The Burning Crusade Hunter Arenas (5v5)
This section will primarily cover 5v5 arena tactics only. I may add a 2v2/3v3 section in the future.
10.1 Responsibilities
In a competitive 5v5, the hunter has two primary roles and his contribution to the team is determined and limited by these. They are:
1. Crowd control through frost trap (3/3 entrapment)
We keep our teammates alive by placing frost traps and having our burn targets kite through those. Without blessing of freedom, melee classes can be effectively shut down through frost trap kiting. Frost traps should be up at all times.
2. Mana drain through viper sting (5/5 improved stings, scorpid pet with rank4 poison)
Viper stings can run healers and opposing DPS classes dry. Scorpids stack poison on top of the viper sting debuff to make cleansing more difficult.
Apart from these, hunters -- like all DPS classes in arenas -- have three primary responsibilities: 1) do damage 2) do crowd control 3) stay alive. I will explain these through basic principles and then the rest of the section will cover principles here.
10.1.1 DPS
In a typical 5v5, a MS warrior picks a target and applies mortal strike to it, then the rest of the DPS main assist (e.g. use an /assist macro on the warrior) to burn the target down. The hunter's DPS role in this is fairly simple and I will often even use a PvE shot rotation macro if I'm left alone. The theory is that with 3 DPS burning one target affected by MS, one or two healers will not be able to keep up and the target will quickly die.
10.1.2 Crowd Control
Crowd control while DPS is tricky but this often makes or breaks the game. Any team can main assist to burn down a target. Crowd controlling opposing healers, as well as crowd controlling whatever is burning down your teammate, is the next additional step. This includes silencing/scattering healers, using pets on healers, and placing traps near your teammates to protect them.
10.1.3 Staying Alive
Hunters basically act as tanks in arenas since we are almost always the first burn target. Staying alive means utilizing feign detah and traps, and keeping close to pillars to we can ring-around-the-pillar when targeted (as long as we don't go out of LoS of healers).
10.2 General Tactics
The following are general principles and playing tips to keep in mind for arenas.
Line of Sight
A vital principle for doing well in arenas is to exploit line of sight. Hunters do not want to be charging an opponent who is near a pillar because the opponent can avoid the hunter and stay out of LoS by running around the pillar. Hunters are not able to effectively chase in this situation because we also have a deadzone to contend with, which becomes problematic when we're chasing someone who is just a few steps ahead of us. The best we can do is send in our pets for minor damage.
Given this, it is imperative to get the other team to charge us instead of vice versa. The best time for hunters to engage a target is when it is in open terrain and does not have any obstacles to hide behind. Be patient and force the other team to make their move.
Traps
Frost traps with entrapment are a favorite CC tool in 5v5's because they can prevent opponents from escaping being burned down. In 5v5's, typically I will use frost traps instead of freezing traps at least until opponents have used their PvP trinkets.
Freezing traps are good for single DPS. Just make sure that your teammates know where the trap is so they won't break it accidentally. I typically put a freezing trap at the feet of a healer if the opposing team has stealth. I will also flare in that spot. All in all, the healer should know that he is in relative safety if I place a trap at his feet.
Snake traps are very effective but somewhat situational. The issue with snake traps is that they are easily killed using AoE. The primarily advantage of using snake traps is against pallies in conjunction with viper sting, since cleanse only removes one effect and is fairly mana-intensive. A pally who has viper sting and a bunch of DoTs on him will either have to suffer through the dots or risk wasting mana on cleansing.
Feign Death
FD should be used to break targetting such as when we are the burn target or an opponent is winding up a long cast spell. FD in conjunction with pets and snake traps can make retargetting difficult, since opponents may suddenly find that they're beating on snakes instead of the hunter even though they know the hunter is feigned. Against targets at range, NEs should macro shadowmeld after feign death to avoid retarget.
Stings
Viper sting is a great tool for draining healer mana or draining mana from opponents who don't have a large mana pool (such as hunters). Since viper sting can be cleansed, one typical use is to apply rank1 viper sting to bait a cleanse. Otherwise, use viper sting when the opponents are not cleansing immediately, or use viper sting once the target is DOT'd with poisons already such as from snake traps or scorpids.
Hunter's Mark
Marking the target our team intends to burn down is usually a dead giveaway to the other team. Instead, mark targets that are likely targets of cleanse, such as a frozen target, so that the cleanse has a chance of removing the mark instead of the trap.
Pets
Keep your scorpid on the pally to stack poison with viper sting. Otherwise, don't put pets on pallies since pet attacks will typically not interrupt pally healing. Other good targets for pets for interrupts are priests and druids.
10.3 Gear
The rule of thumb is to stack stamina and resilience, including using +sta gems on sockets even at the expense of socket bonuses. In 5v5, survivability, not damage, is often key. Individual gear choice though depends somewhat on the overall group composition; if other members on the team are typically the primary burn target, then we can sacrifice some sta/res for additional AP. For example, when our team runs with a mana burn priest, I can often get away with DPS gear. When our team runs with a pally instead of that priest, I am always the first burn target and my focus is thus on survivability not damage.
All classes in arenas will typically also want to bring a shadow resist set. Traditional high end teams are either primarily plate or primarily shadow. Even green non-enchanted shadow resist gear bought from the AH can essentially nullify shadow teams.
10.4 Focus Macros
Focus is a built-in WoW ability that allows a player to designate a target and then use whatever abilities he designates against that target. Note that this is different from pet focus/energy even though it has the same name. Focus is an amazing tool in arenas because it enables us to permanently select one opponent (usually a healer) and then direct actions against him (usually interrupts) without ever losing our current target.
At a bare minimum, have both of these macros hotkeyed if you are MM:
Macro 1:
/focus target;
Macro 2:
/cast [target=focus] silencing shot;
At the beginning of the arena match, select their pally healer and hit your macro1 button. This sets that pally as the "focus" target. During the match, anytime you hit your macro2 button, you'll fire off a silencing shot at the pally, regardless if you have him targetted. You can also create a focus macro for scatter shot and viper sting.
In a typical match, I'll assist the primary burn target, and hit my focus viper sting whenever it's up in order to keep the pally mana drained. When my targets gets to around 20% health, I'll hit my focus scatter shot to CC the pally. This all but guarantees that the burn target will die before he receives that massive heal the pally was about to cast on.
Using a focus macro against a team with two healers is a bit trickier, but generally one will be the primary healer so he should be the target of the focus macro.
10.5 Game Pacing
Tactics will differ depending on what pace of arena game we are playing. Lower brackets tend to be a burn competition where both sides try to kill one opponent while crowd controlling healers and keeping their players alive; this is the "fast game". Higher rated games are typically "slow games" or "endurance games", where the object is to drain the opposing team's mana, and thus mana becomes more like health in that whichever team is brought to zero mana loses.
In a fast game, we are primarily concerned with DPS, and our own health only becomes our primary concern if we are the first burn target. In a slow game, we want to sacrifice DPS in order to stay alive, conserve mana, and keep up mana drain. The other counterintuitive aspect of slow games is that we typically do not want to CC/silence healers, because we want them to use up their mana. We will mostly save CC/silence to reduce the DPS on opposing players in order to keep the burden on our own healers to a minimum.
