Moogul

Late game back at 60 when I raided as a horde me and a friend of mine both raided as two separate spec hunters. He went full marks as a troll. I went survival to lightning reflexes and rest in marks. I stacked raw stat other than my ZG enchants and trinkets. It was very gear dependent. We both had full tier 2, crossbow from Chromagus .I had cloak from Ragnaros, neck and ring from Nefarian, and AQ ring with Sand Reaver barb. Enchants were plus stats on chest and ap on bracers. agility on gloves and boots DM hunter trinket and drakefang talisman. The damage between us was always running neck and neck Until the stats got better. Think about it lightning reflexes is 15% extra agility off your agility base. And yes it works off a totem, tubers, mongoose, food and motw. On top of that 8 piece tier 2 bonus proc. Do the numbers. with Hunters mark and Hawk aspect on and thorium arrows. I had more AP and crit/hit at 60 than you could get at max level in Burning Crusade. Sad but true. I swear by raw stats over AP though if its even or slightly under because Agility is always gonna be best all around. Especially late game. I respeced probably hundred of times back and forth between the builds and crunched numbers religiously. And I swear by the stat build it works awesomely with tier 2 and above. But like I tell anyone seeing is believing. And I raided hardcore from the time MC armor had no graphics till Northrend Expansion. In classic I had tier 1,2.and 3 pieces tier 3. Back then it would take you 6-8 months for a full set unless you were lucky enough to join a guild that had it all on farm and was sharding 90% of the loot.

When I raided at 60 I honestly thought it was a waste of time. It was called tier 2.5. I didn't think it was enough of a stat boost from tier 2 to take over the other classes you shared a turn in piece with. Spell damage and healing kinda made me sick if you used a hunter enough to know anything that we had that was spell like sucked. Serpent sting sucks. Traps damage isnt bad but compare its damage to mage and warlock aoe or dots. Same with volley. Now back in the day I did see fraps of full 2.5 hunters with the arcane trinket from BWL and spell damage enchants, rings, and weapons hitting insane arcane shots. I can only vaguely remember and couldn't tell you how it scaled. I also remember when they nerfed mend pet because some hunter stacked plus healing mail gear and could tank raid bosses with a turtle. Far as for BMs for pets, until you got tier 3 it would seem best to run 2 pieces tier 1 and rest tier 2.

When I played at 60 we got more dmg from cats and wind serpents. I preferred boars and wolves myself. But believe me when I say beasty hunters don't cut it end game because no healer is gonna heal a pet over player. And to do the damage you need pet and weapon damage combined. Ive seen them do well and mostly do bad because there too busy managing their pet. I don't doubt their damage in capable hands its just a lot of it is more situational fights than all around hunter dps.

If he's on defensive he will attack anything that agros you as well as your commanded target.

I can tell you from experience that horde hunters do more damage than alliance. I don't understand why so many people say hunters are useless in raids in end game. I played an orc hunter at 60 and always did as much damage as any mage or rogue. Week end and out we always fought for damage and crunched numbers. Some fights in the game are better for certain classes. Far as specs for late game full marksman always works but I managed to play off the lightning reflex spec with scattershot and no wyvern. Its more gear dependant but late game with the slowest weapon you can find and as much agility as you can stack plus totem, whipperoot tubers, mongoose potions, agility food and MOTW my damage started scaling so much better than marks. I never used dots in raids or 5 mans except for explosive trap on trash it was better aoe than volley ever was. Problem with dots in raids is it sucks for damage and is a waste for raid slot and in 5 mans you cant CC with a dot on target and you never know when you need to pick up a target. Another realization you need to know. Traps cannot be cast in combat in vanilla you'll have to fein death/cast within 3-5 sec window before being pulled back in combat. In 5 mans clever traps is important for keeping a target trapped for long periods of time because it extends the trap time longer than your fein death that way you can fein death trap again. Fein death/drink is handy as well. Another raid saver can be fein death/jumper cables. You'll have to fein death/equip cables first then wait till cooldown is up again before being able to use cables but its handy as hell to keep both regular jumper cables and XL cables for battle res. As far as pvp I beat good rogues 50% of time. Arms warriors could kill me easy if they knew to put on a shield when I got away from them. Druids cant be killed if there smart. When fighting warlocks I can kill and survive good affliction locks if I ate after I killed them. I could kill backlash/destructo warlocks most times unless there full time pvpers(to much spell damage}. Don't even try to fight a shaman one on one. And that's for every class. Most mages I could kill ,most good mages I could not. All depends on if I can burn the frost armor off quick enough any other spec is dead. Shadow priests rape most hunters. And orc hunters one on one against other hunters just have a survival build go scatter them, frost trap, wing clip, aspect of monkey, deterance, bloodfury with the biggest 2 hander you got and beat them down meelee. Beat every race of hunter in game on daily basis with my meelee. It works with frost trap down they will never break enough distance with scattershot to use there ranged. Bloodfury sets orc meelee apart from other races. Eventhough hunters suck at meelee. Against pallies I didn't even try and kill a resto pally and I had enough parry and dodge with my racial for stuns and could outlast their mana pool for ret pallies. But hunters falling off at end game for damage is funny as hell to me. People forget 2 ap per agility 54 agility per crit. I had more ranged ap at 60 than at max level in burning crusade. By the end at 60 I had full tier 1,2,and 3 pieces of tier 3. I was pushing 1600 Ranged ap raid buffed. Hitting 3k aimed shots 1300-2k multies, and auto shot hits around 600-800 and auto crits around 1200-1600. I wasn't a marks build so I only used arcane shot for kiting and pulling.