User:Kathucka/Hunter's Guide to Karazhan/Combat

This section covers everything you need to know about actual combat. This is what you do when you're actually in a fight.

Review of skills
This table is a review of all the hunter skills you might want to use in Karazhan.

Dealing damage
Dealing damage in a raid as a hunter, when you are all set up, is actually pretty simple. If you have gotten this far, you probably know how to do it already. To review:


 * Put up Hunter's Mark on the target. Keep it refreshed.
 * Put Misdirection on the tank any time he is not far ahead on threat. Once or twice per fight is usually plenty.
 * Put Scorpid Sting on the target. Keep it refreshed.
 * Put your pet in Passive mode, with the focus dump ability on auto-cast (except for Lightning Breath).
 * Tap the shot rotation macro non-stop. Use the high-burn rotation macro if you have plenty of mana.  Use the low-burn macro if not.
 * When you are safe on threat, use Rapid Fire and any trinkets or racial abilities that increase damage. Use them all at the same time.
 * Use Feign Death any time that your threat is an issue.
 * Take a mana potion the moment it appears that you might have mana issues later in the fight.
 * Turn on Aspect of the Viper when you go below 25% mana. Fall back to auto-shot only to really increase mana regeneration, at the expense of current damage.

Managing threat
All the bosses and much of the trash in Karazhan are immune to taunts! If you pull aggro from a boss, your tank cannot save you. You must stay below the tank on threat almost all the time. Your two main tools to do this are Misdirection and Feign Death.

Open the fight with Misdirection and some high-threat moves, possibly including an Aimed Shot and a Distracting Shot. This boosts the tank's threat considerably, while allowing you to do threat-free damage. This gives the tank enough of a head start that you can continue dealing damage immediately.

Watch the threat meter. When you approach 90% of the tank's threat, use Feign Death and resume fire.

Maintain fire until Feign Death is available again, and use it. At this point, it is usually safe to blow your Rapid Fire, trinket, and racial cooldowns.

After one more Feign Death, the tank will usually have so big a lead on threat that you will not have to worry about it again. However, it is still possible for a character without a threat dump (Enhancement Shamans, Shadow Priests) to approach the tank's threat. If this happens, put Misdirection on the tank again every time it cools down.

Watch the threat meter like a hawk. The threat meter is life. Ignore the threat meter while fighting a boss, and life ends.

Freeze trapping
On the Attumen and Moroes trash, and Moroes' dinner guests, you may be called upon to Freeze Trap. Hunters can keep a single target trapped for a long time through a technique called "Chain Trapping".


 * Before the pull, target your assigned enemy, preferably with an appropriate raid marker on it.
 * Move to an appropriate spot off to the side of the bulk of the raid. The target will be trapped there, where it will be less likely to get its trap broken by damage.
 * Drop a freezing trap at your feet and back up a bit. It is best to do this at least 25 seconds before the pull.  Your cooldown should be ready so you can drop a second trap.
 * Wait for the tank to pull.
 * Immediately after the tank pulls, hit your target with Distracting Shot, Concussive Shot, Auto Shot, and probably Arcane Shot to build threat on it and slow it down. It will walk toward you and stumble into the trap.
 * As soon as the target is frozen, drop another trap. When the first trap expires, the target should head straight for you, and blunder into the next trap.
 * Consider moving across the room, a distance from the trapped target. Drop another trap as soon as the cooldown is available.
 * When the second trap breaks, the target will have to walk across the room to get to you. As it does, hit it with Concussive Shot and damaging shots to slow it down and maintain threat on it.  Your third trap should be down before it gets to you.
 * Move back to your original position if a fourth trap is required. Most fights do not last that long.  However, your cooldown will start to catch up to you at this point.  You may wish to ask the tank to pick up the trapped target.

On some fights, your are not required to control a target with a trap. In that case, drop the trap at the feet of your healers and casters. If anything gets loose and attacks them, the trap will save them long enough for a tank to pick up the loose monster. This is an especially good idea on the Moroes fight.

Protecting squishies
The squishies are your healers and your casters. These are raid members that die easily when they get attacked. These include holy paladins and restoration shamans, as their gear carries little stamina. As a hunter you have a few tricks up your sleeve to keep them alive.

Most of the tricks apply only to trash fights; if a squishy manages to get a boss' attention, your raid will be short a member a second or two later. They do, however, apply to Nightbane, Moroes, and Terestian Illhoof, all of whom have trash-like adds.

So, here are your tricks:


 * Chain-trap your assigned target. This is just part of your regularly assigned job, but it does mean that there is one less monster running loose that might become interested in a healer.


 * Drop a freezing trap at the feet of your squishies. If something gets loose and goes for a squishy, it will get caught in the trap long enough for a tank to pick it up.


 * Snare the target with Concussive Shot, Wing Clip, or Frost Trap. This will slow down the monster to give the tank time to pick it up.


 * Stun the target with Intimidation.


 * Use Misdirection to send the target back to the tank.


 * Use Intimidation and Growl to pull the target onto your pet, then tank the target with your pet.


 * Use Distracting Shot and Multi Shot and Auto Shot to pull the target to yourself, then snare it and run away. This is called "Kiting".

Note that there is nothing you can do about the big pulls on the stairway up to the ballroom. The warlock always dies there. Just tell him to run back. It is a short run.

Staying alive
Hunters, with decent stamina, mail armor, threat management skills, and a ranged attack have some of the best survivability of the damage-dealing classes. It is your responsibility to take advantage of that by being low-maintenance. You should rarely require outside heals.

Also, remember always that staying alive is more important than doing damage. Your DPS goes way down when you are dead. Here is what you can do:


 * Stay a safe distance from anything that has a nasty short-range AoE attack. In Karazhan, that includes Attumen the Huntsman, Maiden of Virtue, Lord Robin Daris, Romulo, Tinhead, Nightbane, Prince Malchezaar, hand the Prince's Infernals.


 * In general, if the place where you are standing has become a sea of flames, a pit of life-sucking darkness, or a torrent of icy death, go stand somewhere else immediately. Flame Wreath is the exception, of course.


 * Do not go over the tank's threat. Just do not do that.


 * Keep a Freezing Trap down. If you attract unwanted attention, it may run into the trap before it hurts you.


 * If something starts casting a nasty spell at you, run around a corner before it finishes.


 * Use potions and healthstones liberally when you are hurt. If the healers are having trouble keeping up, the healthstone is gone, and the potions are on cooldown, use bandages.  Generally, you want to avoid using bandages because you cannot deal damage while bandaging.  It's better than dying, though!


 * Heal your pet yourself with Mend Pet and bandages. The regular healers will be busy.  If they can manage it, their heals on your pet are very useful to the raid, but do not count on them.

Controlling pulls
Sophisticated raids can use hunters to help control the pulls.

It is usually simpler for the tank to pull by hitting a target first. Once that is done, though, a hunter can control the pull by using Misdirection to send a target to an off-tank, use a Frost Trap to give a paladin tanks Consecration more time to work, and so forth.

On multi-target pulls, a nice trick to use is to put Misdirection on the tank, then open with Multi Shot. This puts a decent amount of threat from the tank on three targets immediately, and makes the pull safer.