Misdirection – Play Nice or No Pudding
WIth great power comes great responsibility. Misdirection is now the single most powerful spell a hunter can wield. Its power is its ability to direct aggro to people who don’t have aggro-mitigating capabilities. Screw up a Misdirection Pull, and you’re getting kicked, no second chances. But let’s talk about Misdirection before we start in with the threats and intimidation, shall we?
Misdirection - Threat caused by your next 3 attacks is redirected to the target raid member. Caster and target can only be affected by one Misdirection spell at a time. Effect lasts 30 seconds. So Sayeth Thottbot, so let it be Done.
So how does this work? It’s called:
The Misdirection Pull
1. Target a raid member, party member, or your pet
2. Cast your Misdirection spell on them
3. Target a mob and fire at it
4. The Threat you generate will be transfered to the target of your Misdirection spell
The Misdirection Pull is a wonderful way of helping your pet or main tank establish aggro control. While your party stays back and you have your Ultimate Zone of Perfect Safety, you Misdirect a mob onto your main tank, saving the tank the need to Taunt the mob off of you, or you Feigning Death to assist the tank in the same.
Why would you use this method of pulling instead of the tank pulling?
1. A hunter can Misdirect-Pull with Aimed Shot generating a boat-load of aggro, much more than a tank can at a similar range. After the Aimed Shot, follow with a Steady Shot and an Auto Shot. Remember that the first three attacks are Misdirected. My non-crits for these would total 2300 damage. If they all critted, it would be almost 4000.
Don’t worry about pulling aggro from the tank; you’re doing the exact opposite! The warrior builds rage more quickly and doesn’t have to expend as much to maintain aggro due to the massive amount he gained at the beginning of the fight from the Misdirection/Aimed Shot/Steady Shot threat he just received.
Imagine giving a warrior a [David's Single-Shot Slingshot] that could do 2300-4000 damage at a range of up to 100 yards. Do you think he would mind if it had a 2-minute cooldown? They are going to love your Misdirection Pull, trust me.
2. If the Hunter accidentally aggros a mob while using the Misdirection Pull, he can still FD and save the party from a costly wipe. Putting a warrior, or any other class, out in the middle of nowhere can have grave consequences. A warrior who is unfortuate and aggros an add is stuck with him, and the party has to work together to recover, or die trying.
You can use Misdirection for crowd control, too. Remember that Misdirection works on any member of your raid, including your pet.
Problem: You enter a room with two mobs who are immune to polymorph and seduce, and you don’t have a rogue. You want your pet to off-tank one, but you want the mob out of the way while you focus on the other mob because they will heal each other if they are within 10 yards of one another.
Solution: Put your pet at a distance from the party, tell him to Stay, and put him in Defensive Mode. Cast Misdirection on your pet, target one mob. The tank charges the other mob while you hit your target with Aimed Shot. Your target is Misdirected to your pet off in the corner where he is attacked and off-tanked, while the rest of the party burns-down the mob the warrior is tanking. As the mobs are on opposite sides of the room, they don’t heal each other. Once the first mob is down, switch to the other.
You can Misdirect onto a warlock’s felguard or a tanking paladin, too. Any off-tank will work.
Misdirection and Macros
Misdirection works really well with macros. We recently talked about Target and Focus and how to use them in macros, well, now we’re going to see them in action with Misdirection. We’re going to need two of them: a Set Focus macro and a Set Misdirection macro.
The Set Focus Macro is simply
/focus target
So, when you target the main tank and mash this macro, he is set as your Focus.
The Set Misdirection Macro is
/target focus
/cast Misdirection
/targetlasttarget
You have made the main tank your focus and you’re ready for the first pull. You target the first mob, hit your Set Misdirection macro, which casts Misdirection on the tank, and then you are again targeting the mob you want to pull.
Sweet, but we can clean this up a bit more.
/cast [target=focus,exists] Misdirection
This changes the target of Misdirection spell without changing your next attack target.
You’re in the middle of a fight, your Focus, the main tank, goes down. You need to get your pet to tank. It’s a good think you’ve got your macro ready:
/cast [target=focus, exists] Misdirection, [target=pet, exists] Misdirection
Ooo! Lookie at them apples. If your Focus exists, you will cast Misdirection on it. If your Focus is deader than a level one gnome mage on the Outland-side of the Dark Portal, than you cast Misdirection on your pet, if he exists. Between his Intimidation and your Misdirection, he should grab aggro and save those squishies’ lives.
And the, you’re at the end of the fight. You have no chance, it’s just you and the priest. The afk priest. The “I only heal the main tank” priest. The snot-nosed, bed-wetting, prissy-pants, tutu-wearing, chromosome-missing b@stard who let you all die, priest. Again, it’s a good thing you’ve got your macro ready:
/cast [target=focus, exists] Misdirection, [target=pet, exists] Misdirection, Misdirection
If your Focus is dead, and your pet is dead, so this macro will then cast Misdirection on whatever you’re targeting. Yup… you knew it was coming. Target the priest, mash the macro, Priest says, “what kind of buff is that…” , you target a mob and Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot… and FD for good measure.
