So You Want to be a Hunter?: A Beginner’s Play-style Guide

So, you’ve decided to play a hunter. Great choice! You’ve read all the beginner guides, chosen your race, and have started pew-pewing your way through Middle-Earth. The hunter is a fairly easy class to learn, but there are subtleties in the early levels that are very easy to miss. Maybe it’s because you’re so good at killing things fast, or that you’ve not had the opportunity to play in a group. Whatever the reason, here are a few things I’ve learned about playing the hunter that I wish I’d known earlier.

Quest Flow

I’m going to start with the most basic information and then build up to some things you’ll want to know closer to the middle-levels. This first tip isn’t specific to the hunter, and it won’t be news to you if you’ve played MMO’s before, but…hey, it got me, so perhaps I can help someone else to avoid being as dumb as I was. When you get to a “quest hub” (a place in the game with several NPC’s offering you quests) pick up all of the quests you can before going out to complete them! The quest hubs in LOTRO are (mostly) designed so that all of the quests at the hub are contained within the same, or very nearby, area. You can trek out there and complete several at once, and then turn them all in at once. If you pick up only one quest, complete it, turn it in, then pick up another quest (like I did), you’ll be doing more running around than you need to, and it will take much longer than it would, otherwise. If you’re a role-player and that’s just your play-style, that’s cool – I get it. But if you’re just doing it because you don’t know any better, understand that there’s a much more efficient way to level.

There’s no crying in LOTRO!

Ok, now on to the hunter tips. At level 12 you’ll get a skill called “Cry of the Predator” that you can use against animals to “fear” them, or make them run away for a period of time. Bree-land is a good zone to practice this skill due to the large number of wolves, bears, boars and other creatures of nature. I didn’t use this skill very much in the early levels, and focused mainly on trying to pull single mobs so I could burn them down as quickly as possible. This skill is helpful when you accidentally (or intentionally, I guess!) pull two animals. You can fear one while you work on the other, and hopefully by the time the fear effect wears off you’ll be ready to take on the second. Cry of the Predator is especially helpful in the Warg Pens instance later on down the line, so don’t forget where this skill is on your bar if you intend to do any grouping.

You can mele, too, y’know

I’m still trying to break this habit. Early on, I got enamored with the amount of damage I could do with my bow, such that even when enemies drew within mele range I tended to stand there with my bowstring drawn, trying to shoot him down through the induction interrupts. That approach can work, but by level 25 you have five mele skills at your disposal, and each of them does something besides simply dealing mele damage. I’d suggest studying up on one of them to learn when it makes sense in combination with other attacks. For example, low cut not only does pretty decent dual-wield AoE damage, but it also slows your enemies run speed by 50%! That’s a significant side-effect that can be used in the following combination: Low cut, back up, quick or penetrating shot (depending on focus level, cool downs), low cut, rinse and repeat until enemy death ensues. Once you’ve mastered a mele/bowshot combination, move on to the next mele skill and continue to build your arsenal of attacks.

Precisely!

At level 6 you are granted your first hunter stance: strength. Strength is great in the early levels, because you have so few skills that you need to be able to inflict maximum damage with each shot. Unfortunately in my case, I got so used to soloing in strength stance that I was well into my 60’s before I realized how fantastic the precision stance (granted at level 18) is. Precision increases your chance of scoring a critical on your bow shots and also generates a focus point for every 5 seconds that you have it toggled. This becomes increasingly important during long battles when you are unable to pop “hunter focus” in combat. Since I switched to using precision a majority of the time, I don’t need to worry about generating focus any more, and the crits achieved with my quick shots are just an added bonus. Don’t wait until your 60’s to try out this stance!

Flying…desperately

At level 20, you are granted a skill called “Desperate Flight”. If you want to completely torque off the rest of your fellowship, wait until the fight gets really tough and then pop this one off! Seriously, though, don’t use it. Ever. It basically just transports the hunter to the safety of a rez circle without the benefit of a glorious death in battle. Since the removal of the ‘death’ morale penalty, there is very little reason to use this skill. The only time I’ve ever seen it used in a group was by accident, and that person felt pretty bad when the entire group wiped. Do yourself a favor and just remove this one from your skill bar altogether.

Purge poison can be used on others, too! 

See title. Not sure if I needed to say this, but since you’re a hunter (not a healer), you may not be aware that you can purge poison from others in your fellowship. Look for the green, glowy poison cloud around one of your allies, select them, and pop the skill. They’ll be glad you did.

What line is it, anyway?

I can’t take complete credit for this, since I just recently learned it from listening to the hunter roundtable Vraeden Hates Hunters (he doesn’t really). You’ve probably noticed that one of the ways to customize your character in LOTRO is to equip certain class traits as you earn them along the way (usually by completing class deeds). There are 3 “lines” of traits denoted by the color of the outline around the trait icon. Equipping traits will grant added bonuses as you continue to stack traits in the same trait line. For example, equipping two traits from the “red line” results in a +10% critical multiplier on your bow attacks. Ever since I’ve played the game, it has been common knowledge in my head (and many others) that the red line is the superior trait line for a hunter, and that all other lines are completely useless. Well….after experimenting a bit I can confirm that that’s not exactly true. In fact, sometimes hitting quickly with a high number of critical hits can generate nearly as much damage as shooting more slowly for “big number” hits, or more! So, don’t fall in love with the red line right away, trait some blue or yellow here and there. Try some different things, you might find out that you’ll even alter your play style to better fit the bonuses you’ve traited for!

Tab-Targeting

Something that you’ll want to get familiar with as a hunter is the tab-targeting feature. Essentially, you can press the <tab> key to target nearby baddies. It’s much quicker, though less precise, than using your mouse to target. A word of caution, though. Be very, very sure that the mob you’ve tab-targeted is the one you want to shoot at. Some of my worst grouping mistakes have been tab-target pulling the wrong group of bad guys into an already-ongoing fight. If you decide to use tab-targeting, you will make this mistake. Just try to make sure it doesn’t happen too terribly often.

Another method of keyboard targeting is to use the <backpace> key to target the closest enemy (credit: Wilros). This carries the same warning as tab-targeting.

Ok, I want to try this grouping thing, what am I supposed to do?

The hunter’s role in a group is mainly damage, but if that’s all you’re worried about, you may not get invited to very many groups. Secondarily, a hunter needs to be concerned with generating as little threat, or aggro, as possible while inflicting as much damage as possible. A high threat level is what makes the bad guys decide to attack you. One way to make sure the tank is the one getting hit (instead of you) is to target the same mob that he/she is fighting. At the early levels, when you can’t take as much damage, targeting a different bad guy than your tank can result in you taking a lot of hits and thus dividing your healer’s attention between you and the tank. It makes things difficult for the group. Another good idea is to let your tank get hit for about 5 seconds before starting your attack. Let them build up the aggro so it’s harder for you to pull the bad guys away. Thirdly, a hunter needs to manage his/her power. There are a lot of different ways to combat power issues, from carrying potions to certain skills and trait builds. Even with these options, I find myself ‘easing up’ on my bow skills during long fights in order to make sure I don’t run out of gas. Or, I’ll resort to using shots that don’t require as much power, like a quick shot/penetrating shot combination instead of swift bow and heart seeker. Just something to be aware of as I’ve seen a lot of hunters run low on power during fellowship runs.

These tips should help get you well into your 30’s or 40’s, by which time you will have outgrown ‘beginner’ guides! Happy Hunting!

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Braxwolf can be found on Twitter at @braxwolf

or on Windfola, tab-targeting his heart out