“Dear BRK, I am trying 41/20/0 (after seeing a lot of more progressed raiding hunters switch and from your long standing advocacy) now from my 0/45/16 marksman build, and need some advice from an experienced BM hunter. My guild can clear Karazahn and are trying to setup runs for Gruul’s, Magtheridon, and possibly BC outdoor world bosses so I want to be able to step it up a notch.

“When should I pop Bestial Wrath? As a MM hunter the closest I had to this was rapid fire for a long cooldown ability. If I pop bestial wrath should I pop the bloodlust brooch and rapid fire too? It hardly seems worth doing on normal mobs or am I mistaken? Gorgor & SpiderPig”

There are three keys to the effective use of damage-enhancement spell and items:

1. Do not overload yourself with attempting to execute a memorized script and then freaking out when the battle diverges from what you expect.
2. Do not allow your trinkets and spells to cause you to overtake the tank on the threat list.
3. Do use them for maximum effect during the battle-sequence by paying attention to DPS-interruptions.

You’re fighting Shade of Aran and you know what you want to do; pop Bestial Wrath and a haste trinket and start beating Aran’s @ss. Wham, Aran casts Blizzard as soon as you walk in the door. Start running, don’t worry about your plan. Don’t allow this unforeseen event to frustrate you into inaction. Go with the flow, get through the Blizzard, wait for a Flame Wreath and then pop your trinket. Beat his @ss.

You’re fighting Gruul and you’re ready to tear him up. The fight begins, you pop Bestial Wrath, your trinket, Rapid Fire, and a leatherworking drum. Your DPS rocks the house! You grab Gruul’s aggro, you get crit for 102,000 and are punched so hard you come out on the other side of the WoW universe. Bad hunter.

Allow your tank to get aggro and don’t go DPS-insane right off the bat. Use Misdirection and an Aimed/Steady/Arcane salvo to help him establish aggro. It shouldn’t take too much time before he’s solidly in control of the threat list and then you can give Gruul what he deserves.

You’re fighting Nightbane and your Rapid Fire spell’s cooldown is up. You’ve been watching your cooldown bars and are salivating to jam your attack speed through the roof. You pop it just in time for Nightbane’s Fear bomb to hit you. Not good, you just wasted almost the entire Rapid Fire bonus.

Pay attention to the raid warnings and the sequence of the fight. If you know Nightbane is about to drop his Fear on you, hold off on the Rapid Fire until you can extract maximum benefit from it. This means paying attention to your environment and the battle, not just your macros and your cooldown bars.

As for popping Bestial Wrath with your trinkets, our opinion is that you should use Bestial Wrath by itself and combine a trinket with Rapid Fire.

Bestial Wrath decreases the mana cost of your specials by 20%. Extract as much benefit from that as possible. Get off as many Steady/Arcane/Multi combos as you can without interrupting your Auto Shot. If you pop a haste trinket or Rapid Fire during a Bestial Wrath, your Auto Shots will come much faster and you will clip them frequently with your specials.

Pop Bestial Wrath, take advantage of the mana-savings and get as many specials in as you can. Once Bestial Wrath fades, slam a haste-trinket and Rapid Fire and let those Auto Shots flow. When they crit, grab the Kill Commands as they become available.

Don’t interrupt the Auto Shots, don’t clip them, by trying to insert specials during this phase of your DPS. You just got 20% mana-savings for specials during the Bestial Wrath, now let the super-fast Auto Shot damage accumulate and your mana to regenerate during the trinket/Rapid Fire session. Greater mana-efficiency leads to higher sustained DPS.

Say it with us, “The purpose of a Hunter is to provide massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS”. Notice we chose the word ’sustained’ not ‘burst’. Always use your trinkets, Rapid Fire, and Bestial Wrath to maximize your sustained DPS, not your burst-damage.

“Dear BRK, Timmy, (my beloved pridewatcher), and I were thinking about WOW instead of working so I thought I would ask a question. Do you think that the dependence we place on our pets and the ensuing ease of soloing contributes to the multitudes of hunters who never learn to crowd control, manage aggro or even how to play the class in general?

“It’s just a thought and it’s probably been talked about a million times but I can’t remember anyone explicitly laying part of the blame at the furry feet of pets. Zeemmaraj.”

It’s not the pet’s fault, no. The problem isn’t that leveling a hunter is any easier than any other class, it’s that hardly anything we need to do to be helpful in a party or raid is part the skills we learn and use to level. This is just as Zee describes.

