PVP Tips & Tricks - Hunters

Today I’m continuing the mini-series of PVP from the viewpoint of the Marksman Hunter. During the series, I’ll cover each class and what you should look for each of them to do. We continue today with Hunters.

Hunter
The mirror-match is always exciting. You should expect hunters to know your class inside and out. The winner of this battle will often be the hunter who knows the class better. Even if both hunters know the class equally well, the hunter who understands the difference in the specs will more often than not be victorious. As a Marksman hunter, you should know what to look for from both the populous Beast Mastery Hunter and less known Survival Hunter.
Things to watch for:

• Feign Death will cause an attacking pet to disengage. It will also deselect them as your target. Watch for this and get the pet back on them as soon as possible.
• Frost Trap will lock your pet in place (this is either immediately before or immediately after the feign)
• If you run into a BM hunter, the only way to deal with Bestial Wrath (i.e. Big Red Dinosaur) is to feign. Trapping will not work.
• If you’re a dwarf (like me), Stoneform will get rid of Serpent Sting. The sting you use is situational. I like Scorpid Sting for the hit rating debuff. Serpent Sting keeps a poison debuff ticking away and Viper Sting can drain their normally smaller mana pools.
• Hunters generally aren’t getting healed much in BGs, so Aimed Shot is wasted on them. If they are BM spec, it may make sense on their pet since the mend pet will then be cut in half.
• Neither aspects nor auras are removable with Arcane Shot.
• Feign Death can also get the snakes from a snake trap off of you. However, they may quickly reacquire you as a target.
• Survival Hunters have a chance to get an immobilization component with their traps.
• The 41-point Survival Talent is Wyvern Sting. This puts the target to sleep for 12 seconds and applies a DOT after the sleep expires.
• If a Survival Hunter recognizes you as Marksman, he or she may attempt to close to melee. In that case, use immobilizing tricks (Wing Clip, Frost Trap, Scatter Shot, and Concussive Shot) and treat them like another melee class. Most hunters will be very content to stay at range though.
• Because of the tree, expect Survival Hunters to have more health than other hunters.
• Since the pet’s damage is such a large component of a BM Hunter’s attack, the pet can actually kill you all on its own. You must keep a BM hunter in range of your attacks at all times.