• 1.0 - The Hunter
  • Some 3.2 Patch Notes
  • Hunter Races
  • Recommended Tradeskills
• 2.0 - Hunter Abilities and Leveling
  • Marksman
  • Beast Mastery
  • Survival
• 3.0 - PvP notes and builds
• 4.0 - Stats and Numbers
• 5.0 - Raiding Basics
• 6.0 - 1-80 Hunter Leveling Guide

This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the Hunter. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on this class, check out the Killer Guides' Hunter 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 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 what may be the highest solo DPS class in the game. A Hunter and his pet being almost the equivalent of a priest/warrior leveling team, just packed into a single class.

With proper mastery of their capabilities Hunters become one 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’ll 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 if 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 entirely different classes, namely the huntards who bring ‘leet melee dps’ and those who actually take the time to lay traps and prefer their proper field of ranged combat, if at all possible.

3.2 Patch Notes

And 3.2 spells doom for all Hunters. Well, not really.

• Agility nerf - more Agility, as well as more Dodge Rating, will be needed for every point of Dodge.
• Mounts are available at level 20
• Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.
• All pets now receive 40% of their master's resilience and 100% of their master's spell penetration. In addition, if a player is at their appropriate spell hit chance or hit chance maximum, their pet will be at the maximum for spell hit chance, hit chance, and expertise. If they are below the maximum, their pet will be proportionately below those maximums.
• Traps now have separate 30-second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.
• Miscellaneous talent changes and bug fixes.

Hunter Races

Alliance

Draenei

To begin with we’ll check out the Draenei, an all round good hunter race to choose due to a couple reasons.  First would be the presence of a small HoT, Gift of the Naaru, giving you a viable method of reducing downtime/surviving tough battles if need be.

Second, and far more useful for raiding at higher levels, is the +1% hit aura, a useful aura for raiding hunters as every point of hit rating counts once you hit the endgame raids. Of course this also improves your solo DPS capabilities, it’s just more apparent in teams since it affects the entire team.

Night Elves

A fairly good PvP race, the Shadowmeld racial coming 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. Since

Dwarves

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. Rogues are something of our mortal enemy in many battlegrounds.

Horde Races

Blood Elves

Of the horde races we’ll begin with the 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 can be used to both replenish mediocre amounts of mana, something hunters do require to maintain good DPS, but more importantly can be used as an AoE silence/interruption when forced into melee range with caster classes. Paladins, for example.

Tauren

Tauren are yet another generally PvP viable Hunter race, gaining a 5% bonus to health that is always valuable in the realm of massive PvP 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

are likely the most favored Horde race for hunters, possessing a decent racial abilities for DPS. Trolls possess the Berserking racial, a potent DPS increase for sustained DPS, with the unfortunate downside that the Troll Hunter must be low on Health to get the most out of this ability. Trolls get Bow Specialization, a 1% increase to critical chance with all bows, which is nice, and they also get +5% damage to beasts. Given the number of beasts in the game this makes a small, but nice, increase to killing efficiency whicle leveling and in some raiding situations. A somewhat useful PvP ability is the reduced duration Trolls get from movement reducing effects.

Orcs

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, useful in PvP situations due to the prevalence of Rogues and other classes with stuns.

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 80, 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.

Generally, crafting skills should be avoided unless you have that excess cash, since they are very expensive to level.

• Leatherworking - for the gear , but it's expensive to level.
• Skinning - to make money and support your leatherworking skill.
• Mining and Herbalism are great cash grinding skills
• Inscription is a great skill to make money, but if you just want your glyphs then it's way cheaper to buy them than to level this profession.
• First aid is essential Keep it maxed at all times.
• Cooking is useful as many of the foods you create will have interesting buffs, as well as allowing youi to regain health and mana.

2.0 - Hunter Abilities and Leveling

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 pet abilities 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. The 3.1 patch series has made the training and teaching of your pets somewhat easier. In addition, Hunters can now train more exotic pets, such as the T Rex's wandering around Ungoro Crater.

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 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 1-80.

