As a self-proclaimed bad hunter, I tend to ignore many of the hunter skills — and certainly the more complex and situational ones. The fact is, I’m lazy — or as I prefer to say, lackadaisical (which has the overtone of not being interested enough to make the effort, instead of just being a character flaw). I play to relax, not to challenge myself. And so for most of my huntering career I’ve been pretty satisfied with Auto Shot, Arcane Shot, and Serpent Sting … and not much else.

But a lot of things changed in Patch 3.0, and now that I am leveling up again I’m starting to figure out how to use some of the changes to my advantage — in a very lazy way, of course. I’ve put together some notes on the skills I am using on the off chance that this is useful to someone else. I’m still not using anything even vaguely complicated (with one minor exception, discussed below), but I am pretty pleased with some of the new functionality.

Again, keep in mind that these are probably not the optimal skills, or the optimal ways to use these skills. I do not suggest that you look to this post for advice! (… Unless your playstyle happens to be as weird as mine.) I really just wanted to share.

Steady Shot

I know a lot of hunters will be horrified to learn that I rarely used Steady Shot before Patch 3.0. But hey, at least it was on my action bar — unlike the rest of the skills in this post.

I knew Steady Shot was supposed to be good steady damage for relatively little mana, but I also knew that Steady Shot would ‘clip’ or interrupt Auto Shot — to the extent that using it badly could actually lower your DPS.

Now I could have set up a shot rotation macro to use Steady Shot properly, but … a shot rotation macro isn’t really a great fit with a playstyle built around randomly pushing buttons whenever I feel like it. Anyway, if I used Steady Shot consistently during a fight I would run myself right out of mana. So mostly I skipped it.

But after Patch 3.0, Steady Shot no longer clips Auto Shot — so I can click it whenever I feel like and the net result is positive, not negative! In fact, because Steady Shot can be used again pretty much as soon as the arrow launches, I often find myself hitting it just to have something to do while I wait for the Arcane Shot cooldown.

By the way, you can now train Steady Shot at level 50. Very nice!

Aspect of the Viper

Unfortunately, I still have problems with with running out of mana if I pound Steady Shot too much. Luckily, the new Aspect of the Viper takes care of that reasonably well. Aspect of the Viper reduces your damage rather severely (in the 50% range, depending on your talents), but when you’re just doing relaxed farming and quests that’s not a huge problem. (… Unless you forget to switch out of it after your mana refills, which I often do.)

Now like I said, I’d not at all interested in complexity when I play, so I need either a button I can press randomly and get good results, or a clear and present indicator that it’s time to use a skill. For Aspect of the Viper, that indicator is when all of my other skills go blue because I am out of mana. Then I switch Aspects and rely on Auto Shot for a fight, sometimes two, and then I switch back.

Very simple for me, and very in-my-face. (Mostly. I do forget to switch back sometimes, but eventually I notice that it’s taking more time to kill things.)

And conveniently, you can now train Aspect of the Viper at level 20 so you have plenty of time to play with it!

Aspect of the Beast

Speaking of Aspects, I’ve gone from mostly using Aspect of the Hawk to mostly using Aspect of the Beast. This is entirely and completely because of Pike’s Aspect of the Beast post — so go read it if you haven’t already!

Short story: More damage from pet and slightly less from hunter works out really well for keeping aggro on the pet during casual farming. For example, I rarely bother to send my pet in first anymore — I just right-click to attack and trust my pet to get aggro before the enemy makes it to me. (And the rest of this list is for dealing with what happens when that doesn’t quite work.)

You can learn Aspect of the Beast at level 30, incidentally.

Intimidation

Speaking of aggro … I am rather embarrassed to say this, but I only just recently realized how useful Intimidation is for aggro control. Now perhaps Intimidation doesn’t belong on this list since it didn’t change in Patch 3.0 … But I only recently started using it, so it seems new to me!

I don’t use Intimidation every fight, but it’s a really handy emergency button for when I mis-target and end up walloping on the wrong enemy (i.e. not the one my pet was attacking) for awhile and then he comes to chew on my face. In many of these cases I can use a combination of Disengage and Misdirection, but Intimidation is always there for me when I’ve tried other things already and I’m still in trouble. It’s my ‘Oh hell!’ button.

Disengage

The new Disengage is just plain fun! It flings you backwards several yards — or more, if you happen to be standing on a steep slope or next to a cliff. (Dangerous, but still fun.) It also stops your Auto Shot, so you need to remember to attack again, but it’s a quick way to get back to range. And fun! (Did I mention it makes me laugh every time I use it?)

