Brian's WoW Hunter Article
 

http://www.nuklearpower.com/hunter.php

Very true, I agree completely. In fact it opened my eyes. Although I did let hunters pull before I never really realized how much better they are at it than warriors.

One thing I want to point out, though, is that hunters are not the ONLY class capable of making the ultimate zone of perfect saftey. They are indeed the best at it, but rogues come close. Rogues have stealth, Sap to reduce pull sizes by 1 humanoid, throwing weapons to pull from range, Feint (a de-aggro move), and most importantly Vanish, which puts the rogue into an improved stealth for 15 seconds and clears all aggro if it works, much like Feign Death. And like the hunter, the rogue can just let him/herself die if the pull goes really bad, and get ressurected. The hunter still has a clear advantage (pet, traps, mail armor at 40, longer ranged attacks, tracking abilities), but the rogue is nearly as good if you can't find a hunter.

:fighter: - I had no idea that hunters were so effective, heck i never even heard of feign death before you mentioned it. I will make sure in the future to add in a hunter to my instance's

I was thinking the same thing. While hunters can do it more safely (with rogues not too far behind them in that respect), just about any class can utilize the Ultimate Zone of Perfect Safety, as it simply involves being a distance away from the rest of the team while doing the pulling.

However, there are a few assumptions made with the over-all strategy. First, that the team has a member with reliable and consistent resurrection ability. In other words, you have to be teaming with either a priest or a paladin/shaman (whichever is your faction's equivalent). While to some it may seem necessary to have one of the two in an instance regardless of pulling tactics, this tactic changes the need for such a thing from in case of a party wipe (or perhaps frequent deaths, if the mobs repop fast, *cough* Scarlet Monastery *cough*), to a required contingency for every single pull. Of course, I guess that's not an issue, unless you either don't have a healer (which is most likely a very, very bad thing), or have a druid as the main healer (which is arguably the only thing they shine at in higher levels, but I suppose that's more a problem with their rez than anything else).

Another thing is that Brian refers to 'expending extra mana' regardless of who's mana it is, which is somewhat flawed. The 'tank pull' strategy only really covets the mana of the healer(s), not that of a mage. The logic there is that, since the tank will take less damage from any given hit due to having more armor, any non-tank that takes damage will result in more hit points being lost over-all.

Also, when slip-ups occur with crowd control (that is, both mezzes / sleeps / stuns / etc. as well aggro management), it usually falls upon the healer(s) to try to be a sort of safety net while either control of the crowd is regained, or the bad guys are defeated. This isn't always possible depending on the slip-up, but still, many people generaly consider that to be a large part of a healer's role (whether that's a right or wrong expectation is another topic altogether).

So when Brian talks about a mage's mana, it seems rather irrelevant to me, as it really does nothing to rebut the prevalent 'tank pull' strategy. And besides, I believe Brian even mentioned that the mage would still be using polymorph even when a hunter is pulling (which was right before he stated how he would debunk the two arguments against hunters pulling, one of which was extra mana use; he then never mentioned mages again*), so I don't really understand why he even talks about mage mana usage.

Then there's the FFXI comparison; that since hunters are very compariable to rangers from FFXI (whom are the preferred pullers in that game), hunters should be the default pullers for WoW. The problem here, is that such an argument only bears weight if you were also to compare both pulling and aggro management, in general, between the two games, and to reasonably conclude that they are similar beasts. After all, one could say that both dictionaries and thesauruses are lengthy tomes largely regarded for the purpose of aiding with the usage and understanding of a given language. However, that does not mean that both are equally useful at any given task (that is, a thesaurus is not going to be quite as efficient when looking up the meaning of a word, for example). Brian might have a point, but if he does, he didn't finish it.

Anyway, the article simply didn't convince me of much, to be honest. Not to say that Hunters aren't cool or anything (currently my highest level character is a level 34 hunter, although I'm playing a different class these days.), but it seems to be like there are pros and cons to both tank-pulling and hunter-pulling. If he was trying to indicate that hunters are the absolute superior pullers, then maybe I'm just dense, but I didn't see it.


*Well, he did mention them, in a list along with every other class that isn't a hunter or paladin in referring to the class's puller preference (I imagine he just forgot paladin, though maybe he has another reason).

35 Hunter, here. I liked the article, but a couple points:

1. Every time I've pulled with a hunter, a mage has used polymorph if he could (much easier to take on elites one at a time). Mages do it to pulls no matter whose pulling, so arguing that the hunter is superior because he doesn't need a mage is somewhat faulty reasoning.