This section is only an overview of hunter leveling, check out our Hunter Leveling Guide for more information, talent builds, and stuff. If you need a step-by-step guide to go from 1 to 80 (or any level to 80) then check out our recommended leveling guide, below.

Marksmanship

The marksmanship tree is comprised of all our ranged special attacks, basically being the namesake tree for hunters, due to the class's 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 fierce arsenal of shot types, everything from aimed shot, for a massive opening damage critical, to steady shot for consistent DPS and arcane shot with its 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.

Marksmanship Hunter Leveling

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 it even reaches 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 increases with your level.

I found it extremely easy to take an undergeared and  perpetually broke hunter from 1-80 without ever taking a trip into town, aside from every 10 or so levels to train skills, even 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. Of course, that kind of ranged damage will make you a valuable team member, as well.

See our Marksman Hunter guide for more info on this build.

Beast Mastery

Beast mastery fulfills yet another crucial role in the hunter class, the improvement of our pets. These talents will take the pet from being just an assitant to something far greater. .

Abilities such as Bestial Wrath and Intimidation refresh an otherwise failing tank pet. Most non-beast mastery Hunters will find that the pet declines in aggro holding capabilities, becoming mostly a pure-DPS, almost DoT, pet at 60+.

However, not only does this tree maintain the pet's effectiveness at tanking, but also brings massive amounts of improvement in DPS, regeneration, and a variety of other abilities - via multiple talents that apply increases to both the Hunter and the Pet, notably The Beast Within.

Beast Mastery Hunter Leveling

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 Mastery's 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.

See our Beast Mastery and Hunter Leveling Guides for more on this build.

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 bent on seeing you die.

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. Ssome 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.

Survival Hunter Leveling

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 Fury Warriors.

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 and is a refreshing experience without becoming truly tedious at any time.

See our page on the Survival Hunter for more.

3.0 - Hunter PvP

Stay out of melee - While Hunters can dish out enough melee damage to function for leveling it doesn't work so well for PvP. Any other melee class will lock you up and shut you down. Use your abilites to get out of melee ASAP and get back to your strength, ranged devastation.

Hunters can be very effective at PvP, but like any other class they have to play to their stengths and minimize their weaknesses. Hone the skills that keep the opposition controlled and away from you. Learn the skills that apply the highest burst damage for those times when you can just blast away.

While your pet will be completely unable to tank another player it can be a very valuable DPS addition. It can also initiate an attack, allowing you to get several shots in before the other player finds and targets you. Some pets, such as those with large wing spans, can obscure the vision of the other player.

Traps laid down in bottleneck areas, such as the tunnels in Warsong Gulch, or the entries to either base in Atarac Valley, or right next to (or on top of) a flag can be very valuable. Crowd Control abilities can be every bit as useful as raw damage.

Arena - There are plenty of Hunters in the top ranked 5s bracket, a few in the 3s, and a very few in the 2s. This probably means that Hunters are best in a group PvP situation. Get a team and communicate with each other. This doesn't mean that there's no chance in 2s or any other form of PvP, just that the job might be a bit tougher. Hunter/Druid (Balance or Resto) seems to be a good 2x2 combo.

The Arena builds below are for Season 6 and will likely need to be tweaked for later seasons.

Hunter PvP Builds

Marksmanship & Survival PvP Build 5/55/11

• This is a general group PvP build

Survival 2x2 Arena Build 0/14/57

• High ranking 2x2 player, note that it's a Blood Elf. With a 2700+ rating.
• This build also includes the glyphs used and the pet builds

Marksmanship 5x5 Arena Build 0/58/13

• Orc player with 2870 personal rating

Major Glyphs

• Disengage: The disengage glyph is largely considered the most "must have" of any of the hunter glyphs and can be considered just as powerful as intervene reductions are for warriors.
• Aspect of the Monkey: This Glyph gives the hunter a speed boost when he dodges and works with both Monkey and Dragonhawk aspects. Anytime you can move faster you can kite easier and position faster.
• Wyvern Sting: This Glyph lowers the CD of Wyvern Sting which makes the ability more available and can help you set up that game ending CC chain sooner.
• Frost Trap: This glyph is useful for increasing the area of effect of your frost trap making kiting easier for you and your team mates. The general consensus is that Frost/Wyvern are the 2 swing glphs for the 3rd major slot and Wyvern is more useful for 2v2 due to the control nature of the bracket and Frost is more useful for 3v3 and 5v5 due to the amount of players it can affect and the need to kite multiple melee at times. Experiement with different combiantions to find the one that suits you and your teams best.

