A Hunter's Story

Ok, Maybe it’s me, but all the jerk DK Tanks have become jerk healers. And idiot ones. I mean, seems the remaining DK Tanks are a lot nicer than they used to be. And the healers all seem to be on xyz alt, well geared, and have no clue how to heal. Like the Tree that complained they didn’t have enough time to get any heals off on the tank. Seems strange when you have an ICC geared healer and a Defense Capped tank w/ 32k health. But when you realize the healer was using Healing Touch only, and never even tried any instant casts like Rejuv… Yeah, no wonder the tank was dieing before the healer could heal them!

Another one that was annoying, was the one that got into the group and 5 seconds later said “Tank’s not geared enough. Bye”. So being defense capped and geared well enough for Ulduar isn’t good enough for a heroic anymore, eh? Oh well, we moved on at a pretty quick clip anyway with the new healer, so I’m glad the stupid healer wasted their dungeon timer CD. I’d be willing to bet we would have gone slower with them healing anyway!

But in short, these things keep happening. I guess it’s just the natural rotation of what we need most and what people gravitate to without learning the necessary skills. I mean, I play a healer, tank & 2 dps. But I spent the time learning how to play them so I do it decently or better. Or more importantly, I’m nice. I say hello. I say thank you. And if someone says “mana”, I wait for them, not run off like mad. And if I’m a healer and feel like the group could go faster because I’m barely dipping below 98% mana… I help DPS. I don’t sit there and yell “go faster, go faster, go faster” every fight. Even when the pally tank and all dps are out of mana… Yeah. Quite simply – “Xanther says Play Nice!” And I can’t wait for Cata so our friends all come back & play w/ us, lol.

Yay! Been meaning to post this for a while, but yay, Lady X can tank!

Been working on some alts, now up to 78, so she’s been on her DK and me on my mage. Originally, her lvl 80 warrior was going to tank, but frankly she just had a lot more fun just running in and hitting things on a cute little warrior gnome. But since we’ve been leveling up another set of alts, she’s been tanking whenever we had a bunch of dungeon quests. And she’s been doing well!

Until the last month or two, I hadn’t really used the LFG for regular dungeons, let alone the ones at the right level while leveling. I’ve noticed you mostly run into two types of people. The impatient or the ignorant. Essentially, you see the person who is used to lvl 80 heroic runs and wants to push the group faster and faster and faster. Nevermind that it’s physically impossible to go any faster because their DPS isn’t quite what they think it is. Or, you run into the person who is on their main. Congrats to them for figuring out how the LFG works! But I usually end up offering helpful tips, like which way to go…

So the one person is trying to make everyone go faster, the other is making the group slow, and I’m in the middle, going “chill” to both, lol. The poor healer is trying just to keep everyone alive, forget keeping them topped off. Especially when you have 3 DPS and they are: 1 is trying to tank, 2 is doing their job, and 3 is hitting random mobs. And the poor tank is frantically trying to keep the mobs on themselves when it’s all just a Charlie Foxtrot.

So anyway, Lady X used to help Raid Lead by organizing the raid. She preferred helping by scheduling and getting the group together rather than running the show on day-of; didn’t want to deal with which direction to go first, which pull, who is assigned to what, etc. So I think it’s cool she stepped over that barrier! But I also don’t blame her for being wary of trying to tank. If there’s a wipe, everyone blames someone, and the tank is an easy target. Whether or not it’s their fault. I guess it’s a tough balancing act on Bliz’ part of trying to make tanking easy enough to deal with idiots, but still hard enough to make it a challenge and be fun.

But anyway, I figure I should help her practice when we’re just questing… I pull lots of extra mobs, AoE, and make her save me! Hehehe… Ok, well, I guess I’m not that bad. I do pull an extra mob sometimes, or just go in and AoE blast stuff. But I have Ice Block if I screw up. And I only pull as much as I think she can handle. And it’s a good thing I’m on a mage instead of my hunter, because then I could play some real nasty games! Hehehehe… Ok, thinking about getting some flowers or something on the way home from work today because our couch is comfy, but not that comfy…… Lol. ‘Sides, I’m not too woried. The next pair we’re leveling is my DK and her mage. So I have no doubt she’ll do the same, if not worse, to me soon.

