Hunter's Guide

1. Introduction
2. Talent Tree
---A. Beast Mastery
---B. Marksman
---C. Survival
---D. Conclusion
3. Pets
4. Gear (stats)
5. Good to know (tricks)
---A. PvE
---B. PvP
---C. Dungeons/Raids
6. AddOns


1. Introduction

If you want to play solo, a hunter is the perfect choice. Their pets become their tanks, and you just stand back and kill the mobs*1 from a distance. That means that hunters need a ranged weapon like a gun or (cross)bow. Hunters are also a very good for farming*2 and grinding*3.


2. Talent Tree (available at level 10)
A. Beast Mastery [BM] (spec)

Beast Mastery is the best spec*4 to level up to the maximum level. You and your pet gain more
health and armor, so you’ll be able to survive longer. The downside is that your DPS (damage per
second) goes a bit down. This spec is because of Beastial Wrath and your defense good for PvP
(Person versus Person). The pet does about 1/3 of the overall damage, so a Beast Master is
almost useless without a pet.

This spec has got certain skills that you can get with the talent points. Such as Intimidation,
Beastial Wrath and The Beast Within.
Intimidation: on the next successful attack, your pet stuns the target for 3 seconds and
causes a high amount of threat.
Bestial Wrath: your pet grows stronger and his attack power gains 50% additional damage
for 18 seconds and the pet does not feel pity, remorse or fear, and this cannot be stopped unless
killed.
The Beast Within: when you activate Bestial Wrath, you will enrage together with your
pet, and the hunter’s attack power will gain 10% additional damage, the cost of your skills will
decrease with 20% for 18 seconds, and you will not feel pity, remorse, fear, and you cannot be
stopped unless killed.

Beast Mastery has got certain skills that aren’t really needed. A duo-spec with Marksman is in
general great for PvE (Person versus Environment), PvP and even dungeons/raids because of your
good defense, your nice amount of damage and when your pet crits and your party gains a buff
that increases their attack speed for a few seconds.

*1 Mob: creature or monster in the environment that you can kill.
*2 Farming: killing creatures to get items that you can sell to get gold.
*3 Grinding: killing creatures to get items that you can sell to get gold and to level up.
*4 Spec: one of the three sides in the talent tree.


B. Marksman [MM] (spec)

Marksman is a good spec for dungeons/raids. Your DPS and critical chance is a lot higher than
with Beast Mastery, so you will kill very fast.
You can use it to level up or go PvP because of the high damage and criticals, but you will steal
aggro from your pet more easily and you won’t have as mana health and armor as with Beast
Mastery (+ Beastial Wrath, BM skill, is véry useful in PvP ). The positive side is that you’re not
completely lost when your pet dies, comparing to Beast Mastery.

This spec has got certain skills that you can get with talent points. Such as Scatter Shot,
Silencing Shot and Aimed Shot.
Scatter Shot: a short-ranged shot that deals 50% weapon damage and disorientates the
target for 4 seconds, but the effect will be gone when the target is hit.
Silencing Shot: a shot that deals 50% weapon and silences the target for 4 seconds (the
target won’t be able to use any mana consuming skills).
Aimed Shot: an aimed shot that increases your ranged damage by 70 and reduces the
target’s healing taken by 50% for 10 seconds.

Marksman is a spec that can stand on his own. There aren’t really any talents there at you
don’t need at all. Though it might be good to duo spec them to BM (more defense), survival or
even both.


C. Survival (spec)

Survival is one of the least used specs. The reason why is because it makes the hunter go melee
more often, so too hard to solo and hard for dungeons and raids. It’s mostly used for PvP
because you’re good in slowing people down, stunning and sleeping them at any distance. Like
Marksman, you’re not lost when your pet dies.

This spec has got certain skills that you can get with talent points. Such as Counterattack,
Wyvern Sting and Readiness.
Counterattack: becomes active after parrying and opponent’s attack. This attack deals 40
damage and immobilizes the target for 5 seconds. This cannot be parried, blocked or dodged.
Wyvern Sting: a sting that puts the target asleep for 12 seconds. Any damage will cancel
the effect. When the target is awake again, the sting will cause 300 nature damage over 12
seconds.
Readiness: when activated, this ability immediately finished the cooldown of your other
hunter abilities.

Survival can be useful for dungeons and raids when you need a good trapper. Freezing trap
puts down a trap that turns the creature into a big ice cube, preventing him to do any damage
for 20 seconds. Any damage will break the trap. Survival has got a talent that decreases the 30
sec cooldown of the trap. This way you can hold the trap as long as you want. It’s good to
have a good trapper with you (to protect healers for example), though this way costs a lot of
points in survival (and you basically throw them away) so your DPS will be lower.


