The legend.
The (horribly misunderstood?) ... Beast o' Melee Hunter.
Come at me bro' ...
/beckon
Disclaimers:
This is not intended to be a bleeding edge DPS optimized raiding Hunter spec that will put everything else to shame. If anything, it is intended to be a viable (as opposed to optimal) melee Hunter spec to be played for FUN as a soloist and in 5 man groups in PvE content.
I am well aware of the "BM for leveling!" exhortations that have been made repeatedly for leveling builds, particularly for those who are interested in speeding through to 60. I am not interested in speed running to 60 and will be taking my time to enjoy the game (meaning hardcore mode here on Turtle WoW), therefore I have no problem with "being slower" than alternative build strategies in terms of XP per hour. I'm here to have fun!
The primary purpose of this build is to explore the possibility of a potential off-meta spec which I have not seen anyone else show enough interest in yet to post an actual build for, before or since I first posted this in the Elysium Forums and then later on the Symmetry Forums (which are now defunct). This post is basically an answer to a question of mine ... which is that if you're going to play a melee Hunter, how should you go about supporting such a build choice? In what direction do the advantages and strategies lie? What counter-intuitive things do you need to know/unlearn in order to play "efficiently" with a deep Survival spec, as opposed to a deep Beast Mastery or deep Marksman spec? Also, what Pet should you be using (and why)?
Warning: WALL OF TEXT CRITS YOU!!!
You have been warned!
No, seriously … I mean it.
Probably the first misconception that Players have about being a melee oriented Hunter is the most common ... that you're "doing it wrong" by not using your Pet to tank for you. That's mainly because the Conventional Wisdom™ has hardened around the notion that as a (solo) Hunter you're supposed to be using your Pet as an aggro magnet so that you can plink stuff from a distance using your ranged weapon ... and this is essentially true for both Beast Mastery and Marksmanship. The thing is, this isn't the ONLY way the combination of Hunter and Pet ought to be performing.
The basic strategies for how to "use" your Pet essentially boil down to the following three options depending on which talent tree you invest heavily in:
- Beast Master: Pet tanks (at range), buff the Pet.
- Marksman: Pet tanks (at range), buff the Hunter.
- Survival: Hunter tanks (in melee!), Pet offers close support(!).
As you can obviously see, even just that brief description of basic foundational strategies shows how seriously the fundamentals of playing as a melee Hunter inverts a LOT of the Conventional Wisdom™ around how you're "supposed" to play the class. For a lot of people, the entire notion of playing as a melee Hunter is so bass-ackwards as to result in an assumption of You're Doing It Wrong by default.
So if we can get past the "Do not back up, severe tire damage" warning sign that has been posted in front of the entire IDEA of playing as a melee Hunter, what are the necessary building blocks that we need to be optimally aware of in order to make a melee Hunter "work" as well as such a build can?
Well I'm glad you asked!
There's (quite) a few factors that inter(re)act and synergize with each other that as a melee Hunter you're going to want to optimize for (in no especially particular order).
- Raptor Strike (6 second cooldown)
- Mongoose Bite (requires you to Dodge) (5 second cooldown)
- Counterattack (requires you to Parry) (5 second cooldown)
- Dodge Chance
- Parry Chance
- Critical Hit Chance
- Agility
- Pet Choice (you want Screech ... more on this after talents)
The first thing you need to know is that in order to get the most out of your Survival talents for melee, you actually need to be IN melee, rather than the Easy Option of staying at range all the time. This is both obvious (it's hard to melee from a distance) and counterintuitive to many of the basic assumptions for the Hunter class. The main reason for this is the Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite spells that you can use, both of which require melee weapons, but there's also Counterattack, which lies at tier 5 in the Survival tree. These three attacks are going to be your bread 'n' butter as a melee attacking Hunter.
Raptor Strike has a cooldown on it, so you can't exactly spam it consecutively in combat. Mongoose Bite requires that you Dodge an incoming attack, which for all intents and purposes means you need to be holding aggro at melee range in order to make this option available to you. Counterattack requires that you Parry an incoming attack, which for all intents and purposes ALSO means you need to be holding aggro at melee range in order to make this option available to you.
So the key point here is that if your Pet has aggro, you aren't going to be Dodging and Parrying incoming attacks and you'll be limited to using only Raptor Strike and Wing Clip (and Wing Clip does such pathetically minimal damage it's not even worth talking about if you've got Counterattack) along with Auto Attack. If you're doing melee damage in support of your Pet, you've probably dropped at least 1/4 to 1/3 of your damage output potential, if not more, as a melee Hunter. Given that most people assume the Pet is supposed to be tanking for you, rather than you tanking for your Pet, it's not at all surprising that this dynamic would be somewhat poorly understood (let alone accepted).
