Level 1-58 Hunters Guide

This guide will get you to outlands level 58 with the basic understanding of a Hunter and how to play your class. Hopefully :D

Hunters are the only ranged physical DPS (damaging) class in World of Warcraft. They wield bows, crossbows, or guns to unleash a stream of arrows or bullets at their enemies. Attuned with nature, hunters can track nearly any type of life form and tame beasts to fight alongside them. Pets draw attention away from their masters, allowing a hunter to deal damage from afar (this is called Tanking). A hunter can also place traps for enemies that can harm, slow down, or even incapacitate enemies who trigger them. With many useful abilities, a hunter played well can be a huge asset to a party or a worthy foe.
Racial Abilities
Racials (a race’s abilities) are the first thing to consider before you make your hunter. Some racials are more suited to a hunter than others. But in the end go with what you like but consider these as you roll your hunter.
– Alliance
Draenei – 1% to Hit: this means your hit cap is 1% less than that of other classes, which becomes very important at level 80. Jewel Crafting bonus comes in handy at Level 80, too.
Dwarf – 1% Increase Critical damage from guns, and Stoneform that is handy for PvP (While active, grants immunity to Bleed, Poison, and Disease effects. In addition, Armour increases by 10%. Lasts 8 sec).
Night Elf – Shadowmeld very handy for PvP (Stealth like ability), Reduced chance that melee and ranged attackers will hit you by 2%.
– Horde
Blood Elf - Silence all enemies within 8 yards for 2 sec and restores your Mana. Good for PvP
Orc – Blood Fury – a self buff that increases attack power by per character level. Lasts 15 sec. Duration of Stun effects reduced by an additional 15%. Damage dealt by pets increased by 5%.
Tauren – Warstomp - Stuns up to 5 enemies within 8 yards for 2 sec. Base Health increased by 5%
Troll – Beserking self buff that increases your attack speed by 10% to 30%. At full health the speed increase is 10% with a greater effect up to 30% if you are badly hurt when you activate Berserking. Lasts 10 sec. Increased chance to critically hit with Bows is increased by 1%. Health regeneration increased by 10%. 10% of total Health regeneration may continue during combat.
Choose the race you prefer. I chose Draenei for the heal ability, but other racials are better (horde side mostly: for the pet damage and weapon damage bonuses), but don’t let that put you off choosing an Alliance Hunter.

Gear
To begin with, gear is varied. In the beginning, it doesn’t really matter what gear you come across as you will be swapping and changing it on a day by day basis from quest rewards and drops, but it’s advisable to go for gear with Agility, Stamina, Intellect and, later on, Attack Power. Strength and Spirit don’t do anything for hunters and neither does Mana/5 secs. Some players like to ‘twink’ their characters and this is fine for them, but it’s not really necessary. I got the crossbow “Crystalpine Stinger” at level 27 from the AH (Auction House) and used it all the way up to level 59 Outlands (only because I knew the crossbow you get from Outlands quite early on from Hellsfire is great and it wasn’t worth spending money on other ranged weapons as I know how good this crossbow was going to be). As far as memory serves, the crossbow is the Expedition Repeater from a level 58 quest “Colossal Menace”.
For level 1-58 gear in Azeroth, go for “of the Falcon”, “of the monkey” or, if all else fails, “of the wolf”, though “wolf” isn’t great but the Agility is okay. “Of the monkey” is usually best for Agility and Stamina. Use this website to look for gear.
Weapons
The race you pick determines the ranged weapon you’ll have at the beginning; as Draenei it’s crossbows, as dwarf it’s guns, etc. The melee weapon remains the same: it’s always a dagger/sword. It is worth going to each of the weapons trainers in each city and learning every type of weapon early on; ranged and melee is available to Hunter class. When you come across new and better weapons, it’s an easy swap to level your new weapon straight away on easy mobs. This is easy as a hunter: pet tanks the mobs and you shoot your weapon skill levels go up. Melee weapons aren’t that important for hunters and you really shouldn’t have to use them all that often. As a hunter you are only interested in the stats that are on the melee weapon, that’s why as this present time a Staff is the best weapon in game for hunters at level 80. (Journey’s End) it is best in slot for the stats that are on it. So learn each of the different ones you can, be that Staff, 2 Handed Axe, Polearms, etc., and you are ready for later gear.

