LotRO Hunter Guide src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/89165" width="630">


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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/overview">OVERVIEW
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/solo-play">SOLO
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/group">GROUP
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/pvmp">PvMP
|
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/endgame">LEGENDARY
ITEMS | href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/89221/page/2">TRAITS
| VIRTUES
|
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/skills">SKILLS


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alt="A Group of Hunters with Sample Rotation"
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Lounging
around the campfire, a group of Hunters swap lies about their biggest
Heart-seeker hits.

GROUP
PLAY AS A HUNTER


The transition from solo play to group play can be rather
jarring for Hunters. Consider: when soloing, the Hunter never worries
about threat generation, always knows what mobs he has rooted or
feared, and can freely hurl his Rain of Arrows willy-nilly. In fact, it
often behooves him to do so. But things work differently in groups, and
taking a solo mentality into a group setting can lead to severe
problems, and this has earned Hunters something of a bad reputation.

First and foremost, fellowship
Hunters are going to have to
forget about Strength stance and area-effect skills.  Hunters
are massive aggro-magnets, the bane of semi-skilled tanks, frustrated
mezzers and overworked healers everywhere.  Random, haphazard
use of Rain of Arrows can break carefully-planned crowd-control
strategies and generates huge threat that can be difficult for the
group's tanks to contain.  The fellowship Hunter wants to
minimize his threat generation while still making generous
contributions to the group's DPS output.

Now is the time to familiarize
yourself with the other
stances:
Precision and Endurance.
 Precision stance generates much less threat than Strength
stance and no more threat than using no stance.  It doesn't do
quite as much damage as Strength stance, but shots fired from Precision
stance are more likely to find their targets, and DPS is slightly
greater than using no stance.  Endurance stance generates less
threat than Strength or Precision, and consumes far less
power, but it also does markedly less
damage.  The Hunter's selection of stances will depend
entirely on the group and the situation - if threat and aggro
management are critical to the group's chances of success, Endurance
stance is the way to go.  If there is some leeway in regards
to threat and aggro (for example, the group has an over-level tank who
knows his class well), Precision is a solid choice. If the Hunter is
able to ramp his damage (start slow with auto-attacks and other
low-threat attacks, and build to more powerful attacks later on), he
can often run in Precision stance all the time.

Power consumption is another
enemy of the fellowship Hunter.
 A Hunter who burns through all his power early on in the
fight can no longer contribute to the group's DPS output in a
meaningful way.  In those cases with long, drawn-out boss
fights, it is important to conserve power and contribute a consistent,
even stream of DPS over a longer period of time.
 Focus-burning shots tend to consume much more power than
induction shots and should be used sparingly.  Every
fellowship Hunter should make sure to complete the level 45 class
quests to get Bow of the Righteous, which gives a small power return
with each ranged skill use.  With Bow of the Righteous,
Endurance stance, a high-level Tome of the Wind-Rider and half-decent
in-combat power regeneration (from virtues, armor and jeweley), a
Hunter can fire Quick Shots all day long without ever worrying about
excessive power consumption.

Skill rotation in groups is a
different animal than soloing.
 It is generally unwise to open with big power shots while in
a group, as this will often draw the aggro away from the tanks.
 A better rotation for groups is to wait a few seconds for the
tank to establish a good base of threat, then hit with Quick Shot -
Quick Shot - Barbed Arrow - Quick Shot - Quick Shot - Swift Bow,
gradually adding Focus-based shots into the mix.  The big
spikes of threat generated by the more powerful shots are offset
somewhat by the consistent stream of lower-threat Quick Shots and
auto-attacks, and these spikes are more easily-managed by the group's
tanks.  Using melee skills in a group is not generally needed,
and can actually be counter-productive.  Melee skills have no
power return from Bow of the Righteous, and do much less damage than
ranged attacks, resulting in a much lower power-to-DPS ratio. However,
there are times when a well-timed melee strike can make a big
difference - a corruption removal with Dazing Blow, for instance, or a
slow from Low Cut.

Hunters are poison-removal
professionals.  Since this
is the only buff Hunters have that can be applied to other members of a
group, don't be shy about using it.  Take a quick pause from
the shooting and take that poison off the healer before he dies.
 There is no cooldown on this skill, it's
instant-cast (apart from the animation, which does take a second or
so), it applies a poison resist buff for 15 seconds, and it removes
multiple poison effects, making it vastly superior to any pot or salve.
 The Trapper of Foes version of Poison Purge is even more
powerful - it can affect multiple targets, though it does have a short
cooldown. It may help to change your UI settings to only show
dispellable effects - this will enable you to more
clearly see when
group members are poisoned, rather
than having to sort it out from
among dozens of little buff icons underneath the health bar.


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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/overview">OVERVIEW
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/solo-play">SOLO
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/group">GROUP
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/pvmp">PvMP
|
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/endgame">LEGENDARY
ITEMS | href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/89221/page/2">TRAITS
| VIRTUES
|
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/hunter/skills">SKILLS


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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