What happens when we grab aggro from our pet? We melee. Does it work? Sure it does. Does this behavior fly in the face of everything we need to understand about aggro management in an instance? You bet your bippy.

Do we need to trap in order to level? Nope. See two mobs, send pet on both with a Mend Pet cooking and he’ll be fine. Try the same thing in Shattered Halls and your pet is going to end up a smoking pile of goo on the floor.

Compared to a hunter, a pet is a great tank. Compared to a Real Tank, a pet is a joke. Your pet has 10,000 armor and 7000 health? Your Kara tank has 14,000 armor, 15,000 health, 15% dodge, 20% block, and 15% parry. Your pet mitigates 50% of melee damage, but your tank completely avoids 50% of all hits and then mitigates 55% of the damage he does take when he’s hit. When grinding, your pet takes a beating but not so bad a beating that a Mend Pet won’t keep him going. In a heroic or Kara, your pet will get two or three-shot. Onemust be able to chain-trap to move into higher content and our1-70 grind doesn’t prepare you for that.

What does? Practice. Just because you don’t need to chain-trap to level doesn’t mean you shouldn’t practice it.

Are you running around Nagrand killing the Talbuks? Try chain-trapping one tonight. See how many traps you can use in a row. Two? Three? Can you chain-trap a Talbuk to Halaa? To Aldor Rise?

And once you can chain-trap, we’ll move onto double-trapping.

“Dear BRK, my warlock has been part of our Kara Group A [but] I decided to bring Ahoni and Almandaragal this week instead. Despite being a little under geared, we performed splendidly. Going into the Attumen fight we were 4th on the damage meters. I wasn’t worried about that since I had been busy trapping. When Attumen was lying on the ground under his horse, I stood alone atop the meters. Not bad for a Hunter with unbuffed ~1550 RAP and 18.5% crit.

“Thanks for everything you do at BRK. You have made me laugh. You have made me a better hunter. But more than that, you have made me a better player. Keep up the good work. Ahoni & Almandaragal”

A hunter’s primary responsibility is providing massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS. But his ability to crowd-control just about any kind of mob can be equally critical to raid success. The Moroes is a perfect example.

If you don’t have a spare tank to hold that trapped mob and burn it down before engaging Moroes, the hunter could have to keep him trapped for the entire fight. Beastlord gear helps. Survival spec helps. But BRK has done it with no bonuses to traps and so can you. Pull-timing is critical and emergency heals may be necessary, but chain-trapping that add is more important than your DPS so make sure you do it properly.

And don’t think you can pull of chain-trapping a Moroes-add without having practiced chain-trapping for a long time beforehand. The sooner you start practicing, the better.

Aetherial Circle Kara Group One cleared Attumen, (two pieces of cloth healing gear for the squeeky priestie), Moroes, (plate belt for our off-tank and cloth healing gear for the squeeky priestie, Maiden, (leather DPS-gear for a feral druid and a shard), and Big Bad Wolf.

Now we have small problem with BBW. See, July was the BRK Month of Hunter Loot and last time we were here we got both the [Beastmaw Pauldrons] and the [Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle] on one kill. Um… guess what dropped again last night.

Mmhmm. Both of em. The groans of disappointment were so loud and heartfelt we felt the need to apologize to everybody.

Now we did clear four bosses, including Maiden with only one priest, so it was still a dandy night, (except for the sharding of all that hunter gear; that made our eyes mist).

Let’s talk about Moroes for a moment. The original plan was for one shackle, one trap, one burned down very quickly, and the fourth off-tanked by Hobbes. The off-tank mob was a guy who hits like a truck and we told the raid leader that Hobbes can off-tank him, but only with heals. No heals, dead pet, vicious clothie-smashing mob running amok.

We tried this plan and when the shackled mob broke free and the squeekie priestie had to reshackle - even with a Mend Pet cooking - Hobbes was cut down faster than you can say “GET AWAY FROM MY BUGS!”

So the raid leader changed strategy and had Hathorn, a very good feral druid, shift to bear form to off-tank. Doomilias and I were kinda concerned in that if Hobbes dies he can be rez’d, but if Hathorn dies, he’s gonna probably have to stay dead. He’s our #3 DPS-bringer and losing him would be a Bad Thing.

