Friday, January 4, 2008

Hunter Arena Performance thus far.

Looking at our battlegroup alone,

I'm watching closely as to how many warlocks vs hunters there are in top-rated 5s teams that SK-Gaming website is picking up.

I'm not sure why I'm not showing up on the 5s list, as our 5s team is rated pretty high @ 1919 currently. That would put me in 9th place on SK gamings website for hunters in 5s for BG9. That isn't too shabby, considering my gear really isn't all that great yet as about half of it is from kara/heroics, and I'm at about 276 resil, 10800 hp, and only 6400 armor with a crappy bow.

Keep in mind that I hit 70 on Dec1, 07, and I've been on break since my gf is here visiting me for winter break, so I haven't had much time to improve my gear that much.

It does seem, based on this data, that warlocks are far more popular (or at least common) of an arena class than hunters. Does this mean that most hunters don't like PVP? I really can't answer that, but from what I've experienced so far, this does not mean that hunters are not arena viable. Even with 3 of us on the team being undergeared, we went 2-3 against Neilyo's SK gaming 5s team who are in full s2/s3 gear with mostly s3 weapons.

I'm fairly satisfied with my pvp/arena performance, aside from a few gripes about minor things such as pet mechanics and how expensive it is to play one. I still, however, feel weak against magic-heavy burn teams. I really have no escape options vs this. I often become conflicted, because often the best way to disrupt magic dps is to LOS it as best as you can, however, doing so severely limits my own physical dps, thus limiting the knockback I could be causing which would slow the offending magic DPS. I don't have clos/vanish/etc, and I don't have intervene/defensive/spell reflect. I really have to just either stand there and eat the incoming magic dps while I try to plink away slowing one attacker (usually a spriest or ele shaman), or just LoS as best as I can and hope that my healers don't get CS'd while winding up a heal to keep me alive. That's really when I feel the weakest out of any matchup, which is odd, since I felt hunters are good counters to casters. (And they usually are)

I don't really mind getting rocked by warriors that I can't get away from. If I played a warrior, I wouldn't want to get kited all damn day either. I think our ability to deal with melee (and especially rogues) is pretty good.

The ONLY thing I think we need improvement on in this area is a ranged "peel" to get a melee off of not necessarily me, but my teammates. Other than scatter shot, I don't really have any way of doing this, and even that isn't reliable in a lot of situations. I would kill for a frost arrow that would deploy a frost trap from range, but I don't think it would be enough to warrant giving up silencing or scatter shot.

Other than that, I feel the class is very solid. I really like the (hunter/druid) duo's ability to counter warrior/druid in 2s as well, which is a very popular setup. Also, I've found that as a hunter/lock/druid setup in 3s, we can easily snore our way to victory against RMP. We took down happyminty's team with relative ease.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Does this mean that most hunters don't like PVP?"

Story of Hunters:
You are fresh hunter at 70 and want to do arena. You get team, but you find you go down like wet paper in your blue gear.

So you start farming honor. There is meat-shield and lots of space, you farm your BG honor and you have fun. So you farm enough for decent s1 bow, 2-4 pieces of s1 gear, 1-2 non-set items and 1000arena points Axe witch you get by having 1400? rating for 3 weeks in 2v2.

You get 'serious' about arenas. You find out that you are confined, there is ton of LOS and suddenly there is almost no one to eat damage instead of you. Oh and your pet acts retarded in BEM arena.
It's all far far away from FUN you had in either BG. Especially when you meet different Druid/Rogue-Warrior in 2v2 as Hunter/Disc.Priest in 4/10 matches.

Funny at those matches... if their melee kills your priest and you kill melee in same time. 1v1 Hunter vs Resto druid... I think I resed pet like 3 times. If Druid would be more persistent (left after 20minutes) he would won because I would run out of arena water... in like 5 hours.

Anonymous said...

Could you offer advice for hunter/druid/lock 3v3 strat?

My Hunter/Priest is the 1800 bracket in 2v2 but i want to get serious about 3v3 as well.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Sam said...

Sure. Hunter druid lock is a very solid 3s makeup.

Ideally, you want to be with an SL/SL lock that can put lots of dot pressure on most everyone except the melee typically (as he will be rooted/cycloned/trapped/scattered most of the match).

Double healer + warrior is a pretty tough fight for a lot of teams. Hunter/druid/lock, however, has very little problem taking this team down, due to the tons of anti-melee capabilities you have, in addition to the 2 pets keeping their healers in combat, and 2 different types of mana drain: One poison-based, the other magic-based.

Against RMP, you simply have to kite the rogue around through frost traps, or across the map, while the warlock/druid CC's him off of you. You keep viper sting on the priest as often as possible, and DPS the mage whenever possible.

Save silencing shot to use on the mage for when your druid gets CC'd.

RMP can't really go for anyone on your team very well, since you have fear, cyclone, root, scatter, and traps. Most of their DPS will end up coming from the mage, and he won't be able to do much if you're plinking away at him as much as you can. The rogue will be screaming on his vent server about getting chain CC'd, and their priest will be helpless in a very short amount of time due to viper sting. Utilize pillars and traps as much as you can. Have whoever's getting focused kite the rogue across the frost trap, unless that means getting closer to the mage/priest.

Kill elementals as soon as they pop. They put out a lot more damage than people give them credit for, and are very, very easily killed with a hunter. They typically stay stationary once start casting, and have very low hp/armor.

Time is on your side in this fight. Their priest will be oom LONG before your druid, their rogue will desperately have to blow all their cooldowns to stick on his/her target, and the mage is going to struggle against hunter dps quite a bit.

Anonymous said...

thanks ill try that out!