So to be a "good" Survival (melee) Hunter you need to be tanking in melee, rather than letting your Pet tank for you, and you want to maximize your Dodge and Parry chances in order to make Mongoose Bite and Counterattack available to you as often as possible ... and the reason for that can be found in tier 2 of Survival in the Savage Strikes talent. Add up Savage Strikes (+20% critical hit for Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite), and Killer Instinct (+3% critical hit) and you're already looking at an easy +23% critical hit chance ON TOP OF whatever your melee critical hit chance is based on Agility … which incidentally you'll get getting +15% more (Agility) for from Lightning Reflexes. This can easily push your critical hit chances for Raptor Strikes and Mongoose Bite attacks in excess of 50% (if not more). All of these factors combine to make your melee critical hits absolutely DEVASTATING and FREQUENT(!), because melee critical hits do +100% damage baseline … not +50% damage (base) like you'd see on ranged and spell critical hits. Oh and Monster Slaying and Humanoid Slaying will increase that output even further!
But the key is that you have to have (and hold) aggro on yourself in order to make this work. If you don't have aggro, you lose Mongoose Bite which is your heavy hitter. Think of it as being comparable to using Aimed Shot in melee range if it helps, with a major critical hit chance bonus, and a fast cooldown, and it's an Instant cast. Yeah ... kinda like that … only more satisfying, because you can use it more often than Aimed Shot when you've got aggro on your Hunter.
However, there is a bit of sneakiness that you can engage in to reliably produce a situation that I call Tandem Tanking which makes the combination of yourself and your Pet able to withstand WAY MORE incoming aggro than you'd expect to be able to handle, but since that's a Player Skill involving tactics and positioning, rather than being something inherently build related, the explanation for that bit of trickery will have to wait for a follow up post.
So taking all of those factors into consideration, here's how I would invest my talent points when angling for a melee Hunter build.
Level 60 Beast o' Melee Hunter ( 13 / 0 / 38 )
https://classicdb.ch/?talent#cVVhZZIxbiRGut
- Beast Mastery (13 points)
- Endurance Training - Rank 5/5
Increases the Health of your pets by 15%. - Improved Aspect of the Monkey - Rank 5/5
Increases the Dodge bonus of your Aspect of the Monkey by 5%. - Thick Hide - Rank 3/3
Increases the Armor rating of your pets by 30%.
- Endurance Training - Rank 5/5
- Marksmanship (0 points)
- None
- Survival (38 points)
- Monster Slaying - Rank 3/3
Increases all damage caused against Beasts, Giants and Dragonkin targets by 3% and increases critical damage caused against Beasts, Giants and Dragonkin targets by an additional 3%. - Humanoid Slaying - Rank 3/3
Increases all damage caused against Humanoid targets by 3% and increases critical damage caused against Humanoid targets by an additional 3%. - Deflection - Rank 5/5
Increases your Parry chance by 5%. - Savage Strikes - Rank 2/2
Increases the critical strike chance of Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite by 20%. - Clever Traps - Rank 2/2
Increases the duration of Freezing and Frost trap effects by 30% and the damage of Immolation and Explosive trap effects by 30%. - Survivalist - Rank 5/5
Increases total health by 10%. - Deterrence - Rank 1/1
When activated, increases your Dodge and Parry chance by 25% for 10 sec. - Trap Mastery - Rank 2/2
Decreases the chance enemies will resist trap effects by 10%. - Surefooted - Rank 3/3
Increases hit chance by 3% and increases the chance movement impairing effects will be resisted by an additional 15%. - Improved Feign Death - Rank 2/2
Reduces the chance your Feign Death ability will be resisted by 4%. - Killer Instinct - Rank 3/3
Increases your critical strike chance with all attacks by 3%. - Counterattack - Rank 1/1
A strike that becomes active after parrying an opponent's attack. This attack deals 40 damage and immobilizes the target for 5 sec. Counterattack cannot be blocked, dodged, or parried. - Lightning Reflexes - Rank 5/5
Increases your Agility by 15%. - Wyvern Sting - Rank 1/1
A stinging shot that puts the target to sleep for 12 sec. Any damage will cancel the effect. When the target wakes up, the Sting causes 0 Nature damage over 12 sec. Only usable out of combat. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on the target at a time.
- Monster Slaying - Rank 3/3
Here's how this all comes together.
As I mentioned above, Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack, plus (melee) Auto Attack of course, combine to serve as your bread 'n' butter for inflicting maximum melee damage. Savage Strikes and Killer Instinct combine to enhance your critical hit chance by +23%(!) before including Agility, which is enhanced +15% by Lightning Reflexes, and that's even before including any mods on your gear, to your Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite. Needless to say, this makes you want to use Raptor Strike (6 second cooldown) and Mongoose Bite (5 second cooldown) as often as you possibly can!
