Hunter Information

[New Admin]

Thought it was time for another installment in the Class section, so here are my thoughts on hunters. As a warning, pet information is covered in another post to keep this one reasonable in length.

Specific builds are listed in another post, but if you have a new hunter and are wondering how to spec yourself, the rule of thumb is this: For soloing and grinding, the Beastmaster tree is unstoppable. You essentially get to play tank and dps in one character, and as long as you stay at range, nothing can stand in your way. In late game you'll want to respect to Markman and touch on Survival to get Improved Traps if nothing else, because pets in instances are less useful, and respeccing to Marksman makes you an insane source of damage. So, that's a place to start depending on where you are with your hunter.

I've scoured the web looking for the mechanics of hunter stats, so you know what to compare when considering armor.
Basic hunter stats to pursue are Agility, Stamina, Intellect (if you're a Marksman spec, otherwise it doesn't matter too much), crit rating, attack power, hit rating, and +mana per second if you happen to get any. Personally I think that last one is so minimal that it's not worth it, but every little bit helps.

Now, the best mechanic synopsis I've found actually came from wowwiki found here:
www.wowwiki.com/Hunter

The trouble in discussing hunter stat mechanics is that there IS no real upper limit. More is ALWAYS better. Depending on how you're building your gear, the stats you want may differ, but its important to know what each stat does for you.

Crit Rating ups your critical strike chance: At 60 and 70 respectively, 14 and 22 crit rating give you +1% chance to crit.

Attack Power ups your damage: At 60 and 70, 14 attack power give you +1 dps (before other calculations are made)

Agility ups your attack power (raw damage), critical strike chance, armor, and dodge: Just to make the numbers work out taken from the wowwiki chart, at 70, 40 Agility gives you 40 attack power (roughly 3 dps), 1% critical strike chance, 80 armor, and about 1.75% dodge. But again, these are rough numbers subject to diminishing returns. The more you have, the more you'll need to make a difference. If you want a general rule of thumb for END GAME HUNTERS: Attack power and Agility are equally important, followed by crit rating

The reason for the above is that end game hunters should be about sustained dps. High crit rating is nice, but if you crit every third or fourth shot, you'll draw aggro off the tank constantly. But if instead you're doing constantly high base dps through attack power boosts, aggro is easier to control. So while it's fun to crit, you should focus more on attack power in end game.

As for hit rating: As with every other class, your base hit chance is 95% on a mob of equal level, so to max out your hit rating you need enough to get +5%... The basic equation is 10 and 15.77 hit rating at 60 and 70 equals 1% chance to hit. Now, because instance bosses are actually level 73, to max your hit rating against THEM, you need a total of 9%, which is 142 hit rating. If you care to read further, the discussion is here:
tkasomething.com/hitrating.php

Those are the absolute basics of getting gear for your hunter. I'll cover pets, enchants, weapons, and builds in other posts. If these rough mechanics aren't to your liking, I direct you to this site, which has numerous spreadsheets which can calculate differences in gear and which you should keep based on the stats.
tkasomething.com/spreadsheets.php

[New Admin]

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hunting

Hunters are awesome for leveling and PvE: they can track anything on the minimap making quest npcs and mobs easy to find. They have aspect of the cheetah/pack, so even before they get a mount, they can run around much faster, they can do massive dps without fear of aggro because of their pets, and have numerous ways to deal with gaining aggro as well as traps for crowd control and additional damage, aoe or single target.

So, basics of gameplay for those starting out or looking to tweak their play.

Solo questing

The most important thing to do is keep aggro on your pet. So make sure that growl is on, your pet has the highest level it can to be most effective, and you let your pet generate at least some aggro before engaging yourself. Because as a hunter you’re playing two toons at the same time, a threat meter is quite useful for hunters even when soloing because your pet shows up on the meter and you can keep your own aggro under your pets as you get better and better. Also useful as “group training” for not stealing aggro from the tank.