Pets
The class you choose will determine your starting point and what pets are available to you. Here are some examples of what you can find in the different starting areas.
Draenei – Cats, Tallstriders, Ravagers, Bears
Dwarfs – Cats, Boars, Bears
N-Elf – Spiders, Cats, Boars, Wolves

Blood Elf – Cats (in 3.1, I’m told, Turtles have set up home along with Bears in the Ghostlands)
Orcs/ Trolls - Scorpions, Boars,
Taurens – Boars, Cats, Wolves

Pets Come in 3 different types: Cunning, Tenacity, and Ferocity. At level 10, any pet will do. Once you get to level 12 -13, start to look at pets more seriously. There are plenty of websites out there; Petopia is the best resource. It is generally accepted knowledge that hunters should level with a Tenacity pet as these pets are designed specially to tank for you. These pets have Improved Growl, more armour and health, and can take the damage from mobs, which is what you want. Now, I’m not saying that a cat (as a Ferocity pet) won’t do this for you; cats will do the job just fine, but for ease and speed, Tenacity pets rule. They are bears, boars, worms, cockalisks, rhinos, and more. It is advisable to find these pets in your starting area and get one of these from the beginning.
If you press N, you can see your talent trees: Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival. We will talk about these a little later; for now, see the tab on the right hand side under yours? That’s your pet’s talent tree. Your pet will start to gain new talent point as it hits level 20 and 1 talent point every 4 levels after that. I will do a post on Tenacity builds and Ferocity builds at a later date.

Professions
It’s probably best to start with Leatherworking (LW) and Skinning. You can make gear for yourself, it’s a nice money-spinner, and it can get you the money you require for upgrades in gear, talents, and mounts quickly. When you get to a high level at a later date, it’s advisable to get Mining and Jewel Crafting (JC) as LW high level has no real use except AH playing. JC has some very nice JC-only gems that far outweigh the LW recipes that you will have. JC gems will give you a good head start for raids. Levelling in Mining isn’t hard, but it can be laborious: it can be levelled to 300 (Outlands) in a few hours.
Secondary Professions
Take all of the Secondary Professions (First Aid, Fishing and Cooking) since they are good money-makers. You’ll be able to feed your pet cheaply; the pet treats at level’s end are expensive and much easier to make yourself. It’s a good idea to get Fishing because it will make levelling in Cooking easier, and there are daily quests that will give you money and a chance for pet/mount rewards.
Levelling
Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, decided to not give pets to level 1 hunters, so you’ll have to wait until level 10 before you get a quest to tame a pet. Unfortunately, this leads to confusion in the class: for the first 10 levels of your hunter’s life, you’ll have a bow and a dagger only. Most hunters will attack mobs and beasts with melee weapons for the first 10 levels, forgetting they actually own a bow. Again, unfortunately, when they do eventually get a pet that will tank for them, they still melee. So very, very wrong. A pet should tank the mobs while you shoot from range this is the essence of a hunter and makes levelling as a hunter that much easier and stand you in good stead when you get into groups and raids.

http://www.bigredkitty.net/2009/03/09/brk-baby-hunter-movie-part-one/
http://www.bigredkitty.net/2009/03/16/brk-baby-hunter-movie-part-two/
http://www.bigredkitty.net/2009/03/16/brk-baby-hunter-movie-part-two/ http://www.bigredkitty.net/2009/03/16/brk-baby-hunter-movie-part-three/
http://odeo.com/episodes/24427933-Project-Lore-BigRedKitty-Baby-Hunter-Part-4

These 4 videos are an excellent guide through the first few levels, and you should take his “kite and kill” ability on through all your levels.
I am sorry to say that the celebrated BigRedKitty won’t be continuing these videos, but at least they’ll give you an idea of what to consider when killing mobs as a hunter.
You can do dungeons that you find along your way; they will have some of the better gear for your level and give nice experience. For speed, though, just do quests. I will talk about instances and a hunter’s role in quests in a later article.

Melee hunter /sigh
There are so many of these: hunters that run in and fight mobs with their dual wield daggers, pets doing nothing, looking bored and bewildered. This is where the term “huntard” comes from: rolling an easy class and not understanding what you are doing or how the class works. Hunters are a “ranged” damaging class, with a pet for a tank or companion DPS (“damage per second” that will increase your DPS by buffing you and its own raw damage). The higher your DPS the faster your target will die. You don’t need to worry about high dps at this point in your hunter life, just keep in mind that DPS is your function later on in groups and raids and managing this again your threat is important. We will talk more about this in another post. You’ll just make things harder for yourself if you run up and use melee weapons.
You can see in the video how easy it is to kite mobs, even at low level, and once you get a pet to tank for you this makes killing mobs so much easier. Don’t run in and melee while your pet is hitting the mob, use your, bow, gun, or crossbow, your main damaging weapon. Mobs will die that much faster if you DON’T melee. You can just use auto shot but, again, that’s not making things easy for you. Use the skills you are given in turn, something that is called “shot rotation”.

