Гайд по Хантеру.

[smersh 12]

Вот такой гайд попался под руку в интернете:

"1. Общее.

Начальные параметры охотников:

Орк Тролль Таурен Дворф Н.эльф

Strength 24 21 26 23 17

Agility 19 24 18 19 27

Stamina 23 22 23 24 20

Intellect 17 17 16 19 20

Spirit 22 22 22 20 21

(к сожалению табличка нормально не стала, надеюсь разберётесь

Параметры охотника

При создании нового персонажа у игрока нет возможности выбрать начальные параметры. Они будут зависить лишь от выбора расы и класса

- Strength (Сила) - увеличивает урон в ближнем бою. Сила не влияет на шанс нанесения критических ударов.

- Agility (Ловкость) - увеличивает урон в дальнем бою, увеличивает шанс нанести критический удар, влият на шанс уворота(dodge), а также от неё напрямую зависит величина защиты и брони(defense и armor).

- Stamina (Выносливость) - Увеличивает здоровье персонажа(Health points).

- Intellect (Интеллект) - Увеличивает значение маны и влияет на шанс нанесения критического повреждения магическими заклинаниями. Интеллект влияет на шанс повышения навыков ближнего боя (dodge, parry, block).

- Spirit (Дух) - Увеличивает скорость регенерации маны и жизни. Этот параметр также позволяет повысить навык владения определённым оружием.

* На повреждения в дальнем бою влияет ловкость, на повреждения в ближнем бою влият как ловкость, так и сила.

Преимущества

1. Может приручать и управлять различными животными.

2. Может быстро путешествовать используя Аспект гепарда(Aspect of Cheetah) или увеличивать скорость всех членов группы с помощью Аспекта стаи(Aspect of the Pack).

3. Может использовать разнообразные способности зверей.

4. Очень хорошь в преследовании убегающих монстров и игроков.

Недостатки:

1. Может носить кольчужные доспехи(Mail Armor) только с 40-го уровня.

2. Не может носить пластинчатые доспехи(Plate Armor).

3. Обладает малым количеством способностей ближего боя.

Доступные расы: дварф, ночной эльф, орк, тролль, таурен.

Стандартные бары: Здоровье/Мана

Доступное обмунидирование: тряпичная одежда(Cloth), кожаные доспехи(Leather), кольчужные доспехи (Mail - нужна тренировка)

Доступное оружие:

- топоры(One-handed Axes),

- Кинжалы(Daggers),

- ружья или луки(Guns и Bows),

- арбалеты(Crossbows - нужна тренировка),

- копья(Spears - нужна тренировка),

- посохи (Staves - нужна тренировка),

- одноручные мечи(One-handed swords - нужна тренировка),

- метательное оружие(Thrown - нужна тренировка),

- двуручные топоры(Two-handed Axes - нужна тренировка),

- двуручные мечи(Two-handed Swords - нужна тренировка)

2. О роли класса.

Основная задача Охотника – это нанесение большого урона противнику. Такой класс в игре называется Damage Dealer. Находясь в группе, Охотник помогает уничтожать врагов как можно быстрее, ведя по ним огонь с большого расстояния. Возможность нанесения урона из далека, делает этот класс очень полезным, когда нужно выманить монстра. Такое действие в игре называется Pull. И умелое использование стрельбы и различных ловушек делает Охотника прекрасным пуллером.

Не стоит забывать и о лучшем друге Охотника – его питомце. Прирученное животное атакует противников, по вашей команде. И берет на себя все внимание монстра. Это называется контролировать, держать на себе Aggro (агрессия противника, желание атаковать именно эту цель). Отвлекая монстра от самого охотника, питомец дает вам возможность вести стрельбу по противнику, не завязывая с ним ближний бой.

Лучший друг Охотника – его питомец. Не забывайте, что у прирученного вами зверя есть показатель самочувствия. Чем выше этот показатель, тем счастливее ваш питомец, тем более большой урон он будет наносить. Кормите прирученного зверя едой, которая ему нравится, и тогда вы без особого труда сможете поддерживать его самочувствие. В противном случае питомец уйдет от вас или даже нападет! Только Охотники могут давать уникальные имена своим животным (Rename). Но давать кличку каждому зверю можно только один раз.

Охотники умеют использовать различные возможности животных, перенимать их черты, позволяющие использовать способности, которых раньше у них не было. Охотники обладают широким выбором атак на расстоянии, парой атак ближнего боя и возможностями приручать и контролировать зверей. Охотники сохраняют тонкую связь со своими питомцами и должны всегда заботиться о их настроении. Когда у вас появляется питомец, то вы можете заметить иконку в левом верхнем углу экрана, которая отражает уровень его настроения(Happiness). Чем чаще вы используете своего питомца, тем ниже данный уровень становится. Недоволный питомец может даже напасть на своего хозяина. Для того, чтобы поднять настроение своего питомца достаточно его просто покормить. Всегда запасайтесь едой для своего питомца. Узнать какую пищу он ест вы можете либо в конюшнях(Stables) или с помощью заклинания Сведения о звере(Beast Lore).

Конюшни (Stables)

Вы можете оставлять своих питомцев в конюшнях. Они распологаются недалеко от гостиниц и почтовых ящиков. Там можно докупать дополнительные места для содержания своих питомцев. Если вы хотите выбрать другого своего зверька, который есть у вас в наличии и не потерять теперяшнего, то вам необходимо делать это в конюшне.

Дальний бой

Охотники могут вести рукопашный бой, но на расстоянии они действую намного эффективнее.

Прицелы

Инженеры могут собирать снайперские прицелы для оружия Охотника. Найдите инженера, что бы повысить урон, наносимый вашим оружием, или посетите Аукцион, где вы сможете купить прицел.

Боезапас

Всегда старайтесь использовать самые лучшие патроны и стрелы, которые могут наносить больший урон по противнику. Инженеры могут создавать намного более качественные боеприпасы, чем те, которые продаются в торговых лавках.

Колчаны и сумки для патронов

Используя их для хранения своих стрел и патронов, Охотники увеличивают скорость перезарядки своего оружия. Это позволяет им стрелять быстрее. Старайтесь найти колчан или сумку с максимально большим бонусом к скорострельности. Многие из них вы можете получить в награду за выполненный квест.

Уход за животным

Животное Охотника обладает показателем настроения - иконка рядом с изображением питомца. Чем чаще ваш зверь вступает в бой, тем сильнее ухудшается его самочувствие. Но Охотник может повысить настроение питомцу покормив его. Счастливое животное наносит больший урон врагам (125%). Если вы не будете следить за настроением прирученного зверя, то питомец уйдет или даже нападет на вас!

Еда для питомца

Всегда носите с собой запас пищи для животного. Разные звери предпочитают разную еду. Узнать гастрономические предпочтения вашего зверя можно в меню. Нажмите "С" и выберите закладку Pet (Питомец). Животное будет есть как сырую, так и приготовленную пищу.

Аспекты

Аспекты - это специальные баффы, которые охотник получает от своего питомца. У вас одновременно может быть активным только один аспект. Аспекты можно менять в зависимости от ситуации. Например, вы можете начать битву с Аспектом ястр***(Aspect of the Hawk), а когда монстр подойдёт близко переключиться на Аспект обезьяны(Aspect of the Monkey), дающий больший шанс уклониться от атак.

Профессии

Вы можете выбрать для изучения две любые профессии, но представленные ниже могут быть очень полезны для класса охотник.

- Снятие шкур (Skinning) и обработка кожи (Leatherworking) - Вы сможете сами создавать кожаные доспехи, а также у вас всегда будут под рукой компоненты для их создания.

- Зачарование (Enchanting) - охотник сможет делать свои вещи ещё лучше и сильнне.

- Mining и Engineering - Охотник сможет делать улучшенные патроны или менять их на стрелы для своего лука.

3. Билды.

Я как и многие другие считаю для раскачки лучшим билдом бистмастер-марксмен (БМ-ММ) билд.

Вот раскладка талантов которую я рекомендую брать при быстром каче до 60го левела:

БМ ветка.

Endurance Training 5/5 – Повышение ХП пета на 15% очень хороший талант, с ним на начальных уровнях с ним пет будет почти не убиваемым.

Improved Revive Pet 2/2 – Очень полезный талант. Если пета хантера убивают, то начальных уровнях это аналогично вайпу, т.к. начинающий хантер просто не сможет кайтить и постепенно убивать мобов. Из-за того что у него не хватает для этого опыта и количества абилок. С этим талантом можно повесить на моба винг-клип отбежать на максимальное расстояние и всего за 4 секунды воскресить пета сразу с 45% ХП.

Thick Hide 3/3 – Увеличение армора пета, приводит к уменьшению по нему физ. дамага и делает пета еще более живучим.

Bestial Swiftness 1/1 – Увеличение скорости пета на 30%. После патча 1.9 это единственное средство как можно “расшевелить” пета, т.к. сейчас абсолютно все петы имеют одинаковую скорость. А ждать пока пет добежит до моба, это терять драгоценное время.

Unleashed Fury – Увеличение дамаги пета на 20%. Тут что называется без комментариев.

Improved Mend Pet – Имба талант и в ПВП и ПВЕ. За каждый тик лечения (т.е. за 1 сек) с вероятностью 50% снимает с пета один негативный эффект, будь то магия, курс, десиз.

Ferocity – Увеличение крита пета на 15%. Увеличивает дамаг пета, кроме того в комбинации с талантом Frenzy увеличивает дамаг еще больше.

Intimidation – Стан на 3 сек. Аналог скаттер шота. Наше оружие против любых мили классов. Кроме того очень полезен в инстах чтобы остановить моба который срывается на приста (друида) или любого кастера в кампе.

Spirit Bond – Регенерация 2% ХП в течении 10 сек. Очень жаль что этот талант изменили в патче 1.7, тогда он был куда лучше и полезнее особенно в ПВП. Сейчас этот талант нужен только в ПВЕ, для того чтобы максимально уменьшить downtime (время в течении которого игрок не атакует моба, а бежит от одного к другому или сидит на месте и восстанавливает ХП и ману).

Frenzy – Этот талант безбожно решает, особенно если у вас пет с быстрой атакой 1.0-1.5 сек. При одном единственном крите скорость атаки вашего пета увеличится на 30% на 8сек. Быстрый пет нужен как раз для того чтобы в эти 8 сек нанести как можно больше ударов и соответственно повысить вероятность повторного срабатывания таланта.

Bestial Wrath – Увеличивает дамаг пета на 50% на 18 сек, и делает его неуязвимым ко всем станам, замедлениям, дизориентам. После патча 1.9 этот талант так же изменили в худшую сторону, уменьшив бонус дамага со 100% до 50%, однако чуть увеличив время с 15 до 18секунд. Этот скилл почти верная смерть для всех кастеров.

ММ ветка.

Improved Concussive Shot 5/5 – Возможность застанить противника с 20% вероятностью при выстреле конкусив шотом. Хороший талант. С ним немного легче кайтить противника, и есть некоторый шанс сбить каст.

Lethal Shots 5/5 – Криты это дополнительный дамаг, следовательно берем без вопросов.

Aimed Shot 1/1 – Это наш хлеб и соль. Основной выстрел хантера. С помощью этого выстрела я наношу примерно 30% моей общей дамаги в инстах. Также это убер скилл для ПВП, при соответствующем геаре и оружии аймед может критануть по тряпкам на 2500.

Hawk Eye 3/3 – Увеличение дальности стрельбы на 6 ярдов. Хантер без этого скила недохантер. Он очень помогает в ПВП и ПВЕ, подавляющее большинство д***ффов имеет дальность 20-40 ярдов. Взяв этот талант мы остаемся за их зоной действия.

Efficiency – 1/5 По сути проходной талант. На выбор есть еще марка и аркан шот. Марку я не люблю т.к. за 1 талант она дает всего 3АП, это мизерная прибавка к дамагу. Та же история и с аркан шотом, этот скилл используется мною не очень часто, да и уменьшение кулдауна на 0.2 сек очень незначительно.

Mortal Shots – 4/5 Увеличение дамаг критов с 200% до 224% (230% если брать полностью). Эти таланты берутся самыми последними на 57-60 левелах, к этому времени у хантеров уже должно быть около 20% крита на ренжед оружие. Взяв этот талант мы тем самым увеличим дамаг каждого пятого выстрела на 24%, или если подсчитать грубо увеличим общий дамаг на 5%.

Раскачавшись до 60го левела, я рекомендовал бы вам не перекидываться в другой билд, а нафармить немного денег, порядка 200-500 голды, кому как надоест. Этот билд наилучший для фарма элитов 55-58 левела. Деньги вам очень понадобятся в дальнейшем на энчанты, маунта, потики и многое другое. Так чтобы не терять лишние деньги потом на перекидывание билдов туда-сюда, я и рекомендую фармить именно сейчас. Кроме того это научит вас использовать все ваши абилки, и азам агро менеджмента. Это поможет вам в дальнейшем при хождении в пре МС инсты (шоломанс, стратхолм, дир-маул, У(Л)БРС).

