This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the Hunter class. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on this class, check out the Killer Guides' Hunter guide.

Also, for more Hunter info, see our Hunter Class Guide, and our pages for specific Hunter talent builds: Beast mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival

• 1.0 - Introduction
• 2.0 - Talents
• 3.0 - Gear & Progression
• 4.0 - 1-80 Hunter Leveling Guide

1. 0 – Introduction

Hunters are the fastest and easiest leveling class in the entire game, no contest.  Why would this be? Because they have an unbeatable and unmatched solo capability due to an unmatched rapport with their pets.

Of all the classes, the hunter alone can skip more than ten levels of training and new abilities and continue to reach insane levels of experience per hour, and this is all tied to their massive and consistent DPS. In fact, Hunters are good enough that you don't need gear (other than weapons.) Want proof? Here's the Naked Troll Project. Of course, some gear will make your leveling much easier.

2.0 – Talents

Beast Mastery

For hunters the beast mastery tree is quite obviously the best for straight leveling speed, although it gives few buffs to the hunter himself, although they are there, it turns his pet into a war machine and allow that pet, alone, to solo multiple monsters at a time.

However, the primary aspect of which this aids leveling is not built entirely on how much damage the pet deals, but rather that it also hold’s aggro well enough to rate it as an extremely reliable and durable tank.  

This combined aspect of both hunter and pet dealing high damage and the hunter being capable of healing the pet quite easily makes it almost a rival for any Warrior/Priest team.

Both builds are very similar, but the first is a little more PvP oriented, though it's not by any means a full PvP build. It gives up some of the "rapair pet" abilities for somewhat improved damage.

Talents

The first talent of the beast mastery tree is, interestingly enough, a buff to Aspect of the hawk.  Although not an unwelcome talent, since it can provide a faster attack speed, it is a rather interesting start on a tree almost entirely focused on the hunters pet.

The next talents, Focused Fire and Improved Revive Pet, are largely filler – yet again they provide bonuses, just not exactly major ones at any level or step of the beast mastery build. We picked FF for the first build and skipped IRP.

Unleashed fury is obviously helpful, a large passive increase to pet damage is never bad. 

Ferocity is a real gem as well, and it leads up to what is likely the best beast mastery talent in terms of grinding and pet damage, Frenzy.  A 10% increase to critical chance is massive and makes your pet into a respectable force on the battlefield.

Intimidation is a reasonable ability, making it extremely easy for you to go all out as your pet will likely be capable of pulling aggro once more in short order once you use this ability. 

The other big pick is bestial discipline, the focus regeneration increases overall damage by an immense amount as the pet gains the ability to use its special attacks far more often.

Finally, we reach frenzy.  As mentioned above this is yet another great talent, easily turning it into a meat-grinder of death against your targets and making it practically impossible for your ranged DPS to now pull aggro.

Bestial Wrath and The Beast Within: both of these function as survivability tools that allow you to pull victory from the jaws of defeat when faced with otherwise unbeatable encounters.  Serpent’s Swiftness simply makes you and your pet slightly more awesome, enjoy it.

Beast Mastery: And now, you can tame just about anything. See that giant elite T Rex over there? Here's the leash...

3.0 – Gear & Progression

Gear wise what you want is massive amounts of damage, agility to be specific.  Due to your numerous tools of survivability including feign death, traps, dodge, etc. you’ll find stamina a largely low priority stat, being beast mastery specced makes it even more so.

One point of agility equals an increase in attack power, critical chance, and dodge, making it essentially the wonder-stat for hunters in that it increases everything required at once.  However, individual items possessing significant amounts of straight up +attack power or +critical rating are valued as well.

1. Agility - Your #1 stat over all else.
2. Stamina - Your pet is taking the mob's attack, so you don't need a lot of Stam. It is, however, more valuable if you're on a PvP server
3. Intellect - Increases your mana pool, which is good, but is always #2 to Agility
4. Strength - You need Agility to use that bow of yours with the 200# pull, not strength. Strength has no value for you, unless you're that rare Hunter who like to live dangerously and melee a lot. Even then, Agility is far more useful, as is Stam.
5. Spirit - of no use.
6. Crit rating - the more the merrier.
7. Attack Power - You can never have enough.
8. Hit rating - Focused Aim will provide all you need until you start to raid or PvP.

