The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Huntards
by Vonya
Lets go back to the basics, shall we?
Hunters are ranged dps. We have a pet, which also contributes to the dps we output. As BRK illustrates every time he talks about huntering, a hunter and her pet are not two separate entities. We are a team. We work together and the combined might of our contributions is more than simply the sum of our dps.
But when you’re just a baby, starting out, you don’t know any of that.
A careful and attentive player, if they’re lucky, will tame their first pet at level 10. The noncareful and nonattentive player may actually not pick up the quest to tame a pet, and spend far too long wondering where hunters buy them.
Before that, the game teaches you bad habits. You can choose to shoot arrows or bullets at a mob, but they inevitably run at you (funny how that works) and you finish the encounter meleeing.
You shoot, they run in, you melee, they die.
For many people, this is the definition of a huntard. I’m telling you right now that it’s actually the definition of a “hunter”, as defined by Blizzard itself. These people took the lessons that Blizzard taught them from level 1, and decided that’s what the class should be.
Can you really blame someone for feeling that way? Especially since the method works!
Oh, I know what you’re going to say. “The method doesn’t work as well as being a REAL hunter!” Tsk, tsk.
How are they supposed to know that? Is there a quest in the game that rewards you for allowing your pet to hold aggro on a mob?
Not directly. The melee hunter will die more often than the ranged hunter, sure. But that’s really only true at higher levels. Lower level mobs, again, lull the melee hunter into a sense of security. What they are doing is right. Why? Because it works. Look how quickly the mobs die! They barely took any damage at all!
The ranged hunter will kill more quickly and have more control over his environment. That’s probably true. But unless the melee hunter has actually seen what a ranged hunter is capable of, they have no idea.
The melee hunter reaches level 40 and suddenly they begin to level much more slowly than they’re used to. Mobs take longer to die, and they get killed more often, and there are more adds than they’re used to. Is there a class quest to teach them what’s going on?
No.
So they continue melee huntering, staunchly forging ahead and doing what has always worked for them in the past, and what Blizzard taught them to do.
That’s why I see so many high level hunters fighting alongside their pets. Nobody tells them that the rules have changed, and that the things they were taught about how quickly things die with the way they were fighting no longer apply.
So how does the melee hunter break free of the “huntard” mentality?
Well, they could spec Survival – some people will still call them huntards, but I laud them for choosing a spec that actually compliments the way they’re playing the character. Just because it’s not my particular choice, that doesn’t make it wrong. The only “wrong” way to play the game is to do something that’s not fun. Everything else is just varying degrees of “right”.
You can say that it’s “wrong” to be melee hunter. It’s better to say, instead, that a ranged hunter will have higher dps than a melee hunter. Note that Blizz has a habit of changing class mechanics to the point where I will not be terribly surprised if Survival Hunters become the new highest dps build. If that happens, I will fall into the ranks of “huntard” because I enjoy being a Beastmastery hunter for the tree itself, not just because theorycrafters say it’s the highest dps.
In order to choose the Survival spec, though, they have to understand the differences between the three talent trees available. And if the only way they know how to fight is the way Blizzard taught them, they probably won’t really grasp the things that make the trees different – If you can only conceive of one way to play a hunter, then how would three talent trees make sense?
Another thing they can do is research. Get online, read blogs, read Elitist Jerks, read websites.
A lot of players never do that. I know that the players who visit blogs are almost always the people who need it the least. Why? Because you guys are researchers. You’re min/maxers, you want to know the best way to play your class to the utmost.
But the first thing you have to say in order to make the decision to read a blog is that you don’t understand something.
Think about that.
You have to admit to yourself (and possibly the whole internet) that there is something which you do not understand or are not capable of figuring out on your own.
If there’s one thing that school taught ME it was that not knowing the answer was anathema. Wrong. Shameful.
It takes a lot more courage and self-confidence to admit that you need someone’s help than it really should. Especially when you’ve got almost no other way to learn it.
And people can’t offer you help until you ask. Until you open up and admit that there’s something you don’t understand, any advice is seen as a personal attack. Heck, even after you ask for help, it’s often seen as an attack.