И вот вы достигли 60го левела, нафармили денег и готовы решимости идти дальше. Для хождения в пре МС инсты подойдет и БМ-ММ билд и чистый ММ. Я настоятельно советую вам собирать ваш синий сет именно в ММ билде. Да неодетый хантер в ММ билде потеряет часть дамага по сравнению с БМ-ММ (с учетом пета конечно), однако ему будет куда легче найти пати. Хантер не самый нужный класс в этих инстах и группа (особенно из 5ти человек) вполне может без него обойтись. В плюсах ММ хантера, аура, скаттер шот, больший дамаг самого хантера, детеранс, частые криты с раптора, прокаченные ловушки или большее кол-во ХП за счет талантов в Сюррайвл ветке. В плюсах БМ больший дамаг с учетом пета, дополнительное средство контроля в виде мощного пета танка. Но к превеликому сожалению БМ хант не очень востребован в этих инстах. Если вы зайдете в уже готовый рейд, то первое что вас попросят сделать это убрать пета, а второе включить ауру. Если вы не сделайте ни того ни другого на вас будут смотреть очень косо, а возможно сразу кикнут из рейда. Если вы готовы к тому, чтобы каждый раз терпеть это то выбирайте БМ, если нет то ММ ваш выбор. Я конечно понимаю, что боязнь пета родилась не на пустом месте. Но я думаю что дело не в пете, а в человеке за монитором. Одни могут прекрасно контролить пета, а другие могут вайпнуть рейд и без него. Лично я на 60м левеле в БМ билде не проходил ни дня, но со мной вышло так, что сразу как я докачался меня стали брать в МС, а там неодетому БМ хантеру делать было нечего.

Вот мой вариант раскачки ММ хантера:

БМ ветка

Improved Aspect of the Hawk 5/5 – С вероятностью в 5% есть возможность увеличить скорость атаки на 30%.

ММ ветка

Improved Concussive Shot 5/5 – См. выше.

Efficiency 2/5 – Проходные таланты. См. выше.

Lethal Shots 5/5 – См. выше.

Aimed Shot 1/1 – См. выше.

Hawk Eye 3/3 – См. выше.

Mortal Shots 5/5 – См. выше.

Scatter Shot 1/1 – Одна из самых замечательных абилок хантера. Дизориент на 4 секунды с кулдауном в 30сек. Востребована и в ПВП и в ПВЕ. Позволяет сбить каст, набрать дистанцию, поставить ловушку в бою. Единственный минус это то, что скаттер сбивается любым дамагом, даже ДоТом.

Barrage 3/3 – Увеличение дамага мультишота на 15%, если учесть что мультишот наносит примерно 20% моего общего дамага, то этот талант увеличивает дамаг на 3%, за 3 таланта очень неплохо.

Ranged Weapon Specialization 5/5 – Увеличение всего ренжед дамага на 5%, включая абсолютно все абилки. За 5 талантов получаем пассивную(!!!) абилку увеличивающую дамаг на 5%.

Trueshot Aura 1/1 – Дает по 100 мили и ренжед АП всей пати в радиусе 45ярдов. За эту штуку хантера обожают вары и роги которые находятся в пати с хантером.

Сюрравл ветка

Humanoid Slaying 3/3 – Увеличение дамага по всем хуманоидам на 3%, также увеличивает критический урон на 3% (т.е. с 230% до 233%). Очень хороший талант полезен в ДМ и стратхолме (скарлет части), и очень полезен в ПВП.

Monster Slaying 3/3 – Тоже что и выше только касательно бистов, драконов и гигантов.

Savage Strikes 2/2 – Увеличение крита с раптора и мангуст страйка на 20%. Раптор по сути единственная мили абилка у ханта и увеличение крита с нее 20% более чем приятно.

Improved Wing Clip – 4/5 16% вероятность при использовании винг-клипа приковать противника к месту на 5 секунд. Очень помогает против всех мили классов, а мешает то что вероятность срабатывания очень мала. Т.е. на нее можно надеяться, но нельзя рассчитывать.

Clever Traps 2/2 – Увеличение длительности или дамага ловушек на 30%. За 2 таланта увеличивает длительность фризинг трапы до 26 секунд (замете что кулдаун на ФД 30сек), и дамаги иммолейшн трапы до 900 за 15 сек. Весьма неплохо за 2 таланта. Имея этот талант хантер может запросто с помощью скаттера ФД и ловушки, контролить одного моба неограниченное время.

Deterrence 1/1 – Увеличение доджа и пари на 25% на 10 сек. Учитывая что у хантера около 20% своего доджа, 8% с аспекта, то при применении этой абилки на 10 секунд у него становиться 53% додж и 30% парри. Т. е. на это время хантер практически неуязвим в мили.

Ну чтож вы выросли, возмужали собрали полный бистсталкер или крит комплект из ДМ, вступили в успешную гильдию и даже умудрились получить свои первые эпики. Самое время задуматься о будущем. А в будущем вас ждет МС, гигантсталкер, эпик квест, а дальше БВЛ, драгонсталкер и арбалет с хромагуса.

Многие рекомендуют не перекидываться в сюррайвл пока не будет больше 400 аги. Я не думаю что это правильно. В МС на каждом висит полный комплект баффов (напомню 16аги дает улучшенная марка, и 10% БОК т.е. примерно 35-40аги в зависимости от шмота). С учетом этих баффов планку можно понизить до 350аги. Если на вас одеты все синие вещи то эту планку вы преодолеете с легкостью, даже если собираете крит комплект. К томуже большой плюс сюррайвл билда в том, что есть возможность “личить” ауру других ММ хантеров в рейде. И за счет этого иметь больший ДПС чем у них.

Хочу добавить, что если сравнивать ММ и сюррайвл билды по дамагу, то при хорошем шмоте (если у вас будет порядка 600аги без талантов и баффов) они становятся равны. Однако в сюррайвл билде куда больше ПВП плюшек, именно поэтому в качастве hi-end билда я и рекомендую перекидываться в сюррайвл. Опять же повторюсь оптимальный вариант увеличения ДПС всего рейда это 1-2 ММ хантера и 3-4 сюррайвл хантера. В этом случае если считать суммарный ДПС всех хантов в рейде он будет максимальным. Однако если у вас в гильдии принято составлять группы что вроде такой: вар, 2роги, хантер, хиллер, то конечно ММ хантеров в гильдии должно быть больше.

Вот первый вариант раскачки сюррайвл-ММ хантера:

Этот вариант предпочтителен для еще синих хантеров у которых нет или мало вещей с хитом.

Также для походов в МС я бы очень рекомендовал вам завести волка и обучить его способности Furious howl 4го ранга. Для этого придется затаймить волка из ЛБРС около босса-волка. Также прокачайте ему по максимуму фаер резист и стамину. После этого роги, вары или ханты с которыми вы будите в группе скажут вам спасибо за дополнительный дамаг который они получат от этой абилки волка.

БМ ветка

Ничего.

ММ ветка

Improved Concussive Shot 5/5 – См. выше.

Efficiency 1/5 – Проходные таланты. См. выше.

Lethal Shots 5/5 – См. выше.

Aimed Shot 1/1 – См. выше.

Hawk Eye 3/3 – См. выше.

Mortal Shots 5/5 – См. выше.

Scatter Shot 1/1 – См. выше.

Сюрравл веткаHumanoid Slaying 3/3 – См. выше.

Monster Slaying 3/3 – См. выше.

Deflection 2/5 –Это проходной талант, но имхо весьма полезный. Дает дополнительно 2% парри, с учетом того, что далее вы возьмете контратаку это очень нужный талант.

Savage Strikes 2/2 – См. выше.

Clever Traps 2/2 – См. выше.

Survivalist 5/5 – Большей частью ПВП талант, однако и в ПВЕ отнюдь не бесполезный. На первых порах у вас катастрофически не будет хватать ХП. Для более-менее комфортного прохождения МС нужно 5000 ХП, под всеми баффами. Этого хватит чтобы пережить 2 курзы на Люцифроне, бомбу на бароне или 2 фаербола на лава паках. Когда я начинал ходить в МС у меня было всего 4к ХП и мне этого катастрофически не хватало, одно неверное движение и ты труп. Было бы чуть больше была-бы возможность пережить тот или иной нюк отойти и отбандажиться.

Deterrence 1/1 – В МС у этого таланта появляеся новая жизнь. В случае срыва агро и резиста ФД, немедленно включайте детеранс, аспект мартышки (или сделайте макрос на то и другое) и бегите к танку, чтобы он побыстрее забрал с вас моба. Лично мне это не раз спасало жизнь.

Surefooted 3/3 – В МС обитают мобы 60-63 левела и поэтому необходимо иметь высокий шанс хита. Напомню все боссы это немного модифицированные мобы 63 левела. Чтобы не промахиваться по ним, нужно иметь с вещей, энчантов и талантов 9% хита. Эсли будет меньше часть ваших выстрелов будут миссы и следовательно вы недоберете часть дамага.

Killer Instinct 3/3 – Увеличение мили и ренжед крита на 3%, Крит это дополнительный дамаг следовательно берем.

Counterattack 1/1 – Это чисто ПВП талант, в МС и БВЛ он вам никак не понадобиться, но брать его стоит хотя бы потому, что не МС единым жив человек.

Lightning Reflexes 5/5 – Вот она звезда сюррайвл ветки! Просто убер талант, дает на 15% увеличение всей вашей агилы, причем он учитывает все и базовую агилу и шмотки и энчанты. Например мне этот талант добавляет 81 агилу (1,53% крита и 162АП). Вам конечно будет добавлять поменьше, но даже в самом худшем случае (у вас 350аги) он добавит 52 аги, что очень и очень неплохо.

Второй вариант раскачки сюррайвл-ММ хантера подходит для хорошо одетых Хантеров, которые имеют высокий шанс хита со шмоток. В этом случае все остается тем же самым, только талант Surefooted не берется, и тут у вас есть выбор вложить по 5 очков в Deflection, Improved Wing Clip или Entrapment на ваш выбор. К сожалению имея фулл ДС у меня только 6% хита и чтобы перекинуться в этот билд мне необходимо добрать еще 2-3% хита. Конечно этот билд не повысит вашего дамага, однако прокачав по полной один 3х выше талантов вы станете немного более живучи, да и энтрапмент вам понадобиться в БВЛ на Разоргоре и Нефарионе, особенно если вы играете за альянс. Так же если вы решили посвятить себя ПВЕ, то лучше будет если вы прокачаете Efficiency 5/5, т.к. на боссах вам катастрофически не будет хватать маны."

Edited February 11, 2010 by smersh

[фткyн 1469]

ПвП гайд по ханту

http://hunterguide.wikispaces.com/Hunter+PvP+Guide

Hunter PvP Guide

Note that all of this huge and amazing work is done by Syrana from Kalecgos ( US Server ) Keep it up :-)

NOTE: This was written pre-2.0 so it is currently obsolete. I plan to update this guide for TBC when it comes out. I have decided not to update this for 2.0 yet since some things to likely to change anyway when TBC comes out.

- TOC -
P.0 Prelude
P.1 PvP in a Nutshell

0.0 Introduction
0.1 Author Background
0.2 Why PvP
0.3 Why PvP as a Hunter

1.0 Character Decisions
1.1 Races
1.2 Faction
1.3 Talent Spec
1.4 Stats
1.5 Pets

2.0 Professions
2.1 Primary Skills
2.2 Secondary Skills

3.0 Equipment
3.1 Weapons
3.2 Armor
3.3 Enchants
3.4 Trinkets
3.5 BG Rewards
3.6 Buying Items
3.6 Instance Loot

4.0 Proficiency and Experience
4.1 Level Management
4.2 Pet Experience
4.3 Weapon Skill

5.0 Skills and Talents
5.1 Traps
5.2 Aspects
5.3 Stings
5.4 Shots
5.5 Melee
5.6 Miscellaneous
5.7 Beast Master Talents
5.8 Marksman Talents

6.0 PvP Basics
6.1 Kiting
6.2 Melee
6.3 Pet Management
6.4 Feign Death
6.5 Aimed Shot Setup

7.0 BG Tactics
7.1 WSG
7.2 AB
7.3 AV
7.4 General Teamplay

8.0 PvP Against Specific Classes
8.1 Druids
8.2 Hunters
8.3 Mages
8.4 Paladins
8.5 Priests
8.6 Rogues
8.7 Shamans
8.8 Warlocks
8.9 Warriors

9.0 UI Management
9.1 Mods
9.2 Macros
9.3 Keyboard Management

10.0 World PvP

11.0 Videos

12.0 Conclusions


- Appendix -

A. Getting your Master Hunter's Rifle

B. AV: Bloodseeker or IBS?

C. Fun with Shadowmeld.

P.1 PvP in a Nutshell

In case you don't want to read through all of this guide, or just want a quick summary of the important points, here's some cliffs notes:

1. Focus on agility and stamina for PvP. Those stats are far more important than any other.

2. Choose a ranged and melee weapon with the highest max damage that you can find, regardless of its DPS. PvP is all about burst damage -- doing a ton of damage in a short time so that your opponent does not have time to heal or react. As a hunter, you want them dead before they know what hit them. Ignore weapons with low damage and high speed, even purple ones, as those are more suitable for PvE.

3. Aimedshot + multishot + autoshot "three-shot combo" is your main burst damage, it consists of a set of 3 attacks that comes pretty much instantaneously. Hit your aimed shot button, start spamming your multishot button, and then you'll get your multishot then autoshot right after your aimed shot casts. Use this combo whenever possible, such as when your target is
a. stationary (i.e. not running towards or away from you)
b. crowd controlled such as by scattershot, intimidation, freezing trap, entrapment, etc.
c. busy with something else, such as trying to cap a flag.

4. Get out of melee range with scattershot, feign death + freezing trap, intimidation, and wing clip. Feign death + freezing trap is in particular one of the most abusive tools that hunters have, use it every time an opponent gets within melee range. For melee, many hunters create a macro to spam raptor strike, wing clip, mongoose bite, and counterattack so that they automatically wing clip and counterattack whenever possible.

5. Learn to kite. Kiting is shooting on the run -- jump, turn and shoot an instant such as concussiveshot / stings / arcaneshot, turn back around, and land facing the original direction. Kiting is essential for killing melee opponents such as rogues, it might be difficult to learn at first but once you have it down, it's simple to execute.

