Previous things I missed on your glyphs:
1. Glyph of Concussive shot: This works like judgement of justice kinda, but instead of them not being able to go over 100% speed, it makes them unable to go over 50% speed, regardless of what they are doing. If they are sprinting, 50% speed. If they are on a 310% flying mount, sorry, 50% speed. This is very, very, very, good.
This will also override abilities that prevent people from being slowed under a certain percent, such as death's advance, ghost wolf, priest pvp 4pc. This is probably the only way to kill an enhancement shaman.
A rogue with sprint glyph will run at 200%, you conc shot them, they go 50%, so 100%. With this glyph, they go from 200% to 50% instead of 100%. It completely negates ANY movement speed increases. Replace deter glyph with it.
Agio said:
Okay got it-I'll put stopcasting on EVERYTHING, even if it isn't while playing WoW. /stopcasting "do laundry" even.
Please explain the 40 Agi gem in your gear > resilience socket bonus.
The pet I'm using is maxed out for speed-I'm only using this one for PvP primarily.
I'll figure out the key spamming n stuff-lots to learn but it's fun and despite my nifty sig, I strive for mediocrity, not terrible terrible. Well, occasionally I go for really fn bad.
You should vary your pets based upon what you fight, not just use one pet, ESPECIALLY so as a BM hunter.
What good is a spirit beast heal versus a rogue or warrior who will likely never hit you to begin with (if you play it right)?
I generally use either the bat, spider, monkey, or bird of prey. Tenacity pets are out now with the intervene nerf, but it should be noted that intervene puts a damage bubble on the next attack for you, and this damage bubble will absorb dot damage equal to its amount (usually 50-60k) until you get hit next. Pretty useful for feral druids, as they are likely to get all their bleeds on you at 80%, and not hit you again, and you still die. Although, I'd rather have a different pet ability. The only one really good is a crab(As BM, you get the shale spider stun, which is very nice), but ferals can like, shift, and since crab is a channel root, it messes it up and breaks it. Rather silly.
Also, using cunning pets is almost always superior than ferocity. If you need that heal, you can always trap the dude, swap to the spirit beast, heal, and swap back. Roar of sacrifice + a pet control ability will prevent more damage done to you than it would heal, if used wisely. Additionally, cunning pets are the only pet that get bullheaded, an EXTREMELY under-rated pet talent. It is basically a pet trinket. This would be even more important for a bm hunter, BW only lasts 10 seconds, and the best strategy versus a bm hunter is to neutralize the pet. I know as a MM hunter all I really do against a BM hunter is double deterrence during BW, then trap the pet and proceed to kill the hunter. If it takes too long, scare beast the pet. If they aren't using a cunning pet, or aren't using bullheaded properly, they get rolled.
You don't bother with resilience because a hunter isn't a tank, its counter-productive. You are designed to avoid damage entirely instead of mitigate it, unlike every other class in the game (kind of why we suck) but you have to roll with it because you don't have the tools for anything else. Similarly to the pet survival talents, 200 extra resilience will not save your life. If you are that close to dead, you are going to die anyways. Hunters don't hover around 40% health like some classes with self healing, we are still the only class without it, so we don't get damaged to run off and heal, we have to avoid damage all together with our control. This is why a lot of hunters use PvE trinkets, and why the new PvE tier will be so good to have 2 pieces of in PvP. (We have been doing this for a long time, one of the more memorable ones was the ulduar tier in WoTLK that increased serpent sting damage by 10% for the 2pc, which directly increased chimera shot damage)
As for what pets to use when fighting:
1. Bird of prey almost always versus another hunter. Only pet that really is able to CC while damaging, a root does nothing. The only other option for a BM hunter would be a shale spider stun. I would decide between the two by the weapon the hunter has. You can easily see by the green if he has a weapon chain or not. Spirit beast heal would not be useful versus any intelligent hunter, they can purge it and you have zero trash buffs to mask it. Also, you want bullheaded for reasons I mentioned above, so usually the bird would be better. If they have a chain, its still a 4 second disarm.
I might use a bird of prey versus a warrior if he likes to charge in bladestorming as a method to stop the initial trap, that can be annoying, will only swap to a bird if I know he does that from experience.
2. Monkey for rogue, warrior, ret paladin, mage.
Rogue: You can blind them when they open on you, which breaks their stunlock so they can't kidney and you get to save your trinket for blind. A rogue can counter this by opening on you with CloS up (because monkeys throw magic poo, who knew?) but they don't do that since the CloS/combat readiness nerf. After they are blinded, you can simply put a trap right down on top of them (You wait to blind till cheapshot is almost off) and then you are free to get range. They will usually be forced to trinket as a hunter getting range that early in the fight while using zero cooldowns is a guaranteed win. So, there you go, you got the rogue to trinket within the first 5 seconds, AND broke their opener.
