Tors

This is my first season in the arena. I don't see any other dedicated hunter thread for general PvP stuff, so it's probably a good time to start one.
So, as of 2.3:

1) Are scorpids still useful for masking our poisons? I've heard from many people that Viper is getting prioritized over Scorpid Poisons. I don't have a Scorpid Pet at the moment, and I'm wondering if I should go get one.

2) How do people usually train their pets for arena? As of right now I try and get the highest ranks of Shadow, Frost and Nature resistances after getting the basic pet abilities.

3) After doing just a little bit of basic testing, it seems for my current gear setup Snake Traps do more damage than Immolation traps. I was a little surprised by that. Also, I've never seen Entrapment Proc off of snake traps, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

Dude, don't fuck up the rotation

 

aquacadet

Scorpids are pretty standard still, and I'm pretty sure that it's still random what poison will get dispelled. That being said make sure you have the improved stings talent, and are targeting priests, mages and shaman for viper sting over paladins.

I make sure to get avoidance, cobra reflexes, scorpid poison (rank 4 is a must), then max NR, FrR and SR.

I've seen entrapment proc off snake trap, but it only does it when the trap is first sprung.

This season I've had the most luck playing Warrior Warlock (felguard) hunter Priest (Disp) Paladin. It's a very stong setup from previous seasons, but now with the aimed shot and arcane shot buffs it's even better. We mana burn any elemental shaman, or mages we come across and keep a pet on them to keep them from drinking then split DPS on two targets that will both have healing debuffs on them. It not only slows their DPS, but really puts their healers in a tight spot manawise.

 

Ceress

Yes, the scorpid pet + imp. stings is still the best option.

If you are doing (Druid/priest) + Hunter 2v2, MM to silencing shot, but then get Improved Revive pet and Beastial swiftness in BM, and then either Imp. Wingclip or Entrapment in survival. Beastial swiftness makes an enormous difference vs druid teams, and imp. revive pet is extremely useful. Despite your best efforts your pet will die vs good teams, and having the imp. talent makes it so you can trap one, fear/cyclone the other and resummon it in their face.

Games in 2's are extremely long so make sure you have a good supply of snacks handy. Raid marker yourself, your pet and your healer, and always be aware of where they are. Do not LOS your healer, it is better to take damage and receive heals then try and avoid damage and end up LOSing an efficient greater heal and forcing your priest to use less efficient instants.

I play priest but I would say if you have the choice between entrapment and imp. wingclip, imp. wingclip is better for 2v2 and entrapment for 5v5. A wingclip proc is just extremely helpful no matter what you get it on, whether it is a warlock pet, kiting healer, or your dps focus, or a rogue pounding your face with trinket down.

 

Maynard

Yeah, I'm surprised this thread wasn't around. I've taken my Druid seriously last two seasions, but with his 3s team falling apart and a promising 5s for my hunter on the horizon, I'm playing my hunter instead.

Currently I'm looking at playing in Warr/Pal/Priest/Warlock/Hunter lineup, was wondering how this team plays out, what it's weak points are, and so on. Intuitively it seems like it'd be mostly a drain team, but with 3 dps would also have the potential to end a match more authoritatively than a tri-healer drain team.

I'm also debating (considering?) how worthwhile some other pets might be. I have heard some players find that a pet with dash is better to stick on druids in 2s than scorpid poison, and I was wondering if boar charge is useful at all (I was thinking it'd be great to target a healer and pull away from melee DPS).

 

doogless

It was discussed in the drain teams thread - Charge triggers the cooldown on Dash. That combined with there being no boars above level 60 makes them an uncommon pet.

 

Tors

Why do you say rank4? Using Petopia's pet calculator you can't get avoidance, cobra reflexes, poison rank4 and max of those three resistances.

Is avoidance really necessary in arena? How much damage are pets taking from AE other than Frost Nova?