D. Conclusion

The best you can do is start with the Beast Mastery/Marksman duo spec. You’ll have good
Protection, good DPS and you know how to save yourself in any scenario. At max level when you
know more about the talents, skills and gameplay of your class, you can try other things out and
to see what works out the best. But don’t forget, respeccing costs money! (1 gold, second time
5 gold, then 10G, 15G, …).


3. Pets

There are a lot of beasts you can tame in World of Warcraft. Though you must know that every beast has got his own skills (see next page). When you tame a beast, you won’t get all the skills already. You can learn them by taming other beats. When you fight with them, they will teach you a skill that you can learn to your pet.

When we’re talking about health, armor and DPS, it’s important to choose the right pet.
PvE: I always found that a bat or bird are wonderful for PvE. They’re fast with their diving skill and they can hold mass aggro with screech. It does small amount of damage to mobs around the pet, and it lowers the mobs’ attack power. Growl + screech = good aggro keeping. Another fun fact about birds and especially bats is that they’re huge.
PvP: you might want to have a pet that is fast. Pets interrupts spell casters while casting spells, and when you’re a BM, intimidation can stun them (so he needs to be able to catch up). Also try to go for smaller and undetectable pets. Boars are excellent for example, especially with charge (stuns the target for 1 second). Warp stalkers with warp (transports himself about 30 yards further) can be a real pain.
Dungeons/raids: pets are DPS machines in here, so you might want to look for pets with a lot of damage (7%). But don’t forget that your pet needs nice health and armor as well, because when a healer is under attack and the tank doesn’t see it, it’s up to you to send your pet in and let him get aggro. A hunter’s task is more than just DPS and a trap now and then.

Beast list


4. Gear (stats)

A hunter wears leather until level 40, then his gear changes to mail, so you’ll have more armor for defense.
The most important stats are: agility/crit chance, attack power, intellect and stamina. A hunter is not a tank, so stamina or armor aren’t really that important (unless you’re a PvP freak, then you might want to go for some extra health). Otherwise it’s your pet that tanks the mobs, or the tank in dungeons/raids.
Good to know: armor protects you from melee or ranged damge with (cross)bows or guns. Health protects you from spell damage.

You're a ranged class, but you do need a melee weapon for the stats and to do some damage when you’re too close to the target.


5. Good to know (tricks)
A. PvE

° Do the 360: run away from the mob, jump, spin around halfway and use instant
shots
like concussive shot to slow it down, arcane shot for damage or serpent sting to give
it overtime damage. Then just spin back so you did a 360° jump. While doing this
jump you will keep the same speed so your enemy can’t get any closer.
° Wing Clip: don’t be afraid to go straight to your enemy. When you see you can’t
escape, just run towards him, use wing clip to slow him down and keep running.
this way you’ll have some time to run away, do damage and start doing 360’s.
Another fun fact about Wing Clip is that it levels your melee weapon skill so much faster.
Just keep spamming it on lower level mobs, you'll lose some mana and you won't hit that
often, but your skill will increase extremely fast.
° Feign Death: this is a great skill to get all your threat to 0. Your target will go
back to your pet and you can start nuking again like crazy.
° Freezing Trap: put down a trap and run away, the mob will run into the trap and
you’ll have time to go to a save distance, use a bandage when you’re hurt and
there’s a chance that your pet will gain aggro when he attack the cubed mob.


B. PvP

You can always use the same tricks as those from PvE. They’ll certainly save you in there as
well. Though there are some others to protect you from rogues and stealthed druids for
example.

° Freezing trap: when you want to recover and eat/drink something, you might want to
hide yourself into some bushes. But you’re not always save. So when you recover or even
try to mount up, put down a freezing trap and stand just in front of it.. Then you can run
away in time or wing clip and run.
Tip: when you’re putting the trap down, move immediately. Then you don’t see the emote of
You putting it down.
° Flare: when you’re protecting flag in a Battleground, you can use freezing trap and
stand in front of it + do flare around you. Just for that extra safety. Just don’t use flare
when you want to hide in bushes. It can be seen from a long distance, even by your enemy.


