[7.3] Azortharion's Hunter Guides

[Deleted]

because BM was so strong already!

[Piene]

So I went and got my Windrunner legendary weapon and fell flat on my face playing MM for the first time since 7.03 dropped. Mobs... mobbed me and ate me for lunch
How do I avoid getting pooped on without my trusty pet tank?

Black Arrow, Exhilaration (Cooldown gets lowered for every kill you get) and some Kiting/Binding Shot and you should be fine.

[Kylecat15]

So like any tips at least in dungeons? I find it so difficult to use Barrage (I mean for trash which obviously means nothing). It pulls so much and its so annoying having to try and position myself by the tank usually so no other mobs are in front of me -_-

[Thursley]

So like any tips at least in dungeons? I find it so difficult to use Barrage (I mean for trash which obviously means nothing). It pulls so much and its so annoying having to try and position myself by the tank usually so no other mobs are in front of me -_-

What kind of tips are you looking for? There isn't some special trick that will suddenly allow you to barrage freely. The mechanic is straightforward: stand in a position where there aren't extra mobs in front of you. Also, you should get out of the "trash means nothing" mindset, because it's definitely not true for dungeons. When it comes to doing difficult dungeon content quickly trash is generally more dangerous and time-consuming than bosses.

[Mikemo]

So like any tips at least in dungeons? I find it so difficult to use Barrage (I mean for trash which obviously means nothing). It pulls so much and its so annoying having to try and position myself by the tank usually so no other mobs are in front of me -_-

I found a neat little trick that seems to work the majority of the time. As soon as you barrage and you see an arrow going towards a mob thats not part of the group your meant to attack, immediately feign death and if it works it shouldn't aggro the mob. You have to be pretty quick to notice stray arrows for this to work though. Let me know if it works for you

[Madwolf]

So leveling has been a pleasure so far but I'm not entirely sure what to think of Hunters so far.

Beast Mastery still feels less involved than it should. It wasn't overly complicated in WoD, but it also kept you active. In Legion it has moments where you're plugging away, and then there's down time where you're waiting for your focus to get back up to 70 to throw in another Cobra Shot. Chimera Shot should be a baseline ability and not a talented one. Pets also feel almost as squishy as they did prior to WotLK. I that they're trying to emphasis the different Pet specs by making them stand out more, but I don't feel as if a Ferocity Pet should stand that high of a chance of dying during a Dungeon or Raid encounter. The reason pet micro-management went away after Vanilla and TBC, as far "fire" damage went, is because pet pathing is clunky, and baby sitting something that makes up a core part of your class just isn't very fun/

Marksmanship is interesting for me thus far. I hated it when I was going through the quest chain for the Legendary weapon. I get how good it can be, and that it is very involved, but I felt like I needed my pet if I was going to use it for leveling. The duration of Black Arrow felt underwhelming, and AoE was a pain. If you have a tank it's a ton of fun, and I'm sure it's even better when you nail the rotation. I just haven't gotten it down quite yet. I just didn't feel that I could keep leveling with it.

Survival was more fun than I thought it'd be after getting a ton of criticism. Again I felt it suffered from some of the problems Beast Mastery did where it had a certain spots where you had down time, and waiting, no matter what isn't very fun.

Honestly, if you like a spec guys an gals, you should play it, and learn to play it well. A person playing a spec they like is more likely to play it well than playing a spec that they don't just because it's supposedly "better."

[Deleted]

Hati's contribution to Beast Cleave was nerfed by 25%, not in any patch notes. Hati's Beast Cleave damage is now 75% of main pet damage.

What does it mean?

5-6% DPS drop on 4 target sustained AoE.

Was Hati's KC always 33%? Or was it 50% or even 75% at some point?

[Azortharion]

It was higher once, but that was nerfed a while ago. Nothing wrong in sims atm (cross-checked everything).

[michelf]

So I went and got my Windrunner legendary weapon and fell flat on my face playing MM for the first time since 7.03 dropped. Mobs... mobbed me and ate me for lunch
How do I avoid getting pooped on without my trusty pet tank?

i levelled all the way with MM and it was so much fun, you actually have to play MM as if it is PvP, you need liberal use of your CC abilities, binding shot is marvelous! concussive and disengage, playing at lvl 108-110 i was actually having to clear out kite paths of mobs to solo the rares as you are so squishy thats why i found levelling as MM so fun, it wasnt just braindead hurr durr md to pet and just stand here doing rotation

[tithian]

So I went and got my Windrunner legendary weapon and fell flat on my face playing MM for the first time since 7.03 dropped. Mobs... mobbed me and ate me for lunch
How do I avoid getting pooped on without my trusty pet tank?

1. Use Black Arrow on a heavy hitter. When you kill stuff it recharges so you can effectively have a tank even without a pet and will help you with rares.
2. Exhilaration recharges quickly as you kill big pulls, so the trick is to focus on killing fast, instead of survivability and kiting.
3. If you pulled more than you can handle and you can't kill enough things for Exhilaration to fully recharge, Feign Death.
4. Binding Shot is good for giving you breathing room, which is why almost every build out there recommends it as a talent.
5. If everything else is on CD, Disengage and run away, Posthaste makes it super easy.

[Zanez]

Anyone know what spec we should be getting legendary drops for when going 13 bm.20 mm them 26 bm artifacts?

