Today over at WoW Insider, I have a guide to optimizing your hunter for Cataclysm heroics. The heroics are difficult enough that for the first few weeks they’ll be quite challenging — however once we gear up we’ll be blazing through them like we did in Wrath.
Cataclysm has been out for nearly a week now. Hordes of hunters have proved their valor by uncovering the Twilight Cult’s plot, rebuilding the World Pillar, and fetching a drunken dwarf his pants. A hero’s work is never done. While many hunters are still proceeding steadily through the levels, a lot of them are now pushing their way into heroics.
No more for us mindlessly AoEing our way through trash and bursting down bosses with no thought to strategy — now it’s time to pay attention to fight mechanics and dust off those rusty trapping skills. Our diligence will be rewarded with shiny blues that will help us hold our own in raids, and loads of reputation via our tabards. But like my grandpappy Frostheim used to say, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing at the top of the damage meters!”
Join me after the cut as we talk about optimizing your hunter for heroics, how to spec, how to glyph, and how to look good while you do it… Read More.
Excellent article, and should appease those who accuse you of MM bias !
I have yet to set foot in a cata regular dungeon let alone a heroic. The queue time for dps on our server runs about 55 minutes and the guild is all spread out over “hells half acre” leveling. I have to admit that it still pains me to replace my hard won ICC gear…….of course I had pretty much the same reaction going from BC to Wrath .
I’ve been using the raid SV spec (1 pt different) and I’m amazed by how well my dps is compared to other classes. Now that I’m getting new gear with lots of hit, I’m wondering whats the best way to reforge now? Does SV prefer mastery > crit > haste? I haven’t played SV since Ulduar and after learning focus in MM spec, I’m impressed with how much easier SV is to play although I miss playing MM, especially the self heal and interrupt.
I’ve been Reforging Into as much crit as possible ( i.e. reforging whatever was higher of the two between haste/mastery while leaving hit and reforging hit into crit on Hit trinkets and the like to stay at cap). So I’m at appox. 2k crit rating while haste and mastery are both around 1000. If I had to choose I’d probably reforge mastery before haste but its mainly because I regularly feel focused starved and have to delay ES or BA/SS significantly when switching targets and such.
As for the lack of silencing shot I find that scatter shot more or less accomplishes that role on trash. While it doesn’t help on the bosses that “require” interrupting ( first boss of SFK, and ToT come to mind) silencing shots longish CD probably wouldn’t make or break a groups ability to do those encounters either.
Oh, I did find a use for camo. After getting 1 shot in Heroic Throne of Tides trapping a mob, I now use camo before I trap in the beginning of a pull. It keeps me from getting mob aggro and the tank seems able to pick up the mobs easier.
That article was amazing. I dinged today and just before doing so dumped my MM spec for SV. I want to keep BM in case those BM only pet buffs are called for in the near future.
If you dump your BM spec, what happens to your BM only pets? Will they stay in the stable, or just disappear?
Gotta say, it’s a huge jump in dps, but I never really liked SV before, so don’t really know how to play it. This article really helped a lot! I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, thank you SO MUCH!!!
Now, what’s the best way to make L&L proc more? From what I’ve done today, it seems to proc a lot more from any kind of trap than it does from black arrow. Thoughts?
In Heroics you can often get a proc by trapping at the start of the pull, and for many bosses with adds dropping a snare trap will give free procs as well. this said I wouldn’t throw a ice trap out just for the proc but if it helps the encounter along I don’t object to a little something for my efforts.
As for the choice between BA and Explosive trap to proc lnk Frostheim stats he uses Explosive trap on 3+ mobs. Thats a pretty good rule of thumb but be mindful of CC, and I sometimes BA the “big guy” of the pull before burning down the littler ones single target since BA is wasted if ti falls off after 1-2 ticks.
It was funny after doing regular Grim Batol with a pally tank making is near impossible for me to use my freezing trap since he put down consecration on everything, I got it as my first heroic. Despite our dps being in the 8k-10k range it took us 6 mins to down the last boss. It was worth though since I got first chaos orb and my first 359 epic neck from trash
mobs.
been running normal now for a week had some great guild runs because everyone works together but PUGS my god there are some bad players out there lol but as HuntressRachel says camo is good to get close lay your trap or launch it as for SV I just carnt do it i think its my play style tried and tried just carnt get a long with it so for me it will be MM At the moment top the dps chart every Dun so do me for now just hope you guys who switch dont get nerfed . Great artical again m8 but yet to be convinced about changing from MM .
Heya Frost, I was wondering how you felt about Wyvern Sting as an additional CC for this spec?
Case in point, some of the trash pulls in HoO needed CC but a lot of the mobs are clumped and we were lacking a mage for Polymorph. MD Tank, Launch trap to the path of the 1st CC target, change to second CC target, Wyvern thus pulling (communicating with the tank of course
). Its possible in this situation we just lacked the heals or tank quality to survive with one CC, but our vast toolbox got us to the end.