Even more concerning was the plan that once the second add was killed that Hathorn tank our trapped mob and then DPS would burn that one down, too. We have no problem chain-trapping our mob through Moroes’s death and really didn’t want to tax our healers by asking them to shackle, heal both tanks AND watch Hathorn as he tanked the meanest of the four adds.

Basically, we knew we had the DPS to pull this off but did we have the healing?

Fight began, we trapped, Hathorn tanked. The first mob went down PDQ and DPS shifted to Hathorn’s mob.

“BLUE IS GOING FOR SNOW!” the squeeky priestie excitedly announced in a voice that would shatter glass.

Yes, our trapped mob was running toward us when our resto shammy heal-grabbed aggro and was about to get a big mouthful of pain. Hunter to the rescue! Our lovely little Pull Shot Macro was again the hero.

/cast [modifier:alt] Distracting Shot
/cast [nomodifier] Arcane Shot (Rank 1)

When you need to grab aggro now, you want to use instant casts. Aimed Shot and Steady Shot are both on cast-timers, whereas Arcane Shot and Distracting Shot are instants. Arcane Shot has a cooldown so you cannot fire it twice in rapid succession. However, we can fire Distracting Shot and Arcane in succession, and that’s just what we did. Holding down the proper modifier key, we smashed our heavy Distracting Shot followed by our regular Arcane Shot. This generated enough threat to pull our mob off of the shaman and get him to come at us, right into our trap. Mob controlled, healer saved, raid eternally grateful, yada yada yada.

The raid burned down the second add and Hathorn moved onto our trapped mob. Healing came through in a Big Way and the third add went down hard. DPS switched to Moroes, he ate our DPS-Cookies and suffered for it, falling face-first in the dust.

“Run out now!” someone screamed. Our typical ending to the Moroes fight is to run out and let the remaining adds despawn before we come back in to loot.

“Wait a minute…” someone else slowly thought out-loud, “Let’s kill that last one”.

And we jumped on that idea. Squeeky priestie led the charge with a torrent of high-pitched obscenities directed at our target.

“KILL THAT {censored}!! {censored} HER IN THE {censored}!! SHE’S A DIRTY {censored} {hyphen} {censored} MOTHER {censored} {censored}!!”

So that was fun.

It should also be noted that Group 2 cleared Attumen and Moroes also before an emergency caused their priest to have to skadoodle. Big props to Aetherical Circle’s Kara Group 2!

“Dear BRK, what do say? I am writing this because I have thank you from the bottom of my little dwarven heart! You are my savior. Praise BRK! I stumbled into BRK-land via Google searching for kiting techniques. I read a post and became hooked.

“Then I found your blog. I wanted to cry. Reading your blog is like having the “birds and the bees” conversation with your mom after she found you making out with the boy next door. It can be extremely embarrassing at times but absolutely essential. [Ed: emphasis added]

“I am very eager to learn and to become the best hunter I can be. I won’t call myself a decent hunter, but I am not a total huntard, just in a state of growing pains. Thank you for make the maturing process as straightforward as possible. Yours Truly, Breana and Pookie

First, let’s say that Pookie is a fabulous name for a pet. We /applaud the choice. When we were a very young hunter, we had a stuffed bear named Pookie.

Then, of course, that sentence. We laughed, we cried, it became a part of us. +5 BRK Cool Points, natch. We love it!

Finally, some BRK Wisdom. Breana, you have BRK’s permission to call yourself a Decent Hunter. Just because you’re not the best chain-trapper on your server does not make you a bad hunter. Who do you want in your guild? A highly-skilled hunter who sports the emotional development of a howler monkey, or friendly and intelligent girl who practices her chain trapping in order to improve her skilset? There’s a h3ll of a lot more to classifing a hunter as “decent” than an ability to not break sheep, ya know.

And keeping your pet on Passive in kara doesn’t hurt either. /blush

One of the benefits of the Freezing Trap is that we can, generally, place our crowd-controlled mob wherever we choose. BRK has taught you to always position your trapped mob such that AoE damage will not break the trap; keep the trapped mob away from the tank and the main DPS target so that the trap isn’t accidentally broken.

The downsides to the Freezing Trap is that it is resistible and the traps take a long time to cool down.

The super-benefits to Shackles and Polymorphs is that they are basically indefinite and instantly cast. The downside is that these guys never get positioned properly. You’ll have sheeped and shackled mobs mere inches from the main DPS target, and should you break one, the priest or mage will scream bloody murder.

