FeignDeath
Latest
Scattered Shots: Threat management
Last week David discussed finding and training your pet. This is a great time to start practicing threat management. When you attack a target in a group, your target will be threatened to varying degrees by everyone in the group. This becomes really important later in your career, when you will more often be facing targets in instances, or larger targets which require a full group to kill. Take advantage of the early levels of Hunter to practice threat management, and bring more to those groups than they might be expecting.Most classes have to group with someone before they ever have a chance to think about, much less practice, threat management. But we have a built in tank: our pet. We can practice this as clumsily as we need to, dying as often as we have to, all without an audience to mock us. Your pet'll never mock you. He's your best friend! Just don't ask what he tells the other pets when you're not listening.I'll be discussing "threat," also known as "aggro" or "hate" depending on the group. All of these words refer to one thing: how mad the target is at you and all your allies. Lots of things can cause threat to rise, such as standing within a mob's range, smacking a mob with a gigantic slab of marble, or even healing a party member who is in the process of doing either of those things. Lots of things can also cause threat to drop, such as being feared, being polymorphed, or being killed. Understanding a little about how to manage your own threat will help you prevent that last option from happening to you or your party members.
Surviving to see another ding
I'm facing exactly this issue right now (in fact, it's one reason why I'm thinking of rolling a hunter again and ditching my mage)-- Peterxt from Dragonblight want to know what the best class for surviving is. That is, what's the class that, when things go wrong, can get themselves out of trouble alive? I'm assuming he means solo-- everyone should stay alive in a group setting, or something is going wrong.The obvious answer, of course, is the paladin. It's one reason they're so hated-- they wear plate, they can heal, and just when you think you've whittled them down, they have that stupid bubble. In terms of solo play, paladins aren't the fastest killers, but they are very good at taking on adds one after another. When things go wrong, paladins have lots of escape routes.And in fact, mages have lots of escape routes as well. They fall apart easily when getting hit, but they have so many abilities to keep from getting hit that a mage with a little mana and their wits about them can actually survive almost anything-- drop a Frost Nova, Blink away, keep Frost Armor up to slow attackers when they do hit, and you can pretty much run your way out of trouble (not to mention, if you're frost, that ice block can be the ultimate survival tool). That requires a lot of technique, though-- if you really want to stay away from a graveyard, a mage isn't your cup of tea.Every class has their own escape plans (Vanish for rogues, Last Stand for warriors, and so on), but for my money, no class is better at surviving solo PvE then a hunter. Feign death is terrific, and if it doesn't work, there's always the option to let your pet tank while you flee. Or, now that they work in battle, traps. Or Scatter Shot. Or Concussive Shot. Heck, Misdirection even works on NPCs, so if you happen to see someone around that you want to tank for you, you can throw up Misdirection and exit stage left.Every class can survive if it's played carefully and well. But if you never, ever want to see a graveyard, I'd say hunter or paladin.