For non-multimob CC pulls, provided the targets aren’t immune, Wyvern Sting is a required talent to for the spec and is best not wasted. It’s also one less hand movement than Trap Launcher and removes the possibility of placement error. One area where I initially struggled was switching off of the sleep target fast enough to get on the actual mobs just MDed, thus wasting (or almost wasting) the MD. I got around this by pulling out an old mouseover cast macro I used back in WoTLK PvP. The one downside over trap launcher I found was with trap launcher you can usually wait long enough to regain its 20 focus cost before the pull, but Wyvern is 10 focus off the top as the fight begins. I found this to be trivial.
Seems that (if not immune) then Wyvern Sting is the optimal CC ability for an SV hunter, especially for patrols.
The one problem is that Sting leaves a DoT up, which plays havoc on (almost, I think there’s a mage glyph that kills DoTs on poly) all forms of CC. So it’s viable for your second focus target but, unlike traps, we can’t keep a permanent CC up on something that way.
Also noteworthy – at present, Cobra is increasing the duration of both Serpent and Wyvern’s DoT portion. So potentially a minor DPS boost when you do switch to that target.
There’s quite a couple CC’s that can be placed over a WS doT tick, Warlock Fear, Shaman hex, That said its definitely best if the tank picks the WS target as the first CC’d target to kill.
Wyvern sting is certainly worse than a freezing trap in all regards — it lasts half as long, and then screws you from re-ccing with the dot. It’s good for ohcrap! situations, but it’s really subpar for planned ccing. There’s usually enough cc-ers that you can do a trap, and someone else can do another cc.
Only reason i do Trap and WS in my guild heroics is because its faster if I just do it myself > > I’ll HM the kill target CC 2 mobs and the tank will pick up whatever comes running. If there’s casters that I didn’t cc them then a warlock/mage can cc or a DK can DG/silence etc.
Honestly with all CC i find its best to CC anything that stays at range so you can pull the melee mobs out of the pack. then even if a ranged mob breaks its much easier to target it for lovin’.
I also find that it is fairly rare for 30 seconds t be insufficient o kill all the non-CC’d targets. There are some 6 mob pulls in a couple zones but even then its better to have a mob cc’d for as long as possible. I’ve personally run with a warlock where I’ll trap the fear target when my CD resets and he’ll fear the WS ( or new adds that came in).
That said obviously whatever works best for your group and situation is the ideal. If you need the WS/trap CC then great, if not you can always use WS like scatter shot to interrupt casting on trash.. its enough sometimes to simply be aware and ready to use a tool if its not called for consistently.
IE: WS is decent for when someone else pulls before freezing trap is placed, or when a shaman hex falls off and trap is on CD. Hex unglyphed has a 30 second duration and 45 sec cd. Glyphed is 30 sec duration 30 sec CD. So, if it has been 30 seconds (unglyphed) or gets broken, sleep it. It will be able to withstand the dot.
Another idea for when someone pulls before you trap is to scatter shot it and then throw in the trap.
Hi Frost, I just would like too say I have deleted my 85 Hunter because everything that I have ready says that BM is no good at all in raids or Dungens, only SV or MM so my question is what is the point of haveing a hunter with a pet if the pets are pritty much worthless in any context?
Great article. I have to admit that I’m a big fan of when you just come right out and say something is just plain wrong or bad, a lot of WoW sites/articles are missing that imo.
Its sad tough, that blizz couldnt apply proper scaling to our abilities. Everything seems to be high base damage low scaling.
Very apparent at low levels, my new hunter is pulling 500dps where others do 200dps. I can only imagine that with a tier or 2 we’ll be quite down bottom, when scaling catches up with basedamage values.
Already showing with MM tough. You got best dpf/burst using cobra-chimera as opener, not some form of steady or aimed.
Also (dont know if its been noticed), steady/cobra focus is awarded ON-HIT basis. That means that if you fire it on 100 focus using a 50 focus shot, you got 63 focus the next global.
second 0: 100 focus *cast steady*
second 2: 100 focus *steady fires, instantly use 50 focus attack* – 50 focus
second 2.1: 50 focus *steady hits* +9
–passive focus regen for 1 sec–
second 3: 63 focus *attack with x*
That allows you to effectively reduce your first shots damage by 9 focus. Since you cant do anything from the start anyway (tank has to get threat up) its a great way to boost damage and your rotation flow and as such also boost the MD threat part.
All you are really doing when you change the rotation is delaying the regen that is inevitable. Also, if this is the very beginning of a fight, you have just lost a big chunk of the threat that you could have transferred to the tank in MD in the opening blow. I think it would be better to open with something like Explosive/Chimera shot to help the tank ramp up threat quickly than it would be to try to game the opening focus cost and delay the opening contribution. I’ve been in instances where I’ll look at Omen and see that some other dps class opened with something pretty hard and it almost pulled threat of the tank (even with my MD active).
Great article Frost, I have already been doing most of the things listed; however, there are quite a few of which I had not considered.
I have gotten several invites to my realms top raid guilds as a result of putting into practice many of the things you advocate here. And as always this is where I direct new hunters looking for info on how to play as a deathdealer.