A simple Misdirect onto their squishy @ss will shut them up quickly, but we’ve found that that strategy is patently derogatory toward achieving Harmonious Party Dynamics. Another solution should be found.

Here it is: learn to Multi Shot in a Crowd-Controlled Environment.

Let’s start with a diagram that shows our problem:

As you can see, if the hunter fires Multi Shot while directly facing the ogre-target, he will undoubtedly break that Polymorph. Our choices are thus: refuse to fire Multi Shot, or find a way to fire it without hitting the sheep. Can we fire Multi Shot without hitting the sheep? We sure can.By turning counter-clockwise, we’ve removed the sheeped mob from our Multi Shot “Zone of Terror”. Will we still be able to Auto Shot and everything else? Yup, no fears there. This “firing off-axis” toward our target will only affect our ability to destroy that sheeped mob with our Multi Shot, nothing else.

When do we turn? You have choices. You can start your turn long before you’re ready to fire Multi Shot, or you can do a quick “flip-turn” using your mouse just as Multi Shot is about to fire, or anytime in between.

How much do we turn? Ahh. Therein lies the rub. You’ll need to practice this many times to learn the exactly how wide your “Zone of Terror is”. It’s not quite 180 degrees, but it’s way more than 120 degrees.

Big Note: for safety, it’s better to turn too far and not be able to fire than it is to not turn enough.

It’s hard to practice this as this situation is hard to recreate. If you have a mage friend who wouldn’t mind help you out in Arathi Highlands, or wherever your favorite practice zone is, that would be optimum. Otherwise, you’re gonna have to use your next instance as a testing zone. Be careful and learn quickly.

Wednesday, 3:00pm. You know what that means by now, we hope. BRK on WoW Insider is primed and ready for launch.

What else is going on? We ran heroic Ramparts last night through the first boss. Loads of fun trying to remember the pulls we haven’t done since January. Typical heroic instance, the boss was cake while the trash was mean and nasty.

We’ve given up on the Sha’tari Skyguard as there are only two daily quests while the Netherwing area has eight. Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money, and a dragon too. We should have ours by Sunday.

Holy bird-dung, the proliferation of mining bots isn’t more obvious than when one mines on Netherwing Shelf. There’s adamantite and khorium littering the place. Why? Because one cannot go out there without the “disguise” one receives for getting started on the Netherwing quests. And to start those quests, you have to have the epic flying skill, which cost 5000g. What gold farmer is gonna blow 5000g for the privilege of mining on the Shelf? None. So they just send their d@mn bots everywhere else and leave that area alone. If you’re a blacksmith or other profession that needs ore, getting your epic flying mount just added another side-benefit; access to the best mining in Outland.

Did we mention we respec’d back to BM? We decided that since we’re running with a shadow priest, we’re gonna turn off Aspect of the Viper and stick with Aspect of the Hawk. Since AotH is gonna be our partner, we added 5/5 in Improved Aspect of the Hawk. We missed the screenshot, but at one point we had IAotH, our Thundering Skyfire Diamond, The Beast Within, Ferocious Inspiration, and our Abacus trinket all procing at the same time.

Speaking of the TSD, as soon as we see one of the meta gems that give +12 agility and +3% to crit damage, we’re gonna splurge and grab it. The TSD procs neither often nor long enough for us at all.

In the BRK Market Watch, Primal Fires are selling like crazy, 20 gold each. Stacks of Netherweave Cloth are down, fetching only 3-4 gold per stack. Primal Earths are going for 4 gold each, which really surprises us. Knothide Leather is down around 5 gold per stack, and the Scraps are barely getting 1 gold per stack. Adamantite, Khorium and Eternium remain steady at 20 gold per stack. BOE greenies aren’t selling worth a d@mn; we’ve having to vendor everything. You want fast cash? Get your good-for-nothing carcass to BEM and farm some Motes of Fire for an hour.

Finally, several our super-close friends are considering splintering once again and forming a Heroic-Instance guild. Kara is nice, but the logistics of it are a pain, we only run it 3x per week, and we have to deal with some unsavory types. The idea is a GM-only leader, no officers, no invites, just us friends. No forums, no website, no DKP. Anybody out there doing something like this? We’d love some feedback.

It’s a four pack. No, there are five. OMG it’s six-pack. /shudder

You’ve got a mage and a rogue and that’s good. But you, Mr. Hunter, are about to be pressed into service into another role in addition to providing large quantities of sustained, ranged DPS.

