Why I like being a Hunter.

I suppose I should give recognition to the blogs that inspired this post, but that's not gonna happen. Reasons for my love of Hunterdom are as follows:

Soloing - As a BM hunter and hater of PvP, I spent most of my time alone when leveling up, so being able to solo just about any quest outside of a dungeon has proven to be extraordinarily helpful. Take for instance when I was level 57, I was questing in Winterspring hunting stuff and skinning anything I could, when I came across a quest that required me to head down south to some canyon and kill ice giants. So I headed down there to check it out and see what needed to be done, and as it turned out the giants also happened to be level 60 elites. Great, just effing dandy... Now at this point most classes would call out for help or just entirely avoid doing the quest because of the difficulty that would have ensued, but I was a hunter, and a pretty good one at that, so I thought to myself "Let's give it a shot. Who knows? I might be able to do this one."

So I prepare myself, make sure Strife's happy and still very much alive, make sure that I'm only close to the one that I want to kill, then I let loose. Hunter's Mark, pet attack, mend pet and wait for Strife to get a good chunk of aggro...a few seconds later I start laying into the sucker like there's no tomorrow, using everything I've got in my arsenal to try and get it dead. A few seconds later Strife's dead and I'm heading for the hills. Feign Death, resisted, dead hunter. But I got him down to 25%, so I figure I can take him out with a little more planning. Race back to my body, rez pet, heal+pet food+eat+drink, and find the guy who took me out earlier. Same deal as before, Hunter's Mark, pet attack, mend pet but this time I start attacking him as soon as Strife gets to him. Strife still grabs aggro from me for the first while, but having started attacking when he did, I can almost control when I grab it back from him depending on my shot rotation.

Strife's health is dwindling, so I let loose, grab aggro from him and pop a mend pet. I attempt kiting him waiting for Strife to get his health up, Mine's going down and Strife is almost maxed, so I Feign Death, not resisted, he's back on Strife at about 35%. This sucker's in the bag. I down him, he drops what I need and I gloat about it to my guild. They were all impressed, especially the ret pallys, who are known for their lack of soloing abilities. It was a proud day for us all, and I'm pretty sure that's when they really started to take notice of my abilities as a hunter.

Pets - We have pets, they are a part of us, and they're hella cool. I mean who doesn't want to have a big fuzzy death machine running along with them chewing the hell out of stuff? Exactly, no one doesn't want that.

Chain Mail - Not quite as good as Plate Mail, but way the hell better than anything the squishy classes have. Priests, we love you and you're very much needed, but if you get a heroic mob on you you'll be lucky to survive 2 hits. It's a damn good thing you can bubble.

Pets, again - We seriously love our Pets, they're a huge part of being a hunter, at least those of us who are of the BM variety. Plus there are a ton of unique pets that you can tame that few other people are ever gonna have, which is something that no other class can do. Warlock minions all look the same, as do the frost Mage water elementals. Plus we can specialize our pets to whatever meets our needs, try doing that with a water elemental or a single minion.

Guns!!! - Well, I'm a dwarf, I love my guns. They look sweet (the higher level ones anyway), they've got a unique sound and often have cool animations, Plus they're our main form of dishing out damage, no need to resort to stupid stuff like axes or spears to attack with, just sit back and watch the magic happen.

Traps/Chain-Trapping - We may not have many close range abilities, but we've got a few and Traps are some of them. They serve all sorts of purposes, AoE damage, Damage over Time, Poisoning, Slowing down, and literally Freezing in place. When put to proper use they're some of the most useful things we've got going for us. Chain-Trapping also helps tremendously. For those of you that don't know what Chain-Trapping is, it's the process of tactically freezing mobs to prevent them from attacking you, but doing so in a fashion that keeps them frozen for as long as possible. To do this you must place a trap well before you pull the mob, preferably waiting until the cooldown is either finished or nearly finished, then after you pull it make sure you're far enough away from it to keep your new freezing trap from refreshing the trap you've got him in and ruining the entire chain trapping plan. If done properly this method of keeping mobs off your party can be used for as long as needed, especially if you've got enough talent points in the survival tree to get the super traps.

And that's about it for me on this topic, I'll be back after I sleep with a "Why I like being a Rogue." post.

Good Hunting,
Tox