Shot Rotation

“Shot rotation” is term for the sequence of abilities you have and when to use them. “Auto shot” will fire with out any help from you and is usually left out of rotations because you have no control over it.
For a low level hunter the “Rotation” will be Serpent sting then (Arcane shot -> Auto Shot). Serpent Sting has a 15 second duration, so when 15 seconds is up, reapply it. Continually do Arcane Shot every 6 seconds as the shot has a 6 second cooldown (CD), so you can only fire it once every 6 seconds;with auto shots in there that will fire without you pressing anything. If you check the Beast Mastery tree, you’ll find that that’s all the shots you have for now. If you look at the Marksmanship tree you will see there are other shots: Aimed shot and Chimera Shot; in the Survival tree there is Explosive Shot and Scatter Shot. These are added into shot rotations depending on your build: Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, or Survival. Beast Mastery is by far the easiest tree to use while levelling as a hunter. This is also a good way to learn shot rotations without overwhelming yourself with too many different shots at a time.

Have fun with your hunter and if you need more advise and help, feel free to email in at thehunterssanctuary@gmail.com

Happy Hunting

3.1 Beast Mastery Build

Although Beast Mastery has taken a knock in recent months from the massive amount of changes to damage and pet damage, its still remains viable in PVE. If have stuck with Beast Mastery through the changes in 3.1 and found damage output to be roughly the same if not slightly increased since the patch.
The Best pet for this spec is still the Devilsaur followed by the spirit beast and then cat/raptor. I know a lot of people are going for Gondira but to be honest I’m really not impressed with it, it’s just lazy blizzard reusing a skin they already have and not creating a new one.

I have been tweaking my Beast Mastery build quite a bit and I’ve found this one to be the best so far. This build has taken a tweaking and I get really good dps out of it.


Shot rotation
Shot rotation remains the same for Beast Mastery, as always
Send pet/ hunter mark macro -> Pet management macro -> Serpent Sting -> Arc Shot -> Multi-Shot -> Steady shot and then its a matter of Steady Shot till the other shots are ready.

Macros

Again the usual macros can be applied
The 1st one being the pet management macro
#showtooltip Bestial Wrath
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Call of the wild
/cast Rabid

This is easy enough 2 keep track of with the Omni CC addon. The tooltip is Bestial Wrath to keep to eye on its CD at all times
2nd macro is my main/spammy macro. Not used to extent, it used to be and now Kill Shot is on the GCD (Global Cool Down) it has to be removed from the original macro. However, this has made things somewhat better. The macro I use for all builds as it is generic.

#showtooltip
/console sound_enablesfx0
/cast Steady Shot
/cast Kill Command
/console sound_enablesfx1
Use this when all other shots are on CD and mash it so kill command is used when it’s available. You will still hear the roar when it’s used.

3rd macro
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Arcane shot, Multi-Shot

The shot macro from Marksmanship yes, just adapted from the Marksmanship one to accommodate Multi-Shot not Aimed Shot. I keep it as 6 seconds, as haste is soft capped for Beast Mastery this duration shouldn’t be a problem. If you do have timing issues depending on how much additional haste you currently have, just change the reset timing accordingly.

Kill Shot
Now kill shot is on the GCD we can no longer add this too macros (it’s a pain but simple enough to remedy. Either put it on its own or you can make another macro easy enough to use
/stopcasting
/cast Kill Shot

Armour Penetration
This still is the best of stats for a hunter and to be honest you don’t need to worry about how much you have. Gear comes with it and you can’t do much about it. Grim Toll does help with DPS but that’s more a Hit issue than Armour Penetration issue. Although Armour Penetration has changed since 3.1 it’s still not a stat to stack on directly. For a Beast Mastery build, it is more important than it is for the other specs as Beast Mastery is a more physical build so keep an eye out for it, but don’t be overly worried.

Pet Talents
Go for the old build with the additional point in both new talents this works out well for DPS. Use addons to regulate pet abilities: KHT, Zhunter, Omni CC to name a few.

3.1 Marksmanship Build

Since 3.1 came out I’ve been trying a few builds, tweaking them here and there trying new pets and new talents. thats why my posts have been rare of late. I’ve come up with what I think are good builds for you to try or base your own builds on.

