Zwaineroth

After playing around in 2s last night with a Prot Warrior, I really have to agree that survivability is a huge issue. As BM, out of 25 matches I died within 5 seconds on more than half of them, getting gibbed by focus fire almost straight away. Mages and Ret Paladins are the worst offenders here, because at least we have a few tools to deal with Rogues and DKs. Note also that this was with 4-piece Hateful/Deadly and a Tenacity pet (Scorpid) using Roar on me.

I am thinking of trying a Surv spec like THIS. The focus would be heavy on trapping and CC while tossing out instants. I'm not a fan of Deflection/Counterattack at all, because it's rare for me to be facing anyone as I'm trying to kite; I'd rather have all of the trap snares.

In general I'm going to avoid 2s and try to stick to 3s and 5s where I won't be the first target and can actually get some damage off.

 

Bolverk

I am liking your build, not sure how that will translate into Arenas but, anything is worth trying and improving upon. With the dual-spec seemingly around the corner (release slated for January?) I have to wonder, what will be the outcome for hunters in pve/raid/pvp?

I'm of the mind to put on my wish list some swaps between the MM and SV trees; say for instance Combat Experience and Readiness with, Sniper Training and Explosive Shot.

The viability of the latter two, are more prominent in open pvp areas like the battlegrounds where maintaining distance and denying exploitation of our dead-zones is incredibly easy. In a fairly boxed in area like an Arena, specifically the 2's and even the 3's (I haven't competed in 5's yet); keeping our distance from heavily armored and resilient close-combat classes is where we fail. Especially, with the onslaught of Dk teams, now taking prominence in Arena.

I'm speaking of those of us, that are not seasoned Arena players. Almost all of the Arena vids I have seen are centered around the Caster classes, that don't have any dead-zone restrictions; so my knowledge of Hunters, in Arena is limited.

What is the experimental or first time user, of a Survival build to do for stats, in the current state of pvp? I had stated in a previous thread that I didn't believe a full or heavy SV build to be viable but now, I'm not so sure. Are we going to see more changes in the stacking of Agi/Stam/Str/Hit/Resilience (because Strength adds to AP) vs. the Agi/AP/Hit/Resilience?

If we're going for close quarters combat; trapping, shooting, wing-clip and counter-strike will be our bread and butter. We're not going to be the uber new melee class but, we can become the close-combat, crowd-control thorn, in our opponents side.

Your points spent in MM are essential but also Focused Aim would help, not for the reduction of StS (Steady Shot) push-back but for the increased % to hit, call me a fool or as some are prone, a "retard" but I would rather take the 3% to hit over 15% to arcane shot because it affects our hit rating overall and not just StS. I would personally pull the 3 points out of Sniper training and dump them into Resourcefulness, to reduce the CD on traps from 30 to 24 seconds as well as reduce the mana cost. The Glyph for improved damage on the Immo-trap will be a boon for it's effect not it's longevity.

Any opportunity your opponent grants you through ignorance; is an opportunity to turn their ignorance on them and take them down. A Hunter that is harder to kill by sheer survivability, may just be the way to go.

 

Mixe

I don't feel that even Resilience can help our serious problems in 2v2. I also got killed within 5 seconds on pretty much every game; not enjoyable.

I like your spec, however I'm pondering over survivability vs. burst. I'm not too sure how 3v3 and 5v5 will play out. I can certainly see a MM "burst" build being more useful than a SV build which is based upon surviving. With the Build I posted on the previous page*, I was dealing insane burst when I wasn't being dragged down by CC/stuns etc. In a 3v3/5v5 scenario I can see us getting ALOT more free space to manoeuvre and deal some big damage. The following shots from the MM tree would also be beneficial for a 3v3/5v5 scenario:

- Aimed shot for the 50% healing debuff
- Silencing Shot for the usefulness of silencing a healer/caster to nuke him down quickly
- Chimaera Shot for the benefits you get back depending on the sting.
- Scatter Shot would also be picked up from the SV tree for CC if we do get a rogue on us. That way a quick Scatter Shot can provide us a few seconds to get out of melee range.

As you can see, with those 4 shots, we can be sure that we are of some use in Arenas.

Now onto Pets. I've been trying the Crab and I've found him somewhat 'alright' in 2v2/3v3. The survivability, was still an issue. Now this may be because my healer was slacking (quite likely). Pin is insanely useful against Melee, but the thing that drags it down is the long cooldown on it. I think that maybe the Chimaera with Froststorm Breath could be more useful as it's cooldown is short (10 seconds) and has a 30 yard range instead of the melee range of Pin. The only issue with the Chimaera is that it's survivability is less and requires the Beast Mastery talent in the BM tree, and as we've realised - BM is not too great in 2v2. I'm unsure on 3v3/5v5, we will have to see as time goes on. I will be looking into trying each Build in each bracket and hopefully come out with some results. As for now I can only speculate.

