Hunter auto-targeting is back! Please take it away.

I've spent all my time since the pre-patch launched cleaning up thousands of BOEs, so today was my first day trying out group content since then. I jumped into a timewalking dungeon, and was happily DPSing until a few pulls in. The final mob of the group we had pulled was dying as I hit Cobra Shot, which is instant now, and my character automatically targeted a mob in the next group and fired that Cobra Shot to them instead! I don't really like being that hunter that pulls extra mobs, so I became startled and a bit nervous. I was thinking "this doesn't feel right, is this how it always has been?" trying my best to remember. Then it happened again a few pulls later, although luckily for me, the mob I was auto-targeting wasn't in line of sight, so I quickly de-selected them. "Something is NOT right!"

I turned to Twitter, and found more hunters that had found this issue, and then I found this old post at WHU about the removal of auto-targeting for hunters in patch 4.1. And now I remember the change! And how much I liked it. And that it boosted my confidence a bit in dungeons, not longer that worried to do something stupid...

I don't know why auto-targeting is back. It could be because Survival is now a melee spec. Auto-targeting is awsome if you're a melee player! But if you're a ranged player with auto-attacks (autoshot) and only instant abilities and a pet on "Assist" it's pretty bad!

Yes, I can put my pet on "Defensive", and I guess I could try to always have my back to the next group or max range to the group we're fighting, but these are not always viable solutions.

There was a reason auto-targeting was removed for hunters back in Cataclysm, so please remove it for BM and MM again! I want to keep doing my reliable tab-targeting.

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Edit: I've tested a bit, standing 30 yards away from the testing dummy in Stormshield.

Abilities and macros that trigger auto-targeting:

• A Murder of Crows
• Barrage
• Dire Beast
• /startattack

Abilities that don't trigger auto-targeting:

• Bestial Wrath
• Chimaera Shot
• Cobra Shot
• Concussive Shot
• Counter Shot
• Dire Frenzy
• Intimidation
• Kill Command
• Multi-Shot
• Stampede (although they run in front of you, mowing down everything, so don't use it when you're trying not to pull mobs that are close)
• Wyvern Sting

Macro to prevent auto-targeting:

/cast [@target, exists] A Murder of Crows

(insert Barrage or Dire Beast instead of A Murder of Crows for those respective abilities)

I'm happy with this fix now. I'm gonna be using /startattack with Multi-Shot, and /cast [@target, exists] on the three listed problem-abilities. Hope you all are able to sort out stuff like you want to too, whether you like to autoselect targets or not. :)

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I'm playing Beast Mastery again, and my plan is to have Lae as my main in Legion. :)