Welcome to Crowd Control City, population you.

This is Chain Trapping, my friend, and the mechanics behind it are intricate and detailed. So let’s do what we always do when presented with a stressful situation where our reputation and membership in the BRK Hunter Pantheon of Excellence is in danger.

We cheat.

OK, cheating isn’t really the answer, but practice is. BRK takes his trappers to Arathi Highlands for training, so hop the Refugee Point Express and meet us there.

Remember our raptors from our kiting training? They’re back. Remember those figure-eights through the camp we made you do? Welcome to your past because we’re gonna do them again.

Let’s find a nice pretty raptor… ah, there’s one. Let’s name him Chucky. OK, we’re gonna trap Chucky and kill him. Drop your freezing trap, target Chuckster and fire. Here’s he comes, right into the trap, and *pop* there he is. Notice how your Auto Fire button is still flashing? What happens if you run more than eight yards away and turn toward your trapped Chuck? Try it.

OO! Lookie, you just fired at Chuck and broke his trap. That’s not good is it. How do we fix that? Well, when we want to trap a mob, we use our Pull Shot Macro:

/cast Arcane Shot(Rank 1)
/stopcasting

This will keep our Auto Fire from turning on and prevent us from accidentally freeing our trapped mob. Very important this is. Let’s try another Chucky.

Trap down, nice Pull Shot, here he comes… and *pop* in the trap. WooT. Your Auto Fire is off so it’s safe to run around. Let’s do just that and run down the road a bit. Further, further.. ok stop. Is your Freeze Trap cooldown up? Yes? Go ahead and drop another.

Oh look! Chucky is free and he’s coming right for you! Ahh.. now you see, don’t you. Stay right beside your trap, here he comes, and *pop* he’s trapped again. That was your first chain trap, nicely done.

Here’s the Big Points about chain trapping.

• Your trap can exist without going off for 60 seconds.
• Your trap cooldown is 30 seconds.
• A mob will remain trapped for 20 seconds.
• You can only have one trap down at a time.

Because of all these facts, you have a lot of time-management for which you must account.

Let’s try another raptor. Drop your trap and wait. Your trap can exists for 60 seconds, remember? Let it sit and ponder Chain Trapping, what are we waiting for?

The trap cooldown, that’s right. If we wait at least 30 seconds before trapping Chucky, we’ll have a fresh trap to put down in case Chucky resists the first trap. The lesson is that we don’t drop our trap the second before the mob we want to trap arrives; we want to drop it as soon as possible before the pull so that our trap cooldown is up in case of a resist.

Your trap cooldown is up, so pull Chucky. Nice Pull Shot and *pop*. Now run down the hill into the camp. That’s far enough, now drop your next trap. Good. Chuck has been trapped for 10 seconds so you have another 10 seconds before Chucky is freed. But remember too that it takes Chucky 10 seconds to run the same distance you did. Since we know where he is, where he is going, and how long it will take him to get to us, we can consider this “run to the hunter” time as trapped-time or crowd-controlled-time, whatever you prefer.

Now take Chuckurinio on a nice figure-eight, chain trapping the whole way. Good. OK, let’s head off somewhere a little harder.

Shadow Lab.

We’ve already cleared the first boss and are about to start clearing Blackheart the Inciter’s trash mobs. The first two packs are four-pack and we’ve got the Blue Square. We’re going to be pulling into the clear room behind us, so how do we start our chain trapping? Before the tank pulls, we go back into the cleared room and head off to a side area where we’re sure the AoE damage isn’t going to occur, drop our trap, return and stand beside the tank, target our Blue Square and wait.

The party is ready and the tank pulls. The Blue Square mob comes into range and we smack our Pull Shot. We’ve got aggro! Our Auto Shot is off thanks to our macro so we just turn and run for the trap. We arrive, stop, turn around, watch Blue Square come at us and *pop* he’s ours. Smack your Assist macro which causes your to automatically target the tank’s target, smash your Pet Attack macro and off your pet races to begin DPSing.

Done properly, the tank has pulled his target down the tunnel and inside the cleared room. Start running to the other side of the cleared room, putting some distance between you and your trapped mob. DPS the tank’s target as you run, but once you reach a safe position, stop and DPS like a madman.

But keep watching your trap cooldown. As soon as it’s up, drop another trap. If you’ve timed everything well, your second trap should be down before Blue Square has broken free.