I have tried all 3 builds now from Beast Mastery to Survival and I’m currently Marksmanship at the moment and loving it. All three specs are viable in all raids and I can still top damage and DPS meters with all of them, so there is no excuse and no opportunity to whine about any spec not pulling its weight. True the hunter builds do need to be balanced more and some builds will do better than others numbers wise, But they all do well and above 3k dps in 10 man Ulduar. Seen as I am using Marksmanship now here is the build and macros I am using:

Here is the Marksmanship spec I’m using at the moment.

Just remember I am hit capped. If you are not; you NEED Focused Aim and therefore will have to pull 3 talents out of the build to complensate for this to put in this Hit increasing talent.

Macros

I use quite a few macros with this spec all of which I have adapted for the other specs I use.

1^st macro is my Chimera/ Pet abilities macro

#showtooltip
/cast Chimera Shot
/cast Call of the wild
/cast Rabid

I tried with chimera of this macro and to be honest, its just too many things to keep track of. Chimera works well on the macro as you hit serpent sting just before your first opener of chimera this means your pet is already in combat so you don’t waste any uptime of call of the wild and rabid in the time your pet gets to your mob.

2^nd macro is my main/spammy macro. Not used to extent, it used to be and now Kill Shot is on the GCD (Global Cool Down) it has to be removed from the original macro. However, this has made things somewhat better. The macro I use for all builds as it is generic.

#showtooltip
/console sound_enablesfx0
/cast Steady Shot
/cast Kill Command
/console sound_enablesfx1

Use this when all other shots are on CD and mash it so kill command is used when it’s available. You will still hear the roar when its used.

3^rd macro

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=4 Arcane shot, Aimed shot

I tweaked this about according to how much haste I have to 4 seconds before it reverts to back Arcane Shot so you dont miss the Aimed shot timer. I tried 6 secs and 3 secs (reset=3) etc and found I had very little chance to hit Aimed before it went back to arcane and I tried reset=6 and found that was far too long Arcane shot was coming back faster and I was waiting for it to swap back Arcane for me to hit it. So try reset=4 and see how it goes. I found this to be the optimal time between macro rotation.

Kill Shot

Now kill shot is on the GCD we can no longer add this too macros (tis a pain but simple enough to remedy. Either put it on its own or you can make another macro easy enough to use

/stopcasting
/cast Kill Shot

This simple macro should stop whatever you are doing (usually Steady Shot) to fire Kill Shot meaning you don’t miss any time waiting for the cast time of Steady Shot to end.

Oh another macro I created to look after Readiness and Rapid Fire is:

#showtooltip
/castsequence Rapid Fire, Readiness, Rapid Fire

This cycles through these two abilities to you can Rapid Fire, changes to Readiness, to you can refresh Rapid Fire to use again.

Shot rotation.

With Marksmanship you have a lot of shots to look after, different timers and more abilities than you can shake a stick at. Use the addons to their best extent. OmniCC, Power Auras, MSBT, KHT will all help you look after timers and shots. If you go do the addons page on the blog, you can see how to configure MSBT and Power Auras and how to set up various other timer notifies and aura reminders.
The best rotation I’ve found is this:
Hunters Mark/send pet -> Serpent Sting -> Chimera Shot macro -> Arcane shot -> Aimed Shot -> Steady Shot macro spam. Now just manages you CD’s as and when they come back. Keep hitting Chimera Shot when its ready and you won’t have to worry about Serpent sting the whole fight on the one mob. Just remember when swapping mobs to fire an opener of Serpent sting-> Chimera shot first.

Pets

I, like every hunter did, went and got and trained a wolf to 80. I took it into heroics and raids and I was very disappointed in its damage, shocked even. My level 79 Moth did more damage on the training dummy than the 80 wolf. So after a lot of research, trying various other pets, lots of recount data and time in IF and heroics levelling pets and trying new builds, I finally decided that for Marksmanship and Survival specs the Raptor and cat where they better pets to go for. After a lot more time and recount data, the raptor won out. Exceptional DPS from that pet over a 10 min time trial on the training dummy with the cat just behind. This is the pet talents I chose and I did try wild hunt too but found with the spec I was using and the 2 points in Unleashed Fury in the Beast Mastery tree the Shark attack worked out much better on DPS.

Marksmanship isn’t for everyone, there is lots to remember, lots of CD and timers to watch and of course Trueshot Aura to remember :D For me though I am loving Marksmanship and will stay this spec. I was Dual specked Beast Mastery/Survival, now I am Beast Mastery/Marksmanship and will stick with this for some time to come. The new workings of Survival where not for me and I will look at Survival in 3.1 in a later post.