I’ll admit it, I’m a PvEtard. I don’t stand in fire and I don’t pull agro, but I sure as heck forget where I have master’s call bound and blow my trinket at the wrong time. That said, I’ve been having moderate success the last week in battlegrounds PvP, and thought I’d share some lessons I’ve learned.
Trial by fire
The first thing you need to know about hunter PvP is that you will die a lot. Hunters dish out lots of pain, but are relatively squishy compared to other DPS classes, so we get focused a lot. Luckily for us, resilience was changed recently to be much more awesome than ever. Unluckily for us, it’s also more accessible than ever, so more of your targets will have it.
My first recent journey into a BG was Arathi Basin. I had a PvE geared healer following me around, and decided to try to take Farm, which was defended by a solitary sad looking warlock. I didn’t know enough about the gear looks to realize that he was in full PvP gear sporting a resilience rating of over 1000, though. Two on one, and he thrashed us. Soundly. My attacks that usually hit for 5 digits seemed to do no damage. Every time my healer tried to get a heal off, he was feared or CCed, and within 15 seconds, both of us were dead and the lock was somehow still at full health.
If you are starting to farm BGs for your PvP set using 100% PvE raid gear, be aware that you will usually hit a lot less hard. Also, once you get enough resilience to survive more than a couple seconds of combat, you’ll start to see your damage output go back up.
Lesson one: you need resilience!
Having had this wisdom branded into me, I set about getting a welfare PvP set together. First off, there’s tons of excellent gear you can get with honor only. Here‘s the search I used in wowhead to make my hit list. Also, if you have a decent PvE trinket, keep it and replace your weakest link with the Medallion.
You can purchase iLvl 232 set pieces for emblems of triumph, dropped in heroics now. You want to get at least your two piece bonus of 100 resil. If you run VoA, keep an eye out for the 251 or 270 iLvl hands and legs that drop from there.
Arena points without arena
I am very hesitant to start or join an arena team. It would add a ton of work per week, and I’m not sure I have the time for anything but random BGs once in a while. Still, if you win a random BG once a day, you get 175 arena points a week, which is fine for my purposes. The goal here is picking up iLvl 251 pieces without an arena rating requirement. Note that in this wowhead search, they list the wintergrasp shoulders, which are less than ideal for most people. They’re better than PvE gear, but they have hit instead of crit, and hit is usually not a problem for PvE players getting into PvP.
Finding honor points in the weirdest places
- All those stone keepers shards? Convertible to honor.
- Old BG marks? You can turn them each in for 185 honor at the Champions Hall in SW or the Hall of Legends in Org. Note: this took me forever. Stupidly, you can only do one every two seconds, and can only carry 10 of the conversion items at a time.
Spec choice
All three hunters specs are viable for PvP. I can’t say anything about high end arena, but for BGs, any of them work. Here’s the differences:
- Beast mastery is all about pressure and cooldowns. When you use your big red button, you will do a lot of damage and apply a lot of pressure no matter how much they’re trying to fear or CC you. The problem is that you have less cooldowns available for survival, and will probably be quickly targeted and focused down. BM enjoys a nice short term stun, but little CC overall.
- Survival is all about sustained pressure. Same level of defensive cooldowns as BM, but the offensive pressure is less cooldown dependent. You have no big red button, but your overall damage output will be higher on longer fights. Also, SV has an extra short term ranged CC they can use.
- Marksmanship is my PvP spec of choice. You have many more defensive cooldowns and CC options because readiness doubles how much of everything you can do. You can dish out as much hurt as the other specs.
I’ll keep you folks in the know as I learn more.
I don’t usually have a problem doing bg’s in PVE gear with the pvp trinket – you just gotta be smart w/positioning, deterrence usage, and interrupts. Rogues can still kill you, but just drop a freezing trap if u plan to stand still for a bit.
I’m a casual PvPer (raiding PvE mainly) and also find the daily BG plus weekly Wintergrasp quests a great way to get lots of honor and marks/shards (tradeable for honor), so a quick way to gear up for PvP (I don’t really want to use Emblems for gear as I have a better use for them, Cataclysm heirloom gear, epic gems, etc).
I need help with my PvP spec, shot rotation (ie best use of CC etc) and wondered if anyone could recommend a good PvP hunter blogg or starting points. Thanks in advance.
you can always check out the specs that they have on the arena junkies website. i have personally found that without a good PVP spec, bgs can still be very frustrating.
You should really consider grabbing your healer buddy and starting up an arena team. Its not as difficult as you might think. 10 matches a week and you get a fair amount of arena points.
