HunterTips for Levels 20-40 - Builds, Talents and Class Mechanics - Hunter Forums

First check out 'Gars Guides' on this site. Fantastic information on pretty much everything, plus browse the site. Garwulf has put together some of the best info on the web that you can understand without a physics degree as it pertains to hunters. From specs to glyphs to what type of beer hunters drink. Then read on.

For levelling and solo the Beast Mastery tree is pretty much the best. You get so many benefits from the tree and your pet is essentially your tank so that tree gives us and our pet many big bonuses. It ain't too shabby for dungeons either. I've played BM my entire albeit short WoW career and love it so I can advise only on BM. First here's Big Red Kitty's Cataclysm BM Spec build recommendation. If you don't know who BRK is, for shame! Some of the best info around for new hunters.

http://www.bigredkitty.net/201…..bm-hunter/

Really though, it's whatever tree suits you. You can always dual-spec at Level 30 for 10g and work with two trees. Your hunter trainer teaches that.

As a BM our #1 shot is Kill Command then Arcane and Steady. Always make sure you're in Aspect of the Hawk and have Hunter's Mark up for maximum damage.

Typical rotation earlier on in level is Hunter's Mark, Serpent Sting, Arcane, KIll Command, Steady. You don't really need Serpent Sting as the mobs are usually dead before the damage over time the sting does comes into play. Very useful though if you're taking on mobs much higher in level than you or an elite with a whack of HP's.

I currently use HM, Arcane, Kill Command, Steady (Cobra once you ding 81) You can pop Kill Command 1st , I simply find Arcane a good opener to set my rhythm and occasionally I nail a huge crit.

Of course Kill Shot-always Kill Shot when you can fire it. Exceptional damage. Kill shot when it becomes available to you is huge but it's many many levels away so forget about it for now.

At your current levels, actually pretty much all the way through your number one stat as a hunter is agility, your second most important stat is agility and your third stat is stamina. So those are the primary stats to focus on. 

Armor Pen and resilience are stats that concern us way way down the road, defintely not important until much higher levels. Hit is important but again, at later levels and you get capped pretty fast with the new gear. I've reforged gear a few times from L on to bring my hit down. Once you're hit capped anything above is useless. I mean, zero miss is as good as you can get Strength, Intellect are useless to hunters.

Much of the new equipment has high secondary stats like haste, mastery, hit and crit. Personally I find haste and crit the most effective. Haste helps us generate focus and increase are ranged attack speed. Mastery is the least useful, for BM anyhow. If you come across an item with great primary stats and a whack of Mastery you can, for 10g have it re-forged to give you 40% more of a more useful secondary such as haste, crit or hit while reducing the less useful stat. You cannot re-forge an item to gain primary stats.

Becoming gear obsessed isn't great-trust me I was a gear junkie in my youth, always upgrading. After wasting much time and gold I realized the skills mattered more, particularly until L70 or so when gear starts to really matter. I've seen gear maxed high level hunters (L+) not the best in the skills department (okay really bad and I suck) but they certainly look stylish in their matched gear.  You can level a hunter pretty much naked so long as you have good pet control, a solid ranged weapon and the skills. We shouldn't be getting hit, more practice with movement and keeping our distance etc. matter, in many cases much more than gear. If you find yourself melleeing a lot, adjust or huntering isn't for you.

Working with concussive shot (to sliow the critter down) early on is a good way to learn some hunter essentials like kiting, strafe and stutter-step, (fancy term for moving in between a cast and auto without clipping the auto-shot) If you're so inclined you can practice the jump shot or at the very least running spinning and firing off a shot-there is nothing more fun than falling off a cliff to your death while being fancy. Make sure you don't try the jump shot with a cordless mouse, 1st few times I did the mouse went fliyng across the room almost killing my cat. Once you've got the hang of firing on the move you can work with a shot like Arcane.

Oft times you can find BOE items at the Aucton House relatively cheap and superior to quest items. At the AH for armor go to leather until you have access to mail, click 'useable' items on the Auction interface and take a look see-if you EVER look at cloth armor a group of nasty hunters comes and beats you up.

