First, I would just like to say hello to the community here, this is my first post here as I usually frequent the steam forums for Left 4 Dead. I wanted to contribute my findings about hunter mechanics and techniques, so I have copied the thread of mine from the steam forums which include my findings from a week after release, to today. Some of the terminology I use may be different that the hunter tutorial here, but it all means the same thing. As usual, anyone who aided in the thread, or found something independently of me has been quoted or credited. Enjoy.

I decided to create a compendium of my Hunter knowledge, so that it can be discussed, corrected, and improved for hunters everywhere. I'll start off by stating the properties of hunter jumps and wall jumps, these are the building block mechanics hunters have to "jump" off of.

*update* Added instructions on how to create a practice server at the end of the post.

*update 2* Pounce sliding has been (mostly) figured out.

update 3 Video links are being added for the more technical mechanics. In the links the videos are also availible for download so they can be played in high quality for a better look at what's going on.

update 4 New mechanic released for mass testing, the "bunny pounce", see the section below on how to do it.

update 5 New video links have been added, they should be quite high quality, if there are any problems, let me know.

*UPDATE 6* Bunny pouncing has been solved, go to that section for details.

As a disclaimer, I turn you over to -Onions-:

Use the practice server setting at the bottom of the guide to practice these, because no one wants a hunter on their team pouncing around like a hopping chicken with its head cut off.

Pounce:

Fairly simple, the hunter's best friend. Causing up to 25 damage maximum (yes, even while on fire) depending *solely* on the distance from point a (jumping off point) to b (victim). It can be hard to quantify how much distance will net you a 25, so get out there and find your favorite spots. I find new 25's every day, and soon me and a friend will try to release a tutorial to show hunters just where they all are. *Fire now does nothing for the hunter, and I for one, don't care. I also want to add that you do not need to hit crouch again to wall jump at any time. If you know you're going to hit the floor though, you'll want to tap or hold crouch just before you hit the floor to immediately jump again.

*Patched Mechanic*
The hunter initial damage from pounce has been altered, and needs to be tested to see if it has an impact on the hunter meta-game.
*Needs testing*

In addition to everything above, if you pounce someone close to his teammates, said teammates will be stunned and shoved away seven or eight feet. They are always pushed away in relation to where the teammate is that got pounced, and while slightly useful in most scenarios, there are some maps that give this mechanic potential. If you mange to stun someone off a ledge, it will incapacitate them in the hanging state, functioning exactly like as if a smoker pulled them off.

*New mechanic*

It's been elusive to nail down, but the "push" mechanic of pounces is indeed a consistent and intended mechanic. For anyone who doesn't know, you can "push" people off surfaces for extra damage in pounces, while it has a minimum drop distance of about 35 feet to do damage, it scales up VERY quickly, getting up to 75+ damage at 45+ feet for a fall. To do this, pounce someone on a ladder (no mercy map 3, final ladder is a great place), you may not see it, but when you pin them to the ground below the game will make a "ding" noise confirming the push damage, if you're in the air long enough or don't do initial pounce damage, you will see "player pushed other player for xx damage". This is extremely deadly, and I would like to see if there are other ways this mechanic can be implimented into the hunter game.
*Needs testing*

Pounce Sliding:

Third person: http://iwantbrains.com/videos/JumpSlideThirdPerson.wmv
First person: http://iwantbrains.com/videos/JumpSlideFirstPerson.wmv

Something I'm sure everyone has accidentally done, you can actually slide your jump if you know what you're looking for. If you hit *any* edge of a surface at the end of a pounce, you will slide off the edge with the velocity and angle you hit it at. The angle and speed of approach is irrelevant for the success of this mechanic, the sweet spot for sliding is *very* hard to hit, so if you're going to try it, prepare for a lot of practice, or a little luck. The most important part of this mechanic is that it DOES NOT re-set your jump distance like wall jumping does, thus, elongating your jump for more damage and range. The places you can do this tech and hit someone are very few, but if mastered, can really take people by surprise and do a lot of damage.
*TESTING DONE*

I am now 90% sure that pounce sliding is cause by landing on the ankles/feet part of the hunters model on the edge you want to slide off. I will have a video linked to this soon. This is why curving is so important, because curving positions your model so that you can hit the edge with nothing but your models ankles/feet.