If we're just using scorpid for the poison masking, is rank1 enough or does have a higher chance to be resisted or something? Otherwise, rank5 is the highest.

Dude, don't fuck up the rotation

 

Enova

A single stack of rank 4 last longer than a single stack of rank 5, giving you a little more time to stack an extra charge on a moving target.

Guilty as charged ^

 

doogless

That was fixed a while ago. All ranks now last 10 seconds.

 

Yippy

Some AoE's that are encountered regularly that pets take 50% damage from include blade flurry/whirlwind/sweeping strikes/consecrate/cone of cold/multishot(even if the primary target is the pet). So yes, I'd say avoidance is really necessary in arena, especially given that some healers like to pull pets towards a blade flurrying rogue or a sweeping striking warrior, for keeping our pet alive for drinking/covering viper.

E: On my scorpid I run rank 4 scorpid poison because as far as I'm aware downranking doesn't increase the resist rate(basing this on mages who downrank poly and frost nova) and you can get rank 5 Shadow resist(140) with rank 4 nature resist/frost resist, as opposed to rank 4 shadow resist (120)

 

Bouboulou

Hello,
I have recently respecced from 0/43/18 to 11/41/9 due to pet survivability issues in 2v2 and 3v3. I also changed my scorpid points to give him more stamina. I had the feeling the resistances were not that efficient (scorpid not resisting fears, frost nova or entangling roots at all). Do some players share this impression?

I use to play in 2v2 with a resto druid, but we are not doing that great. Against priest/druid with either warlock, warrior or rogue we lose very often. In the end, the opposite healer is generally oom, but i am too, or nearly, and i find it difficult to outdamage the healpower of an oom priest or druid while a warlock, a warrior or a rogue can still deal very serious damage and it's often (after a while) a loss that seemed certain from the beginning. Does anyone have some good advice ?

 

aquacadet

Did they change the cost of rank 4 up to 30 focus when they changed the duration? The reason I used to run rank 4 was the lower focus cost let you keep your stack growing even if one poison gets dodged or parried.

 

Trohck

It was always 30 focus.

 

Bondok

In reply to Bestial Swiftness for a MM/Survival Hunter....
...could another option be to go for a Serpent with it's ranged Poison to mask Viper Sting?

Seems that slowing your pet is the greatest counter and I'm starting to see a lot more people concious of what a Scorpids job is. I know you lose the DOT Stack but it seem with a Ranged Poison it maybe just as effective.

Thoughts on this? Has anyone tried this?

(Sorry, not trying to Hijack your Thread Torz , just wanted to add a something else in the mix since the Scorpid questions are being answered already.)

 

Trohck

The problem is the DoT stack is the only thing that really protects Viper Sting consistently. With only one thing protecting it, it's going to take an average of 1.5 cures to remove it. So you'll get ~one tick of Viper Sting. Not worth it in my opinion.

 

Mechanic

I have a question about BM pets and abilities. I have a cat and in my pet training book I have the max ranked claw and bite. I have heard conflicting issues of not having bite as to get that extra claw. Bite is a waste of focus. Should I only have claw as his only dps ability? I never consider prowl in of pvp.

 

Tors

This thread is all about Hunter PvP- so any hunter questions, tips and such are welcome imo

Dude, don't fuck up the rotation

 

Tors

Query: Clever Traps, does it extend the Freezing Trap duration in PvP?

Dude, don't fuck up the rotation

 

Sapa

No Clever Traps
Trap1 20s (10)
Trap2 10s (10)
Trap3 5s (5)
Trap4 2s (2)

With 2/2.
Trap1 26s (10)
Trap2 13s (10)
Trap3 7s (7)
Trap4 3s (3)

(number) is true in arena. I'm just not sure how it's rounded up or down(used down). Due 30sec CD, dispels and trinket I doubt you will ever chain trap someone for 3rd time. So Clever Traps don't really do much for Freezing Trap.