Seriously though. Don’t Misdirect onto your priest. That’s just wickedly stupid. They are a tightknight bunch and the word will be spread about you. No amount of priest-karma will save you.
So save the “Misdirect Onto a Squishy” antics for the other cloth-wearers. They love it! They told me so, they did!
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15 Responses to “Misdirection – Play Nice or No Pudding”
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Maybe not so much a cloth wearer as a leather wearing tank. I sure could have used this from the hunter pulling in last night’s instance. That would have saved me trouble from running back and forth to grab aggro from the hunter and other squishies. I have a cool down on my growl as well as my charge. If he’s pulling one mob after another before I’m ready to go it’s a slow run to the next group to pull aggro from. A couple of bad pulls wiped us, one from happy go lucky hunter and one from the trigger happy druid (yeah, I was running low on time *grimace*).
Sounds like a good deal. Can’t wait to find a hunter with it willing to let a feral druid tank, to try it out.
I know a couple of 70 hunters on Madoran who are ready, willing, and very able to allow a feral druid to tank. In fact, I think one of them is running Mana Tombs tonight. At 7 server time.
Hm, interesting. My druid tank is on Madoran. Think perhaps I could get an invite?
I’d love to try this Misdirection on for size, then if it works out I can let last night’s hunter know he needs to get it. Ha-ha!
She is? Well consider an invitation served.
some day i will be lv 70 and get to try this out but might be a wile they don’t like hunters all that much on my server too many bad ones so even if i get a group i never get to pull but i like my hunter so I’m not going to give up even if i have to grind my way to 70 =P
adrus
Well, just finished Mana Tombs with Lui. Had two hunters, healadin, druid tank, and warlock. No wipes, no deaths, all bosses down. How do you like Misdirection Pulls now, Lui?
Well, I delete a comment from this post because it was too good to be buried. I am working with the comment author to write a Guest BRK Post. Stay tuned.
I think there is an even better implementation of this macro:
/cast [target=focus, help] Misdirection; [help] Misdirection; [target=pet, exists] Misdirection
This will attempt to cast Misdirection on the first of three targets. First, on your /focus unit if it is friendly. Second, on your current target if it is friendly. Third, on your pet if it is out.
I take no credit for this… just found it elsewhere. I also use it together with the following hunter’s mark / set focus macro:
/cast [help] focus; Hunter’s Mark
Lets not forget the importance of pet MD for when wanting to trap something far away So ya put your pet away cheatah and run placeing an ice trap a for ever distance away(haven’t tested this one in particular but is about right distance) like the entrance at Ramparts, then run like a wild mhan on crack all the way to say that first tunnel lookn thing on way to 2nd boss, when ya whistle for your little flamer or kitty cat of choice MD to them end with scater and eye of the beast and pet speeed the mob into your trap. This gives ample time to CC 2 more mobs when survival and wearing your 2 peaces of beast master gear that out fiter puts on for ya when ya get into monkey before blowing your whistle.
i’ve been up to late and not explaining this exatly right but i think peeps get the picture lets ya trap something far far away w/o leaveing where healers are which is my normal trap setting place gotta keep those resto cake eaters on their toes.
Hides from his Resto Druid
playeing wife,
Scathatch
TNO-Kalecgos
ps been browseing this site for about 2 hours and making it a must read and book mark for the rest of TNO’s Hunters the smart ones will come:).
Only thing I want to know about misdirect is if it will work on a stealthed rogue. Almost got to test it in kara but rogue was hidin in the other room.
My only question is why you would steady shot instead of arcane shot. Does misdirection not work with the arcane damage?
I’m only level 41 so I have a bit of time before I have to deal with MD, bu would like to know
In a PVE situation you don’t need to have a huge burst damage so Steady Shot with it’s cast time is better than Arcane Shot with it’s instant castbecause it will put out more damage per second than Arcane and it will put out more damage per mana than Arcane.
Since you aren’t getting any of the threat you generate with Misdirection there is no real need to burn through your mana to accomplish the goal of pulling the mob onto the tank.
This isn’t to say that Arcane Shot is useless. It’s a great pull shot at rank 1 and like most instant spells it is good for a spell cast interrupt, and of course it absolutely shines in PVP for putting them down after an intimidate before they can Pot, Heal, Bubble-Hearth, etc…
man good blog and i love that last comment about the jack@ss priest lol in a couple guilds ive been in its a practice for the hunters to use misdirection on a random clothie just for kicks
Hey~ I have a question about your MD macro.
This one –> /cast [target=focus, exists] Misdirection, [target=pet, exists] Misdirection
When you cast this, would it immediately put MD on your focus even if it was about to die, or immediately on your pet? Thought I’d ask before I try it out….
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