The Freezing Trap in Instances is the Schiznit
“In my guild runs usually is the tank that pulls… but during the pull [I'm] usually on CC duty (i.e. frost trap) and was wondering what is the best shot to use in order to peel one mob off the group going after the tank. I have tried both aimed shot and distracting shot with mixed results.”
Why is your guild letting your Tank pull? Because you guys are not trying to avoid adds; you know these groups are linked and there is no point to letting a hunter pull as your Freezing Traps crowd control is your secondary purpose behind your massive quantity of sustained, ranged dps. This is Standard Instance Tactics and BRK participates in them with aplomb when additional crowd control is necessary.
So how does this go down? Your preparation for the Trap is critical. Place your so that your mob will be trapped a good distance from where the rest of the fighting will take place; you don’t want an AoE attack to break your trap. Place your trap 10-15 seconds before the pull so your trap cooldown is partially burned. You get back beside your tank for the pull, target your mob…
And turn almost 90 degrees away from your mob.
Sideways? Yup. Remember, you can fire at things that are not directly in front of you. BRK sees lots of people who cannot run and turn in a circle at the same time. If this is you, by standing at an angle to your mob, you will decrease your turning-time and allow you to run toward your trap all the sooner. If you can run and turn at the same time, even better. If you can execute a 180 degree turn with your mouse, that’s optimum and you’ll get some BRK Cool Points.
So your mob is marked - BRK prefers blue square for his traps - and the tank pulls. All the mobs go for him and you want to pull yours and separate him. Your Pull Shot Macro comes in very handy here.
/cast Arcane Shot(Rank 1)
/stopcasting
You’ll instantly hit your target, he’ll aggro on you, and your Auto Shot will turn off, preventing you from accidentally shooting your mob after he is trapped. We have not run into a situation where a linked mob did not target us when we hit him with Arcane Shot Rank 1; you don’t need anything more powerful and it saves mana by not using something more powerful.
You run your mob toward your trap. Your pet is beside you. Doing nothing. Why? During your run to your trap, you can target your Focus’s target - you made the tank your Focus, right? - and send your pet to attack it while you run to the trap to complete your crowd control assignment. Isn’t that spiffy? Of course it is. You’re running toward the trap and your pet is running to demolish the first dps target. That’s the epitome of a hunter controlling his pet and maximizing his effectiveness. BRK wants you to get This Good.
Poof, your mob is trapped, so what’s your next move? Run away from the trap while shooting the tank’s target. Get as much distance from the trapped mob as possible while staying out of the AoE attacks your party is smacking-down. Now, drop another trap. The trapped mob will eventually break free of your first trap and come after you again, and now you’ll have a fresh trap ready and waiting for him. Poof, he gets trapped again, and off you scoot to another safe location, drop another trap, keep firing. If a trap isn’t resisted, you can keep your crowd control target safely out of combat for a frickin’ long time.
BRK recommends you make sure your party understands that you are in control of your blue-square mob, even when the trap breaks. You know that he’s coming for you and that you have a trap ready for him, but your party may not. When the trap breaks, tell your party, “Hunter has Blue Hunter has Blue”. They will learn that this means that you can practically max-dps one target while simultaneously crowd controlling another, and they can safely ignore Blue-Square until they are ready for him.
Mastering your traps and the techniques you can employ to maximize their effectiveness if crucial to playing a hunter in an instance. BRK recommends you practice by “toying” with low-level mobs to see how effective you can be at trapping, running, and dropping another trap, waiting for the mob to run at you again, retrapping, etc. Rememer it’s a skill like Kiting that you need to practice before you wipe your party in Shadow Lab.
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im good at trapping what i have trouble with is when they want me to send my pet in to off tank and ice trap another i all ways have trouble switching to the target i need to trap…
Adrus
DAmh said:
“Arcane Shot Rank 1; you don’t need anything more powerful”
A small advice - don´t use Arcane Shot Rank 1, when trying to peel of a mob from a palladin-tank, pulling with his Avenger’s Shield. It´s not even remotely possible. I even had problems with Distracting Shot Rank 7 (max). Often i had to use a maximum Arcane Shot TOO, just to get some attention from the blue-marked mobs.
