New BM Hunter - Advice on PvE Macros plz

Classes Hunter
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Welcome to the best Class in the game.

As you can see from all these great posts, BM Hunter isn’t as simple as many (non Hunters) would have you believe.

NOT TO WORRY.

The beauty of BM Hunter is two-fold:

  1. It’s a very easy forgiving Class/Spec to play to begin, and when passive talents are selected, can also be simple to play. This gives you time to learn the basics and master them.
  2. It’s a difficult Class/Spec to master using all active talents at your disposal, including commanding your pet as a second weapon. It takes lots of time and fails so you learn what not to do.

The way you find most fun and rewarding is the right way.

The Misdirect Pet, and Feign Death/Play Dead macros should be at the top of your list.

Good Hunting.

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Yeah, its been so amazing. Just from the community my enjoyment of the game has increased by tenfold because I now feel like I am “getting” the spec… when before it just felt like I was pushing buttons.

and since this is such a great thread, could ask for a little more advice:

Which Pet?

Like everything else I assume this isn’t a simple linear answer… So I actually did read a lot on this last night… on the 3 main classifications and then Spirit. Wow… taming can be a game in and of itself.

Is there like a quick reference sheet of a specific pet I want in specific situations? Or maybe one for raids, one for soloing and one for M+ or something like that? Right now I am still leveling and about to start Venthyr today… I think I read Clefthoof is best for me in soloing? Again, a lot of data out there for these pets and adds a new fun element that I didn’t even know about. What a great class.

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Short answer is more or less…

Soloing:

Clefthoof

Group-based PvE:

Ferocity-pets are fine here as they bring passive healing, Primal Rage/Bloodlust in case noone else has it(Shaman/Mage).
Tenacity-pets are also good, specifically Spirit Beasts, due to the combo of bringing a passive health boost, on-demand damage reduction + an on-demand heal/heal-over-time that isn’t on the global cooldown(Spirit Mend).

For further reading, feel free to check the link below:

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On pets, I posted this on another thread here yesterday:

It depends on the content you’re running. For open world and Torghast, a clefthoof is generally recommended. They have an amazing combination of abilities that make them really hard to kill. And since they’re Ferocity pets, having Primal Rage (aka. Heroism) is a nice DPS boost every ten minutes.

An argument could be made for any Cunning pet in open world due to the speed increase; so long as you’re not worried about your pet being noticeably squishier.

For raiding and M+, go with a Tenacity pet of your choice. Since all pet damage has been normalized, you’ll want the extra health and defensive cooldown these pets give you to be slightly less squishy. (Slightly…) Unless there’s no other member of your party with Heroism, then go back to you clefthoof.

I can’t answer as to PvP.

Side note: if you’re soloing higher levels of Torghast, take a talent other than Animal Companion. In order to make this talent not OP, there’s an invisible debuff that reduces the pets’ damage. While this is still normally a net gain, it does reduce the amount of damage your main pet does; and therefor reduces the amount of healing through leech.

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And I’m gonna be the outlier here….for pure non-squishiness, the clefthoof is best. This is true. I soloed TC with a Clefthoof. Much sturdier.

However, it’s too big for me and I really don’t like the way it looks. They are awesome, but I found that Scalehides are a very close second. They are also smaller and I feel in love with the Koranic ones……and then I found how easy it was to have a matching pet and Mount….Bliss!

Petopia is the way to go but same thing, it’s overwhelming. The nice part is you can get one of each type and try em out for your day to day stuff.

Most important part of choosing the right pet……
Make sure your transmog matches!

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46

Most important part of choosing the right pet……
Make sure your transmog matches!

This cannot be understated! This is why my Dark Iron Dwarf is rocking a pair of Faultline clefthoves: they match my racial heritage armor! Now if only I can get the matching mount to drop… :frowning:

After all, everyone knows that collecting pets is half the fun of being a BM hunter!

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Pets:

  • Pets bring abilities based on skill classification.
    • Cunning
      • Pathfinding - boosted movement speed
      • Master’s Call - (limited) CC breaker (for you or a friendly target)
    • Ferocity
      • Predator’s Thirst - leech (important to note that this is only from damage YOU do, not damage your pets do - their damage heals them, not you)
      • Primal Rage - party haste boost (unusable in rated PVP)
    • Tenacity
      • Endurance Training - max health boost
      • Survival of the Fittest - damage reduction (6 seconds)

That said, exotic pets offer additional abilities that can be very useful, probably more in PVP than in PVE.

In rated PVP, Ferocity pets are somewhat less useful than the other two skill groups as you lose one of the two group abilities (you can’t use Primal Rage in rated PVP). The leech sounds really good until you realize that as a BM Hunter most of your damage comes from your pets and the leech only works on direct damage by you (your weapon and traps only). Your pet’s leech only works to heal your pets - which can be helpful, but not as much as you’d think.

I generally look for either the “slow-em-down” ability (in flag carry maps) or the “mess-up-incoming-heals” ability (pretty much everywhere else but especially in team-fight maps).

For the slow-em-down pets, my PVP go-to is the Aqiri - you not only get an intermittent 60% slow on your pets’ target and a speed boost yourself, your pets get an additional 30% speed boost.

For mess-with-their-heals pets, my PVP go-to is some form of bone raptor - the common ones in the desert area of BfA work just fine for this.