6. Hunters kill leather and cloth opponents. Warriors and paladins take forever to kill so avoid them as much as possible. Rogues, druids in caster/cat form, warlocks, priests, mages are your primary targets. Choose your targets so that you maximize your killing.

7. Volley does not stop opponents from capping your flags, nor does any channeled AoE spell. You must hit an opponent with an non-channeled attack that does direct damage.

8. Trap and flare before battles. Resist the urge the run in with guns blazing before you've adequately protected yourself with a trap at your feet and a flare to keep away rogues. When you put down a trap, there is nearly a 100% chance that someone will hit it before it expires, so it is almost never a waste.

9. Get a fast attack speed pet such as Broken Tooth or ZG bat. Fast attack speed pets are amazing for interrupting spells.

10. Keep your pet on passive and manually command it to attack (or hotkey it to attack whenever you use certain abiliites) so that it does not break your CC or others'.

Here is an example of ideally how a battle against a melee class such as a warrior would turn out:

1. Lay down a freezing trap at your feet.
2. Mark the hunter, aimed shot + multishot + autoshot then concussive shot and arcane shot the warrior as he comes towards you, if you can get those off before he charges.
3. Warrior gets into melee range either and is frozen by your trap.
4. Use your PvP trinket to remove hamstring or stun if necessary.
5. Scorpid sting and run to max range, feign death + freezing trap, bandage or eat if you need to.
6. Repeat #2 to #5 until diminishing returns.
7. Apply serpent sting and kite the warrior to death using scatter shot, wing clip, frost trap to keep out of intercept range.

This guide serves as an introduction towards how to PvP effectively as a hunter. It contains comprehensive information about tactics, gear, BG strategies, and basically anything that might be remotely useful for PvP. This is not a PvE guide nor is it a general PvP guide, although some of the information in here may still be relevant towards those.

Please give me suggestions for content -- most of this guide is actually from reading the forums anyway :-). If I use your content, I will credit you by bracketing the content with your reply#.

NOTE: Due to having to move this content over from the old forums, I've lost the actual content from previous crediting. I'll note the crediting anyway but you won't be able to see the original posts that I took the content from.

0.1 Author Background

I've devoted this character primarily to PvP, and have spent significant time in every bracket and in most of the respected PvP guilds on my server. I am usually the defacto raid leader and call the shots in my BGs, I am exalted in all 3 BGs. My highest rank achieved is rank 12. I am active contributor to the PvP and Hunter's forums, which lead to the writing of this guide. I am also the MVP of the Starcraft Strategy & Tactics forum, for which I also wrote "the" fundamentals guide to Starcraft.

0.2 Why PvP?

Your choice of PvP, PvE, RP, etc., is simply that -- your own personal choice. I am not going to try to convince you to PvP and will not insult you if you prefer PvE, but I will try to fairly list some of the more important tradeoffs to consider.

Some people prefer to play in an environment where they don't have to worry about being ganked or corpse camped or what not (PvE); others enjoy the additional excitement and unpredictability of having to deal with players as well as mobs (PvP), and perhaps want the opportunity to be the ones doing the ganging and corpse camping occasionally. Of course, whether you are on a PvP or PvE server does not affect your ability to participate in BG, which will often be the bulk of your PvP experience. One thing to note is that you can switch from a PvP server to a PvE server, but not the other way around, although server transfers do cost real money. If you have no strong leanings, pick a PvP server so that you have more flexibility in case you need to transfer realms in the future.

In all honesty, some of whether you enjoy PvP and BGs will depend on how good you are. If you are getting consistently killed by random enemies who are significantly lower level than you, chances are you will not enjoy PvP. I did not intend to actively PvP at all on my server; but as an experiment, I joined a 10-19 WSG, and I have loved PvP ever since my first game. Your experiences may differ; nobody will blame you if they do. I would say that if you have reservations about PvP, just get to lvl18-ish quickly, then try out some 10-19BGs to see if you are able to do well or at least think you have a reasonable chance of getting as good as you think you need to be.

0.3 Why PvP as a Hunter?

This guide intends to cover basics so that you have the best chance of maximizing your PvP potential. Hunters are fortunately a fairly powerful PvP class at this moment, both in BGs and in world PvP, so in choosing a hunter you are already starting off with a good chance of doing well at PvP. We have excellent DPS, good survivability, and many neat abilities that help our team directly in the various BGs.

Also, hunters' value in PvP tends to remain somewhat fixed in the sense that there are no brackets where we are naturally underpowered versus other classes, and no brackets where we have a huge advantage. Thus, we remain fairly powerful through the game. That said, there is a plethora of awful hunters out there, they are often disparaged as an EZ Mode class played by people with no common sense (this impression is often reinforced by the tendency of poor hunters to wipe raids with their pets), so hopefully this guide will allow you to rise above that stereotype.

1.1 Races

Horde racials are generally thought to be superior than alliance, particularly given the shadowmeld nerf in the specific case of hunters. The rule of thumb is that alliance racials are better for PvE, and horde racials are better for PvP. I will not go into depth here, but to note some relevant advantages of each class.

1.1.1 Orcs
25% stun resistance is huge given that stuns are integral in PvP. Note that the hunter PvP insignia trinket does also break stuns ( http://thottbot.com/?i=39986 ) although it is on a 5-minute cooldown and is useful against many other types of immobilization (i.e it is not redundant).

+5% pet damage is very useful in PvP and is particularly useful for BM-specced hunters.

Note that bloodfury only increase melee attack power so it has situational usefulness to hunters.

1.1.2 Tauren
War stomp is very effective as yet another tool to get out of melee range, or as a caster interrupt. It is like a free bomb or scattershot every 2 minutes.

Endurance is also helpful since stamina is so important in PvP.

1.1.3 Troll
Trolls are regarded as somewhat shafted compared to other horde races, but +5 bows is still significant ( see the weapons skills section for more information).

Beserking can add significant DPS but is a mixed blessing since to get the most of it, you need to be somewhat close to dying.

1.1.4 Night Elf
NE are the stereotypical alliance hunter race. They were particularly popular before the shadowmeld nerf since they could aimed shot from stealth ( nowadays, we will destealth as soon as we start the aimed shot). Shadowmeld is still very useful for various tactics such as guarding flags and nodes, or eating safely near combat. Wisp form is marginally useful for corpse running such as when you need to get to a forward GY to res past defenders.

Night elves also have the highest starting agility out of all races.

1.1.5 Dwarf
+5 guns is a solid skill although be aware that in some brackets, the best bow is significantly better than the best gun.

Stoneform has some usefulness such as removing crippling poison from rogues. Stoneform also removes Blind, Devouring Plague, and Viper Sting.

Saying it's useful for removing crippling poison makes it sound particularly lackluster.

Note that find treasure will conflict with your other tracking abilities.


There are other sorts of non-obvious considerations for PvP such as that taurens are larger and thus tend to be targetted more easily.

That all said, there is no clear consensus as to which race is the best. Picking a race can be nervewracking because you're stuck with your choice forever, and no amount of money or quest rewards can alter your race. Consider your own style of play or even aesthetic preference -- you're going to have to stare at your character and listen to his emotes whenever you play.

Note that starting stats differ between races, but this difference is not considered significant. Blizz's site has a table of starting stats (http://worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/hunter.html ).

1.2 Faction

There is a general stereotype that horde do better than alliance in BGs, and therefore if you want to have the best chance of winning in PvP then you should choose horde. The reasons behind this are not clear; there is wide speculation about map imbalance, racial imbalance, personality of typical horde or alliance players, Blizzard conspiracy, etc. Regardless, don't just accept this as a fact since it is a generalization. It is worthwhile to do a bit of research when picking a server as to the relative population of alliance vs. horde characters, and stop by the realm forum to see how each side is doing. For example, if you choose a server where alliance outnumber horde (not just the overall population, since many players or farmers have alts, but rather the actual playing time), then you may be at a disadvantage in world PvP (getting ganked repeatedly) and in BGs (being shorthanded in games or not being able to find a selection of strong players in your bracket). Better to do this research beforehand than to pick a bad server and have to pay for a transfer later.

1.3 Talent Spec

Talent specs are somewhat of a stylistic issue, and there are many variants that work well. I recommend reading some of the FAQs here and elsewhere or posting in a separate thread if you have any questions or would like to debate the effectiveness of various specs. I don't want to get into this in depth since it's a controversial issue, but I will at least note some of my own personal observations since I've experimented extensively with various specs:

*If you're starting out and don't know what else to do, put points in MM until you have at least scattershot. This is because aimed shot is integral to PvP and PvE so I recommend getting that first regardless of what you are doing; and if you're getting AS, you might as well continue down the same tree to get your first CC ability, scattershot.

*0/21/30 is the classic PvP build. It focuses on burst damage with its +crit talents, and it gives decent survivability.

*0/31/20 is particularly useful if you have in a group that can stay together for the TSA benefits. It is somewhat less flexible than 0/21/30 but is a good overall build if you want to do both PvP and PvE.

*31/20/0 is a fun spec since it turns your pet into a killing machine every 2 minutes. It is great for destroying casters in particular, and is a good option for hunters with poor gear since your pet has fixed stats (i.e. the build is not gear-dependent).

One caution about any build that does not put points into survival is they miss out on entrapment, which is one of the best PvP tools in the game period. In a non-survival build, you may do very well as an individual, but your team contribution may be more limited. Entrapment is so useful that some guilds pay their hunters to temporarily respec that way whenever they decide to PvP.

1.4 Stats

Whether PvE or PvP, generally the most important stats for a hunter are in the order of crit%, agility, stamina, ranged attack power, intellect, spirit, strength.

A typical "poor" hunter (i.e. one who does not run instances to get extraordinary loot, and who does not have enough money to buy blues from the AH) focuses on green "of the monkey" gear. These give both +sta and +agi, so they're perfect for us. In general, do not get armor that only affects one stat, because the amount of total bonus it gives you will be less than if you had an equivalent quality armor that focused on two or more. For example, a lvl49 item might give you either +17 agility ("of agility") or +12sta/+12agi ("of the monkey"). Notice that the "of the monkey" thus gives an additional total +7 stats, which is significant. The rule of thumb is that for similar quality gear, the more stats the gear affects, the higher the overall total.

A recurring question comes up as to whether to focus on stamina vs. agility, particularly when enchants are considered since you often have to choose between them. Cost and availability issues aside, this depends on a number of stylistic issues so there is no clear answer. It may for example depend on whether your bracket has a lot of healers who are willing to help keep you alive, in this case you could theoretically focus primarily on agility.

As a rule of thumb, stamina is given increased priority in PvP for all classes because "glass cannons" do not tend to fare well in BGs. This is because once opposing players figure out that some particular hunter has a ton of agility but relatively little health, they will gun for him repeatedly since they know he is easily killed and does too much damage to ignore. This is different than in PvE where non-tanking classes can avoid combat through aggro management. Also, stamina has somewhat non-linear importance. Without getting into a bunch of math, the simple explanation is that sometimes you'll get stunned or CC'd or what not for some significant amount of time while damage is unloaded onto you. If you don't have enough stamina, you may not survive this and thus all your amazing agility and DPS won't amount to much. You need enough stamina to survive the initial onslaught, so that afterward you'll be alive to start kiting or what not. I can't count the number of times a rogue or warrior has gotten a jump on me, taken me down to red health, then I get away and kite him to death afterward. The main point then is that you need some good amount of base stamina to have decent survivability. Note that it is true that agility also helps your survivability since it increases your armor and dodge%. However, the contribution of stamina to survivability is generally much greater than agility.

One caveat is that if you are specced for lightning reflexes or survivalist, these may reasonably affect how you prioritize agility and stamina since they increase either of those by some percentage. In other words, if you have lightning reflexes, you definitely want to focus on getting as much agility gear as possible.

I generally avoid straight stats other than agility and stamina (note: I am not covering RAP and crit% yet, I'll get to those below). That is not to say that other stats aren't helpful, but they are not nearly as important. Strength only helps melee attacks and thus is our least important quality since we would like to avoid melee as much as possible. Spirit is useful for regenerating between battles, but excellent food that restores both health and mana at the same time exists cheaply as low grade rewards in BGs so it's not an impediment to eat frequently. For that reason also, intellect is a less important stat. Be patient about looking for gear. Blizz has decided that hunters need spirit since that's particularly useful for PvE, so a lot of hunter gear has +spi; be deliberate in deciding whether you really need +spi gear or whether you'd be better off if that was a different stat. And when I say to avoid items that give other stats, I am not saying you should discount those stats entirely. Many good items will give you non-agility and non-stamina bonuses, so you should have some natural bonuses in non-essential stats. Just don't consciously prioritize them over agility and stamina, in general.

How you end up prioritizing stats may ultimately be simply an issue of preference, however. I can only tell you what has worked for me and what is generally accepted in hunter communities. I would rather for example have little intelligence and have to drink after battle, than to be killed with mana remaining because I didn't get stamina instead. Your preferences may differ.

Finally, sometimes you will come across items that give ranged attack power (RAP) or +crit%. RAP increases your DPS at the rate of 1DPS per 14 RAP. Attack power affects both melee and ranged, and that's *all* it does -- it increases your damage by a fixed amount. Crit increases your crit percentage; you can get some idea of this number by looking at your "attack" button, since that lists the melee crit percentage (I say "some idea" because talents affect your ranged crit%). Crit percentage can be thought of as adding roughly 1% to your overall DPS since for every 100 attacks you are getting an "extra, free attack" from critting, so for example whether you get attack power versus crit% comes down to a mathematical comparison. However, note that we have talents that improve our crit damage so it becomes slightly higher than 1%. Also, crit doubles the fixed damage contribution of multi and aimed shot, so those hit very hard when you crit. Thus, the overall DPS that crit% adds is more valuable than just 1% DPS.