When questing, track whatever you’re looking for. Tracking is highly useful, and you can see a lot, be it a named mob you’re after, or just looking for a certain type of mob like “Dark Iron Sapper”. Just remember to switch depending on what you’re looking for. With the exception of some bugs in Outland, you can literally track anything in the game, so you should be able to find it far more easily than any other class. Between tracking and using allakhazam or thottbot to get the general location of what you’re looking for, you can pinpoint anything in the game very quickly.

Use Aspect of the Cheetah to get around as soon you get it. Just remember to turn it off before engaging any mobs, and switch to Hawk.

Put a trap down before you engage a mob if you can help it. This allows you to set yourself up in case you grab aggro from your pet, and also allows you to start the cooldown on your traps well before you start the fight, so if you want to put another one down as soon as the first one is triggered, you can do so. On an aside, it is actually possible to freeze two mobs at the same time by laying a freeze trap, waiting for the cooldown to get down to about 5 seconds, pull the mobs, freeze one, lay a second trap down, and freeze the second one. Thus it is possible to engage 3 mobs basically simultaneously without too much trouble.

Feign early and feign often. Yes, there is a 30 second cooldown on FD, but as with using a threat meter, knowing when to feign and dumping aggro back on your pet is essential. So get used to watching where you are on the threat meter, and responding before a mob comes at you.

Hunting in a group

The hunter’s primary role in a group is to unload dps on mobs who are firmly fixed on the tank. This is fairly straightforward: point, shoot, and avoid pulling aggro. However, more often than not, especially as you progress through the game, you will be assigned a specific target to deal with, most often by using a freeze trap. Here, the art of pulling comes into play.

As with soloing, putting down a trap before the fight begins is crucial, because you want to get your trap cooldown to pass as quickly as possible so you can refreeze a target if the fight is an extended one. So rule 1 is, lay the trap down as soon as you can.

Trap PLACEMENT is also important. It is too easy for a lazy hunter to just put a trap down right where s/he is standing and then pull the target to the trap. However, when you’re dealing with a group of 4 mobs all coming at you, this makes it difficult to ensure that YOUR target, and not someone else’s is the one to get frozen. Even with the best laid strategy this some times happens anyway, but it is your job to keep accidents to a minimum. To do so, first figure out where the tank or the rest of the group is going to be fighting the pull. Once you know their position, run off to one side and lay your trap down there. That way, when the initial pull is made and all the mobs head in one direction, you can pull your target into you trap without worrying if another mob will trip it.

Knowing how to pull is crucial. If you’re assigned to a caster, make sure you use silencing shot for the pull. If you don’t HAVE silencing shot, make sure to notify the person marking targets so he doesn’t give you a caster. Do not dot a target that’s going to be CC’ed. Opening fire with serpent sting is all too easy to do, but can devastate a group when a dotted mob breaks CC and wreaks havoc.

The pet is less useful in instances, and must be kept under tight control. Turn growl off so your pet doesn’t steal aggro from the tank. Unless your pet is acting as a tank for the instance (if you’re running a low level instance as a high level) or your pet is serving as an offtank on its own mob, growl should be off at all times in instances. Further, you pet should be on passive, so if you get hit by a spell, your pet doesn’t go running off to attack a mob and aggroing 3 more, causing a wipe. If you do send your pet out to attack something, make sure the area nearby is clear so additional mobs don’t aggro. When in doubt, let other group members approach first, and let your pet follow them in once you know the area is clear.

Keeping mobs at range is rarely an issue, but it does come up. As long as you lag behind the group and hang out in areas that have already been cleared, you should always be able to keep mobs at range and unleash a hailstorm of bullets and arrows without difficulty. There are some tight corners and small rooms however. In cases where you are backed into a wall and cannot get range to fire, do not be afraid to assist with melee damage. Lay a trap down right under a target to make sure it triggers instantly, wing clip the target because slowing something down is ALWAYS useful, and use raptor strike to boost your melee damage. It is FAR safer to add melee damage when you can’t get range than running around (or backing up) without regard to what mobs or pats might be nearby, aggroing them, and wiping the group. But again, this should rarely be an issue because range is relatively easy to maintain.

