Today over at WoW.com (and still blogging from the past! Woooo) a discussion of the disease known as huntardism, how to identify it, and how to cure it.
The term “huntard” stretches all the way back to vanilla, when all the gold farmers were hunters (and actually farmed). While usage of the term has died down a bit due to widespread educational programming, it still exists, and we now know more about the huntard than ever before. Sometimes these bad players are just teenagers with parasitic worms burrowing through their brains, driving them slowly mad; other times they’re hillbillies destabilized from imbibing massive quantities of impure corn liquor and generations of profoundly unbiblical procreation…. Read More.
Thanks, Frost, for the laugh. With your help, huntardism will one day be a distant memory.
I see very few huntards when I’m playing Omogon ..but when i play my resto Druid I still see lots of them…..cloth gear……. really weird gems…….a strange mix of PVE and PVP gear……no pets….pets on aggressive ( warlocks seem to be able to do this as well).
Only a couple of days ago in a random CoS the warlock’s pet ( huge guy with a big axe) and the hunters crab pulled pretty much every mob for the whole city in the first minute of the instance…..thank heavens for a 48K Warrior who knew how to generate threat
My Huntard story:
A few days ago I was in a random UK with a DK Tank,Druid Healer,rouge, warriorand myself SV Hunter as DPS. Prior to starting I had set my focus on the tank so that i can use MD, as any good hunter would do. During the 2nd pull the DK goes to the left grabs aggro and backs up to the center pulling the right side as well. Now i’m not going to bash another class but the DK is squishy and the druid pulled aggro from him on a heal and I quickly MD the aggro back to the DK as I see it was part of my job. My macro posted to party chat that I had used MD and right after the tank went down hard followed by the rouge and the warrior. When the dust settled the healer and i stood alone.
Thats when the name calling started as it was all my fault for using MD. So huntardism is not limited to hunters making mistakes but the ignorance of others blaming them when things go bad without a clue to reality.
I would like to disagree on some points. Feign Death being used reactively is not necessarily a sign. See, there is this other problem, bad tanks abound. These are tanks that have T10. Ones that I, if they are good, don’t steal threat from a trash pull(with constant use of the WHU assist macro in my pre-raid gear.) I have run into some of these tanks that range from bad to atrocious.
Some of these fine examples of tanks are:
1) Turning to next target
2) Marking a target with a skull(normally a good sign) but proceeding to make their main target anything but that one. If it weren’t for the fact they can take a beating I would beat it into them that they need to be attacking the same target as DPS in order to keep enough threat on that target.
3) Running off, pulling everything(and it’s mother), then bitching about dying: slow noobs, etc. All because they didn’t wait for the healer to finish loading in.
Now, after a few trash pulls Feign Death becomes proactive, but until you can be sure it’s definitely a really bad tank. They can be reactive from the shear fact you aren’t expecting it. Especially in groups that wind up so well gear that things just die before getting off a second or third shot rotation.
Also, it’s unfair to call someone a huntard just because they didn’t know about the duel spec bug.
The one thing that wasn’t on the list, a good thing, was hunters that don’t know how the heroics glitch Hadronox. I don’t know the glitch and I absolutely refuse to use it on grounds of honor. It’s an exploit! Yes, I have been called a huntard for that before, but I just put those noobs on ignore.
Thank you for the insight…
I shal delete Stout, and re roll a DK.
A huntard anecdote from a forum I frequent, with a happy ending.
“I queued to tank last night, just to keep my hand in.
Hovering at 5k ish gear score, blah blah, the pally is at 5200 and healing, a 4k gs frost mage, a 5.1k dk and a 2800 huntard. Folks… it was beyond bad, possibly even past horrible, down into the sub cockles of terrible. The DK bitched at everyone, whilst doing…. 800dps, which was double the hunters 400, the mage was doing 1500, and I was cranking 3k+. The DK informed the paladin he was utter fail for not healing him and that the hunter was a worthless scrub and the tank (me) didn’t know how to hold threat (he deathgripped in extra mobs continually). Then he started the racist comments, I stopped pulling and initiated vote kick, bam, byebye DK, we get … another DK, this one only 4.1k gs, but they did a solid dps job.
The mage, came up to 3k dps, the hunter…. stayed at sub 500, so I started to look into things, oh dear, oh deary deary dear. Several epics ! which was good, not so good, they were 90% spell caster mail, with a tank gun, tank rings, mp5 trinket, no gems, no enchants, and 71 points in beast mastery. Yes folks, huntard in every existential sense of the term. Once I calmed the paladin down, we set about coaching him, put mark on the target, use misdirect on the tank and then volley, use go for the throat and bestial wrath whenever on cooldown, put sting on the target and spam steady shot, go for attack power/agility gear. He took the suggestions gratefully and responded `this is the first group today that hasn’t kicked me, Ive been in 12 groups`. By the end of the run we had him pushing 1400 dps, which given how awful the spec and gear was, wasn’t too bad, I directed them to several `how to` sites and linked elitist jerks and they promised to take a look later.
After the run (they netted some nice upgrades), I was busily sorting out some auctions when I get a tell from a level 1, turns out that the huntard’s dad had been watching and appreciated my taking the time out to help out. Turns out the kid is severely autistic and WoW is one of the few `social` activities they can manage without completely withdrawing into their shell.