So anyway, I post this for 3 reasons. First, because lately we haven’t been playing WoW too much, and when we do play its mostly leveling which means nothing really new, so I have little content. And since I have content, it gets posted. Second, to compliment my wife because I know she’ll read this (/hug!). Third, and the real reason, lol, is to brag.

Ok, so if you’re running a dungeon like Halls of Stone, you can make the dungeon go a lot faster by skipping Krystallus and Maiden of Grief. Perfectly fine with that…. So long as you mention that it’s your plan at the beginning of the dungeon (or, hell, even just plain mention it – don’t just do it without saying anything). And if everyone’s good with it. But when the tank is the only one who wants to do that? When the healer & 2 dps want to finish a specific achievement and quickly talk to Yarauk… And the other dps wants all the bosses for the badges… Let’s put it this way – I was the healer, and Lady X was one of the dps. We both needed that one last Elder for the meta.

So, we are in HoS, and tank goes straight to the Tribunal of Ages. We figure it’s fine with us skipping the other bosses, so long as we get that last Elder. Especially since it’s only a couple trash pulls towards Krystallus, and is real quick to get to. So after Tribunal, we are running back to the intersection and mention that we’d like the Elder. The tank is already pulling the trash at the entrance to Sjonnir. So of course someone accidentally pulls other trash on the way to catch up to the tank. And yet the tank doesn’t even try to pull the trash off them, even though I managed to heal us through all that. Oy! But anyway, then we got into a debate with the tank, because 3 of us were sitting over by the area to get the Elder, and 2 of them were sitting by Sjonnir. Tank was giving the “I don’t have time, I have a raid” excuse and saying that we can just queue up for a tank after we kill Sjonnir. I’m sorry, but isn’t that a bit rude for the incoming tank (assuming we got one who clicked OK when they saw 2 of the bosses were already down – one of which being the final one)? The incoming tank wouldn’t be able to get Frosts for the random, or even any good number of badges. Not to mention the half hour we’d have to wait for a tank anyway, since I’m guessing most tanks won’t accept a dungeon that’s already complete… So we pretty much just plant ourselves. I mean seriously, it’s like 3-4 pulls, AoE, and they go quick. And 3 people in the group of 5 want to do it, 1 doesn’t care, and only 1 doesn’t want to. So instead, we wound up spending more time talking about it than we would have spent getting the Elder and then the final boss. Finally the tank does the “Well you can always just get another tank ” and ditches. Which was fine with us, we just invited a guildie and actually finished out the whole dungeon. But he needed a Rose anyway, so it worked out pretty well, lol.

But my point here is that people should play nicer. If you plan to do something in the dungeon that is different from the norm (such as skipping bosses) then you should ask first. Or mention it. Just say something so people don’t waste their time. For example, when I’m tanking in GD, I always ask if people want Eck or not. And then I go with the majority vote. It doesn’t matter to me if we kill him, I don’t need the badge, but it doesn’t take long. And if I were in a super rush, I’d let people know when we start that I don’t have time for him. And even if I were in a rush, and 3 ppl in the group needed me to do 3 quick trash pulls so they could get a meta… Yes, I would take the time. Because it’s faster to just do it than to discuss it!

And another side note – Tanks and Healers are replaceable in PuG’s. And it doesn’t take too long either, because you jump the queue when you’re mid dungeon and lose someone. Therefore it is not a trump card to say “Do it my way or I’ll leave”. So please realize that it’s an MMO, meaning lots of different people with lots of different expectations, needs, wants, etc. And if you’re in a group of people and the majority of the group needs something real quick? Be nice! Seriously!

10 things…
Here are some things that people just don’t seem to understand, unless they’re a Hunter. Everyone complains about hunters (not near as bad now in wrath as it was in bc, but the stigma still exists), but that’s probably because we have the most complex character in the game. But anyway, if you’re running with a hunter, here are some things you should understand (in no particular order):

1. We need to stand still
2. We need to be at-range
3. We control 2 characters
4. We have a bond with our pets
5. Misdirect is not up 100% of the time
6. We do bring buffs to the party
7. Beating the tank on threat isn’t the end of the world
8. Everyone hits a button on accident
9. We know our character
10. Repair bills suck

So here I’ll try to explain a little about what I mean so you can understand why we’re frustrated when someone demonstrates that they don’t understand one of the above.
We need to stand still.
The short version is that we’re snipers. Yes, we actually have a talent that says “stand still and you will do more damage”. Not to mention we are semi-casters, so while many of our shots are instant casts, we do still need to stand still to get all of them off the bow. Remember, we even have a channeled spell (used much more often with the current game mechanics and the speed/quantity of pulls). Aka – want us to do dps? Let us stand still during the fight.

