[Hunter] how to arena?

Lodi · 06/13/07, 5:45 PM

Might one of the awesome arena hunters on an awesome arena team, share some tips/vids for those of us who are less than awesome? My, um, "friend" wanted to know

(does imp stings give stacking pet poisons any chance to resist dispel?)

Is there a better pet than scorpid to apply a stack of poisons in arena? One every 4 seconds plus slow pursuit speed isn't doing much for me.

Myul · 06/13/07, 6:13 PM

Hunters and Arena, only for a minor group of them a satisfying amusement.

- Deadzone is your Enemy's friend, try to avoid it.
- Use Frosttrap versus engaging warrior or later versus enemys healer to take them out of combat for a while, slow trap with entrapment is nice versus massive melees (especially at 5on5 warr/warr/x/pala/sham)
- HP matters, try getting 12.000+ HP unbuffed with a lot of resilence, or you will die soon
- There are other classes in the arena that heal better and do better damage, but no other class can be so annoying as a hunter can:
* communication is important, frost trap to take out the t3 mace 15kish warrior with full rage bar, WITHOUT someone hitting him for 253 white damage
- your pet hitting, is a wonderful, interrupting dot versus any healing class (maybe not versus paladin, try to devide him from the second healer because of his aura)
- drain mana from most annoying (heal?)class while assisttrain on someone else to prevent him from beeing able to dispell it, wasting his global cooldown instead of healing. A priest can't dispell it (dwarf can do it once with stoneform) regulary.
- try to kite melee's with wingclip and deterrence if specced for, and in common 5on5 you while kite a lot

Any specc can be helpfull:
BM with stun/tbw -> antifear versus priests is very strong
MM with scatter and silencing shot is again strong versus any healing class, interrupt first heal and prevent them from casting another for 3 seconds really hurts
Surv is a cruel for any melee class and if played properly every enemy will hate you for your traps, imp wc and if specced for wyvern sting and readiness

As regular, it depends on your enemy composition (is there any paladin, knowing handling your frosttrap with bosac? Any poison dispeller, laughing about your stings?) and the arena typ you want to play. 2on2, 3on3, 5on5?

Are you willing to respecc, depending on your setup and switch back for raids in the evening? If you are looking for some hunter in the playoffs, there are not many of them. Same with rogues, both classes have so many to offer, but can't dip out a warriors dps or have a frostmages/locks cc. It's really possibile reaching 2k+ rating, but not an easy road and you may need to equip before you can climbing up (become a sniper at av and farm for blue season 2 stuff, stacking on star of elune).

---

Petquesten:
Stealthing pet's are nice, you have allready some slowing ability - a skorpid is it for the reason you allready mentioned, to.

Shadowed · 06/13/07, 6:19 PM

Hunters with good gear hurt, leaving them alone is usually asking too lose actually, and frost traps, slow trap is pretty much always useful since it's harder on the melee and also gives your entire team an area to kite through.

Spades · 06/13/07, 6:20 PM

Repeating what I said in the other thread:

Spec Entrapment, put a frost trap on the bridge in Blade's Edge and collect your points. :E

But seriously, use Viper Sting intelligently. Force the healers to either a.) be too busy chainhealing to dispel themselves or b.) use Snake Trap to stack their poisons then apply it. Viper Sting is a very powerful tool, and I find it's underused by many hunters, or at least not used correctly. Cleansing it off when it's your only poison debuff is easy. Cleansing it off when you're affected by six different poisons, or are under an assist train, or are spamming your max holy light on the warrior is more difficult.

Smd · 06/13/07, 9:16 PM

I've only really been doing 2v2 lately, running resto shaman/MM hunter and what I've found so far is:

Get a scorpid and let it stack 1-2 poisons on the target and wait for them to start casting before applying the viper. That way they generally have to take at least 1-2 ticks of it before getting it off (and often they waste a decent amount of mana dispelling the other DoTs).