So the next time you see a “huntard” – don’t stop and snicker, point them out to your friends and mock them. I’m guilty of this myself (”Did you see all the spirit gear that guy’s wearing? He’s got more spirit than agility!!” And where, pray tell, was the quest that told you what spirit does for you? What any stat does for you?) and I need to stop.
As long as the way they are playing the game is only affecting themselves, and they are enjoying it…who am I to judge? Who am I to take a screenshot and add a lolcats caption “Huntard…yer doin it wrong!” to it?
The only time I should care at all about how someone else is playing their character is if I am grouping, instancing, or raiding with them.
To those of you who think that raiders should be allowed whatever spec/gear/playstyle they want, I say that’s hogwash. Raiders should be allowed whatever spec/gear/playstyle they want THAT STILL ALLOWS THEM TO ADEQUATELY PERFORM THEIR PRIMARY FUNCTION.
You want to be a holy dps priest? Wonderful, fine! But you have to keep up with the other dpsers. If you can’t break 400 dps when you’re wearing gear that makes the warlock standing next to you quiver with envy, and he’s doing 600 dps…then you should stop and ask yourself whether or not your decision is affecting other people.
A holy priest that proves to me they can still out dps the prot warrior tanking the instance (at the very least) has a chance. And so does a melee hunter that proves they can keep up reasonable dps.
A huntard is just a hunter who decided to listen to what Blizzard taught them about their class.
You shoot. The mobs run to you. You melee. They die.
If there’s anyone who should be ashamed for the number of huntards running around, it’s not the hunters. It’s Blizzard, for not showing that there are other options. For not letting the hunter choose. For requiring that they learn outside of the game, without assigning homework or giving pages in a book to read.
April 24th, 2008
REEEEEALLY good post. I had the good fortune of making a hunter after playing a priest and warrior, so I already understood threat and tank/healer interplay beforehand. But a lot of people play a hunter as their first char, and there’s nothing in-game that teaches the finer points.
I have one minor bone to pick: Spirit rocks while leveling. The recent mana regen changes supposedly wrecked hunters’ sustainability at lower levels, but if you stack a little bit of spirit it becomes a non-issue. No need to give up tons of other stats, just having one or two “of the Wolf” pieces, while being conscious of the FSR (yay priest background), is enough to eliminate drinking entirely. Except, you know, when you “accidentally” pull a camp of 5 guys and have to mash Mend Pet a bit
/pat Owl
April 24th, 2008
I play a rogue as my main, but I have a hunter alt (one among many.) Before I rolled said hunter, I watched other hunters I knew to be good at their job. I observed and learned how they played. When I finally rolled my hunter, I tried to emulate those habits. I quickly learned that their ways did not work for me. See, when I rolled my hunter, Marksman was the king DPS spec and all the hunters I played with were level 60 raiders. What worked for raiding didn’t necessarily work very well for leveling, or for my playstyle. So my hunter got shelved for a long time, curiously enough, right around level 40. She became my bank alt. Yes, a level 40 bank alt.
Fast forward a few months to the release of Burning Crusade. While researching information for my rogue, I stumbled upon this little site some people may have heard of called Big Red Kitty. Suddenly, it was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes and I saw the world of huntering much more clearly. Huntaring: I wuz doing it rong, especially for the way I wanted to play my hunter. See, I wanted my pet to be my tank while I stood back and killed things. But everything I’d seen and read up to that point said that Beastmastery was the huntard spec…until BC changed everything. One respec later and suddenly Lotos and Smoke ruled the battlefield. The only time she ever got hit was when I got stupid and lazy. Smoke became a monster, tearing enemies apart and holding aggro like a champ.
The point to this tale is to support exactly what Ego is saying. The game teaches you to play one way, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right way or even the right way for you. Know what you want, how to want to play and then seek out the information you need to determine if that is possible.
