References

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Pet Tank Mr Grabby Hands

Last week I got a little surprise. We were doing VoA-25 in my "new" guild and we were at the last boss. The last boss is terribly boring. The hunter class leader (who recruited me into the guild) announces on vent that he's going to ask me to pet tank. Thank you reader Achillyse.


I did a double-take for about 2 seconds and then promptly flipped my talents summoned Flash and thanks to Outfitter my gear already switched to pet-tank. 10 seconds later I'm at full mana and Flash is tanking.

It was a little odd. Threat was of course a problem at about half-way down the line. I believe I got three or four misdirects total (two being mine) by about 50% of the bosses' health. We lost one ranged DPS from threat who maybe didn't hear a normal tank wasn't at the wheel.

I also am not sure I got any heals for the first 20-30 seconds or so. But the turtle shield and a mend pet seemed to do fine.

I also did not use a high stamina set. I went with normal DPS trinkets instead of stamina trinkets. Health was never a problem. He was un-critable, took plenty of reduced damage, and had the shield and last stand. I did pop last stand just for the hell of it when it was clear it wasn't an issue and to see his numbers shoot up.

I wasn't able to taunt back. This may have been my issue, or the boss may be one of the many that is pet-taunt immune.

You can see in the second picture that the pet does get picked up.

I did a few things wrong. I should have been in beast aspect for a bit more threat. I am also glyphed for it. (/facepalm!) I should have spoken up and asked all hunters for misdirects, healers for heals on the pet, and DPS for a little restraint. I should have made sure my pet had buffs (I think he got half of them). I probably shouldn't have tanked a boss that requires a taunt rotation. And I should have repositioned the boss after a jump ... but honestly the damage didn't affect Flash and it kept the melee away on the threat meter. ;-)

Gobble-gobble!

Kheldul's Hunter DPS Tips and Tricks Roundup

I hope you enjoyed my not-so-typical hunter DPS tips. They were mostly about behavior and excluded any talk of gear, enchants, gems, glyphs, flasks, or even shot selection specific to a hunter talent tree. Don't worry - This is not a going out of business sale!

Here's the round-up.

Tip #1: Maximize Yer Powerhouse Cooldowns


Tip #2: Use That In-Combat Pot


Tip #3: Don't Cheap Out


Tip #4: Buff That Pet!


Tip #5: Time on Target and Movement


Tip #6: Pre-Combat Pottin'


Tip #7: Network Latency


Tip #8: Low FPS FTL


Tip #9: Strategies and Situational Awareness


Tip #10: Minimize the Viper


Tip #11: Pet Time on Target


Tip #12: Maur DoTs!


Tip #14: Go Forth and Multiply


Tip #15: Be a Leech


Tip #16: Kill It Dead


Tip #17: Small Pauses Aren't Always Bad


Tip #18: Mind Your Peripherals


Tip #19: DPS for Dummies


Tip #20: A Room With a View


Tip #21: Macros and Saving Steps


Tip #22: The Skin Is Always Greener


Tip #23: KISS


Tip #24: Taking a Metered Approach


Tip #25: Timing Autoshot


Tip #26: Pet Auto-Casts


Tip #27: See What You Need

Kheldul's Hunter DPS Tip #27: See What You Need

Tip #27: See What You Need
So much attention has been spent to good UIs. There's a reason. You don't want too much information. You need some of it summarized and some of it in your face. You can't have too much or you'll tune it out -- and maybe tune out too much. And if you don't tune it out, it will delay your other thought processes. You need screen real estate. You need good addons. You need to try out the features of the UI you make so that it works for you.
Do you need numbers spiraling out at you? Do you need to know who healed your pet? Do you need numbers counting down the milliseconds before the graphical bar shows it is complete? Do you need to see your pet casts? Do you need a timer bar for your Blessing of Kings buff? Think about what you need to remove from your UI as much as what you need to add to your UI.

After you boiled down what you need and don't need, make sure to have space to see what is going on around your character. Clutter is not your friend. If you're using Power Auras, don't make them so they obscure your general vicinity. (Power Auras is a great visual space-saver, but only use it for what is important!) Cast bars can be thinned. Keep what you need to look at front and center. Keep things that you scan quickly to the left and right. Humans, like other animals, grew up in the landscape world and have eyes horizontally aligned. We'll see changes and horizontal movement a lot quicker than a vertical change.

There is a thread over at Elitist Jerks with over a 100 hunter UI screenshots. Check it out for ideas.

I recommend Power Auras for the important stuff; Need to Know for the important procs and target debuffs; and Mike's Combat Scrolling Text to keep the information flow reduced and flowing out of the way. And of course everyone recommends something like Deadly Boss Mods and something for combat stats. There's also help for auto-shot visualization, and viper alarms.

Kheldul's Hunter DPS Tip #26: Pet Auto-Casts

Tip #26: Pet Auto-Casts
Last week, I fell into the old auto-cast bug. It wasn't in a raid, so I suppose it didn't matter much. But it was a good wake-up call and reminder. Pet auto-casts are still bugged. It may only happen when you change pets and/or dual-specs. But if you rely on auto-casts then you need to make sure they are still on auto-cast. Open up your spellbook and click to the pet tab. Do it when you sit down for a food buff.

For special hunter-buffing abilities like Furious Howl, you may choose to add a /cast for them into your shot macros (along with Kill Command). I have avoided doing that for a few reasons. One is that I don't want all specials (even those not usable by my summoned pet) in the macros, nor do I want to edit them or have different sets by pet type. And there are a lot of specials. So they will not fit in the 255 character macro limit. The other is that I've seen different approaches to putting these specials in macros. Some do somewhat suspiciously hacky petautocaston/petautocastoff combination within the same macro for the same ability.

I'm recommending Blizzard default autocasts. As long as they are on and actually firing off, you will not be too far behind yourself if you added them to macros. And you will want to use autocasts for most pet abilities anyway.

And by all means, if you have a foolproof way of macro'ng all pet DPS abilities into your shots please share it!