Since the guild contains a lot of new hunters, I decided to write a guide about chain trapping in instances. I am assuming you have no add-ons and macros, and that you are using rank 2 (15 second trap), and you have no talent points to lower trap cooldowns.
Freezing trap : Keeps enemy in place for 10/15/20 (ranks) seconds. Cooldown of 30 seconds. Trap that is laid down remains active for 1 minute.
Now, some useful information about hunter traps. They work like spells in terms of resist rate. What that means is :
Equal level: 4% chance to resist.
+1 level: 5% chance to resist.
+2 levels: 6% chance to resist.
+3 levels: [Mob] 17% chance to resist / [Player] 13% chance to resist.
Traps always have 1% to be resisted, regardless of your hit chance.
Resist checks happen both on initial application and on heartbeat ticks.
What this means in terms of talent point allocation:
Unless you’re trying to trap something that’s 3+ levels above you, 2 points in Trap Mastery is useless. Even against a target 2 levels above you, adding a second point does not provide any boost in trap success rate or longevity.
So, here is what you should do when trapping in an instance.
1. Lay trap at least 30 seconds before the pull. This ensures that when your mob is trapped, your trap is off a cooldown.
2. Pull the mob with distracting shot, and then spam Escape key to stop hitting it and removing your trap accidentally.
3. As soon as a mob is trapped, run a little distance, place second trap and run a bit more. Start hitting the first kill target while running. Make sure the new trap is in line with the already trapped mob.
4. Repeat when the mob is trapped.
That’s it, simple isn’t it? Not quite, few things to remember :
- If you feign death , you lose aggro on the trap, and your healer gets it. Trap killing healer = bad bad hunter. /knuckleslap
- A distracting shot will not break trap. If you feign death, use Distracting shot on the trap.
- If your trap is resisted, and the new one is on cooldown, don’t panic! Kite the mob. Wingclip, concussive shot, scatter shot, intimidation, all of them can work till your trap comes off cooldown.
Pulling Macro
A little teeny-weeny macro can really simplify this process. Consider :
/cast Distracting Shot
/stopcasting
This will cast one Distracting shot and stop attacking the mob. Excellent for pulling, and for hitting the target with the occasional DS.
Focus and Target
Time for a little more advance concept. Focus. Not your pet’s focus. Your toon’s focus. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I will just quote hunter-god BRK :
“A simple question: do you know what your Focus is? No, not the Focus your pet uses for spells, but your toon’s Focus. Did you know you have one? Well you do and it’s very handy. Let’s learn a little about it.
You have a Target. WooT! Your Target is the mob or friend with whom you directly interacting. Your Target changes, of course. It changes when you select a different mob or friend. Blizzard was kind enough to allow us to use our Target as a variable that can be used in commands and macros.
If you want to emote “Hello” to your friend Someguy, you could type:
/hello someguy
If your Target was Someguy, you could also type:
/hello target
This is an example of using Target as a variable. For our little hello-command, Target is set to Someguy and the computer handles the rest. Simple.
Now you also have a similar variable called Focus. Whereas your Target changes when you select a new mob or friend, your Focus can only be set, reset, or cleared explicitly. If you want to make Someguy your Focus, you would type:
/focus someguy
Target and Focus are separate entities. If you click on your friend Thatgirl, your Target is automatically set to Thatgirl but your Focus continues to be Someguy. If you click on a murloc, your Target is now that murloc but your Focus continues to be Someguy. The only way you can effect a change in your Focus is to do so explicitly:
/focus thatgirl
/focus murloc “
- quoted from BigRedKitty’s article on hunter macros
Bind a key to your focus. This can be done in the standard WoW keybinds section. I use Alt+f. Make a macro to assist your focus :
/assist focus
This will start attacking the mob your focus is attacking.
When the instance starts, set the tank as your focus. When trapping, pull using the pull shot macro, and then use the assist focus macro immediately after your pull macro. You immediately start dpsing your tank’s target before your mob is even trapped!