But a benefit of getting so much aggro, is that the mob won´t go for the healer when he exits your Freezing Trap. That can also happened when you pull with a low-aggro shot.
May your freezing-traps never fail!
The right shot to use is Distracting Shot (max level), it almost guarantees you will still have agro when the trap expires. If you do happen to lose agro to your healer, or someone else when the trap breaks, use it again. And again if you have to.
If you have a free action bar spot to use Distracting Shot as a Pull Shot, go right ahead. BRK doesn’t bother with it as we’ve never encountered a situation where Arcane Shot was ineffective.
However, rememeber that Distracting Shot is classified as Arcane, so an Arcane-immune mob will respond no better to Distracting Shot than he would Arcane Shot.
As for tanking Paladins, BRK cannot make any argument in support or against Lake’s comment. We can grab aggro from pulling warriors and feral druids with ease, but until we run with a Ret Paladin, we’ll reserve making any proclimations.
And trap your mobs away from yer healers so they don’t aggro your trapped mobs. Positioning is a critical component to every fight.
BTW, BRK is making this comment from the surgical suite at Florida Hospital Celebration. Yes, we’re wearing a hospital gown and surfing the internet. WooT!
You know, I never thought about the agro radius being an issue for keeping a healer safe. I usually trap where I have a convenient opening, and completely forgot that keeping the mob away from the healer would keep those big ole heals from stacking up the agro while he thaws. Thanks for bringing this up!
Throw back to old post about whom we’re having trouble with. 3 weekends, 3 attempted dungeon runs, 3 failures to complete run, 3 different resto druids being main heal.
1 - No threat reduction talents and couldn’t move away from ghosts
2 - Lied. He’s balance. Gear and spec. :-/
3 - Thought he should attack DURING pulls, then switch to bear form and run til we take back agro. Told us to L2Multitask when we told him to heal only and never attack pulls.
Number 3 was the most infuriating. I told him he was the healer and couldn’t attack when I pull with a low agro shot or else he’d pull all the agro. He said “You’re just a sucky hunter”
Just make sure the web cam isn’t on and your tooshy isn’t hanging out of the back of that gown.
Good luck, BRK. Speedy recovery and all that.
As a priest, I also second the use of distracting shot to pull mobs into freezing traps. Using low agro does save mana, but it is too high of a risk. I frequently draw agro from my heals on mobs as they unfreeze, especially if space is limited. The hunters I have played with who trap well and keep attention off me all use distracting shot. There is really no reason NOT to use a high threat shot here as that is your intention. If freeze trap is resisted, I can still heal the hunter, but it is much harder to heal myself when I am being attacked. Saving one shot worth of mana is not worth the risk of healer agro.
Ah, trapping and kiting. I remember my first successes at both, in Shadow Lab and Shattered Halls, come to think of it.
… yeah, I solo’d a *lot* until level 70.
Learned to kite from a very nice mage, who could pull off a perfect jumpshot. Yeah… still working on that one, myself.
meh, its easy now. It used to take much more skill back when you had to feign death to place a trap. Now with clever traps and beast lord set bonus, you can pretty much stand on top of the mob and just time the trap well
“Back in my day the cool down on traps was 15 minutes and you could only kite running backwards. You kids have it easy”
Meh.
Thanks for the informative post Damh. I had thought I was doing an effective job trapping in instances but you have given me some new pointers to help me do even better - this should definitely help for the guilds next attempt at Moroes
Oh btw.. I also finally re-specced BM (41/20) and am loving it so far hehe.
I guess combining [decent writing skills] with [general cluelessness about his class in a PvP setting] at least sparks controversy and views.
Yet …
Don’t write about whatcha don’t know, lad.
- Not even 6,000 lifetime kills is no PvP experience
- Pre-expansion ranking of … Sergeant
- No arena teams in any bracket
Still using the level 60 standard ranged weapon?
No gems in any sockets?
Keep practicing. In-game, because writing sure isn’t helping you.
Hey again anonymous. My armory link is:
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Madoran&n=Damh
I don’t know which armory profile you found, but it sure isn’t ours.
