Hunter Guide

[learntoplay]

I didn't quite know where to put this, but I was asked to make a hunter guide; here is what I have so far (bare in mind that I have not had any in depth suggestions just yet, so this is fairly basic and feedback is appreciated). Final product will include video links.

Hunter

Class Strengths:
Stealth
Speed
High range
Burst damage
Ability to pick fights
Confuse

Class Weaknesses:
Low sustained damage
Less range than marksman
Less defense than marksman
Limited CC options

Important Skills:
Ensnaring Arrow
Camouflage
Distraction shot
Mobility (If petless)
Cold Blood
Son of the Wind
Confuse

Hunter is the best solo class (in my opinion) because you can track down enemies and pick who you fight, and when you fight them. As a hunter, you're strongest 1v1 when you catch your enemy unbuffed or fighting another player/mob. When you catch them unbuffed, you can come out of camo on them and use confuse to keep them unbuffed (and cut off some of their ccs – such as silence, ambush, distraction shot, defeaning roar etc etc), usually for long enough to kill them using cold blood.

General fighting suggestions:
Track before you uncamo and know if there are other enemies likely to interrupt the fight
Know your surroundings – If you uncamo on someone they will typically go for the nearest rock or tree, leaving more time to others to interrupt the fight
If you decide to use a pet: be wary of pet hp and likelyhood that enemies will kill your pet; use buffs to keep it alive and debuffs to increase the damage it does.
When fighting more than one player, distraction shot one and kill the other AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, then pace the next fight, play smart to stay alive.
When fighting more than one player, use proper target priority first: Conj > Warlock > Marks > Hunter > Barb > Knight *

*This is in MOST cases my target priority; eliminate the classes that will take longest to kill with distraction shot first then kill the others. Use this fight as an example: Marksman + Hunter vs Me. Distraction shot hunter, confuse marks and take his hp down as much as possible (you MIGHT manage to kill him before the hunter gets out of distraction shot), finish off the marksman then kill the hunter. I would do this because the hunter would die at the same time as the marksman, but marksman will do more damage to me with his normals and take longer to kill than the hunter would, making the 2nd fight harder than if I would have done the opposite. Generally, take out healer first, but after that you would kill the class that would do most damage first.

Fighting specific classes: I am going on the assumption that you start from camo without pet

Warlocks:
A typical combo I would use on a warlock would be uncamo with normal hit (always do this, you get high damage from your first normal out of camo and it doesn't appear in their log) then confuse, rapid shot and son of the wind (you need to avoid these spells mainly: beetle swarm, frozen storm, soulkeeper, vampirism, sultars terror – These will waste the timer on confuse). In the duration of son of the wind, use cold blood – this will take down the hp of the warlock by a significant amount. When your son of the wind is about to end, maybe 1 second left, use distraction shot on the warlock (if he is above 20% hp – if he is not, use ambush and finish him off in the duration: if they don't die in the duration use distraction shot then, or stunning fist) and rest for mana. Before your distraction shot ends, you should buff rapid shot (if its off c/d) and dirty fighting, then ambush; if by the end of ambush the opponent doesn't die, use stunning fist from here. I would personally get to some range at this point and and ensnare should do to finish the job. You should buff acrobatic at some stage in this fight, preferably during distraction shot.

If you do this fight without camo (a pvp for example): Start with some range and use this range to break barrier, and the possible rebuffing of barrier, then rapid shot and son of the wind (at 30m), move in close and cold blood. After the cold blood, follow the guide.
Support conjurer:
Assuming you find a support conjurer running around alone, if you need help killing them, please stop reading. In war the best thing to do is keep the conjs under pressure and distract them from healing their allies. Conjs without DI are asking to be confused.
Warju:
I wouldn't suggest fighting them petless, but if you do, catch them with confuse when they don't have pet or steel skin/karma mirror up, then son of the wind and follow the guide to how to kill warlock. You really need to think fast, you can't rely on mind blank to fail. If mind blank does run out in the duration of confuse, use distraction shot on them, rest for mana then ambush. You should be able to kill them in this duration, if not, go to range after stunning fist and try to nuke from there. Warju really is the toughest class to kill. You will need to buff acrobatic at some stage in this fight.

