100% of all matchups i encounter in 2s n 3s geming agility is the way to go (the better gear you get the better agility and crit becomes compared to ap). Especially in 2s its very valuable when facing for example a hpal warr team that goes for you. Doesnt matter if u play double dps or with a healer, the extra dodge n armour is superb. The damage output barely varies. In pve it greatly varies (agi > ap) but in pvp it ain't so clear due to the nature of resilience. This is due to resilience drasticaly not just reducing the raw damage you do to a target yet especially the damage they get from critical strikes specifically.
Short thing about spell penetration: Spell pen is good since it lets you ignore resistances. With this your chimera shot, serpent sting, explosive and immolation trap, arcane shot, volley do full damg on targets with fire/arcane/nature resistance. I strongly suggest having a second pvp weapon. One with for example 2 resilience gems in it, the other one with 2 spell penetration gems in it. Preferably the jewelcrafting ones that grant 43 spell pen per gem (86 in total). With this you can swap to spell penetration when facing a mage (80 resilience over talents. Possibly 40 additionally from mage armour), druid (mark of the wild on the whole teams grants 75 resistance) lock (felhunter has like 160 resistance) teams. If you know u are gonna face for example a good mage team (mage has mage armour as well = 120 resi) or a lock team where your major goal is to kill the lock pet, you can enchant 35 spell pen on your second back, put a 43 spell pen gem into your oathbinder and a second 43 spell pen gem into your gloves to activate a bunch of gem bonuse. With this geming and gearing strat you gain 121 spell pen (perfect for mages with mage armour and definetly better against lock teams where u kill pets) + 2 gem bonuses you would normaly not obtain.). If you wanna go the full way you can gem another 25 spell pen into your bracers for example (277 pve ones with blue gem in it) and gem 13 spell pen + 10 hit into your legs instead of the nightmare tear. This way you get to 159 spell penetration. Add another 20 hit gem wherever you like and you can safely switch your titanium weapon chain for +110 atp (its useless vs castercleaves really (except SP)).
Currently i go with 3% hit and specing into 2% hit. This gives the best combination. You have to spend 2 points in it anyway as you elsewise don't have enough points spent into the lower tiers of the tree to get to Readiness. If you spec less than 2% hit you would have to invest these 2 points into stuff like improved concussive shot or improved arcane shot. Neither is a valuable option really. If you spec 3% hit you are losing 1 point in improved barrage and thus 4% crit on aimed shot which is quite the bummer as aimed shot hits bloody hard in 284 with the fat crossbow and all the arp you have.
Speccs
For the most part i play MM in arena. These are the 2 speccs im using.
Specc MM 0/53/18 https://db.rising-gods.de/?talent#cZ...oecbbob:0hfzMV
Specc MM 0/52/19 https://db.rising-gods.de/?talent#cZ...eMbbobb:0hfzMV
Specc SV 0/15/56 https://db.rising-gods.de/?talent#cZ...ofIhedN0ok:0Nk
The first MM spec is my current standard spec with max pressure. i use it as double dps, duels, 3s. The second MM spec is with 2/3 LnL speced into. u only lose 4% crit on aimed shot and 10% less movement impairing effects but especially with explosive trap ticking on a pillar on a bunch of enemies you get an LnL proc frequently. Obviously u also get it mostly from freezing or frost traps. it is especially powerful against plate enemies. I use it as hunt/healer, in soloq and when facing tc.
short thing about glyphs:
as you can see in my above listed specs I use trueshot aura glyph as mm. i switched the standard disengage glyph for it as the 10% extra crit on aimed shot weigh heavily and I noticed that I quite often didn't use disengage on cd. i still use disengage glyph as double dps.
enchants:
head: 50 ap + 20 resi
shoulder: 40 ap + 15 resi
back: 22 agi
chest: 20 resi
bracers: 50 ap
wep: titanium wep chain
range wep: 40 crit
legs: 75ap + 22 crit
belt: extra socket
gloves: 20 agi or 44 ap (barely matters)
Professions
I use blacksmithing and jewelcrafting. 82 resi extra gained by it are really strong. Alternatively you can get 40 and/or 42 extra agility which beats the normal 80 ap or 40 crit gained from leatherworking/enchanting and skinning any time damage wise. Engineering and tailor can be quite nice as well. Especially burst wise the rocket from your gloves can be quite strong. Yet you lose the normal glove enchantment for it. Same goes for the ap procc on your back from tailoring. You lose the 22 agi back enchant for it. I prefer steady stats in this case.