We need to be at range.
You know how the mage, boomkin, warrior, lock, etc. can all stack up under the boss’ butt? We can’t. Why? Because Bliz won’t let us fire our bows/guns at point blank range. Yes, they reduced the minimum distance, but it still exists – we have a minimum distance. And on bosses? Are you a tank and love how far away you can stand and still hit the boss because he has a huge hitbox? Yeah – now add a few feet. That’s the C L O S E S T we can get. A mage, boomkin, warrior and so on can literally stand as close to the boss as the tank and still hit it with FULL DPS. At that range, hunters become melee fighters because we cannot do ANY ranged damage. This is one thing that ticks me off real quick – when tanks forget/ignore this fact. The other day, for example, I had a PuG tank in DK who was pulling the boss right next to me. That means A = I am not at range and B = I have to move. Since I’m only on point 2 of this blog, you can understand why it would make me mad that a tank does this. It’s 2 of the base rules of a hunter. Not to mention just plain stupid when there’s no need to move the boss and you can literally position him wherever you want. I know the retort ‘you have Disengage‘ but first, it has a cooldown, and second – when the tank can easily move the boss (or return it to the same spot, for bosses that move during phases) then that means you are gimping your DPS. And if you know hunters have this mechanic and you don’t move the boss? You’re intentionally making it impossible for us to do our job. Quick way to piss me off, in case you can’t tell, lol.

We control 2 characters.
These pets are on our bars, they have their own controls, abilities, talents, etc. That’s in addition to all the other things about our character we have to control. Yes, many fights are shoot & forget, but if there’s green goo on the ground, we have to be a healer in addition to dps, focus on making sure the pet doesn’t just sit in the goo, etc. During fights with multiple mobs we have to have ourselves and our pets on the right target. On ‘stop dps’ fights, we have to stop our dps and our pet’s dps. And so on. There are 2 characters to think about. Does the pet occasionally get hungry for blood and go do something stupid? Sure, it happens. But think about all the rest of the time in which the pet is doing what it is supposed to – and give credit to the hunter for controlling 2 characters at the same time.

We have a bond with our pets.
You’ll notice that hunters don’t all have the exact same pet with the exact same abilities. In fact, we spend time researching which pet is the best for our play style, we go pick the skin we want, then tame it, then level it, as well as putting in talent points and so on. Quite a bit of time invested just to have the pet ready for a level 80 dungeon. So please forgive us if we shed a tear or two when the pet dies, or get defensive when someone insults the pet. It’s not some voidwalker we summon from the darkness whenever we want to bend his will to ours – the pet is a friend that we found, trained with, and is now a teammate in battle. Of course, I’m lucky that most of my guild is sad when my pet dies in battle. I think they too have a bond with Fluffy after running countless dungeons with him!

Misdirect is not up 100% of the time.
Especially with the speed of dungeons these days, the idea is to do as much dps as quick as possible to get to the next group, to finish the dungeon. Only way for us to safely lay into the mobs real quick is to use MD. Thus we use it pretty religiously nowadays (or at least some of us do). So before you ask a question like “are you using MD?” or “wait to hit the targets until I have agro” look at your buffs. Chances are, if the hunter’s pulling agro it’s because MD was on CD for that particular fight, or they’re beating you on threat after they already used a MD. Thus don’t automatically assume it’s their fault. Yes, generally if a DPS is pulling threat, it was their own fault. But it’s not always the case. And with hunters who have MD and FD… At least think about it before just laying the blame out there. Besides, if MD had 0 CD, tanks would have an even easier job! Lol.

We do bring buffs to the party.
Ever wonder why you aren’t running out of mana? Running fast back through the dungeon after a wipe? No, it’s not quite the same as Kings, but I just thought was worth mentioning since I can’t count how many times I’ve heard that bringing hunters to a group is useless because they bring no buffs. We do bring buffs, and we also bring a huge chunk of DPS!

