Again this is a terrific site. Thanks Lassirra!

I especially got a kick out of your depiction of
a tank’s frantic activity

<>

LOL I can only imagine.

I hope SOMEDAY to be able to be that active AND also far more aware of what others are up to all the while….

I ain’t anywhere close to that yet.

On balance, my experiences with the random groups have been good. I know the easy content has plenty to do with that, but still it is usually just fine. Pretty long waits, but fine (I just do a daily or two while waiting).

One thing I do which MAYBE helps a little is drop a fish feast right away, and check classes to see which drums and scroll of fortitude buffs might help and give em. That’s mainly just only to slow everyone down for a half a minute before we start….

I am a well geared hunter who does great dps and studies fight strategy. I read this and other websites BUT I didn’t know about chain heals. Not everyone played for 4 or 5 years, has friends that play, or was lucky enough to find/get into one of the few actually helpful levelling guilds.

I know this class in and out, but I don’t know somoe of the basics or how other classes relate to ours. The people serious enough about this class to blog have many alts and what not and are take for granted that we undrstand every other class.

The customization is not overly difficult but I am sure most of us are not new to spending time to tweak a mod.

For example, I have two 80s on two different servers. One of my 80s is in a guild that consists of two people. My other 80 is in a fairly small guild that rarely has enough people on at the same time to fill a 5man. My choice of guilds is based on the fact that I’ve been in large guilds before and rarely enjoyed myself. So I stick to extremely small guilds. However, that means that if I want to do certain things in-game, I have to PuG to do it. There is no other option.

Because I’ve opted for quiet, drama-free game play, I have given up the luxury of being able to run anything with players I already know. Despite that, I’ve managed to gear one character sufficiently to be doing ICC 10 on a regular basis (provided I can find a group), and the other isn’t too far behind.

My point is, it’s all well and good to say “If you don’t like PuGs, don’t run them”, but for some, that option doesn’t exist. It comes down to: “Do you hate PuGs more than you want to gear up to experience certain content?” and for many, the answer is no. It’s the same reason many people suffer through battlegrounds or Wintergrasp. The experience may be painful, but the ultimate rewards (better gear) make it worth the hassle. That doesn’t mean they can’t still complain about it in the process.

I want my dual-spec naow!
I really want to have a BM off-spec, and since I’m raiding in a guild, I just can get rid of my Sv-spec.
But I want a spirit beast!

Furthermore, “if you aren’t willing to teach, correct, and set someone on the right path, don’t complain.”? Ummm… what the hell do you think this site is? I’m supposed to spend 20+ hours a week running a site intended to teach players how to play, and then spend all my in-game time doing the same thing as well? Pardon me for wanting my in-game to be exactly that, my time. I do my part to contribute to the community, thank you. I don’t enjoy having someone tell me that I don’t and that I can’t complain about whatever I want to complain about. That just spits in the face of all the work I’ve done on this site over the past three years, and I don’t much care for it.

Yet with this gear i can put out a respectable 4k dps on most bosses – as a minimum.
Peak dps 6.5k on a boss like trollgore/patchwork.

Yet in 4 outta 5 pug runs im all alone at the top of the dps charts, often doing in excess of 40% of total damage.

I heard somewhere that the LFG tool always tries to include someone with low gearing to balance things out. But not 2 or 3 of them!

For me there are only 2 motivations for doing random heroics in the first place:

1. To get my frost badges
and
2. To improve my dps, situational awareness, and skill as a hunter.

I wonder what the fail DPS priorities are?

Just because you’re playing with people you don’t know and will probably never see again does not mean you have free license to be a terrible player. The fact that this is accepted as “just how things are” rather than rallied against is pathetic. (Which is compounded by the fact that apparently it’s everyone else’s job to educate these slobs, rather than making them take responsibility for their own ignorance. But that’s a whole different gripe.)

It is conceivable that a level 80 player may not have a clue how to play their class. This is especially true for Hunters, as we’re an extremely easy class to level. Combine that with Heirloom items, Recruit-A-Friend, and the fastest leveling process to date, and it’s no wonder people get to 80 and still have no idea what they’re doing. Frankly, it’s fine not to know what you’re doing at 80. The problem comes in when you attempt to start playing with others.