April 24th, 2008
Very enjoyable read, though I break with the conclusion of ‘blaming Blizzard.’ Blizzard provides a set of tools, they don’t necessarily need to put the whole thing together for you. Much of the fun of my Shadowpriest has been learning how to maximise her efficiency… tinkering, trying new things, seeing what works and what doesn’t. And yes, reading the holy maloney out of resources such as this one. ‘How can I do better with the tools I’ve been given?’… that’s initiative, in the game as in life.
And all the Blizzards in the world can’t instill that.
Sure Blizz starts a hunter out on a particular path, but if the player does not explore those tools themself, it is no failing but their own.
When I first learned Shadowfiend, it seemed like a pretty straightforward bargain. ‘Summon my wee pet and he’ll replenish my mana pool and deal a little damage in the process.’ My experience with him went very quickly in about this order:
1. Okay, summon him when I’m low on mana.
2. Well, my solo efficiency is such that I’m hardly ever so low on mana that he even crosses my mind.
3. Well, then he’s a contingency spell…
4. …that I hardly ever cast. Some toy!
5. Well, maybe if I use him to hold the mob’s attention to begin a fight while I DOT them up…
6. Nice! Mob’s half-dead when he gets to me. Efficiency just went up!
I used the little bugger the other day to solo a L65e ‘Mountain Gronn’ in Nagrand for a quest, and between him, the PW:S, the Vamp Embrace, and the PS, I finished the fight with barely a scratch, much more robustly than I’d have guessed.
Now my little pet has sweet FA to do with mana regen four times out of five he’s called to duty. And he’s called to duty quite frequently now.
The point I’m making here is, if you take the game and your ability to play it seriously, then you have to push yourself to explore and develop- noone, not least Blizz, should have to do that for you.
Otherwise, if you play casually or just to have fun, ‘huntard’ away and let none speak crosswise!
April 24th, 2008
Nice!
I have been guilty of pointing out what I consider to be huntards instead of attempting to educate them… but I always feel awkward when trying to tell somebody about something unless they ask. Who am I to teach them? I’m just a guy as well.
My personal definition of a huntard has been somebody who plays the class and claims that they can do something which their playstyle doesn’t support. This includes the marksman hunter with no pet who was wearing strength-oriented mail and had fiery-enchants, but ONLY because he was claiming superiority to the rest of the group, both prior to and after getting us all killed.
I wouldn’t consider Gweryc Half-hand a huntard or a muntard, because he knows what he’s doing, and doesn’t claim anything contrary (as far as I am aware).
April 24th, 2008
I outdpsed a hunter in Scholo once with my holy priest. Full healing spec and he was a good hunter too, a close mate of mine. He was confused and abashed. I would have been confused too, if I wasn’t too busy laughing my head off. To this day I have no idea how I did it, mad multidotting may have helped.
More recently I’m finding it surprisingly pleasant to grind with him post-2.4. “I’m a priest, I got spirit, I don’t need to drink!” (PurePwnage)
Have you seen the 2.4.2 notes? Blizz *really* think hunters are a melee class.
I totally agree with the “what I do by myself is my business” sentiment. Big up Noor et al.
Not sure about the “everything taught ingame” though, chaintraps and tanking aren’t taught ingame either so I’m not sure it’s a fair accusation. Blizzard just give you a toon, you’re always expected to figure out how to use it yourself.
What irritates me far more are the sharp inflections caused by scaling or environment change; for example lifelong retridins having to heal pre-BC, locks outscaling mages, bears dying on Illidan and the caster/melee DPS swap T5->T6.
I can’t say I have too much respect for those congenitally unable to ask for or accept help either. It’s a life skill, the lack of which provides lots of time to play WoW and eat ramen. I’ll try my best to help gently, but there’s some personal responsibility too.
A lot of people seem to find this a big barrier to effective raiding. Good groups *will* monitor you, you *will* be judged and help *will* be offered/given/administered.
The education system, much as I respect the valuable work they do, sure has a lot to answer for. Given the option I would unschool my future brood. WTS [Househusband], any offers?