Surefooted offers 3% hit chance and 15% resistance to movement impairing effects. Monster Slaying and Humanoid Slaying combine to give you +3% damage to Beasts, Dragonkin, Giants and Humanoids as well as an additional +3% critical hit damage bonus.
Deflection adds +5% Parry, which allows you to use Counterattack more often. Counterattack (5 second cooldown) is what you use instead of Wing Clip because you want to prevent runners rather than open up range to resume kiting. Counterattack also hits just as hard as Mongoose Bite, although it doesn't benefit from the increased critical hit chance that Savage Strikes offers Mongoose Bite.
Improved Aspect of the Monkey adds another +5% Dodge, on top of the base +8% Dodge, yielding a +13% chance to Dodge (and Night Elves get another +1% Dodge as a racial bonus) which then creates the necessary opportunities to use Mongoose Bite. Long story short, you're going to be using Aspect of the Monkey (with or without talent boosting) while you're in melee to help you Dodge tank so as to respond with Mongoose Bite which then has a very high chance of scoring a critical hit.
Deterrence at tier 3 in Survival is required for Counterattack, but it makes for a decent "Uh oh..." response (5 minute cooldown though) to pulling too much aggro, since it adds 25% chance to Dodge AND Parry for 10 seconds, which can let you tank for a short time against too many adds while also maximizing your burst damage potential from use of Mongoose Bite and Counterattack. Even before adding in your gear and attribute modifiers, if you've got Deflection and Improved Aspect of the Monkey running, that's 25+8+5=38% chance to Dodge bonus (39% if Night Elf!) and 25+5=30% chance to Parry bonus for a combined total of 68-69% chance to NOT TAKE DAMAGE from melee for 10 seconds ... before you add in modifiers from gear and Defense and your attributes. That's 10 seconds of "U Can't Touch This" against anything making to hit checks for melee attacks. So for those 10 seconds you are a Dodge/Parry tank. Use this as soon as you get 3 mobs beating on you so you can kill the first one (with Mongoose Bite and Counterattack and Raptor Strike) before the Deterrence buff expires (or shortly thereafter), at which point you only have 2 mobs trying to hurt you instead of 3 and can manage.
Clever Traps increases the duration of your cold based Traps (to 13/19.5/26 seconds for Freezing depending on rank along with 39 seconds for Frost) and increases the damage of your fire based Traps (Immolation and Explosive) by 30% each. Trap Mastery reduces the chance that your Traps will be Resisted by 10%, making them relatively "reliable" when used. Amusing side note, this means that you can Tame new Pets with near impunity, so long as they don't Resist (either the Trap or the Tame itself) while taking NO DAMAGE in the process when Taming with use of Freezing Trap at rank 2+. This makes it a LOT easier to Tame Rares and Elites.
Other amusing side note ... your Immolation (mainly) and your Explosive (situationally) traps help contribute to what I call a 4h weapon style, using the following for damage production (more on how this fits together later):
- Main Hand
- Off Hand
- Pet
- Trap
Improved Feign Death needs no additional explanation beyond making Feign Death less often Resisted and thus more reliable (because when you use it, you WANT it to work!). Wyvern Sting gives you an opportunity to "stagger" incoming aggro by temporarily neutralizing a member of a mob group so as to let you melee tank more in a serial fashion, rather than in parallel, which is a lot less risky since you'll have (more) time to react and make decisions when taking on individuals staggered over time rather than all at once. With Wyvern Sting and either Frost or Freezing Trap and Deterrence, you can handle up to 5 mobs in a single aggro pull, so long as you get to pick your ground and initiate the engagement on your own terms. More on the tactics for THAT later.
Finally, since the whole point of this build is for your Hunter to be tanking rather than your Pet, Survivalist at tier 3 in Survival seems to be a prudent choice since it increases your total health (from ALL sources!) by an extra +10%. However, if you want to "pirate" any talent points for other priorities, I would rank Survivalist as the prime choice to "harvest" from to pay for something else, such as Unleashed Fury in the Beast Mastery tree if that's your preference. For this reason, I'd actually advocate leaving investment in Survivalist "for last" at Levels 56-60 if everything else in this build is working for you just fine.
