First and foremost, I’d like to point out that a lot of this will apply mainly to working in groups. As I’ve spent some time recently leveling my priest, I’ve had a chance to step back and watch burgeoning young hunters at work, and have noticed a few startling trends along the way. With that in mind, I thought it was about time for some words of wisdom from a hunter that’s been around the block a couple times and lived to tell about it. I’ll also try to include some tips for working alone, but as I said, this will mostly apply to 5-man instance groups, as that seems to be the place where most young hunters find themselves to be a little lost. (After all, isn’t the ease of soloing why most folks become hunters to begin with? So, we’ll leave that alone for the most part, aside from a few techniques to practice while soloing.)

So, let’s get started!

Learn to Properly Control Your Pet

Pets are a huge part of being a Hunter. No Hunter worth his or her salt will go anywhere without their furry companion, so learning how to control your pet will be a huge stepping stone in your progression as a noteworthy and skilled Hunter. While at first glance pets can seem almost laughably easy to control and understand there’s actually a lot of finesse involved in maximizing your pet’s usefulness and minimizing the risk for mishaps.

The first big thing about controlling your pet will be Pet Attack and Pet Follow. By default, these commands are key bound for you. Right off the bat, you should familiarize yourself with these key bindings and begin using them religiously. By using the key bindings for these commands, rather than taking the time to actually click the action bars, you’ll free up a lot of your time to multitask.

For example, say your group starts a pull and you notice a couple stray mobs that the tank hasn’t picked up yet. Your first instinct of course is to send in your pet to pick up a stray that could potentially start chewing on your healer. While your intentions are good, you notice as your pet starts running towards the mob that the Mage in your party was just as alert and has Polymorphed the mob before your pet got there. A quick tap of the keyboard and your pet’s running back to your side while you continue focusing DPS on the main target. Had you taken the time to mouse-over and manually click the Pet Follow command, your pet would likely already be chewing on the sheep and taking damage. Of course, the Mage could just re-sheep the target, but this is taking their DPS away from their main target, and taking your time away to heal up your pet from the unnecessary damage it took from the sheep, and also pulling your attention away from your main job: DPSing the main target.

This is just one quick example of why it’s important to be able to quickly and efficiently control your pet’s movement at all times.

Another good example of the need for quick pet control would be the oh-so-dreaded “runner”. We’ve all encountered humanoids that, when low on health, run away like little girls. And we’ve all encountered the resulting chaos (and often death) when they come back bearing friends. A good way to minimize the risk of a party wipe is to be able to quickly call back your pet from the fleeing mob. Chances are fairly good that the aggro radius of your pet is a bit greater than the “help me” radius of the mob it’s chasing, and calling your pet back to your side before the mob gets too far will make your chances of surviving the runner that much greater.

Practice using these key bindings while you’re out soloing, rather than clicking the commands manually. Once you’re used to the movement and you acquire some muscle memory for it, you’ll actually find that it’s a lot more “lazy person” friendly than clicking the commands anyway, as you actually require less physical movement for it.

Another big aspect of pet control is knowing when to disable certain abilities that your pet has. Growl, in particular, is an ability you’ll more often than not want disabled throughout instance encounters. As a matter of fact, the moment you enter an instance, the first thing you should do is make sure Growl isn’t set to auto-proc. Turn it off entirely. Trust me, your tank will thank you when they don’t have to battle it out for aggro with some strange furry creature, and you’ll save yourself a lot of hassle as well by not having to heal and/or feed your pet quite as much.

Also, it’s important to know when to Dismiss your pet altogether. If you and your party intend to take a “shortcut” through an instance, and you find yourself needing to jump anywhere to your intended destination—dismiss your pet. Unfortunately, our pets aren’t quite intelligent enough to know that we’d like them to jump over stuff to follow us, rather than take the long way around. So, please keep in mind that if you need to jump anywhere, you need to dismiss your pet first. Otherwise, a couple minutes later, you and your party will be in for a nasty surprise when your pet comes trotting back to your side, several dozen packs of mobs in tow.

Hopefully none of this will come as a surprise to any of you. But, it bears repeating because I’ve seen these types of mistakes happen again and again, and Hunters that perpetrate these sorts of mistakes are often remembered and rarely invited back for future groups. Pet control is an easy concept to understand, but the finesse of it can be difficult and require practice to actually put into action. The best thing to do is to develop good habits and practice new techniques while working on your own, and then put them to the test in groups.

Pick Your Shots Carefully

Knowing what shots to use, and when to use them, is another big part of being a skilled Hunter. A perfect example of this is Multi-Shot. Knowing when and when not to use Multi-Shot is tricky, but important. When in doubt, do not use it! Multi-Shot is the single most feared shot in the Hunter repertoire, and has the most notorious reputation among non-hunters we group with. I can’t tell you how many non-Hunters and Hunters alike have told woeful and frustrating tales of groups wiped by the indiscriminate use of Multi-Shot. The best potential use of Multi-Shot that I’ve found is as supplemental AoE, when your main goal is to deal damage to as many mobs in a short span of time as possible. (This should supplement the use of Volley and Explosive Trap when mobs are in tightly controlled groups.) Like all forms of AoE, Multi-Shot should be used carefully and judiciously. It’s all too easy to disrupt various forms of crowd control (sheep, sap, your own traps, etc) with the use of Multi-Shot and could potentially cause a party wipe.

