Hunter Raid Mechanics pt III - Pets and mana effiency

So now that we've covered shot rotation lets go over the wonderful world of pets.

One of, if not the, most attractive features of hunters in WoW is the pet. The pet is what makes the hunter class so unique and enjoyable. Your pet not only serves as a great way to make questing easier, but choosing your pet shows alot about your play style.

There are three basic categories of tameable pets in WoW - Those are the "tanking" pets which have low dps and high armor and hit points, the "dps" pets which have high damage and low health and armor, and the "middle of the road pets" which have mediocre stats of both.

The biggest factor in determining which pet you should use is what you like. The second most is what your using it for.

Because WoW is a game of fun, nobody should tell you which pet you should be using at all times. However there are certain pets that excell in certain situations.

Before the changes to a normalized pet speed, I would have suggested a faster attack speed pet. However a pet of choice for leveling is a boar due to high hit points and their aggro gathering abilities from their charge.

(please keep in mind that because BM is at the moment the most optimal raiding spec, the pets chosen will be best used with a BM spec.)
Since this is a article on raiding mechanics, we'll be covering which pets are most usefull in raiding.

To start off with the pets that are the best for raiding situations are any from the cat, ravager, windserpent, or raptor pet familes. These are high DPS, low health and armor pets. The reason you want a high dps pet is because A) they wont be taking much damage (hopefully), and B) Higher DPS of your pet = higher DPS of your toon.

That being said, I found that the best pet to start off with is a cat. This is because of their extremely fast attack speed and high damage. Especially as a fresh 70, the cat is extremely viable in both PvE and PvP. If a cat isn't your fuzzy companion of choich a Raptor is another great pet to have. Ravagers also have great DPS and very high armor for a DPS pet which makes them really good for PvP.

Windserpents are a very unique pet. Once you hit around 32% crit chance (with raid buffs) a wind serpent shines. This is because their trained ability lightning breath causes an average of 115 nature damage to your ememy and ignores armor. Not only that but it barley generates any threat. That combined with Go for the Throat gives your pet a very dangerous skill that can greaty increase your damge.

My reccomendation for new raiders is to start with either a cat or a ravager. These pets have the highest DPS and attack speed avalible and will increase your DMG quicky in very noticeable amounts. Work towards the 32% crit and switch to windserpent.

For soloing (farming, dailies, etc) I use my trusty warpstalker Blinky. Their blink abilty combined with intimidation is a great way to pull with your pet and catch enemys that are trying to run away. They also tend to have higher health then cats or ravagers.

Remember to also give your raiding pets the highest ranks of bite / claw and cower if they can learn it. Also, training cobra reflexes is very important.

For more information on pets in general go to petopia.brashendeavors.net
Here is a niffty little pet talent calculator - http://www.thehuntersmark.net/projects/petcalc.html


Mana effiency

Ever since the change of the intellect - spirit relationship change hunters have really gotten shafted on mana regen. Yes we have a buff that restores mana, but that works based on our total int which isn't avalible on most gear pre t4. So what do we do you may ask? First thing first, learn to pot and to pot often. During a high mana intense fight (prince, nightbane, bear boss, eagle boss, lynx boss, etc) the best thing to do is pot as much as you can.

I find the best way to restore mana during these fights is to do the following.
First of all bring at least 10 fel mana pots to any raid your in.

Use a fel mana potion at 80& mana, 50% mana, and 20% mana. when you reach 20% mana use the following:

Make a macro that switces aspect of the hawk for aspect of the viper and activates rapid fire, such as
/castsequence aspect of the viper, rapidfire, aspect of the hawk

push it twice to cast aspect of the viper and rapid fire, push it a third time to go back to hawk.

After viper and rapid fire are activated, switch to just auto shots and use your fel mana potion. This technique is best used at low mana - 20% or so - and can get back almost all of your mana in a short time.

The best way to manage mana is to get used to how much you use per rotation, for me its about 2% total mana, and get used to potting as much as you can. Nobody likes an OOM hunter.
Also avoid abilites such as arcane shot and multi shot on high mana intense fights. Unless of course you have a nice little shadow priest in your group :)

Well, until next time I think of somthing to write about
-MoMo