Arghhh... I protest..!

[Torachi]

Okay... I just had to add my two cents to this particular topic... I just can't resist. Wanna know what's really, truly sad? I remember when wolves were crap. I remember being the only hunter on Kilrogg, pretty much, who was brave and/or stupid enough to run around with one. My wolf of choice? Veritas, my disease-riddled Felwood wolf. Back then, I remember the "number one best pet omg they're so awesome" being the cats, and bears. If you were a hunter with anything else, you were laughed at and shunned from groups. The thing is, Veritas was absolutely perfect for how I personally played, and he worked well with my brother's paladin character, too, which is who I was always partied with.

It really honestly irks me that so many people expect us hunters to have the number one pet, with no exceptions. I thought part of this game was diversity... the power to play the way you want to play, not the way the entirety of the realm wants you to play. -.-

Anyways... that is it for me. I had my rant, so I'll be going.

[Vicario]

I have a Hunter friend (who is also one of my closest IRL friends) that can get away with using a cat in raids. As for me, I've decided to go with a burly-looking cat for the more stringent DPS requirements and a Wind Serpent for more relaxed DPS. Oh, and I'm SV, which apparently has been nerfed.

This is one reason why despite such a pet fitting her image, Arclite won't be getting a Wolf any time soon.

I remember the days when the only pet I could use in groups and such was no pet.

[Dweezill]

I nwas in VoA 25 this week, and I was laughed at for using my wasp. Then, i said that i was Bm and the wasp did better dps for me,I was litterally laughed at. i got a few whispers, and finally, I said flat out... i will use my pet slime. I will out dps all the other SV/MM hunters in the raid with said pet. If i do out-dps all the other hunters,i get all the hunter gear that drops. if I do not out dps all the other hunters,i will not rol on any gear. After a laugh, everybody agreed. I do have to say I am the proud owner of my 251 item level gloves thanks to it. I then told the raid leader and the other hunters who dared laigh just what i thought of them and that they should bow down before me, and left the raid. Funny thing is, the people witht he "best pet and best spec" usually aren't skilled enough to back anything up. they think the pet and spec are gonna carry them, and that just isn;t true. keep on playing the way you wanna play. I am far from a great hunter, but I am a solid player who knows his spec and his pet. play they way you want and witht he pet you want. you will be a lot happier. and it will show in your dps. happy hunting.

[Vicario]

O snap, that's amazing! Chalk another one up for the... non-min maxers. That should be a reason why you love your Wasp.

[Vephriel]

*applauds Dweezill*

Epic story.

[kamoodle5]

This is a bit off subject, but I once had a bit of a shun myself when I was going to run RFK with a guildie and some random players on my hunter, but it was not about the choice of pet I went with, which was my scorpion. Just me as a hunter in particular when an arrogant warlock was thinking, "Why do we need a hunter? We need a healer." We actually went fine without a healer for a while and my pet served as a decent secondary tank since my guild partner was a warrior. Our team was a hunter, a warrior, a warlock, and a rogue. Suddenly, the warrior got dced and never returned. After we got a level 65 in the party shortly and she was summoned, the rest of the run went all right (I know, we cheated with the level 65). Only problem was I never got any good gear from the bosses (even the warlock had to roll for the mail/leather blue gear when he couldn't even wear them and I needed the leather gear). I didn't even bother to ask for the leather gear cuz I knew it wouldn't be worth it.

I bet you guys had been in the same scenario at least once where a player or two in a party would overlook your pet and judge you sourly just because you're a hunter.

[BelleStar]

I enjoy my time on WoW, but I'm just not turning it into work. I'm the guy clicking his hotbar with a mouse and using the cursor keys... So, now you understand just how generic I am.

And that's how I am. I only have one macro and that's for TBW/Pet attack/Rapid Fire/Serpent Sting, to get everything off at once. My other dps boosters are on a click when needed basis. But I don't see how that has anything to do with what I said

I'm just going to single out one thing.

He usually hangs in a firefight as well as most, but again I run BM and all the pet skills to keep him up over ultimate DPS.

I'm going to bet you've not seen Halls of Reflection atleast?

I did when they first came out. We were whammed faster than sin.

I got into a group a second time, no one explained tactics, I got kicked because evidently I was doing 'to low of dps' and they decided to kick me right between wave intervals. So GG there.

