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.
• Ferocious Inspiration - following a pet crit, the party all has +3% to damage, including casters.
• 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%. Common non-MM choice.
• Go For the Throat - Greatly increases your pet's focus regeneration by adding 50 focus after every crit. Common non-MM choice.
• 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. Taken by nearly all hunters.
• Scatter Shot - Disorients the hunter's target for 4 seconds, allowing the hunter to trap, run away, or prepare an attack.
• Ranged Weapon Specialization - Improves all ranged damage by 5%.
• 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.

Key Talents

Note: Unlike other talent trees, the early and mid-range talents of the survival tree are heavily up to opinion and playstyle.

• Hawk Eye - Increases range of the hunter by 6 yards. Common non-SV choice.
• Humanoid Slaying - One of the few early damage choices. Increases damage by 3% against humanoid targets, which includes most bosses. Common non-SV choice.
• Clever Traps - Extends the duration of Freezing Trap to 26 seconds, almost matching its cooldown.
• Surefooted - Increases hit chance by 3%, reducing the need for hit rating gear. Common non-SV choice.
• Killer Instinct - Adds 3% to crit rate.
• Lightning Reflexes - Adds 15% to agility. This makes agility the central attribute for survival hunters.
• Expose Weakness - Following a crit, everyone attacking the hunter's target gets bonus AP equal to 25% of the hunter's agility. Essential raiding talent.
• Thrill of the Hunt - Helps the hunter conserve mana considerably.

See Survival for more details.

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.

See Hunter Talent Builds for common talent set-ups.

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