BTW:
Disc priest/MM-SV Hunter
vs
1. Frost Mage/Rogue
2. Druid/Warior-Rogue

How to?

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...jerks/Sapa.png

 

khel

So every week I spec for pvp for 3 days, then back to raiding for 4 days, and I want to use the same spec for my 2v2 and 5v5 teams. In my 2v2 team I am paired with a resto druid, and in 5v5 am trying to get a drain team going with a felguard warlock, resto druid, holy paladin, and disc priest. Both are extremely defensive, outlast teams so rarely is someone ever getting bursted down.

So even though I see most pvp hunters speccing mortal shots, wouldn't ranged weapon spec be better? With the specs I am debating, I have 6 points to spend and will probably put 5 points in RWS, and 1 point in mortal shots, but just was interested in other opinions.

Also in 2v2 it seems imp wing clip might be best, but in 5v5 entrapment is optimal, so I think that I will put 2 points in each instead of 3 in 1 talent, and 1 point in the other. This is the final spec I have in mind: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Kaeto

There is something that can extend traps over 10 seconds. I was boggled the other day when I got frozen, saw 12 seconds on the debuff duration, and watched it tick all the way down to 0. I don't know if Clever Traps has that effect or not. Maybe it's some combination of Clever Traps + a lower rank freezing trap.

 

Berkut

OK, I need help.

Specifically, it is with great shame that I admit that I have not been using 'focus in my bgs.

This is not good, I know. How can I silence a healer while dps the mage if I do not use focus? Not well.

So, does anyone have a set of good /focus macros and a quick guide on how to use them, specifically in arenas?

 

Chulak

This is my first season taking arena seriously (and I'm only a few weeks in), but here are some initial impressions:

Clever Traps is nice, more for the increased snakes on Snake Traps and the increased duration on Frost Traps. It may be my imagination, but it seems that my snakes are more likely to go after multiple targets in a larger area with Clever Traps.

Regardless of whether Viper is getting cleansed or not, at least in 3v3 if the healer is cleansing anything they're not healing, which provides precious GCDs to burn down an opponent.

I just finished training a scorpid and I'll be giving him his first run this week, specced avoidance 2, cobra reflexes, 120 resist in frost and shadow, and the rest in stam and armor. The diminishing returns from all higher ranks of trainable pet talents cause me to feel like I'm always getting more overall bang for my buck when I go a little way into several.

 

topojijo

First you'll want a macro that is simply /focus to quickly set who you want to be the focus.

Then for say silencing shot it's a simple macro like

#showtooltip Silencing Shot
/cast [target=focus,exists] Silencing Shot;

Then whenever you need to silence your focus target just hit this macro. As long as the target is in the front 180 degrees of you and in los/range they will get hit.

 

Tammy

IMHO, unless you get a mod that counts the number of times your pet resisted fears, nova or roots you cannot rely on your intuition. In the heat of battle, you are alot more likely to take note of the times when fear (etc) wasn't resisted than the times when it was resisted.

I am also using a similar spec for 3v3 (11/42/8 - didn't feel I needed a 3rd point in Hawk Eye). I find it alot better for 3v3 and 2v2 than the usual 0/42/19.

The greatest power of druid/hunter is that they can effectively reset the fight and drink as many times as they wish. If you oom the opposing healer and you are oom as well, reset the fight, drink and then resume dps. You need to play very aggressively and for that you need mana. The best way to play druid/hunter imho is to play very aggressively, reset, play aggressively, reset, etc, gaining an increasing edge with each reset. You can totally abuse your opponent's psyche by trapping their warrior and FD drinking right in his face, only to land an entangling roots on him 1 second before trap fades.

Lock/Druid also has this advantage, they also can CC the entire team and "reset" the fight. Also their lock never needs to drink. The only downside to locks is that they cannot fear warriors and are very vulnerable to rogues. You can trap warriors very easily and your ability to kite rogues is very high as well now that the deadzone has been removed.