I can't 'afford' to do 'steady' DPS. Some fights aren't about 'Steady' DPS and some fights, especially like HoR/PoS and all that you can't really focus on the pet, you're busy with other things. So as I said, that may be how you play, but it's not how I play. I'm not saying how you play is wrong but I'm saying how you play is not how I'm going to get Ryai into HoR or Yas into HoR. If I'm going to be BM I have to bring the dps, not the steady drip drip. I have to be able to go full out hard when needed, it's why I've learned to stagger my cooldowns, because they are my only form of burst damage.

Hunter : BM

Endurance Training : + 10% Health

Spirit Bond : + 2% total health regen, + 10% added to healing.

Glyph : Major

Glyph of Mending : + 40% to Mend Pet.

Tenacity Tree :

Great Stamina + 12% Stamina

Blood of the Rhino : + 4% Stamina , + 40% added healing " That's from any heals "

Wild Hunt : + 40% from Hunter's Stamina

Silverback :

Pet's Growls heal it for 2% of total health.

Again this is a tank pet- and I can't have growl up in an instance! I mean my Corepup grabbed aggro off a DK in FoS and that was bad enough! I can't risk even a tank pet in higher levels and while I was allowed to apologize for growl slipups with the cowerbug, this would be my own mistake for having growl on and I'm not going to lie and say 'sorry Growl glitched on'


again I'm sorry but while I know you are trying to help I don't think you understand the situation and while you are trying to offer help, it is not viable. Even when I bring Sunscale, his growl is off

Having to bring a tenacity pet into an instance and sacrifice more dps just for pet survivability and nothing more, is not a viable solution in my eyes. When I bring Sunscale, it's for his spit not his health.

I don't really see why your pet is getting killed so much that you feel you have to devote an inordinate amount of attention to it to keep it alive.
Do you have your pet attack stray mobs or do you have it assist the tank?
I usually have my pet assist the tank, even when I use Volley.
I have a macro that, all at once, cast hunters mark, sends pet in to attack, and puts me in dragonHawk.
so even if I change targets, I just hit the button and pet is on new target. no straying away, no grabbing random mobs, no getting itself in to trouble and death.
About the only time my pets die is if the whole group wipes and I FD.
in that case the pet is the last to actually die.

and yeah I keep my pet on defend, not passive. if it runs off to pick up a range mob that is attacking us, it will usually be fine because 2 seconds later the tank pics him up and the pet doesn't even get aggro. or better yet , I target the range mob, aggro it much harder than my pet can, LOS him and pull him in to the tank. again pet never gets enuf aggro to get seriously hurt.

I don't get the glass cannon reference in regards to hunter pets.
1) pets dont hit that hard . pet dps, even for BM, is lower than anyone else in the group save the healer.
2) pets arent that breakable, even ferocity pets
now my mage with , what seems like paper armor, THAT is a glass cannon. of course my mage pet never dies before the mage does.

back to hunter...
I dual spec BM and SV. I do HHor and HoR randoms. I can go as either spec and not worry about my pet getting killed or DPS. sure with BM DPS is lower, but not because I'm micromanaging the pet.
For SV I usually have my wolf. I have the one with the runes and fiery feet. it looks cool to me and so I'm glad atm it does max dps.
If I go as BM I take spirit beast or wolf, or wasp or whatever ferocity pet I have that I feel like running at the time.
why don't the pets die? because the pets don't get much aggro if any.
1) their damage is low compared to everyone else doing damage.( 1k or less DPS compared to 2.5k+ for players)
2) Blizz made it so pets are virtually immune to AoE damage from mobs so.. they not getting killed from that.
3) any mobs not on the tank are on the healer or one of the DPS(players) because of reason number players DPS is so much higher.

I'll pull aggro long before my pet will, and if I do I can FD and drop aggro back to , usually the tank, but never my pet. not in a 5 man. So far I haven't need to worry about pet death in a 5man of any kind.

I do agree with the not being able to afford to do steady DPS.
DPS is all about burst now. its about who can do the most damage FIRST, before the mob dies.
sure when you are at the dummy you can plink away at it for as long as you need to get all your stacks and debuffs and procs on it to get your DPS up.

remember also that the dummy has infinite health.

in a 5man the mob has a fixed number of health. so you don't have 15-30 seconds to get all your DPS ducks in a row. you gotta burst it out all at once, or as close to that as you can.
why? because if you don't the mob will be dead from OTHER players DPS.
it wont matter what big blast of boom you got coming in the next GCD if the mob drops dead before you can get it off.
yeah.. your DPS is dependent, to some extent on the DPS of the other DPSers in the group.
if they have good burst and you don't, mob will die before you have chance to fully DPS, your DPS will suffer.
if they have DoT based, or even medium DPS, you have both time and HP left, your DPS will rock.. at the expense of the DoTter and medium DPSers DPS.

at the end of the trash fight, the burst DPSers are all high numbers and patt themselves on the back.
some may even boast on themselves, or make rude remarks on lower DPSers. or even worse VK a low DPS after a trash fight.

of course bosses have enuf HP to level this out . but at the end of the run your DPS numbers will not be based solely on the Boss fights, but mostly on all that low HP ,fast dead, trash you did to get to the bosses.