Before I embark on a major quest line I google it to see what the payoff in equipment is. Excellent site is http://www.wowhead.com/ for good info and also comments on the quests themselves. Many times the really good stuff requires a group or it's a dungeon. Again, if you're soloing for level, you may not be able do them though trying is enormously fun. Also, you have to get the right drop as well if the mob drops random gear A hunter with perfect stat Soulbound Plate Leggings o' Doom that they'll never be able to use is just depressing.

Same for weapons. Two-handed weapons such as polearms, staves and axes typically have the best hunter stats. The AH is also a good place to find out what the 'hunter' items are named. Such and such of the bandit (bandit is usually good but overpriced), windflurry or whatever. Blizz added many more names in Cataclysm to confuse us. If nothing else it's good information to know for future use and very handy if you are soloing and can't get that hunter goody at the end of a quest line. You can get some pretty good gear doing faction reputation grinds, again visit wowhead.

For levelling and questing solo the 'best' pet so they tell me is from the tenacity tree though I've always preferred a wolf from the ferocity tree and used the same wolf since Level 30. That's simply because I like the look of wolves. 

You don't 'upgrade' a pet unless you want a different looking pet or a different tree, it levels as you do and all talent points whatever the tree is become available to the pet at certain levels. Nor, according to anything I've read do hunters learn from pets or pets learn from each other. For certain, My L78 spirit beasts haven't gotten any smarter in the stable with my L84 wolves 

I know I haven't-the stables are comfy though.

The best advantage in Catalysm regarding pets is having 5 different ones at our disposal while we're out in the WoW world. So you can swap from ferocity to tenacity to cunning or whatever you may need.

As you go through the earlier levels mentioned I found it doesn't much matter what pet tree, more a personal preference.  

Here's a good site to check out the different types of pets and trees and respective talents  http://www.wow-petopia.com/

Also, you can tame a L10 pet @ L and when tamed it's only 2 or 3 levels below your current level. In a couple hours it'll be at your level. One of the best parts of BM. Taming all iknds of funky rare pets of all levels. Anj has some great posts here on rare pets.

Hope this helped some, have fun.

grimreaver said:

You mentioned the three most important stats as 1) Agility, 2) Agility and 3) Stamina. Was that on purpose to emphasize agility or was #2 supposed to be something else?

Hi Grim-it was intentional , saves a new player from the unnecessary distractions and confusion I found myself looking at when I first started a few months back 
What you'll find is optimum hunter gear will basically only have those two stats, Agility and Stamina. If it doesn't, ignore it. Hence the AH is a good place to familiarize yourself with items and secondary stats. If you haven't already you'll notice when you're looking at gear either at the AH or as a quest reward; when you hover your mouse over the picture the stats compare to what you currently have equipped. Very helpful that is. You can weigh it out and with the introduction of re-forging you can twink gear that as I said may have overall great stats but have 'expertise' or something else useless on it. Blizzard has a weird sense of humor at times. At least you can reduce the crappy stat  by 40% and put it someplace useful. Mastery isn't bad by the way, simply not that great of a stat for BM compared to haste, crit and hit.

Glad you found the post helpful. The game has been around for so long that many of the players have 4-5 Level -85' toons and the majority of sites were and are geared towards theory-crafting, advanced or 'end game' play, hardcore raiding etc.  I'd find myself reading about such ridiculously complicated stuff it gave me a headache. Understandablle given the amount of time a lot of people have been playing but there are a lot of non hardcore players too and they just want to be decent in their class and have fun.