Gear
Stat priorisation in PvP as a hunter is very difficult. While you have the always same opponent (boss with around 10k armour) and the same rotation with similar damage spreading across the physical and magical damage field in PvE it is very different in PvP. The armour of your opponents differs. Your rotation and pressure builds differ. The spreading of magical and physical damage differs (in PvE 20% of your damage is magical with arp hard cap. In PvP its 40%!!!). Thus, creating a one fits all table is impossible. I will yet still give it a try and share my thoughts.
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how do i know what headpiece is better? what to look for when you chose your gear? I will tell you how I do it. I have some kind of list in my head about the stats. for example:
2 ap equals around 1agility (why that is was explained above)
2 arp equals around 1agility http://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=409807
3 haste equals around 1agility
1,2crit equals around 1agility
1 resil equals 1agility
1 hit equals 1agility
so in the end i always calculate how much agility is on the gear i am looking at.
Also if you look my character up in the armory you will see that i have lots of pve gear on and lots of resil gems and enchantments. The reason behind this is that it gives me better damage stats while having the same resil when i replace the pvp gear with pve gear and gem resilience! The only disadvantage you have with this method is that you have around 1,5k -2k less hp since the pve stuff always has less stamina than pvp gear.
As we know from PvE arp becomes better the more we have of it. While it is difficult enough to factor in different armor values of your enemies into the equasion there is another stat that becomes better the more you have of it, and that is crit. That is because of resilience which subtracts a certain amount of your crit value. Yet the more crit you have the more the effect of resilience becomes marginalised. Either way it is hard to put into numbers which stat affects your damage in the specific manner X. The above listed equasion resemble an approximation and are not accurate for every situation.
Example:
the pvp legs have these stats:
114 agil
195 stamina
87 intellect
2 sockets (red and blue)
98 crit
114 resil
197 ap
pve Leggings of Northern Lights:
167 agil
144 stamina
96 intellect
3 sockets (red, blue and yellow)
106 crit
88 arp
228 ap
pve legs have 73 more agil (53 more agil + 20 since i have one more socket)
40 more ap (31 more ap and 9 more intellect (1 intellect = 1 ap (through talent))
8 more crit
88 more arp
114 less resil
From the list i posted above we get the following stats
73 agil + 20 agil (40ap) + 6 agil (8crit) + 44 agil (88arp) - 114 agil (114 resil) = 29 agility!
so compared to the pvp leggings the pve leggings give you a damage boost of 29 agility while staying at the same resilience as before and only losing some hp. Just to clearify: I subtracted the 114 agility (114 resil) since i will have to gem more resilience on this and other gear i am wearing to maintain the same resilience i had before. yet its still a plus of 29agility. I did this with every gear i am wearing at the moment.
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2h wep or 1h wep?
2h wep for me. You have slightly better stats (even with 65 ap enchanted on one 1h), stronger melee hits (talked about the different swing timers of range and melee wep earlier), can kill totems insta always in one hit even if they are protected by soneclaw totem (2 1h can struggle with onehitting them). The only argument favouring 2 1h is the fact that you can still deterr during some disarms. Yet only during hunter, warr and sp disarm. All of these disarms are used defensively during which you dont wanna deterr anyway or you are stuned during it and cant deterr anyway.
Which dps trinket to choose?