Disengage by itself is handy if your pet has dragged an enemy up into your melee range, or when the Freezing Trap you dropped at your feet to stop an add wears off and you don’t feel like slowly walking backwards. And Disengage with Misdirection is even handier.

You can learn Disengage at level 20.

Misdirection

Prior to Patch 3.0, the long cooldown timer on Misdirection meant it wasn’t terribly useful for me during normal solo questing, and since I don’t raid or group I didn’t really have much call to use it. In fact, even though Misdirection was arguably the pinnacle of usefulness for the hunter, I never even bothered to put it on my action bar.

But now Misdirection has a 30 second cooldown, which means I can use it almost every fight. Unfortunately it’s a little complicated to use …

Unlike my other favorite skills, Misdirection is cast on a friendly target — in my case, always my pet. But that meant that when I used it in combat I had to hit the button, then select my pet (usually via my pet’s portrait), then cast Arcane Shot or what have you to transfer a nice solid bit of threat. This isn’t hard, per se, but it didn’t really work with the way I normally play (aka flailing).

So when I started to test out Misdirection I went looking for macros to help me use it. I found a good many very handy — and rather complex — macros. I didn’t need something that would Misdirect onto my focus, my pet, my mouse-over target, or my best friend’s mother depending on which keys I held down — I just needed something to cast it on my pet. Every time. Because that’s all I need.

Luckily I was able to modify the Misdirection macros I found very easily into the simplest possible variant:

/cast [target=pet] Misdirection

I used the question mark icon, so it automatically shows the Misdirection icon and cooldown. If I don’t have my pet out, I get the error “You have no target.” But I only use this macro with my pet.

And it works wonderfully! I’ve found three main uses for Misdirection:

• I use it to direct adds onto my pet before they get to me, or to keep adds on my pet if I need to heal him. (I’m mostly hunting with a cat right now, so not a lot of AoE threat coming from him.)
• I use it during combat if I look like I’m going to pull aggro. (I use the in-game threat display to keep an eye on that, especially now that I am leveling again and upgrading my equipment faster than my pet is upgrading his attacks.)
• And I use it in combination with Disengage when I do pull aggro and have something nasty chewing on my face. In that case, I case Misdirect then Disengage, and suddenly I am many yards away and all the threat is coming from the pet. It’s beautiful. (And it makes me laugh.)

Unfortunately, Misdirection is not available until level 70. I’d love to see Blizzard move this one down to level 40 or 50 where it would do us more good!

A Sample Fight

So here’s how a normal fight might go for me:

1. I engage a target by right-clicking in it, which starts Auto Shot.
2. The target aggros on me and runs towards me.
3. My pet, on Defensive, Dashes, Charges, or just plain runs for the target.
4. Usually the pet gains aggro and stops the target outside my melee range.
5. Sometimes the pet gains aggro inside my melee range, in which case I Disengage to get back to range.
6. Sometimes the pet fails to gain aggro, in which case I hit my simple Misdirection macro and then Disengage.
7. Now in any case I’m back at range. I hit Serpent Sting, Arcane Shot, and Steady Shot in random orders until the target is dead. I’ll also sometimes throw in Kill Command. (I carefully trained myself to hit it when it lit up, and now it is always lit up so I just keep hitting it.) Or I start reading the web page open on my other monitor and just Auto Shot the entire fight. That’s pretty common.
8. If there are adds that I can see coming and Misdirection is off cooldown, I use Misdirection to get the add on my pet and then keep going on the original target.
9. If there’s an add I don’t see coming, I Freeze Trap it until I have a chance to deal with it.
10. If something goes wrong for whatever reason, I set my pet on the face-chewing add, hit Intimidate, and either Disengage or back up to get back to range. Then we work on the enemies in the new order!

I expect that’s all pretty normal, really, except for the randomly hitting buttons part. (And I do mean randomly. It’s not unusual for me to lose track and Serpent Sting three times in a row, or re-Mark after 5 seconds, or … well, you can imagine. I am a bad hunter, after all.)

But I’m pleased to have a small array of new buttons to press when I want to. And my husband keeps telling me how proud he is of me for using more than three skills. (I suspect he’s being sarcastic.)

Oh, and I forgot to mention Feign Death! I don’t use Feign Death for aggro control or anything like that. No, Feign Death is my ‘Do-Over’ button.

I use it all the time.