It should be common sense that if you don’t know how the hell to play your character, you should not be attempting to play it in a group environment. (Let alone heroics or raids.) It’s a recipe for disaster, and you’re knowingly setting up complete strangers for a miserable experience. That’s just plain rude. Learn how to play your character first, and then look for groups to join. If you don’t want to learn, fine. Just don’t subject other people to your inadequacies.

It’s very easy to learn enough about each class to not be a hindrance to groups. The basics are exactly that: basic. And yet, it’s amazing how many people are completely ignorant of them. (Apparently most people have never heard of Google.) There’s no excuse at this point for not knowing them. Just spending time in-game watching General or Trade chat will likely alert you to a few good resources.

People seem to be able to find WoWHead and add-ons sites just fine, but can’t be bothered to learn the basics of their class before hopping into the Dungeon Finder, and I’m sick of it. If you’re too lazy to learn about your class, fine. Just don’t make my game-play experience miserable in the process.

Based on the fact that you’re explaining Hunter mechanics to me, I can only assume you didn’t really bother to take a look around the rest of the site. I’m well aware of what they should have been doing. I’m also well aware that, as a tank, I should have done more. In fact, I said as much in the article itself.

I think, perhaps, you may have missed the point.

Historically, (and probably a little bit because I work thirds), I’ve always considered myself more of a PvP hunter, learning how to improve myself in battlegrounds (never cared for arena, sadly). I eventually got tired of getting 2-hit by PvE players who are practically given much better gear (including high ilvl weapons and better PvP gear) than the honor gear that I farmed several months for (competing with unique classes such as AFK’ers, Bots, and Retards), and in a shorter time frame. So logically I decided to join the PvE community. I can’t say that I’ve regretted the switch as even pugging groups seem much more focused and coordinated than in PvP. To make things easier, the only thing really stopping progression is the group’s own stupidity, not human opponents. You generally know what to expect, and if you don’t on your first run, you probably will on the second.

Before I even started pugging (or even grouping with guildies, for that matter), I was well aware of concepts like attacking what the tank is attacking, Misdirection, and Feigning Death on top of the healer to lose threat. The only thing that really gets me is dungeon mechanics that I am unaware of because of my newness, like monsters that charge if you don’t stay close enough or kill-orders that aren’t initially self-explanitory (like the Flame Bearers in PoS which can wipe a group more often than the bosses if not handled right away).

As far as “new” or “baddie” players who tend to make mistakes, I say tell them what they’re doing wrong. If they’re as bad as me, they’ll remember it and do it right next time. If they refuse to listen, then wish them luck on finding a group and vote them out, if they’re not willing to learn, then they are eternal noobs™

I think my worst mistake was accidentally using (and not realizing it until I ran back) an anti-rogue macro that Shadowmelds, switches to track hidden, and puts the pet on aggressive during FoS. This was not so much because I am “bad” as the bind for it was right next to another skill that I was trying to use and butterfingered. From the group’s perspective, I can only imagine that looked like “OMFG CONTROL YOUR PET IDIOT! NUB SCRUB HUNTARD!”

(I know exactly what you’re thinking, and NO, you CAN NOT extract Eternal Noobs with the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor).

I do think you are wrong about several things, though. For example the priestess thing. Not in saying the hunters were wrong (lets face it, they were idiots), but part of playing your class is knowing how to play with other classes. I would have feigned death in that situation, I use it religiously. Before it came to that though, they all three have waited for you to get aggro on all the mobs (please tell me you told them you were pulling all of them, or else half of this is your fault)then MD volley the entire group(considering its size)….you’d have all three of their threat stacked up for a total of 12secs of volley time(4sec for each of there MD)on every single mob, after that, they wouldn’t have to worry about pulling anything and could unleash hell on the priestesses all they wanted….if anything was alive…and i doubt there would be.
Ofc, this isn’t a perfect world, and if i would have done that and the huntards didn’t, I’d have probably targeted the priestess you did have. Then called them huntards and apologized for their behavior.
Now, if this is a strange tactic to you consider this…Hunters are basically the only DPS class without a passive threat mitigation. What we do have is MD and FD…if you don’t use them you are a crap hunter…and if you don’t use them and you never pull, then you should just delete your character, because you aren’t doing enough damage to even call yourself DPS…and thats a fact.

