BM Hunter and dungeons

(1) Are you pulling aggro from the tank, be it yourself or your pet? Hunters generate a lot of threat and I have found that I can pull aggro from even a good tank if I go full out on something at the start of a pull and don't use misdirect. Also make sure you feign death to keep from generating to much threat.

If your sure your pet's growl is turned off and it is pulling threat, then it is most likely your tank for that group sucks at his/her job. If growl is turned off there is no way your pet is going to pull aggro unless you are targeting a mob that the tank has not established threat with yet.

(2) If your talking about a pug group you're going to hear and have people giving you crap about anything under the sun. There are lots of people out there who just enjoy running there mouths, even if it's something they have to make up. If your going to do pugs, you will just have to develop a tough skin and let your actions speak for you.

Well yes I or my pet have been pulling aggro from the tank that is why I get blasted lol...now I dont know what dps I am dishing out but I dont have great gear yet as my ilvl is only 327...I have never used misdirect in a dungeon and yes I am sure growl is off 🙂

Yes I have been using the dungeon finder to get into a group and I have now started to leave the groups in the middle of the dungeon when they start to go off lol...I did not think it was my fault and someone else did say the tank must be crap, I have tried to satisfy the people in dungeons but cant satisfy everyone I suppose. So I will just keep trying the dungeons and hope they are an ok lot if not leave haha...

Thanks for your reply

Rob

Definately start using misdirect. Use it at the start of every pull if its off cool down.

Try using pet on passive.

^ always start with MD as Takaas stated.

You may even count to five before sending pet if tank is not good enough.

Also make sure you have auto cower turned on, so that pet manages his own aggro a bit.

Ideally you shouldn't even have issues with pet on defensive.

I'm sure you are missing something there but can't figure out either.

You might also double check your pet's talents, and drop the ones related to creating thread, if there are any.

Hmm, there's something strange here….

You wrote: "I have never used misdirect in a dungeon and yes I am sure growl is off", as if these two things are somehow both aimed at reducing the threat generated by your pet.

It would seem (from this) that you are missing the point that in a dungeon you should use MD on the Tank, not on your Pet.

If this is stating the obvious to you please forgive me, but it just seemed a bit strange you putting those two statements together in that way.

Hunters should use MD to the tank as a matter of course in dungeons. If in the early stages of a dungeon it appears we have a tank who can't generate threat and hold agro very well, I use it before every pull (with a multi-shot when appropriate) to help the tank build up threat, and again during the fight if he's struggling. (I use a threat meter to keep an eye on my target's threat table). Otherwise I tend to reserve MD for if/when I need to send a breakaway mob back to the tank in a hurry.

My way of using MD is simple but effective. At the start of each dungeon I just target my Tank and type /focus. My MD key runs a macro which Misdirects to my focus if there is one (i.e. my Tank), otherwise to my pet. This way, I just use the same MD key whether or not I'm in a dungeon party.

Also, just a brief mention about a) making sure your tank marks at least the first two dps focus targets (we use 1. skull, 2. red cross); and b) using a threat meter such as Omen.

I just remembered something - it might not be relevant, but it's worth mentioning anyway.

At one time there was a bug with the auto-activate feature on some Pet abilities, notably Growl and Prowl.

You could switch off auto-activate for these abilities in the Pet spellbook, but the next time you looked you found they had switched themselves back on again.

I don't know if this bug has been fixed, because I found a work-around a long time ago: just put those two abilities onto the Pet toolbar, and the auto setting will not change by itself.

You may have to replace two abilities that are already on the toolbar, but I manage okay - I use macros for Bestial Wrath, Call of the Wild and Spirit Mend, for example, so I don't need them on the Pet toolbar any more.

Pretty sure that bug has been fixed, though I'm not in-game to check it at the moment. I'm sure someone else can verify or I will look once I get home later tonight.

Thank you all for your replies  I tried another instance lastnight and used md on the tank but I ended up in a great group and we were flat out keeping up with the tank, it was great not to have to worry about: is growl off did I do md on the tank lol...I waited till the tank had pulled the mob before I fired any shot at all. I think it is just the groups you strike using the random dungeon finder, as the others maybe new to the 85 lvl as I am and just learning 

I was also thinking that kill command and bestial wrath might have been causing the problem too as I use those alot when off cool down.

I am only doing the instances to get honor etc because all the drops so far are less than I have until I can get my ilvl up to start doing heroic, currently 327ilvl 

Thanks ppl

You SHOULD be using Kill Command and Bestial Wrath whenever they are off cool down. I'm thinking that the most likely explanation is you've just been paired with poor tanks or ones that are still learning.

I've not seen a lot of instances where I'm pulling aggro from the tank whether from my pet or my shots. Keep using MD, remember to Feign Death *before* you pull aggro not after, and I'm sure you'll be fine.