[Roonok]

Aye,


I totally agree with everyone posting as I said. The role of the Hunter in the majority of dungeons these days has been relegated to maximizing burst DPS as much as possible. I do so miss the days when players just banded together and threw all their abilities into the mix just trying to survive. Now-a-days it's become such a narrow viewed class. I have no idea how it came to happen, but it did.

As I mentioned earlier I run with a fairly large group of real life friends, which I feel has blinded me to many thing's. Over this last week I've worked much harder to experience groups outside my friends though. I wanted to see what so many have been telling me. My baby Hunter ran into this last week and it prompted me to fire off the original thread and now I've witnessed just a taste of what everyone has been saying here.

The majority of the players running pugs have two ways of looking at this game. If you're lucky you get the ( I don't cares ). That statement sounds horrible, but running a Bear and being BM spec'd more for flat DPS and not burst, these players generally won't give you grief if you simply perform your job in their group. The pug leaders that are ( OMG..! We have to blow through this Instance like pros ) are the one's mostly having trouble with BM Hunter's I think. I was told flat out several times to pull out Ye 'olde Wolfe pet and asked if I was MM. In a couple of groups I was asked why I was coming in third to a Mage and DK. I pretended to not understand English many times lol...

Okay, now I have much more respect for Hunter's out there pugging... Sadly this isn't a level 80 thing anymore like I had once thought. It's slowly trickling it's way all the way down the food chain to even lowbie level stuff. I'm not entirely sure how serious it has gotten on all the various servers, but ours seems to have an abundance of " Professional " gamers on it lol...

One dungeon that sticks out had us grouped up with a Pally ( tank ) , Priest ( Healer ) , Hunter ( Me ) , DK ( DPS ) , Mage ( DPS ) . It was fine, but I got the initial words of wisdom that I was setup all wrong. I played the role of ignorance and was graced with advice from our DK who proceeded to explain I needed a Wolf, spec MM and crank my crit rating and Armor Pen to their max. I thanked him for his help just to keep thing's civil for the run. No one had said much up until a boss which spawned waves of adds. Our healer got tied up with a mess of them after the mage grabbed to much aggro and couldn't aoe them off. The Priest typed "aggro!" and I immediately pulled off the boss and laid traps and began to volley to free up the healer. It took a few moments for me to clear them all, but without much trouble the situation was solved. The tank got his heals back and the rest of the boss fight went just fine. The Mage got rezzed and we stopped for rebuffage and mana. That's when I got informed by the DK that I was not to pull off the boss for any reason unless told too. Sadly moments later that was seconded by the Pally. Both the Mage and Healer took up for me, but I just decided not to rock the boat and agreed with the groups rules. The Priest sent me a private message that my help was appreciated no matter what the others said. For me clearing aggro from Healer's is just so ingrained into me from years of playing mmorpg's in the past that the dynamics extremely hard for me to break.

I really hate to say it, but from what I can gather Hunter's have limited options these days. Either you have to have understanding friends or a guild that allows you to be who you are, or you need to be dual spec'd with the right gear and a Wolf. That might allow you to play the way you want, but also have the tools to switch over to the ( accepted ) spec and pet when Pugging... I'm not going to post anything else about the subject anymore because I understand what's going on now. I realize most Hunter's are just trying to survive in today's WoW environment anyway possible. My hats off to all of my fellow Hunter's out there struggling to find a place in this new extreme game world where every point of damage is more important than anything else.

Personally I've decided I'll play my own playstyle and just forget about trying to find a middle ground. I'll stay BM and keep my Bear and stay on the fringes. Hopefully some thing's might change for the better with Cataclysm's release. I'll keep cheering you all on and keep my fingers crossed...

Take care, Roo...

[Rhyela]

I just want to say a few things.....

The role of the Hunter in the majority of dungeons these days has been relegated to maximizing burst DPS as much as possible. I do so miss the days when players just banded together and threw all their abilities into the mix just trying to survive. Now-a-days it's become such a narrow viewed class. I have no idea how it came to happen, but it did.