Flatline it can be said that that sharpened twilight scale is bis for hunters in pvp. Yet be alerted! The arp base stat of it is sadly rather trash vs plate wearing classes http://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=409807. Thus, I preferably play with Death's Verdict over the 284 arp trinket. Why DV and not skull? The crit base stat aint so gud due to the stat of resilience (explained above why resi hurts agi and therefore crit more than ap) itself. On top of that the base state of DV benefits from my trueshot aura. While the procc of the skull is clearly favourable over the one from DV it's sadly the truth that hunters dont work like ordinary melee classes or even casters that can just say "I have proccs! lets go!". Often your trinket procc goes to waste due to the current pressure situation (firing shots in viper mode. Enemy healer not in cc and can spam cleanse on your sting). That is why trinket proccs are not a favourable thing for hunters in longer matches.
Pets:
There are only 4 optional pets as sv or mm in arena. They all have roar of sacrifice (ros) as an optional spell to specc into (worth!)
Spider: I barely play with it. Can be used to web/silence/trap a target fairly easy. It can also take grounding totems insta on range with its web ability (40sec cd i guess). Besides that its a pet of the cunning family. Therefore quite easily killed. Yet as a cunning pet it has its own trinket to get out of cc (have to specc into it (worth!)) on a 3min cd and a never ending sprint (have to specc into it).
Ravager: Favourite pet to play with when playing double dps combs. It works just as a spider yet has a 2 sec stun (there is no other way for a hunter to stun a target (except if you play BM (shame on you))) on a 40sec cd. This is great to make up for your lack of kicking abilities. It also makes the enemy do an animation thats comparable to the animation from targets that got hit by the ability throwdown ability by warriors in Cata. Causing them to not being able to move for 1,5seconds even when trinketing the ravager stun instantly. It also belongs to the cunning family of pets.
Crab: The base pet of all hunters in arena. Being a tenacity pet it has greater survivability than all other cunning or ferocity pets. It has more base hp, dodge than other pet families. Additionally it receives 40% more healing. It has last stand on a 6min cd, pet charge (1sec charge --> really useful for trapping). The crab itself has a 4sec root which is dispellable on a 40sec cd that doesnt cost any focus.
Gorilla: Barely anyone knows what this pet is good for. Its also a tenacity pet and therefore has all the stuff a crab has. Yet instead of a 4 sec root on 40sec cd it has a 2sec pummel on 30sec cd. Problem with it is that it shares the GCD of its focus dump ability. The pummel itself doesnt cost any focus but it sharing the gcd with an automatic attack makes it unreliable to work when needed. Therefore when using this pet i strongly suggest to disable the auto focus dump. Its also important to know that the enemy can actually resist the pummel since its nature based (i guess). Hunter pet scales with the spell pen from the hunter but a mage with 120 resistance will still resist a pummel here and there (atleast for me since i when facing a mage can only swap to my spell pen pvp wep and gain 86 spell pen). Its yet still really strong and can be game deciding. LSP doesnt regulary have nature resistance (sham never uses the totem for it) and the little bit of damage you lose when disabling the auto focus dump makes up for the abilitiy to kick a drain soul or lava burst when really needed.
Bonus: The bat! It is the same pet family as the ravager yet has a range stun on a 60 sec cd which can not be dodged and has a range of 20y. Can be good for stuff like duels, hunt/dk or hunt/rogue.
Combs n general ideas
The following paragraphs will cover some 2s n 3s combs where i allow myself to have some sort of judgement upon.
Hunt ret (2950 exp): The comb i played the most and what im known for the most until this day. Definetly a really strong comb. The burst is extrodinary, the kiting abilities are strong, loads of instant ccs and a ret that can nearly outheal an enemy hpala when facing war/pala. You are basically strong against everything. Guide updated in October 2019: http://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=378864
Cons: rsham/prot pala and disc/preg specc (or prot pala). Rsham prot pala the only valuable kill option against good people is rsham. Yet try doing that against a sham on lust with ES and sacred. Meanwhile the prot pala is tunneling your ret with extreme burst.
In most cases use your cc early and line it up for a long cc chain which forces a lot of cds from your enemy. Often you can use the SoV from your ret to get even more damage and coverage for your hunters mark (7% more damger for you).
Hunt feral (2600): Have to play it sublimely to get decent raiting with it. Have to have superb synergy with your mate.