On a side note- I was in a pug last night in Deadmines-  joined after the first boss, almost to Foe Reaper, the tank quits on us mid-trash pull so I Dismiss my raptor, call up my turtle, tank the rest of the trash and then switch to BM & tank Foe Reaper. Granted, the healer was good and the DPS at the bottom kept the adds off us, but it was pretty fun 🙂

Healer left after the fight though cause we never did get another tank. Group disbanded and I never did finish my random last night. But that was exciting.

hammer, these guys did good job with suggestions, so I'll give my thoughts from a tank perspective which I've been doing mostly since Cata came out, at least in instances.  Don't get me wrong I love all ranged dps, and have 85 lock and 85 S priest, ranged is what I prefer, but I do enjoy tanking at times.

I don't consider myself to be the best tank, and only do it with my guild, or with 3 members and pug the rest.  I only ask the dps to do three things, know their CC and how to use it, try their absolute best to hit what I'm hitting, and give me to the count of 3 to get the mobs on me.  The first one is actually pretty easy, just takes some practice.  The second is a little more difficult, on bosses its not a problem, unless there are adds, usually its just everyone trying to kill the same big ugly thing so they can move on to the next.  Where the problem is when you have groups especially with tanks that switch targets, but sometimes it's necessary to switch.  The third just takes discipline.

I try not to switch unless it's necessary, and that's usually when a mob goes after the healer, or a dps peals one off.  A dps won't normally peal one off me unless they aren't hitting what I'm hitting, and that's usually where the problems comes in.  I watch Omen to see who's creeping up on the meter, but you can have 120% on a mob outside my group, and I won't see it.  It does happen, and it can be for any number of reasons, from a tank switching targets, to not paying attention.  It's not the end of world as some tanks want to act, it's the point where ranged has to help the tank out though.  Misdirect to the tank, or simply Feign Death to dump your threat.

In an instance I always set the tank as my focus, solo I always set my pet as my focus, just out of habit now, and use the two macros below.  If I see the tank is hitting something different, I'll hit my assist macro again, it automatically puts my pet on his/her target as well as me.  If I see my threat getting too high, I use my misdirect macro.  Another thing that will gain you favor with the healer and tank, is trying to protect the healer.  If I don't have mob trapped, I put a trap in front of the healer, if they pull a mob I misdirect it back to the tank.

You guys see how I switched back to my hunter wihout even trying?  Most tank's priorities are going to be their threat/survival, protecting the healer, and at least some of us protecting the dps.  You're still going to get bad groups, you're still going to get tanks that feel dps is a dime a dozen.  In my opinion when you do, you have a bad tank, a good tank will work with his group to make it a successful run.

Ranged can be harder than you thought. A good article on WoWInsider.

#showtooltip Hunter's Mark
/assist focus
/cast Hunter's Mark
/petattack
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

I hold out my startattack for other shots, it gives my pet time to get there if solo, and gives me another second for the tank to build threat in an instance.

#showtooltip Misdirection
/cast [@focus, exists, nodead] [@pet, exists, nodead] Misdirection

Hopefully the tank isn't dead, but if they are, this will misdirect to your pet.

I apologize for the long winded post. 🙂

Well I ran another instance last night and we went through 3 tanks lol one got sick and another just could not hold the pull and left in the middle of a pull lmao so the warrior and myself combined took over as tank till another one was found 🙂 was damn kewl...I used MD onto the tank before every pull and as for setting a trap in front of the healer hmmm well they never stand still long enough to put one in front of them lol...but I am never far away from the healer and go after the breakaways heading toward us....it is hard to do MD to the tank in the middle of the pull as most time you cant see them, I suppose that is where a macro would work but I have never used one lol about time I did .

I think all up I just struck a few bad groups, ohh and another thing is that they expect you to know their little codes and what each target icon means but when you are just getting going in dungeons they hate it when you ask, such as freeze trap blue raid icon, ok did that but then the tank runs to the side to pull and pulls it away from the trap hahaha...ohh well it can only get better maybe lol.

Ok just off subject a bit but at lvl 85 without epic gear etc (ilvl 328) what sort of DPS should I be pulling??? I installed one of those dps addons and at the moment I average between 5.5k to 7.5k  what are your thoughts???

A good place to check that is at femaledwarf.com, they have a spreadsheet set up to input all of your gear, they can even upload it from the armory and it will give you what dps you should be doing, and what pieces you can upgrade or what have you to increase your dps. Without seeing your gear or anything, and at 85 bm spec'd and i'm assuming your running regular cata dungeons, I would assume that you are very close to what your output would be although I think you should be more on the 7.5-8.5 range at this point. 

A lot depends on your rotation and pet choice as well, someone mentioned that you need to be using kill command as often as you can, always make sure you have enough energy to do so, and something that helped me out was to use your bestial wrath as often as you can, I tended to "save it up" for boss fights and junk, but there is no need if you have it glyphed and specced out, you can get the cooldown to around a minute, so use that like its going out of style too.