Beating the tank on threat isn’t the end of the world.
Misdirect.
Feign Death.
For some of us, Shadowmeld.
Need I say more? We’re charged with doing mass DPS so we do it. Yes, sometimes we pull threat. It happens when you’re cranking DPS out like that. Which is why we have a mechanic for dumping it. Granted, we should be trying to dump threat before pulling, but sometimes you get a crit when you didn’t expect it, so it’s a half second too late. It’s not the end of the world, we’ll dump the threat. Then the tank has a big lead on us in threat (which is why we wait until last second). Not saying we won’t top the threat again, considering that happens more often than you know, but just saying give us a break. Now, if a hunter is doing it repeatedly? Give them a smack upside the head. But if it happens once in a while? Don’t sweat it. It probably means that the hunter is already having to dump threat on a regular basis, so don’t waste energy yelling at the hunter – spend it on gaining more threat so the hunter can focus on doing damage instead of playing dead.

Everyone hits a button on accident.
We’re ranged. We have bloodthirsty pets. Think about wrath for example. If a druid is targeting a mob and accidentally hits wrath, they have 2 seconds (just under, taking into account haste & such) to correct their mistake. Now think about a hunter. If we’re in range and right click on the mob – we’ve already shot it. It’s actually really easy to do. There is no “oops” time. Similarly, it’s not too hard to send in the pet on accident. Think about trying to stop a warrior mid-charge. How is a pet charging any different? Oh yeah, it’s not our character, it’s our pet. Meaning we have to realize it (a little harder considering it’s the pet on the side, not our whole character, or even something in the center of our screen), then call it back mid-charge. Basically don’t expect that to happen any more than you would expect a warrior to stop mid-charge. So since those are things that happen instantly after accidentally hitting the button, give us a break. Everyone hits a button on accident here and there. The difference is just that our characters can do more damage on accident (instead of a tank tossing a shield too early, for example). Of course, if they do it repeatedly, yell at them. But once in a while? Seriously, chill out.

We know our character.
We know our character. We wouldn’t be lvl 80 and in good gear if we didn’t at least have a clue what we were doing. So don’t tell us how to play our character. Ask questions about why we do what we do by all means. But, for example, a hunter who gems for AP should not be yelled at by a paladin saying he should gem for AGI. Similarly a hunter gemmed for AGI should not be yelled at for not gemming for AP. Things like that are similar to the debate between Spell Power and Spirit for resto druids. If you have a character that is as experienced as the hunter you’re talking to? Sure, debate whatever it is. But if you don’t? Don’t try telling a hunter they’re doing it wrong. That goes for other characters too, but remember – other characters look at 3 talent trees. Hunters look at their own 3 plus that of their pets. Means we have to do more research, which generally means we’re more knowledgeable about our characters. Not always the case, but someone who plays a hunter as their main probably knows a lot more about hunters than someone who plays only a warlock.

Repair bills suck.
We wear mail. Not as expensive as plate, but that does put us up above cloth and leather right from the start. You have buff food? We have twice as much because we have 2 mouths to feed. And you know that relic/idol/totem/etc? The thing you get once and are done with it? At the moment, we have ammo – a consumable (I say ‘at the moment’ because it looks like Bliz is going to switch away from it being a consumable). Those arrows, btw, go for roughly 7g per stack right now, so don’t forget to add those to the bill. But since everyone seems to think hunters wear leather, they always lump us in with the ‘your repair bill is less than mine’ group. So please stop making that mistake.

So – Summary?
Hunters have a lot more going on than most characters. Hunters are complex characters to play and are often misunderstood. Here I’ve shown some of the more common things people don’t know/understand about hunters. Hopefully this will help people understand hunters better so they understand why we do things certain ways, and how to better help us so we can all get through the dungeon/raid faster and easier.

Ok, so last night was rather interesting and pretty funny. I and 2-3 guildies (depending on who was available at what time) were running randoms and having a pretty good time. The 1-2 pugs we picked up were always interesting. We seemed to get all the Dumb Knights though.

Yes, notice the positive points this time? Huntards get negative achievement points because they tarnish the name Hunter. But if they are no longer a Huntard, then this helps the name of Hunter! Sorry DK’s, there’s a few good ones out there like Kal, but the rest must be former Huntards, lol.