Intuitively, crit% is also more important in PvP than PvE -- in PvE, we should be concerned about sustained damage and would like to avoid crits since those risk drawing aggro to us. In PvP, fights are short and fast paced and thus crits, or "burst damage", becomes very important. With good crit, you can aimed shot that mage that's not watching you and he'll be dead before he's able to respond. If your damage is just fairly steady and predictable, you become very easy to deal with. Overall, whether to choose between crit&, agility, and RAP depends on the particular gear you are wearing. One important note about +ATK is that it does not affect your crit% or any other stats -- every point of agility, on the other hand, increase your attack power, dodge, armor, and crit%.

Here are some handy formulas to bear in mind.
53 agility = +1crit% (at lvl60)
1 agility = 2RAP
14 RAP = +1DPS

1.5 Pets

This section will be brief because there are plenty of other guides out there about choosing pets. One thing to note is that pets all have the same speed now (apart from dash/dive). Fast attack pets such as Broken Tooth are prized for interrupting casters. Large pets such as bats are prized for getting in enemies' faces and making it difficult for them to target other units. Generally DPS pets are more useful versus tank pets since pets are rarely targetted outside of AV.

2.1 Primary Skills

2.1.1 Engineering
I recommend taking up engineering no matter what class you are in PvP. The reason is that engineering gives you access to unique items that no other class can use. For other professions, you can buy all/most of their items on the market.

For example, in the 10-19 bracket, with engineering you can craft a good quality head piece ( http://thottbot.com/?i=1369 ) for both armor and stats whereas most other players would only be able to get a headpiece through a lot of pain. Later on, you get access to a wide assortment of very useful trinkets and explosives that -- again -- no other profession can use. Dynamite and bombs for example are very useful, since bombs can stun many players allowing a flag carrier to escape, and dynamite will add significantly to your DPS.

Furthermore, engineering lends the ability to make engineered bullets, which are superior to vendor-bought ammo at the same level bracket. You could buy engineered bullets at the AH since they don't require engineering, but that tends to get rather expensive.

There is a widely voiced concern that engineering is very expensive and therefore you should look more towards gathering professions. I find that this is not entirely true because there are still engineering items that you can sell at a good profit and that are highly sought after. These include ammo and scopes. You can also AH items to other engineers, particularly of the other specialization, such as XL goblin jumper cables. As an overall comment, I believe that it is a myth that some professions are great money-makers. Every profession has items that can be sold at profit, but professions are also money-sinks for the vast majority of items because there are so many people of any profession on each server that it drives prices way down. If you are concerned with money, then take two gathering professions to start with, and then switch to engineering once you are ready to go into hardcore PvP.

One important restriction to note on engineering is that if you have a pet out, mind control cap (which is available via gnomish engineering and is one of the key reasons why many people decide to choose gnomish for PvP) will not work. You need to first dismiss your pet. That said, mind control is an excellent tool for changing the tide of battle -- the opponent basically becomes a pet for a period of time and will attack or randomly use spells. You can MC a priest hoping he'll randomly buff or heal you, for example. Unfortunately, mind control cap has been nerfed from a recent patch such that it can be only used out of combat, so its usefulness is somewhat marginal now.

Finally, if you do pick engineering, try to level it up to the maximum in each bracket. The items you get for high level engineering tend to be relatively overpowered so this can give you a good edge over other players.

2.1.2 Mining
If you take my advice to go engineering, you may want to choose mining as a natural pairing with it. Really, any gathering professions is a good tools for making money, particularly skinning and herbalism. That said, I don't even believe this is necessary, because material prices tend to fluctuate greatly so if you buy low and sell high, you can make a profit out of those without having to gather them yourself. And there are always people who materials on the AH at a total bargain because they don't realize the actual worth. As a note of comparison, my hunter had over 1000g at level29 and close to 3000g at lvl49 just from this type of strategy. You do not need to be a skinner to buyout underpriced light leather and resell it at a high profit.

On that note, you really do not need to have a complementary gathering profession to your crafting profession. It's all opportunity cost -- if you mined copper and you use it to make an item, then you're paying the cost of having that copper because you could have sold it. This is known as opportunity cost. So you're no better off than if you had just bought it at a cheap price on the AH. What's more important is that you have at least one gathering profession so that when you're out in the world, you can be gathering materials for free whether they be metals, skins, or herbs.

2.2 Secondary Skills

2.2.1 Fishing
Fishing is a cheap way to keep your pet happy. Fishing also can net you rare fish to sell on the AH. The issue with fishing is that skilling up can be quite painful particularly in the beginning. However, fishing also gives you something to do while you're waiting for boats or the next BG to pop. It is an easy source of income once you have skilled up, since you can catch rare fish or even items. You may initially find fishing pointless, but you'll be surprised at how much downtime you can fill up through fishing whereas normally you'd have nothing better to do.

2.2.2 Cooking
Cooking is of course useful for us since it provides us with food to keep our pets happy. For PvP in particular, cooked foods are important because they give various bonuses that last for a significant amount of time (typically +sta and +spi), or until death. These can give quite an advantage, or a needed buff during critical times such as when you're carrying the flag and need extra survability. Definitely spend the time to learn cooking, and start on it early. If you start on cooking late, the mobs you're grinding won't be giving you the type of meats that you need to level up your cooking, so you'll have to resort to buying them on the AH where they are rare and overpriced.

Once you have food that increases your stats, use it situationally. You don't want to be wasting time eating food after you res unless there is truly nothing going on. I will usually just eat at the beginning of BGs, particularly when I'm in a game where I don't think I'll be dying frequently (i.e. where I'm unlikely to get killed within the first minute such that my food buff goes to waste).

Of course, your pet will not benefit from +stats food, so don't waste it on them thinking that it will.

Note that although you cannot eat during combat, you can continue eating even after you've entered combat. A simple technique is to eat, shadowmeld (if NE), and send your pet after the next target.

Note that even if you have to buy cooking meats from the AH, you can often get them for cheaper than comparable food from vendors. This is particularly true if you have pets that only eat meat, such as cats. If you're using pets that eat conjured food and bread, this is of course not an issue. Another note is that you do not need to always be feeding your pet the highest quality food available. Your pet may gain less happiness from lower food, but it still may end up being cheaper.

Finally, bear in mind that whenever you are resurrected in a BG, your pet gains a ton of happiness. Playing a pet in BGs is an easy way of keeping him happy. Some players have even used BGs to maintain pets that have been discontinued (i.e. you can no longer tame them, nor feed them if they are tamed). You can also use restoration power-ups in BGs to improve pet happiness.

2.2.3 First Aid
First aid is of course useful to every class. BG rewards also include bandage items, which are generally very good for their level but require first aid skill to use.

Gear is of course very important in PvP. Teamwork, strategy, and skills are all vital, but those will never completely overcome discrepancies in gear. If you think that by skill alone you can dominate other players, consider that eventually you'll meet someone who has just as much skill as you but far better gear, or even someone who's significantly worse than you but can kill you because of superior gear.

Fortunately, hunters are not quite so gear-dependent as other classes, such as compared to rogues. It takes us a lot of agility to improve our crit%, for example, so we're not like rogues where stacking on +agi gear turns us into amazing killing machines. We generally have easy access to bows that are good quality such that getting a blue or purple bow versus a green one is not so remarkably different to the point of being a game-breaker, versus rogues who can put on two purples with +15agi and turn PvP into EZ mode. Gear *is* important; but just don't drive yourself broke or get too frustrated for lack of top quality gear. Even if you're a hunter in mediocre greens in 10-19 WSG, you can still do very well against rogues with the best enchants and gear.

3.1 Weapons

3.1.1 Melee Weapons
Dual-wielding versus using two-handed weapons is one of those questions that pops up constantly. In general, dual wield in PvE and use a two-hander in PvP. The rationale for choosing 2H weapons is that 1) the overall stats from a 2H-er are typically better than two 1H-ers, 2) raptor strike is based on weapons damage and thus the higher the max damage of the weapon, the harder hitting the raptor strike, 3) you will not be spending much time in melee so melee DPS is not as important. If you take my advice, you will choose the highest damage 2H you can find with the best stats. A typical "poor" hunter will have a slow green "of the monkey" 2Her. Disregard this advice if you are in a bracket where you can get 2 1Hers that give better overall stats than 1 2Her, or if you constantly find yourself in prolonged melee situations (where the DPS of dual wielding will be superior to 1H). In that case, choose the 1Hers as long as you don't mind weaker raptor strikes.

A final issue to note is that dual wielding allows for an enchant on each weapon. The best enchant for a 2Her is +25agi. Alternatively, you can get two +15agi if you dual wield. This difference is particularly important to twink hunters, the extra +5agi does make a difference particularly in lower brackets.

3.1.2 Ranged Weapons
Similar to with melee weapons, generally you will want to pick whatever ranged weapon has the highest max damage, particularly since aimed shot, scattershot, and multishot are based on max damage. This will mean the weapon has a relatively slow speed, since comparable weapons in a level bracket will have the same overall DPS (the higher the max damage, the slower the weapon must be).

There are a few advantages of using a slower weapon:
1) Higher burst damage.
2) More damage from aimed shot and multishot.
3) More damage from the "free" shot of your aimed/multi/auto combo.

A slow bow is particularly useful for instants that are based on max damage, i.e. aimed shot and multishot. It is true that weapons damage for these abilities has been normalized such that faster bows now hit harder, but the normalization does not completely negate the difference since it only affects RAP, not the base damage of the weapon. I won't go into all the math; but suffice to say, a slower bow with high max damage will hit significantly harder with aimed and multishot. This becomes even more important with critical hits, once you factor in the various talents that increase critical damage.

[97]Another factor is that for the aimed/multishot/autoshot combo (explained in a later section), the autoshot comes for "free" regardless of casting time.[/97] This is because while your aimed shot is winding up, so is your autoshot.

An additional minor consideration is that slower bows use less ammo, and incur less repair cost since there is a chance of the weapon suffering damage each time it is *used*, meaning that everytime you actually shoot the weapon, that is when there is a chance of damage. If you're using something the Hurricane ( http://thottbot.com/?i=13869 ) with Improved Aspect of the Hawk and Rapid Fire on frequently, your repair costs are going to be fairly high, not to mention the cost of ammo. There are at least mods out there that will automatically use junk ammo for those shots and stings that don't rely on weapon damage, but it's a pain to have to manage this.

One advantage must be mentioned about faster bows, which is that they are better for caster interrupts. A fast bow with Improved Aspect of the Hawk and Rapid Fire along with a pet can lock casters down. Also, +dmg scopes on bows affect each shot, they do not add DPS (i.e. unlike ammunition), and thus a faster weapon will benefit more from scopes. However, I do not believe these advantages outweigh the disadvantages. For example, the Hurricane is often debated on this forum for PvP use. It's a fast impressive bow, but its max damage is just not very high and therefore your multi/aimed will be suffering considerably.

Another dilemma is whether it is worth paying much more money for a blue ranged weapon that has slightly higher DPS than a green one. The answer is that a small amount of additional DPS is not *that* important for PvP. DPS really becomes noticeable over very long PvE boss fights where you can shoot uninterrupted for quite a while. Apart from that, doing one more DPS at lvl19 isn't going to make or break your game. It is far more important to look at weapon stats and max damage, and much of your DPS will come from your attack power versus the bow's damage itself.

Finally, sometimes the question is asked of whether to use a gun or bow. Aesthetic differences aside and racial bonuses aside, a reason to use a gun is if engineered bullets are available at that level. Some people prefer bows because they are less noisy, and thus less likely to attract attention.

3.2 Armor

3.2.1 Stats
As explained in the stats section, focus on armor that gives +crit%, +agi, +sta, and +ATK, in roughly that order.

3.2.2 Mail
At lvl40, hunters begin wearing mail. Mail armor mitigate physical damage by a significant amount over leather armor, and thus can be thought of somewhat as giving extra health against physical attacks. Hunters after 40 should transition primarily to mail, since there is no drawback to using it. If you're on alliance side, you will find plenty of mail in the AH since we are the only class that primarily uses it (versus on horde side, where you'll be competing against shamans, although fortunately shamans tend to prefer different stats).

Don't discount leather completely, however. Some pieces of leather armor such as from easy quests give noticeably superior stats than green mail, so it may be worth sacrificing some armor in order to get better stats. This also depends on what classes are giving you problems -- for example, typically shadow priests and warlocks are high on our threat list, and both of those use magical attacks so that armor type does not matter.

3.2.3 The Abundance of Spirit
You may notice that many items designed for hunters have odd stats, such as heavy emphasis on +spi. In fact our epic staff ( http://thottbot.com/?i=37737 ) doesn't even have +agi. It's thought that some of the rationale for this is because spirit is seen as important for solo PvE in the case of hunters. However, as mentioned above in PvP, you definitely should not be favoring spirit as a general rule. Thus you may find yourself passing up items that seem to be designed for hunters in favor of even normal green "of the monkey" gear.

3.3 Enchants
Enchants have no level requirement so they are particularly useful in lower brackets. +7sta means a lot more at lvl10 than at lvl60. That said, use of enchants is often a controversial subject particularly in lower brackets because players who do not have money or have moral qualms are at a severe handicap versus those who have enchants.

