I hope I don't derail this thread too much, I tried to start my own thread but apparently one of the extremely intelligent mods thought it was "useless" and redundant.

Anyway, I was wondering what some of you higher rated hunters choose in regards to sockets, and which style or combination of gem selections do you find most viable for 5v5 arena situations?

I ask because I started out trying to stack as much sta/resil as possible (11.6k HP, 320 resil unbuffed at the moment). As time goes on I have begun seeking more damage.

The way I see it, we have three different options in regards to gem and enchant choices:

1) Stacking Stamina and Resilience gems on everything we can
(Reasoning behind this choice: When we are the target of an assist train it does more good to your team to be able to survive than put out a bit more damage...)

2) Using all pure damage oriented gems
(Reasoning: The PvP gear already has enough built in survivability, why not bring it closer to the PvE gear in terms of damage)

3) Balanced mix of stamina/resilience and damage-like gems
(Reasoning: More damage the example 1, more survivability than example 2)

So what do you guys use and why?

Thanks for reading.

ps- I usually run with a Warrior/Rogue, Discipline/Holy Priest, Resto Shaman, and Mage.

Now, I'm by no means the highest-rated hunter out there, but my 5v5 finished last season at a somewhat respectable 2044 after not playing much at all for the first 2/3 of the season(and consequently am in a little bit of hole gearwise).

My personal feeling is this: Regardless of gem choices, it's counterproductive to skip the socket bonuses unless your base stamina is so horrible that you absolutely NEED 12 stam all over the place. This isn't PvE, where beyond a certain point, stamina for non-tanks is mostly a waste of itemization points. All offensive stats are helpful, as well as defensive stats. Thus, my personal point of view is that the "Stack 12 stam gems like a crazed monkey" approach is suboptimal. I've gone for primarily hybrid gems in the DPS sockets- Sta/Agility in Red, Sta/Crit in yellow. Agi over AP, mainly because the DPS yield may be similar, but Agility also has the peripheral dodge(and very minor armor) benefits.

If I were a little more comfortable with my survivability(11.5k unbuffed HP, 252 resilience at the moment when I spec for PvP, IIRC), I might even go for pure DPS gems in those sockets, but at any level, socketing hybrid or DPS gems in your red/yellow will net you a bit of crit rating/resilience you wouldn't otherwise have. And at least in my experience, now that my HP/Resilience aren't in the "total suck" range, I feel as if taking advantage of the socket bonuses is the way to go.

Which is ironic, because I'm usually the one chastising people for using stupid gem choices just to satisfy worthless socket bonuses in PvE.

It is true that hunters have a very small niche in which they can fit in, but I don't think that it is as huge a problem as mentioned earlier in this thread. You don't need a pally/priest/warrior backbone every time; for example:

My current 5v5 team is fluxuating quite a bit at the moment, but one of the two most successful lines we ran was 2pally/war/eleshaman/BMhunter. With BM spec and heroism, hunter damage burst is a force to be reckoned with, especially since its physical damage that can be done from range. I run with pally/priest/war/MMhunter/rogue at the moment, and it does seem to work a lot better... but its not the only viable thing.

I don't think it is fair to talk about the backbone needed to support a hunter, since it is more a problem with the design of arenas as a whole that requires a warrior/pally for almost all standard lineups. It's not just a hunter thing. There is synergy between priest and hunter, that is a good thing, not a bad requirement.

Hunters can be a huge force to be reckoned with if they know what to do and when to do it. I will list some tips and tricks here, hopefully some of you guys will learn something you didn't know before!

• Use macros. Set your focus target to a healer, and have a set of macros that can scattershot, silencing shot, and viper sting your focus target. Assist the DPS train and use the appropriate skills at the appropriate time without ever having to switch targets. Only trick is to keep in mind your focus target's location so you don't lose LoS at a critical moment.
• Keep your viper stings and pet on one target. Choose this target well, the idea is to take someone out of comission; don't waste it. DO NOT do your stinging and petting on the current damage train target, that target is being killed, drain something else. Try to chose a target that can't dispel. Even the best teams will have a pally too busy to insta-dispel their priest if you are DPS training properly.
• Find the second healer and piss him off. After you lay an initial frost trap, and your mana draining is in swing, try to catch the pally or druid or resto shaman away from his priest, and then freezing trap him. Chances are it will still get dispeled quickly, but if you do it right the pally might have to burn bubble to get out, or it might even bag you a kill on the damage train.
• Keep doing stuff even when you are being focused. Make it clear to your pally that getting BoF on you at the start of a burn is imperative to your survival, and will make it waaay easier for him to heal. Frost trap and start kiting, hopefully with entrapment. Keep casting your stings, keep DPSing something. If your DPS target is a rogue or war currently trying to destroy you, just pick a healer and DPS him instead until you kite out of range, never waste your time just running around at 30% move speed without shooting anything.
• Watch your healers - you can help them. Scattershot will rarely be a game saver for you (although it can be), I like to save it for a healer who gets pummeled, kicked, w/e. Get your healer to call whenever he is in trouble, scatter and trap to give him some time to get away and get his spells rolling again, even if the trap is gonna be dispeled right away it buys some time. Silencing shot can also be used to help save someone, especially when placed on a mage at a crucial moment, don't be afraid to use it defensively as well as offensively.
• Start with hawk, switch to viper if your initial burn doesn't work, or if a second target isn't dropping. If you run out of mana the other team will probably ignore you, have arena water on you. Hide and drink.