That’s exactly how it goes down, how lucky for you. But eventually Blue Square is freed abd running at you. Remind the rest of the party that you’ve got him and not to fear or off-tank him. Oh good, they left him alone and he’s still coming your way. Yay and *pop* he’s trapped again.

Get on the move one more time, back to the position of the original trap. By now your party should be finishing the third mob and the tank will be able to pick up your trapped mob, but be ready for an early trap-break anyway. Watch your trap cooldown and as soon as it’s up, drop your trap.

When you do the five-pack mobs, you might need to trap three times. When you do the six-pack mobs, you may need to do four. Yes, it’s very engaging work and, when done properly, is tremendously fun and will earn you heaps of accolades.

There are things that can go wrong, of course, such as Blue Square gets hit with an AOE and he aggros someone else. Target him and blast him until you get aggro back. Once he’s running at you again, manually turn off Auto Shot and you’re back in the chain-trapping game.

What if Blue Square gets feared or hit with a DoT debuff? Well, then it’s hopeless to try to trap him again. If there is a free mob running amok, tell the rest of the party that you’re trapping him, like, “Hunter is Trapping Circle!”

Always remember that good communications will keep a party alive in a tough spot. BRK has been in a party that has pulled one of the six-pack mobs and the level 71-elite demon and survived because of chain trapping and excellent communications.

And he has seen that same party wipe on the non-elite skeletons before Vorpil because of bad communications. Boy, that was really funny.

When we get a question at the BRK North-American Centralized Digital Communication and Ice Cream Bunker, the email is pretty specific. For example, look at my gear, check my talents, which gun is best, do you like walks on a beach under the moonlight, where can I buy some BRK Mojo, etc.

But sometimes, buried within that question is a deep, theological conundrum… and occasionally a blatant demand for kitty-kisses. The latter we forward to a more personal inbox, but the former gets special blog-attention.

BRK loves to focus on the foundation of Hunterism and Hunteristics, (both terms are hereby copyrighted by BRK Entertainment Ltd. and may not be used without the express written permission of Major League Baseball).

Without a solid understanding of the mechanics and principals of the basic elements of ranged combat with a pet, the intricacies and nuances are really not important. The concept of a Shot Rotation is such an animal.

BRK received a lengthy and kind email within which contained a question about Sting Shots and their usefullness. However, this particular sentence really caught our eyes:

“My shot rotation is usually: send in pet, hunter’s mark, concussive shot, steady shot, {serpent sting}, arcane shot and then auto shot and arcane till mob dead.”

Before we get into a lengthy diatribe, rowdy rebuttal, and messy food fight about the pros and cons of Sting Shots, we’ve got to straighten out this shot selection sequence. Do you know what’s wrong? Yes? No? Bueller?

Either way, let’s go back to the most basic question: What’s the best way to kill a mob.

The answer, of course, is: “It depends”.

PvE or PvP?
Instance with lots of help, or solo?
Lots of possible adds or all alone?
Sober and alert or drunk and slobbering on the keyboard?

The answers to these questions help form the fundamental principal of:

Efficiency versus Expediency - do you need to kill while conserving resources, or kill quickly regardless of the consequences. What BRK considers the optimum solution is to maximize both. This is the foundation of a Shot Rotation.

BRK-Definition of Shot Rotation - Preserving resources as much as possible while delivering the most damage possible while not pulling aggro from the pet/tank.

A Shot Rotation is not the Maximum DPS Possible. Any fool can blow every cooldown and fire every shot whenever their cooldown is up. Pfft. BRK calls this Rambo Mode and it is not recommended for instances or PvE.

Of course, BRK is a strong advocate of using it in PvP. Screaming inarticulate guttural animal sounds in Rambo Mode is optional, but highly recommended; it’s a hoot.

But BRK digresses.

Many people believe that there is a maximum Shot Rotation, and they’ve discovered it, and if you don’t follow their plan perfectly, you’re a n00b.

Bullpucky.

The Perfect Shot Rotation is a one-shot kill. One bullet, one kill; nothing more efficient than that is there; anything less is sub-optimal. Knowing this, we are free from trying to mold ourselves to some incorrectly-calculated shot rotation based upon a specific 2.7 weapon speed and 1700 RAP and cooldown-sequencing and pet attack speed and the high tide in Perth Amboy and other such hogwash.

Your Shot Rotation is dependent upon your gear. And as such, it shall change over time, so don’t be afraid to experiment. But this is a discussion for Advanced Shot Rotation Techniques, and we were talking about The Basics. Digressing canceled.

