What a Horrible Random... or Was It?

There are some things that newer hunters just do not understand or perhaps there are some things older hunters just take for granted and have not grown to learn better.  This is a story about that.  New hunter and old hunter.

I am the old hunter.  Mind you I am not old school by any means but compared to someone that started in cataclysm I could be called an old timer with ease.  Not to mention the fact that one of the reasons I fell in love with the hunter class was the old school feel to them.  Kiting, jump shots, etc.  I would spend hours on end, just for fun mind you, practicing the jump shot and kiting elite mobs around un'goro.  But enough of that, on to the story at hand.

A returning player from the guild had just hit 90 and I said I would queue up with him for a dungeon figuring that having my little boost to DPS will help with him being a fresh 90.  I figured if he is doing less it would not hurt having a guild mate with him to do a little more and pick up the slack so he does not hinder the group any being a returning player and a new 90.  As it turns out, it was not needed, he did fantastic, but that is not what this story is about.  It is about us being in the dungeon and the people on vent.

I was explaining the fights to him as it was his first time doing all of them and we were talking about the run on vent with some other people on as well.  One of the other people was a hunter who started a few months into cataclysm.  He is an amazing hunter, I've taught him most everything I know and I would have to say when it comes to DPS the student has surpassed the teacher.  I can beat him sometimes but it is no easy task, he really does everything perfect and makes me have to try to be better all the time just to keep up.  But after listening to him on vent I would have to say I guess I did not teach him everything about being a hunter.

So me and the fresh 90 druid pop into the dungeon and the tank pulls as soon as we zone in.  One problem, the healer had not zoned in yet and the tank is not one of those super geared DKs.  I see this and blow everything I have knowing the only chance we have is to down these mobs before the tank dies.  I tell the druid to blow everything as I noticed we were currently healerless.

All but one of the mobs go down and being he was close to death and coming after me I go kite mode and we kill him a few seconds later.  I say it was a close call on vent and the guild mate hunter says it sounds like I am in a fun one, being sarcastic of course.  I laugh and say it looks like it.

Seems the healer DCed while coming into the instance, we wait another minute or two and then kick them.  Sad part is we see him zone in nearly the exact second the kick goes through.  I felt so bad, but at least he is a healer and will not have to wait that long.  Being DCed was not his fault.  Either way, we get a new healer and go on our way.

Next pack of mobs the tank loses one and it goes straight for the healer.  I trap it.  We kill everything and me and the druid turn to the mob I trapped to kill that one now but the tank moves ahead.  Just like he had not noticed one got away from him he did not notice I had trapped it.  At least the 3rd DPS remembered, I believe it was a warrior but I don't exactly recall.  We down the one mob quickly as I turn growl on my pet and MD to it.  It only takes a second, the healer moved up a little so they could heal the tank and us and by this little event I can tell that the healer had noticed what I had noticed, this tank doesn't seem to have any situational awareness and this will be an interesting run.

I say this to the druid on vent and the other hunter is listening and he starts complaining for me I guess.  The dungeon goes on and we have pull after pull with mobs all over the place, bosses that have aggro issues, the healer getting torn apart by any caster we run into.

I am trapping freely, silencing shot goes off for anything that I can interrupt, I don't think I have used scatter shot so much in a dungeon that I wasn't soloing.  I even used intimidation a few times and I am nearly sure I have never even once used it in a random since I switched back to BM this expansion.  I am picking and choosing mobs to taunt with my pet and healing it as best I could while kiting another because I am out of ways to control all the mobs running around while the tank is doing... I have no clue.

One pull, the boss in Mogu'shan Palace with the adds, the tank figures it is his job to tank the boss and pulls that and completely ignores adds.  I trap one, set to burn another, and have to play keep the mob off the healer as best I can.  It becomes a delicate balance of being the only one doing good damage so should I burn things as fast as I can or work control to try and get things in order.

