The Burning Crusade Hunter Skills and Talents
5.1 Traps
One initial note about traps is that if you go beyond a certain range of your trap, it will disappear. So you cannot just put down a trap and ride away. Another note is that if you want to disguise dropping a trap, jump while you lay it down. It's easy to see a hunter kneeling down to lay a trap, it's not as easy to see if he's jumping at the same time.
5.1.1 Freezing Trap
Freezing Trap (FT) is one of your main crowd control tools. A typical use is to wait until something hits your trap, run to max distance, and aimed shot. Note that after around 6 seconds, you will exit combat mode as long as nothing else hits you, at which time you can FD to eat/drink, shadowmeld if you're a night elf, etc.
Get in the habit of always putting down a FT (or other trap) before you engage in combat. This costs you a second, but will help tremendously because once you're in combat, chances are you're not going to get out of it for a while, and then the only way to place a trap after the fact would be to waste FD to get out of combat.
Note that FT suffers from diminishing returns for repeated use, and all PvP crowd control including FT lasts a maximum of 12 seconds.
Since FT has an arming time, it is sometimes tricky to actually freeze your stated target. Scattershot in conjunction with freezing trap can be used to stun a player long enough for the trap to take effect. Or, stand on the trap to force melee opponents to either dance around it or get frozen.
Freezing traps can also be used defensively to keep teammates safe. A useful tactic in arenas is to have squishy healers stand on freezing traps particularly when facing a team with stealthed opponents.
5.1.2 Frost Trap
Frost trap has great use for slowing down packs of enemies chasing after you. Many hunters will put at least one point into entrapment for use with frost trap. With entrapment, frost trap can effectively immobilize many opponents (who might be running after your flag carrier or trying to escape with your flag). The proc chance is checked every ~2 seconds so with 5/5 entrapment you are almost guaranteed of a proc eventually.
You can also cooldowns and clever traps to effectively have two frost traps active at once. If you have entrapment, the proc rate is calculated individually for each trap such that if they overlap, the proc rate is doubled. This is particularly effective for keeping melee classes off your back or setting them up for a nice aimed shot.
Frost trap with entrapment is incredibly useful in arenas. Targetted players tend to flee, jump, or hide around obstacles to abuse line of sight. Entrapment keeps them in place.
5.2 Aspects
5.2.1 Aspect of the Cheetah
There are mods that cancel AotC upon getting hit ( http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-1500-1-antidaze.html ). These are extremely useful to prevent you from getting repeatedly dazed if you don't notice your aspect is on during combat. Aspect of the Cheetah is also helpful for kiting melee classes. Just be careful that you don't get hit by a ranged attack while kiting, since for example a good rogue will be alerted that you switched to AotC and will immediately shoot you.
5.2.2 Aspect of the Wild
AotW is one of our few party buffs, and helps considerably when dealing with druids and shamans. Typically, even if duels, it is more useful to put on AotW than Aspect of the Hawk when fighting either class. If you are in a party that is able to stay together, AotW can be tremendously beneficial.
5.2.2 Aspect of the Pack
This is a very helpful buff because it can allow your party to collectively move much faster than normal. For example, if a paladin or warrior is carrying your flag, use AotP to allow him to travel faster. Note that just because a druid is carrying the flag on your team, he should generally not run ahead of his escort, so aspect of the pack will help you all move fast as a unit.
5.2.3 Aspect of the Beast
AotB hides you from enemies tracking you on the minimap (your blip does not appear). Track Beasts will not reveal AotB hunters, contrary to the naming similarity. AotB is useful for flag carrying and flag hiding in WSG, since if we are also visually concealed, it can be exceedingly difficult for others to find us. Contrary to popular belief, AotB does not hide your red nameplate. Consider turning AotB on when mounting, since it can mislead enemy defenders who are using tracking.
5.3 Stings
5.3.1 Serpent Sting
This is our default sting. It does decent damage, stops rogues from vanishing for long, and can finish off opponents who are running away. One caution is that if you serpent sting someone, this will break CC, most notably freezing trap. Put on scorpid sting instead before your opponent hits your trap. Note that stings have a short cooldown, so you can tab through enemies at the start of battle and apply a sting to each of them fairly quickly if you so desire.
5.3.2 Viper Sting
Draining mana is a great ability in both BGs and arenas since classes who depend on mana become fairly useless after it's drained. Viper sting is also costly for our own mana, and it can be cleansed by some classes, so sometimes tricks are required such as applying lower rank stings hoping that our opponents will waste mana cleansing them. Viper sting does break crowd control.
5.3.3 Scorpid Sting
This is a safe sting to use in conjunction with CC because it does not cause damage -- you can safely shoot a frozen target with this. Scorpid sting is useful when kiting opponents where we also want to keep the option open for crowd control.
5.4 Shots
5.4.1 Auto Shot / Melee
By default, we will switch automatically between auto shot and melee depending on range. This can cause us to inadvertently break crowd control. Turn that switch off.
5.4.2 Arcane Shot
Arcane shot to is pure magical damage, and thus bypasses armor. It is a significant part of our DPS and our primary DPS while we are kiting.
5.4.3 Multi Shot
Multishot is one of our best DPS moves, since it hits multiple targets and awards straight bonus damage. Do not use multi shot only when there are multiple targets in range, instead think of it as free additional DPS every 10 seconds. Note that multishot does not interrupt your autoshot timer. In other words, your autoshot will fire at the same rate regardless of where/whether you also fire multishots.