Both are Cunning pets so I get an additional (not quite full scope, but still good) CC breaker and a speed boost from both.

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First let me say bravo you! You’re smart, catch on quickly, and ask great questions. All the makings of a promising Hunter!

Bad Hunters are lazy, think the spec is far simpler than it actually is, fail to have vision to see it’s complicated potential, and think they know everything. (Why wouldn’t you want to over-excel while playing the most mobile Class/spec in the game?)

As you can see by the various answers on pets, there’s a wide range of choices/preferences for various circumstances. Again, whichever suits your play style and you find the most fun, are the right choices for you.

And yes, Pet Taming is a game of it own, because it’s a very integral part of the spec that is very personal.

There’s a reason why there are five on-board stable slots at max level, and an additional 200 at the Stable Master. (Plus, Divas like me prefer my pets match my mogs - or mogs match my pets.:grin:)

I’m going to be an additional outlier - but then I solo mostly. I prefer Spirit Beasts because of Spirit Mend. It’s a great additional heal with a shorter cool down than Exhilaration, and handy when Exhil is on cool down.

I turn off the auto-cast, so I can make it on-demand. Just make sure you are the focus before you cast it.

It can also be cast on any friendly player even if you’re not in a group, (or NPC in certain circumstances like in the BFA Warfronts.)

Remember: BM Hunter gets more complicated (harder) the more active talents you allow yourself (and your pet.)

Also, every pet model moves/paths differently depending on animations, and abilities.

Have Mend Pet ALONE (independent of the pop-out pet command menu) either on a keybind, or an easily clickable action bar slot - you need it a lot. You can also macro it with other things, but it’s good to be at your disposal when needed, (especially since they extended Revive Pet’s cast time. Grrrr :angry:)

Give yourself time, and Open World solo experience to FAIL so you’ll learn what works, and what doesn’t.

Also be prepared to have abuse hurled at you. There’s a lot of narcissistic bad Hunters who’ve given the spec a bad rap.

For me personally, it’s been my favorite Class/Spec to play. I try others and have alts, but I always get bored and go back to BM Hunter. (I’ve got several.:shushing_face::nerd_face::innocent::grin:)

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And I took that personally.

Joking, of course :stuck_out_tongue:

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Clearly you are just terrible! Lol

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All good information.!

Personally I use most of the above macros and W/A are great.

I run a Clefthoof in open world and Torghast.
in the other three slots I have my Spirit beast , Fox {run speed} and Devilsaur for heal de buff. Always leave one spot open for Random tames.

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Excellent advice! You just might stumble upon a rare you either didn’t know existed, or didn’t expect to be up with no Hunter currently camping it.

(OP - if you read this, remember to dismiss your current pet before taming, (not abandon-unless you really don’t want it, or it’s easy to go get another one later), and if you forget because you stumble upon a rare you’ve wanted forever and your brain falls out of your head from excitement (me, usually), don’t beat yourself up. :nerd_face: :grin:

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I just could not get those to work. I play at 3440X1440 reso… I dont know if that is why but neither of your WA’s worked for me visually and all the other ones I have tried were mai nly overkill for me (too much going on).

I watched a few videos today on how to build my own… but its just not processing for this old mans brain.

I want very few things (at this point)
When is Barbed Shot, Resonating Arrow, Bestial Wrath and Aspect of the Wild off Cooldown. That’s really all I want right now. I want to stick that WA somewhere around the middle of my screen and to the left with LARGE ICONS that Show it GLOWING for ready to use and STRIKETHROUGH with the countdown timer on icon for Used.

The other issue with other weak auras is resizing them takes is not a simple drag and grow procedure… and at my resolution all the weak auras I see are so small they defeat the purpose of using lol.

Ill keep at it… I plan to dive into it this afternoon again… but no doubt it will help my skill set tremendously once done.

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I use the tell me when addon, you can change the size, opacity and location of the things you need to track, I have mine middle right of the screen so its very easy to see. I track my barbed shot buffs, barbed shot charges, beastial wrath, trinket cooldowns, wild spirits, kill command… pretty much everything I need has a timer on it and brightens when its ready. Theres a small learning curve with tell me when but I found it easy enough to use, theres also youtube videos to help you set it up.

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55

For the first macros you listed that cancel Turtle, can I just make the macro and replace my actual Barbed Shot with the macro button? Just got eligible to run SL dungeons and noticed how much of a pain in the neck it was to click off Turtle lol

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Yes. Most of the button on my action bar are macros that do “things”.

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Yep, you can.

Like Hafthor said, most of my actual buttons are made up of macros like those I mentioned above.

Simply go into the macro menu, make a new macro and choose whatever name/icon you want(preferably the same as the main ability you intend to include) and then copy-paste the corresponding text lines above. Then hit save and drag the new macro out and drop it on top of the old button where you previously had for example Barbed Shot.

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You can even go into the game’s interface menu and disable the macro names on buttons if it annoys you. Then, your macro buttons are indistinguishable from plain ability buttons.

Not that this doesn’t confuse me from time to time if I need to reorganize things…

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Thanks for the help. I’ll do that asap. Clicking off turtle isn’t exactly optimal lol

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Most important shot you want to go off/re apply is Barbed Shot! if you macro the cancel aura for turtle to any button. it should be this one. Nothing will hurt your dps more than Frenzy stacks dropping off.