Wall jump:

A hunter's best *best* friend. The true virtue of the wall jump itself, is it's ability to get a hunter out of bad situations quickly. If you miss a jump, bounce off the floor, get out of there, and re-set. The wall jump can also be used as a wonderful distraction, if you can wall jump quickly and accurately, you can distract a group of survivors long enough for a boomer or smoker to make his move. The actual mechanics of the wall jump are generally known, but haven't been specifically discussed much. Left click to jump off wall when you hit it, right? Well, there's much more to it. First off, wall jumping has minimum angle requierments. These numbers aren't quite concrete, but they are very close to accurate for in game purposes. You must be looking roughly ten degrees away from the wall, and at least 10 degrees up or down, to initiate a wall jump. This creates a conical "jump zone" while you are touching or gliding on a surface you can leap off of.

*old-ish mechanic, new to the post*

Since people have been talking about it so much, I'll explain the "silent wall jump", if you pounce once as a hunter during that specific life as a hunter without wall jumping with that pounce, you can do the "silent pounce". After you've done a normal pounce, you can then jump against a wall (Like a wall jump, but you're just normally jumping) and left click. You will hop off the wall instantly. This is useful if the survivors are either bad, or bogged down and can't kill a hunter whose been bashed off for a quick getaway. This isn't so useful as an attack opener, it may work here and there, but it's not as useful as the other techs are for openers.

Also, you do *not* have to hold crouch the entire time, and it's actually better if you don't. I'll explain why next...

Jump curving:

Third person: http://iwantbrains.com/videos/CurveThirdPerson.wmv
First person: http://iwantbrains.com/videos/CurveFirstPerson.wmv

Many people know you can slow or even stop your jump mid-air by using the "s" key, but for those of use who have "surfed" in CS or TF2, we know that "a" and "d" are even more useful. Using your mouse look, and "a" and "d" you can curve your jump to an extent. Obviously this has great utility for correcting your aim mid air, but it also has some more technical uses involving wall jumping. First, I'll explain how to curve specifically. To curve left, gradually look to the left and hold "a" mid air, it's the opposite for right. If you are holding crouch, stop it! You're losing a lot of air control if you do, so stand up mid air to better your curving. Now for wall jumping, knowing the minimum wall jump degree "cone" helps here, as you can curve yourself into a wall you would have otherwise missed, and jump off of it. Curving also helps you attack from places survivors can't see. Now, curving leads to an even more advanced tech...

Strafe Jumping, A.K.A, Kai Jumping

This tech comes in two versions, diagonal, and vertical. I'll explain diagonal first, since it's the easier of the two. To attempt this, it would bee a good idea to have wall jumping, and curve jumping mastered first.

Diagonal:

Third person: http://iwantbrains.com/videos/DiagonalThirdPerson.wmv
First person: http://iwantbrains.com/videos/DiagonalFirstPerson.wmv

To do this, first you must find a relevant place to practice it. No Mercy 1, off of the spawn to the right there is a really tall building with some stairs on it, that's where I suggest to practice both of these. Once there, remind yourself of the jump degree cone, because it's going to be really important. Jump and curve into the wall you want to do this on at a 45 degree angle upward (diagonal is focusing on both horizontal and vertical distance). When you curve into the wall to jump, look 10 degrees away, and jump again, holding your strafe button to curve the entire time, curve *back* into the wall, and do it again. Doing this, you can jump up a single wall diagonally. You can, of course, adjust your angle for what is appropriate, but much under 30 and you start to lost altitude. This is best suited for long flat walls close to areas the survivors pass by, and can easily get 25's in places you can't usually jump from. For vertical distance without much space to work with, try vertical...