Hope that helps!

You are only talking about 5v5 situations, where our biggest issues are 2v2, 3v3 and Arenas, generally as a whole. There are ways to make Hunters useful, but other classes just do better at it.

The deadzone is an artifact of vanilla wow. Ranged attacks should always work unless your target is in melee range, that change alone would go a long way toward making hunters more viable in arenas.

The deadzone is nastier with latency.

If you don't get far enough out of it, you won't get your .5 sec cast (server side) off before having your zone violated again.

With 0 latency, you could predict exactly how far to run and stand to get one more auto off. But unlike other abilities (backstab, etc.), the client is not given any benefit of the doubt under latency. To explain: if *on my screen* I got in range and backstab, even though by the time my command arrives at blizzard's server, my target has either turned to face me, or moved out of melee range, I still get the backstab through (but it can be dodged as if from the front!). The server trusts my client. I think a similar thing happens with stings and arcane shot (which are instant) - I bet a lagged hunter can shoot you with them when he appears to be at deadzone range (but on his screen, he's further ahead).

It's actually worse with multi, which has the same cast time, but isn't activated until the client gets the command to the server. You can be around a LOS obstruction, at 15 yards, and have someone run 7 yards in the .5 sec latency + .5 sec cast to get multi. Whereas if you'd had auto shot toggled on, you'd just wait .5 sec (I assume). If the server would let you initiate shots without LOS (rejecting them server-side if they don't make it), then the impact of latency would be reduced.

If the deadzone isn't straight out eliminated, shots need to happen based on client-side trust for consistency with other classes. That is, if I hold still for .5 sec with someone out of my deadzone *on my screen*, I deserve to get a shot off.

Of course, high-latency warrior vs hunter matchups will still result in charge landing before a shot puts him in combat 10 out of 10 times.

So much could be said about warrior too.

Nope, unfortunately, latency will always side with the chaser, rather than the chasee. Let's say a rogue is chasing a hunter, and they're 8.2 yards apart. The hunter has a 200 ms latency time, and tries to shoot an arcane shot at the rogue. In the 200 ms the command takes to reach the server, the rogue has moved 0.3 yards towards where the hunter was when he started the shot. The server will read this as the two being 7.9 yards apart, and the hunter will get the dreaded "Target too close," despite the two never actually being less than 8 yards apart (And the hunter's attacks will stay lit up, despite being useless).

The sad part is, the deadzone is there to stop the exploitation of a very simple mechanic, auto-shot and auto-attack don't share a timer. It's very simple to test, have the auto-switch from melee to ranged turned on, then get two mobs, one on your pet at ranged, and another meleeing you. If you spam your tab key, you'll find that you're able to shoot the ranged target without interrupting you auto-attack, and vice versa, getting the sum of your melee dps and ranged dps. The 3 yard deadzone is there to keep a hunter from being able to just sway back and forth 0.2 yards from melee range to shooting range on a single target and getting tons of mana-free damage with slow weapons. It's probably less significant now with steady shot, but back when all we had were 3 instant ranged attacks and aimed shot, it would've been pretty overpowered steady dps.

As a hunter that PVPed for a total of 2 1/2 years, the dead zone is really something that limits hunters in Arenas, unless you have some "1337" skills getting out to range is a real difficulty. Im sure with some creative thinking and some nice trinks, you could manage to get out to ranged and stay out there. Removing the dead range isn't a good solution but reducing the size or giving more shots to use in the dead zone might fix some inbalance issues.

Haste does decrease the "cast time" of multi, and they (multi and auto) are uninterruptible. Only aimed, steady, and wyvern sting (i.e. shots for which you get a cast bar) can be interrupted, or suffer from pushback if you prefer.

edit: Autoshot is instant, it simply has a cooldown. Initially, I suggested this cooldown could be decreased via haste effects as with multishot, but I don't think this was accurate, so I'm recanting!

Perhaps you're not understanding "instant" in the same sense that I do.

If a shot is instant, I don't have to hold still to cast it. If it is not instant, from the time I tell it to shoot, to the time it actually shoots, requires some immobility.

I'm shocked that anyone claims that multishot's .5 sec cast time is affected by hastes. Auto shot's is also .5 sec and clearly isn't.

I spec beast for 2 v2 , 3 v 3 arenas, its gives me a better advantage imho over MM. The 18 secs of immunity to CC with a paladin healer at your side can be overpowering. Also by specing beast for smaller arenas it allows me not to worry about the deadzone as much. I always believe hunters needed a dead zone but now with so many changes, I am not sure anymore. There is too many factors now that allows melee classes to keep hunters in range.

