Hunter Mastery

Hunter AoE Overview

I think one of the most fun aspects in the game is that of AoE pulling. Just about every class in the game as at least one AoE spell that allows them to kill a massive amount of mobs at once. Be warn that when Cataclysm came out they put in a hard AoE cap.

When I think about AoE pulling, like many of you out there, I bet you first thought is that of WoWHobbs or simply Hobbs. In fact like many of us, I came into the game learning how to make gold the way most gold makers are against; farming.

Back in wrath of the Lich King when was still leveling my wee little hunter to level 80, I started watching Hobbs and the Hobbs way of Pulling. I remember at one point I almost switch to playing just a Paladin because of Hobbs, I even released a video to Hobbs thanking him for everything he did.

So what is this talk of AoeE and Hunters? How does that even move into gold making? Good question and here is the simple answer. Hunters right now I believe are one of the best AoE classes in the game, I say one of and I would agree that warlocks have pretty strong AoE for being a cloth class, while I don’t think they are as strong as hunters. That’s up for debate and more than open to such.

First off, as a hunter you have a number of options, our main AoE is Multi-Shot which got massive buffs and nerfs in Cataclysm due to the nature of Survival AoE. I think everything can agree that Survival while the strongest and quicker AoE of the three hunter specs, Beast Master as the best AoE, just more down time between it. I’m not sure of the numbers but I think two hunters of equal gear, the Beast Master Hunter would burst faster than a Survival hunter could.

It’s about skill, and I would call a Beast Master Hunter more skilled to beat an Survival Hunter simply because as Survival you only need to do two things. You Trap Launch your Explosive Trap, followed with spam of Mutli-Shot with some Cobra Shots to get focus back. The power of Survival AoE is that of Serpent Spread.

For a Beast Master Hunter, one could almost debate you need to use a Worm, for it’s AoE power, being most of your damage comes from the pet. You need to have your pet there, followed by a spring of Mutli-shots. You still need to fire your Explosive Trap and the two together will cause a hunter to reach the AoE cap. You need to use Bestial Wrath and Fervor to keep your focus going.

So the question comes down too this, what would be the most effective spec for use of AoE looting come Mist of Pandaria? I personally with the new Fetch Glyph and AoE Looting Hunters will become THE best AoE farming class ever.

My AoE build could go between BM or SV. Later this week I’m going to talk about all three specs and some solid AoE information to get the best and fastest looting so when Mist of Pandaria launches you’ll be racking up the gold.

Finally here is a nice little advance macro I’ve been working on in beta for some time. This macro will cast Multi-Shot and always attack whatever your pet is attacking or your focus target, which I found to be idea. When you drop combat, it’ll cast Fetch on your last target you targeted. Keep in mind that Fetch is not as good as the Engineering Loot-A-Rang because you can’t move while you’re using Fetch. Also if you use Fetch and then move, your pet will still go to loot but you wont loot anything, however Loot-A-Rang does.

Mutli-Shot/Fetch Macro

#showtooltip [combat]Multi-Shot ; [nocombat]Fetch
/tar [target=focus,harm] focus
/assist [target=focus,help] focus; [target=pet, exists] playerpet
/use [combat]Multi-Shot
/targetlasttarget [nocombat]
/use [nocombat]Fetch

Recommended: If you’re a Engineer you can switch out Fetch to Loot-A-Rang and still get the same effect and use your minor Glyph Slot for something else.

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