Those are the basics. It is more challenging to play a hunter in an instance because you are more enclosed, have more mobs coming at you, and if you pull aggro and have your trap fail early or entirely, you are stuck with the mob, and have to deal with it because feigning will send it at the healer or a cloth dps’er rather than the tank, which is far worse than letting it beat on you and your pet. But with a little practice and familiarity with the routines required, you can quickly become quite adept and controlling one mob and slaughtering others.

[New Admin]

BUILDS

At a glance the three trees for hunters can be broken down as follows:
Survival: improves melee play, crowd control, and damage avoidance/absorption.
Beast Mastery: Pet increases damage, health, armor, and gains abilities.
Marksmanship: Hunter ranged dps drastically increased, new dps and controlling abilities.

Now, it is almost universally agreed that the Beast Mastery tree is the THE leveling tree to use. It keeps aggro on your pet and allows you to do some extra damage without fear of gaining aggro.

In end game, heavy Marksman with a touch of Survival is recommended, though there is more variability here. I will share the Beast Mastery build to 70, and my personal choice for end game Marksman/Survival, but feel free to add your own comments, suggest other builds, or tweak it to your own style.

Beast Mastery:
As an initial note, keep in mind that this tree will boost your pet’s stamina and armor enough that a dps pet can tank very well, so for leveling, opt for a dps pet rather than a tank. It will speed your leveling up incredibly. Recommended pets are cats, wolves, raptors, and birds. Boar, bears, turtles, and spiders are not as useful.

10-14 Endurance Training 5/5
15-17 Thick Hide 3/3
18-19 Improved Revive Pet 2/2 (not crucial, but if your pet is your primary tank, if it dies you can freeze trap your target and revive the pet while it’s frozen, then launch right back into the fight)
20-21 Pathfinding 2/2 (the faster you can get around, the faster you level)
22-26 Unleashed Fury 5/5
27-28 Imp. Mend Pet 2/2
29 Ferocity 1/5
30-31 Spirit Bond 2/2
32 Intimidation 1/1
33-36 Ferocity 5/5
37-39 Frenzy 3/5
40 Bestial Wrath 1/1
41-42 Frenzy 5/5
43-44 Bestial Discipline 2/2
45-49 Serpent’s Swiftness 5/5
50 The Beast Within 1/1

Now you have the highest skill in the tree, and can fill in backwards. The rest of this build assumes that you 1) will continue to solo quest 2) have no need for group bonuses and 3) don’t care about your own dps.

51-52 Animal Handler 2/2 (the faster you move the faster you get things done)
53-55 Catlike Reflexes (the less your pet gets hit, the less mana you have to spend healing)

All other BM skills affect your own dps/abilities or give group bonuses. As such, they will be ignored. Feel free to fill in the rest of the BM tree instead of following this guide.

56-60 Imp. Concussive Shot 5/5
61-65 Imp. Hunters Mark 5/5 (increases your pet’s dps)
66-67 Go for the Throat 2/2 (more focus = more pet dps)
68-70 Hawk Eye 3/3

Now you’ve hit 70 and there’s no real reason to make the focus of your build your pet for PvE purposes anymore, because all the gear you need to improve comes from instances. So at this point, I highly recommend respeccing to Marksman/Survival. Since you’re a 70 you don’t really need an “order of talent points” but if you’re interested in going Marksman from lvl 10 onwards, here’s the recommended build

Marksman/Survival for PvE (Talents are in Marksman unless otherwise noted)
The point of this build is to make you do massive ranged damage and even more massive crits, particularly through Multishot, as well as make your traps a reliable form of CC when needed and an effective form of dps when not.

