Casual Huntering

Posts Tagged ‘arcane shot’

Well, with the Lunar Festival coming soon to a close the Elders of Azeroth come forth to bear their wisdom. The shared topic from Blog Azeroth, given by Khi, was to share some wisdom with people just starting out. I’m not sure exactly how wise I am, sometimes I can be downright immature, but I am Elder Aoirselvar, and every so often I come up with some profound.

Okay, so you decided to create a hunter. You like animals and guns? Or it was random decision and you don’t really know what you are getting yourself into. Great!

Well, welcome, you have come to the right place. Hunters are great! They are fun, great for leveling, great dpsers, and usually down right good looking (especially the dwarven types).

As Thorgas Grimson, Dwarven Hunter Trainer said,

Tamer of beasts, master marksman, proven tracker – what else ya want to accomplish in this lifetime? All those things combined takes quite a bit of intelligence and a great deal of patience.

The path of the hunter ain’t an easy one, that’s fer sure. You’re gonna need lots of training if you wanna be as good as even our lowest ranking rifleman. But that’s why I’m here.

One thing you should always remember is that you gotta respect the world you’re livin’ in. The beasts that choose to fight along side you; the shine of your weapon; the weight of your ammo; the bite of the bitter wind; all these things you need to know intimately.

Now when you start playing a hunter at level one you’ll notice something is missing. That’s right you don’t have a pet, you have to earn it. Level one through ten is often known as melee hell for hunters. As you will soon find out, we hunters aren’t so good up close and personal. We usually like to keep our big mean pets around to keep people out of our face. We have personal space issues.

But… you don’t get to do the quest chain to get yourself a pet until level 10. However, there are a few tricks to keeping mobs out of your face up to this point. And there are some very important skills to be learned at this point.

At first you’ll have next to nothing. You’ll be able to auto-shot and hit someone with your sword. Your auto-shot is the most basic range attack you have, and it is awesome. You just have to normally turn it on and forget about it. We’re the only class I believe that has a range auto attack (some people aren’t too happy about that).

You’ll see that this auto-shot range attack takes a break between shots for two seconds. So, this is what you’ll do when you attack mobs at first. Target something you want to kill, get as far away from it as possible with it still in range. Your auto-shot spell will be white when in range, red when out.

In range.

Not in range.

Then start your auto-shot, while you’re getting ready to shot again walk backwards, turn around and run, or strafe to one side or another, just for a couple of seconds then stop facing the mob again to let the auto-shot do it work (the only crappy thing about auto-shot is that you have to be holding still for it to work).

So, continue to do this, auto-shot, move, auto-shot, move, and before the mob can reach you it’ll be dead.

For some mobs all you have to do is back up for a couple of seconds, shot, and back up again. However, this doesn’t always work and some of the tougher mobs will catch up with you quickly. In these cases you’ll want to strafe shot them. That is running away with either the “Q” or “E” button, to the side, gaining distance from the mobs during your cool down on auto-shot then ever so briefly turning around, holding still for just a slight moment to get an auto-shot in, then start running again. The goal is to keep your melee weapon skills as low as possible to show just how well you did at killing stuff before they got anywhere near you. You’ll start to get the rhythm of it. It’s almost like a dance. Shoot one two shoot one two etc etc. (I had a harder time getting screen shots of the strafing because it generally requires both hands.)

If you are having a difficult time judging when you can auto shot again there are mods out there. The one I am using is called Kharthus’s Hunter Timers.

This is a good time to note that it’s probably a good idea to make sure you know what’s around you. It doesn’t do any good to walk right into a mob while backing up attacking another mob. But it shouldn’t matter, from level 1-6 all mobs are yellow, meaning they’ll only attack if you attack them first. By the time we get to mobs that are a bit more aggressive we’ll be focusing on a new tactic anyway.

Now as you start to level you’ll get some nifty shots to help you with your anti-melee quest. At level 4 you’ll get Serpent Sting, this is a DoT (damage over time) shot. You’ll want to start with this shot now and continue your auto-shot/ move /auto-shot thing. Important to note, you no longer even have to click on auto-shot. It starts automatically when you shoot your Serpent Sting at the mob. Now they’ll die even quicker. Muahahaha.

It is also important to note that Serpent Sting in an instant cast shot. That means you don’t have to be holding still to get this shot off. It’s probably best to hold still for the first shot so you can get your first auto-shot in as well.

At level 6 you’ll get Arcane Shot. This shot, like Serpent Sting, is also an instant cast. Now you’ll be able to provide extra damage while you’re moving. There are a couple of other skills we should discuss now that you have Arcane shot. (by the way, you now also have the Hunter’s Mark, a very important hunter ability that we won’t go into here – just use it all the time, very important).

Now that you have a couple of instant cast shots its time to look at a new skill, the jump shot.

This is the coolest badest thing you’ll ever learn as a hunter, but it’s a little tricky. If you are a keyboard turner, then you’ll have to stop that to figure this thing out.

Basically, when you have a mobs attention, you run away, but you jump, then using your mouse turn mid air shot an instant shot and turn back around before you land on the ground. (you’ll have to use hot keys for your shot, so if you like to use your mouse to click on your spells, well stop that as well).

Sounds difficult right? It’s not that bad. The trick is to use your mouse to do quick turning mid air. Big Red Kitty (BRK), one of the greatest hunter teachers of all time made a brilliant video on how to do this. If you seriously want to be a hunter then I highly suggest you go watch it and several of his other training videos. They are outdated in several aspects, but the basic skills remain the same.

It looks as if I’m shooting backwards, but when I actually hit the button I’m facing the mob, it just takes a second for the animation to keep up, thus the U-turn shot.

Once you figure out this jumping shot thing, then leveling without a pet become enjoyable. It becomes a game to see how far you can make the mob run after you and if you can get him down before he gets anywhere near melee range. (And if you thought strafing would be difficult to get screen shots for, try getting them for the  jump shot. I had to enlist my wife to take the screen shots for me.)

This my friend is kiting, that is pulling your mobs along like a kite on a string. It is, in my opinion, one of the most fun things you can do as a hunter. You don’t get asked to do it very often, but there use to be fights here and there where you could. I use to kite the tinman from the opera fight in Kara in BC around the room to keep him occupied while the rest of the mobs were killed. Great great fun.

Soon enough you’ll get to level 10 and you’ll get your pet. Then it’ll all change. You’ll no longer be required to run around every where, jumping and straffing and such. You’re pet will keep the mobs attention. There is something that’ll be lost. You’ll find yourself, every so often tell your pet to just chill for the moment, just so you can kite a mob here or there. My wife got really enjoyed when I did this, dragging mobs all over the place. It’s good fun. Of course these are invaluable skills in PvP. In PvP kiting is a very important skill indeed.

But it’s in the first 10 levels you learn this fun stuff. That’s why we don’t get pets right away; it forces us to learn how to fight without them. I suggest you put your pet on passive ever so often and show off how bad @ss you are.

Happy Huntering