1.0 - The Hunter
2.0 - Hunter Abilities
3.0 - Leveling
4.0 - PvP
5.0 - Raiding
This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the class. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on this class, check out this guide here.
1.0 - The Hunter
When I think of hunter, I think beastmaster, no not the actual talent build I mean the movie, it’s just that instead of commanding around a pair of ferrets we get our pick of a few slightly larger and more powerful specimens. This makes them useful for killing yes, but they lack the inherent likability of ferrets, leaving us instead with lean, mean, destruction machines – A regrettable downgrade.
However, pets provide us with an amazing synergy between what is the greatest non-player tank and the highest solo DPS class in the game, a hunter and his pet being the equivalent of a priest/warrior leveling team, just packed into a single class.
With proper mastery of these capabilities hunters become of the most powerful classes in the game, possessing numerous abilities dedicated to keep us both alive and continually capable of retaliating in any number of PvP and PvE situations.
You’d likely find hunters and rogues quite the close match, both have immense problems with overpopulation leading to every guild in existence practically teeming with rogues and hunters, threatening to overflow even.
This both inhibits your ability to gain positions on Arena teams as well as raids, requiring any given hunter to prove
themselves ten times over to truly set them apart from the vast flock of players more aptly named “Huntards” by the majority of players.
The good news is that of you truly are a hunter of exceptional skills, it’ll be easily visible within at most a fight or two. This is due to difference between good and bad hunters being so dramatic as to divide them into almost alternate classes entirely, namely the huntards who bring ‘leet melee dps’ and those who actually take the time to lay traps and prefer the field of ranged combat if at all possible.
Alliance Races
To begin with we’ll check out Draenei, an all round good hunter race to choose due to a couple reasons. First would be the presence of a HoT, gift of the naaru, giving you a viable method of reducing downtime/surviving tough battles if need be.
Second and far more apparent at higher levels is the +1% hit aura, an extremely useful aura for raiding hunters as every point counts once you hit the endgame, of course this also improves your solo DPS capabilities, it’s just more apparent in teams.
Night Elves are a fairly good PvP race, the shadowmeld racial coming quite in handy for ambushing unsuspecting players in both world PvP, Battlegrounds, and Arena. Additionally it can be used for hiding from higher levels/gank squads while leveling.
Night Elf hunters also gain the benefit of a 1% dodge chance increase, another bonus to stack with aspect of the monkey when forced into melee, more often times this’ll happen in PvP as opposed to PvE but it’s a nice passive increase.
Finally, dwarf hunters are considered by many to be the best alliance race choice due to gun specialization, increasing the chance to critically strike with all guns by 1%, an increase on a level with a talent point or two.
The benefits of stone form are simply icing on the cake at that point, highly useful against rogues in PvP which are something of our mortal enemy in many battlegrounds.
Horde Races
Of the horde races we’ll begin with blood elves, another average/somewhat good yet not particularly standout race much like Draenei are on alliance side, however in this case the racial ability benefits PvP as opposed to PvE.
Arcane Torrent/Mana tap can be used to both replenish mediocre amounts of mana, something hunters do require to maintain good DPS, but more importantly the latter can be used as an AoE silence/interruption when forced into melee range with caster classes.
Tauren are yet another generally PvP viable hunter race, gaining a 5% bonus to health that is ever valuable in the realm of massive burst damage where every point counts. You’ll also gain the benefit of warstomp, an AoE stun that may allow you to gain range from melee classes.
Trolls and Orcs are likely the two most favored Horde races for hunters, both possessing the greatest racial abilities for DPS with one being slightly better in PvE while the other gains an advantage in PvP. Trolls possess the Berserking racial, a potent DPS increase for sustained DPS but made even greater when combined with Bow Specialization, a 1% increase to critical chance with all bows.
Orcs on the other hand gain the benefit of Blood Fury, another great DPS increaser, as well as 5% more pet damage via Command and a 15% resistance to all stuns with Hardiness, immensely useful in PvP situations due to the prevalence of rogues.
Tradeskills
My recommendation for tradeskills/professions is to pick up the leatherworking/skinning combo, allowing you to not only make large amounts of cash from selling skins but to support your own leatherworking skill gain.
Leatherworking gives you the benefit of making both armor and drums of battle, the latter being a great end-game buff for raiders while the former can come in handy at any level so long as you keep the skill within decent range of the gear suitable to your level.
Optionally you could wait to get leatherworking until 70, instead picking up Mining or Herbalism and using this to generate even more money to afford epic mounts and the like, eventually dropping it to powerlevel leatherworking with excess cash.
2.0 - Hunter Abilities
Hunter abilities are distributed about 2/3’s into our own powers and such with the remaining 1/3 being the slew of pet specific talents such as mend pet, revive, etc. This number of course increases should you specialize into beast mastery.
Properly using a hunter of course depends on the efficient usage of our pet, whether that be for tanking as beast mastery, additional DPS as marksman due to declining threat gain without talent tree buffs, or simply a distraction as Survival in PvP.
Of course it’ll be slightly annoying constantly taming and training new pets for the period of time required to learn new skills to train your own, but it’s worth it in the end for the increased DPS and tanking abilities.
Marksmanship
The marksmanship tree is comprised of all our ranged special attacks, basically being the namesake tree for hunters due to the classes large emphasis on ranged combat despite the presence of an almost strictly melee tree in Survival.
With enough points into this tree you gain the benefit of a literal arsenal of varying shot types, everything from aimed shot for massive opening damage critical to steady shot for consistent DPS and arcane shot with a dispel effect.
