World of Warcraft Hunter Guide

The hunter is the always popular archer class in World of Warcraft. A unique difference with most other games is that you will also get a permanent pet in World of Warcraft. These vary between just about every animal you can imagine, raptors, gorillas, tigers, cats, rhinos, crabs, crocolisks and many more. If you’re looking for a class that primarily deals physical ranged damage through guns, bows or crossbows with the assistance of their pet you’ve come to the right address.

Click HERE For the Ultimate Guide to World of Warcraft

Getting Started

The hunter has a decent array of choices when it comes to races. The Alliance can choose between being a Dwarf, Dranei and Night Elf. The Horde can choose between Troll, Tauren and Blood Elf. A few races get a decent bonus in certain areas and I will cover these per subject.
Ranged Weapon Bonus – Some hunter races get a bonus with a specific ranged weapon giving them 1% increased chance to critically strike. Dwarves get this with guns, and Trolls gets this with bows.
Player versus Player Bonus -  Dwarves get stone form, allowing them to instantly remove a disease/poison or bleed effect once every 2 minutes. Orcs get hardiness, giving them a 15% passive duration reduction to stuns. Taurens get war stomp, allowing them to stun targets within a radius around themselves for 2 seconds. Trolls get a passive racial that reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 15%. Blood Elves get a silence that works in a radius around themselves, silencing all targets within range for 2 seconds.
Misc. – Draenei get an aura that increases all grouped players chance to hit with spells and attacks by 1%. Orcs get an ability that significantly increases their attack power for 15 seconds, on top of this they get a racial to increase their pet’s damage. Trolls get an ability that increases their attack speed by 20% for 10 seconds.

There are quite a few decent racials floating amongst there. Most important of all I suggest you check out the WoW armory or youtube for some animations on (x-)bow/gun firing animations as some races have a pretty darn annoying one and you wouldn’t want to get stuck with that. Remember that even though you could just try out all the races and shoot some level 1 mobs you won’t be able to see how certain abilities fire until you get to the higher levels ;).

Hunter Talent Trees

The hunter is one of the few classes that has 3 talent trees focus on nothing but damage dealing. Of course each tree is unique in their own right and I will give you an overview here:
Beast Mastery – As the name suggests this guide focuses on improving your pet’s damage to the degree where you will be able to compete with other players simply by having your pet do 30-50% of your combined damage. A cool aspect of this tree is that the final talent allows you to pick up a few more unique and powerful pets like rhinos, chimeras, core hounds  and devilsaurs.
Marksmanship – This tree focuses on dealing the maximum amount of physical damage as possible with your ranged weapon. You deal critical strikes more often and more damaging than any of other trees.
Surivval – As the name suggests this tree makes you more beefy in a few ways. This includes buffing up your traps and your health to giving you extra mechanics to keeping you at range from your enemies. Don’t make the mistake thinking this means you won’t deal a lot of damage. This tree also has a lot of nifty talents to increase your attack power and agility when you meet certain criteria. There is also a talent that increases your damage on your most used abilities by 6% whenever you stand still for at least 6 seconds.

Hunter Mechanics 

The hunter revolves around a few mechanics which I will discuss below.
Pet play – The hunter is able to choose from a wide variety of pets. Once you hit level 10 on your hunter you will receive your class quests to tame your first pet. Pets come in 3 different categories:
Ferocity – These pets focus on dealing damage
Cunning – These pets focus on mobility and utility. This makes them useful in player versus player, soloing and small group play.
Tenacity – These pets make excellent meat shields. They specialize in taking damage and holding the mobs latched onto themselves.
Each pet type has their own unique talent tree. As your pet levels with you, you will gain talent points for him which you can spend in the unique talent trees for your pet. If this doesn’t add enough diversity each different pet family also gets their own unique ability. To give you an idea just how unique these abilities are I will give you a few of these abilities out of the 33 there are. And yes, there are 33 unique pet families out there, all with their own unique looks amongst the pet family giving you a wide diversity of pets and looks to choose from. Anyway here are some example of the abilities:
Chimera – Frost Storm Breath : Your chimera simultaneously breathes frost and lightning at the target dealing  Frost and Nature damage to the target and slowing it for 5 seconds.
Nether Ray – Nether Shock : Instantly deals shadow damage to the target, interrupting any spell cast and prevents any school in that school from being cast for another 2 seconds.
Spider – Web : Encases the target in a web, preventing movement for 4 seconds.
Devilsaur Monstrous Bite: Your devilsaur bites the target dealing physical damage and boosting the damage it deals by 3%. This effect stacks up to 3 times.
Raptor – Savage Rend : Slashes the enemy causing it to bleed every 5 seconds for 15 seconds. A critical hit with this ability will increase the raptor’s damage by 10% for 30 seconds.
Wolf – Furious Howl : Increases the wolf and its masters attack power for 20 seconds.
Cat – Stealth : Your pet enters a stealth mode, slowing it’s movement but its first attack will deal bonus damage. Lasts until cancelled.
Boar- Gore : Your boar gores an enemy dealing damage. If used within 6 seconds of a charge it will deal double damage.
Turtle – Shell Shield : Your turtle withdraws into its shell, reducing damage taken by 50% for 12 seconds.
Warp Stalker – Warp : Instantly warps your warp stalker behind the target and gives your pet a 50% chance to avoid the next 3 attacks made.
Crab – Pin : Pins the target in place, squeezing them also dealing damage over 4 seconds.

As you can see even this list gives you a diverse amount of pet abilities to boost your ranged attack powers. A key aspect of being a good hunter is choosing the right pet for every situation. As such you are able to store multiple pets in the stables and use an ability to call the necessary pet out whenever you so desire.

If you wish to continue reading this World of Warcraft Hunter Guide you can find page 2 here, WoW Hunter Guide

Are you interested in leveling faster and solving your money problems?  

If your answer to this question is yes I suggest you have a look at the Ultimate Guide to World of Warcraft 

In this guide you will not only get comprehensive guides to leveling quickly while making plenty of money you will gain various guides varying from talent guides to professions and player versus player to a beginners guide. Wait no longer and get your Ultimate Guide to World of Warcraft now!