It seems he’s talking about a dwarf hunter Damh on Kilrogg who’s still using rhok delar
LOL. I guess it’s a classic case of open mouth, insert big red paw. There’s a link to your armory profile on the page… If I were gonna take the time to trash someone’s gear and experience, I’d be sure I’m talking about the right person. Funny, though… anonymous didn’t provide a link to his own armory profile so that we might have a standard to which we can aspire. XD
He posted the same thing on the latest BRK WOW Insider post. Can’t seem to get his facts straight.
I for one like BRK’s writing style and does have some good points. Not sure I agree with them all, but it’s no big deal. I’m no expert on hunters, only got mine up to 64.
Keep the insights coming BRK. And don’t lose your writing style!!
I use arcane shot or distracting shot to pull mobs for the initial pull. I usually prefer Arcane shot(max rank) since it basically always works as an initially puller and does damage. It’s also on my action bar and dist. shot isn’t even though I use it a bit.
When it comes to pull mobs off during a fight… Distracting shot works better hands down. Or you can just scatter shot that mob and trap him.
All this changes when you do heroics. As I only do heroics now as the “simple” instances don’t drop anything for my anymore and we love Paladins as tanks the pull tactic changes a bit.
In heroics the trashmobs single hit most people not wearing plate (unless you change equipment).
It is very hard to get aggro from a good tank when he pulls. And yes, you should pull for the tank usually with your aggro shot on other players (don’t know the name of it as I play the german client).
In tricky situations I do this:
I let the tank pull
I set aggro on my pet (as otherwise I get pretty much hit badly)
Advantage: you can set your pet to stay behind the trap and stand elsewhere.
And I pull. Also when the trap vanishes usually the mob has aggro on my pet and not me.
That saves a lot of problems where you have to fight a lot of trash mobs in heroics.
Also watch your timing. Set trap and let the cool down come down a bit before you pull. This allows to lay a new trap underneath the mob during the fight before the old trap vanishes.
Note: we do have healers who see the value of my pet and heal it as well.
Latest feat: we did one endboss with 4 people, my pet tanked
In shattered halls with max points in trap mastery and clever traps (plus 2 pieces of beast lord) I regularly trap 2 mobs with freezing trap i always use max rank arcane shot here’s how i tend to play it
lay trap 10-15 secs before pull
arcane shot target A
concusive shot target B
wait for target A to hit trap
drop second trap
wait for target B to hit trap
As long as main target is nuked quickly 26 secs on first trap is long enough for me to get distance and chain trap target B …
I hardly seem to get any resists at all now, if i get one i’ll pick mob up with pet
Hope that makes sense, see how many people want you for groups when they see you can trap 2 mobs and off tank a third with pet :O
I have often thought about the two traps idea and was glad to see that someone uses it effectively.
You didn’t mention it, but I presume that target A would have be clearly identified to the group as a definite second on your kill list.
One thing I have lots of trouble with is trapping ranged mobs. I ask not be assigned ranged mobs for trapping, but then who listens to hunters… Any ideas anyone?
The mob stands as follows…
M M M M Bluey (you want bluey to not be a caster - say ‘please’ to the marker).
Stand away from your herd of players (group), well away.
Before tank pulls, say Ice Down (tank should educated to know that this means count 5 then pull).
Macro shoot your Bluey. If you do this right (immediately after the pull) Bluey hasn’t had time to be distracted by anything else, doesn’t need distracting shot, and will come straight at you.
By the time he reaches you, you’ve already shifted to your Focus Target, sent your pet in and started DPS. Don’t worry ’bout it. Trap will freeze; mantra - trap will freeze, trap will freeze, trap will freeze. I don’t know if mantra’s work - but I do know you didn’t fire a sting (did you?).
Hunters that say “Bluey broke out of my trap - how did that happen?” don’t have macros and used a sting.
Okay, IMHO the running around bit shouldn’t really be necessary. Perhaps a few steps, but as long as you’re in range and you’re well away from everyone else (use shoo a lot) you’ll be fine.
A step or two here and there is okay, but re-trapping can be done where ever you want.