When my MD is off cooldown I decided not to waste it on the tank any more being he doesn't seem to think holding the adds is all that important.  I had dismissed my pet and called another one I knew I had in tenacity spec and MDed to it, one mob at a time.  I made sure the druid was on the same target as me and he and I burnt down the adds one at a time as the other DPS and the tank focused the boss.  I was trapping the one eating the healer but apparently traps have diminishing returns against these mobs so I had to use scatter a few times as well.

I am calling out moves for the druid, picking targets to go after one at a time to burn them based on which ones are making the healers life hell and which ones I have trapped already being it seems they can not be trapped twice.  We could have tried to just burn the boss but with mobs beating on the healer and the DPS in there that would have been a wipe no doubt.

When we are down to one add and I have everything on cooldown I tell the druid to go to the boss and do a little kiting on the add after I make sure I have its attention. Then with a jump and turn and disengage I land directly on the tank and the boss and feign death and somehow, to my amazement it works, the tank takes the aggro and we finish that one and the boss off.

All this time the hunter on vent is complaining about how horrible this run sounds and how he would have dropped group already.  I never said a word in reference to his comments, we just kept moving on.

Going up to the last boss the tank runs away from the healer again and it is a blow everything moment once more.  A little fancy dancing with some serious BM burst on the AoE with that random buff and it tends to be no real problem and requires no additional tricks on my part.

Last boss the tank finds a way to die from basically standing in everything he can find to stand in and the other DPS, being melee, follows him step for step through every bit of bad he can find and that leaves just me, the druid and the healer up to fight the last bits of the fight.  I turn my pets growl on and call stampede and that ends up being just enough to get us through the fight and finish it off in a adrenaline pumping few seconds to end the run.

This whole time the hunter is saying how he wouldn't do this, wouldn't do that, couldn't do this, couldn't do that. I listened to him the entire run and was left thinking there is something I did not teach him when I taught him how to be a hunter.  I did not teach him how to be an actual hunter.  I taught him how to do hunter DPS.  I did not go far enough.  I failed him really.

I said to him it was not a bad run at all.  No wipes and it was fun and exciting and I got to do what a hunter is supposed to do.  I controlled the battle, protected the healer and still managed to pull numbers most classes could never even imagine while doing all the little things I had to do.  It was a great run, an exciting run and I had a lot of fun.

I said to him, it was a fantastic run, one of the best I have had in ages, it reminded me what it really means to be a hunter.  It had been so long it seems.

I left it at me telling him that I would teach him all these little tricks and how to bind those lesser used things in simple to get to places so if and when something like this happens to him instead of it being a wipe or dropping group he can do all those little things and stand tall at the end of a fight and proudly proclaim, I am a hunter.  No problem.

I used at least 35 completely different abilities that dungeon run and every single one of them was needed.  I used Hunters Mark, Serpent Sting, Cobra Shot, Arcane Shot, Bestial Wrath, Kill Command, Glaive Toss, Lynx Rush, Dire Beast, Rapid Fire, Readiness, Kill Shot, Ice Trap, Frost Trap, Explosive Trap, Snake Trap, Concussive Shot, Distracting Shot, Tranquilizing Shot. Silencing Shot, Scatter Shot, Intimidation, Mend Pet, Dismiss Pet, Call Pet, Stampede, Deterrence, Disengage, Feign Death, Misdirection, Aspect of the Hawk, Aspect of the Fox, Growl, Spirit Mend, Shield Shell and maybe more all at one moment or another.

What other class can say they can do all that and more?  It might have not been the best run ever and if I were on any other class I probably would have called it a horrible run but I was not on any other class I was on a hunter and the run was just fine.

Somewhere along the line I failed as a teacher if the hunter I taught on vent was calling it a horrible run based on hearing what I was saying and all I was doing.

On any other class it would have been a horrible run.  On a hunter, it was an exciting run.  Like it or not, that run needed a hunter to be in it because handling chaos is what hunters do best and that run was awesome.  It made me feel like a real hunter again.  I had a tim allen moment where I felt like grunting when it was all said and done.

Now the question is, how to I teach that hunter that?  How do I explain to someone that never needed to do any of those things that those things are really what being a hunter is all about?  Well, those things and awesome DPS at the same time. ;)