Big Red Kitty Shares His Expertise Visually
Big Red Kitty has created two excellent videos for new hunters. The first, the BRK Lowbie-Hunter Guide Movie, focuses on the fact that hunters are a ranged class and covers basic techniques for staying at range, even before you get a pet. The second is the BRK Intro to Pet Training Movie; this one walks new hunters through the complicated process of learning and teaching pet skills.
These videos aren’t everything a hunter needs to know — that isn’t entirely feasible in a 14 minute video! — but they make an excellent starting point for players new to the hunter class.
3 Comments
i have to admit at low level i guess i am still a huntard , every time i tried to kite a mob i ran into aggro range of another mob , but the videos are well worth any new hunters time to view them , and the omen add-on i must check out as i have never tried it , that might be useful as i level my lower level pets
Hehehe, nothing I didn’t know as a slightly higher level hunter, but still fun to watch.
Honestly, Hunters who don’t melee are just another style of huntard. While your right on with the way you use your pet to hunt in most situations, your approach leaves a fair bit to be desired.
On this video BRK showed how efficient the so-called “huntard” style is at the low lvls, by shooting a wolf 3 times and smacking it once for a quick clean kill (not only is it fast it gets you melee and defense skills in the process); he then proceeded to kite another of the same style of wolf and spends nearly 3 times longer doing it, and wasting way more mana than the health he lost from the one hit the first wolf got in on him.
Kiting is very important, but its a very situational skill, all hunters should know how its done, and its worthwhile practicing it against stuff that doesn’t matter, but it is certainly not the fastest or most efficient style of hunting, especially in the pre-pet levels.
Kiting has its place in two prominent situations, one is when you are facing an adversary that neither you nor your pet can reasonably handle the dps from, the other is when you need to pull a mob from a group, in which case you send pet in, have it whack everything but your target, then you proceed to pull said target with heavy dps (preferably opening with an aimed shot) while your pet does cc on the remainders.
Outside of that, melee and close-combat are important for a couple of key reasons you totally ignore, the first and fore-most; DEFENSE.
You can’t possibly avoid getting hit now and again, your going to run into an oddly vacant area and have trains come barreling back to their pathing, mobs spawning inches from your face, prowling/sneaking mobs appearing within agro range, and PvP against any competent melee or hybrid. Your going to get hit, and its worth having defense maxed to help mitigate that and hopefully grant you that extra second or two you need to turn the tides of battle to your favor.
I’ll often hit an even or lower level mob with an arcane shot, hit it a few times then turn off auto-shot and stand in place as i wait for the mob to run up and smack me, and then for my pet to turn on it and snag agro from me, before backing up and resuming combat. It gives me about a 4-6 second window to gain some defense, and against even or lower mobs there is little if any risk involved at almost any level, you only have to do this a handful of times each level to stay up to date on defense. Obviously you don’t want to do that all the time, and certainly not against any mob thats higher than you or with above average dps, but its a simple easy way to not be defenseless at later levels or when you go do battlegrounds etc, against opponents who have their own way of calculating agro, hehe.
Second, we got one of the widest varieties of weapons available to us, and a few useful melee skills which are definitely situational, but worthwhile and useful none the less. Now granted, this doesn’t happen often, but every now and again, you are going to push your luck and stay out in the wild just a bit too long and run out of arrows/shot and find yourself close enough to a town/outpost/etc thats not your home to make it worth fighting your way to it rather than going out of your way to hearth and then run significantly longer to get back to said location. Then there is the times at lower levels when you got a small quiver, and you want to conserve what you have by letting your pet grab agro and then meleeing side by side so you don’t run out prematurely. Plus, when farming for resources or helping lowbie friends, your often going to take on large numbers of easy to best mobs who hardly do any damage to you, and its going to be faster to pull mobs to you one after another, wing clipping them and send your pet on them once they reach you. After you get several to you, you precede to turn and help your pet smack the crap out of the little buggers using wing clip again to avoid runners.
Basically all i am saying is, while ignoring the mechanics of agro and dying from trying to tank is wrong, it is just as important to not ignore your defensive and melee skills, skills which are way easier to level at the low levels when mobs are still easy to get away with tanking for more than a few seconds without getting your face handed to you.
In closing, not working them is limiting your characters potential, it gets really boring now and then to just always do the same thing over and over again, its nice to have the option to switch it up and know you can occasionally get away with breaking the rules and go toe to toe with a big old beastie while still knowing your limits.
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