The main problem I am seeing against melee-heavy teams is our lack of an ability to help us survive the onslaught of stuns from Rogues and Warriors. Blizzard have stated they are making changes to Deterrence, but I feel it is a stupid idea what they have at the moment. They are giving us pretty much a front-cone-bubble to help us against melee raping us. Not going to be useful since any melee DPSer with a brain will just move to the back of us. Any thoughts on this?

I quite like Disengage as an ability to get out in the open. I've made a macro to Wing Clip then cast Disengage. That macro is great if you enter any BG/Arena. But the flaw with Disengage is falling damage. You really have to be quite careful where you disengage, or you can easily die off fall damage. I'm thinking that perhaps whilst in air after casting disengage, you should take no fall damage for a few seconds (no more than 4) just to give us an incentive to use it whenever, wherever. Because atm, you have to look behind you and judge whether you are going to fall to your death. Please note I'm not talking about off great mountains, I'm talking about your average slope in a BG, and using disengage whilst at low hp (e.g 2k).

* = (This is a build I made myself quickly and I didn't really go time to see if it's the absolute best build. I realise there could be a few changes needed to make the build more efficient in PvP. Pointers are more than welcome ^^).

 

dlanod

Same experience here. I was partnering a DK and we noticed an instant difference when I switched from saving my Shadowmeld cooldown for emergencies to doing a Shadowmeld/Prowl combo on starting (I grabbed the wrong pet). We jumped from a 50% win rate to a 100% win rate (admittedly off a small sample in both cases, and against average teams as we are also) because I was no longer getting immediately focused down in 5-10 seconds every game. Hardly an ideal solution, but hopefully the new Deterrance will provide some help here in surviving that initial burst.

 

Zwaineroth

So the spec I posted earlier is a little silly because Arcane and Explosive share the same CD. :X

I am trying THIS BUILD in BGs now. Survivability is MUCH better and the ability to legitimately kite many classes is great.

I can see the argument for taking Focused Aim being purely for the pushback resistance; as it is, I don't need the +hit because of dual Accuracy enchants.

The problem with Survival, as everyone has identified, is that Explosive hits like a wet noodle, so you have no burst at all and no good way to put players away. Staying alive is cool but not when you can't kill anyone. I can see a spec like this being useful in a utility role in 3s/5s to lock down/drain healers, but it doesn't seem optimal or versatile for a DPS role.

I'm coming around on spec'ing MM for PVP in general; you get some of the same tools as Survival but have much more damage output.

The other issue I have with Survival is that I have about 20 abilities I want to use, 30-40 if I include focus macros for some of them. I am not doing well at managing all of the hotkeys, that's for sure.

I've pretty much resigned myself to not playing 2s unless I find a priest or druid to run a drain comp. Oh well.

 

Dantastic

Ive decided to go ES survival for arena. I tried MM and BM, but I found I was either nuked in seconds or not enough tools to control the fight properly. Going surv I felt a lot less helpless, wyrven sting is superb in these short matches, and with my disc priest partner we could keep a player CCd almost constantly.

In my opinion SV gives pretty good burst via very regular LnL procs from trapping, and if the PTR changes go live then explosive shot will do twice the current damage. Right now 3xexplosive in 3 GCDs is fairly effective, but with twice the damage we could actually be a strong burst class, and in the same tree as many of our best PvP talents. Im fairly optimistic personally.

 

Grumhul

Being optimistic is really nice. I tried Survival in Arena yesterday as well, but I got disappointed. Wyvern Sting is really nice and an added advantage is that you tend to keep all your "control" elements (Scatter, Entrapment,Imp.Wing clip), but the burst damage is so much that I either ended up stunned/snared or dead within seconds. Right now, Naxxramas runners have a real party on the arenas with their high damage gear, benefiting by the lack of Resilience.

In my humble opinion, BM and its ability to neglect CC is a great asset right now. I had a built like this in mind to compensate for the upcoming Readiness/BW nerf. You get Scatter, Entrapment and Surv.Insticts by losing Kindred Spirits and Go For the Throat, which I think is acceptable.

I will have to test a little bit more and let you know about results. However right now I am convinced that the seconds you get as CC-free damage machine in an environment that everyone has a very easy way to burst you down while stunned, are invaluable.