Over in Beast Mastery, I've selected Endurance Training to get past tier 1 and Thick Hide as well as Improved Aspect of the Monkey as already alluded to in tier 2. The reason why I stop here rather than going deeper into the Beast Mastery tree is because most of the talents involved in going deeper into the tree increase Pet damage output, which can present a Threat balance challenge for a melee Hunter with no access to a Taunt of any kind. Furthermore, increasing your Pet's Stamina and Armor through Pet Training can become expensive in a hurry, crowding out other opportunities for investment, such as attack skills (more on that in a moment) as well as Resistances, which can't be obtained through Beast Mastery tree talents. So Endurance Training and Thick Hide represent the most "efficient" places to bolster your Pet's defensive protection(s) and enhance their survival in a way that won't interfere with your desire to hold aggro yourself.
And that's the reasoning and rationale behind the selection of Hunter talents ... which then brings us to the OTHER HALF of the melee Hunter build ... your choice of Pet!
When I played as what I liked to call a "CQB Hunter" over a decade ago in a Survival build similar to this one, I billed myself as a Close Quarters Battle specialist, meaning I had no problem bringing the full power of my potential to bear in tight interior twisty passage spaces because I fought in melee. I remember a number of pickup groups being surprised at meeting a Hunter who wasn't Marksman specced and therefore largely useless when fighting indoors in tight spaces, such as the ruins of Stromgarde Keep with its short twisting passages and tight staircases with lousy lines of sight that limited range. At that time, I was using a Ghost Saber as my Pet (for Prowl) and it was pretty decent, if not exactly optimal for a melee Hunter. Naturally, I didn't know what I was doing back then, but I was able to make it work.
This time around, I decided to "do my homework" and not just reach for the Ghost Saber again on the off chance there might be something better. So the first stop was the ancient archive of Petopia ...
Looking through the Big List of Pet Skills, what I was really after (besides damage, obviously) was either a buff or a debuff that can affect/benefit my Hunter, as opposed to something that just benefits my Pet. As far as I can tell, there's only 1 buff and only 1 debuff Pet Skill.
Furious Howl is the buff (that almost everyone knows about) … while Screech is the debuff (which apparently hardly anyone has ever heard of ... ba-dump ching) … although the chatter in channels here at Turtle WoW indicates that more people know about Screech at least than did on either Darrowshire (Elysium) or Symmetry (yay Turtle WoW community!).
So as I'm sure plenty of people already know, Furious Howl will add extra damage to the next physical attack of every party member within 15 yards every 10 seconds. At rank 1, this is essentially a +1 DPS boost when averaged out, and at rank 4 it's a +5 DPS boost when averaged out, per recipient of the buff (which when soloing will be 1 or 2). That might be good if you're buffing 40 people (or better yet, 40 Hunters/Warlocks and their melee Pets!), but when you're soloing with your Pet that isn't exactly anything to write a guide about. Picking a Pet for +2 to +10 DPS from a Pet Skill (because you and your Pet should be benefiting, so +2 to +10 DPS instead of +1 to +5 DPS) is a little ... meh ... and it isn't exactly going to help you a great deal with tanking mobs yourself all that much. For this reason, Furious Howl qualifies as better than nothing for a (soloing) melee Hunter build, but not by a great deal. By way of contrast, Bite does about +1 DPS when averaged out too at rank 1, but adds +9 DPS on average at rank 8 and is therefore roughly comparable to Furious Howl in terms of DPS for a lot less Focus cost (35 vs 60 Focus) and similar cooldowns (10 seconds each).
The other option is, as I've already mentioned, Screech ... and this one is ... interesting ...
Screech does +2 DPS at rank 1 and +9 DPS at rank 4 when averaging things out, so it's broadly comparable to Furious Howl and Bite in terms of damage production, but it also applies a debuff. Although the damage done is to a single target, the debuff effect applies to every enemy within melee range (of the Pet) ... and this is the key point. Screech will debuff the melee attack power of all enemies in melee range by -25 melee Attack Power per rank (so by -25 at rank 1 and -100 at rank 4). Think of it as being akin to a Druid's Demoralizing Roar or a Warrior's Demoralizing Shout, with an area of effect of melee range (so small radius), but which can be chain cast every 4 seconds(!) for "perma" uptime and which doesn't need Rage to cast (because it uses your Pet's Focus instead). Yeah ... like THAT.
THIS is your tank support debuff.
Many players do not realize that NPCs use different Attack Power scales than PCs.
While players gain +1 DPS per 14 Attack Power at all levels, NPCs do not.
Level 60 elites have been tested to gain about +1 DPS per 2 Attack Power.
Think about that.
Although Attack Power scaling for NPCs starts around parity with PCs at Level 1, it scales differently as Levels increase. That means that as Levels go up, Attack Power debuffs become increasingly effective at lowering NPC DPS output, because NPCs are affected much more strongly by changes (in this case, debuffing) to their Attack Power. For stronger encounters (such as raid bosses), the testing indicates that they have a similar amount of Attack Power, but their damage scales up significantly faster! When you consider many bosses have attacks that deal a multiple of their normal damage, then the stacking effect of Attack Power, and its debuffing, becomes very apparent.