Knowing your Bluey is on one side of you helps a bit.. hence the step or two.
This is why having some SV is important btw. You want the extra 10% HP, (who doesn’t?) but you also want nice long freeze traps.
BM or MM? I don’t care, BRK seems to be obsessed with BM, personally I prefer giving my herd some extra AP (Trueshot), getting some extra agility/AP and intellect. But it’s a personal thing and depends on your style of play. I just feel the SV thing is a must for happy freezing.
“you want bluey to not be a caster - say ‘please’ to the marker”
Good tip. I think I’ll try that instead of “hey - I thought I said don’t mark casters for me you fool!”
Seriously though, that was a nice post. I’m glad to see another person agrees that a few points in SV are worth it for the 26 seconds of coolness.
BRK mentioned recently that they were tempted by a 41/3/17 build. Personally, I use a 41/5/15 and it seems to work nicely for me.
I occasionally prefer casters to melees to be honest, But this depends on the geography of the battle.
But i use skills that BRK for example strictly wouldn’t skill: Hawk Eye and Silencing Shot.
Casters won’t run into the trap ,right. They will start casting whatever they can at you. Now there are 4 occasions where they won’t:
1) They are out of range.
2) They are out of sight.
3) They are silenced.
4) They are oom.
Now I use them to my advantage:
-Lay the trap where the mob is to be freezed.
-Step back to max range for the pull, and take step back right after the shot.
-The mob will start walking towards me until he’s in range. Once he’ll start casting he eats a silencing shot. This will make him start running again.
-Tada, an entrapped mob!
You may replace range by line-of-sight, but you need an obstacle the game recognizes as being one for the mob as well. There are some strange obstacles out there …
Hi Guys,
This is my first post after numerous insightful forays into the world of BRK.
Can anyone confirm for me a chain trapping suspicion I have held for quite a while.
If you trap a target, then lay another freezing trap on or very near the frozen target, the second trap appears to be consumed within the frozen masses fairly quickly and the cumulative trapping time appear to be much less than if the target was trapped and retrapped a slight distance away?
(Temsik - Thaurissian)
Well, Annonymous, I’ve never had an actual experience like that, but it’s a personal superstition of mine to always place the second trap away from the initially trapped mob.
As far as the “you’re just a sucky *insert class here*” comments, it’s ALWAYS in my experience been from someone who’s too full of themselves to admit that they are in fact the one with insuficient skill. They usually get a prompt /kick from me.
I would also like to say, BRK, that your blog has helped me immensely as a hunter. The things I’ve learned from this blog have gotten me invites to instances left and right, with people who ‘usually don’t PUG with hunters.” That’s a rewarding thing to hear. Thanks a ton BRK, keep up the good work.
Spaceturkey
lvl 68 BM Hunter
Anub’Arak
I know you love hunter pulls with a passion. However, on trash groups where I trap, I use a different technique - assuming the tank pulls. On my server, the tradition of tank pulling is too strong to fight against, anyway. With pally tanks, it’s not a choice, either. I am marks with enough points in Survival to reach longer traps.
I visualize a capital A (or an equilateral triangle, really), with the (future) fight site at the top, and my first trap dropped at, say, right bottom corner, some 15 feet away from the top. I pull my mob with no less than three shots, but usually arcane-auto-steady-auto. While the mob is running to my trap, I target the tank’s target using /assist Tankname macro, start shooting, and send my pet there. As soon as my mob is trapped, I wait for the autoshot of the current cycle to fire and run toward the other bottom corner of my visualized triangle. On the run, I do whatever “maintenance” is needed - send the pet to the next target, Hunter Mark the next target, put a sting up or just fire an Arcane Shot. When I reach my destination, I drop the trap, make a couple more steps beyond it to avoid standing on the trap, and proceed with dps. Repeat till the group moves on to my target.
The initial pulling shots aren’t lost dps or anything, because the trapped mob will have to die eventually, anyway. What they do is assure that my mob will keep chasing me, even through three or four traps, and even with healer classes who tend to pull more aggro (shammies, I think, do). I used to pull with a single shot, but enough healers got aggro that I changed it.