Always try to go for quick games. We play with bauble nowadays. Avoid a MS/Aimed or dispel wound poison by the feral and top either of you 2 instantly with double bauble. Good thing about this comb is that you can actually pull off some really sick ****. Prolly the most outplay potential as a hunters 2s comb in my opinion. And of course its fun as hell to play it.
Hunt disc (2800): Disc should have 900 mp5.
General ideas for facing different combs that many people find troublesome as disc hunt:
1. Hpal warr: http://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=378865 updated in October 2019
2. Ele lock: Preferably starting on the ele sham with basically all cds. Scatter --> snake trap (roots and poisons (good if cleansing totem is behind pillar)) --> hunters mark --> serpent --> silence lock (dont wanna silence ele since he takes 30% less damage during it) --> aimed --> chimera --> readiness --> chimera --> silence lock --> aimed --> kill shot. If your disc nukes with you (using fiend is often enough) the sham should be dead.
3. Rsham lock: If they use a felhunter i mostly just wait for dispel rng with traps and hunters mark on sham and kill the lock. If lock ports away on full trap on sham you can setup on sham and swap. If succubus pet you have to play really well to win. Good sw:d by your disc and smart traping are key to win. Try to swap between lock and pet. The target without earthshield is yours. Traping is quite situational. At start i like to trap sham n silence lock and sometimes score a quick kill on the pet right there. Can go the other way around just as well. If you are a tryhard you can play with ravager pet against succubus teams. With this fine pet you can easily counterplay the double cc from fear/seduce (kick seduce).
4. Sp rogue: Prefered kill target is the shad priest. Using your crit immunity (ros) on dance and trinketing the first kidney if your priest is getting saped and/or he uses dance. If they aint using dance in their opener and your priest can free cast, dont do anything (shouldnt be needed). Slow trap is your friend #1. Avoid VT as much as possible.
ATC, PHD (2750): Both nice melee cleaves. Can get higher raitings quite easily without too much effort. Definetly the way to go when playing a hunter first time in 3v3 arena.
PHP (2500): Both very strong combs and really hard to kill. with php u have double dispel, still lots of instant ccs which allows nice combos, extremely good burst with PI-dispels by the priest on your target and ret using wings. Arguably the strongest comb in the game currently. In the last tournament in July 2019 I basically only played PHP and won in the end.
Macros
This is the list of macros i use currently:
http://pastebin.com/Zdsm6CNN
What macros are important as a hunter in arena? Get a whole bunch of focus macros. Wing clip, silence, scatter, pet charge, pet root/stun/web, tranq shot, concussive shot, growl (for groundings) are the basic ones. Feel free to add more. Get a normal burst macro with racials, trinkets, rapid fire. Get macros to support your mates with intervene, ros and freedom. Get a macro to swap weapons. Little tip: I somehow cant use a macro to equip my 2h wep when using my 2 1h pve weps. Solution is to use the equipment manager in this case. Get a mouse over pet attack macro.
General tips
1. Always watch your pet. Pet positioning as a hunter is key to drive the enemies mad. Try to never leave it open field for them to focus it. Keep it close to you if needed and on your target if possible to assist with damage. Watch its focus bar when having auto attack focus dump enabled and wanting to use intervene or pet charge (both cost focus) soon. If it dies a lot of your support as a hunter is trimmed.
2. Kill the cleansing totem. Get a name plate addon or just use the regular ones from blizzard and send your pet on them as much and as fast as possible to keep it from dispeling your sting.
3. Support and interrupts. I normaly have my focus set on the enemy healer. If your team is falling behind i swap it to one of the enemy dps to keep them from what ever they wanna do. Let it be slow, scatters, silences or pet charges. save your ros and freedom for special occassions if needed. Dk/healer teams love to grip your priest into the middle, pop garg on him and kill him. Never use freedom before they do that. Against frost dks and sub rogues dont use ros before they use dance/that 20% increased strength thingy. Against disc rogue or enemy hunters try to intervene scatter, silences, on your mate and gouges, blinds, disarms, kidneys and cheap shots on everyone.