Matches usually only take a few minutes each (if that), and even if you guys don’t do very well, you should still be able to muster up at least another 100-200 points a week.
He was on a different realm :P
I’ve been considering starting one for the rare week where I’d have time to do enough random BGs every day to get a win as well as squeeze 10 games in, but if I don’t hit that 10 game mark, all the time I spend in there is wasted. Also, most of the stuff I can get without a rating requirement doesn’t need arena points, and the prospect of getting a team to the point where I can get the stuff that does have a minimum rating requirement is probably a lot more work than 10 games a week.
Start up an arena team.. it takes 30-45 min, one night a week, to get in your 10 games, which results in about 350-400 arena points assuming you loose all 10. Plus it will start teaching you a lot about working with a partner from a pvp perspective.. and you’ll get good at peeling of your healer, just from having to.
That, I’ve actually started getting good at :)
Web with spider, concussive if the healer gets any range, and frost trap under their feet are all things I’ve gotten good at. BGs are actually very educational when you don’t get instagibbed every encounter ;)
PVP is pretty hard for me, in all games, but im getting used to it.
I’ve found that BM is a killer spec in BGs, where Surv is the guarding spec (I don’t have an MM). BM I can easily rack up killing blows (much better 1v1 than other specs), Surv is too easy to get CCed long enough for well-geared PvPers to heal etc, but I can hold off several enemies at a base long enough for help to arrive :)
Spec: pve mm
Pet: george the spider \o/
Gems: all 10agil/10crit, 3 x 34agil, 3 x 25 spell pen
Resil: 851
Gear: pve items (helm, cloak, rings, 1 trinket, weapons), pvp items everything else relentless/wrath (all gotten with badges/hp)
End result = absolutely destroy everything and you can take a beating.
This is timely as I have been pondering the acquisition of a PVP set and spec, as I have more than enough Triumph badges, honour and Stonekeeper’s Shards to assemble a full set of gear.
However, my hesitation stems from – and I think I’m getting my PVE in my PVP here – it’s really a significant gear downgrade. I mean, I know I gain Resil and more Stamina, but I’m losing a lot of other core Hunter stats.
I know I get killed easily but I also kill quite effectively in my PVE gear. Is the trade of Resil for AP, Crit and AGI worthwhile?
Being a PVE player who ventures into BGs (no Arena for me!) I have no clue on the technicalities of gear aside from wanting gobs of Resil but at what cost is that swap beneficial rather than detrimental?
I had the same problem- without much resil, still wearing the majority of my raid set, I would consistently be top on kills and damage in any BG where we won. When it was close, however, I would be middle of the pack, barely above random players in blues. If you always outnumber your opponents, pve gear is great, as you won’t be needing much in the way of damage avoidance. If, however, you want to be able to help turn the tide in a even match, resil is far more valuable than core hunter stats.
All that said, hunters do very well with half a set of pvp gear, if their pve pieces are strong. Also, if you find that the balance between survivability and pressure needs adjusting, you can always gem agility.
Regarding doing well with a half set of PVP gear – would you recommend then picking up a smaller amount of the higher-tier Wrathful gear rather than many of the lower-tier Furious pieces? I’m not sure if I’d consider my PVE pieces to be “strong”, I have a mix of 245s, 251s and 264s with no Sanctified items (average item level according to Elitist Armoury is 257) so I’m somewhere between adequate and strong.
And at what point does Resil actually start to matter? I was under the impression that one needed around the 1000 Resil mark before the effects of the stat were noticeable, so is it even worth going with PVP gear if it means only being in the 600-800 Resil range?
Resil was hugely buffed last patch- any amount of it you can get will greatly increase your survivability. I found that at about 600 I survived noticeably longer, however at my current 800something, I don’t pack the punch I used to. I might find a comfortable middle ground by regemming agility though.
850 is the sweet spot for resil.
Thanks for that. 850 is still far higher than I’d be able to obtain via gear I could purchase now.
Think it’ll just be better to keep on my current path of PVP in my raid gear than throw myself into slowly buying the high-end pieces. I just don’t take PVP that seriously.
Remember that you get +100 resil from the having 2 pieces of the pvp gear and 153 from the new pvp trinket alone.
And yeah its not worth putting lots into it if you need the badges gems etc for pve with is your prio im guessing.
I just built up all mine over time from the amount of frost emblems and hp i get weekly.
One benefit to PvP as BM: You are effectively doubling-up your solo and PvP spec, allowing you to keep your second spec for raiding and save on respec costs.
Sure, most content can be soloed in any spec with current raid gear, but there is still plenty of content that cannot, such as certain old raids and particular 80 group quests.