For example:
- Magmadar
- Normal: 1867 - 2476 damage.
- With demo: 1512 - 2121 damage. (-16.3%)
- Maexxna
- Normal: 5491 - 7281 damage.
- With demo: 4448 - 6238 damage. (-16.3%)
For most Level 60 encounters, the observed Attack Power value appears to be ~300. Also, the damage contribution from that Attack Power is ~30% of the NPC's total melee damage. This implies that reducing the NPC's Attack Power to zero will reduce their melee damage by ~30%. So on those encounters, you should apply Demoralizing Shout and Screech, to fully debuff the target's Attack Power to cut your healers some slack on the demand for their mana.
Point being that Attack Power debuffs like Screech make it possible for you to take a lot less damage while tanking yourself in melee range, with your Pet supporting you. Broadly speaking, this is almost like having your Pet cast a Curse of Weakness on anything you're fighting, so long as your Pet fights right beside you ... and the less damage you take, the longer you can tank. Needless to say, this is where a combination of Screech and the Survivalist talent in tier 3 Survival synergize together to put you more in control of the melee situations you actually want to get yourself into.
Which then brings up the question ... can Screech from different Hunter Pets be stacked? And if it can, are you only able to stack different ranks of Screech, or does each Pet get their "own" Screech debuff regardless of rank? Would the damage avoided due to Screech be superior (in any way) to the damage buffing of Furious Howl in parties and raids, since the former is a near "perma" debuff while the latter is a "1 attack every 10 seconds" buff?
Have we been missing a forest for the trees when it comes to the debuff versus buff side of possibilities?
Might there be "room" in raid formats for Warriors, Bear Druids and Screech Pets to synergize together for Attack Power debuffing in a way that reduces demand for healing and thus "shifts" the dynamics of the optimal mix of who to bring? Well, it depends on the debuff cap limit (which tends to be "filled" extremely fast), so maybe not ... but it might be fun to try and find out if there's any potential there since it would appear to be a poorly explored realm of opportunity.
Note that in the context of this question concerning Screech, the talent spec of the Hunter matters very little, while the selection of Pet to deliver the Screech debuff becomes much more important. In that respect, the Beast o' Melee spec I've posted here is essentially irrelevant to the Screech question now being posed about the potential of Attack Power debuffing, since the use of Screech is in many ways "spec agnostic" because the debuff isn't enhanced by either Racial Traits or by Beast Mastery talents (aside from the Stamina and Armor ones to make your Pet able to withstand more punishment).
No other Pet Skill offers the ... synergy ... that Screech does for a melee Hunter. Every other skill your Pet can get and have is either oriented around defeating a target faster by doing (more) damage to it, or is oriented around protecting the Pet more (Shell Shield), or is an "alpha strike" one use sort of surprise attack used as an opener (Charge, Prowl) and/or a movement buff (Dash, Dive). Screech however costs very little Focus (20), has a 4 second duration on the debuff, and when assigned to auto attack your Pet will only use Screech again when the debuff expires, not before. In practice, this means that your Pet will automatically use Screech every 4 seconds (or so) and not "stack" the debuff foolishly. The skill doesn't have a cooldown, but if the debuff is already on your Pet's target, it won't Screech again until the debuff expires, meaning that your Pet isn't "wasting" Focus on Screech and that the skill is NOT a Focus dump akin to Claw.
This has some rather interesting implications. For one, it means that if Screech is the only active skill you give your Pet, it'll Screech and drop from 100 Focus to 80 Focus ... and then 2 seconds later be back up to a full 100 Focus. My experience was that Pets on Symmetry seemed to be regaining Focus at a rate that is faster than Rogues, which is to say at 24 per tick every 2 seconds (still waiting to see what the Focus recovery rate is here on Turtle WoW). Point being though that your Pet can sustain casting Screech plus Growl indefinitely.
So ... if Screech is so "good" at supporting a melee Hunter build style, which Pets can Screech?
- Bat (Offensive)
- HP: Medium (+0%)
- Armor: Low (+0%)
- DPS: High (+7%)
- Learns: Bite, Cower, Dive, Growl, Screech
- Diet: Fruit, Fungus
- Carrion Bird (General)
- HP: Medium (+0%)
- Armor: Medium (+5%)
- DPS: Medium (+0%)
- Learns: Bite, Claw, Cower, Dive, Growl, Screech
- Diet: Fish, Meat
- Owl (Offensive)
- HP: Medium (+0%)
- Armor: Low (+0%)
- DPS: High (+7%)
- Learns: Claw, Cower, Dive, Growl, Screech
- Diet: Meat
Bats are easy to acquire for the Horde in Tirisfal Glades, but their Diet may be annoying to supply over the long haul since they will only eat Fruit and Fungus. I would recommend that anyone in the Alliance not even bother with trying to acquire a Bat as a Pet before planning to go to either Shadowfang Keep or Razorfen Kraul since every Bat before then is to be found in Tirisfal Glades with extremely low Levels.