4. Traping! There are many different ways of traping an enemy in a freezing trap. Classic scatter --> trap. Root someone with snake trap and throw trap/silence (if needed) on top of that. Conc shot slow --> throw trap (silence if needed). Against war/X scatter healer --> warr intervene --> meanwhile snake trap --> both rooted --> throw trap on healer --> silence if needed (growl against shamans). Throw the trap seemingly randomly on an enemy healer when he starts casting. Sometimes you run after a healer that u wanna trap and he runs around the pillar. You can seemlingly run after him without cheeta aspect and lay a trap at one point of the pillar. You keep chasing the healer until he gets to the trap and with this method you didnt have to use anything (only works when healer doesnt have an addon that tell him that you lay a freezing trap). Can also do an advanced conc shot trap. Conc shot --> throw trap --> pet charge to secure their position --> silence to avoid sw:d or sac (requires fast fingers) (when doing this trap you have to make sure that your pet aint hitting anything currently since the pet charge is sharing GCD with the focus dump ability and that your pet has 40 focus so you can do the pet charge and growl without the necessity to crit during this progress with an auto attack which would grant you 25 focus).
5. Kiting of melees. In theory it seems pretty much impossible to kite a warr right? He charges you --> disengage --> intercept --> gg. And all that with a spammable slow that can not be avoided (piercing howl). On top of that a counter freedom for your freedom if needed by his paladin. So what to do? Wing clip your target insta to get a slow on him which lasts quite long. Sometimes you can get an aimed or chimera off by making confusing moves. Yet to actually deal some damage you have to get some range. So what you can do is snake trap the warr -->silence his healer early (they all have addons nowadays to see when you use snake trap) to prevent dispel/freedom --> disengage towards his healer --> scatter trap. After the snake root comes the pet root. In general try to never face your front to the warr. I have about 38,5% dodge and 5% parry +2% night elf miss racial. Use it! Try avoid using viper aspect when being in melee range to a melee. You lose a lot of dodge and take heavier damage. Tell your disc to push on the healer and cc/burn him --> warr will charge/intercept. Meanwhile kite the warr into west uzbekistan to lure his healer into open field and make him vulnerable. Against unholy dks get out of the green aoe soup that slows everything. Then scream for dispel on chains. This is all information regarding hunt/disc but i feel like these kiting tips can be applied to other combs as well.
6. Readiness. Mightiest spell of the hunter. Can either be extreme burst or a new pallet of peeling and defensive abilities. Me personaly i rather use it to get some extra burst when a pala thinks he can sit a 10sec trap while his warr is getting hit without shield block. Can ofc also trap 2 people at once in 3s for example. Looks funny and is really effective or just do a 20sec + cc chain all on your own with this ability and scatter, silence, trap.
7. Dont stack up with your partner when facing an enemy rogue team. Its possible that one of you gets saped and the other one right away opened on with cheap shot without using shadowstep. And since they often play with priests your team gets double feared right after and you are screwed. Let the hunter get infight with volley and camp open field while the priest sits at the pillar at max range.
little tricks
1. If u face a frost mage team as disc hunt they will often try to deep your priest and then sheep him. Use silence for that. If they get closer to you and your disc they will often try to nova/cs/sheep your priest. Counter that by freedoming your disc so he can run away.
2. Silence hunters when they attempt to trap. Same goes for warriors and their aoe 8sec fear. They often do that in 3s when you sit at a pillar. They charge in at a random target and fear the whole team. If you are clear and sure about it you can silence their charge and if possible get a stun on them to counter their opener.
3. The sickest trick you can pull off as a hunter (my opinion) is to dispel NS. And doing that is quite hard as a hunter since your tranq shot aka your dispel actually has some travel time. Following situation needs to occur: enemy sham/druid sits in a full cc. You know they will NS after this. Roughly half (depends on how far you stand from the ccd target) a second before the cc ends you fire a tranq shot on them and it perfectly hits when they have the buff up. Problem with this is that the enemy healer needs to have another buff up when sitting in the cc. Elsewise the game doesnt allow you do shoot the tranq shot in the first place. So even if you land the tranq shot perfectly you might end up dispeling a trash buff instead of NS.
