I myself, as a child of TBC, didn’t get the benefit of the Rhok’delar quest, but learned this and other kiting techniques when pulling ghouls through Hyjal NPCs to get them a little more proactive in defending the camps was en vogue.

Fear not though, budding hunters, for there are still opportunities to test your kiting meddle in WotLK, and you don’t need to be ready for ICC to do it. If you’re new to raiding as a hunter, try to kite the zombie chow on the gluth fight (note: 10-man is the best place to start, as 25-man solo-kiting is a Tad more challenging, though not impossible). Just run in a big figure-eight, jump-shotting as you go. Your group mates will love you for it and the hunter community will be proud of your new found skill set.

Now that you have the mob’s attention, see how long you can run away from it while keeping aggro which, of course, necessitates firing off a shot every few seconds to keep it aggro’d to you. It gives you a chance to practice switching between running forward and turning to slipping into a straffing run. It also gives you a chance to intuitively learn just how much you need to turn to get that 90 degree arc onto the target. This will also give you a chance to determine if strafing left or strafing right is easier for you (the goal is to master both, of course, but figure out which comes more naturally for now). And, most importantly, this is a great chance to learn without doing it in a raid setting where failure could lead to a wipe.

Heading back to older zones to pick a lower level target is obviously recommended so, should things go hinky, you will probably survive a few direct hits.

In PvE, this skill has many uses that will make various situations significantly safer for you. In PvP, this is an absolutely invaluable skill. When a hunter masters this _and_ stutter shooting (pausing running long enough to fire off an autoshot before resuming running), the hunter will have gone a LONG ways towards being a deadly threat to many a character.

As a side note, any hunter who has done the quest for Rhok’delar will remember mastering this skill in an effort to kill Artorius the Doombringer.

Ok, enough rambling for me.

Also, because it’s only that 90 degree arc, I’ve found that firing on the run, without jumping, to often be easier – running forward, I turn 90 degrees and immediately start strafing (a move that has become almost second nature due to practice) while firing at the target behind me. That, of course, is just a matter of preference – I’m sure many simply prefer the jump shot rather than strafing shot.