Even if you do not "twink" your character with all the best enchants, it is worthwhile to research which enchants are relatively cheap and thus worth getting anyway. Also, learn about enchant component prices, since those tend to fluctuate in the AH. If you're patient, you can get enchant components at very cheap prices. Adding to this, often farmers sell enchants on trade chat for very cheap, because they are not able to use the AH (this is particularly an issue amongst farmers who illegally share an account). Finally, once in a blue moon, an enchanter will sell enchants for free. All in all, if you're patient and somewhat researched, you can keep up to date on enchants without blowing a huge amount of money on them.

Similar to enchants, you can also buy armor kits and scopes to be applied to your items, although unlike enchants these have level requirements. Note that the level requirement for these is based on your item level, not your own level or the item's minimum level requirement. You can often through questing get items that you can still use at your level even though they are high level items. One noted example is the Master Hunter's Rifle ( http://thottbot.com/?i=38532 ), which is a lvl43 item that is available for completing a lvl29 quest. At level 29, you could buy a sniper scope ( http://thottbot.com/?i=5253 ) but you can't apply it yourself because you are not level 40. However, you can get someone to apply it for you through trading as with any other enchant.

3.5 BG rewards

BGs have their own loot that is generally very good and is one of the primary reasons why people play BGs (the other popular ones being to grind honor for ranking, or for the sheer fun of it).

One of the main advantages of achieving a good rep in BGs is that you'll have access to good quality (blue or purple) items at each level bracket from there on and thus will never have to worry about actively having to hunt for better gear. However, before you decide to spend inordinant amounts of time grinding for rep in BGs, take a careful look at the rewards to see if they are actually what you need. For example, out of the WSG rewards ( http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds/rewards-warsong.html ), I only wear the exalted tabard ( because it looks cool) and the Rune of Duty, which is useful for PvE grinding but still not superior to most trinkets I have access to at 40-49. This is not to say that WSG rewards are poor; however, if you have the mindset that you need to be wearing the absolute best equipment for your bracket, then you can generally get better loot from the AH or questing than from WSG rewards. Particularly for WSG, in the earlier brackets the items you have are extremely valuable, particularly the weapons from revered. Once you reach the later brackets, you'll be able to find comparable or better quality items on the AH.

At fairly low rep level, you can also have access to potions, bandages, and food that restores both health and mana, all at much cheaper prices than what you could get in the AH or (typically) from vendors. One caution about potions is that BG potions have a 5 minute cooldown, as opposed to the 2 minute cooldown of normal potions. You may elect to still use the normal potions if you expect to be using potions frequently in BGs. The other option is to use combat potions once you reach knight ranking -- these are cheap and have only a 2 minute cooldown, but you can only carry a very limited number at one time.

3.6 Buying Armor

Be patient checking the AH for items. Item prices fluctuate tremendously, particularly on epics, and you can sometimes get epics for really cheap through trade chat via farmers (who need to sell their items immediately because they can't use the AH). I've seen purples in my 40-49 bracket fluctuate between 20g and 200g.

You can check thottbot (http://www.thottbot.com) for the items usable in your bracket. Note however that this is not always so obvious because unlike in the case of weapons, you can currently only search by armor level, not level requirement, so you may miss high level armor that are still usable at your level. I usually search for a few levels above (e.g. lvl 45-55) and then manually see what's available at lvl49 for me. Also, you may miss BoE or quest items entirely since those items themselves may have no level requirement.

3.7 Instance Loot

Even if you're rich, you won't necessarily be able to get the best loot for your bracket unless you plan accordingly. The best loot tends to be bind-on-pickup, and often you can get loot that is overpowered for your bracket by running higher-level instances. Kaliban's Class Loot Lists ( http://69.41.171.43/hunter.htm ) is one of the best resources out there for figuring out what instances for each class.

Other than looking at Kaliban's master hunter loot list, you can also compare your equipment against players who advertise their profiles in your bracket. Allazkhazam (http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/psearch.html ) and thottbot ( http://www.thottbot.com ) both allow you to search on profiles. You can search by some relevant term such as ordering by HK for all level49 hunters. Looking at these profiles won't necessarily give you the very best equipped hunters, however, since there are comparatively few players who actually advertise themselves on those sites. Still, it is better than nothing.

Speaking of which, one important note worth mentioning is that if you plan carefully ahead for 20-29 bracket, you can get the coveted Master Hunter's Rifle/Bow (http://thottbot.com/?i=38532 ), which is a lvl43 item! I will later post the gory details of how to acquire this weapon, but if you get it, you will have a sizeable advantage over all but the best twinked characters in your bracket. The MHR/B not only is significantly better than anything else you can buy or get in 20-29, but it also can be equipped with a +7 scope since it is a high level item. Other weapons in this bracket are stuck with an inferior scope.
4.1 Level Management

If you're planning to stay in a BG bracket for a while, experience management becomes non-trivial. Pre 60's, at some point you'll have to start throwing away many marks of honor in order to avoid levelling up. Players who stay in a bracket for a long time will tend to have just a sliver of experience less than that needed to level (and generally they'll stay in the bracket until they accidentally level up such as through discovering a new land).

It is also very important that you plan ahead as to what instances you need to run in order to get your loot. You do not want to be lvl49 with 100 experience to levelling, and then find out that you forgot to run Mauraudon and now no longer have the option. In this case, you will have to settle for being less equipped than even a poor hunter who just ran Mara a few times and got the exceptionally good hunter gear from there.

4.2 Pet Experience

One additional headache for hunters is managing pet level and loyalty. PvPing with your pet will not increase its loyalty. The exact mechanics of how pets gain loyalty is not known, although it is some combination of keeping your pet well fed and grinding mobs that give experience. Fortunately, keeping your pet happy is easy through BGs because everytime you ressurect or hit a restoration powerup, your pet gains happiness. However, beyond a certain point, your pet will not gain loyalty unless it is grinding or gaining levels -- you can keep it by your side through months of BGs and it will not gain loyalty.

Note also that your pet does not gain experience from your rest bonus nor from your quest turnins. Thus, to keep your pet as close to the same level as you, you will want to grind off of rest bonus. This really only becomes an issue when you have reached the level you want to stay at (e.g. 19, 29...), have gotten a new pet recently, and want to level it up as much as possible. Once you start approaching the level at which you want to play BGs, you may want to consider minimizing your rest bonus such as by quitting outside of inns and cities. This way, you have the best chance of leveling up your pet without gaining too much experience yourself. Bear in mind that your pet does not gain experience from quest turnins (such as turning in marks of honor).

4.3 Weapon Skill

Read more about weapons skill at Wowwiki ( http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Weapon_Skill ). Weapon and defense skill affect a number of combat stats. The actual contribution of skill seems to have a lesser effect in PvP than in PvE. This much is obvious because otherwise in PvP you wouldn't be able to hit anything more than 5 levels higher than you, and your spells would always be resisted. Regardless, you will want to get these to their maximum values if possible, and weapons skill is still very significant. This can be done simply by grinding through grey mobs or letting them hit you until your skill is high enough. You can use cheap intellect scrolls during this grinding, or pay a mage to buff your intellect.

Note that the higher the level of mob you interact with, the more chance you will gain skill; that said, you can certainly grind grey mobs until your skill is maxed out, it just takes a lot of time. When grinding mobs in this way, I put on some grey weapons and spam rank 1 wing clip and scorpid sting since those inflict minimal damage. If you're getting tired of hitting low level mobs trying to skill up, get another character to allow you to follow him around and hit mobs that he's already tagged. In Stormwind Keep, while I'm waiting for BGs to pop, I will skill up on Onyxia's elite guards there, once someone else has tagged them. Sure I'll die occasionally if I accidentally aggro one, but it's also much easier to skill up on that way than to grind grey mobs forever.


5.1 Traps

One initial note about traps is that if you go beyond a certain range of your trap, it will disappear. So you cannot just put down a trap and ride away.

5.1.1 Freezing Trap
Freezing Trap (FT) is one of your main crowd control tools. A typical use is to wait until something hits your trap, run to max distance, and aimed shot. Note that after around 6 seconds, you will exit combat mode as long as nothing else hits you. Thus, if your opponent hits your trap, you can lay down another one without use of FD assuming that your FT cooldown is up. You can even eat and go into shadowmeld.

Get in the habit of always putting down a FT (or other trap) before you engage in combat. This costs you a second, but will help tremendously because once you're in combat, chances are you're not going to get out of it for a while, and then the only way to place a trap after the fact would be to waste FD to get out of combat.

Note that FT suffers from diminishing returns for repeated use, and this is shared by scattershot so that your scattershot will have less duration if you've previously frozen an opponent.

5.1.2 Frost Trap
Frost trap + entrapment is what makes hunters so annoying to opponents in BGs.
Frost trap has great use for slowing down packs of enemies chasing after you. Many hunters will put at least one point into entrapment for use with frost trap. With entrapment, frost trap can effectively immobilize many opponents (who might be running after your flag carrier or trying to escape with your flag). The proc chance is checked every ~2 seconds so with 5/5 entrapment you are almost guaranteed of a proc eventually.

You can also use feign death to effectively have two frost traps active at once. If you have entrapment, the proc rate is calculated individually for each trap such that if they overlap, the proc rate is doubled. This is particularly effective for keeping melee classes off your back or setting them up for a nice aimed shot.

5.2 Aspects

5.2.1 Aspect of the Cheetah
There are mods that cancel AotC upon getting hit ( http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-1500-1-antidaze.html ). These are extremely useful to prevent you from getting repeatedly dazed if you don't notice your aspect is on during combat. Aspect of the Cheetah is also helpful for kiting melee classes. Just be careful that you don't get hit by a ranged attack while kiting, since for example a good rogue will be alerted that you switched to AotC and will immediately shoot you.

5.2.2 Aspect of the Wild
AotW is one of our few party buffs, and helps considerably when dealing with druids and shamans. Typically, even if duels, it is more useful to put on AotW than Aspect of the Hawk when fighting either class. If you are in a party that is able to stay together, AotW can be tremendously beneficial.

5.2.2 Aspect of the Pack
This is a very helpful buff because it can allow your party to collectively move much faster than normal. For example, if a paladin or warrior is carrying your flag, use AotP to allow him to travel faster. Note that just because a druid is carrying the flag on your team, he should generally not run ahead of his escort, so aspect of the pack will help you all move fast as a unit.

5.2.3 Aspect of the Beast
AotB hides you from enemies tracking you on the minimap (your blip does not appear). Track Beasts will not reveal AotB hunters, contrary to the naming similarity. AotB is useful for flag carrying and flag hiding in WSG, since if we are also visually concealed, it can be exceedingly difficult for others to find us. Contrary to popular belief, AotB does not hide your red nameplate. Consider turning AotB on when mounting, since it can mislead enemy defenders who are using tracking.

5.3 Stings

5.3.1 Serpent Sting
This is our default sting. It does decent damage, stops rogues from vanishing for long, and can finish off opponents who are running away. One caution is that if you serpent sting someone, this will break CC, most notably freezing trap. Put on scorpid sting instead before your opponent hits your trap. Note that stings have a short cooldown, so you can tab through enemies at the start of battle and apply a sting to each of them fairly quickly if you so desire.

5.3.2 Viper Sting
Draining mana is a great ability, but it's also costly on your own mana. You should be using serpent sting by default because even if you drain most of his mana, it doesn't win you the battle if he kills you before his mana is out. Viper sting is an ability I sometimes use when I'm about to die -- it's sorta a parting shot. Also, Viper sting is great for use against spellcasters who are already low on mana, because it keeps them out of mana so that they don't regen enough to get off that critical heal or what not.

[82]Be aware that some classes can dispel stings -- in this case, you may want to watch to see whether the target is smart/quick enough to dispel it. If so, avoid using viper sting because it will often cost you much more mana to cast it than for them to dispel it. However, a good situational use is to sting an enemy who is in the process of a long cast (such as a heal). In this case they will have to either cancel their heal to undo the sting or they will eat the mana drain.[/82]

5.3.3 Scorpid Sting
This is a safe sting to use in conjunction with CC because it does not cause damage -- you can safely shoot a frozen target with this.

5.4 Shots

5.4.1 Auto Shot
One thing to note is that the initial action bar button for auto shot toggles it on and off. This may get confusing because you can be standing around not shooting something if you accidentally toggled the shot off. Get any of the number of mods that adds a casting bar to auto shot, both so you can time auto shots and also so you know definitively that you are actually shooting versus standing around doing nothing. I also have macros for my other shots (e.g. concussive shot, multi shot, etc.) that turn my auto shot on just in case for some reason it is not.

5.4.2 Arcane Shot
Arcane shot to is pure magical damage, and thus bypasses armor. This means that although its damage may not seen amazing on paper, it is particularly effective against heavily armored targets. Note that arcane shot is on the same cooldown as aimed shot. Be careful about using arcane shot if you need to used aimed shot right afterward, such as if you are going to scatter then aimed shot.

5.4.3 Multi Shot
Multishot is one of our best DPS moves, since it hits multiple targets and awards straight bonus damage. It is labelled as an instant, but it is technically not since it has a small casting time and you must be standing still. Do not use multi shot only when there are multiple targets in range. Think of it as free additional DPS every 10 seconds. Note that multishot does not interrupt your autoshot timer. In other words, your autoshot will fire at the same rate regardless of where/whether you also fire multishots.

5.5 Melee

5.5.1 Raptor Strike
Raptor Strike is a surprisingly effective melee ability, given that hunters are primarily ranged attackers. As mentioned above, you'll generally want to use a 2Her with high max damage to get the most out of raptor strike. I often use Raptor Strike to finish off opponents who are low health and near melee range, and this is particularly effective if you put 2 points into Savage Strikes for the additional crit%.