10-12 Hawk Eye 3/3 (Survival tree. Gives you the longest range in the game)
13-17 Lethal Shots 5/5
18-22 Imp. Hunters Mark 5/5 (affects all melee attacking the target, so in a group it will help all noncasters)
23 Aimed Shot 1/1
24-27 Imp. Arcane Shot 4/5
28-32 Mortal Shots 5/5
33-35 Barrage 3/3
36 Scatter Shot 1/1
37 Imp. Stings 1/5
38-42 Ranged Weapon Specialization 5/5
43 Trueshot Aura 1/1
44-46 Imp. Barrage 3/3
47 Careful Aim 1/1
48-52 Master Marksman 5/5
53 Silencing Shot 1/1

At this point, take stock of where you are. If your traps are breaking early constantly, focus on Survival, if your CC is fine and you want to do more dps, stay with Marksman. You’ll end up in the same place at lvl 70.

Survival (Trap improvement):
54-55 Humanoid Slaying 2/3 Just to get you into the next level, and humanoids are more common than dragonkin
56-60 Highly personalized. Again the point is to get to Clever Traps. So if you find yourself pulling aggro a lot, put 5/5 in Deflection to increase your survivability. If aggro isn’t a problem and you want to slow mobs to a crawl, dump 2 and 3 in each of Entrapment and Imp. Wing Clip. A total of 5 points only, so whichever you find yourself using more, put 3 in, and 2 in the other.
61-62 Clever Traps 2/2. This should enable you to freeze mobs then kite them a little long enough to put down another trap and freeze them all over again. Or just add more dps to the mix, depending on what you’re being asked to do in the group.

Then dump points into Markman to fill out a few things:
63-64 Careful Aim 3/3
65-68 Imp. Stings 5/5
69-70 Combat Experience 2/2

In the alternative, simply reverse the talent distribution above, filling out Marksman first then ending with Survival if you find your traps are functioning well enough that you don’t have to worry about CC.

[New Admin]

As mentioned previously, stats to shoot for as a hunter generally are Agility, Stamina (all classes want stamina of course), Intellect (Marksman spec), crit rating, hit rating (up to 142), and attack power.

I leave you to your own devices to find gear for yourself, but I’ve laid out gems and enchantments for each slot to boost your performance.

GEMS

There are a wide variety of gems available for hunters to improve themselves for every above mentioned stat. Again, the only thing you really have to determine is if the socket bonus is worth pursuing: if not, you can stick in whatever you want. Also remember that the only “magic” number for hunters is 142 hit rating. If you have that or don't care about hitting it, then you can just cram as much crit rating as you want in there, or boost your agility to help out your crit, attack power, and armor. Since the field is wide open, listed below are all gems listed by color, what they do, and the range of improvement for each stat. PVP gems are specifically noted, and are probably worth getting in the end game because they are significantly better than their readily available counterparts.

As usual, all information is taken from www.wowwiki.com/Gem

RED: Agility (+4 to +10), attack power (+8 to +24)
There is a +20 attack power gem (Bold Ornate Ruby) available for 6885 honor points in the Champion’s Hall in Stormwind, from Master Sergeant Biggins.
There is a +14 attack power gem (Mighty Blood Garnet) available for 10 Marks of Honor Hold in Honor Hold from Warrant Officer Tracy Proudwell

YELLOW: Intellect (+4 to +10), hit rating (+4 to +10), crit rating (+4 to +10)
There is a +10 crit rating gem (Smooth Ornate Dawnstone) available for 6885 honor points in the Champion’s Hall in Stormwind from Master Sergeant Biggins.

BLUE: Mana per 5 seconds (+1 to +4), stamina (+6 to +15)

ORANGE: Agility and Hit Rating (+3 to +5 for both), Attack Power and Crit Rating (+6 to +10, and +3 to +5)
There is a +10 attack power and +5 crit rating gem (Inscribed Ornate Topaz) available for 8500 honor points in the Champion’s Hall in Stormwind, from Master Sergeant Biggins.

GREEN: Stamina and Crit Rating (+4 to +7, and +3 to +5)
There is a +3 Stamina +4 Crit Rating (Barbed Deep Peridot) available 10 Marks of Honor Hold in Honor Hold from Warrant Officer Tracy Proudwell.