2. Look at the Situation B scenario Brian posted. Realistically, a Warrior can do the same thing with his shooty weapon of choice. Sure, he has a greater chance of dying if things go awry, but the basics are the same: warrior pulls, warrior gets mobbed, warrior dies, warrior gets rezzed, party safe. A hunter's shooty is better than a warrior's, but this comes into play more in actual combat than in pulling.

Yes, hunters have good tools for instances, but they have their limits. Tracking can become a nightmare in some instances (turn on Track Humanoids in Ragefire Chasm and you'll learn that very quickly) and while traps are useful, they're not going to save your party if you're horribly overmatched.

I love my Hunter, and so far I haven't had trouble in instance groups. But I needed to point those out.

I get the feeling you missed the point from this.

What his point was with "Situation B" was how hunters have 3 ways of staying safe, and if they go tragically wrong, THEN they either Feign, or die (where WoW's lenient death system comes in). A warrior has next to no options should that happen, other than run real fast, go defensive stance, and pray.

Praying is about the best thing you can do, too.

EDIT: And I agree to that, Rogues rock as pullers. Sap is handy, I can unload a good 180 damage on a regular Ambush, 290 on a crit, and if things go wrong I can use Sprint to get back fast, or even Vanish to make myself scarce.

To understand why a Hunter is very good at the job of pulling you have to understand the art of pulling. Any idiot can shoot a gun (well okay, paladins aren't even smart enough to do that) but there is more to it than that.

The absolute worst way to pull a creature is damage it. This form of pulling has the largest social add radius out of any other form. This basically ensures that you will get an add. This form of pull is available to every class, some with better range than others.

The second best way is to debuff the mob. It has a lower aggro radius, but its still sizeable. Not every class can do this.

The least noticed way is to inch up close to the mob until it notices you and run. Pretty much the only thing that will add are mobs that are linked to it. Every class is capable of it, some are better at surviving this type of pull than others.

A Hunter can do all 3 types.

Another part of the pulling process is being able to size up the situation. Between Flare and Tracking (ZOOM IN IF YOU SEE TOO MANY ON THE MAP!) can anyone honestly say any other class can do this better? Not often in instances where there are invisible mobs (thus far in my experience) but generally when there are you end up wishing you'd known about it before hand.

Then there are class skills. Many non-offensive hunter class skills can be used towards a pulling effort. Feign Death and Freeze Trap being chief among them. Using those the Hunter can lessen the risk to the party. A Rogue with Sap and Vanish have pretty much the same ability, but it doesn't work quite as well.

What does a Rogue give up to be puller? Backstab.
What does a Warrior give up to be puller? Charge. Questionable there, since a warrior really concerned with holding aggro is in Defensive Stance and not a more aggressive one.
What does a Hunter give up? Nothing.

In Brian's essay he didn't really use a good example. In a two mob pull with low risk of adds it really doesn't matter who pulls. Anyone can and it'd pretty much be the same regardless. A team of 5 that can't handle 2 mobs needs to rethink what they are doing or why they are there.


Why do I think Hunters make the best pullers? They have an abundance of skills to aid in pulling. They have the ability to survive until a better suited tank picks up aggro. They are able to permanently remove 1 add from a group (via Freeze Trap, Feign Death, and a little cooperation from the group) or at least temporarily delay an add.

My opinion, take it or leave it.

But this is, well, somewhat flawed, and not just because Feign Death is one of the three countermeasures, as Brian called them, that Brian listed (thus leaving only death when the three countermeasures fail). Let's take a look at those three ways hunters are supposed to be able to save themselves from a bad pull, without endangering their party:

1. The pet. Brian is right, in that Growl is very effective. However, it can only be used once every, what, eight seconds? So if a hunter pulls more mobs than he wanted, the pet will be able to grab aggro from one of them, thus keeping one of the many at bay. Great, except that the idea was for the hunter to either pull a proper number of mobs back to the party, lose the aggro of the mobs that are pulled and get safe, or die. The pet only helps in accomplishing this if it take all the aggro so that the hunter may run outside the chase range of the mobs, which it doesn't do by gaining the aggro of just one mob. The pet is quite a useful tool, but I don't see how it is supposed to single-handly save the hunter after pulling more mobs than the group wanted. (And remember, even if it did work with good results when used with another countermeasure, Brian stated that these countermeasures where Independant and Redundant systems, not interdependant.)

