Out of curiosity, how did Hunters perform best in vanilla and TBC?

[Deleted]

A little background information: About a week ago, I saw a thread on the mage forums about the preferred rotation in vanilla and TBC. A few days later, I created a similar thread about warlocks, and a few days ago, about rogues. both threads gave me quite a bit of insight into the history and legacy of this game, and how the game evolved since then.

I don't do this for nostalgic reasons, or for research, but merely out of curiosity. I never played in vanilla, and only about half a year in TBC, and while my second char ever was a hunter, I was quite a noob back then.

so, how did hunters perform best? what was the optimal spec? what was pet management like in those days? any special weirdness which caused much hilarity?

[Deleted]

Easy:
Vanilla -> tranq shot bot

[Ardourdan]

I don't play Hunter, but regarding Pets, it used to be that it was pretty much best-guess on what the best pet to take was.

That said I do remember that during TBC the Scorpion as a pet was OP because its stacking poison attack would consume Nature buffs from players such as Stormstrike. Once that was nerfed I believe that the Lightning bolt from flying serpents became OP for a while. Fun times.

[Huntermyth]

0 - 21 - 30 was the best viable spec back in vanilla.

about rotation, there was no such thing. you had to use tranq shot when the boss fight requires you to though.

edit: sorry forgot to add pets. Humar the Pridelord and Brokentooth were the best 2 pets both for pvp and pve due to their incredible attack speed.

[Bluesftw]

empty your mana bar at boss , then either autoshoot and go afk or feign death , drink to full xD

[Roshar]

0 - 21 - 30 was the best viable spec back in vanilla.

about rotation, there was no such thing. you had to use tranq shot when the boss fight requires you to though.

edit: sorry forgot to add pets. Humar the Pridelord and Brokentooth were the best 2 pets both for pvp and pve due to their incredible attack speed.

Humar wasn't tamed for his attack speed, he was sought after because he was the only black lion in the game at the time (since then there's Spite in Sholazar Basin). It was The Rake in Mulgore and Broken Tooth in Badlands that were sought after for their speed. There were bats as well like the Needler that was sought after for his attack speed, Lupos the wolf in Duskwood because he did shadow damage and not physical damage, the AV frostwolves because they could outrun epic ground mounts so they could catch any player....there were so many "options" back then but tbh if you were raiding they were all false choices. You either went with a fast attack speed pet or you accepted that you were ok with not doing everything in your ability to max your dps.

[Perrito]

i never raided in vanilla, i was just leveling at the end of it.

in tbc it was really easy, pretty much all you had to do is spam your 3:2 macro (i think that was the name of it) until your keyboard need replacement, in some cases you would bind it to mousewheel. every often you would use your BW and spam some more steady/kill command.

dont remeber right the spec but im pretty sure it was bm with some points in mm/sv 41-15-5 i think it was the best spec, not sure because that was long time ago.

md had 3 charges but man it was almost required so the tank would get agro right away, some ppl took aimshot to just MD, threat was an issue back then.

traps were our nightmare, you will get a resist/miss on a hard pack and you would wipe in 5 mans, you get a break (even if no one touch it mobs just decided it was enough and they would break early cc) and you were done. it was required for you to either scatter trap on pull or distract trap to get it away from group.

in pvp we were garbage, like total garbage, you will end up playing with a lock and a resto druid if you want glad back them, 20-30 min matches mana draining the enemy healer, you had to arcane shot a lot in order to take off those dispell nature druid used that made him inmune to your stings. it was a mess, right now is much simple than it was before, not because is easier to play now than before it was because there were no dispell CD or protection, unless you ran with a lock.

i loved raiding back in TBC but i wouldnt want to go back, so far the best xpac for me been pandaria, as a game there are some BS in pandaland that i hate like forced to do dailys (even tho im a bit of a achievement whore i hate dailys), everything at start feel a bit grindy but now is like perfect. from all xpac i think it goes panda->tbc->wotlk->cata.

[Marksman12]

BM was insanely OP and top dps back in TBC; at least for me, i topped the meters almost every raid. Did not play in vanilla so i couldn't say.

[Deleted]

Vanilla raiding, pets weren't worth using, neither was Serpent Sting. Mana was an issue and our main value to a raid was Tranquilizing Shot. DPS was passable until Naxx where we lagged behind, Hunters were actually incapable without some serious RNG luck of breaking 600 DPS required on Patchwerk. MM was the main raiding spec but SV became viable at high gear levels because of the +25% agi.