 

Elendril

I played some 3s last night with a Disc/Holy priest and Mutilate rogue. I wouldn't play anything but BM until resilience starts to add up, since otherwise you'll just die within the duration of a stun. Bestial Wrath/Readiness is pretty absurd burst - we'd kill mages in the duration of garrote so they couldn't ice block. Master's Call is very good support for melee on your team - I was able to keep my rogue out of roots reasonably well to keep his DPS time up or save myself when Beast Within was down.

One note - as much as people have talked about using tenacity pets in arena, I'm not convinced that they're better than ferocity. Ferocity damage is clearly higher, and cat stealth is really nice, especially for a night elf who can shadowmeld - this is a big deal on Orgrimmar arena especially - but Heart of the Phoenix is very good as well. A lot of teams will just try to explode your pet, and being able to bring it back instantly is really nice - I had one game that got to 1v1 with me vs a death knight, and when he couldn't stay on me, he swapped to kill my pet only to see it instantly come back to live.

 

Mixe

50/21/0 will only be good until Readiness stops affecting BW. So in longterm, 50/21/0 is out of the equation. I too am finding Tenacity pets not so great in arena. Their DPS isn't that good, and they still get beaten really quickly. Roar of Sacrifice is nice, but with the burst which I think will outlast resilience, it's not too useful.

So maybe as you said, picking up a ferocity pet such as the Chimaera could prove useful. I do love the ability of the Chimaera, and the Cooldown is short which is even better. However, it means we must pick up the exotic talent, which is alright. The main issue with pets is survivability. I truely think that Resilience needs to scale with pets also.

 

Dantastic

The real strengths of survival are CC and bursty damage (getting the latter from the former is nice too). Ive been doing 3s with an ass rogue and resto druid. Certain classes, notably death knights, are a pretty big problem for the druid with their silences and hot destroying ability. But as survival, I can scatter trap, start dps on main target, and as soon as trinket is used sleep. That puts 1 on their team out for 20 seconds at least, and in the kind of quick fights we see at the moment thats often enough to put someone down.

I tried BM readiness, with the druid speccing moonkin as an experiment, but although the burst is strong, you cant even trap (no scatter), cant do strong DPS on the move with only arcane/aimed to work with and generally people run behind a pillar as soon as you go big n red.

Also if ES goes live in its current PTR form then I doubt youll see a single PvP hunter whos not surv spec and I want to get used to it in the hope ES ends up as powerful as it is now on the test realms.

 

Osungar

Hey guys, haven't posted here since Season 2 when I quit my hunter, but just getting back in.

I've been playing 5's all night on a 4DPS team (DK/Mage/Lock/Sham/Me) as a survival hunter (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft). One thing that I'm instantly noticing is the incompatability of ES with sheeps & other CC. It takes a lot of coordination to make sure you're not DPSing a target near a CC. This would be a lot easier in 2's and 3's, and maybe even in a 5's that's not so front-end oriented, but it is a problem that MM doesn't really have.

Wyvern sting I was also very excited to use, since I was MM for the first 2 seasons. It takes a lot of practice, though, to learn how to use it well... I found myself using it too early a number of times, and once you blow it too early, you can't really recover CC-wise because of the dot. Once again, in 2's and 3's this is much easier where you can trap -> WS rather than in 5's, where it's much easier to WS -> trap.

Overall, I'm really leaning toward respec'ing into MM for 5's. I want to try Survival in 2's and 3's first though, but Silencing Shot vs Wyvern Sting... I'm not sure which brings more utility, especially since you can still hold onto the really essential PvP survival talents in an MM build.

Has anyone else had these same sentiments?

*EDIT* - Reading back a couple pages, it seems a lot of people do share my sentiments. ES + Arcane Shot being on the same CD is also stupid, which everyone but me mentioned and I completely agree with.

I did have a question though... out of all the MM specs linked, noone picks up Wild Quiver or Piercing Shots. Have these been shown to look a lot better than they actually are?

With pets: I think pets with snares are being pretty overrated at this point. We already have plenty of snares to kite with, and most classes have abilities that, after they're off CD, will allow them to instantly catch you regardless of whether they're snared or not (WE Nova, DK Pull, Sprint, etc). I'm planning on using a Ravager or Cat, and I'll substitute in a Scorpid if I'm on a drain team.

 

Dantastic

In the next patch theyre removing the AoE effects of explosive shot so it wont be an issue anymore. I agree though it is a real pain at the moment.

Wild quiver at first glance does look like a bursty PvP damage ability. However its been shown as a poor talent even for PvE dps, and considering the movement involved in arena matches preventing many autos from going off I certainly think this is one to avoid. Similarly with piercing shots, it has potential but the amount of ignore simply isnt high enough imo, though if youre struggling with plate teams it could be worth considering.

