When your Hunter gets to level 70 you gain an amazingly useful ability called Misdirection. However little is said about it in game, and there is not much information about it. It can make a huge difference to how you play a Hunter though. Ideally, it would have been nice to have a training quest built into the game to teach players about it and it's uses. However, no such quest exists. This means that many Hunters have had to learn how to properly use misdirect (MD) through trial and error, however just as many never use it. In fact, it is not uncommon to be in a group at 70 and have a tank say one of two things; "Thank god, a Hunter that knows how to MD", or "What's this MD do? I haven't seen it before." This is because many Hunter's never use it, so some players have never seen it, or get used to not seeing it. That's where this guide steps in. In it misdirection and it's uses will be explained in detail.

What is it?

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Setup for a Misdirect to a Warrior

Misdirection is a Hunter ability that you can learn at level 70. It is an instant ability that works in two phases. Firstly, to use it you must target a friendly player or pet that is in your party or raid and cast misdirection on them. This puts a 30 second effect on them and you. This effect transfers the threat from your next three shots (that happen within the 30 second time frame) to the target of the misdirect instead of you.

Misdirection has a 100 yard range as long as the target is in line of sight (LOS). It costs 9% of your mana to cast and has a 2 minute cooldown. While the target of MD must be in line of sight when the spell is cast, the threat will transfer after the effect is in place regardless of current LOS.

At level 70 and with reasonable equipment, the threat transferred to your target can easily be 5000 or more from the three shots. This provides the misdirects target a huge head start on aggro so that the MOB does not run to the next target as quickly.

Uses

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Misdirecting to a Pet

The first way that players tend to use misdirection is as a threat boost for their pets. By level 70 hunters tend to do enough damage to pull threat from their pets very easily. By using misdirection on your pet before sending them in allows you to go full out on damage faster and longer so that you can burn through enemies quicker.

The second way is much the same, but this time in a group. You use misdirection to provide the tank a head start on threat. This allows not only you, but the whole group to start damage faster. It also allows a group or raid with multiple hunters to ensure that multiple targets move towards the right player.

The third way that misdirection is used is to initiate or control long pulls. This could be to fight a MOB or Boss in a certain room to minimize interference, or to get a caster to come to forward instead of standing there blasting you.

A great example of a long pull is in the Mechanar instance. In this instance the best way to fight the first boss is on the stairs leading down to his area. The tank sets up where he would like to tank him, the hunter puts a MD up and then runs into the next room and shoots the boss. The threat transfers to the warrior and the boss runs back to him on the stairs.

With caster based targets, they have that annoying tendency to stand there and cast rather than move towards you into a trap or into melee range (and away from other surrounding MOBs). The trick here is to have a target to MD to that is back and out of LOS. A favorite tactic is to put your pet on a stay command around a corner, then put a trap in front of them, put MD up on them and then run forward and hit the MOB you want trapped. The threat is passed to your pet, which they can not see, so they run towards it and around the corner to hit it, at which point they become trapped. You can then send your pet after the current kill target.

The last way misdirection is used is as a threat passing tool in long fights, such as raid boss fights. In these fights hunters can help the tank keep their threat higher than other players by using MD as often as they can. In a 25 player raid this can add up to a significant amount of extra threat for a tank. This threat allows the rest of the DPS classes to do more damage before having to slow down to keep below the tanks threat level. It is also used on bosses that have phases where they drop threat, to ensure that the boss returns to the tank.

Macros

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Threat being transferred to the pet

Once you get the hang of using misdirect, you will quickly realize that there needs to be an easier way. Don't worry, there is. A few simple macros can make your life easier. The basic macros that you need are a macro to set your focus, and a macro to use misdirect.

Focus is something that a surprising number of players never use, probably because it is not bound by default to a screen button. Your focus is a set player or MOB that you remember and can get back to easily through macros or / commands. There are a number of ways to set your focus, the simplest being /focus bob, where bob is your tanks name. The macro I use is a dual function macro. If you are targeting an enemy it casts Hunter's Mark on them, if you target a friend it sets them as your focus. This keeps the number of buttons on your toolbar to a minimum.

#showtooltip Hunter's Mark  
/cast [harm] Hunter’s Mark;  
/focus [help]

This next macro is the one that actually casts misdirect on your focus target. If you do not have a focus set for some reason it will cast misdirect on your current target. This again keeps the buttons on your bar to a minimum.

#showtooltip misdirection  
/cast [target=focus,exists] Misdirection; Misdirection 

Once you have misdirection up on a target you have 30 seconds to start the pull or make the shots the transfer threat. After that misdirection will fade and you will have 90 seconds before you can cast it again.