All that said…they still deserve to get hacked.

again I am not a leet hunter, so for me …if I’m careful about trying to help out the tank (and healer) and group in general, my recount activity level and dps are gonna fall some. But that makes no difference in 5 man heroics because they were, of course, designed for much lower gear levels than those easily available nowadays. In these random daily groups there is almost always more than adequate DPS available.

So the players who spam recount dps reports throughout the instance irritate me whether I am leading the parade or not. They are just courting crazy trouble. Was in one Gundrak group where we were crusing along killing all the obsses when the healer left. Why did he leave? He said it was out of principle because every dps but me was trailing the tank on the meters. Geesh!

If somebody wants to report dps after it is all over I don’t see the point but go ahead. The rest of the time if the bosses are going down and we are not? A dangerous and worhtless practice.

Except for one crazy high number in Oculus that must have included amber drake damage, the best dps I have ever been able to manage in an entire 5 man run was 5169 in Pit of Saron. But often enough, in my opinion, I had played just as well or better at 3500 or even less….

Again, if the group, in whatever dps balance, is getting it done, the dps numbers don’t mean a thing. Keep recount out of the run.

I’ll toss in my two cents (less inflation)

I’m far from a leet hunter. Not a raider, except for occasional nightowl pugs; but I have run about 60 or 70 heroics with the new dungeon finder, so from that limited perspective….

I’m amazed anyone does a #1 in a heroic unless asked to (or by accident…that is another long buggy story). Not guilty on that one.

#2. Great information, and I am learning to really slow down. John Wooden’s old basketball maxim, “Be quick but don’t hurry” applies to many things, including much of wow.

#3 Me, normally I make the tank my focus and have a macro to target that focus. Give him a couple seconds and then stick with that target until it dies. But then I do again target the tank’s latest target after that death….

Lassirra said

“The only time this may be an ill-advised policy is when you have a tank that tabs through targets frequently throughout each fight. This is something Warriors do frequently because they have the weakest AoE threat of any of the tanking classes. Additionally, tanks will occasionally swap targets if a mob gets loose in order to taunt them back. If you start attacking that target, you’re making the tank’s job of getting that mob back under control that much more difficult. .”

Hmmm gotta admit my innate high sympathy and appreciation for the difficulties of the tank life ends about there….lol…..if after the first trash mob has gone down he is STILL messing around switching targets, I’ve done all I can reasonably do because I am gonna focus on his target of the moment again.
If it is a problem I’ll try and compensate with a misdirect and/or fd, but I can’t read his mind.

#4 have left growl on for a little while…and worse yet,on agressive, a couple times when I entered fresh from the middle of a BG. I apologized profusely and changed it quickly. The only 5 man heroic fights portions where I deliberately leave both on are the “add attack” intervals in the Anub’arak tussle. (to try and take some heat of the healer)

#5 I know better but I have done it. Great reminder!

Thanks for a terrific article.

The thing about PUGs and randoms are that you get people of unknown background and experience in a class. Sometimes you get great folks, sometimes you get people who reached 80 as part of a power leveling exercise and really have no clue about how you really play the class. It’s a whole lot tougher to swallow when you either know the class yourself or, are used to playing with people who do.

PUGing and randoms are like buying a mystery box, “let the buyer beware!”

Anywho, I can barely stand hunters in WoW. They are such a poorly designed class compared to most of the others with all kinds of useless bloat and awkward abilities, and their total imcompetence in melee regardless of spec is both loathsome and goofy.

All of the above is mostly made up for mechanically by outrageous long range burst damage but, honestly, the class still feels really lacking.

I have always really enjoyed Ranger-type classes in other MMOs and hate how that archetype is missing in WoW even though there’s a class perfectly capable of representing it.

As for the community? Yeah, it’s atrocious and has nearly chased me off of the game several times, but it’s general luster and good playability keeps me in it; I’m thinking it’ll get better as the game’s popularity dies down over time.