April 24th, 2008
Curse you Ego, thief of time!
teh Khol Abides: my bank alt is an L70 paladin alchemist/jewelcrafter. I love my girls, but they bleed me dry… *sob*
Gauntlet: it’s always hard, but it’s easier if you lead with the goal and avoid even implied criticism. “Wanna know a neat trick to squeeze in some more dps? Drop VE, it’s extra threat”. Note *more* and the impersonal tone, “*I* do this and I’m uber so copy me” tends to get backs up. It suggests they’re already doing good dps and this is like a pro tip, instead of “omg even noobs know this”.
Leading questions can make it seem less teacher-student, there could even be good reasons! For example a dps warrior in my comm was sucking, I checked and he had a lot of stamina gems. Turned out they were to fulfill reqs set by his classlead. I would have looked a total ass flaming him, questions kept it constructive.
April 24th, 2008
@ eldr: Good points. I do find teacher-student has its role, though, when properly done. My guild holds ‘Instance Clinics’ for our juniors, where we go into some rudimentary instance (RFC is a favourite) and drill on the basics of Instancing, group dynamics, and development of each participant’s skill with their class. Awhile back one actually turned into a ‘Hunter school’ where our resident L70 Hunter drilled on things as fundamental as proper pulling, trapping, and pet maximisation. All I could do was sit back and soak it all in, and it was a joy to see both those taking their time to pass on their experience, as well as those hungry to be exposed to precisely that.
April 24th, 2008
Good article. But, like Apoptygmaa, I don’t know that I especially want Blizzard teaching us how to play.
I’ll confess right now that my level 20 hunter alt, who was my main until I created Morane, frequently melees alongside his pet. But I think I have a good reason…
Since I usually play solo the possibility of mass aggro scares the heck out of me. Mass aggro can happen either because I pulled more MOBs than I wanted (ie more than 1) or because the MOB panics at 10% health and runs off for help.
Since a level 20 hunter has very limited trap capabilities, when confronted with a mass of hostiles I usually try to drag one (just one) MOB out to my position. That way if the worst happens I can see how many MOBs are coming and if they panic they have a long run back to their buddies. Which they never make.
I typically send Tuppence in when the MOB is about halfway to me. I rarely even get hit, Growl pulls aggro of me and I get in a couple of whacks with the axe. Saves on arrows and keeps my axe skill up.
Of course for widely separated MOBs then Tuppence goes in first.
April 24th, 2008
Well met.
I know many of the beginning quests were designed with vanilla wow in mind. I’m curious about the new starting zones, specifically the Draenai and Blood Elf starting areas. Maybe the hunter quests there are better suited to the points raised in your post.
During open stress test, I played a hunter and for quite some time, the class overall was broken. Our pets didn’t begin with growl, so it was assumed hunters would eventually melee, using disengage and distracting shot while in groups to manage their agro.
Although my comment is focused on the hunter situation. I appreciate the overall focus of your post. Does blizzard teach you how to play your class? The answer is a resounding “no”. The community has a responsibility just as important as the player to learn to play effectively in a team environment.
Great post!
April 24th, 2008
I’m really steamed at Sid Meier for not showing me how to beat Civ 4 at Regent level, too. The bastige.
April 25th, 2008
Level 11 hunter! Before my pets (I took every beast I could find to see if I could learn something – ended up with ice claw bear) I was already avoiding melee by stepping back between auto-shots. I have not melee’d since having a pet (hasn’t been long).
I can see how great it is to solo-level with a hunter!
This really isn’t about hunters per say though, its more about seeing the distinction between those who are focused, learning, and thinking about WoW and those who just go through the motions. I know both, including one person who can only laugh at his pre-enlightenment days (prot. warrior with spirit gear – have to have that health regen) but now is a highly valued raider (DPS or healing spec. Shammy).
You cannot rationally pursuade the irrational and willfully ignorant, yet you can help those who only suffer from innocent ignorance. Just share your knowledge, no harm done (so long as the delivery doesn’t tack on an implied ‘you’re a complete idiot noob’), when you are feeling generous enough. If you feel the need to walk on eggshells with someone, chances are *they* aren’t worth the effort.
