Hunter Talents (WoW)  

See also: Hunter Talent Builds

Hunter talents, along with the rest of the hunter abilities, are divided into three separate points of focus for the class: Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival.

Beast Mastery (BM)

The Beast Mastery tree focuses on the hunter's connection with nature and with his/her pet. Most of the talents improve the usefulness of the pet in some way, and the remaining talents generally affect aspects. One of the critical aspects of the Beast Mastery is the two talents that enhance the attack speed of the hunter, which has significant impact in later levels on shot rotations. Beast Mastery is also often considered the best tree for leveling in a class that needs no help leveling.

Key Talents

• Improved Aspect of the Hawk - Gives a chance to increase attack speed by 15%. Common non-BM choice.
• Focused Fire - adds 2% to the hunter's damage output while the pet is active. Common non-BM choice.
• Unleashed Fury - adds 20% to pet damage
• Ferocity/Frenzy - adds 15% to pet's crit chance, and gives the pet +30% attack speed after a crit.
• Improved Mend Pet - gives the hunter a way to remove status effects from the pet.
• Bestial Wrath/The Beast Within - makes the hunter and pet immune to crowd control, and improves their damage, for 18 seconds.
• Serpent's Swiftness - increases attack speed of both hunter and pet by 20%. Very essential talent.

See Beast Mastery for more in-depth commentary on the Beast Mastery talents.

Marksmanship (MM)

The Marksmanship aspect of the hunter class emphasizes their use of ranged weapons. Critical skills enhance general shot damage, as well as improving select shot and sting skills, and adding a few new ones. Marksmanship hunters generally have the highest damage when only the hunter themselves is included, however they are typically outdamaged by beast masters when the pet is also considered. Considering marksmanship does not add anything particularly unique to a dungeon or raid group, they are generally not considered to be very desireable, but the activated abilities that come with the tree work very well in the arena.

Key Talents

• Lethal Shots - Increased critical attack rate by up to 5%.
• Go For the Throat - Greatly increases your pet's focus regeneration by adding 50 focus after every crit.
• Mortal Shots - Increases the damage bonus on critical strike rates by 30%. (Crits basically do 15% more damage.) This talent is featured in nearly every serious talent build.
• Scatter Shot - Disorients the hunter's target for 4 seconds, allowing the hunter to trap, run away, or prepare an attack.
• Trueshot Aura - The Marksmanship talent boon for the rest of the group, "TSA" adds attack power to everyone in the party including the hunter and his pet.
• Silencing Shot - A very poweful skill against casters, silencing shot can nullify spellcasting for 3 seconds out of every 20.

See Marksmanship for more details about the Marksmanship talent tree.

Survival (SV)

While hunters can output very high-level damage, and provide a tank for soloing or a PvP nuisance with their pets, the rest of the hunter's array of skills are related to keeping the hunter alive and to providing utility. In addition to wearing mail armor and having very high dodge rates, hunters are able to crowd control opponents using traps and the survival talent ability Wyvern Sting. Survival hunters, in particular, are very effective at these aspects of the class, and although their damage output tends to be lower than the other two specs, the idea is that survivalists bring something more to the group beyond just their DPS.

See Survival for more details.

1. Tier 1
• Improved Aspect of the Hawk (5 points) - Has a chance to give the hunter 15% haste while using Aspect of the Hawk
• Endurance Training (5 points) - Increases pet health by up to 10% and the hunter's health by 5%.
2. Tier 2 (5 points must be spent in the tree)
• Focused Fire (2 points)
• Improved Aspect of the Monkey
• Thick Hide
• Improved Revive Pet
3. Tier 3 (10 points required)
• Pathfinding
• Bestial Swiftness
• Unleashed Fury
4. Tier 4 (15 points required)
• Mend Pet
• Ferocity
5. Tier 5 (20 points required)
• Spirit Bond
• Intimidation
• Bestial Discipline
6. Tier 6 (25 points required)
• Animal Handler
• Frenzy
7. Tier 7 (30 points required)
• Ferocious Inspiration
• Bestial Wrath
• Catlike Reflexes
8. Tier 8 (35 points required)
• Serpent's Swiftness
9. Tier 9 (40 points required)
• The Beast Within

Talent Builds and Selections

Choice of how a player "builds" their character is based heavily on playstyle -- both their own tastes, and the parts of the game they engage in mostly.

• Leveling: Beast Mastery is usually considered the optimal tree, with Marksmanship also being decent. Pets have difficulty maintaining aggro over survival hunters, and their damage is lower, making it a slower tree for soloing.
• Instances: Each talent tree offers its own valid points. Beast Mastery and Marksmanship both do considerable damage, but Survival gives greater flexibility to react to situations and to help handle adds.
• Raiding: During raid encounters, Beast Mastery outdamages Marksmanship, and so Marksmanship hunters are generally discouraged. Survival provides the critical talent Expose Weakness, however this effect does not stack, so at most 1 survival hunter is wanted on the raid, and ideally the rest are beast masters.
• PvP: Each tree has their advantages. Survival hunters are harder to kill and can apply better crowd control, and beast masters cannot be crowd controlled while The Beast Within is active and have a pet that can chew up casters. However, for arenas, marksmanship is usually considered ideal since preventing heals through Scatter Shot and Silencing Shot is critical and the hunter's role in arena is limited to begin with.

Common Builds

Numbers given are for the points spent in (Beast Mastery/Marksmanship/Survival).

(41/20/0): This is the standard Beast Mastery build, used heavily for raiding and also by most other hunters interested in playing with Beast Mastery as their primary tree.
(7/43/11): This marksmanship build is mostly designed for PvP usage. It does excellent damage for MM and also has some elements of survival.
(0/41/20): This variation is designed more to help with general instance running.
(0/21/40): The most frequently used survival builds are very similar to this one, regardless of how the player plays. Typically some points are shifted to other talents depending on the player's focus. For example, this would be a more raid-focused survival build, while this version is more geared toward PvP.
(0/28/33): Many players go deep into survival far enough to get Expose Weakness, and focus the rest of their points in other trees. Another version of this spec is (7/21/33).

Please note that not every player will spend their points exactly like the examples given above. These are just general designs.