Raptor strike is technically an "on next swing" ability, it is not an instant like the rogues' sinister strike. However, it is effectively an instant for the first use since it hits immediately when you get into range.

5.5.2 Wing Clip
This can help get us out of melee range and slow down enemy flag carriers. Put at least one point into improved wing clip since proccing in PvP has great benefits against melee classes. You can spam wing clip repeatedly since it has no cooldown (other than global cooldown), so you'll proc with improved wing clip more than you might expect. Just don't expect wing clip to get you out of range of rogues using crippling poison or warriors using hamstring, since basically both of you are slowed.

5.6 Miscellaneous

5.6.1 Scare Beast
Scare beast affects druids and shamans in animal form! You can for example scare beast, then FD and eat until full health while your target runs around chased by your pet. This is a no-win situation particularly for druids -- if they go into caster form to avoid getting feared, then they are extremely vulnerable to being stunned (scatter or FD+FT) and then aimed shotted for a huge amount of damage since in caster form they have little damage mitigation.

5.6.2 Eagle Eye
Eagle eye can be very useful for locating flag runners and doing scouting during BGs. In AB, you can from certai spots such as the LM see all the other nodes. Also, the animation for eagle eye looks just like the AB flag capping animation, so you can really freak out the other side by eagle eye-ing directly on their flag. They might think someone is capping their flag.

5.6.3 Flare
As common sense would dictate, keep flare up whenever possible if you know rogues, druids, NEs, etc. are around. Flare's detection radius is about double its graphical radius, you can tell by the radius of its casting circle. In particular, when supporting your FC, flare his path as much as possible. You can have multiple flares up at once.

5.6.4 Volley
Volley used in conjunction with entrapment and frost trap is deadly since enemies are held in place and have to eat the volley. As with other channeled spells, volley does NOT break node capping and thus cannot be used to prevent multiple enemies from capping.
5.7 Beast Master Talents
BM spec makes your pet into a killing machine on a two-minute timer. You also have access to intimidation, which is somewhat like scatter shot but is a true stun.

BM spec is that I am no longer as concerned about opponents CC-ing me or getting in my dead zone, since my pet is doing significant DPS. I only need to keep myself alive and add some supporting damage. This is far different from MM spec where my primary concern is to keep opponents out of my dead zone and melee range.

The main disadvantage of using BM spec is that level 60, pet's don't scale. This is the classic hunter's end-game issue. If you are well geared, you should definitely not be using BM spec; if you are poorly geared, then BM spec gives you some basic viability because your pet's stats are independent of your own. Also, you will have to actually keep your pet alive, whereas in MM spec I will often just continue fighting without my pet.

5.7.1 Intimidation
[32]There are some differences between Intimidation and Scattershot. Intimidation lasts only 3 seconds instead of 4, but the cooldown is shorter (only 1 minute). Intimidation can't be broken by damage, and it has a longer range from the hunter -- but it requires the pet be attacking the target. There is sometimes a short delay after casting, since it procs on the next successful pet attack, so it isn't as reliable for an instant interrupt as Scatter. It also can't be done if your pet is CC'd. These differences have to be borne in mind, but on the whole I've found Intimidation to be at least as useful as Scatter was with my previous hunters, the biggest advantage being that I don't have to husband it as carefully since the cooldown is so short.[/32]

5.7.2 Beastial Wrath
BW is seen as a "free kill" every 2 minutes if managed correctly. Once you BW your pet, he not only will do more damage but also will be immune to the various CC that players use to keep high damage opponents off of them. BW's effectiveness will be sharply mitigated however if the opponent is moving, because your pet will spend at least as much time moving to stay with the opponent, and during this time it will not attack. Your opponent does not even need to move very much -- as long as he's in motion, the pet will most of the time just move beside as if it's on follow. Be prepared to use concussive shot, traps, or intimidation to keep your opponent still. This is an unfortunate mechanic in the game but unless your opponent is still, he will be taking vastly less damage from your pet whether it's in BW or not.

5.8 Marksman Talents

All hunters should at least get aimed shot since it is a necessary ability for both PvE and PvP. Apart from that, hunters will usually pick one of the CC abilities -- scatter shot, intimidation, wyvern sting. There is endless debate about which is better, so I will not get into that here.

5.8.1 Scatter Shot
Scatter shot (SS) is your primary tool for getting out of range when something closes into melee, is your primary spell interrupt, is good for short term crowd control, and is good for finishing off near-dead opponents. The key to SS is that it has no dead zone range and thus can be used as a semi-ranged attack even if your opponent is close. SS is the reason that most hunters go 0/21/30 instead of 0/20/31.

One sometimes forgotten followup to SS is aimed shot (SS + AS). If you start AS immediately after you SS (after the 1 second global cooldown), you will aimed shot right as your opponent gets out of SS. The trick with this is that you must scatter your opponent while he's still at ranged distance, so this does not work as well when he is already in your dead zone or melee. SS + AS is a useful move if something is running towards you to get into melee range. Just SS as soon as your target is in range, and follow with aimed shot.

Be sure your opponent is not DOTted when you scatter him, or it will break the effect. If your opponent has a sting on him, replace it with scorpid sting before you scatter him.

Scatter shot is often useful for preventing offensive spells as well, or stopping someone from getting into range to cast those. A typical example is scatter shotting a priest who is running towards you to psychic scream. However, proper use of this form requires knowing a bit about the range of spells being used against you, since scatter shot itself has fairly short range and thus you may not for example be able to count on it as a defense against psychic scream particularly if you have bad lag.

Note that there was old bug where through an easy macro you could exit combat mode immediately after scatter shotting. That exploit no longer exists.

5.8.2 Aimed Shot
Much of your ability to kill opponents fast as a hunter relies on aimed shot, since the aimed+multi+autoshot combo is a giant source of burst damage. It is always advantageous for you to start off with this when possible because it gives your opponents little time to react (heal, run away, engage you) when their health goes from 100% down to 10% in an instant. Practice getting a feel for when opponents are behaving in a manner such that they will likely stay in range of your aimed shot windup -- generally this is opponents that are fighting something else, eating/drinking, etc. In mass battles such as AV, you can stand back and pick off casters and rogues with this to rack up huge numbers of kills.

Note that if your opponent has no target, then once you start up aimed shot, he will automatically target you. A prime example of how this works against you is if a mage is drinking and you wind up an aimed shot -- he'll see you're a hunter and stand up to ruin your crit. You may want to use an instant (e.g. multishot) in this case instead. Another way to defeat the automatic targetting is to first send in your pet. This will cause your opponent to target it and the pet will keep him busy while you aimed shot him.

Rapid fire decreases aimed shot casting time; I have a macro that tries to start rapid fire before aimed shot for this reason.


6.1 Kiting

Kiting is one of the most essential hunter skills in PvP. Kiting is where you maintain distance from a melee target while shooting at it. This is akin to "running and shooting over your shoulder". It works very well against classes that have poor or no ranged ability, since you can effectively kill them without them getting close.

The motivation behind kiting is that hunters do their best work at range, and are relatively poor at melee. A hunter does not want to go toe-to-toe melee against a rogue or warrior because in most cases he will get slaughtered. Kiting allows us to keep our opponents at range.

Kiting can be accomplished in a number of ways. The most standard method is to jump in the air, spin at least 90 degrees towards the target (most people spin a full 180), shoot off an instant, and then spin back, all before hitting the ground. Thus, you are basically running in one direction while occasionally jump-spinning to face your target so that you can hit him.

Another method of kiting involves using the strafe key to essentially run sideways away from the target. Done properly, you will still be slightly facing the target (imperceptably in most cases), so you can shoot your instants without having to jump and turn around.

Learning how to kite may at first may seem rather daunting. To jump and then spin, shoot, spin back, all before landing takes some work. Fortunately, this can be practiced against any landmark or inanimate target. You can for example choose a hallway in your town, then practice running up and down while jump spinning. Or, choose any stationary NPC in town and jump-spin with him as a dummy target.

I recommend learning how to jump-spin using the first method I mentioned (i.e. jump, spin at least 90 degrees, shoot, spin back). When you first practice this, you may want to spin a complete 180 degrees. If you're having trouble spinning back to your original position, you may want to adjust your mouse. Another key thing to note is that as long as your mouse returns to its original position, you will also be back to facing in your original direction. Practice flicking the mouse and then flicking it back to the same horizontal position it started. You can even do this outside of WoW just by playing with your mouse on the screen. Once you can consistently flick it back to where it started, you're set for kiting.

Another helpful hint for learning how to kite is to watch your minimap. Since your minimap gives you an indication of what direction you are facing via a pointer, you can practice spinning back to the same direction by just watching your pointer.

In terms of what to actually shoot while kiting, typically you'll want to concussive shot, arcane shot, and sting in whatever order. Watch your cooldowns and hit your shot whenever it's available. The exception is stings -- they have a much shorter cooldown their duration, so you don't want to waste mana repeatedly stinging a target once it's already affected. You will probably want to map your instant shots to keys that you can still reach while holding down the "w" to move forward. For example, mapping concussive shot to 4 and arcane shot to 5 allows you to hit those buttons while holding down the "W" to keep moving forward. Note that you do not need to actually hold down "W" while jumping, since the whole idea is that while you're in the air, you'll be continuing forward in the direction that you were facing when you first started jumping. However, for convenience, some prefer to keep "W" held down. Personally, I have concussive shot mapped to 2 so that I just release the "W" key briefly to hit "2". What you choose to do is totally up to you -- any number of methods are equally effective. Other options are to hold down both mouse buttons, or put yourself on auto-run using the numlock key.

In steps, the mechanics for kiting are:

1) Run forward holding down either 'w' or both mouse buttons.
2) Jump with space bar, release 'w' or your mouse buttons.
3) Spin 90-180 degrees in either direction using your mouse.
4) Hit your concussive shot, arcane shot, or sting button to shoot.
5) Spin back in the other direction using your mouse.
6) Hold down 'w' or both mouse buttons to resume running.

Also be aware that you can start your kite from when you are facing your target. Suppose you are happily shooting away at a distant target and he starts coming towards you. Jump backward, shoot an instant, and turn 180 degrees so that you are now facing away from him and running in that direction.

Kiting is also an important skill in PvE. You can kill much higher level melee mobs if you kite effectively.

During kiting, also watch for improved concussive shot. If that procs, your opponent is stunned -- you'll want to get to maximum range, perhaps hit rapid fire, and start unloading multishot and auto shot in addition to your instants.

6.1.1 Jousting

[113]The alternative strat against melee classes is jousting. This means that you don't try to stay at range constantly, but to get to range intermittently. When the opponent comes too close to shoot, run at him, raptor/WC, run through and get back to range, shoot some more, rinse and repeat. The good thing about this is that it minimizes interruptions. The bad thing is that it gives your opponent a chance to hit you with stuns and snares, and of course to do some damage to you while in melee range.

For that reason, a jousting tactic requires some heavy Survival talent points (Survivalist is an absolute must, and anything that boosts defense and resistance is also crucial), and it helps to have your Insignia trinket on cooldown. A Free Action Potion also wouldn't hurt.[/113]

6.2 Melee

Melee is inevitable in PvP. Theoretically you can kite all day or opponents will be distracted by your pet, but in truth people will generally make a beeline for hunters to get into their dead zone or melee range. Fortunately, our melee abilities are *not bad*, and we have many ways of getting out of melee range.

Most hunters will use a raptor strike / wing clip / counterattack / mongoose bite macro that will try to do each of those in turn. With this sort of macro, you can just spam one button and it'll do the appropriate attack (The only caveat is that sometimes I will get an "ability not ready" error if I recently mongoose bite'd someone and I parry again before its cooldown).

The idea behind this macro is to punish people for getting into melee range via use of your raptor strike, then wing clip them so that you can get back into ranged. Be careful about spamming this macro too much though since wing clip is an instant and it is not cheap on mana. If I panick, sometimes I can start smashing my melee button and find out I've drained most of my mana on wing clips.

My macro additionally tells my pet to attack my current target.
/script CastSpellByName("Wing Clip");
/script CastSpellByName("Mongoose Bite");
/script CastSpellByName("Raptor Strike");
/PetAttack();
6.3 Pet Management

For starters, be sure to disable growl on your pet in PvP, and you may want to put him on aggressive. Aggressive helps particularly against stealthed opponents because your pet will see them and immediately start attacking them even before you do or before notice they're there.

However, be careful when setting aggressive that your pet does not needlessly run away chasing after hopeless targets. Also, aggressive means your pet will break CC'd targets, such as your freeze trap. Thirdly, an aggressive pet may put you into combat prematurely.

For these reasons, if your pet control is good, then it's probably best to keep your pet on passive and to hook in PetAttack(); macros into your various attacks (e.g. you can set a macro such that whenever you raptor strike something, your pet attacks that same target).

As a general rule, most opponents will not target your pet. This is because when you die, your pet dies; and equally as important, when you res, your pet will also res with full happiness even if it was dead. For this reason, I would also not using a tank pet such as a bear, since you are trading off DPS for survivability but your pet does not need survivability in PvP.

Thus, it is not as vital for your pet to have as much health and defense as possible. I generally find that putting training points into resistances is a good idea because whereas people won't try to kill your pet, they will usually try to CC it whether through fear, frost nova, entangling roots, etc. Giving your pet decent resistance increases its usefulness. Shadow (fear), Frost (frost nova), Nature (entangling roots) are particularly vital. I don't worry so much about arcane (sheep) since, frankly, most mages will polymorph me instead of my pet.

You may for example want to respec your pet away from stamina and armor just for PvP, and then spec it back to a PvE build when you go back to questing. Retraining your pet is not very expensive so this is feasible. Or you could have a PvE pet and a PvP one.