If you do this fight without camo, you want to keep range until you can break barrier and take the warju down some hp, or until they neglect to rebuff mind blank (or you think it's about to end), son of the wind and go into range, confuse, cold blood, follow the guide from there.
Hunter:
If you start from camo, the easiest way to control the fight would be to normal hit, confuse, rapid shot, cold blood; when cold blood ends, use a dot then either distraction shot as the confuse duration runs out (if they don't use their son of the wind) or son of the wind and continue to add damage on to them, then if needed use ambush or distraction shot at the end of their son of the wind. You will want to avoid stunning fist during your confuse duration, so if they start running towards you, strafe away as you are using your cold blood damage, or if you're not confident, use ambush and then use your cold blood.

If the hunter is not petless, you have the option to distraction shot the hunter and kill his pet, then ambush the hunter, and confuse before they get up again (during the ambush time you may use normal hits, a DOT or sudden strike etc; I prefer 1 normal > sudden strike > 1 normal > confuse)



If you start the fight without camo, you will want to use break apart from range, buff defense and use retaliation. You will generally want to look for distraction shot before the other hunter gets it, take the fight from there; as the other hunter likely buffed defense at this point, you will want to debuff using sudden strike and use your distraction shot time to wear away a chunk of their buff duration, then confuse will stop them from further buffing. If you fight this way, an option would be to use confuse out of distraction shot, then do damage and cold blood in the duration of confuse and ambush or stunning fist from that as confuse ends.

Marksman:
If you start from camo, you may want to use distraction shot first, as this saves you from being instantly winter stroked, wasting confuse. If you choose to skip distraction shot at first, going straight with confuse, should do so within 15-20 range so they don't just keep running away from you. After confuse you will want to use son of the wind to avoid being winter stroked, then use rapid shot, buff some defense (preferably acrobatics, as stacking rapid shot and evasive tactics can lead to a bunch of missed shots), and unload your cold blood. As your confuse is wearing off you should aim to have a DOT on the enemy, and stun them with stunning fist; if you manage to land this before they can buff, feel free to buff evasive tactics and break stunning fist with ensnare – by this stage they should be dead or within 5% hp while you are well above 50-60%.

If you start without camo, you should try to lure the marksman within your range using trees or other objects – marksman hit higher than you and you won't hit them for much unbuffed at all. You can pop out from a tree and distraction shot them while they're still moving, but this will require a lack of concentration on the marksmans part and fast movements on yours, or you can force them the whole way to the tree and stunning fist (if you choose to bring them to the tree, you'll want to have defense buffed), then it's all tree hugging from there. If you choose the distraction shot option, read above.

Fighting a marksman who has buffed, you will want to stand as close as possible to them to negate their strategic positioning buff.

General rule of thumb versus archers: do not spam stuff through son of the wind, you have very few cc's to use and you will just be wasting mana or relying on luck.


Barbarian:

You'll want to learn how to strafe for fighting barbarians (unless you're Drew.). Fighting barbarians can be a tedious process, if they lose interest they will instantly run to a tree, so you'll need to manage your distance to around 20-25m. You will not be able to kill them in a cold blood duration, but if you uncamo on them, use your normal then either use a dot or confuse them and try to get some damage on them before they're aware of your exact position. Do some damage and make sure you keep ensnare on them as much as possible. Mobility is mainly used for barbs so you'll want to use it when they use spring – combined with ensnare and passive movement speed it will keep you ahead of barbs if you've used your distance right; if you feel a barb is too close (within 5m, roar range-ish), then don't be scared of using your son of the wind to avoid this, and use retaliation – if UM ends, use stunning fist or ambush and continue to keep the damage going while maintaining safe distance. There is no real “way” of killing barbs, just make sure to keep away from them and keep ensnare ON them. You may choose to use hinder or caltrops on a barb, but this will lead to them going to a tree and it is quite cheap to use vs one barb.

Knight:
This is usually a longer version of the barbarian fight, but you will need to use your DOTs a lot more. If you can catch the knight without defensive stance, confuse him. This should take off a fair amount of his HP with cold blood. If the knight isn't using defensive support (1 v 1 he won't touch you if he has it), then you can lure him out of defensive stance by letting him catch you, then using stunning fist when he leaves it, then confuse from there (be aware of the high risk of disable limb from this – you might need to use son of the wind and mobility to get away from him again). It's a long tedious fight that won't always be worth it, but your DOT's (break apart mainly) will contribute greatly to speeding up this fight.