Communicate very well with your partner about where people need to be to get their whole team into your LoS. Oftentimes we'll face warrior/pally and it's important that you and your partner know where you're dragging the warrior to force the pally to come get him.

Keep your pet up and keep him on the healer, that way they can never get out of combat to drink.

Try to split targets between your freezing traps and scatter shots to prevent too much diminishing returns. Also remember that scatter shot is a CC, not just an interrupt. It can be used for the full duration (I seem to forget this sometimes) also remember that it's not dispellable (IE use it on the warrior in a warrior/pally team).

Use AotV to keep your mana up against a mana burning priest. When we go up against teams like this it's usually not particularly important to be doing a lot of DPS until the priest is OOM anyway, so as long as you keep viper up for yourself you can generally have enough mana for whatever shot you absolutely NEED to use to survive (generally Scatter or Concussive)

hawkon · 06/14/07, 10:54 AM

The first thing you'll have to realize: you are the tank. In a 5v5 setting you'll want to team up with a paladin who have you as 1st prio for BoF, aslong as you're getting targetted. You may also want a good priest/shaman who is able to dispel freedom on hostile warriors. If your team manages to do this simple thing, you have probably the best crowdcontrol in the game vs melee teams.

Who do you send your pet on? early game, priests for sure. The pets interrupting really hurts them casting manaburn (and I assume you're doing a deep MM/surv spec, so pet critchance will be low, not proccing focused casting on the priest). Never ever send pets on healers. All healing classes have 70% chance to not get interrupted with their heals, +35 from conc aura. Later in the game, you might want to send your pet for either a paladin, or just keep it on the priest. Like previously mentioned, it prevents them from drinking/changing gear etc.

Lodi · 06/14/07, 1:47 PM

Pet on mana burning priest - yes, excellent. But I'm BM so he'll crit -> focused casting (oh well). An enemy hunter with nobody else on our team after him is a decent pet target (prevent steady). I tend to go for warlocks as they don't have 70% channeling on fear, and frost mages (also makes poly difficult)/shadowpriests. But locks do have a ton of instants.

I used to be marks and preferred it, but went BM for pve dps and I'm not swapping specs weekly yet.

I like the advice of their healers to move by luring their dps to chase you around a LOS obstruction.

I thought the entrapment nerf, along w/ second wind, made it not such a clear win. I guess the root proc is just 4 sec now?

Amok2007 · 06/25/07, 2:27 PM

My guild formed a 5v5 team last night and we did our 10 fights (3 wins, 7 losses).

Warrior
Pally (Healadin)
Pally (Smackadin)
Hunter (Me... MM)
Druid (Feral)

Our 3 wins were complete wipes of the other team without a single loss to ours. On our 7 losses, each team wiped me out first. Whether it was a druid sneaking around to find me or a combat shammy and warrior or even faster, a mage... I got smacked around quite a bit.

If you look up Amok on Archimonde, you will see I don't have the mondo fantastic gear nor do I have 12000 HP.

Based on the experience last night (how extremely little it is), protect your hunter! The really good teams seem to kill them off first.

Halbard · 06/25/07, 4:55 PM

There are two types of hunters... especially in the arena. A hunter left alone does damage to everyone, and is able to take time to pick their targets. Our crowd control goes a long way to making everyones job easier, we give a warrior support with aimed shot, disrupting a healer with stings and pets. We deal alot of damage from a place where, for the most part, we are not noticed, and thought of very little in the heat of battle. The other type of hunter... one that is NOT left alone... barely counts as cannon fodder. our deadzone makes us easy prey for an intelligent player, and since many PVP'ers can now basically ignore our traps and such, we have become pvp fodder.

But all-in-all... I still love pvp with my hunter.

Amok2007 · 06/26/07, 10:05 AM

Hunters: Red shirts from Star Trek

Sciurus · 06/26/07, 11:53 AM

Might be worth mentioning that you can use hunter's mark with freezing trap like mages use detect magic on their sheep targets.