Vertical: Much more difficult than diagonal vertical requiers that you have the following mastered: Wall jumping, curve jumping, diagonal jumping, jump cone.

First person: http://iwantbrains.com/videos/KaiJumpFirstPerson.wmv
Third person: http://iwantbrains.com/videos/KaiJumpThirdPerson.wmv

To perform this, begin your jump just as you would for a diagonal, only instead of around a 45 degree angle up, you will need to use something much closer to 75/80. Do your first jump, but instead of holding your strafe key, and looking away from the wall again, turn all the way around towards the wall, going from your beginning strafe key, to "w", to the opposite strafe key.
The goal of this is to keep yourself sliding on the wall the entire time you're turning around, once turned around, proceed just you would with a diagonal jump with an angle of 75-80 still. If you can repeat this, congratulations, you've learned the hardest hunter tech I know of. This is useful for 25's in mostly unknown and unexpected places, much faster setups for jumps, awkward escape angles, and very high angled attacks.

*100% vertical* method of vertical oriented hunter jumping.

Third person: http://iwantbrains.com/videos/VerticalThirdPerson.wmv
First person: http://iwantbrains.com/videos/VerticalFirstPerson.wmv

You can climb straight up any mostly flat surface, no matter how thin it is. To do this, simply put your back to the surface you want to climb, hold "s", jump straight up, and wall jump by looking 10 degrees down. While holding "s" you will continually go back to the wall. While this tech gains no horizontal distance, and gains it's vertical the same speed as the strafing method, it is much easier, and just as applicable in many scenarios.

^credit: Foxdie^

NEW TECH!!
Bunny Pounce

This combines the oldschool "bunny hop" that most veteran steam gamers know and love, and applies it to the hunter game. As posted and discussed before, you can bunny hop from a pounce with the correct timing of the space bar. Using the momentum of a low angle pounce, you can launch yourself at a low angle, long range jump. The problem is, is that most of the time, it is just a *jump* and not a pounce (this will be discussed later). The best method of using this tech/mechanic is to do a single low angle pounce, hold the direction key you want to use to move (A, W, or D), hit space with the right timing, and land on your target. The most difficult part is the bunny hop timing, so don't get frustrated if you don't get it.

Bunny pouncing has been solved, for a quick explanation and tutorial, here's kraljevo8's thread on it: http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...d.php?t=825136 Basically, in order to use this to pounce, you need to be looking at -1 degrees or lower on the pounce before the bunny hop. It's still a difficult tech to master, but will expand the hunter game.
still needs some testing

This is what I know, and I wanted to share this with the community in hopes of upping everyone's hunter game. If you have anything to add, questions, or corrections, please let me know. Hopefully soon there will be video tutorials to go with this, but until then, send me a PM to add me in steam to practice with me in-game.

If you want to watch all the tech videos in one stream, here's the master video list: http://iwantbrains.com/

To practice on your own, use the following:


At the main menu with console enabled, drop console and type "Map l4d_vs", use the arrow keys to cycle through the vs maps until you find the one you want. Hit enter and you'll start your own server, when the game starts, drop console again and type these commands:

sv_cheats 1
director_stop
sb_stop 1
sb_all_bot_team 1

Along with those command, you'll want to know these commands:

z_spawn <class> (class is hunter, boomer, tank, smoker, and witch)
god
give health (use this to be able to pounce again as a hunter)
noclip
fire
jointeam 2 (join survivors)
jointeam 3 (for infected)



Good hunting, and as always, questions are welcomed.

recently i have discovered a group which gives u access to modified servers which allow you to play hunter games such as tag,hot lava,25 pounce,and pounce races its a good bit of fun if u ever get board of normal l4d vs games let me know if u want to check out one of their servers and ill send u a invite see of you like it