[HelpMeHelpYou]

Paddy is my hero <3

[rossi]

Dont tell people what to do bitch

[learntoplay]

Originally Posted by rossi

Dont tell people what to do bitch

Lol, pls don't bring butthurt here Jasper, I know you are my fan. But really, if anyone finds anything I should add/take away from this, please let me know; I feel it's very bare atm, but i will be adding some video to it too likely.

[LucianDeathshield]

Originally Posted by learntoplay

if you feel a barb is too close (within 5m, roar range-ish), then don't be scared of using you're son of the wind to avoid this,

your*

Nice guide though, i'm sure it'll help a lot of people

[VandaMan]

I think the descriptions of methods for fighting particular classes are rather useless. Not that they're "wrong" or that I think you should go about fighting them in a different way, but every fight is different, and if you train yourself to rely on a particular framework for how each fight should go (particularly a framework posted by someone else, and then simply memorized and replicated), you probably will end up dead and raging every time you come across a decent player.

While I do agree that you should always have some sort of plan going into a fight, it is always much more complicated than this. You simply can't go into every fight with every eventuality in mind, and have a proper response preplanned. This is one of the biggest faults I find with many of the players praised as excellent PvPers. We all know you can carry out a long, preplanned chain of crowd controls, kiting, resistance buffs, etc. That looks great when you upload it on youtube and show everyone how uber you are, but most of the players who do this have 9 fights for every 1 that went into the video where this little internal script ran into something it didn't expect and they reverted back to playing like a newb. (and no, I'm not referring to the OP, just a general observation)

This script can become more and more complicated, if you begin to take into account additional scenarios (what if x is resisted, what if I get frozen, what if they hide behind an obstacle, etc), and this will of course increase its effectiveness. But even if it were possible for your "internal script" to account for every scenario, does this really make you a better player? You are literally just following a series of if-then-else constructs, no matter how complicated, like a computer would. I suppose if increasing your win/loss ratio is how you define becoming better, then this is all fine, assuming your programming is good. I hope you enjoy being a level 60 mob with mediocre AI though

[Rising_Cold]

I have to start running around as a warju to prevent ganks now... tnx paddy >.<

that said maybe I can make something of my hunter now ^^

[Immune]

Ok so I was in the middle of making a pet-version post mimicking peng's, then I refreshed and saw Van's post and I threw it out because, like wtf, that would be silly to post that right after he pointed all that crap out. So instead I'll give some less "if-then" guidance:

First, some non-pet related, miscellaneous tips:
Know this when tracking: On foot, most people (including you) move ~65m in 20 seconds - the time you have to wait between 2 tracks. Mounts give +50% speed - that's ~100m in 20 seconds. Take this into account when reading your tracks.

Learn to play without relying on confuse (use lvl 1 or not at all even); then when you're good at that, go ahead and raise it to 3 or 4. If you use a crutch from the day you're born, it becomes more of a weakness when it fails.

Be creative; hunters are not a class where you can afford to be predictable. Have multiple methods for fighting the same person, even if 1 way is clearly more effective.

Don't be afraid to scout. If you suspect an ambush on the other side of that bridge for whatever reason, don't cross it anyways because "what are the odds?"; use your damn camo and find out. If there's nothing there, no harm done. It's foolish to be caught off guard as a hunter by non-hunters.

Don't count yourself out until you've been killed. This isn't hunter-specific, but hunter is that class where if you start losing, you get the urge to run - don't, this usually just makes it more likely that you'll die (unless it's a zerg... then you're on your own).

About Pet Hunters
So far, most of the info has been given while making the assumption that you are not using a pet. This makes a huge difference in what skills you will use and how you will approach different situations. Where with a petless hunter you generally use a lot of mana in a short time to kill someone fast (relative to pet hunters, that is) a pet hunter tends to be better at conserving mana and wearing the enemy down.