Minor Glyphs

• Feign Death: The CD of your feign death is beneficial as it increase the amount of time you can target drop and interrupt casts (on yourself) with the feign death ability. This is one of the most popular minor glyphs.
• Mend Pet: This glyph adds 20 happiness to your pet per each tick of mend pet. It's useful for getting your pet to 125% damage again (happy) after a death or due to happiness decay. While only minorly useful in the arena it's better than the revive pet glyph for a non BM hunter.
• Revive Pet: While the glyph is more useful in conjunction with the Imp revive pet talent this glyph has its place in some hunter builds. It is pretty close to useless as a hunter w/o the imp revive pet talent as a 10 second cast is generally impossible to get off under normal circumstances and saving 1.0 seconds of pushback isn't going to make a difference.
• Scare Beast: Being able to get off a scar beast, cast while under pressure, can save your life and your teammate's life, as well as makes it easier to catch a resto druid in beast form.

Hunter PvP (Arena) Pet info

ArenaJunkies.com recommends using a Tenacity build for your pet. Here's an example tenacity build. Note that the 3.2 patch may change this a bit. The core talents are these:

• Roar of Sacrifice: The ability is useful for dampening burst attempts on your team mates.
• Intervene: This ability can be used to help prevent saps/openers on you or your partners, It can also eat death grips and is valuable indirectly as a quick way to move your pet away from enemy players.
• Blood of the Rhino: Blood of the Rhino offers further stamina and also increases healing received by 40% which makes it easier for you (mend pet) and your healer to keep your pet alive.

Crabs are popular due to their class ability pin, a four second root. Turtles, also very popular, have the shell shield ability which helps them mitigate incomming damage.

The Stats and the Numbers

1. Agility - Your #1 stat. Adds to your ranged DPS, your crit chance, your dodge, and some armor.
2. Stamina - Keeps you alive . You need more for PvP than either Raiding or Leveling.
3. Intelligence - Builds your mana pool
4. Strength - You don't need strength as it doesn't help with your ranged attacks.
5. Spirit - Useless
6. Attack Power - Directly increases you damage. Get as much as you can.
7. Crit rating - Just as important as Attack Power
8. Hit rating - You won't need much for leveling or PvP, but it is more important for raiding. Try to hit 5-6% for PvP and 8% for raiding.
9. Resilience - Only useful for PvP. Get as much as you can without gimping your other stats.
10. Armor Penetration - Marksman hunters will find this most useful since they do the most physical damage. Pets get nothing from it and abilities that don't do "physical" damage don't get anything out of it. Nice to have if you're Marksman, but the other stats are more important.
11. Expertise - Ranged attacks can't be dodged or parried, so this is of little use.

So you want to look for...

• Agility, Attack Power, Ranged crit
• Stamina and Resilience as needed.
• Hit rating as needed to hit 6% for PvP, 8% for raiding.

Gems and enchants should also reflect the above.

5.0 - Raiding

5.0 1-80 Hunter Leveling Guide

For years Joana's Horde Guide and Brian's Alliance guide were the standards for Hunter leveling, simply because Hunters were the class of choice for both those guides. Other classes had to make due as best they could.

I argue that Zygor's in-game Guide is better than either because all the "looking up of stuff" is done away with. Zygor's appears in your main game window, where youi can see what you have to do at all times. No more switching from game to guide, no more manually setting waypoints, no more browsing Thottbot for tips. It's all contained within Zygor's guide and it's all automated.

You will never wonder where to go or what to do and you will never need to look up anything from other sites. The guide automatically updates as you complete tasks and quests and then sets a waypoint arrow showing you where to go next. This will have you leveling much faster than the older guides.

Grab your copy of Zygor's Guide here, or read our review.