Been a longtime reader here but this is my first post. My question is this, with hunters in an arena 2v2 - 5v5 what stats should you be stacking? Of course there are dps stats but I find myself the first target 90% of the time. In dps gear I can maybe get one of the oponnents down intime.. but usually by the end I die depending on how much focus fire there is. Obviously the solution is to get more stam. My question is at what point do you stop goign for stam and begin going for dps, or visa versa.

Currently Untalented I can get my HP upto 9.6k 15% would put me somewhere around 11k, but thats besides the point. I know it will at the end boil down to personal prefference aswell as playstyle but i am interested to see what other hunters are doing.
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Sympa of Skywall

thats prettymuch where im at now 11k, 50 res

http://www.geekboys.org/arena/index/5/ is quite helpful for seeing what other people are doing.

Try picking up 2 pieces of the blue PvP armor(shoulders and gloves would be my recommendation), the PvP belt, bracers, and boots. and band of the exorcist. Not sure what your Arena rating is, but grinding honor is a good way to pick up solid PvP items without having to wait a few weeks. My HP has stayed about the same over the last month or so, but after picking up some of these items and a few pieces of gladiator armor I noticed a huge difference in my survivability.

High resilience and hp is very important in 2v2's imo, since you'll fight a lot of gimmicky teams with high dps potential. HP alone won't save you from direct damage classes, and resilience won't do hardly anything against dot classes, so it's good to get a mix of both(which is done easily just by picking up PvP pieces).

I'm probably not qualified to talk too much about 5v5's, since I don't do them, but I imagine you'd want survivability over dps here too, since you're probably not going to be bursting anyone down. Because of this, resilience lets you prolong fights to your advantage(less healing required).

If you have T5 already, I wouldn't replace it with the blue pvp gear right off the bat. Pick up the off set pieces and jewelry from the normal BGs to start off with. This will save grinding BGs for gear that you will replace with arena stuff anyway, and anything that means less BG grinding is a Good Thing. Down the track, if your survivability is preventing you from progressing further in ratings, then I'd grab the blue gear. Otherwise, just keep your T5, augmented with the BG gear, until you replace it with the arena set.

I do think the gear is an amazing part to survivability as a hunter but from where you are coming form I think hunter mechanics alone can help you survive better. From a 5v5 point of view I noticed some groups will try to focus fire the hunter, or myself in that situation. This is where communication comes in handy but you should also be firing off your control to get rid of the fire on you. IE: FD clearing you as a target is extremely helpful along with frost traps.

I've noticed that if you are in a 5v5 as a hunter, and you charge alone or are typically out in frontal view of the other team you will get focused first. The best approach I take is to hang back when starting the arena, especially if you don't have the SM NE ability. My hunter is BM speced with entrapment and imp conc shot so those are also some viable options to keep people off you given they proc. Also having TBW is a great start to not being CC'd and being able to run all over your enemies to escape the focus.

For you to have over 10khp helps a lot I think and resilience is always a huge factor but I'd suggest looking back at why you are getting focused and how they choose you out. Naturally I know a lot of groups choose to focus the hunter because hunters dps is shocking at times if done right, but if that happens to me I let my group know I'm taking the dmg. I usually end up on the high end meter with dmg at the end of the arena by a significant amount so it is paramount that your group keeps you alive. Figure out how to stop it from happening as well as improving health and resilience.

In most cases, an opposing group will focus on you, especially in 3v3. It all depends on your team make-up of course, but by attacking you they neutralize a lot of your threat. After all, as long as they stay in your deadzone, you can't hurt them.

I tend to focus on survivability and utility most of all, rather than pure dps, because, as a class, we just lack the burst dps and sustained dps to take down high-resilience targets fast enough. In most of my fights we win by outlasting the other team.

Depending on your setup go for 350 or 400 resilience with 11500-12000hp unbuffed.

If you know that you will get focused more in one of your arena brackets just build up a heavy resilience set as it does help a lot.

Using my own 3v3 as example here. I almost never get focused in 3v3 because we run with a priest so I can use the 'pvp dps' set which is roughly 350 resilience, 11900hp, 2k ap and 28.5% crit. It stil looks like I'm wearing full pvp set so no one will try to hit me like smart teams would if I used the shoulders from Shade of Akama. :p

Osse what spec do you use when doing arenas? Could you post a link to a talent calculator?
Thanks in advance.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft if I remember correct.

I think you will want to check Cheeky's spreadsheet for the answer to that one.