Common Misconceptions:
It is entirely possible to kill any of the other classes as a pet hunter without your pet; it will generally be a tedious job however (and you may have to play dirty - but hunters are good at that).

Pets aren't useless in war if you know what to do with them.

Pet's are no more or less advantageous than a barb's 2-handed weapon or a knight's shield. The uses are just different.

Using a pet
There are 2 main uses for your pet/companion/slave: damage and distract.
Ideally, it will serve both points simultaneously.

In 1vs1:
Always prebuff beastial wrath, it lasts long enough to do that.
Generally, if you play at a medium range from your opponent (close enough so that your pet can reach - 30m max), they will go for your pet first (excluding marksmen... just use camo, seriously). If they just cc it... well, that sucks, don't waste your mana buffing it though. If they try to kill it, this is where you use sotb and see how much mana they're willing to waste on it; hopefully a lot, seeing as you wasted a lot to buff it.

Additionally, your pet is good for smoking out tree-huggers. First, have your pet stay on one side, then start buffing while moving to the other side. Have your pet attack if they move away from you (use sotb) or be ready to strafe and cc if they rush you. I have killed a number of barbs behind their precious tree-shields with this method.

In 2vs1: You can do the same as with 1vs1, but trying to keep 2 at range won't work well. Instead, try putting your pet on the squishier of the 2 targets, cc the other one and kill the squishy if you can. Alternatively, use sotb and sick it on the tougher one as a distraction, then focus your efforts on the squishier one. Or some mix of those 2 ideas... whatever works.

In war: Don't bother with wrath, your pet won't do damage against auras; so you may as well let it keep its evasion. Use sotb, throw it at a mage. This is pretty damn awesome if you use a huge pet (troll), half of them will immediately target it just to clear their view. If you're lucky, your group will use this opportunity to rush. If you're unlucky, well, your pet dies and you feel resentment towards your allies for just watching like it was a sideshow.

Alternatively, camo behind the enemy, use sotb and your own defense buffs, and cause as much chaos as you can - distracting shot a marks, confuse a conj, set your buffed pet on some lock, ambush that marks after someone casts dispel on him, ensnare that guy who got away with 10 hp. The more chaos you cause though, the more attention you'll get (your pet should get most of the attention at first) - have a plan to get back to your group.

That's most of what I can think of to talk about, so I'll leave it at that. Go throw your pets at all of your problems like a professional now.

[LucianDeathshield]

Originally Posted by Immune

Ok so I was in the middle of making a pet-version post mimicking peng's, then I refreshed and saw Van's post and I threw it out because, like wtf, that would be silly to post that right after he pointed all that crap out. So instead I'll give some less "if-then" guidance:

First, some non-pet related, miscellaneous tips:
Know this when tracking: On foot, most people (including you) move ~65m in 20 seconds - the time you have to wait between 2 tracks. Mounts give +50% speed - that's ~100m in 20 seconds. Take this into account when reading your tracks.

Learn to play without relying on confuse (use lvl 1 or not at all even); then when you're good at that, go ahead and raise it to 3 or 4. If you use a crutch from the day you're born, it becomes more of a weakness when it fails.

Be creative; hunters are not a class where you can afford to be predictable. Have multiple methods for fighting the same person, even if 1 way is clearly more effective.

Don't be afraid to scout. If you suspect an ambush on the other side of that bridge for whatever reason, don't cross it anyways because "what are the odds?"; use your damn camo and find out. If there's nothing there, no harm done. It's foolish to be caught off guard as a hunter by non-hunters.

Don't count yourself out until you've been killed. This isn't hunter-specific, but hunter is that class where if you start losing, you get the urge to run - don't, this usually just makes it more likely that you'll die (unless it's a zerg... then you're on your own).

About Pet Hunters
So far, most of the info has been given while making the assumption that you are not using a pet. This makes a huge difference in what skills you will use and how you will approach different situations. Where with a petless hunter you generally use a lot of mana in a short time to kill someone fast (relative to pet hunters, that is) a pet hunter tends to be better at conserving mana and wearing the enemy down.

Common Misconceptions:
It is entirely possible to kill any of the other classes as a pet hunter without your pet; it will generally be a tedious job however (and you may have to play dirty - but hunters are good at that).