The basics of a Shot Rotation do not take weapon speed or any other trivia or stats into account. Now then, it’s just you, your pet, and one mob, ok? Here we go.

The Basic Shot Rotation

Step 1. Macro that sends pet and Hunter’s Marks.

/petattack
/cast Hunter’s Mark

Bind it to an easy-to-find key as you’ll use this a lot. BRK has it mapped to one of his extra mouse-buttons. Macros make your life so much easier, why aren’t you using them?

Step 2. Wait.

Don’t fire anything; allow you pet to reach the target and Growl. Growl is like Sunder in that it builds aggro. Pulling the mob off your pet is a Bad Thing, so let your pet Growl and commence fighting before you get wacky and drop an Aimed Shot on it, ok? Sheesh.

Step 3. Serpent Sting.

Get the maximum out of your Damage Over Time debuff by applying it immediately. What is the best Serpent Sting right now, 555 damage over 15 seconds? Something like that? It’s not the best debuff in the game, BRK admits, but get the most damage for your mana-buck and fire it first.

Step 4. Arcane Shot.

Does BRK need to say anything? Is anybody not using Arcane Shot? We didn’t think so.

Step 5. Multi Shot.

Never forget your Multi Shot, especially you Marksman who have talent points spent in improving its damage and crit. Yes, you can get into a lot of trouble with Multi Shot and crowd-controlled mobs, but the solution isn’t to ignore Multi Shot; the solution is to master it and know how to fire so that you don’t hit CC’d mobs. That smells suspiciously like another blog post, doesn’t it?

Step 6. Watch Your Cooldowns.

When your cooldown on Arcane and Multi Shot are ready, fire em again. BRK loves the Cooldown Timers addon that puts a nice graphical bar and countdown clock for each spell so I can see at a glance which spells are not cooled-down, and how long it will be until they are. BRK Growl of Approval for Cooldown Timers.

Step 7. Watch Your Sting.

Watch it and reapply it when necessary. You should develop an inner-clock that tells you it is about to run its course. Some hunters use an addon that tracks the debuff length, BRK doesn’t; he’s got the mojo working and knows when to reapply Serpent Sting just as it wears off.

Step 8. Prevent Adds.

If the mob starts to run away and possibly aggro another mob, use Concussive Shot and/or Intimidation. Don’t blow these two spells any earlier as you can use them to prevent adds if a mob tries to flee.

And frankly, that’s it, folks. Steady Shot, Kill Command, Aimed Shot, and everything else is a matter of taste and preference. BRK likes Kill Command as it generates extra aggro for Hobbes, others prefer Steady Shot as it will crit nicely if you are spec’d properly.

Remember not to pop Steady or Aimed Shot as your first shot into a fight. Pulling aggro of your pet is Not Good. You have a pet for a reason, and that reason is so that you don’t have to melee.

And you know not to let BRK catch you meleeing. I’m not saying; I’m just saying.

The Diet Coke of Evil is out of the basement and back on WoW. We in Legendary are thrilled, and of course a little nervous, but that’s natural. If you’re on Madoran, say Hello to Ozma. She loves people… ok, she hates people, but she’s not reading this…

“I’d like to talk to you about your positions on warriors and how they pull sometime in the near future too. No scopes. Damage dealt with a pull is not necessary. Stats are nice. How far should a warrior go in gearing ranged weapons for pulls? Any comments”

You people and your questions designed to piss me off are just getting to be too much. Let me say, let me state for the record, let me be heard far and wide, let the bells ring and the banners wave,

There is never a good reason to let a warrior pull, excluding ignorance and laziness. Period.

Just a second, I’m gonna need some cocoa for this post.

…

Ooo, dark chocolate, yum.

…

{sip}

Ok, then. Let’s run down some reasons why warriors pull:

I want to build aggro as soon as I can so that my rage will increase quickly.

This situation assumes that there is a single target, say a boss in an instance, and the possibility of aggro’ing other mobs is nil, right? The warrior wants aggro, we all understand that and we all want that. We hunters want you to tank, plate-boy, so let us help you.

If there is a warrior who can generate more aggro with his ranged weapon than I can with Misdirection and a 3000 crit Aimed Shot, followed by a 1500 crit Arcane Shot, I’ll quit WoW and go play Dr. Seuss’s ‘Pet The Lorax’ for WII. Do not give me any excuse other than you’re inexperienced playing with a competent hunter. That I’ll believe, but then let me educate you. If you insist on pulling, you’ve just proved the axiom that Warriors are designed for those who hate to think.