Note that once you reach 60's AV, you will need a pet with some survivability to deal with NPCs and elites.

In terms of other pet abilities and pet choices, there is very detailed information on the Wow Hunter's Forum about these issues, so I will not go into them in detail. Many hunters will use cats because they have fast attack speeds for interrupting spell casters, have dash so they can chase down flag carriers or fleeing opponents, and have prowl which works well in conjunction with NE shadowmeld.

One recurring question that I will address, however, is whether to use claw or bite or both. The DPS from both is comparable, but bite is an occasional attack whereas claw will drain focus very quickly. Claw is great for interrupting spellcasters because it is a frequent attack, but it may leave your pet without focus when needed such as to dash during the middle of combat (e.g. my opponent starts fleeing). I would generally say it is redundant to get both and particularly not a good idea once you're at the stage where you have more pet abilities available than you have training space for.

6.4 Feign Death

FD deserves its own section since it is one of the most important tools that a hunter has for survival and setting up for massive DPS.

FD (FD) is one of our best survival tools in both PvE and PvP. The point is not to actually make people think you're dead -- in PvP, few people will not be fooled when you suddenly drop dead in front of them, and maybe people have mods that automatically retarget you after you FD. The true benefit of FD is that it takes you out of combat, which allows you to do a number of things, the most important being that you can set traps. A typical example is that a rogue has gotten the jump on you and won't let you get out of melee range. FD, set a freezing trap immediately, and he'll be immediately frozen. You can then run to full range, aimed shot him, and start kiting. At a 30 second cooldown, FD is one of our most abusive and useful moves.

Many hunters will use a macro to handle the specific case of FD + freezing trap (called FD+FT), since it is so commonly used. See the FAQs on hunter macros for an explanation of this, but basically you will want to FD, set the trap, and pull your pet off the target so that the pet doesn't hit him out of the trap. I additionally will go into aspect of the cheetah, but that's up to you:
/script CastSpellByName("Freezing Trap");
/script PetFollow(); PetPassiveMode(); ClearTarget();
/script CastSpellByName("Feign Death");
1. It is not necessary to include ClearTarget();, its inclusion on most FD macros is based on a myth that your FD has less chance of being resisted if you include it.
2. You must mash the button for this macro twice. The first time will FD, the second time will FT.

FD can also be used to break opponents' lock on you. For example, rogues will lose their combo points on you when you FD. If a spellcaster is casting something with a long casting time, you can FD near the end to interrupt his spell. For example, if a mage has frost nova'd you and is preparing to frostbolt, you can feign death to break this. This is particularly useful if your scattershot is down.

FD can be used to effectively have two traps going at once (note: you cannot have two traps waiting on the ground. What I mean is that, using FD, you can place one trap as soon as the other is triggered). Once something hits your first FT, you can set another trap even though the other is still active. To set the next trap, you can either feign death to get out of combat, or wait for a few seconds to exit combat normally (assuming that nothing else is hitting you nor are you hitting anything during this time).

You can also use FD to exit combat in order to change trinkets, this is particularly relevant to engineers, who may have many trinket options available.

Note that DOTs do NOT put you back into combat after you have FD. If someone casts a new DOT on you, then you will be put back into combat; but if a DOT ticks, it does not put you into combat.

6.4 Aimed Shot Setup

One of the most abusive hunter tools is the aimed shot combo against helpless targets. Aimed shot is situational in open combat since it has a long prep time. However, if a target is frozen, scattershotted, entangled, etc., this is an excellent time to aimed shot them. I will go through the freezing trap setup and you can adapt to your particular situation. The nice part about this combo is that you can practice it against mobs since the sequence is exactly the same.

Suppose a warrior charges you in melee...

A. FD+FT. Warrior is now frozen.
B. Run through the warrior and hunter's mark him while running.
C. Jump-shot scorpid sting the warrior (this does not break the trap). Make sure your autoshot is off; you may want to use a macro that turns your autoshot off whenever you use scorpid sting.
D. Run to maximum range (optionally, use AotC to get there faster) and turn around.
E. If you are out of combat, lay another freezing trap, eat, drink, whatever.
F. Make sure you are on AotH.
G. Hit rapid fire if it's available (it will reduce the casting time of your aimed shot).
H. Start aimed shot.
I. Send in your pet when aimed shot is almost done.
J. Start pressing your multishot button madly.
K. You will get an aimed shot, multishot, and auto shot off near-instantaneously. Hit him with a concussive shot afterward and start kiting. And if he runs at you, he hits your next trap, and you can repeat this process over again.


7.1 WSG

7.1.1 Track Humanoids
It goes without saying that track humanoids makes hunters extremely valuable for locating the opposing flag carriers. Sometimes however it's not altogether clear where the flag carrier is because track humanoids does not indicate elevation. Fortunately, you can at least differentiate between whether the FC is indoors or outdoors since indoors their blip will be faded. For example, if their FC is in their base but his blip is solid, then he's on the roof, otherwise he's either on 2nd floor or the FR itself. If he's running out of the FR and his blip is faded, then he's going through the tunnel, otherwise he's going out the second floor.

Another note is that sometimes flag carriers will hide in the most interesting places -- you know he's somewhere near the GY since the blip shows it, but you have no idea where he is exactly. Or, you're playing low level BGs where there is no tracking available. A simple solution is to just /target him manually and then send your pet after him. Follow your pet, and tell the rest of your team to do so. In accordance with this, it is helpful to get the bgflag mod ( http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-1425-1-bgflag.html ) which displays at all times who has each of the flags. This can save you the headache of having to scroll through your log to find out who picked it up, or have to spam chat to ask if anyone else remembers. Note that sometimes your pet will not attack the target if it is out of range, so there are limitations to this.

7.1.2 Hiding with the flag
Aspect of the Beast allows you to hide from track humanoids. Sometimes I am designated as flag carrier because with Aspect of the Beast, I can find a good hiding spot and stay there indefinitely while horde futiley tries to search me out. Note that hunters generally are not the best flag carriers because of their lighter armor; however, good use of Aspect of the Beast along with a good stamina build can make us fairly effective in this. Make sure to dismiss your pet when you are hiding in this way or put it on stealth (prowl) so that it does not give away your position.

7.1.3 Playing defense
Pre-mount in particular, defense is an important part of WSG. Played correctly, hunters can be a terror on defense because we have many abilities to keep a flag runner CC'd. Make sure your flares and traps are always up, and there are mods ( http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-2286-1-traptimer.html ) that can help you keep track of when these need to be renewed so you don't forget and let them expire. Otherwise, often rogues will wait outside of flare radius until it expires, then run in. Trap choice is somewhat situational, but in general use frost traps (particularly if you have entrapment). If offense is coming in solo, freezing trap sets up very nicely for an aimed shot and gives you ample time to ask for help if necessary. If offense comes as a zerg (which is more typical), then a frost trap can keep a number of enemies stuck in your flag room while your reinforcements arrive. Another reason to use frost trap is that if you're defending with a group, often people in the group are not smart enough to lay off when a target is frozen by a freezing trap.

If you're a night elf, stealthing near the flag can allow you to get the jump on an enemy coming in. However, if your pet doesn't have prowl, keep him away from you, otherwise it will give away your position. Typically I'll just put my pet on stay and park him in the corner of the flag alcove where he's not easily visible.

Track humanoids is of course a great asset to have for defense. Typically when there's incoming, I'll ping each enemy's location once on the minimap so that my team can know how many are coming and where they are without me having to type it out in raid chat (of course if you should type it out anyway if you have time). There are hunter mods that will augment your minimap so that if you mouseover a target, the mod will display the class, level, and faction of your target ( http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-339-1-icu-hunter.html ). This mod is indispensably useful in BGs.

7.1.4 Trapping the graveyard
I do not condone GY camping (i.e. where in a lopsided game, players stand where opponents spawn as to farm honor when those opponents res), so whether you GY camp is up to your discretion or your server's particular rules of etiquette. Regardless, if you happen to be passing by your opponent's GY, it is sometimes a useful tactic to set a trap in the middle of it. An explosive trap will put players into combat as they res so that they can't immediately mount. A frost trap will of course directly slow them down from leaving. A flare will cause them to be debuffed such that they cannot stealth or shadowmeld soon after. Sometimes when our flag carrier runs through the opposing graveyard, I'll drop a frost trap so that ressers can't catch up (BTW: I generally advise running down the ramp, not the graveyard. The reason is that you want to stay away from their GY as much as possible since that's where they res, whereas if you run down the ramp then you are going along the side where your team is ressing in their GY, making it easier for them to come support you after they res).

7.1.5 Assisting your FC
Hunters are useful for assisting the flag carrier, since we have a decent amount of CC. Use of frost trap is critical here, since you effectively slow the entire group chasing after your FC. This is particularly vital when your FC is going through either tunnel because the trap is impossible to avoid. Don't be hesitant to blow your FD so you can put down a frost trap to help your FC. Remember also that you go out of combat if you or your pet do not attack anything within several seconds, so if you've blown your FD then you can just wait a bit until you are naturally put out of combat so that you can place a trap.

Use Aspect of the Pack situationally. I am always in the same group as the primary FC so that I can speed them. Even druids benefit from this since they do not get speed bonuses when indoors. Of course, cancel AotP once you see incoming, and if you overuse it then your teammates are likely to get very very irritated.

During flag assist combat, it is often a good idea to put on Aspect of the Wild versus hawk/monkey, since enemies will try to root or bind your flag runner. This is particularly important on alliance side since you have not only druids but shamans to deal with.

Also make sure you are constantly throwing flares in the path that your FC is running.

7.1.6 Engaging selectively
I've mentioned various uses of shadowmeld in case you are NE. One other use is simply for survival or choosing situationally how to get into combat. Obviously, the less frequently you are targetted, the less you are going to die. However, hunters are often picked on first because they have such good range that they get the first hit off of approaching enemies. Thus, we tend to die prematurely before we can unload a lot of DPS. A way to avoid this is to shadowmeld, wait until opponents have engaged other classes (hopefully your tanks), and then start blasting away. Often then your opponents are dead before they even realize that you've joined in. I have specific macros that target various well known hunters in my bracket to compensate for this, since they tend to hide in interesting places or wait until I've engaged someone before picking me off. Of course, the goal of BGs is not to farm HKs or avoid dying, so don't just use this to rack up kills at the expense of effectiveness or your team will not be particularly happy with you. Some hunters are known to be chickens that only engage when they're absolutely safe, even while their buddies are getting slaughtered.

7.1.7 Flag Carrying
Some classes are obvious candidates for running the flag, such as druids and wariors. We are not one of them, but we can still carry the flag decently because we have fair damage mitigation with mail, and survivalists in particular will have more health plus deterrance and resistance to CC. We have track humanoids to see where enemies are coming from, and an aspect to increase the speed of the entire party so we can travel together fast.

However, all things (gear, ability, level) being anywhere near equal, I'll hand off the flag to a tank or druid/shaman if I see one. We really shine as FC supporters as mentioned above, and note also that we will drop the flag if we try to FD to set a trap.

7.1.8 Using pets on defense
Keep your pet in front of the flag, put him on stay so he doesn't follow you and aggressive so he automatically attacks anyone who comes near (note: "stay" does not mean your pet won't move, just that it won't follow you). You can then move around freely knowing that your pet is guarding the flag, just don't go too far away or your pet will despawn.


7.2 AB

7.2.1 Using eagle eye
From the lumber mill, you can see every node using eagle eye. This makes hunters an excellent choice for coordinating AB attacks. You can also annoy people by making them think someone is capping their node, since the hawk eye animation is identical to the flag capping animation. During games when I am directing AB, I will sometimes stand at the LM for the entire game and just direct traffic and scout from there. I find in this regard that the LM is superior to the GM, since visibility is poor from the GM (also, from the LM, priests can mind control players and throw them off of cliffs...).

7.2.2 Leapfrogging to the BS
This is not a hunter-specific strategy, but I figure I would mention it since it is seemingly not well known. There are 4 ways of getting to the BS from surrounding areas -- two bridges, and two ramps from water. If you are going through the water route on mount, you can actually jump on the floating wreckage to make it there without dismounting. This is not easy to do, so I would recommend practicing during games when you are obviously winning (the other option being to fish :-b ).

7.2.3 Playing defense
There is no remarkable trick to playing D in AB. However, one thing to bear in mind is that with proper use of feign death and traps, you have amazing crowd control ability. First, of course make sure your traps and flares are up. Suppose you are unfortunate enough to be solo D when 3 enemy come to take your node. The first enemy hits your trap and is frozen. The other two enemies go up to cap your node. Simply FD+FT to put one of them out commission. That leaves one left for you to deal with. Hopefully you can solo them, or at least keep them occupied until reinforcements arrive. Effectively you can (at least temporarily, and disregarding instances where a pet sets off the trap) delay three eopponents from taking your node.

If you have to leave a node or are passing by one, leave a trap and throw a flare to help whoever's defending it.

7.2.4 Taking advantage of terrain
AB has a lot of natural terrain that can advantageous to ranged classes. The Blacksmith for example is on a hill, so there are a depressions along the edge of the hill where you can stand and shoot where the game thinks you are within line of sight of the target even though the target cannot see you directly. This is great for picking off attackers -- hide halfway down the hill, wait for incoming to get engaged with something, and start firing away. It can take them a while to figure out where you are.

You can also take advantage of raised terrain such as building rooftops or tree stumps to keep yourself safer from melee range. This includes the top of the gold mine at the GM site, and the tree stump at the LM site coming from stables. This may be considered cheap so use at your own discretion.