Against healer+lock just kill the pet, this should be doable with your CC's, then you can reset the fight by cyclone+trap.
If it's a lock/druid, you'll fight an uphill battle but it's still doable. You need to be very aggressive though. You will not outlast that combo for several reasons: 1) their pet is more durable (voidy) 2) their healing is just as good as yours 3) their sustained dps is better (especially with all the LoS in arena) 4) They can remove your mana drain, you can't remove theirs. In addition, their mana drain is more effective anyway.

All these reasons mean that beating a lock/druid in an outlast battle is very very difficult and most likely impossible given equally skilled/geared players. The one thing you have that SL/SL locks don't have is burst, and therefore I believe your best course of action would be to play very aggressively. Kill their pet aggressively while CCing them, then move to their druid and make sure he never drinks, silence/scatter the lock on drains/fear and hope for the best.

As far as I know that poison has a 10 second cooldown and I am 100% certain scorpid is the better option to use.
I rarely found snares on pet preventing me from keeping the enemy healer from drinking or from draining him. It makes it a bit harder yes, but generally it's no big deal. The biggest problem I found with snares is that if a warrior hamstrings your pet, he can dps it freely and KILL it. It's not the fact that the pet is slowed that bothers me, it's the fact that it will die. That's the beauty of bestial swiftness, a hamstrung pet with bestial swiftness will move at 65% speed, while a wingclipped warrior will move at 40% speed (or 43.2% with boots enchant/meta gem). Try it and you'll absolutely love it, the pet just outruns warriors now, all you need to do is wingclip.

Ofcourse there's ways to counter it, the healer can run to the warrior, but then the healer can't LoS abuse you. If the healer is a pally, he can JoJ the pet. If they have a druid, he can root the pet to buy the warrior time. And then there's improved hamstring. But generally speaking, bestial swiftness is king at keeping pet alive as long as you snare the warrior.

Bestial swiftness is a great counter to hamstring, but with rogues the picture also looks somewhat better. A bestial swiftness pet with crippling poison will run at 39% speed, while a wingclipped rogue will run at 40% speed. With some latency the rogue might not be able to hit the pet as effectively as he would normally. This is a long shot though, and this talent is alot better against hamstring than against rogues. Generally rogues in 3v3 don't go for the pet though, from my experience.

It is also an excellent talent regardless of snares. 30% extra speed means your pet will reach your target sooner (23% sooner to be exact) after it has been CC'ed, or avoided via bridge jumping in blade's edge.

Yes it does. Since the cap on CC's (pre talents) is 10 seconds, your freezing trap will last 13 seconds if you have 2/2 in clever traps. I tested this when patch 2.3 came out and heard of no changes since, so I assume it's the same.

Also, since the base duration is capped at 10 seconds, you can use rank1 freezing trap in PvP and save yourself some mana (same with scare beast, rank1 is all you need).

Sapa's reply seems to suggest that clever traps doesn't improve the duration of your first trap. I believe this is wrong but i'll have to test it again to be 100% sure. I'll test it tomorrow and let you know. There is no reason why it shouldn't affect freezing trap though. After all, that is what the talent does and there is no reason to nerf it (especially with how weak hunters are relatively).

Druid/Warrior = trap warrior, keep pet alive, fear druid in human form for some mana burns+viper pwnage. Your priest must drink as much as possible. Mark the druid to stack 440AP in the long run, this is very important. As a side bonus it will prevent a nelf druid from drinking in shadowmeld, but the 440AP bonus is absolutely huge.

Spec 11/42/8. 11 for bestial swiftness (warrior can't dps your pet even with hamstring as long as he is wingclipped) and 8 for improved wingclip (imba versus melee).

One more thing - while stacking poisons with a scorpid is nice indeed, a smart druid can use this against you, by running to your trap intentionally (and it will break due to the poison dot). In this case you can disable the poison autocast 10 seconds before your trap c/d is ready to avoid the possibility of this happening. If he runs to your trap, you can punish him for it by viper stinging him inside the trap (it doesn't break the trap immediately now, it only has a chance to break it like mana drain + fear).