[Zungate]

1. Use Black Arrow on a heavy hitter. When you kill stuff it recharges so you can effectively have a tank even without a pet and will help you with rares.
2. Exhilaration recharges quickly as you kill big pulls, so the trick is to focus on killing fast, instead of survivability and kiting.
3. If you pulled more than you can handle and you can't kill enough things for Exhilaration to fully recharge, Feign Death.
4. Binding Shot is good for giving you breathing room, which is why almost every build out there recommends it as a talent.
5. If everything else is on CD, Disengage and run away, Posthaste makes it super easy.

2.* Misdirect to Dark Minion, Barrage.

[Deleted]

2.* Misdirect to Dark Minion, Barrage.

Minion insta dead all mobs on your assand force FD no thanks
Another reason to not like MM for open world is Suramar City

[Madwolf]

i levelled all the way with MM and it was so much fun, you actually have to play MM as if it is PvP, you need liberal use of your CC abilities, binding shot is marvelous! concussive and disengage, playing at lvl 108-110 i was actually having to clear out kite paths of mobs to solo the rares as you are so squishy thats why i found levelling as MM so fun, it wasnt just braindead hurr durr md to pet and just stand here doing rotation

Kiting around mobs just isn't very fun to me. And being on a PvP server means if someone ganks you that it'll be a struggle to deaggro and fight your attacker without wasting critical CDs for stuns and slows.

I also feel that kiting mobs around is a waste of time and slows leveling by taking you away from objectives which is bad when respawn times are high.

With a pet I can manage larger pulls, adds, and other players without wasted movement.

[Youn]

Maybe I am doing something wrong. It seems I can just stand still and burn down creatures without kiting them around. Yeah, they get to melee, but they don't on average do more then half my health even when I have pulled 3-5 of them. I did take Black Arrow for creatures like the Elite Moose in High Mountain. But, for normal mobs, I don't believe I have had any issues with pulls under 6 creatures.

[Madwolf]

Sounds like you're doing something right. Part of my problem was definitely rotation. The other issue is using Black Arrow effectively with misdirection.

Honestly having to pair the two feels like a bad design choice. The purpose of the critter seems to be to tank, so why not make it growl to begin with? Because outside of solo content it's just not that great a talent.

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I don't want Blizz to make BM bad again, like pre-WotLK because it's not very complicated. I get that, but it's not the players fault, that's the designers. I would gladly take more to do.

[Dracodraco]

Sounds like you're doing something right. Part of my problem was definitely rotation. The other issue is using Black Arrow effectively with misdirection.

Honestly having to pair the two feels like a bad design choice. The purpose of the critter seems to be to tank, so why not make it growl to begin with? Because outside of solo content it's just not that great a talent.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't want Blizz to make BM bad again, like pre-WotLK because it's not very complicated. I get that, but it's not the players fault, that's the designers. I would gladly take more to do.

In fairness, Black Arrow does exactly what it sets out to - it aggros the one target you put it on. With 250K hp in 830 ilvl, and an 8 second shelf life, it was always clear the intent for it was never mass-AOE pulling; It was simply to provide a breathing room for single player content (AKA not mass AOE'ing).

[Haram]

Hi Azortharion, I thought I would ask here instead of opening a new thread since it's somewhat relevant.

Looking at your guides for BM & MM, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions to clarify the rotation.

For BM, is there a specific reason why we don't want to use Cobra Shot < 90 Focus? Since KC is 30 focus, and on ST, we would be using Murder of Crows every 1 min, wouldn't just making sure that we are >30 focus to always have KC usable when off CD be a better number? I'm not questioning the guide itself, as I assume it's the most optimal way to maximize DPS, I am just trying to make sense of using Cobra Shot only on 90+ Focus.

For MM, is there a reason why we use Barrage on our opening sequence after Trueshot and not before?

Thank you so much for the guides, they've helped me out a ton

[Hamlet]

Hi Azortharion, I thought I would ask here instead of opening a new thread since it's somewhat relevant.
For MM, is there a reason why we use Barrage on our opening sequence after Trueshot and not before?

Not Azortharion, but let me take a stab here: reason is for Trueshot haste bonus to speed up the channeling of Barrage.

[Dracodraco]

Hi Azortharion, I thought I would ask here instead of opening a new thread since it's somewhat relevant.

Looking at your guides for BM & MM, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions to clarify the rotation.

For BM, is there a specific reason why we don't want to use Cobra Shot < 90 Focus? Since KC is 30 focus, and on ST, we would be using Murder of Crows every 1 min, wouldn't just making sure that we are >30 focus to always have KC usable when off CD be a better number? I'm not questioning the guide itself, as I assume it's the most optimal way to maximize DPS, I am just trying to make sense of using Cobra Shot only on 90+ Focus.

For MM, is there a reason why we use Barrage on our opening sequence after Trueshot and not before?

Thank you so much for the guides, they've helped me out a ton

For BM: Crows might reset and you'll need the focus sooner. Likewise, ask the question - "does it matter if I'm above 90 focus?" - all your focus gain is largely static, so being super high doesn't really matter; There's no real difference between 60 and 90, unless you think your reaction time is so low that a 2 second buffer isn't enough to hit CS/KC.

For MM - because trueshot increases the speed we cast barrage at - quicker cast, more DPS. Likewise, it allows for the sped-up regen during the channel for more focus, and lastly, Trueshot with the artifact has 50% increased crit damage, which means even if it had no haste, it'd be a dps gain to pop it prior to barrage as barrage is our highest priority button.