Carrion Birds are easy to acquire for the Horde in Mulgore and for the Alliance to acquire in Westfall, and their Diet will be the easiest to supply since you only need to go Fishing or feed them Meat, either of which are readily available.
Owls are easy for Night Elves to acquire, difficult for Dwarves to acquire (the Wetlands run to Menethil Harbor), and are definitely "hard mode" Achievement: UNLOCKED! for Horde to acquire prior to Level 48 when anyone can get one in Felwood since before then ALL of the Owls are on top of Teldrassil (and the Horde are NOT WELCOMED there!) and getting through Darnassus can be a chore for them (enjoy the corpse runs!). Owls have the most restricted Diet of all the Screech Pets since they will only eat Meat.
Bats and Owls do additional damage with their melee auto attacks, while Carrion Birds have better native armor. All three have access to Cower, Dive, Growl and Screech (of course), but Bats and Carrion Birds can use Bite while by contrast Carrion Birds and Owls can use Claw.
Curious side note here. I've played this build with Claw on an Owl up through Level 24 on Symmetry (before they imploded). Claw is a very effective Focus dump skill, as it essentially drains your Pet of Focus due to the lack of a cooldown on Claw. Your Pet will just Claw (with Claw on auto attack) until there isn't enough Focus to keep using it. This kind of Focus starvation (by design) can potentially interfere with your Pet using Screech, in that your Pet won't always have enough Focus remaining to Screech every 4 seconds. The counterpoint to this is that your fights will typically be shorter, simply due to the added damage coming from Claw. Ideally speaking, if you're going to put Claw on your Pet, you'd want to (re)write your melee attack macros to use Claw "manually on command" when casting Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and/or Counterattack so as to not put Claw on Auto Attack causing the skill to spam away Focus faster than it can be recovered.
Once you've selected your Screech Pet, the one that you're going to want to use for the long haul, comes the bad news. Screech rank 1 only appears on Greater Fleshrippers (16-17) in Westfall, which might be hard for some Horde Hunters to get to without a corpse run (or few/several) ... and Screech rank 2 doesn't show up until you meet the Salt Flat Vultures (32-34) at the southern end of Thousand Needles.
After that comes the decision of what (if any) other Pet Skills do you want to train into your Pet that use Focus aside from Screech? Well ... I'm going to suggest the ultimate heresy here. You should also train your Pet to Cower.
Wait ... WHAT?!? Cower??! NOBODY uses Cower! EVER!
Well ... yes ... but hear me out.
The reason why "nobody" uses Cower is because it doesn't DO anything useful for Hunters who want to play at range, shooting, while their Pet tanks for them at a distance. Remember what I said earlier about the basic strategies for the three talent trees?
- Beast Master: Pet tanks (at range), buff the Pet.
- Marksman: Pet tanks (at range), buff the Hunter.
- Survival: Hunter tanks (in melee!), Pet offers close support(!).
As a melee Hunter, you want your Pet to SHED aggro ONTO YOU so that you can maximize your Dodge/Parry procs to use Mongoose Bite for magnificent critical hits and Counterattack to prevent escapes (oh and use Raptor Strike when it's not on cooldown). Now if you're wanting your Pet to HOLD aggro, you obviously want it to have Growl, but if you're wanting your Pet to PASS aggro to you, you're going to want it to have Cower so as to ensure that you, as the Hunter, have aggro (and keep it) and not your Pet.
The net effect of this is that when mobs transfer aggro from your Pet to You they'll often (not always, but often) come running in your direction to melee you ... with your Pet following them the whole way. This then creates a circumstance in which your Pet will have a decided preference of fighting BESIDE you, rather than off in the distance, which then means that your Pet will be debuffing the melee attack power of most (if not all) of the mobs you'll be in melee with, and they'll use Screech every time the debuff expires (so every 4 seconds if you don't have Claw on Auto Attack). This then promotes a behavioral dynamic in which mobs will tend to fight you in melee and your Pet will "want" to stay at your side where their Screech debuff is doing the most to promote your personal survival (and theirs, in case of AoE attacks like Cleave) while you melee.
Which sounds about as bass-ackwards as you can imagine ... except that it works ... brilliantly.