When I started playing 7 mos ago that was one of the frustrating things for me, all of the real basic stuff wasn't around or was out of date and this game is insanely complex.  Not much for the casual or actual new players of which there are many. It's always more fun if you know what you're doing or at least where to start. Fortunately for me I came upon this site and received some suberb advice early from Gar. You can ask pretty much anything here and no-one is going to be an idiot. S'long as you don't expect them to play your character for you

I consider myself a casually obsessed player but I play entirely solo and that has it's drawbacks. I ran a small guild many years back in another game, the group thing is way too much hassle for this boy. I mention that as I'm now practicing to enter into the PvP area of WoW and attempting to solo 5 mans of my level simply for the challenge. The best gear can only be obtained for a solo player via that route. The game is afterall geared towards group play and the vast majority of the best of the best gear is all bind on pick-up from group quests, dungeon drops or points in PvP. With cataclysm they did change some of that though, the soloable quest reward stuff is pretty damn good. If you haven't already you'll probably read some 'veteran experts' whiniing about that, especially on the 'Official' Blizzard boards. I avoid those like the plague by the way.

I'm sure I'll get my ass-kicked in the process, I certainly did last night while giving the Vortex Pinnacle in Uldum a solo run but it's great fun and super practice. Anything hunter related that is BOE epic (purple) or even rare (blue) quality is, depending on your server going to be insanely expensive at the AH. Not something you have to concern yourself with for awhile, a person doesn't need it until L onwards to have some serious fun. By then you'll be rich enough to buy it or an expert raider Have fun.

Welcome.  Back when I had the small guild, it was fun. Tight knit and small and we had a blast primarily PvP. Problem was underlings gave you experience, even when you weren't playing. Hell you could level without playing so of course a couple of people had to abuse that so I disbanded the guild instead of listening to the snivelling.

In a perfect WoW world I'd have a group of 4 other people that I could play WoW with but time organization is an issue. Plus, given that Blizz seems intent to make the world a better place by having us be all one big happy family using the Dungeon Finder (yeah like that's gonna happen) it's simply too much of a pain. Hell on my server I get spammed about 7-8 times a session to join a guild and some have even looked at my wowhead profile so they must  be desperate. I'm pretty sure there are more guilds than players on it at this time.

Good luck in the journey.

Welcome and your guild mates are correct about the turtle. I prefer em in soup. Ideally, according to Gar when he gave me some guidance a worm is great due to it's AoE but I can't stand worms, spiders or turtles for pets. That may change once I tame Terrorpene

Have Fun.

Drach said:

Gorillas are nice for tanking too

I know but to date I've not found one that looks like a wolf. Wonder if Anj knows of any?

Mind you last night I soloed Lightning Halls which to a veteran prolly ain't much but to an under-geared lost in space newb like me, well let's just say there was some serious dwarf muscle flexing going on at the end of it. We're so hot!

Hotness aside, my ace #1 wolf wasn't holding aggro all that well and it sure as hell isn't because of my enormous DPS (incredible though it may be).  I love soloing, I'm always  tops on the DPS meter. Chimp might've came in handy, I'll think I'll go grab that Uhk'loc fellow, he kinda looks like a wolf.

Read these http://huntsmanslodge.com/guides for builds or post your current build here and ask for advice. Some excellent marks hunters on here. Maybe do it under a seperate post as this one has gotten way too long and is a different topic entirely.

Gar also has a great article of him soloing an instance around your level. http://huntsmanslodge.com/6262…..hunter.htm  Keep in mind this is Gar, so he's had some practice and rumour has it, skills 

I'm far from an 'expert' but from my own limited experience you do want to go BM with a tenacity pet for soloing 5 mans. I of course use a Ferocity pet but I'm an idiot and emotionally attached to wolves.

If you've been playing marks, best to stick with what you know. You'll do fine. Use a tenacity pet (bear is fine, turtle is better) for their endurance and threat abilities. Tenacity will be a change from Ferocity and may take awhile to get used to-they are not damage machines like Ferocity pets. They're marathon endurance pets.

Make sure you have your stam & agi maxed. That includes the best food and eliixir buffs for your level. 

It's a good idea to be proficient with your traps. See Drach's recent article on the main page about trapping. Much he wrote can be applied to soloing. Besides, proficient trapping is a huge plus for us hunters that is oft-times overlooked.

Soloing 5 mans or 10's if you're feeling frisky is more a matter of endurance and strategy, not a race.  Particularly with the trash mobs, the swarms of em. Try to pick them off gently if they'll cooperate (serpent sting, sometimes it works sometimes not) and give your pet time to gain aggro. Usually a few rush you anyhow so be prepared.