PURPLE: Agility and Stamina, (+3 to +5, and +4 to +7) Attack Power and Stamina (+6 to +10 and +4 to +7)


ENCHANTMENTS/ENHANCEMENTS

Taken from www.wowwiki.com/Enchantments_by_slot

Head: The ZG enchantment called Falcon’s Call gives you +10 stamina, +10 hit rating, and +24 ranged attack power. While which one is better is debatable, the far easier one to get is the Glyph of Ferocity, available when you attain revered reputation with Cenarion Expedition. It gives you +34 attack power and +16 hit rating.

Shoulder: There is a ZG version, which requires exalted with the ZG faction, which gives +30 attack power. However, again, the BC versions are better and easier to get: The Aldor have the Inscription of Vengence at Honored which gives +26 attack power and at Exalted gives +30 attack power and +10 crit rating. The Scryers have the Inscription of the Blade at Honored which gives +13 crit rating, then at Exalted gives +15 crit rating and +20 attack power. So whichever you prefer, pick the right faction J

Back: +12 agility makes the most sense for a hunter, but you can also go with –2% threat or +120 armor depending on your preference.

Chest: Surprisingly limited here for the large variety. You can go with a plain old armor kit for up to +40 armor. Or +6 mana per 5 seconds. Or up to +150 health or mana. Or up to +6 to all stats. I would probably opt for either the 150 health or the +6 to all stats, because if you’re a Marksman spec, that’s +18 in useful stats which will help considerably.

Wrist: +24 attack power is the most obvious choice (Enchantment is named Assault). However, you could also go with +4 to all stats, +12 to stamina, +12 to intellect, or +6 mp5.

Hands: Again, the armor kit is an option. There is an Assault for gloves too, which grants +26 attack power though, or a +15 agility which are probably better choices.

Waist: No belt enchants.

Legs: Similar to the head. ZG enchant gives you +10 stamina, +10 hit rating, and +24 ranged attack power. But there are far more interesting options from Leatherworking: Cobrahide Leg Armor gives you +40 attack power and +10 critical strike rating. And Nethercobra Leg Armor gives you +50 attack power, and +12 critical strike rating. As those are expensive, in the mean time you can use a knothide armor kit to get +8 stamina.

Feet: Interesting ones here too. For the pvpers, there’s Cat’s Swiftness, which gives +6 agility and +8% speed increase. You could also opt for the regen enchant Vitality, which gives +4 health AND +4 mana per 5 seconds. I however, would opt for +12 agility (enchant is called Dexterity).

With weapons, hunters aren’t melee generally, so these should be used to pump stats in my opinion. However, all realistic options are discussed.

1H Weapon: Major Striking gives +7 weapon damage and a blue glow. Mongoose is popular with rogues and hunters, and has a chance on hit of giving you +120 agility and +2% haste for 15 seconds. Seems odd for hunters though because to trigger it you have to be in melee range,but to utilize the AGI bonus, you have to get back to ranged…
Which means the best option is to pump your agility straight up. There are now two of these enchants: +15 (Agility) and +20 (Greater Agility). They both have green glows, and of course more is better, so if you can find and afford the +20, that’s my pick.

2H Weapon: But wait! What if you use a 2H weapon? Then you can opt for more agility with +35 and a green glow (Major Agility). Or the graphically cooler Savagery, which makes your weapon drip with blood and gives you +70 attack power. Both viable options, depends on what you can afford and prefer.

Ranged: No enchantments to speak of, but you can add a scope to a bow or a gun (not a thrown weapon). These are made by engineers, and can be found on the AH if you don’t know an engineer personally. Most increase the weapon damage (from +1 to +12), but there are two unique ones. Biznicks Accurascope gives the weapon +30 ranged hit rating, and the Stabalized Eternium Scope gives you +28 critical strike rating. All scopes are BoE, so you should be able to find them on the AH if they’re available.