4. Get a macro to focus shoot a distracting shot. Reason being is that paladins and discs preferably try to counter your scatter with sac and sw:d. And since distracting shot has a similar animation to scatter its perfect to make them waste their cds. Nice and effective way to use this technique is when playing disc hunt vs war pala. Lay a snake trap. Silence the pala. disengage towards them. 95% of all the decent palas out there will use their big sac to counterplay your scatter here. They are just waiting for a shot flying in their direction. In this situation you can force one of their biggest cds with just some minor cds of yours. It can also be used to take the intervene buff off a paladin after his warr intervened him.
5. When facing an enemy hunter using snake trap you can kill the snakes with either your explosive trap ability. Yet try to do that while being in aspect of the viper. this way you instantly gain around 5k mana from killing all these snakes (only works on Blackrock).
6. What you can also do when facing an enemy MM hunter is using aspect of the nature. This grants you 130 nature resistance and makes their chimera shot sometimes even completely resist. I like using this aspect when facing ret hunter since its short games and you can stay in this aspect for the major part of the fight withot getting mana problems.
7. Use scare beast on druids n shamans in travelform.
8. You can counter shield block from warrs, which is normaly a real damage killer for hunters, by stunning him on it with your ravager pet when landing your chimera shot. With this you can still keep up the pressure even during these normaly quite uneventful 10 seconds.
9. When you see an enemy warrior use bladestorm on your disc dont pull your pet off him. It should be 100% health at start. Just use a mend pet of yours and cover which reduces its damage taken by 40%. With this the prayer of mending of your priest jumps between him and your pet all the time and heals him by a great amount during bladestorm since he and your pet are getting hit.
10. Mend pet! Sounds silly but is greatly underestimated in hunter pvp. You are nothing without your pet. the hunter pet constantly takes damage. let it be from the rend of a warr who wants to get quick and steady OP proccs or a wl laying some random dots on it. Its also taking damage from intervening hard hitting abilites and ROS (during ros the target is unable to be critically hit. additionally 20% of the damage taken is taken by the pet as well!). Therefore i find it absolutely mandatory to keep the mend pet ability up on your pet when ever you can spare a global. Its also great in for example 3s when you play with a hpala. With mend pet you have another trash buff that might get purged instead of sacred shield for example.
Okay thats it for now i guess. Actually took quite a fair bit more of my time than i expected. Of course thats not all. Yet the other topics good mostly alredy covered in other guides. Feel free to ask questions in the comment section.
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Homerjays Hunter Arena Guide
Edited: December 4, 2020
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Member
Okay since i just asked this in the hunter section, i might aswell ask it here if u don't read other topics.
How do u feel about hunters compared to other dpses, mostly the ones with access to double dps trinkets as humans?
Is the potential big enough so it is worth doing everything and trying to get into them or do u just fall off to their advantages?
Thanks.
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Member
Human hunters would be nice. Although the same thing would have to count for shamans and druids as well. therefore we would have to deal with tripple human beastcleaves and lsp. nothing i wanna do atleast...
anyhow i dont think the human racial is greatly superior to for example shadowmeld. as i stated in my guide it aint the main tast as a mm hunter to deal damage. and melding a coil or lava burst or aimed shot can be game deciding.
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Member
Hello, can you please share screenshot of your skillbar and UI thanks!
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Thanks, Homerjay- good guide.
One question: you said "root someone with snake trap and throw trap/silence (if needed) on top of that. "
Won't the deadly poison from the snake trap (or the snakes) break the freezing trap?
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He means to be close to the target you intend to trap. The snakes usually attack the target closest to them and entrapment can proc on two targets if they aren't too far away from the trap.The goal is to obviously land a secure trap without the risk of players intervening your chosen target.
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mhm. well atleast on Blackrock the snakes attack the target that your pet is on currently. they should basically work like the gargoyle summoned by the unholy dk. so if u trap 2 people make sure u have your pet on the target that you do not wanna trap :)
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What's the best PvE trinket for PvP and why?, i'm from Icecrown realm and there we have all the BiS available.
- Death's Veredict
- Whispering Fanged Skull
- Deathbringer's Will
- Sharpened Twilight Scale
All heroic versions.