April 25th, 2008
Many of the advanced healing techniques that priests and other classes use I learned running dungeons pre-BC where a wipe meant a 20min run back to where the group left off (Gnomeregan, anybody?). Blizzard rarely teaches of the “basics” that other players assume you learn as you level up. Start healing before the tank gets low on health? There’s no quest for that. Why am I running out of mana when the only heal spell I’m using is Flash Heal? What the hell is Fade for? Unless you’ve actually been in a party, no priest knows the best times to use Fade or why Flash Heal is a bad call in some situations. A large variety of class advanced techniques get learned running dungeons with a group of your peers (being run through SM by your lvl 70 friend doesn’t count). Because of this, I see a lot of people who get to level 70 not knowing some techniques that are considered vital to being in a dungeon. I’ve met warriors who didn’t know what line-of-sight pulling is or when to use it. Mages who can’t manage their aggro without a threat meter (and some who can’t manage their aggro WITH a threat meter). Hunters who get to 70 and don’t know how to kite an enemy around (its considered a basic technique for hunters, and I’m guilty of that one). For that matter, I met a level 70 hunter in a 25 man raid who didn’t know what Misdirection was, and swore he didn’t have it in his spellbook (Misdirection is a spell hunters learn at level 70, and it turned out he did have it).
The point I’m trying to get here is that there are a lot of people who solo their way to 70 getting run through any difficult dungeon by a higher level person, and when they start doing Outlands dungeons its like a wake-up call they stubbornly refuse to answer. So with all these inexperienced players reaching the higher ranks, what is the solution? The only one I have seen is to teach them on the fly, and if they don’t like it, they can bugger off. Keep in mind, I’m talking about basic techniques here, not playstyles. If your tank can’t line-of-sight pull, or your hunter keeps his pet on aggressive, that’s not a choice of playstyle. That’s his choice to increase your chances of wiping, which means bills for everyone.
Ok, my rant is done, this isn’t my webpage, after all xD
April 25th, 2008
I think the “huntard”-problem is part of (and most visible symptom of) a bigger one: the best levelling spec/gear is not good for raiding/instancing. If you want to level fast to join your friends, you don’t learn any skill which will be usefull when instancing/raiding with them. You have surely seen a prot warrior who never uses sunder armor since he never got used to it (levelled on fury).
The survival specced melee hunter is the fastest way of levelling.
You pull with multi-shot
You can still shoot 1 or 2 into the strongest one before they reach you
They step into your talented explosive trap
You melee, your pet melees too
They hit, you dodge (talented aspect of the monkey + talented parry > 40% avoidance)
If they hit harder, you pop deterrence, they hit the air, you laugh
They die. All 3 of them. Unless they were especially strong, you don’t even have to drink/eat, you ready to pull again.
Of course the survival specced melee hunter’s rampage ends at the first instance boss. They live longer, than deterrence holds. They even live longer than 2 deterrences!!! (surv 41 talent, all CD erase) Since you are crittable/crushable, you die in 2 hits (4 swings, since you dodge/parry the rest).
So the huntard ends up being useless but learnt nothing but a strategy unviable in even a normal instance. Who’s fault it is? Not the Blizzard’s I think. It’s his and only his. The levelling supposed to be a learning process. The people (and NOT Blizzard) instead seek ways to make it as fast as possible. The results are shield wearing prot specced fury thinking warriors, huntards, healers who cannot cancel-cast, DPS-ers pulling aggro.
It is your responsibility to learn. The levelling gives a very forgiving enviroment for it. You could use it. You could PUG Zul’Gurub instead of asking a lvl70 to boost you. You could practice aggro management with your pet. You could group with random players who are doing the same quest healing them. You can kill things on prot spec (it’s long but can be done). At 70 you’d be ready.
I disaggre with “If there’s anyone who should be ashamed for the number of huntards running around, it’s not the hunters. It’s Blizzard, for not showing that there are other options. For not letting the hunter choose.” You always have a choice. Some just don’t think before they make it.
April 25th, 2008
@Everyone
Goodness, so many good comments!
This doesn’t really apply to everyone, but it applies to enough that it’s easier to say that than to pick out names individually.
