Identity Crisis (Hunter related)

[Finney]

Ok.

I began my hunter path going strictly marksmanship. I liked the idea of being a very high damage dealer.

Appeal to vanity: Getting aimed shot crits extremely high.
Risk: Being an aggro-stealer.
Benefit for groups: Medium. The only group buff hunters can really have (trueshot aura), and helping to kill things fast.

Then, when patch 1.7 came out, I went to survivalist for a bit. I really wanted to try out wyvern sting and see how much more health I'd get.

Appeal to vanity: Just testing out the new stuff. Wyvern sting.
Risk: I don't care for melee combat really... at all. Reduced ranged DPS slightly.
Benefit for groups: High it seemed. Longer freeze traps, fewer feign resists, and other CC benefits.

Then (After retreating back to marksman for a bit), I tried Beastmastery. Mainly cause of Snargleton.

Appeal to vanity: Seeing Snargleton big, red, and furious was my primary motivation.
Risk: Being a "one-trick pony" (seeing as how I don't PvP). The one trick being that I was alot better with solo stuff.
Benefit for groups: Low. I've been finding my feigns resisting alot, my DPS has taken a hit, no buffs or CC.

Ok, so I feel that I can make up for alot of things by just by being conscious of what I'm doing. (i.e. if I have too many crits with marksmanship, I can just remember to feign and not get aggro). And now that my vanity with each of these areas has thoroughly been satisfied, I'd really like to know which areas you'd rather see me in with a group.

With Finney, I haven't been doing alot of solo stuff lately. And when I do, I do well enough in any of these specs. I don't PvP much either as I mentioned. Primarily, Finney is here right now to help out in groups. And I feel that I get a chance to group up with alot of you on a semi-regular basis, so I really want to know what you guys think.

So...

Would you all rather me spec to be alot more successful with CC? Would you rather me start working towards delivering a higher DPS and have a attack power buff with me? Or would you rather see a gigantic red turtle gnawing the kneecaps off of everything in sight?

Please don't say, "Whatever you want to do Finney!". I'm done with speccing just for my own purposes. I like each of the areas alot (I do honestly favor marksmanship and survival over beast mastery though... the big red Snarg is the main reason I like the latter), so whatever you guys suggest will be peachy for me.

Thanks for any comments and such!

[Sorcha'Rei]

Use the patented Sorcha method of avoiding having to choose a specc: roll another hunter, level it to 60, and have one of each. (See: three 60 druids and well on my way to three 60 pallis and 2 60 priests.)

[Caspin Mordain]

The hunter class is one of the few classes in the game that - regardless of spec - can do its job quite well given a good player. A combat rogue cannot use daggers well, a full protection warrior just plain is crap at damage dealing usually, a full fire mage can't spam arcane explosion..

You've got good situational awareness - something that goes FAR beyond any sort of specialization. You've got a good grasp of the game mechanics, how aggro works, and furthermore you've got a good idea of how you can best benefit a given situation. I've never seen a hunter prevent so many wipes in a 5 man group situation by placing so many freeze traps, honestly.

With Beast Mastery, you've got a viable offtank in Snargleton, frankly. While it doesn't necessarily bolster your dps numbers at the end ( Snargleton does crap for damage, I'm sure ), it is a beneficial tool that can be used in situations like the Balnazzar encounter in our group the other day ( even though you died, we still won in part to that ).

With Survival, you've got increased HP with the Survivalist talent, you can take the talent to reduce your chance of resisting Feign Death, and you've got the Lightning Reflexes Talent, which is immensely useful. I'd suggest not bothering with Wyvern Sting - it's altogether useless as far as I'm concerned.

Marksmanship has and will always be a solid tree and a good standby for any hunter. Mortal Shots, Scatter Shot, Aimed Shot - these are all talents that every hunter wants to have in his spec. Trueshot Aura is a much more worthwhile talent given the last patch, and is great not only for you - but for melee classes in your group as well ( Its what, 90 attack power? Yeah, I'll take that! )

Most rogues decked out in blues are gonna have between 400 to 600 attack power, depending on their builds ( some dagger builds may have less ), so 90 attack power is 'fantastic' for more dps.

I'm going to post two talent spec as my recommended templates for a hunter. Both are considered PvE templates, and are ignoring talents that may be necessarily invaluable in PvP - since you're not concerned about that.

www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/hunters/talents.html?5000020000000000052510305130513305002000000000

This template offers you Improved Aspect of the Hawk, which basically is a weakened version of your 5 minute cooldown 'Rapid Fire' ability. It's a beautiful first tier talent and very worthwhile to have as a raider.

Standard 31 Points in Marksman. Nothing really special here - the point in Scatter shot can be tossed into Improved Mark instead if you're not a big fan of it, but I'd recommend holding onto it - it's a fanastic close range ability to knock an enemy off of a healer ( or even yourself )!

In Survival, we've beefed up on damage and your trapping, giving you both of the first tier talents around racial damage, as well as picking up the entrapment and trap efficiency talent.

Back over to Beast Mastery, you'll notice I've put two talent points into Improved Revive Pet. Some hunters ( one of them was my best friend on Destromath ) SWEAR by this talent that its the best thing since sliced bread. I was never a fan, and could never be convinced to try it. However, I was more of a PvP person in those days, and in a lot of these five mans, speed and efficiency is important. This talent makes it feasible to revive your pet even during a fight if there is sufficient time. The pet also comes back with 30% more hp, and it won't totally black out your mana pool. However, these two points are pretty flexible, and can go into Improved Mark or Endurance Training as alternate options.

