This page is a short guide to general Hunter PvP and is not particular to any spec. Fortunately Hunters are not so wildly different that the info will be great for one spec and useless for the other, such as it might be for Paladins.
See the guides linked for much more detail.
Contents
This Page
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Hunter PvP Guides
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General Hunter Stats:
- Weapon damage > Agility
- The next best stats depend on your spec. Crit is generally good, Haste is generally poor.
- See the individual spec pages (links are above) for more detail.
For talents see the individual PvP pages: BM and MM.
Gems for All Hunters:
Gemming is… uncommon. Gem slots pop up on occasional bits of looted gear. Some legacy PvP gear has 2 or 3 gems slots, though.
Some say to gem only for Agility. If the gem is not “unique equipped” then this is good advice. Otherwise Agility and your best stat.
In Battle for Azeroth, the Mechagon lands will have the occasional “Punch Card.” This is basically a gem, in that you can drop it into an appropriate card slot, but they are not interchangeable with gems.
Hunter PvP Enchants:
In BFA, at max level, it’s rings and weapons only. Lower levels can have more enchants. Even if you’re level 1, get the highest level enchants, they will scale down to your level.
Short on gold? Most of the enchants have similar enchants available, of lesser value, for less cash. Check with the rep vendor or the Auction House for others. If you want to buy the best enchants, fund all of your alts, donate to the guild, etc., but don’t have the cash, then see what the Zygor gold Addon can do about about improving your situation.
Pets:
Look into pets that offer useful controlling or other interesting abilities, for example:
- Spider have webs
- Monkeys have a stun
- Birds have a disarm
- and so on.
Beast Mastery has access to the exotic pets, with more more interesting abilities.
Videos
Skill Capped has a number of videos for all aspect of Hunter mayhem.
General Tips for Any Hunter
Many of these tips were taken from the WoW forums.
Keybinding
Keybinding isn’t required to play well, but it’s a big help. I don’t expect you’ll find any high ranking PvPers who click their keys, it just faster and frees up your attention and mouse for other things. Don’t
- Start by just binding a few keys, it’ll be much easier than binding and trying to learn all of them. Bind more as you get comfortable with them.
- Use Alt-Z to remove your interface, requiring you to use the binds. You can always Alt Z to bring it back.
- In addition to keybinding the following video shows tips for kiting and a few other things. While the video covers general binding concepts he does often mention Hunters specifically.
PvP Positioning
This is the most important thing you should be concerned with at all times in PvP, no matter if you’re in a BG, an arena, or a duel, where your character is on the battlefield should always be on your mind. Correct positioning will save your life or help your team net a kill. Poor positioning can cost your life.
Pay attention to your entire team’s health levels and communicate with your team whenever possible about positioning changes you’ll be making. Know what to do, for instance is your healer CCed with you at 50% health? It might be a good idea in that situation to disengage behind a pillar instead of trying to do some extra damage.
If you’re reading this going “oh man, I never think about that I just mash Bestial Wrath and hope for a kill” that’s okay, you’ll probably still win (jk jk lol…well not really) but you should start to pay attention to positioning, even if you start to forget about other things just get yourself to do this naturally and everything else will fall into place.
Note: This also includes your pet’s positioning. Know when you send your pet in, when to call him back, when to blink strike etc. You obviously don’t want to pop Bestial Wrath if your pet is not in line of sight of your target. Always pay attention to where your pet is.
Silence and CC on the Healer
Your healer is your friend. Protect him.
Their healing is an important target. Take him down. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing a bazillion dps because his healer is probably healing a bazillion and one hps. A well timed silencing shot can be WAY better for your team than an extra bit of damage.
Pay attention to what’s going on around you. If you see someone’s health bar shoot up, immediately scan the battlefield to find the healer and do something to make his life miserable.
Cooldowns and Abilities
- Kill Shot whenever it’s available. (KS will not be available to Survival in Warlords onward.)
- Cooldowns are there for a reason. Use them. If you can communicate with your team and coordinate usage then do it.
- Concussive shot for kiting, peeling, setting up for a trap, or allowing a teammate to catch up.
- Widow’s Venom to suppress enemy healing. Keep an eye open in case the enemy already has a healing debuff.
- Focus Management – Try to keep enough to fire a big shot, such as a cooldown that’s coming up, and not so much that you cap.
- Kill command, explosive shot, or chimera shot on cooldown.
- Filler shots, such as Glaive toss or Arcane shot, as as focus, procs, and cooldown gaps allow.
Hunter Macros
First off, if you’re not sure about macros then check out our how to macro post. As for specific macros, there’s a nice post on the Bliz Hunter forums with “how to” explanations, what the commands mean, and a lot of actual macros. See it here. ALso the Skill-capped macros and addons forum.
Get Leveled Fast
Very high level players will crush lower levels like bugs. It happens with every expansion and the only escape is to keep War Mode in the “Off” position. But YOU are not doing that, so….
But leveling can be a bit of a drag, with thousands of quests and a few zillion mobs to kill. You can blow $60 and get an insta-level\, but then you’ll spend all that time learning your character. Besides missing out on the gold, rep, and low level PvP fun.
The cure is to snag yourself a guide that points out the most efficient path to level as quickly as possible, always showing you exactly where to go and what to do. One that’s smart enough to adjust if you grab a few leveling in PvP or the dungeons, that can adjust whether you’re brand new or decked head to toe in heirlooms, and that doesn’t care which level you are when you start the guide.
Check out Zygor’s Guide here.