For TBC, MM was ok but was quickly surpassed by BM. Serpent Sting still wasn't worth casting and almost all our damage was via Auto-shot and Steady Shot. Any shot was able to delay auto-shot so to maximise DPS we had to "weave" our specials between auto-shots. You may hear people talking about 2:1 ratios etc. which refer to 2 Steady Shots between each Auto-Shot. By Sunwell we were competitive for damage although Warlocks & Rogues were best by some margin. Most guilds had 1 hunter specced SV to provide a debuff to bosses which boosted physical dps AP vs that target by a %age of their agi. The SV hunter would be behind on personal DPS but the raid would benefit overall. The SV hunter also had to often use older-tier gear because it could mean higher agi. Pets did decent damage and survivability was reasonable.

[SL1200]

I remember finding a macro somewhere and spamming one key, but I admit that I was the definition of noob during bc.

[Renisis86]

In BC a good hunter has a Mouse with a scroll wheel, and enough time to level leatherworking and enchanting. In Sunwell we built insane groups built around hunters. 3 hunters, 1 shaman, 1 feral druid. Everyone had their drums macro'ed, to constantly have a drums buff up. Shaman were their to provide mana and agi totems. Ravagers and Wind Serpents were the best pets. Still feel wotlk was our sweet spot though.

[Deleted]

I remember Survival being rubbish with a buff that increased raid dps.
I always thought it was a melee hunter spec in pvp lol, but then again you never saw them in pvp.

Bm was insane in TBC. Just op.

MM was good, remember huge aimed shot crits, back when it was a 3 and something second cast.

[grisset]

Vanilla: Very little pet use (pulling shazz lol), 10 second rotation: Aimed shot between auto shots and multi-shot because even on one target did more damage than arcane shot. No serpent sting because it would knock debuffs and warlock dots off.

[Aertea]

In very early Vanilla we depended on "shot weaving". Aimed Shot didn't reset or delay the swing timer on auto-attack, the next auto attack just wouldn't go off until Aimed finished casting. So the goal became to cast Aimed Shot as close to an auto-shot as possible. This also caused slow weapons to be incredibly important for us, even after normalization, as all weapons auto-shot frequency depended on Aimed Shots cast time.

And yea, FD/Drink.

[Dald]

In Vanilla, pets were mostly useless in PvE. They would die from pretty much anything, so you had to constantly pull them in and out if you wanted to use them at all.
This was also a problem in the beginning of TBC, especially on fights like Gruul, because pets could get the stoned debuff and blow people up.

[Namarus]

In vanilla you had to have the fast attack speed pets as mentioned, but most fights they were dead. MM spec was very good, but once you had the gear SV was king.

In BC you tamed King Banglash for Cobra Strikes ability to increase attack speeds of pets. Your raid had a token SV hunter for Expose Weakness 25% of hunter's agi is used as bonus attack power for the raid .... Other than that every other hunter was BM with 3:2 macro. Spamming steady shot and Kill command

[Renisis86]

I remember having to tame pets as part of Boss Strats. In ZG we would tame the cobras that were weren't able to tank on Venoxis I think.

[Redpanda]

I raided in bc. Get a really good bow, make a macro tailored to your bows speed, get a free floating mouse wheel and roll the shit out of it and afk. Keep mana pots on hand and if you went dual wield dont forget to have mana oil on them.

[Elapsed]

In vanilla you had to have the fast attack speed pets as mentioned, but most fights they were dead.

Vanilla Holy Pally interject here and when I wasn't trying to stay out of combat to act as a battle res, or it wasn't a super focused cleanse fight (decursive was macro'd to tilde ~) The raid lead's primary order for a couple of us was to keep hunter pet's up. I recall having a separatre addon for pet raid frames in BWL and AQ40 (less in AQ because we had to judge and seal twist alot.

[Wolfster]

my best raiding experience was in BC as a hunter, simply because the complication of the preparation for raids compared to now, but as a hunter i had a macro, it was called the 3:2 macro, which was basically to put the auto attacks in between your steady shots, BM was the spec to go, our group in the raid consisted of 4 hunter (for the stacking 3% dmg buff by each hunter) and the 5th slot was for switching shamans to use bloodlust for us, back then the buffs were grp based and not raid wide, so it all came down to spamming you steady shot/auto shot macro while standing still and spamming arcane shots while on the run, ofc CD and mana management was fun too, like switching to aspect of the viper for mana regen and using the mana sting (forgot the name :/) on bosses that had mana pool for OP mana replenishment, as BM pet management was rly minimal as pet was always bashing on the boss...good times tbh....best times for me :P