The point of the post wasn’t necessarily that Blizzard should be responsible for teaching us how to play our classes. They change the rules often enough that it’d be wasted effort anyway.
The point is more that they ARE teaching us how to play, but only one way, and that one way being inefficient.
It’s not that they SHOULD teach us, it’s that they ARE, and what they’re teaching is only good during the fluffybunny lower levels.
Sure, it’d be great if more people decided to make the game important enough to themselves to research and spend time learning on their own. If they’d be able to say “hey, this THING that’s happening kinda sucks. I wonder if I can make it not happen?” and then find a solution.
This isn’t keyed to those players (of whatever class) who feel they’ve earned the right to raid just by virtue of having reached the level cap, without ever having to do a spec of research.
This is for those people for whom this is just a game – a relaxer, a fun thing to spend their time on. Those people deserve at least a nod in their direction, I feel, to let them know the different ways their class can be played. I picked on hunters here because I play a hunter and understand the thought process behind learning it. I also understand the difficulty of moving out of the huntard mentality, since I was one for a rather long time.
I don’t want classes or long-drawn-out rules on how something’s played.
But say, for instance, there were NPCs in the hunter training huts/houses/whatever. And you could sit down and listen to them talk about huntering a bit, if you chose. Or you could do a few quests kinda like the drae/belf “here’s how to use your racial ability” stuff.
Something so that they realize they HAVE a choice.
It may not seem very important to people who are used to thinking outside the box, but it’s actually difficult to move from “Well of course I melee! I send my pet in and start shooting, and my pet can’t reach him and growl before he’s in my range” to “maybe I should stop and let my pet reach him first, then start shooting.”
It’s an obvious leap for most of us, but not for everyone. And I don’t know about you, but I remember my first hunter – that was not an obvious logic leap, not at all. It’s also somewhat counter-intuitive to say that in order to kill something, you have to NOT shoot for a bit.
The logistics of aggro and other things of that nature are so padded in this game with fluffy, generic language that most players may not even realize there’s something there to understand – they can’t see the aggro-shaped hole in their knowledge about the game.
Blizzard does that so they can change the rules about the way aggro works and soforth without having to change a lot of quests and npc text. I can understand that.
But it makes me sad when I see those level 70 hunters whaling away on mobs while their pet is giant and red beside them, both meleeing.
I don’t want to ask them to join my group. I don’t want to play with them, or instance with them, or even fight near them. And it’s not because they haven’t bathed in a few weeks, it’s because the game they’re playing is a different game than the one that I play.
I can hope that they’re enjoying the game they’re playing, but I get so much pleasure out of the one that I play that it’s natural for me to feel they’d probably like my game, too. Maybe more.
April 25th, 2008
I agree with Vonya here. Players ought to do research for certain parts of the game so that they don’t infringe on the rest of our repair bills (raids, late instances, perhaps even basic BG strategy – “Need more D on the patch of grass between BS, farm, and LM!”). But there is so little support for people who are not already immersed in the game, and this inevitably leads to people leaving the game because past SFK and ramping up in frequency, mistakes become more obvious and more frustrating, but solutions remain hidden in Experiment Land. Plenty of people do just fine learning like that and from generous veterans, but plenty of people turn into bad players to instance with because they don’t know what they need to know, which makes others’ experiences worse.
More importantly, I don’t think simple in-game information givers/instructional quests/whateversaurs take away from the joys of learning through Experiment Land. There is a huge difference in a warrior being able to effectively tank instances at a reasonable pace with little to no aggro loss vs. simply knowing that one should cycle sunder on a large group of mobs. Likewise, people who have a harder time making immediate ratio calculations are going to take a while to realize that Flash Heal is crap unless you need it. Why not be up-front about that? No expanded tooltip or trainer paragraph is going to tell you right off the bat which fights and situations need a Flash RIGHT NOW!, but at least they can let a budding priest know that when those situations do happen, they have a tool for it.
Finally, Vonya, I’ve been a reader for some time, and I want to say that this blog was the single most influential thing that helped me learn the finer points of priesting. Thanks for your intelligence, insight, and wit.