I think one of the real strengths of the new pet system is choice, especially for PvP. In some games, slowing the opponents casting is going to be most useful, sometimes a stun, sometimes an immobilise. Personally Im sticking with the crab at the moment, the soul link effect on anyone in party can really help with the burst in arenas at the moment, and an immobilise has the strength of defensive use, to peel a melee from you or a teamate, or offensive to pin down a nuke target and prevent them LoSing you.

 

Crowbite

I ran the same comp as Elendril and completely agree with him. If you aren't running 50/21 with a ferocity pet, you're gimping your team because burst is the only way to play right now unless you run a holy pally/resto sham/DK combo.

Also, we had a couple game run long enough for me to go OOM. We are going to have some serious issues once the burst gets fixed. Viper is a real kick in the nuts right now.

 

Mixe

In 5v5 I'm finding MM much better. I'm playing in a Resto Shaman / Rogue / Ret pala / Arcane Mage / MM Hunter setup and it seems to be going well. Being MM I offer:

- Another Silence through Silencing Shot (in addition to the mageS)
- Chance to get some mana back through Chimaera in case the match does go on.
- Scatter Shot for a few secs of CC
- Aimed Shot for the healing debuff in addition to the rogues.
- Trueshot Aura for +10% AP for the rogue and pala.
- 50% reduced disarm effect through talents.
- More health, more survivability.

Overall, I'm pretty sure MM is the way to go in 5v5. The burst can be pretty amazing also. Critting for 3-4k is very good.

 

Elendril

Posted some of my thoughts on the state of hunters in arena on the official forums - reposting here in case people are interested:

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Hunter Arena Problems and Solutions

While it is difficult to discern much from the current state of arena and its massive burst damage, hunters still have a number of fundamental problems that remain unaddressed by the recent changes. I’m going to address some of the problems here, as well as the effectiveness of some of the solutions that have been attempted or propsed.

1) Ability to Attack – While many cite this problem as Line of Sight, LOS is only one component of hunter DPS concerns in arena. Hunters lack the ability to stay on a target and DPS, whether that target is running away behind a pillar or getting in our face. Additionally, we’re very limited in our ability to set up our damage. Other ranged classes have reliable abilities to disable or snare a target to keep them in range and LOS to set up burst damage. Hunters have Scattershot and traps, both of which break on damage and the latter of which requires very specific positioning to use on the intended DPS target.

Possible solutions: An easy initial change would be to stop Scattershot from breaking on damage or give it a chance to break on damage. It is only a short disorient as it is – having it break on damage seems unnecessary and could help a great deal in letting hunters keep DPS targets pinned down to at least make use of two GCDs attacking them rather than one. This has the added benefit of not making pets stop attacking Scatter’d targets, since having to resend your pet to attack is a logistical annoyance for hunters who are using scatter just as an interrupt on a target they are DPSing. The harder change is the “chance to break on damage” for Freezing Trap, which apparently has technical requirements with pet AI to implement, but would also help significantly.

2) Vulnerability to Focus Fire/Escape Methods – Hunters are extremely vulnerable to being the target of focus fire, because the vast majority of our abilities require range and can’t be used on melee classes who get on top of us. Additionally, hunters rely a great deal on dodge to mitigate melee damage, and that mitigation can easily be circumvented by stuns.

Possible solutions: Disengage has gone a long way toward giving hunters a viable escape option, albeit one that requires significant practice to use effectively. Master’s Call, as well, is very effective at giving hunters a chance to escape, although the pet range requirements again make it somewhat difficult to use effectively. The proposed change to Deterrence certainly provides some protection from focus fire, but with the directional requirements still leaves the hunter very vulnerable to stuns. The “prevents attacks” component also seems somewhat awkward in that it shuts down hunters from contributing even utility like interrupts while trying to defend themselves, and also encourages the use of “CancelAura” macros for a class that is already starved for keybinding space. A percentage damage reduction while active would provide a much less awkward play experience.

3) Global Cooldown Lock – Hunters suffer from massive GCD lock, which makes utility ablities harder to use effectively as well as making our burst damage somewhat lackluster. While we have Autoshot adding to our damage unlike other caster classes, we don’t have any cast time “big damage” attacks that we can synch up with other abilities to put out significant damage in the window of a single global cooldown (especially with the upcoming nerf to Steady Shot).