Speaking from personal experience on Darrowshire and Symmetry, this works even better than I had hoped when using an Owl at all levels all the way on up into the mid-40s (when Darrowshire "died" for me). The damage reduction/avoidance produced by Screech, particularly when pulling "too much aggro" is one of those things where you have to be on the receiving end of it in order to believe it. It really is comparable to a Demoralizing Roar/Shout level of debuffing, and the margin of error/action that it affords is decidedly non-negligible. It transforms my Hunter from a "mediocre" damage magnet wearing Leather Armor into a "decent" damage soaker (albeit one without a Taunt or threat multiplier), while at the same time supercharging my offensive potential. It does require completely inverting the Conventional Wisdom to achieve, but it works (in PvE).
Now, one thing that I have been able to confirm is that the combination of Screech and Cower is not sufficient to drain Focus from your Pet faster than they can recover it. Putting both Screech and Cower on auto attack, my Owl keeps getting back up to 100 Focus without any trouble. I would anticipate though that a combination of Bite (35 Focus, 10 second cooldown), Cower (15 Focus, 5 second cooldown), Dive (20 Focus, 15 second duration) and Screech (20 Focus, 4 second duration) should have no problem getting back up to 100 Focus, even in sustained combat.
Claw however will disrupt that dynamic of always having plenty of Focus for any/all Pet skills at any time if Claw is put on Auto Attack. This means that there will be "gaps" in the uptime coverage for casting Cower and Screech if you put Claw on your Pet, due to the more intense usage of Focus. However, if that's not a problem for you, you can certainly go ahead and do it. I've now tested use of Claw on a Screech Pet (an Owl, specifically) and found the disruption of the castings to be less noticeable than I had originally feared. That said, I would recommend developing Hunter melee attack macros that invoke use of Claw "manually" when casting Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and/or Counterattack so that you don't wind up with Claw on auto attack draining away all Focus leaving your Pet starved for Focus when it comes time to recast Screech.
So once you've selected your (Screech) Pet and decided on your Hunter talents, it's time to decide where you're going to to spend your Pet's talent points on Skills.
Now as a solo Hunter leveling towards 60, I'm thinking that picking up Resistances (all of them) so as to have a good "all rounder" Pet who can support me in melee regardless of what I'm fighting would be the wisest course of action while soloing my way to 60. Your mileage may vary, of course.
In that respect, Resistances cost 15 talent points for rank 2 with 60 Resistance, or 45 talent points for rank 3 with 90 Resistance. With only 300 talent points to spend at Level 60, paying 45 points for 5 resistances winds up being pretty steep (225 out of 300 points). That leaves just 75 points for everything else. Naturally all of this changes when dealing with raiding at Level 60, where you really only need to protect against a single Resistance type that you can predict with ease.
So if going with 4 out of 4 available Skills while keeping Screech and Cower and wanting to maximize (all) Resistances, I myself do something like this with my Owl:
Pet Level: 60
Pet Loyalty: 6
Points Available: 300
- Cower - rank 6 (18pts)
- Dive - rank 3 (25pts)
- Growl - rank 7 (0pts)
- Screech - rank 4 (25pts)
- Great Stamina - rank 1 (5pts)
- Natural Armor - rank 1 (1pts)
- Arcane Resist - rank 3 (45pts)
- Fire Resist - rank 3 (45pts)
- Frost Resist - rank 3 (45pts)
- Nature Resist - rank 3 (45pts)
- Shadow Resist - rank 3 (45pts)
Total spent: 299
Points Left: 1
If Dive 3 isn't something you want, you can easily substitute either Bite 8 or Claw 8 for the same 25 talent points.
Having played this build into the mid-40s on Darrowshire (Elysium), I found that even with having a /cast Dive built into multiple macros, my Pet rarely (if ever) made use of, or even really needed, to have the Dive skill. That was simply a function of the fact that my Pet rarely left my side. We fought as a team, side by side, rather than apart from each other, and under those circumstances, the demand/need for a high speed movement skill is dramatically reduced. I would occasionally see Dive getting cast, but it was RARE (like maybe 1-3% of engagements, if not even less). So Dive sat on my Owl's skill bar, barely ever getting used, largely because of the engagement strategy I was using at the time.
Since then, however, I devised a new "opening gambit" engagement strategy while playing on Symmetry (before that server folded too) which would make use of Dive more often, so it would spend less time wasting space on my Owl's skill bar. Once I can learn Dive at Level 31 (from a Young Mesa Buzzard in the Arathi Highlands) and train it to my Owl, I switch out Claw for Dive on my Pet. This is purely a matter of HOW you use your Pet, tactically, in terms of positioning and so on, as to whether or not Dive will be of any use to you at all beyond mere novelty factor. I'll have more to say on this specific point later.
