Solo Hunter woes

[Kevin]

Yep. You need to let your pet get to and hit the target first, before you start. I usually use the time they are running up to the mob to cast Hunter's Mark on stuff. By the time they get there, my cooldowns have cleared, and I wait to see the little growl go off. Once I see that, I open up slowly with Arcane Shot, a couple of autoshots, Serpent Sting, a few autoshots, AS, repeat till monster is dead.

As a hunter, you do a lot of damage, so don't be afraid to ease off the specials until you get a feel for what your pet can and can't hold against you. But...you do need to give the pet a chance to start holding against you before opening up.
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OK well this has never been the case with me and a cat pet that has faster than a 1.5 attack speed and my beast master build. I'll often open with conc shot and fire a sting while the pet is closing in. She'll growl then bite and get the mob back in most cases, I'll manually hit claw to give her an extra little bit of damage too (claw also generates more threat than just the damage). I actually pull stuff and then time sending her in so that the mob gets tanked where I want it to be tanked. Make sure you have the highest rank of bite and growl that you can have. Of course I also let the the pet autodash and kept a fast approach speed pet (though with the speed normalizations this isn't as big a deal) so that I don't get as many autoshoots in before she gets there either. And again being beast master means that damage gap with me and the pet is smaller.

With a bear I do have to wait because a miss with a 2.0 attack speed pet is much worse than with a 1.2 attack speed pet, bears will also not attack as much if the mob is moving towards me because they simply don't run as fast as a cat so they will get that close distance nope it moved to far before I can swing affect. The cat (and many of the wolves) don't seem to do this they will keep hitting the mob in the back. So when I play with slower approach speed pets and slower attack speed pets I will wait for them to get a hit in or I'll conc shot then turn off my attack so that I can still get the mob seperated out some to avoid runner issues and such. And watch how you use claw if you use it at all. I like it because a pet with focus at the end of the fight means I didn't do as much damage as I could. So I'll turn it on and off as need be, especially with the new focus regen talent claw can really help a pet hold aggro because growl and bit will not use up the bar even if the pet is holding a couple of mobs against your stings and multishots.

I think I need to do about 1200 damage before my cat will have problems getting the mob back right awwy when it gets in range of it (assuming the cat has focus) this is at L54 for the pet and L55 for me. So unless I crit my opening attacks I can pretty much do what I want to while the pet is running in to get the mob.