C. Dungeons/Raids

There aren’t many tricks that you have to use here, because normally you’re not suppose to
get aggro. Though these are very useful:

° Feign Death: when you see your threat is way too high and you’re getting stealing
aggro
from the tank, use Feign Death to reset your threat. So basically you can keep nuking as
hard as you want all the time. Just keep an eye on your mana and use it wisely.
° Freezing Trap: this trap has got, when you’re not survival specced, a 30 second
cooldown.
When you put the trap down it exists for 1 min. Just put it down and wait until the cooldown
is gone. Then let the tank pull the mobs, and you pull your mob that you’re supposed to trap.
Lead him into the trap and this way you already put down another trap. When you’re lucky
you can even put down a third trap when the cooldown is over. Very effective to increase
the duration of your trap, and if the first trap fails (the mob resists) you can immediately put
another one down as well.
° Misdirection: when the tank has to tank a boss or more than one mob, you should use
this skill. It increases the threat of the person you gave it to. Just don’t forget: when you
need to trap a mob and you gave Misdirection to the tank, it’s véry hard to get aggro from
the mob that you’re supposed to trap to lead him into the trap. Always trap first, then
Misdirect.
° Pet: a healer under attack is very bad. It’s the hunter’s job to protect healers from
getting attacked. What you can do is use distract to get some threat, then trap the target,
or send your pet in with Growl on, and maybe use intimidation when you’re a Beast Master
(doesn’t always work on elites, though). Just do whatever you can to keep the healer alive.
Even if you have to give up your life for it.


6. AddOns

You can find these AddOns on the curse.com website or just try to find them on google.

° Omen (threat meter): this AddOn is good for dungeons/raids but also to solo. You can see
when you’re going to steal aggro from the tank, but also from your pet. So you can use Feign Death
just in time.
° Damage Meter: always nice to how much damage you did and how much crit chance you had.
° Deadly Boss Mods: this is a good AddOn for raids, it warns you about certain things.
° CTRaidAssist: easier to control raids.
° Mobs to level: when you killed a mob, it calculates how many creatures from that level you still
need to kill to level up.
° Coordinator: it shows coordinations on your map, so people can lead you to a certain place
more easily.
° Lightheaded: when you’re a little lazy you can download this one. It shows quest info from
the wowhead.com website, and the coordinations or any numbers are marked in green.
° Mapnotes: use this one together with Lightheaded, and you’ll level véry fast. You can place
notes on your worldmap and even show them on your minimap. With Lightheaded and
coordinator you can look for the questplaces from all the quests you’ve got, mark them on your
map and do a big quest tour. You can also sent the notes to other players.
° Partypooper: getting irritated by people that keep sending you invites? Just press ignore when
he invites you again and problem is solved.
° SpamMeNot: brilliant anti-spam addon. It blocks all the goldspam in /say chat. But don’t forget
to put ‘filter invites’ off when you install this one. Otherwise you’ll never get invited into groups
when you press accept.

If there's any information wrong or when I can add anything, please let me know

Greetings
Aldrundir

Great post.

Rayral just whispered me to suggest that you include shot-rotation in the above. BM/MM Hunters need to consider this in order to maximise DPS for higher content raid encounters.

EDIT: BTW - you are definitely my kind of player...

Aldrundir wrote:...Just do whatever you can to keep the healer alive. Even if you have to give up your life for it.

Hey Aldrundir,
Thx for the amazing guide on the Hunter-class. I have learned some stuff from it ^^. Like be not affraid to use wing clip or how to do the 360° turn ^^.

Anyways: You rock !

Greetz from Belgium ^^

Uniquemod

well here is a gide how to use a bow crossbow or gun that i "borrowd" from the old raiding cominity and its writen by ladana hope it will help u:

Using your gun / bow / crossbow

* Use a shot cycle and stick with it, unless there is a really good reason (need for burst damage). Basically, there are only 2 viable shot cycles. If your attack speed is around 2.00s - 2.30s, use 1:1 (steady - auto), if your attack speed is close to 3.00 seconds, use a 1:1.5 (steady - auto - multi - auto - arcane - steady - auto). Later Cycle will however make you chain chugg mana pots.
Details on shot cycles can be found here
* Do not use Aimed Shot. It actually reduces your dps. Aimed shot is at best an opener in solo PvE and a PvP tool if your enemy is frozen.
* When building your shot cycle, do not only consider your maximum dps, but also your maximum damage before you go OOM. Doing one minute of burst damage at 500 dps with 30.000 damage total, or 2 minutes at 440 dps with 60.000 damage total is a huge difference. Most fights are far longer than a minute.
* Bring Mana pots, learn when to use them. Use Aspect of the Viper in long fights (another reason why improved aspect of the hawk is pretty useless, as you wont have it up all the time). Learn to manage your mana.
* Serpent Sting is not worth it, unless you are seriously bored or the fight is explicitly short, and wont be worth it in 2.3. The damage per mana is better used elsewhere. Besides, it cannot crit.