I meant to supplement my comment; this was a great entry and I appreciate the input. Marksmanship is by far the preferred PvP spec in my experience for all the reasons you mention. Still, I prefer BM because:
1 – I am more comfortable with BM
2 – I like using a Silithid
3 – I like the additional “trinket” that Bestial Wrath provides
4 – The additional points in the pet talent trees give me additional versatility
5 – Intimidation is one of the few spell interrupts available to hunters
Ugh…the first time I got worked over by a sad looking solo guy sitting a node was depressing. I thought, “Meh…I can take this guy…no problem.” and he worked me over like I had two broken legs. Embarrassing. It’s a long hard plug until you get some at least decent PvP gear…it gets a lot better after that.
One of these days I’ll put together a guide for which classes to pick for 1v1, however for hunters, druids aren’t it. Every time I see one, I know that they’ll be able to give me more of a run for my money than most other classes.
Yeah, eventually you get to be the sad solo guy defending the node. :P
People can harp all day on what classes beat what but this game isn’t built on 1v1 (the fact tier 2 pvp weapons and pvp shoulders require 3v3 or 5v5 ratings prove this) It is a multiplayer game and is all about team effort… mages beat rogues, warlocks beat rogues, blah blah… certain classes will always have strengths against other certain classes and its only way to find some sort of balance in a game with people doing things other than blast each other in between the eyes with a bullet. Finding balance is easier found in first person shooters when it comes to 1v1. I enjoy bgs and only do premades where we use everyone’s class strengths to our advantage, no matter which class i play. Hunters can be a true bg nightmare in a organized group, just like any other class.
The best advice for any hunter entering the scarey realm of BGs is keep at it, it is an entirely different skill set than Pve…… Rotations, what are those? Each class requires a different set of shots and traps to bring down effectively. I personally find MM to be the most effective spec for hunters, im lucky, usually play in organized pre-mades where my skills at burning down healers makes me the bane of those damn druids and Pallys. Of course my killing blows go down and my damage suffers, but who cares if we win, by me focusing on those healers it lets everybody else in my group take down the dps like a hot knife though horde. Because i do focus on healers and casters alot i find the MM spec with silencing shot, scatter shot and concussive shot is ideal, i also use a ravanger, with its knockdown and two second stun. Generally i keep my pet on passive and as soon as i find the healer send him out for that initial stun, use a chimera, then arcane, then silence shot, 2 more arcane, by this time usually near out of focus :( so two steadys, concussive, another steady, then go for the the kill….rush him with scatter, chimera, and arcane till hes close enough for a kill shot. on a good healer you may have to switch up and repeat a few times, but remember, if your keeping him busy your other dps are quicky dispatching their team to the graveyard and you will soon have some help. Remeber as with all PvP this is just a loose guildline, remember to work with your team, there is no room in a premade BG for heros. I used enough room for now, will post later with thoughts on melee, rogues etc.
Keep Killin Horde, they are better off dead anyway,
Bakedtatters
This is the most awesome thing I’ve read all day :)
Sent from my BlackBerry
First of all thanks for the props Euripides, really put a smile on my face when i read what you said about my last post. Have been reading and listening to guys for a long time and it has really helped me become a better Hunter.
Second of all i would just like to say i’m a bit sorry. I’ve been working so hard with my team lately, i got a bit to focused on what i’m doing and totally forgot the most important thing about learning to do well in BGs.
Attitude……Attitude….Attitude, the only way your going to make it to be a monster in the battlegrounds is to die, to die lots, to leave your blood all over that field. That being said its the habits you learn during those rough days that will help you excel as the gear comes, and it will don’t worry.
One of the mistakes I frequently make is getting to cocky, running into situations that no self respecting hunter should survive, we do not belong up there dancing with warriors and playing with pallys. We have the longest range in the game and should always use it to our advantage, when i find myself doing that ill switch to my PvE gear for a couple a pugs to wake myself up.
I guess basically what I’m saying is learn from your mistakes, just always try to be a bit better the next time out. Dust off those traps, warm up that deterrence and practice using them to get that pesky melee toon off your back.
Pugs will generally always suck, its just the way it is, you will have your chat ragers, afkers etc, just always try to maintain a positive outlook, have fun with it, dieing does not matter, damn i’ve died over 8k times, for a while its the little victories that matter…..damn i pwned that DK (my personal favorite) especially after they popped army, mmmmmmmm i just imagine that guy raging over getting nuked by a hunter lol, i’ll explain a good way to do that later, i always seem to get talking and don’t know when to stfu, anyway guys just get out there and have some fun, maintain a positive outlook and practice, practice, practice.
Kill more horde, it’s good for the soul
Bakedtatters