Almost all of the damage efficiency of marksmanship comes from maintaining a picture perfect shot rotation. This
applies to both PvP and PvE, with PvP of course being slightly more hectic and thus more difficult to gain the maximum benefit of the marksmanship tree except when ambushing players.
Beast Mastery
Beast mastery fulfills yet another crucial role in the hunter class, the application of our pets, and with some points in the beast mastery talent tree even the improvement of our pets to more than a simple assistant.
Abilities such as Bestial Wrath and Intimidation refresh an otherwise failing tank pet, as most non-beast mastery hunters will find that the pet declines in aggro holding capabilities until becoming mostly a pure-DPS almost DoT at 60+
However not only does this tree maintain the pets effectiveness at tanking, but also brings massive amounts of dual improvement in DPS, regeneration, and a variety of other abilities via multiple talents that apply increases to both the hunter and Pet, notably The Beast Within.
Survival
Often times you’ll find that survival tree acts as something of a side-dish tree of abilities in PvE, only becoming a fully viable and required tree once you begin to hit the battlegrounds and discover just how hard it can be to survive in the face of overwhelming opposition.
Wingclip is a favorite from this tree, a reliable snare that comes in handy nigh every fight should you be required to kite at all, which is more likely in the case of marksmanship hunters as opposed to beast mastery.
Of course this tree also holds one key element of the entire class, traps. Improvements to traps result in a massive
increase of our survivability, making it much more likely that you’ll prevent a multiple mob pull from getting out of hand and with some of the latter talents making you almost tank-like due to HP increases and dodge.
All in all a fun tree to experiment with, although more-so in PvP than PvE.
This section is only an overview of hunter leveling, check out our Hunter Leveling Guide for more information.
3.0 - Leveling
Leveling as a hunter, when done right, can be compared to the pleasure of slowly sipping down a nice glass of (insert cold beverage of choice here) on a hot summer day, pleasurable and luxuriously easy – Just the way I like it to be when I level.
Of course not all players take it the right way, many over emphasize equipment, others forget to train pet skills, but all of this truly takes away more time in the long run than you might gain from skipping it temporarily.
Thankfully all three styles of hunter builds are viable for leveling, catering to those who prefer to snipe from a long range, sick enraged cats on people, and the smaller yet equally capable crowd that likes the tactical challenge of survival from 1-70.
Marksmanship Hunter Leveling
7/42/12 Marksmanship Leveling Build
Marksmanship leveling follows the much loved style of nuking the opposition form orbit (or at least a fairly large distance,) as it’s really the only way to be sure of victory. To make things even better, you’ll likely kill your target before they even reach you, making it fairly easy to continually pull mobs without a single second of downtime.
Aimed shot, concussion shot, viper sting, etc. The combination of this overwhelming firepower is too much for any monster within around 3-4 levels of your own to resist succumbing to the damage output a hunter is capable of, your effectiveness only increasing with level.
I found it extremely easy to take an undergeared and perpetually broke hunter from 1-70 without ever taking a trip into town aside from every 10-15 levels to train skills, skipping the auction house entirely in favor of quested gear.
So, if that’s not enough to convince you, marksman is both entertaining and easy, try it if the image of a lone-gunman suits your playstyle.
Beast Mastery Hunter Leveling
46/12/3 Beast Mastery Leveling Build
Despite all praises I may have for marksman as a method of leveling, beast mastery somehow manages to surpass even this, setting a new bar for soloing capabilities only matched by demonologist warlocks with a felguard in tow.
The majority of beast masteries overwhelming leveling speed comes from the fact that many beast mastery talents not only improve the pet but the hunter himself to a lesser extent. More pet damage equals more hunter damage, not equaling the level of marksmanship necessarily, but still more than enough to make you an even greater killing machine than ever before.
Finally the pet’s tanking ability becomes almost unstoppable with beastial wrath and intimidation, allowing you to run from fight to fight, even with elites, without ever taking a scratch and wasting barely ten seconds healing the pet from any damage taken.
The only absolute necessity is to keep your pets skills at the maximum possible rank at any given time, and even that you can be somewhat lax on without too badly effecting leveling speeds.
Survival Hunter Leveling
5/9/47 Survival Leveling Build
Survival, unlike marksmanship or beast mastery, seems more apt for providing a fun distraction from the usual grind of leveling while still maintaining speeds generally unreachable by any aside from rogues or particular fury warriors/shadow priests.
The concept of spending more time on the tactical approach to combat via traps as opposed to a run n’ gun style of play appeals to both myself and many others, despite its relative slowness compared to the other styles of hunter leveling.
I’d recommend the survival tree for players picking up a hunter to level for perhaps the second or third time, it provides a reasonable change in combat and overall playstyle as to be a refreshing experience without becoming truly tedious at any time.
4.0 - PvP
0/41/20 Marksmanship Arena Build
41/20/0 Beast Mastery Arena Build
Hunter's have two main raid viable builds along with one partially capable build that becomes truly powerful upon reaching the higher level gear of around black temple level. Regardless, this lists the minimum numbers to effectively play a given build in karazhan and similar level dungeons or heroics.
Beast Mastery 41/20/0
Attack Power: 1600+
Critical: 20%+
Hit Rating: 90+
Marksman: 0/43/18
Attack Power: 2000+
Critical: 20%+
Hit Rating: 90+
Survival: 23/38
Attack Power: 1750+
Critical: 25%+
Hit Rating: 90+ |
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