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Member
Just using the relative stat values that homerjay himself gave here.
Death's Verdict HC :-
Passive :- 288 AP
Relative to Agilty = 288 / 2.2 = 130.91
Active :- 510 Agi for 15/45s
Relative to Agility = 510 * 15 / 45 = 170 (Averaged over trinket uptime and internal cooldown)
Total Stat Value = 300.91
Whispering Fanged Skull HC :-
Passive :- 148 Crit
Relative to Agility = 148/1.1 = 134.55
Active :- 1250 AP for 15/45s
Relative to Agility = 1250 / 15 * 45 / 2.2 = 189.4
Total Stat Value = 323.95
DBW HC :-
Passive :- 167 ArP
Relative to Agility = 167/2 = 83.5
Active :- All kinds of stuff for 30/105s
Relative to Agility (Proc Agility) = 700 * 30 / 105 = 200
Relative to Agility (Proc Crit) = 700 * 30 / 105 / 1.1 = 181.81
Relative to Agility (Proc AP) = 1400 * 30 / 105 / 2.2 = 181.81
Average of Procs = 187.87
Total Stat Value = 271.37
STS HC :-
Passive :- 184 ArP
Relative to Agilty = 92
Active :- 1472 AP for 15/45s
Relative to Agility = 1472 / 15 * 45 / 2.2 = 223.03
Total Stat Value = 315.03
Every trinket has it's strengths and weaknesses, however seen from a purely mathematical point of view WFS HC seems to be the superior one of those four followed shortly by STS HC, and then DCHC and DBW HC. Why STS and DBW rank so low is primarily because of their passive stat being ArP and ArP is kinda inferior to stats like Agility, Crit or 2AP in a PvP scenario, because you have so low amounts of it and it is a stat that is valuable if only you have lots of it. If you are swimming in lots of ArP, let's say anything above 600-700 ArP, STS HC will be the best trinket, no contest, just as it is in PvE. STS has a powerful proc that just can't be beaten. However, if you are using lots of PvP gear and have roughly 200-300 ArP, then Homerjay's stats will hold to be around right, and WFS HC will be your friend. Another trinket up for multiple consideration is DBW, because of the variable stats that it procs, however I generally regard it as unviable because of the long internal cooldown despite the powerful procs that last for a long time, if you waste it, you probably won't see it proc a second time by the time the match is over. If you put it to good use over it's entire duration, it is an awesome trinket.
So, in conclusion, if you are using a lot of PvE items in your PvP gear, go with STS HC (oh yeah, it also increases your GS btw, which helps to intimidate noobs LOL), else just pick up WFS HC if you have barely any PvE pieces.
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Myeah pretty much this. Have to take into consideraration as well though that the base crit from skull gets weaker compared to the ap base stat from DV due to the possible high resil of your target. Also u can often not use your procc due to being cc or just shooting some random shots to get mana back etc. thats why i aint a friend of procc trinkets in general and absolutely ****ing loved the wrathstone from ulduar in S6 :)
mostly really just personal preference. with DV you have some nice agi procc that can be useful against melee combs that go on you as a hunter yet that procc is damage wise greatly inferior to the ap procc from skull since agi is less good if the target high resil.
i prefer skull over DV simply because i like crits. w/e.
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Hi guys! Can you help me with DC+ret mutchup. Double dispel is the thing we cant deal with as DC+MM. Any tips?
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Member
What u wanna do is certainly try to lower your resilience as much as bearable. I would go with 900-1000. For the most part i sit on the enemy disc and oom him by that with slow and explosive trap on his pillar. try to get as many double CCs going as possible. In case you play on 3.3.5a and not 3.3.5b you can just burn the ret oom and after that make sure that u keep his pleas dispeled n everyone shielded to prevent him from gaining any mana back via judgements.
for 3.3.5b you can also just swap a lot for example on sacred shield to keep the pressure up.
an example is displayed here:
https://www.twitch.tv/oddwaffle/v/33080213
Me and Oddwaffle vs Capsizer and Talent. They didnt play it super tryhard but it showcases the general idea of what to do to maintain pressure and prevent them from gaining any momentum
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What are the best counters to mm/disc?