I'll post the Survival Based template here in a few minutes.

[Finney]

Seeing how most of my gear currently has %crit and attack power bonuses as opposed to *actual* agility (and this is something that you have mentioned before to me) I don't suppose that the Lightning Reflexes would be worth sacrificing the Mortal Shots and Lethal Shots abilities in Marksman.

I get most of my damage from the set benefits that I have so far with Black Dragonscale armor and *will* have the benefits of the +40 attack power with a fourth Beaststalker piece (which due to the overwhelming stress I experience of hoping for a 7% likely drop, then hoping for a successful roll, I'm not planning on getting fully decked out on BS armor... just the boots).

With that said, while I'd very much enjoy a decreased likelihood of feign death and traps being resisted, I think that it wouldn't be worth the extra points spent in other areas of survivalist to get those abilities.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I dig that first template you have there.

As far as rolling another hunter is concerned, I will *only* do that if Blizzard allows gnomes to be hunters in the future (or if the new race are Murlocs. I want to be one of those annoying buggers so badly).

[edit:] Oooh! I'd always thought of scatter shot as a useful-only-in-pvp ability! Good point! Finney like.

[Caspin Mordain]

Agreed.

Lightning Reflexes starts being worth it once you've gotten a good share of epic armor, and before then, really Marksmanship is the way to go.

There's a good survival template for when you get that far, and I'll post it then, I guess - saves me the trouble of doing it now. ;D

[Celera]

I've been MM specced all along except for one brief flirtation with survival.

TSA is 100 extra AP. I love scatter shot as you can still use it when the mob is too close to use any of your other shots -- it can give you an extra second to back out of melee range. Aimed and multi-shot are very useful in instances once you know how and when to use them.

Of course, most hunters are good marksmen. However, you are good at something much less common -- crowd control. Your multi-trapping is legendary. I understand it and I try to do it where I can, but the fight just moves too fast for me to do it right. And when I do it wrong, I'm just wasting time I could have spent killing stuff. If someone goes after our healers, I can sic Tim on them quickly and usually correctly -- if I try to double trap, the healer usually dies because they are running away and I'm putting the trap near someplace that they used to be.

So, since you are already good at something rather uncommon and very useful, I think that you should eventually focus on those abilities as your availabl gear makes that practical.

Also, my money is on furbulgs as the new race. It's going to be an Alliance race, after all, how could anyone be allied with murlocs?

[Finney]

I know Murlocs is a stretch... a *huge* one. Thats why I'm counting on it not happening

I want the new race to be Pandaren so badly it hurts, though.

[Finney]

Speaking of redesigning Finney, another likely change I'm planning on making is getting rid of either herbalism or skinning (maybe both) and becoming an engineer or alchemist.

Engineering would allow me to bring repair bots and maybe, maybe, ressurect a priest/paladin after a wipe. I think it'd be useful, yet expensive (I'd have to start spending all that money I've been saving for a rainy day, which isn't a problem for me).

Alchemy would be less expensive cause I already have many herbs saved up. But I feel that engineering would be more beneficial to groups I'm in.

Whattya think?

[Caspin Mordain]

Engineering. I can make your pots for you if you bring me the herbs. Drop Skinning.

[Caspin Mordain]

Also, I'm sticking with Dranei as the new Alliance race.

[Finney]

Dranei are the buttest of ugly, so that would make sense.

[Windfoot]

TURTLES TURTLES TURTLES!

[Emizael]

I've been doing the respec alot, and, finally come to the conclusion, that Marksman is where it is at for a hunter, unless you wanna be uber in pvp.

Anyways, I took a bit of a scattered approach this time around, going for the increase damage stuff in marksman, took the two Mob killer enhancements in Survival,( Beastslaying, humanoid slaying), dumped a few points in Improved aspect of the hawk, a couple points in Endurance Training, ( just for those nasty elite mobs) and everything else I had in Marksman. Scattershot, next to disengage, is my most favorite ability in the game. In my face? Gone. In the healers face? Gone, and in my trap.

Just...feign death, Drop ice, and scattershot the monster feeding on the priest. It will...just walk right into yer trap, and then, its done. Or, you can just scattershot the mob, and let the priest back up...but...I like hurting monsters, so..sometimes, I am just as libel to start hacking on the thing...but that's just me. Depends on what the crowd is like.

Now, Fin, yer skills are both Legendary and Supernatural. Nobody here can match yer trap talents. The only way I figure you would want to do any better with them traps, is if you went survival, and even then, a lot of survival builds can kick butt!! The problem, is..I keep finding a lot of the 60+elites, are immune to traps.
Drakk's elite Dragonkin...*shudder* The only other useful things in survival, all seem to work best for PvP, and I gotta agree with Doc, Wyvern Sting..is just worthless! Enhanced Feign, Lightning Reflexes, Trap Master,( that adds a stun effect on top of the trap damage/effect...these are all good, but... Stack them next to the increased damages, ranges, critical effects of Marksman, and ..survival seems to come up ..less.

Beast Mastery. I like it. Big Red Critting Every Hit Pets. If you want yer pet to be a real mob nuisance, this works!! The problem with Beast Mastery, though, is that it seems to work best for PvE, rather then instancing, or raiding, and still, Big Red Pet can do some nifty stuff, like, Intimidate, which will get a mob off you or your healer, but..most pets just can't take the damage the Big Elite monsters can throw at them.

All in all, I would have to say, Marksman...Steady Dps, increased range, Improved Concussive Shot...Trueshot aura...as far as instancing goes..these are just invaluable.

That's my opinion, anyways.