2. Disengage. Disengage lessens hate from one mob in melee range and attempts to shifts the aggro from that mob to another target; useless when the hunter is all alone. The pet is an absolute requirement for disengage to have any application in the pulling scenario from the article, so it's not really it's own method at all, but rather just a means of making the pet more efficient, allowing the pet to grab the aggro of a maximum of two mobs within that 8 second period.

3. Feign Death. This isn't contested; it is a very useful skill. It can be resisted, and the more enemies aggroed at the time the more of a chance that it will be resisted (it seems that way to me, anyway) , but still, this is quite useful, and I in no way contest this skill's usefulness in Brian's strategy.

So if something goes wrong, I only see one ace, not three, that a hunter has of saving their neck, and it isn't by any means guarenteed. And while it's nice to have an nice, it's also nice to put things into perspective: It's one ace.


Subatai:

I...am somewhat unsure about your ideas as to the three types of aggro when pulling that you mentioned. I have never read anything that suggested what you are saying (I'd imagine Blizzard would, perhaps, mention it on the 'Parties: The Art of Pulling' page on the website). Nor I have ever felt that opening with a curse, or faerie fire, was any more or less effective in pulling than a damage spell/skill. So I hope you will forgive me for suspecting such ideas of perhaps being the carry-overs of a different game that you may have played (I suspect this because I believe City of Heroes had a system kinda like that).

However, even if you are right, then I believe that you are wrong about hunters having all three types. As soon as a hunter shoots a special shot, like concussive shot for instance, the hunter immediately shoots an arrow following it, as firing that first shot activates the hunter's Auto Shot. Thus, I don't see how a hunter could pull with a debuff as the damage from Auto Shot would hit immediately after the debuff struck, and thus generate the larger aggro radius.

Can you are honestly expecting that every inch your party moves forward into should first be Flare'd? I'm sorry, but flare is mostly useful when you know (or suspect) a particular spot / room / corner / etc. has hidden mobs, not for checking an entire instance with it. To try to do such a sweep would be too tedious to be feasible due to the spell's recharge rate and radius of effect. Thus, flare is more useful for targetting a hidden mob than finding one. As for tracking, the map being crowded isn't the only difficulty; one must also considere different floors (which are all overlayed on the mini-map), and different types of mobs (which requires cycling through tracking skills). Not that tracking and Flare aren't useful, just that they're not as useful as you seem to be trying to convey.

Actually, no. So long as the team has communicated first (which is also very important when the hunter pulls as well), the rogue could still backstab. For example, the rogue could get behind one opponent, with the hunter then marking another one. As soon as the rogue saps, the hunter shoots the marked target with concussive shot if it aggros and goes toward the rogue, which should gain aggro for the hunter (since concussive shot will be immediately followed by a normal ranged weapon attack, thus doing damage that overrides the aggro of the sap). Then rogue can then backstab the hunter's target, as it will be heading towards the hunter as a slowed pace and thus an easy target. Although that would likely gain aggro for the rogue, and still gets his backstab, and besides, the hunter can just regain aggro with distracting shot and fall back, letting the warrior charge when the mob was pulled far enough, thus getting the rage to hamstring if he is unable to get aggro immediately.

Now if you meant ambush, that's another story. Still possible, actually, but much harder to pull off, and not very reliable. But backstab is still quite possible, and quite reliable, when the rogue pulls.

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I'm not trying to be anti-hunter or anything (like I mentioned with my last post, my hunter is my highest level character), but to be honest, I just didn't really like that article. When I went to read the guide Brian wrote, I thought it would be explaining why hunters are good pullers. But as I read it I keep seeing basic pulling tactics that pullers should always try to use regardless of class (while Brian gave it a nifty name which I'll probably use in groups in the future, the whole idea behind the 'Perfect Zone of Ultimate Safety' is not in any way new; check out the page on pulling in the Basics section on the WorldofWarcraft.com site). Then there was the demagoguery that filled the article, which I guess was maybe Brian trying to defend the class instead of make an actual point (although I don't really see why he would feel the need to, since hunters have more uses than just pulling anyway).

A hunter does bring tracking and Feign Death to the table when pulling, and that does help in preventing screw ups (tracking lessens the chance of pulling a mob not previously spotted, feign death lessens the chance of a non-quite-so-feigned death if a pull goes bad). But both are tools that help with avoiding mistakes; they do not make hunters any better or worse at the actual act of pulling. And to me, that makes the decision of puller a matter of preference rather than a obvious better or worse. To emphasize the postive aspects of both; you can have less of a chance of the hunter dying from a bad pull due to the hunter's tracking and Feign Death, or you can have the tank have all the aggro at the start of the fights. I know that I can see situations and party setups where my preference would change.