Do your best to stay out of aggro range as much as possible (you're going to pull it regardless but do your best) , embrace disengage lovingly and feign death if you get in a real jam (seems a lot overuse that one *shrug*) and most important, keep your pet alive. If he goes, odds are you'll be kissin the spirit healer shortly thereafter.

Also, avoid panicking, or try to. Typically, if a mob or three is on me I stay targetted on my pets target, drop a freezing trap on one of the mobs (staying targetted on the pet target prevents accidentally breaking your own trap), kill the pets mob and he goes after the others I haven't iced.

On that, pet control is so very important in dungeon soloing. Often you can draw 3 or 4 mobs to your pet far far away from you by having him attack one then the other etc. Get them in a nice group and commence. On the bad side, if you don't control it and it's on the attack and gets in trouble, you get swarmed and call it back too late it may bring a whole lot of unwanted dinner guests to you and you're the dinner.

Often it's not the bosses in a solo but the trash mobs that can do you in. You can usually take quite a few of them down using explosive trap and multi-shot. If they are rushing you anyhow, fire off a scatter shot and disengage to gain some ground.  I've found keeping ice trap up around the mess of trash your pet is handling quite useful, slows the mobs down as they're on a skating rink in high heels while your pet has NHL quality skates .

Your pet is the tank when soloing. If your pet is getting overwhelmed-which will happen occasionally, you can always pull aggro to yourself by firing a distracting shot off. Fire the distracting shot, the mob comes at you, drop a freezing trap, toss a mend pet and start moving. Pet regains health and then bites the mob in the ass to regain aggro. That strategy can be of more help with a boss without the trap as they'll often blow through the trap. This by the way can go terribly wrong the first few times you do it so use at your own risk   I found that out all by my lonesome.

Also, if you haven't run the dungeon before, google it. Some excellent help as far as layouts, maps, bosses etc. I get no joy in running around like a blind fool in a dark room. If you do, don't google the instance.

If you've not ran any 5's solo you may want to try one a few levels below to get a feel for dungeons on solo. I've found them vastly different after the wide open spaces. It's fine to talk about 'kiting da boss' and many other techniques, usualy offered by people who have ran the dungeon many times in a group. In a confined space it takes some practice to do it efficiently all by yourself. A lot of times you end up kiting yourself right into another group of mobs.  

There are a few macros and such that I use but it's best to use the ones you like if you use them at all. My main hotkeyed one in a dungeon is an assist pet macro so I always end up back on the pets target after anything untoward develops.  Again, Gar has a Macro page set up. Give it a read to get a few ideas.

That's a few ideas, albeit it scattered ones. A lot of your success or lack thereof is going to depend on your patience, practice and experiencing a few wipes. At times you may not be able to complete the dungeon but it's terrific fun trying. Right now I have a 100% fail rate in L85 instances. That being said, the Cata dungeons were designed to be extremely hard by intention. Very.

Over time you'll develop, or should, methods that work the best for you.

If you do all of the above or this wasn't about soloing instances, I sure hope you didn't read it all  Have fun.

Welcome-there is an interesting thread in this forum about MM vs SV with a DPS link. Appears MM spec is doing insane damage. BM, of course is sucking Oh well, maybe I'll spec MM sometime n try er out.

As for you pulling aggro, if you read the post mentioned that 'could' be why you're pulling. Could also be 1000 other things. Group make-up, tanks, organization and on and on and on. Not that I've much experience in the group thing but you should be sending the pet in before firing to let the tank gain aggro, then trapping and CC. Important to get your pet control down to a science as well. If you do pull aggro, run straight back to the tank to let him regain it or there shall be wipes and much snivelling.

There is a a ton of info about groups on the innernets, lot of good stuff here as well by players way above my pay grade.

Also, seems hunters are slightly out of favor right now from what I've read. As a ranged, we're a long ways behind a few other classes, which is stupid given we are supposed to be the ranged dps'ers.

All of which interests me not at all, my wolf never bitches.

G'luck.