Sometimes, humanity does redeem itself in small ways.”
hello Frostheim
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jumping off ledges of all kinds, ignoring the pet pathing ramifications
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i listened hunter pod cast with BRK, and he said that Dismiss Pet in cataclysm is much faster, is it so? and how fast/seconds it is? it would be huge benefit in fast runs, when all party takes shortcuts jumping from somewhere etc, and every time you need to do 5 sec dismiss pet …. annoying thing.
That was a great article. I love playing hunters (I have 5 on different servers) but I have little tolerance for others. I know it’s a bad attitude on my part but whenever a hunter joins my group, they almost have to elevate themselves to superstar brilliance before I give them the same grudging tolerance a mage who was barely playing at par would get.
@Kilim thanks for sharing that story. I’m glad his dad supervises him in the game, it can get brutal sometimes in how people treat each other. He definitely picked the wrong class though, he’s already on the backfoot as soon as he joins a party.
Kilim,
What a great story. Thanks for posting it.
Yeah, I gave the guy who posted it a virtual pat on the back. I have relatives with an autistic son so it hit home with me.
As a recoved huntard I must say that I really appreciate the info that Frost provides. It has taken me to new heights.
To… “pay my dues”… I often share as much as I can with people and direct them to sites with guides and other information that will help them be all that they can be. I like to think that being a hunter puts us into a close community and we need to look after eachother.
Kilim,
Sadly, I think most people have had exposure to kids with autism these days. For me it was my brother… That was a fantasic story!
I’m Hulksmash and I am a recovering Huntard with a couple of relaspes’ here and there. Thanks to this website I have been able to recover and become a dps leader. Thank you WHU.
Thanks Frost. You were too modest to include some advice that I always give to those who ask my advice (sometimes given without asking if its to the (fortunately few) huntards I meet while in alter-tank ego).
Which is natch, if you want to be a good hunter google Warcraft Hunters Union, everything you need to know is there.
@Kilim: Awesome story, though a few remarks on the story (which I know ain’t yours, but still).
- Tank guns aren’t always that bad. The BoE one from ICC is actually amazingly good. Best ranged weapon if you’re not doing raids, which I doubt he was doing yet.
- Secondly, you named Go for the Throat as an ability to use off cool down. You probably ment Kill Command since GftT is a talent.
Helping people is always nice, but sometimes it seems you just hit a threshold with some people. In my previous guild I was helping two hunters; helped both of them with their rotation, gear and spec. In the end one ended up pulling a significant higher amount of DPS then the other, even though they were similar geared. When looking into it, it turned out the better DPSer was firing about twice the amount of Steady Shots. I tried helping the other one with this, but he never seemed to reach his full potential…
@BaggyG
I always wonder if the ‘epidemic’ of autism is simply related to people being aware of it and not misdiagnosing it as something else, but I am thankful for it as it means that kids who suffer from it are getting good, focused help early on.
@Noiros
Yeah, I was thinking the same things (one of my alt hunters has Rowan’s) but I cut him some slack since he was a druid.
Great story about helping that kid. Good on you
Add Drizzt to the list of common huntard names.
I’ve left WoW a short while ago…. got bored of the repetition etc… but one of the main reasons i left the scene was that ppl were far too elitist & good ppl like Kilim never existed….
if ur looking for a cure then Kilim story goes some way in doin that.
we help 2 maintian the noob/huntard population cause we are quick 2 judge & relectant 2 help.
L2P
Kilim,
i’m glad you brought that feel-good huntard story to our attention. this should be required reading for all classes.. to give us pause whenever a situation possibly like that arises.
Killim, the story u posted made me think a lot.. i have been halping out a lot of new ppl in wow, mostly kids who are like 13 cos i was no difrent when i started to play, heck i was even worse, but i never seem to see the benefit of helping others just than geting a tons of wispers when i log on “how should i do that” and like that.. i mean its anoying but at least i see now that there are ppl who rly need help and i will continue to do so, ty for inspiring me and for lifting that spark agian in me.
Just to make it clear, it wasn’t me that was that awesome (though I do try in my small way) it was someone else.
I remember a few good people who helped me when i started out with my first hunter. Learned a lot from some hunters i still keep in touch with. BRK and Frostheim helped me up my game even more, so thank you for that. Youtube is a wonderful way to train yourself.
A while back i saw Frostheim soloing Violet Hold normal and wanted to try it myself.
It. Was. Hell. But still incredibly fun. Thanks to the newly implied patch, VH was sped up to accomodate bored overgeared players. So that was not to my advantage. But i managed to pull it off. Just barely. Victory! I’m challenging you Frostheim, my mentor, to try to solo it again and see if you too can pull it off. If you fail at this I will have surpassed my master
With great respect,
Amrasillias
Wrong. Being a hillbilly does not make a huntard(minus the incest). It actually makes you better. More accurate would be a pothead who is too slow or accurate enough to stop his hand hitting the arcane shot or forget to put the pet on defensive. Or falls off the catwalk and into a whole mob who pulls the whole side of the instance. That is accurate definition of a huntard. Most here want to be hillbillies, We hunt all the time with our pets. If you didn’t you would not be hunters. Hillibillies forever.