Here's one, that's a bit of a rhetorical question. Or perhaps a concrete one. Or maybe I'm just bored and want to see if I can conjure up yet another blog entry from that Botanica run. But I'm no magician, I use a bow and arrow. And a little magic.
Trapping. Chain Trapping. One of the most exciting parts of playing Hunter, IMHO. And one of the biggest utilities we bring to a party.
Lets fly back to Tempest Keep and head on in to Botanica again, shall we?
Lets say its a 4 pull, and the CC you've got with you is your Tank, a Mage, and you, the Hunter. If you've been following along with today's posts, you're wondering why a mage, when I've been singing on and on about a shammy. Yeah, alas, the mage had to go to sleep shortly after the second boss gave me his shoulder pads, and the Shaman was nice enough to join in.
The way my team was doing it, we'd mark skull and X for the tank to take aggro on and perform CC on them by generating threat and letting them beat on him. Then moon gets polymorphed, and blue square becomes a frozen turkey.
One thing I really like about the sections of Botanica near the second boss is that you get these nice groups to pull. They start in a narrow hall-like area, and then you pull them into a wide open space so you've got lots of room to spread out.
Perfect chain trapping terrain.
For this particular party, we'd burn skull and X fast enough that I would only have to trap the turkey twice. But I can illustrate the point anyways.
I'd start by dropping my trap pretty far back, on the right side of the battle. Tank would pull and grab his two mobs, Mage would sheep her target, and I'd fire some arcane and distracting shots at the turkey, who would then nicely trot into the trap.
While the turkey was running towards me, I'd spam my /assist macro to grab the main DPS target and send my pet and open fire. Once the turkey was frozen, i'd strafe to the left, firing instant shots whenever possible on the move, all the way across the battle field, and then drop a new trap on the far left side.
This big wide open space was good for illustrating the point I'm going for here. When the turkey thaws from the first trap, she's got a long distance to run before settling nicely for another chilly break from battle.
Along the way, she's gonna run past the healer, maybe past the warloc and mage who are doing their ranged DPS on the main target.
The point is, there's lots of sets of eyes that are going to be seeing this turkey with its bright blue icon on it, running about, seemingly uncontrolled in the open battle field.
Now, as the hunter who is doing this on purpose, I know that the mob isn't out in the wild, but is in fact following a very carefully planned route according to my every desire. That mob is under our control.
But sometimes your team gets antsy and you hear "ZOMG, blue square is loose" and then the tank does his best to help out and next thing you know, your little turkey dance is not so easy any more.
I find myself wondering what techniques other hunters have found for communicating out to their teams that blue square should be considered "under control" until you hear otherwise. And please don't touch.
Slightly different than "dont break my trap". That one is pretty obvious to other players, as Blizz was kind enough to draw a nice big blue visual effect around our mobs. Wouldn't it have been a hoot if they called it "snare trap" instead, and the only indicator was a tiny little wire around the mob's ankle? lol. And they get the option to gnaw off their own foot to escape, with a -agi and -movement speed debuff.
It is definitely counter-intuitive to see a mob running around the battlefield, and think "oh yeah, that mob is under control".
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4 comments:
Your best bet is playing safe: when you see that the mob is going to break free, warn the party: "/p Stand clear of the track: Blue Square is passing by and will make no stops until his final frozen destination..."
Nice wording for a macro, Someone. :)
OTOH, I simply tell my group at the beginning of the instance, "The Blue Square is mine until the Tank says to kill the Square. If you see it running around, it's under my control, and if it isn't it will be. Break my trap at your peril."
Or you could simply yell "LEAVE THE FRELLING ICE CUBE ALONE!"
Good advice guys, thank you.
One thing to note. Other than the random PUG or rare accident, my parties do a nice job of not breaking my traps while frozen.
I'm more concerned with the unfrozen turkey who's on the move, but is doing exactly what I want him to do, but to other party members, he appears to be a loose, uncontrolled mob.
I think I'll try to be more clear at the beginning of a run that until I call for help, you gotta assume the turkey is doing just fine, stationary or otherwise.
To a certain extent, it's a matter of learning to trust your teammates. That took me a while, but I try to give folks the benefit of the doubt for the first few pulls; if those don't work out, we need to change tactics.
For example, last night I was running Slabs with a frost mage in the party. She told us at the beginning of the run "don't mind the moon" (our sheep target), and proceeded to do whatever frost mages do to slow down a mob, then kite it far away from the rest of the mobs to avoid any AOE before sheeping it. Once we got a rhythm up, it worked very well.
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