Now I'm sure that some sharp eyed readers (who haven't fallen asleep scrolling through this wall of text) will notice that I've included Growl in my Pet's list of skills to learn, even though I've also got Cower(!). That's because there are going to be times when I want my Pet to PULL aggro onto themselves (to tank for me), and there are going to be other times when I want my Pet to SHED aggro onto my Hunter. I've set up a simple macro which I'll detail later which allows me to switch between use of Cower on auto attack, or use of Growl on auto attack, so as to be able to ping pong, at need, how much threat my Pet will build up, relative to my Hunter.
The above skills choices are just my personal preferences for an all-rounder leveling Pet set of skills. Since skills are the only place you can get Resistances for a Pet, that's what I invest in most heavily here. For Armor and Health, I rely on the Beast Mastery talents of Endurance Training and Thick Hide to more effectively boost those attributes. A side effect of this personal preference is that it makes the difference between choices of Bat, Carrion Bird and Owl essentially one of aesthetics (how "pretty" the Pet avatar is) and choice of Diet. My personal preference on this point is honestly that I prefer the Strigid Screecher Owl (Level 7-8) from atop Teldrassil to all other options, including the White Owls found in Felwood, Alterac Valley and Winterspring, but that's just my own sense of aesthetics. Part of the reason for my preference is because the Strigid Screecher Owl does not natively have any Pet Skills that I would need to spend to respec out of, so they are Tamed as a "clean slate" Pet from the start.
As far as attack speeds go ... the Level 60 Bloodseeker Bat in Zul'Gurub DOES have a 1.00 attack speed, just like Broken Tooth, in case anyone wants to inflict lots of interrupt/pushback on spellcasters with their Pet while playing as a melee Hunter (wait, what?).
There's also a Level 52 (rare!) Spiteflayer Carrion Bird in the Blasted Lands with a 1.20 attack speed for those who would prefer this class of Pet.
All of the other Bats, Carrion Birds and Owls all have a 2.00 attack speed.
So that's the overall "story" of how I'm answering the question of ... if you want to play a melee Hunter, how would you build for it? As you can see, there's a lot of moving parts and pieces to it, but it all functionally comes down to the following synergies:
- Survival: Hunter tanks (in melee!), Pet offers close support(!).
- Raptor Strike (6 second cooldown)
- Mongoose Bite (requires you to Dodge) (5 second cooldown)
- Counterattack (requires you to Parry) (5 second cooldown)
- Dodge Chance
- Parry Chance
- Critical Hit Chance
- Agility (lots and lots!)
- Pet Choice (you want Screech and Cower to assist your melee tanking)
The only remaining choice you'll need to make is ... melee weapon(s). Here at least, there's a lot of flexibility to choose from.
Some people suggest using the biggest and slowest 2h melee weapons so as to maximize critical hit damage from Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite. But the truth is that Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack all merely ADD damage rather than multiply it (it's the crits that multiply the damage output). This means that the damage increase (before critical) will be exactly the same for a fast Dagger as a slow 2h weapon with any of these attacks. In that respect, a melee Hunter build is somewhat "weapon type/speed" agnostic in terms of what you "should" be using (per se), but as always, if all you're really interested in is seeing BIG NUMBERS, go ahead and equip a big slow 2h weapon if that's your preference, since the crits you'll get with it will be AMAZING. The downside to using a big slow 2h weapon is WAITING for your next swing to land.
One thing that I will recommend with respect to weapon speeds though is that if you equip a weapon with a speed of 3.0 or higher you won't be quite as "perfect" with the timing of your Raptor Strikes as you might like, because Raptor Strike modifies your NEXT weapon swing (kind of like Heroic Strike for Warriors). This means that ideally speaking you want to have a Main Hand (or 2h) weapon with a weapon speed that integer multiplies "neatly" into 6.0 ( or very close to) so as to not delay your Raptor Strikes unnecessarily. So best synchronization with Raptor Strike cooldown will be on weapon speeds of 3.00, 2.00, 1.50 (and if there were any such weapons, 1.20, but in a pinch 1.30 is adequate). Point being you don't want to have to wait extra long beyond the 6s cooldown time of Raptor Strike before making your next weapon swing if you don't have to … so choose your weapons wisely on that score.
And finally, there are times when playing as a melee Hunter will feel like this and when it happens it's totally worth it ... but you have to BELIEVE that you'll succeed with it before you can bring yourself to risk(!) being satisfied with a build and engagement strategy that is simply so far off the well worn and beaten track that almost NO ONE ELSE goes where this build will be able to take you.
And that's it for the build side of things.
The myth.
The legend.
The (horribly misunderstood?) ... Beast o' Melee Hunter.
Come at me bro' ...
/beckon
Next up ... macros and engagement strategies ...