Possible solutions: Removing Aspects from the GCD was a nice step here, though it seems they are currently back on the GCD on PTR, which is discouraging. The easiest initial change to make here would be removing Readiness from the GCD, which seems obvious given its effect. Scatter and Silencing Shot off the GCD would help a great deal at aiding our utility, though given their damage components seems like it might be somewhat undesirable overall – hunters are doubly penalized in interruption in that our interrupts are on the GCD *and* have travel time, making it much more difficult for us to effectively interrupt especially short cast time spells than other classes. For the burst issue, it would be interesting to see an ability like the old aimed shot again – a longer cast time attack with big damage that could let us “set up” burst on a target.


There are other concerns, like pet survivability, mana management, and awkward abilities/pvp set bonuses (glove bonus is -2 seconds on tranq shot? We get a modified Purge on a 15 second cooldown, and our set bonus is that it’s cooldown is only 13 seconds longer than the original? Really…?), but I don’t want to present too much at once – a start is better than nothing.

 

Thelastdeadmouse

I ran some 2v2s today with a resto shaman as 50/21 using a cat with fair success, 1704 in 32 games at slightly above a 70% win rate. The combined cat and BW/Readiness nerf will certainly hurt, but it seems like it'll be less than a total deal breaker; the vast majority of the bad teams didn't require the use of Readiness, and on the good teams I didn't finish the match with the second BW. That combined with the cat damage nerf is concerning though. If exotic pets get a slight DPS bump or if cat dps gets nerfed far enough, a Chimera will be my pet of choice for sure.

In that mix was a 14 minute drain fight against a resto druid and unholy DK, which we thankfully won. Going into Viper is a huge issue; we basically had to accept the fact that we would have to go into a "regen mode" where we completely stopped all offensive strategy and focused only on keeping the druid's mana low and forsaking damage entirely.

I will note though that popping Deterrence for an Improved Revive Pet can save a match that seemed entirely lost.

 

Grumhul

I have the same experience also. Bad teams do not require the use of Readiness, and teams that know what they do, can simply work around Bestial Wrath. Still Readiness is handy for double traps and Intimidation but still, we can live without it. If Cats get a damage nerf then for sure a different pet would be good, but I wouldn't leave the ferocity area. Rise of the phoenix is simply that good.

 

learntokite

ok so i play with a frost dk in 2s and we have a SERIOUS problem against dk.pally teams...anyone have any strategies against that combo cause its a bitch?

also what can you do as a hunter when you get one melee, sometimes 2 melee on ur ass in 2s? i drop frost trap and ill use pet to stun but still they are on me and i just go down fast...any tips? im 50/21/0 btw so primarily BM

 

sr20eric

The viability of 50/21 after the nerf to Readiness isn't an issue. It still resets EVERYTHING that keeps you alive. TBW/BW is a great damage increase I'll give you that. But double stun, double deterrence, double disengage, double trap is too handy. I 2v2 as double BM...the only match up that gives us trouble is double pally.

 

Crowbite

Depending on your bracket of choice, 50/21 really doesn't offer more then Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft or Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft after the nerf. In lower brackets the scatter shot breaks up as many target trains as BW or intimidate does, while in higher brackets you still gain readiness, longevity and far better control.

The problem is when you're playing good teams. Bad teams will always be beatable no matter what spec you play. It's good players where this matters. The second BW is the killer when you play against pally teams or against mages. They have abilities to wait out your first BW. It's the second one that pretty much assures a win.

Also, why pop deterrence for revive pet? The minor glyph prevents push back and you can't dodge or parry while casting anyway.

 

Elendril

Just a quick comment - if you want to maximize your potential as a hunter in arena, you need to learn all the tricky things you can do with Disengage. Disengage is absolutely amazing if used correctly, and you need to constantly be aware of it. Besides escaping from melee (the obvious use), Disengage can be used to LOS burst damage by leaping behind a pillar, or can be used as a blink to chase down someone running away across the map if you jump/spin/disengage in mid air. Learn it and love it.

 

thevidon

Do Hungering Cold and Freezing Trap share DR timers?

 

Levidian

Hungering Cold - Spell - World of Warcraft
Freezing Trap Effect - Spell - World of Warcraft

Both Frost/Magic effects, You would assume so.

 

Thelastdeadmouse

Wow, I feel a bit silly. Shows I'm primarily a PvE player.

 

Crowbite

What are you guys planning to do with your yellow slots? We have 2 options as I see it with full deadly/hateful gear. Either we take 3 of the following (ring, neck, cape) that have hit on them and gem all the yellows with 16hit to meet the 5% cap, or we take the hit trinket and use two of the +hit items and socket with int or res gems. The first option frees up a trinket slot for something like a [Offering of Sacrifice] or [Defender's Code] for mitigation or [Mirror of Truth] for DPS, and the second option allows for a little more leeway in item selection.