Pets aren't useless in war if you know what to do with them.

Pet's are no more or less advantageous than a barb's 2-handed weapon or a knight's shield. The uses are just different.

Using a pet
There are 2 main uses for your pet/companion/slave: damage and distract.
Ideally, it will serve both points simultaneously.

In 1vs1:
Always prebuff beastial wrath, it lasts long enough to do that.
Generally, if you play at a medium range from your opponent (close enough so that your pet can reach - 30m max), they will go for your pet first (excluding marksmen... just use camo, seriously). If they just cc it... well, that sucks, don't waste your mana buffing it though. If they try to kill it, this is where you use sotb and see how much mana they're willing to waste on it; hopefully a lot, seeing as you wasted a lot to buff it.

Additionally, your pet is good for smoking out tree-huggers. First, have your pet stay on one side, then start buffing while moving to the other side. Have your pet attack if they move away from you (use sotb) or be ready to strafe and cc if they rush you. I have killed a number of barbs behind their precious tree-shields with this method.

In 2vs1: You can do the same as with 1vs1, but trying to keep 2 at range won't work well. Instead, try putting your pet on the squishier of the 2 targets, cc the other one and kill the squishy if you can. Alternatively, use sotb and sick it on the tougher one as a distraction, then focus your efforts on the squishier one. Or some mix of those 2 ideas... whatever works.

In war: Don't bother with wrath, your pet won't do damage against auras; so you may as well let it keep its evasion. Use sotb, throw it at a mage. This is pretty damn awesome if you use a huge pet (troll), half of them will immediately target it just to clear their view. If you're lucky, your group will use this opportunity to rush. If you're unlucky, well, your pet dies and you feel resentment towards your allies for just watching like it was a sideshow.

Alternatively, camo behind the enemy, use sotb and your own defense buffs, and cause as much chaos as you can - distracting shot a marks, confuse a conj, set your buffed pet on some lock, ambush that marks after someone casts dispel on him, ensnare that guy who got away with 10 hp. The more chaos you cause though, the more attention you'll get (your pet should get most of the attention at first) - have a plan to get back to your group.

That's most of what I can think of to talk about, so I'll leave it at that. Go throw your pets at all of your problems like a professional now.

A question, is it possible to still have a reasonable pet setup with full WM tree? ( I suppose both of you could try answer that)

[learntoplay]

Originally Posted by VandaMan

I think the descriptions of methods for fighting particular classes are rather useless. Not that they're "wrong" or that I think you should go about fighting them in a different way, but every fight is different, and if you train yourself to rely on a particular framework for how each fight should go (particularly a framework posted by someone else, and then simply memorized and replicated), you probably will end up dead and raging every time you come across a decent player.

While I do agree that you should always have some sort of plan going into a fight, it is always much more complicated than this. You simply can't go into every fight with every eventuality in mind, and have a proper response preplanned. This is one of the biggest faults I find with many of the players praised as excellent PvPers. We all know you can carry out a long, preplanned chain of crowd controls, kiting, resistance buffs, etc. That looks great when you upload it on youtube and show everyone how uber you are, but most of the players who do this have 9 fights for every 1 that went into the video where this little internal script ran into something it didn't expect and they reverted back to playing like a newb. (and no, I'm not referring to the OP, just a general observation)

This script can become more and more complicated, if you begin to take into account additional scenarios (what if x is resisted, what if I get frozen, what if they hide behind an obstacle, etc), and this will of course increase its effectiveness. But even if it were possible for your "internal script" to account for every scenario, does this really make you a better player? You are literally just following a series of if-then-else constructs, no matter how complicated, like a computer would. I suppose if increasing your win/loss ratio is how you define becoming better, then this is all fine, assuming your programming is good. I hope you enjoy being a level 60 mob with mediocre AI though

I actually agree with this; it's not that I personally have one plan, hell, I rarely even start the fight from camo lol, it's just really hard to explain *how* to when I really don't even think slowly enough while fighting to write it down. I could keep those as *examples* of how to kill these classes; thanks for that Van.

Originally Posted by Immune

Pet

It's a great idea if you do a pet version or the pet parts of a guide tbh, you're the best pet hunter I know and it'd save me a lot of time trying to explain what I barely know.