This isn't just hunters, but all DPS classes if you ask me. Seems like starting with Wrath, Blizzard designed instances to be much like this: Tank runs in, DPS blows everything up. Tank runs into the next group, DPS blows everything up.

I was told flat out several times to pull out Ye 'olde Wolfe pet and asked if I was MM. In a couple of groups I was asked why I was coming in third to a Mage and DK. I pretended to not understand English many times lol...

I will probably get flamed for saying this, but I think people spend far too much time reading EJ and taking everything they say as biblical. Sure, they have some good points here and there, but people live and breathe EJ. If EJ says to be MM and bring a wolf, by god, EVERYONE had better be MM and bring a wolf, even if you're only freaking level 12. It annoys me to no end. I am one of the possibly few that don't read EJ, don't care to, and I perform very well anyway.

Okay, now I have much more respect for Hunter's out there pugging... Sadly this isn't a level 80 thing anymore like I had once thought. It's slowly trickling it's way all the way down the food chain to even lowbie level stuff. I'm not entirely sure how serious it has gotten on all the various servers, but ours seems to have an abundance of " Professional " gamers on it lol...

You have to realize that a lot of people that play WoW have backgrounds in other games as well, such as FPS games where e-peen matters. They're highly competitive and always try to be the very best of the best. Not that that accounts for every person that plays WoW, I'm not trying to stereotype, generalize or make a blanket statement. But I am fairly sure that many players do play these games and bring that mode of thinking with them to this game.

One dungeon that sticks out had us grouped up with a Pally ( tank ) , Priest ( Healer ) , Hunter ( Me ) , DK ( DPS ) , Mage ( DPS ) . It was fine, but I got the initial words of wisdom that I was setup all wrong. I played the role of ignorance and was graced with advice from our DK who proceeded to explain I needed a Wolf, spec MM and crank my crit rating and Armor Pen to their max. I thanked him for his help just to keep thing's civil for the run. No one had said much up until a boss which spawned waves of adds. Our healer got tied up with a mess of them after the mage grabbed to much aggro and couldn't aoe them off. The Priest typed "aggro!" and I immediately pulled off the boss and laid traps and began to volley to free up the healer. It took a few moments for me to clear them all, but without much trouble the situation was solved. The tank got his heals back and the rest of the boss fight went just fine. The Mage got rezzed and we stopped for rebuffage and mana. That's when I got informed by the DK that I was not to pull off the boss for any reason unless told too. Sadly moments later that was seconded by the Pally. Both the Mage and Healer took up for me, but I just decided not to rock the boat and agreed with the groups rules. The Priest sent me a private message that my help was appreciated no matter what the others said. For me clearing aggro from Healer's is just so ingrained into me from years of playing mmorpg's in the past that the dynamics extremely hard for me to break.

I'd have done the same thing you did, so hats off to you. On more than one occasion I've sent my pet after a mob beating on a healer or a squishier dps. Thankfully no one's scolded me for it, but what kind of player would I be if I didn't watch the backs of my fellow party members? But you and I have been playing this game for a long while, and remember the days where pulls took more thought.

I think what it all boils down to is that to me, it seems that every expansion takes less and less out of every pull, every fight. Remember the days when you'd hear something like this in LFG: "LFM MC, need CC, PST"? How often do you see CC these days? Remember when mages used polymorph and counterspell and spell steal? Sure, a few good mages out there might still utilize these spells, but for the most part, they're there to blow stuff up along with the rest of 'em. Hunters no longer use freezing trap to CC (though I do use freezing arrow in HoR when a mage refuses to be pulled), priests don't shackle, rogues don't sap. All strategy, all thought, all planning has all but disappeared in today's WoW. One DPS class is essentially the same as another. The mechanics might be different, but the roles are the same: AoE dps x 1000 until boss fight, when you might have to move a bit. The utility that used to set certain classes apart has more or less vanished. So now, all we're left with is a bunch of classes in the same exact role squabbling for the top spot, because there's nothing else out there that makes them desirable. It used to be ok for a mage to stop DPSing for a moment to re-cast polymorph. It used to be fine if a hunter stopped shooting to re-freeze a mob that was beating on a healer. But now, that CC is gone, that utility is gone, it's just DPS DPS DPS DPS. Sadly that's just the nature of the beast. I miss those good ol' days of having to "think before you pull". Now you just get a tank, send him into the middle, and let your DPS have at it.

Now, before I get flamed, I will say that I have not stepped foot into ICC yet, so maybe things are different there. But from what I've seen thus far, that fourth role (CC) is gone, and now we're left with Tank, Healz, and Deeps.

