This post will feature useful tips for hunters versus each class. The tips are meant to be general, and you should look for ways to apply them in any setting you can. Playing your class to its fullest is one of the few remaining ways to enjoy WoW, since the advent of the Death Knight ;)
Death Knight:
1 – Deterrence after a disengage. Most DKs will waste their Death Grip on it and you will make a clean get away. Make sure he’s snared before you jump or he’ll catch up fast, though.
2 – Kill gargoyles. We’re probably the only class that can do this easily for the time being, thanks to our plethora of instant ranged attacks.
3 – Disarm them. They will eat the full duration every time.
Mage:
1 – Kill Water Elementals.
2 – Use gladius (/target arena1, arena2, etc) to re-target mages after they pop Mirror Images.
3 – Distracting Shot one of his pets if you’re about to eat a polymorph.
Rogue:
1 – Feign Death whenever a rogue vanishes on you. He won’t be able to cheap shot until he re-targets you, and in the time it takes him to do that you should be able to re-flare yourself.
2 – Don’t DPS a rogue who has evasion up unless there’s absolutely nothing else to shoot.
3 – Try and intervene yourself a second or two after getting cheapshotted: as long as your pet stays in range (5 yards or so) the rogue might end up kidneyshotting it instead.
Warlock:
1 – Destruction warlocks can’t do anything without Immolate up. Interrupt it with anything, including Wyvern sting, and if he’s casting it on you and you can’t interrupt the cast then you might as well deterrence it, since his Chaos bolt will ignore Deterrence.
2 – Even if he does get the immolate off, unless you’re at full hp with heals incoming you should deterrence anyway, because you might get the Conflag at least.
3 – Don’t get mad when locks kill you. They counter us harder than anything except paladins.
Paladin:
1 – You can intervene judgements and Hammer of Wrath, but deterrence is useless against these spells, because they count as ranged attacks. Do not save deterrence until 20% against a paladin, ever.
2 – Scatter and Silencing Shot don’t last long against these classes. If you’re trying to scatter one into a freezing arrow, but you can’t get the freezing arrow off immediately after scatter shotting, don’t bother, because he will run out of it.
3 – Don’t get mad when paladins kill you. They counter us harder than anything except warlocks.
Shaman:
1- Tranq Shot resto shamans on the cooldown.
Priest:
1 – Kite his shadowfiend.
2 – Viper Sting on the cooldown
3 – Use Wyvern Sting early, you can force a trinket/wotf usually.
Other Hunters:
1 – Kill them, deterrence is useless against you.
2 – Kill their pets, they can’t protect them, and once they have no pet, see #1.
3 – Intervene yourself.
Druid:
1 – Viper Sting on the cooldown, it makes them waste GCDs.
2 – Scatter when Abolish is about to fade, this lets you Wyvern Sting them safely.
3 – Scare Beast feral druids on the cooldown. It’ll force them to waste cooldowns or mana to interrupt/cancel your cast.
Warrior:
1 – You can use Deterrence to negate a Charge stun, Intercept, or Bladestorm.
2 – Remember all those guys who would sit in our dead zone during BC? well warriors still have one, and you should abuse the hell out of it so they can’t charge or intercept you.
3 – Warriors can heroic throw and overpower right through deterrence, so don’t wait too long to use it.
I hope these tips and tricks help. If you have your own, post them in the comments section and we can update this post with them. The number one piece of advice I can give to up and coming hunters in pvp is use deterrence early. Deterrence is not like Divine Shield, and it shouldn’t be treated that way. It will not save you if an affliction warlock or dk or warrior gets you to 20%, so use it early.
-Jurgwena
Stupid Warlocks…
I’m not much for PVP myself, mostly just BG’s where I stand in the back and gleefully fire my gun into large crowds of people, but I’m on an RPPVP server, so I’m forced into combat fairly regularly.
I once attacked a Warlock that was doing a quest, for having a stupid name (it was a name from actual Warcraft lore, just with a single changed letter. I hate that.), and he proceeded to [censored] me for half an hour. :(
Stupid Warlocks…
Yeah, one of the really frustrating things about arenas is that other aspects of the game like BGs and World PvP become really difficult to enjoy without the right spec, glyphs, pets, gear, and even consumables. Oh well…
thanks for this jurgwena, it’s super helpful as i’m clueless in pvp
np duder
Some good tips here, thanks :)
Best tip I ever got was – if you’re having trouble chasing someone behind a pillar, multishot something next to them (eg. pets/totems) and you’ll hit them as well!
I always Feign Death when I’m up against a pet class, most of them forget to send their pet back after me again =P
Very well put together post thats the reason I keep comming back to your blog keep up the good work.
[…] seems that Eurpides has a new PvP Hunter Blogger called Jurgwena and they put together a great Arena Strategy Guide for Hunters over on […]
Nice post. I am a new Hunter lvling up and plan to do BGs either at the 29 or 39 lvl. Some of the attacks will not be available to me (haven’t really researched spells/takents at those areas. Any quick suggestions?
Thank you for you posts and time.
Draj
You might want to add that against other Hunter’s you can put a snake trap. Their pets usually spring it and then they end up not being able to cast steady shot for a while.
Paladin judgments now count as melee attacks instead of ranged.
Excellent Post Hunter!
nice work again!