Is DH the only real Kiting class?

Disclaimer: I fully aware I am still leveling my DH, I am not a super pro, just wanted to talk about the class a bit.

I played a lot of Survival Hunter back in Vanilla, still my fav class/spec combo. I have tried several different iterations of Hunter since then and none has felt like the kiting vibe of that original class.

Until…

Demon Hunter.

I was completely surprised, but leveling my DH and playing with the skills on one mob, several mobs, it felt more like my old school Survival Hunter than anything ever has and I am loving it. Here’s how the Hunter went:

  • Keep slowed with Concussion Shot constantly.
  • When enemy closes, hit with Raptor/Mongoose (big crits on clothies), slow again with Wing Clip, get back to distance.
  • When enemy closes again, hit with Raptor/Mongoose, Scatter --> Feign Death --> Freeze Trap --> Aimed Shot.
  • Deterrence for big trouble.
  • Repeat.

Now the DH:

  • Slow with Glaive Toss.
  • Fel Rush, Demon Bite, Blade Dance.
  • Fel Rush away, Glaive toss to slow.
  • I get slowed, Emo Leap (VR) into Glaive Toss.
  • Fel Rush into Blade Dance again.
  • Get caught, get adds? Burn 'em down with Eye Beam, then Chaos Strike madness.
  • Blur for big trouble.
  • Repeat.

Of course that’s not the limits of the tool kit by any means, but I am really surprised with how similar the two specs feel which I was not expecting. I picked DH as a fun alt with a low floor rotation that I can dink around on when I need a break from my UHDK main, but it turns out it might actually be the class I have been looking for all along. :slight_smile:

Also, my 5 year old swears my male Blood Elf DH is a girl. But that’s another thread.

I welcome the thoughts of experienced Demon Hunters.

BTW, what have YOU sacrificed?

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A melee class, by definition, cannot be a kiting class. The entire point of a kiting class, at least as far as DPS goes, is that you deal damage to the target while preventing them from closing to deal damage to you. The classes this most directly applies to are frost mages, due to their insanely strong snares baked into their primary rotational abilities, and MM hunters, due to being able to run without a pet tank and being able to having an infinitely prolonged Concussive Shot via Steady Shot extensions as of 8.1.

Demon hunters don’t play like that. Before 110, they jump in and maul a target to death, then heal up from the soul. After 110, they jump in, pull 8-10 mobs at once, murder them all via Eye Beam and Blade Dance, and stay topped on health due to Soul Rending + Demonic and the constant soul spawns. In terms of solo playstyle, they are closest to Fury warriors or possibly Windwalker monks.

If you have the time, you ought to head out to the Badlands. There’s a quest chain on a hill near the Dragon’s Mouth (western edge of the giant ridged tear in the center-west of the map) where 3 NPCs tell in succession their extremely tall tales of the day Deathwing came. In one of them, the NPC is on a motorbike “entertaining some chicks”, and you have to choose one of the “chicks” to bring with you as you speed off while the others are left behind. One of the options is a male Blood Elf.

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Still one of my favorite questlines in Cata.

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There’s a difference of kiting while barely doing damage (Dh) and a kiting while doing damage(hunter). You can actually kite and do damage while on a hunter as both bm and survival. A hunter that properly uses his disengage can be frustrating.

Hahaha love it!

Apparently the game thinks my male belf dh is a girl too for some reason because earlier when I was running a Mythic, the game’s warning that I got rooted by snakes referred to him as a “she”. :upside_down_face:

Not sure if it’s related to meta form always defaulting to female when the game has to duplicate it somewhere (which didn’t happen here, but I’m wondering if it’s the same weird bug that never got fixed) or if that message calls everyone a “she” regardless of character gender.

On topic, As others have said, DH is not good for kiting in the traditional sense. But if you have someone else to damage them while you’re running, you can do some off-tank kiting. It’s a pretty niche thing though. I’ve only ever done that once for a Legion World Boss where it was just me and an Alliance boomie and we were having trouble with the boss and her adds (it was the naga on Broken Shore). We managed to figure out a strategy where the druid DPS-tanked the adds to keep them off me (and thus unable to stack roots on me) while I DPS-tanked the boss by kiting her away from the druid (and keeping her stun attack away from them so they can keep healing and killing adds since I can avoid the stun easily when I’m not rooted but a caster can’t). It worked like a charm.

Sadly I haven’t encountered another situation like this because it was a pretty fun way to play DH.

Oh my geezus. Dude, I have not done that quest since launch of cata lol.

I’d point out that all male belfs are really just buff females. There isn’t such a thing as a male gender for blood elfs clearly.

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Blood elves were Amazons all along.

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Butch females != effeminate males.

It’s a joke in response to Marakurta’s about all blood elves actually being female.

welp, just wait until u fight a frost mage or warlock that know how to use their cc.

youre in for a real treat! youre gonna say… “dang, i thought these glaives were cool, but my glaives have nothing on his insta root, his death coil, his spammable fear, his seduce, his stun, etc. SHOOT!”

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In my experience demon hunter is only really good at running away for help because the class is just bad :confused:

Man, tell that to the hordes of people whining continuously for us to be nerfed in every aspect of this game…

Its almost objective that dps dh needs to be tuned down a bit. lol

Eh. I could see justification for it in M+, though AoE is intended to be our niche. We’re decidedly middle of the pack on most BoD fights (and the only reason we were as strong as we were in Uldir is because that raid was an AoE smorgasbord). I do think we might have a bit too much utility, though. Honestly not sure why they gave us both a magic purge and Chaos Brand.