Just keep re-applying it as the paladin attempts to cleanse your trap and sometimes you get lucky with it lasting a decent duration in 2v2. During this time your partner should be really laying into the paladin (mana burns, dps, etc).

topojijo · 07/09/07, 4:51 PM

I apologize if this has been asked before, I searched and was unable to find information on it. What are people's thoughts on the value of the Talisman of the Horde/Alliance Trinket?

I'm essentially starting to get into heavy pvp so have been building up honor to get rewards as best as possible. I'm very close to being able to get this trinket, but was wondering if it was worth it?

Obviously it has a lot of resilience and the heal use is nice but is it better than other trinkets?

Also, to give a better idea I'm current in a 2v2 team with a feral druid so yours truly tends to get blasted down first.

ProudAardvark · 07/09/07, 6:26 PM

* The PvP Trinkets are absolutely critical, more so in smaller arenas

* Wvyern Sting is great against crappy teams, at higher levels you will need MM for silencing shot

* TBW is great against crappy teams, at higher levels you will need MM for silencing shot

* You are there for viper sting and entrapping frost traps

* Stack Scorpid Poison to waste palli dispells as you viper sting him. I have my "set focus" target set to mousewheel up, and my "target focus" to mouse wheel down. Middle wheel retargets last target; so, i can focus the pally, then sick the scorpid on him, and then peridoically switch to him -> viper -> and switch back to main assist target. I've found target management to be one of the most crucial skills. If you are trying to tab target everything you're setting yourself up for disaster.

* You can use Silencing Shot to 'Cover' a Viper Sting as well

* Conserve your mana and know when to time your bursts. If you just go balls to the wall against everyone you will be ineffectual and oom before you know it.

* Try not to get trained instantly: You will need to hide and hang back at times. Knowing how not to look like a target is key.

* Snake Trap + Feign Death can give people a headache trying to tab target you, just make sure the snakes are attacking before you shoot or they will re-acquire instantly.

* Use Scatter Shot to save your healers from rogues and warriors

* Act as command and control - as in battlegrounds your track humanoids skill gives you a better information picture of the battle than anyone else. Combine this with eagle eye to gain early intel in a 5's game. Keep in mind that you can switch targets much more easily than can a melee class. See the targetting advice above.

That's all I got. I'm probably a scrub by these forums standards, but this has gotten me to 1650 2v2 rating so far this season, with a shadow priest. Good Luck!

PS in 2v2, a statistical study I ran indicated that playing a hunter costs you 230 rating points on average, after controlling for skill. There are a lot of people struggling in the arenas that you don't read about on the boards.

PPS Feral Druid + Hunter is not a viable (read at all competitive) team combination. Ask the druid to go resto and you'll be doing yourself a huge favor. Class combination is the most important thing in 2v2.

Derketo · 07/10/07, 1:45 PM

If your aim is 5's, you're going to need to do one of two things, run a resto shaman, or reroll an elemental shaman. Some teams have found success using mage war pally resto shaman hunter. It's possible, but most teams these days are wanting to run mage pally war ele shaman priest. The big problem here is I dont believe it's viable for a hunter to sub in for any of those dps classes, so unless youre team is specifically tailored to running hunter, you'll not find much success.

My 5's team started out about halfway through season 1 when we all stopped raiding and started pvping instead. We ended up at 1980 rating, which I thought was respectable considering our late start. I can honestly say if I had a shaman of equal gear we would have been higher rated, they just bring so much more to the table than hunter does.

Elendril · 07/10/07, 4:37 PM

Hunters are excellent in control/wear down oriented teams, like War/Pal/Mage/Priest. Frost trap is still incredibly powerful, and Viper Sting along with two ranged interrupts are really good against caster heavy teams.

3v3 Hunters have basically no good comps - we're decent in some counter-comps, but that's not really an issue outside of tourney style play.

2v2 Hunter/Priest mana burn team can be successful. We don't really have the burst damage or sufficent control to play in much of anything else.