5.4.5 Silencing Shot
Silencing shot interrupts and silences casters. It is an amazing anti-caster tool on a short cooldown. Note that there is some delay for silencing shot even though it is an instant, so when you see another class casting, you may want to pop silencing shot as early as possible in order to guarantee a spell interrupt. Silencing shot can also be used as a mediocre DPS shot during kiting.
5.5 Melee
5.5.1 Raptor Strike
Raptor Strike is a surprisingly effective melee ability, given that hunters are primarily ranged attackers. We generally want to use a 2Her with high max damage to get the most out of raptor strike. I often use Raptor Strike to finish off opponents who are low health and near melee range, and this is particularly effective if you put 2 points into Savage Strikes for the additional crit%.
Raptor strike is technically an "on next swing" ability, it is not an instant like the rogues' sinister strike. However, it is effectively an instant for the first use since it hits immediately when you get into range.
5.5.2 Wing Clip
This can help get us out of melee range and slow down enemy flag carriers. Put at least one point into improved wing clip since proccing in PvP has great benefits against melee classes. You can spam wing clip repeatedly since it has no cooldown (other than global cooldown), so you'll proc with improved wing clip more than you might expect. Just don't expect wing clip to get you out of range of rogues using crippling poison or warriors using hamstring, since basically both of you are slowed.
5.6 Miscellaneous
5.6.1 Scare Beast
Scare beast affects druids and shamans in animal form. We can use scare beast to bait druids into switching out of animal form.
5.6.2 Eagle Eye
Eagle eye can be very useful for locating flag runners and doing scouting during BGs. In AB, you can from certai spots such as the LM see all the other nodes. Also, the animation for eagle eye looks just like the AB flag capping animation, so you can really freak out the other side by eagle eye-ing directly on their flag. They might think someone is capping their flag.
5.6.3 Flare
As common sense would dictate, keep flare up whenever possible if you know rogues, druids, NEs, etc. are around. Flare's detection radius is about double its graphical radius, you can tell by the radius of its casting circle. In particular, when supporting your FC, flare his path as much as possible.
5.6.4 Volley
Volley used in conjunction with entrapment and frost trap is deadly since enemies are held in place and have to eat the volley. As with other channeled spells, volley does NOT break node capping and thus cannot be used to prevent multiple enemies from capping. Rank1 volley can also be used as stealth detection.
5.7 Beast Master Talents
BM spec makes your pet into a killing machine on a two-minute timer. You also have access to intimidation, which is somewhat like scatter shot but is a true stun. TBW is an excellent talent as well because it renders both the hunter and his pet immune to CC.
BM spec is that I am no longer as concerned about opponents CC-ing me or getting in my dead zone, since my pet is doing significant DPS. I only need to keep myself alive and add some supporting damage. This is far different from MM spec where my primary concern is to keep opponents out of my dead zone and melee range.
5.7.1 Intimidation
There is considerable debate over which between intimidation and scatter shot is more powerful. Intimidation is a shorter CC but is a true stun in that it cannot be broken with damage. It has a longer cooldown. It has a short delay to proc after casting because the pet must actually hit the target. It cannot be used when your pet is CC'd or dead.
A typical mistake that hunter use with BM is to use BW/TBW on every target possible. Intimidation along with massive pet DPS is often good enough to burn down a target without use of BW/TBW.
5.7.2 Beastial Wrath/The Beast Within
BW is seen as a "free kill" every 2 minutes if managed correctly. Once you BW your pet, he not only will do more damage but also will be immune to the various CC that players use to keep high damage opponents off of them. The Beast Within will further make us immune to CC, which allows us to destroy opponents who rely on CC (e.g. warlocks).
5.8 Marksman Talents
5.8.1 Scatter Shot
Scatter shot (SS) is our primary tool for getting out of range when something closes into melee, is our primary spell interrupt, is good for short term crowd control, and is good for finishing off near-dead opponents. The key to SS is that it has no dead zone range and thus can be used as a semi-ranged attack even if your opponent is close.
Be sure your opponent is not DOTted when you scatter him, or it will break the effect. If your opponent has a sting on him, replace it with scorpid sting before you scatter him.
Scatter shot is often useful for preventing offensive spells as well, or stopping opponents from getting into range to cast those. A typical example is scatter shotting a priest who is running towards you to psychic scream. However, proper use of this form requires knowing a bit about the range of spells being used against you, since scatter shot itself has fairly short range and thus you may not for example be able to count on it as a defense against psychic scream particularly if you have bad lag.
5.8.2 Aimed Shot
Aimed shot has little place in PvP. Its windup time is too long, and it resets the auto shot timer. Steady shot is the new opener (see below) against CC'd targets. Aimed shot is useful versus steady shot when we really need to one-shot a target (e.g. a target is CC'd but can activate immunity or what not after the first shot hits).
If you insist on using aimed shot, note that PvP CC such as freezing traps last a very limited amount of time, and diminishing returns makes freezing trap very difficult to pull off against opponents that have been trapped multiple times.
5.8.3 Steady Shot
Steady shot does not interrupt the auto shot timer and thus can be weaved inbetween auto shots. It is a good source of additional DPS since it roughly does the same damage as auto shot. If you are standing still and shooting, then weaving steady shots can considerably help your overall DPS.
Do not use steady shot if an opponent is hitting you, since each hit will delay the timer. However, it is generally safe to use steady shot when coming out of FD.
Steady shot has largely replaced aimed shot as an opener when our opponents are crowd controlled. Aimed shot does more damage, but steady shot is faster and also adds in an auto shot, making it a 3-shot combo (steady/arcane/auto) versus a 2-shot (aimed/arcane). Given that Go For the Throat and Kill Command both proc from crits, 3 shots gives us more damage potential.