You can accomplish this with a shale spider stun as well, but then you don't get bullheaded. A common rogue tactic to prevent what I said above is to sap the pet then open on the hunter, but with bullheaded this doesn't work. Lucky for rogues, most hunters do not know that or use it. You could also stop the stunlock with a bird of prey, as I believe the snatch is the only non-magic pet special ability, so clos won't do anything, but it is subject to being dodged, and then you can't trap the rogue because he will be able to move. Still, if you have one out when a rogue jumps you, give it a shot. You can always scatter-trap after the stun is off.
Warrior: If you use a monkey, you can blind him when he charges, giving you another out. To win vs a warrior all you have to do is stop his charges. You have a surprising number of abilities that do that, disengage, deterrence, freezing trap, pet ability, scatter, clever feign deaths.. the problem is the timing has to be perfect on nearly every one (except for trap, but they can reflect). With a monkey, the timing is a LOT more flexible.. just don't get it reflected, or if you do make sure you did it to eat the reflect so the trap goes off. Not suggested to do it that way. You could also use it when they throwdown, meaning you get to save a trinket. They probably wont trinket monkey, too many traps to use it on. Spider is not as useful as people think versus warriors, keeping a target at range is the easy part, getting to range is harder. A root while a target is beating on you while you are stunned is pretty useless. Having a pet that CCs is also an advantage for if they try to CC you and kill the pet. In a 1v1, the only class likely to try this is the warrior. A good hunter will never let it happen, but who knows, the warrior might get like 5 crits in a row, and generally means death for anything. Shale spider performs the same way a monkey does versus a warrior, you won't need bullheaded versus them (although it is good to have, they might fear your pet then throwdown you…) You do not want ferocity, roar of sacrifice hardcounters recklessness meaning their burst is pretty bad, if they do get to you.
Ret Pally: Hammer of justice? -> monkey blind. Rets have no gap closers save HoJ or repentence, so keeping distance is fairly easy with a CC pet. Saves your trinket for when you need it. Also allows you to CC the ret pally if he pops wings, to give you some time to purge it off, or to give yourself sacrifice when he pops wings, but you should keep a ret pally buffless from the start to purge wings instantly. A ret pally fight is going to be long as they have tons of heals, so you want to take as little damage as possible, else they will eventually win with ranged attacks only. I'd suggest swapping to spirit beast when they do bubble and heal, then swapping back after you heal with it. Or just bandage or something. Shale spider does near the same thing, but monkey blind lasts the same as HoJ.
Frost mage: First off, you need Roar of sac to stop shatter crits anyways. Automatically no spirit beast… and they would just spellsteal your heal anyways, you have nothing to mask. The blind is useful to use the same way as versus ret pally, just blind when they deep freeze you, then you can trinket the second one. That way, they can only hurt you when rooted, and you have freedom to get out of that. Bullheaded is important as mages like to CC your pet so you can't do exactly what I said to do. BW won't be enough, they will just iceblock once you use it, and then laugh at you for being BM, just like everyone else does.
Enh shamans: These bastards are like, the anti hunter. Blizzard was like: "Okay, lets give these guys a ranged root, a ranged snare, NO! two ranged snares!, a big sprint.. and ability to remove roots, ranged stuns in the form of unkiteable wolves, purges to make sure the enemy has no freedom and you can keep your permanent ranged snares on them, healing abilities that they can use while moving so they can spam heal themselves WHILE running to you… oh and while we are at it lets make them unsnareable with ghost wolf so they don't go below 100%. Is that enough to kill our most-hated glass in the game? hunters? Yeah!"
Monkey helps a lot versus them, WHEN (not if) they get to you, you can CC them and run away, or CC them when you get stunned. No spirit beast, they can purge your heal. Roar of sacrifice helps when they get to you so they don't crit.
You WILL die to any enh shaman who knows what they are doing though (Good thing those are rare), its a pretty good hard counter.
3. Bat
Usually use versus casters, especially healers. The stun is not as long as monkey, but it is instant, and you can use it while CC'd, unlike intimidation. A casted cc is harder to interrupt a cast with. Again, the monkey accomplishes most that this pet would do anyways, and almost always the longer blind will be superior to the 2 sec stun. Also, it could DR with intimidation, so for BM I would say just use monkey, other specs don't have intim tho.
But you have nothing really that is better versus a healer than a stun pet. Even if it does dr, it will interrupt a cast, which may give you the burst needed to kill them. But if you are fighting a healer, my advice would just be not to, its rather pointless.
If you want to annoy a healer, use a devilsaur. Their 10% ms will stack with your 10% widow venom, because blizzard pays no attention to hunters.
4. Spider
The most commonly used pet, but really the least useful. They just don't think outside the box.
