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WoW class:Hunter  

 Hunter
RacesNight Elf, Dwarf, Draenei, Orc, Troll, Tauren, Blood Elf
Talent TreesBeast Mastery, Marksmanship, Survival

SpellsAbilitiesQuests
TrainersMacrosForum

Contents [hide]

Theme

Rugged stalkers of the wild, hunters roam the wilderness with their animal companion by their side, to track down and slay their targets with deadly accuracy. Preferring to use ranged weapons to stay a safe distance away and get the first shot undetected, hunters are extremely powerful at locating their marks and eliminating them.

Talent Trees

Beast Mastery

The Beast Mastery talent tree focus's on enhancing the Hunter's pet's abilities greatly. With the enhanced abilities, the pet is a foe to be reckoned with for the Hunter's enemies. With improved damage and aggro-holding capabilities, the pet makes a viable tank for solo needs or lower-end instances. Beast Mastery is usually a preferred spec for leveling; on account of the tanking abilities and damage increase, but can also be viably used in PvP or endgame PvE content; and has proved to have a maximal DPS output.

In PvP the Beast Mastery spec works great against melee combatants; as the ability Bestial Wrath prevents you from being ensnared for 18 seconds, giving the Hunter the ability to keep his foe at distance. With the addition of Intimidation the Hunter is able to stun the target for 3 seconds. The two talents combined have a deadly effect to whom ever stands in the way. On the other hand, this spec is greatly reliant on the hunter's pet, and if the pet dies, the hunter is left to fight on his own.

Marksmanship

The Marksmanship spec is based around enhancing the ability of the Hunter itself. Usually used as a PvP spec, the spec is popular around all aspects of the game. The spec greatly increases the Hunter's shots and stings, giving the Hunter the ability to drain the life or mana of its foe much greater then any other spec. The spec focuses on the increase in Attack Power with such talents as Careful Aim and Master Marksman.

The spec is mainly used for PvP because of it's increase in Attack Power and Weapon Damage. With such additions as Silencing Shot and Scatter Shot, the Hunter gains proficiency in battling caster-type classes. This spec is widely used in Arena for it's Improved Stings talent which increases the mana drained by the Hunter's Viper Sting by 30%; which is important in various 2v2 setups.

Survival

The Survival spec focuses on the Hunter's survivability in PvP as well as PvE content. With increased damage to various types of mobs in the game, it becomes a viable PvE spec, along with its Readiness ability. The spec also focuses on the improvement of the Hunter's traps with Clever Traps and Trap Mastery talents. Sometimes known to be used in the end-game portion of WoW, the spec show an incredible DPS output with stacked Agility.

The PvP aspect of the spec comes from such talents as Surefooted, Deterrence, and Wyvern Sting. This spec is usually used to compliment Marksmenship, with a usual 0/41/20 spec for PvP. The Deterrence and Surefooted add to the survivability in PvP, while Wyvern Sting is used as a mode of Crowd Control. This spec is considered an off-spec unless the player can pull off the gear needed to make this spec really work.

Class capabilities

Weapon proficiencies:

  • Axes (starting melee weapon for most hunter races)
  • Two-handed Axes
  • Swords
  • Two-handed Swords
  • Daggers
  • Polearms
  • Fist Weapons
  • Staff
  • Bows (starting weapon for Night Elf, Orc, Troll, and Blood Elf)
  • Crossbows (starting weapon for Draenei)
  • Guns (starting weapon for Dwarf and Tauren)

Armor proficiencies:

  • Cloth
  • Leather
  • Mail (at level 40)

Additionally hunters can parry, and dual wield at level 20.

Hunters are the only class with any noteworthy abilities using missile weapons, as this is their focus in combat. The more distinct feature of their class is the use of an animal companion to fight with them and serve as a distraction for them to maintain range.

The three talent trees for hunter are Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival. Beast Mastery focuses primarily on interaction with the pet, marksmanship is oriented toward damage from ranged combat, and survival deals with the outdoorsmanship aspect of the class.

See hunter pets

Strengths and Weaknesses

Hunters are superb single-target attackers. Although they lack some of the explosive output that rogues are capable of, they are able to fight from out of harm's way. When they fight alone, their pet takes the brunt of the damage for them. Hunters are said to be the fastest class to level because they have little need to wait for mana to regenerate, nor eat or bandage to recover lost health.

While they are capable in melee, they are not exceptional at it, and would prefer to fight at a distance. Their pet can usually only hold the attention of one target at a time, and none at all in PvP, forcing them to reckon with opponents at close range. Many hunters will use a freezing trap to escape this predicament. In a worst-case scenario, they can Feign Death to get their foes to leave them be.

Group roles and expectations

An additional weakness of the class, ironically, is their fast leveling speed. This often leads many hunters toward not learning proper group etiquette or understanding and respect of other classes in terms of equipment needs.

A well-played hunter in a group can be invaluable, though. In addition to being able to DPS single targets very well, they can crowd control very effectively with freezing trap, their pet off-tanking, and sometimes even kiting targets. Some hunters are also expected to do the pulling for their group.

Class Quests

Hunters have a series of quests at level 10 to learn about how to tame and manage their pets. While it only serves as a starting point, the initial taming quests and the follow-up to learn about feeding and reviving the pet serve as a basis for pet fundamentals.

The other noteworthy hunter class quest is the search for Rhok'delar. Although it is an extremely dynamic quest line that forces the hunter to learn about playing their class without their pet, it is very rare that anyone attempts the quest any more simply because the quest starts in the original first raid zone, Molten Core, which is seldom visited.

For a complete list of Hunter quests, look here.

This page last modified 2008-06-13 09:37:05.