I don’t want to have to Taunt aggro off of a Hunter.

I don’t play a warrior. I’ve tried, I was terrible, so I quit. If you, as a professional tank, are incapable of getting aggro from a mob to whom I’ve done a measly 140 damage, you too should hang up your gear and get a WII controller. But if you really and truly need even less aggro on me, then I’ll Feign Death as soon as the mob is standing on your toes; you don’t even have to move. Taunt is a spell, right? It’s on your action bar somewhere? You have the ability to press that button at a specific time?

Nobody knows how to Wait For Sunders anymore. They just start pounding DPS before the mob is with five yards of me, and if I don’t pull and at least have a chance to do my job - a job I’m d@mn good at - I’m gonna go postal on some stupid squishy and I don’t want to get banned for violating the WoW TOS.

Now this BRK understands, has witnessed, and fights against. We totally sympathize and want to help. BRK understands that soloing a protection warrior is not easy; Mr Tank, you have a friend in me. Let me aid you. We hunters want nothing more than to serve you mob after mob on a nice silver platter. It is our pleasure to save your repair bills and prevent wipes from bad pulls by using The Ultimate Zone of Perfect Safety. You think healers are the only ones who care about you?

No, baby, we care about you. We know how you feel, how you hurt. That’s right sweetie, just relax for a while and let us take pamper you. Don’t cry, it’s OK, we’re here. Those mean mages and rogues won’t come between us; we’re gonna be good to you, we promise. Priests will heal your body, but hunters will soothe your mind and ease your troubled heart.

Next time we’re against a three-mob pack, we’re gonna tell the mage to sheep the Circle, and we’re gonna Freeze Trap the Square. We’re gonna tell everybody not to DPS until told to do so. We’re gonna cast Misdirection on you, then gently tag the mob marked with a Skull every so gently with our Arcane Shot (Rank 1) to pull that group, and no other mobs or patrols, right at you. The Circle will get sheeped, the Square will be Frozen, and the Skull will run right to you. Yeah… just like that, we know how you like it right there, don’t you. Just get in defensive stance and do your thing. No running, no nasty bows, and your shield is right there, all toasty warm and ready for you.

Now, you go ahead and Sunder. We’re gonna tell the party again that nobody except the Hunter is to fire until told to do so. Misdirection still has two more shots available to give you aggro, so we’re gonna give you a nice Aimed Shot and then a big Arcane Shot. Your Sunders and our +3000 damage that’s been Misdirected onto you means that mob isn’t going anywhere; it’s all yours. We’re gonna tell the rest of the party to start DPS’ing and you just let us take it down nice and fast.

There, it’s pretty and dead, you didn’t even have to move. Feel better baby? OK, now the mob in the trap is still aggro’d from the Misdirections, so go ahead wait for the trap to break, or if you want to, go get it. Yeah, sweetie, if you want to break that ice, you just do it. Oo! So powerful! BRK is all a-quiver just watching you. There are your Sunders, so we’ll tell the gang to DPS… and that’s two down.

Now there’s the sheep. Oh my! Look at you so excited! You just ran over there and did some cool karate-chop thing with that blood-slicked sword! How wonderful! Sunders, DPS… and down it goes. Look at that smile on your face! Oh, sweetie, I know, don’t cry; it’s beautiful when crowd control, aggro control, and Focused Fire DPS work together… here’s a tissue, just sit for a few minutes, BRK has a conclusion to write, ok?

Shh… ok, keep quiet, our tank is resting, so let’s discuss the rest of the question. It is BRK’s opinion that a warrior should have a ranged weapon for stats, just like a hunter should have a melee weapon for stats. If a warrior wants to waste money on a scope, BRK isn’t going to complain, but you really don’t need it.

Let Hunters Pull. Don’t make tanks have to try to pull a single mob from a pack and have to live with the guilt of wiping the party because they have zero aggro-mitigation skills. Don’t make them run into a room and try to fire when a hunter has practically double their range and can attack from the safety of a doorway. Give your tanks all the aggro they could possible want by using Misdirection.

And please, everybody, don’t attack the mob before the tank has not only established, but solidified aggro. Just because they wear plate doesn’t mean they don’t have a delicate constitution and a frail disposition.

Tanks are people too, you know.