Anyone having issues when a target goes down, auto targeting another (cc) and auto shooting?? Ive tried all option i the interface…really bugging me.
Out of interest, what kind of numbers SV pulling on a heroic boss, In B<M im getting around 17k..not sure how this compares to other specs…Will try the SV today though..
Good post Frost! I am glad you are talking up when hunters have to take the tard out and decide when to single target dps over multi. I can admit I learned the hard way that multi shot is the single most dangerous shot I have made in groups. Being aware of surroundings: who is CC’d and who may somehow “strangely” get picked up by a multi is important for every hunter to know. I see hunters who also don’t think about pathing once the trap is up and that is very important as well. A good hunter will position themselves in a good Line of Sight so mobs path correctly–especially if the Tank will not be picking up the trapped mob before it is on CD or if the plan is to retrap the mob for whatever reason.
For those who want to use Wyvern Frost is right on. it is an “Oh $HUCKS” type of shot that you take only to save someone and becuase your wider of field of vision saw a dangerous loose mob that others didn’t and you were unable to trap. It would be wise to macro your Wyvern Sting with announcement and also to advise those in vent you are doing it so they don’t break it in panic when you are using it to save someone.
Spot on article.
Ok Im convinced, changed to Surv…20k dps
Wow, you are doing more than the rest of the world does on raid bosses already? O_O
http://www.wowmeteronline.com/rank/clazz/dtb/hnt/11/0/1/5
ah the lost art of trapping all thro LK i trapped only to see a pally tank run in and aoe
i been playing my hunter as mian since day1 in vanilla europe and im happy that we have to CC again
remember that you can trap two mobs (can be 3 but 2 is easy to pull off) at a time laydown one trap near grp and wait for cd then pull grp into trap and distract a 2nd mob and laydown a second trap after the first has been set off.
you can trap 3 if you are surv this is harder to do. do the above to get 2 traps but also wyvern sting on third, when your trap cd has about 8 sec left break the sting and concussive shot it to slow if it gets to the buy time till the sting is off and trap cd with scatter shot after you have trapped the third retrap first>second>third and repeat then is handy for the corehound in blackrock cavern on hc where a hunter can solo CC all three mobs.
Heroic PuGs are so hostile nowadays… Don’t people notice that it has been around two years of “FUCK CC, THE BEST CC IS DEATH” and they still rage, QQ, drama about people that are a wee bit rusty on CCing and just need their time.
Myself, for example, never could get into a TBC heroic because no one was willing to carry the scrub in leveling gear along even if I was cooperating, knew what I was supposed to do and etc.
Im definetly at a cross roads now. I hated SV with a passion in wrath, once I went MM i never looked back and now I’m loving it even more with its more challenging rotation. I’ve tried SV again in cata and after leveling and doing dungeons as MM, its rotation just seems so boring and less challenging which,for me, makes it a heck of a lot less fun to play. The problem i’m having is that there is a substantial dps increase from switching and i’m all about pushing my dps.
The only thing holding me back is the fact that me and my healer friend always run random heroics together and we like having my Silencing Shot because were not always sure if one of the PuG dps will do it. Between me and him(a resto shammy) we can interupt nearly everything. Once some of our guildies get up to heroics however there will be no need for me to silence regularly. Not sure what i’m going to do.
(sorry for the double post, first half got sent before i was done typing somehow)
What about Wyvern sting for CC? You don’t mention that (its what I have been doing in normal mode dungeons so far). Also no stead shot mentioned at all? I use that often when I am out of focus and SS is still got a lot of time left – am I making a mistake by doing that? Should I use cobra always instead?
Cobra Shot regens your focus exactly like steady shot does — cobra shot is identical to steady shot except it does more damage and increases the duration of your serpent sting to boot.
Wyvern Sting is best saved for OhPants! situations. As a planned CC it’s not optimal because it puts a dot on the target when it ends and then the target can’t be cc’d again.
I switched to survival from MM for heroics. While it’s great for dps, I can’t interrupt with wyvern or scatter shot. I am not sure what to do, I have a BM offspec but intimidation wasn’t working for that either it seems. With all the required interrupts, I think I have to level up my ape just in case.
I believe intimidation works fine for interrupts on trash, but not on bosses.
Just a quick question, I’ve been running dungeons & heroics for the last couple of days. And I’ve noticed that occasionally my character will auto-target the next group after the mobs die (especially in more cramp instances like SFK) and I will accidentally shoot the next pack because I was hitting a skill while trying to finish off the mob from the previous group. Not sure if my explanation makes any sense, but is there anyway to prevent this or turn the auto-target next group off? Thank you.
Love this article! Thanks so much for writing this… will be a big help in heroics
is this guide up to date because it was posted in 2010 and i cannot find a decent guide just for pve, i thought this website would bring me up to date articles but all the posts are complicated and dont explain enough to me about which classes are best for what. I want my dps to reach its full potential and this seemed like the best website to find that but it is far too complicated