Druid/Rogue = The strat is pretty similar, except now you can fear the rogue as well. You can pretty much CC the rogue for 70% of the fight if you wish. As far as hunter's mark goes, it depends who you plan to kill first. If the druid is your kill target I would keep mark on him and just keep the rogue in combat through the CC's with rank1 distracting shot and rank1 serpent sting. If the rogue is your kill target you can just mark him and that will prevent him from restealthing anyway.

Frost mage/rogue - you need to survive their burst. Be ready to trinket out of stun and silence the mage if he tries to sheep your priest. If you outlast their burst and drain the mage you can win. Also you can trap/fear the rogue, so when he trinkets out of one, use the other. If he is undead it will be harder ofcourse.

Use HoTs/shields preemptively against this setup, even at full hp.

Go to curse gaming, download a focus frame (I use default UI and thus I use FocusFrame, but each unit frame has it's own focus frame as well that is compatible with it).

To make a target your focus target, click it and type /focus. Some arena mods like Proximo allow you to make a target your focus by right clicking (or anything you choose) it's tab on the Proximo window.

With the focus frame, you're able to see your focus target's hp, mana, buffs, debuffs, target and cast bar.

Some macros you can use:

/cast [target=focus] Silencing Shot
/cast [target=focus] Viper Sting(Rank 4)
/cast [target=focus] Scatter Shot

This is the basic structure of the macros I use. I didn't really dive deep into the whole macro business so there may be better versions to use, but these work fine for me. You can also make macros for other spells and other ranks of viper sting. If your spell has different ranks, make sure to type it like I did above, and not "Viper Sting (Rank4)" for example.

How to use them in arena? for example if you're against Priest/Mage/Rogue, and they're focusing you, your goal should be to kite the rogue while draining and silencing the mage as much as possible. So you make the mage your "focus target" and then target the rogue. By using the macros above, you can silence/viper the mage whenever you want without changing the target you currently have (thus allowing you to wingclip/scatter/concussive/dps the rogue more effectively).

 

Kaber

I can't tell you how many games I've lost because a teammate line of sighted me around a pillar as I was trying to spam heal him back to full. You cannot afford to LoS your healer unless he is completely CCed and you need to escape some burst damage - but as soon as he comes out you need to get back into his line of sight and not leave it. The same goes for your pet, you have to watch where it is at all times as well as it's health. The healer has a lot going on, so you need to communicate to him that your pet is being focused and you also need to make sure it doesn't leave his line of sight so he can get it some heals.

Realistically though, any healer that has to spend the entire match healing your pet will run OOM because that pet takes a lot more damage than a player, so proper pet management is key. If you let it die (and there are times where you just need to let it go for the sake of your healer's mana pool), make sure you are in a position to resummon it. 4 seconds and half the mana cost is absolutely huge.

I use a Boar in BG play (and have ever since my Hunter hit 60), the thing with a Boar is that they are absolutely fantastic for kiting melees (though against a well played Warrior or Rogue as MM there is still very little you can do). Once it charges though, it's done and in Arenas there is no room for kiting. Even with charge a Druid can just shift and be on his way again without worrying about the pet. Now Boars can get Dash just like cats (they share a cooldown so you cannot use both at once), and dash will allow them to keep up with the Druid for it's entire duration (it also counter-acts hamstring for keeping your pet on priests and paladins). In Arenas I would say any pet with Dash is going to be better than Charge, and whether you go with Dash or Scorpid poison will really depend on your line-up and spec. With double hunters you can just drop snake traps, use silence and scatter to protect your Viper stings. In a CC heavy team you can call out your Viper and have teammates cover it by CCing dispellers. Your team composition and whether they are willing to cover you will really play a big role in determining which pet is best for you.