What about the match-up vs lock/rsham, feral/disc, warr/hapl, frost/disc?Edited: January 10, 2017
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can only talk from blackrocks perspective and the gear currently available there (264 pve n wf items. T1 weapons. no ashen rings).
There is no real counter to disc hunt. if u play perfect u win practicaly everything. that being said especially vs war pala u need some rng as well to actually kill a decent team. 3 of the 4 combs u mentioned are the last possible threat to disc hunt these days.
frost disc: free win really. cant lose to that. just make sure u can kick the poly on your priest when the mage tries to deep, sheep him. can freedom your mate as well to avoid nova, cs, sheep (written that in the guide also).
disc feral: quite tough n hella annoying. a comb thats hard to win yet also hard to lose to as long as u have a decent partner.
https://www.twitch.tv/homerjayoriginal/v/84967119
thats an example match versus one of the best if not the best disc feral that has played on Blackrock and former at overal. my main priest at the time oddwaffle and me went around 50:50 against them if i recall it correctly. yet keep in mind oddwaffle had only 2/5 wf setpieces and was lacking 5 pieces total, making it harder with surviving and managing his mana pool.
mostlly relying on traps from a far in general, as seen in the vid and trying to stop burns on your priest. have ROS ready when the feral pops berserk. besides that just perfectly execute standard gameplay as dealing damage, lining up cc chains n setups.
lock sham: prolly from the pov as a hunter (speaking of myself) the most exciting matchup these days. there is huge potential to outplay the enemy team. sadly you didnt specify which exact specc combination u find troublesome. so i will just cover the most popular ones briefly. ele/lock: can either nuke ele at start with all cds n fiend with hunters mark --> scatter --> snake trap --> serpent sting --> chimera --> silence lock --> pet attack --> aimed --> readiness --> silence lock --> chimera --> aimed --> kill shot. its pretty much foolsave as long as your priest gets the fiend off at start. if u dont crit or sham just has 1400 resil n bauble, rather play it safe with traps on targets n short setups to keep the pressure up and oom them. dont hesitate to use cds early. slow/pressure the target thats closest to your priest. once u lock them down with explosive and slow trap at their pillar and your priest at max range, its hard for them to recover.
rsham/affli: not much to say here. comes down to the priest not to eat too much cc and the hunter having luck with hunters mark dispels. make sure u have a growl macro to take groundings.
rsham/destro (with succubus): like ele lock just longer match basicly. make sure to hit every trap u attempting to land and swap majorly between the lock and the pet, mostly depending on the target with earthshield
https://www.twitch.tv/homerjayoriginal/v/51603851
https://www.twitch.tv/homerjayoriginal/v/51603373
2 matches vs a decent rsham lock.
war pala: used to be the hardest counter to disc hunt. nowadays i still advise every disc hunt to align speccs n gear to face this comb. to this day the prolly most played matrix in 2vs2 arena. definetly the most popular one and u will certainly encounter a few of these everywhere in the ladder. at the entry of my post i mentioned u need good rng to win them. thats due to them playing with frost resistance aura these days. and since spell penetration doesnt scale with hunter traps in wotlk you cant do anything about some traps resisting. its hard to calculate how many traps actually resist yet i assume its around 30%, if not more. additionally the pala can use aura mastery to double his chance to resist the trap. these days the strat vastly evolves around ooming the paladin by dispeling the plea, pressuring the warrior. dispeling by the hunter shooting tranquilizing shots constantly on him and the priest going for dispel when ever he can and burning also. since u cant rely on lining up long cc chains anymore, the best way is to play mostly at a pillar and draging the warr behind it. dont wanna go too much into detail with it. would say as disc hunt u win (given full gear, 950 resi on hunter, 1350 on priest, correct speccs n players that have synergy together and know the comb) 80% of the matches vs a good war pal.
and besides these serious combs u also sometimes lose random games vs. roflmao double dps combs like ret/protwarr, beastcleave, ret/hunt, feral/rogue, arcane/rogue.
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