I've seen the different aggro radius's in effect and tested it, so while it may be a hold over its still true. As for that automatic shot after a debuff pull, try moving backwards while triggering your sting. If you are moving the sting fires, but auto shot will not.

I've used Serpent's Sting to pull, but couldn't always be sure the mob would make it out of aggro range before the first damage ticked off. If the mob didn't make it far enough, then I would get adds when that damage hit. If it did, then the mob would not bring extra. Thats an example of differing aggro radius between Debuff and Damage.

In Scarlet Monestary, in the Monestary part, A rogue attempted to pull with Sap. Result? Wiped party, as the entire place rushed us. I then proceeded to pull just by getting close to the mobs. Result? 2 mob pulls the entire time.

Believe me if you want or not. I've decided for myself that there is a difference between Damage, Debuff, and Body pulling.

No I don't expect a group to inch forward while you pause to flare every 20 feet. I do expect Flare to be useful in situations where a Hunter already knows there are invisible opponents. It allows your party to see the target to attack. Flare and Tracking don't make a Hunter a better puller though. A Hunter can do those without being the puller. They are just a reason to have the Hunter in team. I only mentioned Tracking because someone else tried to prove tracking is useless.

I guess it should also be mentioned that by reading the essay you can guess Brian's Hunter is over 30 and under 40. On the official forums his essay is being touted as the answer to the level 60s saying that teams don't want us.

But...how is serpent sting in any way a debuff? All it is, is a DoT. I think you're trying to say that your shooting it pulled the mob, and then it runs forward (and thus away from it's comrades) before the first tick occurs, and thus is falls into the category of a debuff. But still, the serpent sting does not actually debuff in any way, and so shouldn't be classified like that (not sure what it would be considered before the first tick goes off; perhaps similar to body-pulling?). Maybe if you tested Scorpid Sting vs Arcane Shot pulling, you'd have my attention. But you're using one thing (pulling with a DoT) to prove another (debuff pulling), and it's not a convincing argument.

And I have also tested it, with multiple characters and different types of debuffs and attacks, against a mob that didn't wander around for a consistant analysis, and it hasn't been true for me. (Also, sap is a debuff, so I don't see how citing that scenario supports your point about different pulling types.) It's great that you've made up your mind and all, and I've got nothing against that; but unlike CoH, where the devs specifically stated that (and listed how) the different types of attacks had different effects on aggro and pulling, Blizz has stated nothing of the sort, and I've seen nothing in the game to convince me of such a thing.


Eh, true. I don't really like doing this for pulling, though, because you still need to evaluate whether it was a bad pull or not. It often takes almost a second for the mobs not shot themselves, but still aggroed by the shot, to start moving after you. So while I would normally have the option of just spinning my character around and reversing the camera angle so I could obverse them (there's no default key for this action, but you can set one in the KeyBind Options), you'd have me backing up during that time. This is important because backing up is only half as fast as moving forward, and you are supposed to pull these mobs to the party, so I'm still going to have to turn around at some point to run so that I don't move lose all my distance from the mobs. So you're spending about two seconds backing up while watching the mobs (and thus dimishing your distance from the party, meaning that you had to be farther from your party than someone who didn't have to back up over ten yards), as the lead one makes good ground on you and the others are starting on their way, before you even know whether to sink or swim. Remember that while you're supposed to be ahead of your team, you shouldn't be more than 50 yards away, as being stunned / slept / immobilized / etc. means the team will have to come to you (as being mezzed shouldn't waste a good pull, and such a thing is inevitable against some enemies).

Still, it can be pulled off without too much more work. It's not as simple, in my opinion, but you are right, and I concede that point.

Yet before, when you mentioned invisible mobs, you state that "you end up wishing you'd known about it before hand." Now you're saying that you have to know about them before hand to make good use of this skill. I'm not trying to antagonize you, but you're not making a consistant argument.

I do agree with you, though, that tracking and flare do add to a hunter's contribution to the utility of the team. While a hunter might not fit into the Holy Trinity of MMO roles (tank, healer, nuker), they do add a lot to an instance party, including (although obviously not limited to) good sustained range damage, traps, a pet which which can off-tank, and insanely useful aggro management abilities (a good hunter is a healer's second-best friend). I don't think anyone in this thread has every really argued with a hunter's overall usefulness to a team, just whether they are the absolute 'best' pullers or not, is all.