Let Hunters Pull! Part II

BRK » 02 February 2007 » In Strategy »

So we’ve looked at the potential pulling possibilities of the other classes, now let’s begin to delve into the subtle art, the artful and illustrious methodology of hunter pulling. But first, let’s take a trip back to your first real day as a hunter.

Congratulations, you just dinged level 10 and you got your first pet. He’s a bear and you named him Fozzie. Nice. So, you think understand the basic concepts, you’ve done a little research, and you know that a hunter is a ranged class. The purpose of your pet is to hold aggro and keep the mob at a distance. Very good.

You see yonder wolf, you send your pet, you wait for Fozzie to strike, he grabs aggro, you being to auto fire, and soon the wolf is dead. Tada, you are a hunter. Bloody blooming bleeping simple, isn’t it.

So why the F do so many hunters not get even this most basic of hunter skills? When I used to hold classes, I would take hunters new to the guild out and evaluate their skills. Do you know how many level 40 and higher hunters would send their pet, immediately slam Aimed Shot, allow the mob to get up in their grill, then start meleeing the mob? It was ridiculous how many utterly horrible hunters I saw.

Just because you are a hunter doesn’t mean you know how to play a hunter. This goes for using your pet, kiting, and especially pulling. Just because you’re a hunter does not mean you have the wow-given knowledge of how to pull.

Frankly, I have seen so many poor hunters that it never surprises me when parties don’t ask a hunter to pull. A quick example:

Getting ready to take down Drak in URBS, another hunter and I were discussing who was going to kite him. Since I was higher on the Damagemeters, it was agreed the he would kite Drak while I burned his guards down with the rest of the party. This was an experienced hunter in full Tier 0 gear, mind you; he was not a noob.

He lined up, fired, and proceeded to run out of the room and across the bridge… and then Drak caught him. Why? Because the hunter forgot to turn on Aspect of the Cheetah. Not totally unforgivable, but pretty angering to the rest of the party. His proper recovery stretegy was to immediately send his pet to attack while he continued to run across the bridge, then pull his pet pack and kite Drak using his pet. It’s a nice strategy that I have employed with many mobs, including Drak. What did our hunter friend do?

He began to melee. Melee! This was a guildie, someone who was looked up to as a veritable treasure-trove of information on WoW, and he was meleeing Drakk? As sure as I’m writing this, I swear it’s true. Of course, you know what happened next, he Feigned Death. And who was next on his aggro list? His pet. Pet gets conflagurated, infects half the raid, total and complete wipe… except the hunter who Feigned Death.

And you wonder why hunters get a bad reputation?

The next time we went to UBRS, we brought along a rookie kiter. She was level 59 and a “gear clown” in every sense of the world. But this hunter was someone to whom I had given basic and advanced hunter training all through her rise through the levels. I knew she know how to solo, because she had been shown how. Ditto kiting, pulling, and all the tricks of the hunter trade. She had the knowledge, now it was time to apply some of it.

She was very nervous; this was her first big kite. I walked her through it then let her practice it once, making her run all the way to the end of Dal’Rend’s chamber so that she had the path fresh in her mind. While she was running away, the party started their preparation for the wipe. Gotta soul stone? Ready to DI? That kind of talk. She came back, we got ready, she set up for her Aimed Shot… and kited Drak perfectly out over the bridge, even jump-shotting a Serpent Sting before making the left turn toward Dal’Rend’s room. The raid was not just surprised, but thrilled; our guild had another competent hunter. To say she got re-invites is an understatement.

Competent hunters are not created with gear, talent points, spec, or gold. They are created with training and experience. A hunter’s skill is not measured in tales of big instances or a matching set of high-level armor. It is measured with the reputation each hunter has among his guildies and peers.

In the next, and hopefully final, installment of this series, we’ll actually discuss Hunter Pulls.

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