Maybe hard to implement from a dev point of view, but why not have:

All ranged attacks work at any range, except melee (maybe at any range?)
But the closer you are, the higher miss rate.

ie if a hunter is plugging away at 40 yards, he doesnt miss very much (same as it is now?)
But if the hunter is trying to run away from a warrior say 5 yards away, he shoots and misses ALOT his shots, but he does get a few off, unlike before.



Thoughts/problems ?

Missing shots at closer range, would kinda of defeat the purpose of a hunter. The more I think about it, the issue isnt really the deadzone, its getting out of it. Smartest rogue I dealt with had kept me snared with crippling poison and one cp deadly throws. We were 1 v 1 standing in arena, and in a fight that I usually felt I could win, I didnt. Maybe make ice traps a 15 second cool down again. With the trinket changes, I dont know what else can be done to rebalance these kinda of situations.

Multi-shot has a cast time and benefits from haste like any other. Autoshot doesn't have a cast-time, it has a cooldown. Or maybe autoshot has a cast time, but the cast time is instant, so you have to stand still for it, but there's nothing really for haste to increase? Not sure on that.

According to the Armory:

The current top 20 2v2 teams in all battlegroups consists of 229 players.
1 Hunter.

The current top 20 3v3 teams in all battle consists of 384 players.
2 Hunters.

Somethings tragically wrong here. I believe its because of the added stam everyone has vs the deadzone. An enemy player can reach the hunter deadzone without any fear of death, or even risk of decent health loss.

The fact that once you deadzone a hunter, the hunter becomes weaker than a holy priest trying to melee you, is the reason why it is so hard to win as a hunter.

Personally I think Hunters should get a passive ability: Reduces duration of slowing and snare effects by 50%.

Just signed up for this thread.

I've got a very extensive post on the main WoW forums concerning our issues in arenas that many players, Lufan and other included, support fully. Instead of reposting the entire 9-or-so-Wordpad-page-long post here, I'll just toss you the link ;p

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...74598798&sid=1

It's good to have a place to intelligently debate on these issues and provide good debates, as well as garner other responses from respectable players. Glad to be a part of the community. I hope I'm as well-received. ;p

You're misinformed. Multi-shot has a .5 sec cast time, as does auto; neither is affected by any haste*. Auto fires independent of the GCD but is interrupted by other casts; auto's cooldown is affected by all hastes, such that the time between autoshots with nothing else interfering is exactly what the paperdoll stats list. Steady and aimed are affected by all hastes. Heroism not only hastes all but multi and auto cast time*, but decreases the GCD. I hope this helps.

* it would be difficult to demonstrate this conclusively, I'll admit, without an excellent ping and framerate.

There's really no way to change this now at this stage in the game, but I had always thought rather than a "Deadzone" melee should have gotten a bonus to damage or the like when close to an archer, while casters don't really get anything (why cant you shoot at a guy casting frostbolts 4 yards away from you? It's not like they are swinging an axe right in your face).

The Deadzone is the reason I could never stand to play a hunter in this game, it's just a silly concept. Unfortunately the classes balance is inseparably tied to it.

I generally disagree with this statement. I think most players(both hunters and other classes) severely overestimate how much removing the deadzone(that is, the inability to do damage from 5-8 yards) would help hunters. The only real argument against it that I've seen is that this would allow some pretty abusive mechanics fo DPS, with us weaving auto-shot with auto-melee, since they are on separate timers. If you simply had one reset the other's timer, this could be fixed quite easily.

Without the deadzone, hunters *STILL* would be the only class in the game that effectively has a minimum range to deal good damage since we'd still be melee-only(aka low damage) form 5 yards in, and we'd still be terrible at chasing stuff around LoS obstructions in arena. Pretty much every class could still put us on the defensive in many situations, simply by getting in our face.

What removing the deadzone would do, is make us more effective in cramped spaces - Blade's Edge arena comes to mind here. It'd also make life a little rougher on mages in 1v1, but I don't consider 1v1 matchups a central balance concern, as long as they're not impossibly lopsided.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree as far the cast time of multi-shot goes...it definitely varies, but like you said, I guess I can't really claim to "know" it's due to hastes, given omnipresent latency. I just really think they do influence it like they do w/ auto and everything else.

More on-topic, buffs for hunter melee are not necessary...just an ability that can derail an assist-train.

edit: gramer

I'd be happy with just one single change to mitigate deadzone issues. Include a slowing effect in scorpid sting. Doesn't have to be huge, I'm not asking for Slow or CoEx, but a 10% speed reduction would be all the difference in the world.

It would give us a chance to escape melee combat, while not destroying Intercept or Dash, and it complements our existing kiting wonderfully. To keep it from being too imbalanced, allow us to keep Scorpid up on only one target at a time. There's certainly precedence for that in other slow/cc effects, and limiting scorpid to a single target wouldn't create major PvE issues either.

Just my $0.02,

Leafshadow