Anyway… Last night. Oh the fun. This achieve goes to all of them. I forget the order, but we got them time after time so they blur together. So we’ll call this one the first one. CoS. I’m tankin (tanked all of them w’ my paladin, got some upgrades too!). Everyone has the drake, but I figure we can go for timed run anyway just for the extra badge, and to make it go fast. So we’re waiting for the first wave spawn, and the DK starts running off in one random direction. Confusing, but ok… So of course the wave comes and he went the wrong way (50-50 shot and he got it wrong). So by the time he catches up to us, pretty much all but one mob is left. We run to the next group and he sticks around killing some undead before catching up. After the first boss kill and he goes off in a random direction again, I point out that it works better if we stick together as a group. That way the tank doesn’t kick his butt in DPS (kinda tired of me doing 1800 dps and him at ~700 by now, since his gear was quite better than that, and he wasn’t even with us for most of the fighting – he was just running around doing his own thing. I know there’s a prob w/ cross-realm dps meters, but that really wasn’t the problem – trust me). So he says “I really don’t care, jackass”.

Obviously.

So one of the guildies just asks “who’se the jackass?” and we just had some fun laughing with each other at him in vent (I know, you had to be there. didn’t realize it was going to be a fun filled DK night otherwise I would’ve made notes for this post, lol). But anyway, even with his pathetic DPS and attacking targets on his own, we did get the extra boss & badge, with about a minute to spare. Took down the final boss, and right after the loot pops up, he didn’t even bother to need or greed – just left, so we’d have to wait for the auto-pass timer. Jackass. How about a little sense of teamwork? Maybe a little gratitude for pulling you through the entire dungeon while you did nothing? Oh well, we were in a good mood and just made more fun of him for being so rude and noobish.

DK #2. Gundrak. So I know I’m not a DK (well, I have 2 of them, but one is lvl 60 and the other like 63 or something). But I do know how to DPS. Correct me if I’m wrong, but unless you’re doing a specific AoE pull, and you’re doing something to help aggro things onto the tank… you should only use AoE or massive dps cooldowns during the fight. Like Army of the Dead. Why the hell would you cast that not only before a boss fight, but before everyone has confirmed they’re even ready?! I mean, first boss fight, Slad’ran, he pulls them out and I figure whatever – he thought we were ready or he accidentally hit it too soon – no biggie. But next boss? So by the time we got to Moorabi we were getting annoyed and a guildie pointed out that you cast that after the fight has begun. He kinda blew it off, and we figured he hadn’t learned anything from the encounter. We were going to make fun of him for forgetting the extra boss, Eck, and just jumping in the water to finish up, but one of the guildies was absentmindedly following him, so we made fun of him in vent too, lol. Of course, he made fun of himself as well, so it was all good. Took down eck, got up to Gal’darah, and I sat down to drink. He pulls out AotD. I continue to get mana back. He start’s saying “Go, let’s go”. I start wondering how long AotD lasts, and if I should let it run out before pulling. Finally I figure I should just go anyway, since everyone was ready. On my way in, all of his army dies because of the time between cast and pull. I wasn’t paying too much attention to chat (trying to tank the boss…), but it was along the lines of guildies saying “see, that’s why you wait until the boss has been pulled”, and him yelling at them saying they were stupid. Guildie healer said well, I’m not going to heal him if he’s going to be like that. So silly me for… accidentally… yeah, that’s it… keeping the boss in one place when he whirlwinded (whirlwinded… that a word?). This wise and all-knowing DK stayed right on him, and obviously died. Lol. Healer even told him he wasn’t going to heal him. So the fight was fine, and we took the boss down easy. The guildie who can’t rez anyone (class couldn’t) asked in vent if we were going to rez him or not. So I /emote contemplates rezzing DumbKnight. But rather than be a total jerk and not, I did. Instant he was alive, he leaves party. Lol. Guess he was a sore loser. I mean, we weren’t being completely nice, so you can’t blame him too much, but only after trying to help teach him to be a better DPS. Sore loser.

So I break in the stream of DK’s (yes, there’s another…) to go to another pug we had last night, a non-DK. This is just to explain the type of people we normally are, when we’re not dealing with jerks. Aka, when we’re dealing with Newbs, and not NoObs.