If you can get a group and hit the instances appropriate for you level you will get some nice XP and some nice gear. Just make sure the gear is appropriate for a Hunter, and not the priest. Otherwise your quest rewards will keep you in fine shape.

Tips

Take the Dual Weild ability when you get it. If you equip two melee weapons you get the stat bonuses from both those weapons, even if you never use them. You'll also look cool.

When training new pets set up a freezing trap first. That way the "soon to be new pet" will spend a little less time trying to eat your head while you tame it.

Always stay at range. Let your pet take the heat and you support the pet. Most of your melee skill are designed to slow the opponent for a reason.

As you pet gets tougher, and your skills better, you can have you pet attack more than one mob, one after the other. It will be able to hold aggro, if you're a bit careful, while the two of you burn them down.

Always log out in an Inn, to get the 100% bonus rest XP.

Questing is much better than grinding for XP, as long as you group your quests. If you grab all the quests in an area you'll find that several are in almost the same place. Do all of those at the same time. Plan ahead a bit, know where you have to go, and try not to do quests that take you way out of your way, unless you're hitting more quests along the way. Turn in a bunch of quests at one time and feel the power.

You're not as gear dependent as most other classes, so don't feel you have to have the best gear, all the time. Gear found by completing quests will keep you going all the way to the end. Save the gear grinding for PvP and Raiding. You get to wear Mail armor starting at level 40, but since you're hardly ever in melee it's not such a big thing.

Professions and Gold

Make an alt that you will park at the Auction House. As you level just mail all the sellable stuff you collect to your alt (to sell) and then get back to the leveling. Log into your alt when you're done and put the stuff up on the AH.

Get the biggest bags you can afford and loot everything, always, unless you already have enough gold. Also, everything white or better, that you're not keeping, gets shipped to your alt. Vendor the gray stuff.

If you have a ton of gold then leatherworking will provide some solid gear, both leather and mail, at the expense of that ton of gold and the time to level the skill up. If you're not so rich then skip all of the crafting skills.

Q: How do you make a small fortune in WoW?

A: Start with a large fortune and then level up a crafting profession.

Inscription can make you a ton of gold, more than any other profession, but you still have to either spend a ton of time gathering the herbs (herbalism) or a large chunk of cash buying the herbs to level up the skill. If you're short on cash then wait for later. Save your cash for your epic mounts.

• Mining, skinning, and herbalism are your create gold on demand skills. Take any two. Also, mining provide a health bonus, skinning a crit bonus, and herbalism a heal.
• Cooking is quite valuable for the foods that buff your stats.
• First Aid is worthwhile since you will get hurt from time to time. Keep it maxed.

With the synergy of both your DPS as well as the pets, you should find your hunter becoming an unbeatable grinding speed demon, enjoy it.

Gems and Enchants

So how rich are you? Eventually you will get gear with gem sockets. If you have some cash then pop in the best gems you can afford. Go for Agility first, as per the above table.

Enchants can be much more expensive. You will also be leveling quickly enough that you will outgrow your gear before the enchant is of too much use. Still, if you want them and have the cash, then go for it. They're pretty much required (as are gems) for PvP and raiding.

Glyphs are nice and many (not all) of the Hunter glyphs are cheap. Here's a tip: sometimes the price on glyphs varies wildly. One glyph may be 40 gold one day and 5 the next. If you can plan your glyph (or any) buying ahead of time then you might get lucky and get the bargains.

4.0 – 1-80 Hunter Leveling Guide

A full blown leveling guide will make yoiur journey from 1-80 a lot easier. It's not essential, but it's really nice. You'll never wonder where you have to go next. The levels will just come, boom, boom, boom and you'll hit 80 a lot faster than otherwise.

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 (and most would do ok.) Both guides were ebooks, which meant a lot of switching from game to guide. Also, the info on how to complete many of the quests had to be found on Thottbot.com (and related sites) since it wasn't in the guide and not obvious from the quest log. Otherwise, they were very good guides.

Zygor's in-game Leveling Guide is much better than either because. among other things, all the "looking up of stuff" is done away with. No more switching from game to guide, no more manually setting waypoints, no more browsing Thottbot for tips.

Zygor's guide appears as an in-game window (small and moveable) which tracks the quest you're on, and the objectives. It automatically updates as you complete tasks and quests and provides all of the "where to go and what to do" info that you will need to level quickly. You will probably never have to consult your quest log again, much less browse Thottbot.

Check it out and grab your own copy, or read our review here.