I'd only really use it versus a feral. They have more root breaks now, but only two. You will eventually eat them all with entrapment and web, and then you can actually get distance. Ferals can shift out of snares an unlimited amount of times, and have multiple dashes, and have a base movement speed that is the same as you in cheetah, but they don't get dazed. Blizzard was on crack when they made them. A spider is the only way to kite them, because your cooldown on root traps will be too high. You need to use freezing to stop their charge, just stand slightly infront of it, they charge and get frozen the same way you might do to shadowstep.
You could also use it on a dk, as they are vulnerable to roots.. but a CC pet is better as you can CC them when they grip, so they can't death strike. BM is kinda lol versus DKs as you are forced to not attack with pets, else they heal to full instantly. Also, you do not have silencing shot to use on them when they lichborne heal, you would have to run your pet into melee to intimidate, which causes a delay (Another use for monkey, blind when they lichborne = no healz) A spirit beast is probably the best here, dks have tons of ranged dots that will whittle you away, its basically a race to kill them before they melt your face off, so it helps to have a heal, and dks are pretty easy to kite already so you can do it without a pet. You also do not need roar of sac as they are unlikely to be doing a lot of hard hitting melee attacks to you. You can get by with scatter trapping the death grips instead of using a pet cc.
Also, don't bind /stopcasting to your cobra shot, not really needed and will probably cause problems 😛
Bandet,
1. Bird of prey almost always versus another hunter. Only pet that really is able to CC while damaging, a root does nothing. The only other option for a BM hunter would be a shale spider stun. I would decide between the two by the weapon the hunter has. You can easily see by the green if he has a weapon chain or not. Spirit beast heal would not be useful versus any intelligent hunter, they can purge it and you have zero trash buffs to mask it. Also, you want bullheaded for reasons I mentioned above, so usually the bird would be better. If they have a chain, its still a 4 second disarm.
I'm a bit confused here. Bird of prey cc ? Don't they have the snatch (disarm) ability. Also, doesn't snatch just disarm the main hand weapon? I've been using a scorpid which disarms ranged weapon as well. In MM versus BM, would you advice the MM still going with a disarm pet?
Bandet-thanks again, much appreciated. The Concuss Glyph I did have initially, made sense as does the agi gems. If I do get tagged hard, that res ain't doing much. Now I think this old boy is just gonna play the game for awhile and see what shakes down. There is enough info here, much way too advanced for me at this time but not for later so am very glad you posted it. Not just for me either, I think a few others will find this helpful which is cool. Again, my thanks.
Takaas said:
Bandet,
1. Bird of prey almost always versus another hunter. Only pet that really is able to CC while damaging, a root does nothing. The only other option for a BM hunter would be a shale spider stun. I would decide between the two by the weapon the hunter has. You can easily see by the green if he has a weapon chain or not. Spirit beast heal would not be useful versus any intelligent hunter, they can purge it and you have zero trash buffs to mask it. Also, you want bullheaded for reasons I mentioned above, so usually the bird would be better. If they have a chain, its still a 4 second disarm.
I'm a bit confused here. Bird of prey cc ? Don't they have the snatch (disarm) ability. Also, doesn't snatch just disarm the main hand weapon? I've been using a scorpid which disarms ranged weapon as well. In MM versus BM, would you advice the MM still going with a disarm pet?
Snatch works on ranged weapons. And yes, versus another hunter, disarm pet is almost always best idea. Even with weapon chain, longest CC that you can still attack them in.
Hey I was reading over this post and was wondering how that pvp has been going for u Agio? I see a lot of great write ups here. It was interesting to see everyone's layouts and macros.
One piece of advice I could tell you would be to get the Naga mouse! I actually don't think I could play with out it. lol
I like to keep my hands as free from movement while playing. I.e. right and on mouse and left over the WASD keys.
I don't use any of the number keys greater than 4 for primary moves. I was able to double the key binds I could have by using shift and alt.
For instance Q is my deterrence key. I decided to have it there because it can be a game changing move so I wanted it to be easly accisable. I then use Shift Q as my Dissengage.
The nice thing about using the key binds is that all your toons have the same setup.
Xeloda-been having a blast. All PvP geared now so I'm not a total pinata. Have you ever seen the movie "UP"? In the movie there is this dog with the attention span of a gnat. No matter what's happening, wham! "Squirrel !" Druids and Rogues are that dog and Hunters are their squirrels. They could have the Flag Carrier down to 3k health, 10 seconds away from a BG win, they see a hunter and it's "Squirrel !" Hunters are in themselves the ultimate CC 
Much information to absorb and learn but the comments here have been very helpful. Still mucking around with builds, pets and binds and getting everything where it feels right but for the most part I'm pretty much done with that. Utilizing the shift mod helped with all the binds and macros. Hunters surely do need a lot of them in PvP.
Now I'm just playing and getting a feel for WoW PvP. I think it'll take me to.. oh I dunno, 100,000 kills before I achieve the level of mediocrity I'm famous for, maybe more 