So we’re in Pit of Saron (or Pit of Saruman, as I prefer). Running it with a Newb mage. He was doing fine, up until the point he accidentally pulled one of the patrolling dragons and wiped the group. We’ve all done it though, so no prob. Release and run in. Except he’s taking forever. So we took out the dragon, while waiting, and so we could find his body since he had released and we were looking around. Found his body, rezzed him, and kept moving, figuring he got lost. He said as much. Thank you for letting us know! That meant we knew he needed a little help. So when we wiped on Forgemaster Garfrost, we helped direct him into the dungeon – I stayed outside, so it would help by following the dot on the map/minimap, and we talked him through it. Took some extra time, but he got in ok. Took down the forgemaster, then Ick. Got through the first stupid-annoying-5 pull fine. Not took quick on sheeping, but it worked. Wiped on the 2nd group. Damn, I hate those guys. Bad pull, bad positioning, sheep didn’t work, agro went funky… I hate those guys. Anyway, we figure the newb had an idea where he was going, so we headed in. Since it was easy enough, and we got in faster than him, we just rezzed him that time. However, after wiping on the gauntlet, he couldn’t find it when heading back in. So we patiently waited, and one of our guildies talked him through it. Took a while, but you have to learn sometime. We figure better when with a group like ours, than a group made up of DK’s like the other ones I’ve been mentioning here… Could’ve booted him from the group, or left him, but that doesn’t help anyone. Instead, he made it back in just fine (with the explanation), so we continued. Even managed to get an achiev too! Which is proof you don’t have to do the gauntlet on one shot, btw, but I think you still can’t be hit by the ice at all during any of your tries. So yes, it took us extra time to help teach him how to get back in, but now he has learned something. Good luck to him, and I hope he does well.

Commercial break over, back to the DumbKnights. Azjol’Nerub. Think we finally have an ok one. He’s not doing anything crazy stupid, helping the group with his dps and such. And then a guildie just had to say it… We start in on some set of mobs (don’t remember if it was boss or other), and I pick up agro. Then he drops his AotD. Our guildie proceeds to say “finally, a good DK”. And yes, like 5-10 seconds later, he wound up pulling agro on something (or many somethings) and getting himself killed. Oy – finally find a DK who puts down AotD, and then he has no concept of threat management. On top of that, he liked to stand in Anub’Arak’s Pound. Why can’t we get nice pugs? However, he wasn’t too bad, so it was all good. We loot Anub’Arak. He waits for everyone to hit greed on the orb, then hit’s need, wins it, and leaves party.

Jackass.

I mean, I could care less about the orb. I have 2 stacks of them in the bank, and if I really needed another one, I have plenty of friends who would give me a few. It’s the courtesy that kills me. People seem to think that because it’s a cross-realm pug it means you can be a jerk and get away with it. What happened to “play nice”? Why be a ninja, especially over something so easy to obtain? Why be a jerk when people are trying to help you dps better? Why ignore teamwork and run in random directions? Why not be nice and spend the extra 10 minutes and teach the poor guy where the entrance to the dungeon is!

Anyway, in relation to DK’s, I am happy to run with true DeathKnights such as Kal and the few like him. I feel his pain with DumbKnights which were undoubtedly Huntards at one point. From a Hunter standpoint though, thank you Bliz for making DK’s – got all the Huntards to pick a new class! Lol.

And I know that this little blog doesn’t have a big reader base, but I hope others post something similar, and that maybe we can have some effect on the PuG world. So after this wall ‘o text, I shall coin the phrase, and please feel free to repeat: “Xanther says play nice!”

WoOt! First time we’ve seen it drop in our various runs… A battered piece of junk. So surprised when I saw it (as I think we all were). Then we rolled, and I actually won it! With 4 guildies and 1 pug, I was pretty convinced the pug was going to win it, lol. Anyway, I’m only a little ways into the quest chain (didn’t have time to do it all last night) and I have to say it’s pretty cool. Though doing laundry was an interesting component. But the long (did I mention it takes a while?) quest chain will end in receiving a very cool weapon.

So this will be me soon! Isn’t it pretty? Yeah, pretty sharp!!! Haha!