There are few other shots in our bag of tricks as potentially dangerous as Multi-Shot, however there are a few other things worth mentioning. Before opening fire on a target, make sure your tank has had a chance to establish aggro. This is especially important for lower-level groups, because your tank doesn’t have the gear and/or abilities yet that higher-level tanks have to help them make sure they keep aggro. As a class that is notorious for putting out a high amount of DPS, Hunters also have to be cognizant of the fact that, as a result of our high DPS output, we also generate a fair amount of mob hate. Ask your tank before beginning an encounter how long he or she would like you to wait before beginning DPS, because they’ll know better than anyone how quickly they can generate sufficient threat to keep mobs out of your face. There are countless benefits to letting your tank establish aggro before beginning DPS. It keeps the mob out of your face, making less work for your healer; it keeps your tank happy because they don’t have to chase mobs all over the place trying to reestablish threat from you; and it leaves you free to maximize your DPS output overall because you’re not worried about having to engage in melee combat or lead mobs back and forth to your tank. Its win-win across the board.

In addition to all that, its also important to make sure you’re targeting the correct mob before you open fire. Now, I know that must really sound like a no-brainer at first glance, but hear me out. When you’re in an instance, in the heat of the moment, and you’ve got a pack of multiple mobs headed right for you, its extremely easy to tab to the wrong target. Lots of nasty things can result from shooting the wrong target. For example, if you’re shooting a target your tank hasn’t established any threat from yet, that will bring the mob straight after you. If you shoot a mob that’s about to be crowd controlled (particularly with a sting or other DoT—damage over time—shot) you’ll keep a mob active that would otherwise be subdued. If you accidentally target a mob in a nearby group, that wasn’t actually a part of the group that was initially pulled, you’re bringing a whole extra pack of mobs down on your party’s heads. These are just a few things that could potentially go wrong if you’re targeting the wrong mob. A good rule of thumb for ensuring you’re targeting the proper mob is to select your tank from your party list (using the F2-F5 keys for easy access) and clicking the Assist hotkey (F). (However, make sure you’ve disabled “Attack on Assist” from your interface options menu.) This will automatically target for you whatever your tank has targeted. Keep in mind, though, that this method isn’t entirely fool proof as your tank may switch targets at the last minute, so its important to pay close attention to what your tank is doing. A good indication as to whether or not you’ve got the correct mob targeted after using Assist is to watch for debuffs on the target. Generally as your tank begins to establish aggro, he or she will employ various abilities such as Sunder Armor (for Warrior tanks), Judgments (for Paladin tanks), Faerie Fire (for Druid tanks) or Icy Touch (for Death Knight tanks) that will appear under the mob’s health bars as debuffs. These are always a good indication that you’ve got the right mob targeted, and can fire away. In the (extended) absence of these debuffs, retarget your tank and assist again to acquire their most recent target.

Hunters as a Crowd Control Class

Its becoming more and more widely accepted that Hunters are a viable and successful crowd control class. Have all your traps available to you in an action bar on your screen at all times, and set all your traps to key bindings. If you’re using the default UI’s action bars, I strongly suggest you pick up Bartender. This addon alone will save you a lot of time, and it’s very easy to set up. Once you’ve got your action bars set up, go to your key bindings interface and set all your traps to key bindings for quick and easy access. With your traps set to key bindings, you won’t have to worry about being able to find them on your action bars in the heat of battle and you can get that pesky mob under control that much quicker.

Now that you have quick access to all your traps, its important to know which ones to use, and when. Nine times out of ten, though, you’ll want to use Freezing Trap (or Freezing Arrow if you’re already Level 80) to get mobs under control. Freezing Trap, if you’re not familiar with it, will encase the mob that walks over the trap in a block of ice, keeping them inactive for approximately 20 seconds. (I say “approximately” because, while the tooltip says 20 seconds, mobs don’t always go along with it.) All traps, however, have a 30 second cooldown so its important to keep in mind that you have a 10 second gap between the time your first trap breaks and the time you can lay down another one. (Unless you have talents or set piece bonuses that reduce the cooldown time on your traps.) With this in mind, if you know your party will require you to trap a mob on a pull, lay your trap a few seconds before starting the pull, that way your cooldown will already be partially finished by the time the mob gets to the trap, which will give you a better chance of being able to lay the second trap before the first one breaks. (Keep in mind: once you lay a trap, it will stay active for 30 seconds before it fades from lack of use.)

The trick to keeping a mob controlled with Freezing Trap is not only knowing when to lay the trap, but also how to get the mob you want to the trap. One almost fool proof (I say “almost” more or less to cover my ass in the event of unforeseen difficulties) way of making sure the specific mob you want to hit your trap does, is to have your tank pull the pack of mobs, while you place your trap a bit away from the group (or further back from where the fighting will take place) as space allows, and fire at the mob you want to come to you before the tank has a chance to catch it’s attention. Make sure, though, that once you have the mob’s attention you stop firing at it. Wait to be sure that it comes to you and triggers the trap properly. Move slightly away from the mob, lay another Freezing Trap once you are able, and go about DPSing the appropriate target. Whenever possible, its important to step away from your controlled mob, that way you can see when your trap has broken before the thing’s trying to bash your face in, and this will give you time to lay your second trap and have it ready when the mob comes after you again.

These are the big basics that anyone new to playing the Hunter class should be aware of and be practicing. A common saying among the Hunter community is that our class is easy to play but difficult to master. Getting these basics down alone will not make you a great Hunter, but it will go a long way toward separating you from the “Huntards” out there.