[Foru21dr]

After reading all this, you guys are starting to scare me in playing the dungeons. I've been playing for a couple of years, and have been PVP'ing for quite some time, but alway wanted to do the dungeons. Now that Dungeon Finder came around, I started a low level character so I could run up each level and learn what I as a Hunter am suppose to do. I've been enjoying the runs, and have not really been in one where there was problems, but it's been the low level dungeons.

My character is now getting into the mid ones and now I wonder if I'm going to be getting into more and more bad PUGs. I don't plan on stopping, but guess the best thing for me to do is to leave the run if there is problems. Hopefully I won't be in too many bad pugs.

[Hawkshadow]

It really is sad to see that BM hunters are so looked down upon
I was in a VOA 25 as BM with my devilsaur, as we are all waiting on buffs and to start trash i get a whisper from one of the healers in the raid;
Priest: "Are you seriously going to BM hunter this?..."
Me: *thinking oh god here we go again* "Yup."
Priest: "Marks does so much better dps, BM is worthless."
Me: "I find i do great dps as BM."
Priest: "My main is a hunter."
Me: "Cool, me too."
Priest: "Maybe you will impress me but i doubt it."

I end up being 3rd in dps and dmg done. beating both a marks and survival hunter who were better geared than myself (not by a lot mind you) It just goes to show that spec and gear is not everything. Also i live in the mountains and have to use Dish for internet, at best I have 1500ms latency with around 20fps.

After the raid the priest whispers me...
"You would do more dps as marks."

......SIGH.

[Gimlion]

Well, with the recent 'buff' to BM, I plugged my gear into FD.com, My best personal dps comes from my BM spec, rather than MM... And it's not a little difference, it's about 350 dps gain over MM, so when people give me flack, I send them to FD, tell em to look me up on Armory, and plug everything in... If their insults/bullcrap is actually serious enough for them to do so, they usually say sorry, but more than likely they don't feel it necessary to put that much 'effort' into proving themselves wrong.

[Ryai]

But now, that CC is gone, that utility is gone, it's just DPS DPS DPS DPS. Sadly that's just the nature of the beast. I miss those good ol' days of having to "think before you pull". Now you just get a tank, send him into the middle, and let your DPS have at it.

Tbh? I don't mind it being gone from dungeons. Why? I just had to tank one earlier, while sick and having sluggish reaction time and LAG AND my gear being subpar too mind you, because we couldn't get a tank and the current Deathknights we were getting are DPS trying to tank and don't have the gear for it, the mindset, the addons and frankly, aren't trying.

Even when we were 'thinking' before pulling once I took over, we were still failing hard- either from charm totems or fears, depending on which dungoen I was healing or for one, tanking. Yes I wouldn't mind people thinking before pulling but tbh I love the easy feel of dungeons in wrath that after you get to a certain gear level you can just AOE everything down and everyone wins.

Yes I remember when CoS timed was hard- or when Dred from DTK was hard. And a few other bosses, but now? Yes gimme easy street because with easy street I can expect less fail from the brainless people I do have to put up with.

I mean I expect raids to require some thinking and strategy but please, not dungeons. PLEASE. ST/LBRS/Etc are horrible for how long they are- and I've had people whining that wrath dungeons are to short, and that they want them longer. I don't like spending a few hours, or more in a dungeon. Especially if I'm only up for one run. Others say 'there's no more CC now it's just DPSing down blah blah blah' yeah and as I said I've been getting into dungeons like that on my healer and tbh no one is even trying anymore. Not even those that leveled up during TBC and not those that have heirlooms that should atleast 30/50% of the time remember days of olde and cc'ing crap.

I like having dungeons in eazymoad :| I'm not lazy ...

I just don't like spending 80-100+gold for ONE dungeon fail run.

[Palladiamorsdeus]

Flat out, use what you want, and let your actions speak for your decision. I've been doing that since Vanilla, and haven't regretted it once. I HATE the standard min/max mentality. It's a game, you are SUPPOSED to enjoy it. I am not saying do stupid stuff like wear spellpower cloth or leather as a hunter, but you should have the freedom to choose what you use. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I use whatever I want, and no one gives me any flak about it. Then again, the only time I lose DPS races is when some one is in ICC level gear. *Shrugs* I've proven my point using various tenacity pets, and even cunning pets before. I love my wolf, but I will not be forced into using her!

*Grits his teeth* Some one once said that being BM is like having ilvl264 gear, but wearing your ilvl 232 gear into an instance because you liked the look. I had to make myself not post in that thread, because it would have all been swearing on my part. I hate people who think like that with a passion.