Adventures in Beta: Fun with Misdirection
Most classes have at least one spell or talent that, while not the most effective damage dealer, is extremely fun to mess around with. How many priests have mind controlled people into lava? How many mages have set up portals to Darnassus and announced that it was going to Ironforge? How many rogues have accidentally pulled half of UBRS through uncautious pickpocketing? Well, there are three very interesting spells in the Burning Crusade with great potential for abuse: Misdirection, Spellsteal and Seed Of Corruption.
According to the official Burning Crusade site, Misdirection is an insant-cast level 70 hunter spell that has this effect: "Threat caused by your next 3 attacks is redirected to the target raid member. Caster and target can only be affected by one Misdirection spell at a time. Effect lasts 30 sec." The spell has a two-minute cooldown.
For progression-minded raiding hunters, this present a great opportunity for hunters to help out tanks on aggro-sensitive fights. Four hunters in a carefully-timed Misdirection cycle can give the tank extra threat, which lets mages, rogues and other DPSers do more damage without pulling the boss. For more ... evil-minded hunters, Misdirection presents a great opportunity to get revenge on other raid members.
A "1001 Uses for Misdirection" thread on the beta forums, started by Expletive, points out some of the many wonderful uses of this spell:
Hunters can now pull mobs directly to the main tank by casting Misdirection on the MT and using Distracting Shot or Aimed Shot to pull. No Feign Death necessary!
On bosses with aggro-wipe manuevers such as Broodlord and Noth, a hunter can use Misdirection to get the boss back to the main tank.
An annoying cloth-wearer has been refusing to heal your pet/wait for your pull/make you some food throughout the entire instance. Next trash pull, cast Misdirection, use your three nastiest shots, and claim it was a macro error.
In a room with a large number of low-HP mobs (the AQ40 bug tunnel or the suppression room in BWL), Misdirect the main tank and then pull everything in the room with an exploding trap. No one is sure whether or not this would work.
Get revenge on that priest that killed you during the priest call on Nefarian.
A nice side note to Misdirection: A good trick for hunters to play on rogues in their guild is to name one of their pets after a rogue (preferably one who is either the class leader, a notorious loot junkie, or always pulls aggro.) When the hunter pet-pulls, the rogue will get an aggro warning from CT Raid or other raid mods and freak out. Hilarity ensues.
Hunters, how are you going to use Misdirection?
(Edited to add: Spellsteal and Seed of Corruption will be discussed later this week. Sorry for any confusion!)
