I am an avid player of World of Warcraft and my favorite character, from the beginning, has been a Night Elf Hunter. It is great to be able to have a pet to follow you around, to feed it, and to use your pet as a weapon to keep enemies at bay while you stand back and hit them with arrows, never taking a point of damage yourself.

Unfortunately, during my time in World of Warcraft as a Hunter, I have come to find out my chosen class is more cursed than blessed by other players who fail to understand how Hunters operate and why their pet is so important to them.

This is, indeed, unfortunate, because a Hunter with their pet can be the most integral part of any team taking on a dungeon. Every single group I have had the mixed pleasure of being a part of has told me, not asked, to put my pet on Passive mode, meaning unless I send my pet to a specific enemy, which action takes precious time from being able to hit other enemies, thereby increasing the likelihood the party will smart for it, has wiped or been beaten worse than they would were my pet on Defensive or Aggressive mode.

This is their loss, but in a way it is also mine; I'll explain.

Each person playing in a group, on a team, in a MMORPG must be considerate of one another in one fashion or another. Yes, if asked, I will put my pet on Passive, but that means the total damage a group can dole out to enemies over time is reduced drastically. To that end, I would offer the following comparison to any other class of character in the game. Take your primary ability, the one you use the most, whether in single-player or in instances, and remove it from your plethora of talents to select and use without opening a spell/skill book first. This takes time to do, and time is sometimes very precious, indeed. Play your character in ANY mode for a while and see how much you relied on that talent.

Now, however, you might begin to see what it is you, the non-Hunter, are doing by asking, or in almost all cases, demanding, a Hunter to place their pet on Passive. Virtually, you take away the pet, leaving the Hunter close to defenseless.

When I go into an instance/dungeon, or an Elite quest, I have a tendency to be mindful of the abilities of other players, and of keeping the "cloth wearers" as safe as possible by using my pet and my character's melee abilities to take "aggro" away from the Mage or Druid, and in turn I and my pet are healed when it is necessary to do so, although my pet and I work so well as a team that we hardly need to be healed at all. I would ask players, in any MMORPG, to be mindful of the other classes and their abilities, even when that ability comes in the form of a pet who might aggro everything in the room and wipe the party. That's how it is, that's how the game is played, and if you don't like the abilities another class has, it is up to you to find strategies to aid those players in keeping things under control, something they can actually learn from.

Do not, however, try and stifle their most powerful ability just because it is inconvenient for you; feed off that ability and make it your own, where you know how to react and what to do in the face of overwhelming odds brought on by that ability. You might just find your gaming experience to be that much richer, and that much more cerebral. Happy hunting.

Learn more about this author, Paul Emerson.
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