7.2.5 Taking advantage of buildings
Another hiding spot for ranged classes is inside the actual buidings themselves in AB. You can for example hide in the gold mine and still have decent range. Better yet, lure some people to chase you into the GM, feign death and lay down a frost trap, and you'll tie them up for quite a while. On a similar note, be wary when approaching seemingly undefended nodes in case there are enemies hiding in the buildings. Keep an eye on your track humanoids, and also throw flares or turn on track hidden since often rogues are choice units for node defense.


7.3 AV

7.3.1 Overview
Hunters are instrumental in AVs, as a good hunter can singlehandedly determine an AV. You will definitely want to learn how to single pull marshalls/wm's, and how to break a turtle at a GY by trapping the spawn point. Your team will LOVE you if you can do these effectively.

AV is very different from WSG/AB in that AV battles tend to occur on an epic scale. There can be a shock for hunters when they finally start playing AV -- forget about dueling tactics such as kiting rogues until dead, you will generally not find yourself in those types of situations (although they do occur). Abilities that we don't use a lot in WSG/AB such as volley become very important.

Hunters can easiliy do very well in AV. As an extreme ranged class, we can sit in the back lines and rack up the kills. We are also instrumental on defense because of our traps.

7.3.2 Exploiting terrain
There are many spots in AV where we can hide and strategically pick off enemy players. These include the elevated areas near SH, and on top of towers and bunkers. If you choose an area carefully, you can essentially render yourself safe from melee. For alliance, camping above the SP GY is highly effective because it takes a long time to navigate up the hill yet you can reach most targets below, so melee classes cannot quickly get up to you. Place a frost trap in the area you are overlooking so you can easily volley or aimed shot enemies as they get stuck in the trap.

7.3.3 Assaulting and defending towers
Hunters are great for taking out tower archers because we have fairly good range and our multishot will always hit 3 targets. Another side effect is that engaging at a distance will often draw out the commander in the tower, and from there he can be kited to the rest of your team versus the normal situation where a few people engage the commander in melee.

Hunters are not as suited with defending towers because of the enclosed space. Ask another class to defend. If you do need to defend, consider standing outside or at the entrance so you have some ranged capability.

7.3.4 Pet usage
Expect your pet to die a lot in AV. Our pets are inevitably targetted in AV since they are melee. As a non-BM spec, I am content to just assume my pet will die after any major battle. This may affect whether you choose to spec BM since your pet will need to be active in order to use abilities such as intimidation. Definitely use your pet, just bring plenty of food or be resigned to wait until you die in order to res your pet.

7.3.10 Pulling Marshalls and War Masters
Before killing the general, teams will have to pull the alliance marshalls or horde warmasters and kill them individually. Hunters should learn how to pull a single one out at a time -- these are tough NPCs and a bad pull can cause a wipe. If you accidentally pull more than one, hunter's mark one of them and tell your party to focus on it while someone else tanks the other(s).

Here is the method to single pull a marshall/wm. The idea is that depending on the number of wms in the hut, there are situations where you cannot avoid pulling more than one initially, so you have to use FD to cause the others to reset.

1. Use track humanoids to see which wm is closest to the entrance.
2. Pre-target that wm (e.g. "/target icewing" to get the icewing warmaster).
3. Keep your pet at the entrance of the hut so he doesn't accidentally draw aggro, make sure AoE effects such as howl are off.
4. Go inside the hut, staying near the entrance, until you can see the wm. Mark it and pull it with any shot of your choosing.
5. Start running out with drek, the wms, and hounds all probably chasing you.
6. As soon as the wm has cleared the room, have your pet attack him while you continue running.
7. Once your pet hits the wm and he's cleared the hut, feign death so that the other wms reset. They will only reset if nobody else has hit them, so make sure your team knows not to attack anything until you have FD.
8. Have a warrior attack the wm to draw him off your pet.

If your FD is resisted, it is imperative that you run back into the hut and let yourself die! Otherwise it's likely that you will cause a wipe because the rest of your team will inevitably hit each of the other wm's and thus prevent them from resetting.

7.3.11 Defending flags
Bear in mind that volley will NOT break node capping. Channeled spells such as rain of fire, blizzard, and volley will not stop enemies from capping your node. You must hit them directly!

7.3.12 Playing effective defense
Hunters with frost trap are amongst the most annoying classes that any offense has to deal with in AV. Frost trap the SP bridge and opponents will have a terrible time getting through. You can also have a few traps active at once as long as you lay one down as soon as the other is triggered. Typically on the SP bridge, I will lay one trap, stay out of combat, lay another once someone hits my first trap, and then a bit later I will feign death to lay yet a third. When assaulting Drek's, lay a frost trap at the entrance to his hut so that horde cannot trinket/run in. Similarly, when playing defense, lay a trap inside Vandar's so that opponents cannot easily pull the marshalls out without getting stuck and killed.

7.3.13 Assaulting graveyards
Inevitably, there will be situations where we are trying to assault a graveyard but defenders are respawning faster than we can kill them, meaning that they are able to interrupt us from tapping their flag. In this situation, ride past the flag to the actual spawn point of the graveyard and put down a frost trap. Once defenders res, immediately put down another frost trap. This will effectively slow down defenders from reaching the flag for a fairly long amount of time, particularly if you present yourself as a target so they spend time killing you at their spawn point.


7.4 General Teamplay

7.3.1 Buffs
Since we are a mana using class, and often do not prioritize +int gear, we should be always asking for arcane intellect from mages. Paladins should be giving us blessing of wisdom instead of blessing of might, since BoM only affects our melee attack power. Of course, Mark of the Wild and Power Word: Fortitude are essential to us, and particularly MotW since every stat is useful for us.

7.3.2 Focus Fire
Often in PvP it is most effective to have the party focus on one or a few targets at a time. Hunter's Mark of course makes this easy for a hunter to point out targets in both PvE and PvP. There are also mods and UI options to show what friendly players are targetting, and to auto-assist them.

7.3.3 Playing effectively at low levels
Be aware that as a DPS class, you will generally do noticeably worse in BGs if you join when you are not near the level cap. This is particularly true in low level BGs because the % difference between the top and bottom level restrictions is much greater than in higher level BGs. For example, if you join a 10-19 WSG as a lvl10, then the lvl19 players will be almost double your level. However, if you join a 50-59BG as a lvl50, then the level difference is only 18%. Another factor to consider about joining as a low level character is that your higher level counterparts will have both talents and skills that you don't, so it's not just a matter of you having inferior stats.

On the few occasions when I join BGs when I'm near the bottom of the level range, I typically have to change my mindset. Since I'll die to just about anyone 1on1, I generally try to avoid combat and think more strategically in terms of supporting the FC in WSG, serving as a distraction, defending nodes in AB, setting tras, etc.

For example, wait for other players to engage before you do, avoid getting into any 1on1's since they will usually be instant death, and focus on helping guarding flags or nodes. For example, it's often assumed that the lowest level player in AB will guard the stables/farm after initially taking it. Specific things that hunters can do in BGs that are level independent include:
1) Guarding nodes or flag and being vocal about warning your team when you see incoming on your radar.
2) Setting traps and using concussive or scatter shot to slow opposing FCs or slow enemies who are chasing your CC.
3) Using auras such as trushot, AotW, and AotP to passively support your team.

In particular, traps and CC are reasonably effective regardless of level; unlike against PvE mobs, these actually will work on players who are higher level than you versus being resisted.

People may complain if the presence of low level players on their team is perceived to be causing them to lose. How you choose to address this is your own personal decision and I will not get into the complex philosophical and social issues here. Suffice to say, though, this is a moot point in ABs when the game is not full (e.g. 13v12), since in that case your presence is not keeping another player from joining in. Also, you can still establish a good reputation for yourself by playing intelligently and supporting your teammates, such that your contribution is seen as valuable.

7.3.4 Score Screen
Since hunters are a DPS class, we tend to do very well in BGs in terms of killing blows and overall kills. In addition, we have not only our own attacks but our pets' to count towards killing blows. All in all, it's not difficult for a hunter to stay on the top of the rankings in a BG. However, don't get distracted by this. BGs are not strictly about killing, and often the players who are at the top of the ranks are counterproductive because they are deliberately farming HKs or just stealing killing blows from other players who have already weakened their targets. I would argue that the kill rankings should just be removed period from BGs so that players can focus more on objectives.

In general, do not look at the kill rankings, and don't get fixated on killing blows. If you do so, you'll likely end up playing suboptimally such as wasting an arcane shot on an enemy that is already near dead because you want the KB. Instead, conserve mana and pick your targets carefully -- if an enemy is already getting beaten on and is handled, move to another target. Since you are ranged, you'll have an easier time switching targets than many other classes. Use your abilities to the glory of your own team, not your own glory. And remember that you do not get any additional honor from KBs, and you only need to be in the vicinity of a dying enemy player to receive honor.

7.3.5 Honor
Also, a key basic point about BGs is that you do not uniquely earn more honor or rep from capping flags or taking nodes. The whole team earns the same amount. Some players who don't realize this concept will ninja the flag from better players because they think they'll get more honor for it. Often if someone shows this behavior, we will explain the rules to them, tell them to hand off the flag to a more appropriate carrier, and kick them from the raid if they do not listen.


Hunters have extremely good range and thus one of our primary advantages in PvP is that we can initiate combat before the opponent knows what hit them. A good aimed shot that crits against any class means the fight could be halfway over before they know what hit them. Since we have excellent kiting abilities, we cause untold frustration to many classes, who have to chase after us indefinitely while getting picked off.

8.1 Druids

Battles against druids tend to be fairly dynamic because you have to respond to what form the druid is in. However, this should generally be a losing battle for druids. If you play this correctly, a druid can only hope to outlast you until you are out of mana.

The tactic against druids in bear form is the same as with warriors. The tactic against druids in cat form is the same as with rogues. However, a notable difference is that you can scare beast on druids in either of those forms. Scare beats has a short casting time, and will make him run long enough for you to exit combat, eat and drink and lay down a trap, go into shadowmeld if you so desire, and/or setup your aimed shot combo. The druid's defense is to shapeshift out of this into caster form, particularly if he has spellalert and sees that you are trying to fear him. However, this is a no-win situation for the druid. If he shapeshifts, he wastes a lot of mana and you've wasted none since your spell is cancelled. You can keep trying to fear him whenever he goes into animal form and make him waste mana or eat the fear. Also, if you catch him going into caster form to break your fear, he's suddenly extremely squishy (i.e. little damage mitigation), so this is a great time to scatter him or FD+FT so you can get off an extremely damaging aimed shot combo. A good druid will just allow you to fear him, and count on diminishing returns.

A good druid will try to root you within your dead zone, spam you with moonfire and what not, and heal frequently. They will also abolish poisons when you DOT them, although if that becomes an annoyance, you can just start casting rank 1 serpent sting and trick him into wasting his mana abolishing it. You will need to keep your finger on your insignia trinket to break out of entangling roots if the druid uses that on you in your dead zone. If not, be prepared to use scatter shot to interrupt him after he roots you.

Aspects: You will probably want to keep Aspect of the Wild active since the added nature resist is better generally than what you would get from Aspect of the Hawk. You can always change back to AotH situationally such as when you're about to aimed shot.

Traps: Be aware that just like warriors, druids' charge will teleport them right through traps that are between themselves and you. You will have to stand on your trap to make the druid hit it when he feral charges you.

8.2 Hunters

Often hunter vs. hunter seems to be a battle between gear and which side gets off various procs such as improved concussive shot. If you followed my guide in terms of gear, you should be able to beat most hunters just through superior gear choice. However, beyond that, we can improve our odds quite a bit by being a bit creative instead of just both standing around shooting each other.

First and most importantly, lay down a freezing trap at your feet to put his pet out of commission. If for some reason that doesn't work, you may also elect to use scare beast to send the beast away, although if the other hunter has a fast bow and the pet has fast attack speed then it may not be worth the time to cast, given the interrupts. You can also feign death to get a pet off of you.

If he uses his rapid fire or gains quick shots from improved aspect of the hawk, scattershot him to make him waste the buff duration, or get into his dead zone. Be sure to followup scattershot with an aimed shot combo as usual, assuming you don't have him DOT-ed with serpent sting. You can also use feigned death to interrupt his aimed shot.

Use feign death strategically. As a night elf, assuming I'm not dotted, I can feign death and then immediately stealth in order to make him break his targetting, assuming that his pet is CC'd so that it doesn't immediately take me out of stealth. You can also feign death to ruin an aimed shot, such as if he scatters you and starts an aimed shot combo afterward. If for example I am frozen or scattershotted and my opponent starts an aimed shot, I will start spamming my feign death button hoping that I break out of CC early enough such that I can FD to ruin his shot.

Viper sting is very effective against hunters situationally, since hunters do not have high reserves of mana. If you are dueling and the other hunter has full mana, don't bother since you should be using serpent sting to kill him faster. However, if he is already low on mana, viper sting can neuter him fairly quickly. Also, even if you lose against another hunter, viper sting wil ensure that a teammate can finish him off afterward.

Survival hunters may behave like warriors -- they'll concussive shot and sting you while charging to get into melee range. This should be a losing battle for them however -- use your freezing traps and trinket to get range, and then kite them.

BM hunters will send their bestial wrath pet against you to tear you apart. Your ice trap and CC will not work against their pet in this instance, so you may have to just pray you can take out the hunter or his pet quickly. Note that BM hunters can use bestial wrath to get their pet out of freezing trap. Another trick against BM pets is to feign death; this will break the pet's targetting momentarily until the hunter sends it back at you, so that saves you from some damage. Also, if you move around while the pet is attacking you, it will spend some time following you instead of attacking, so this can greatly help with damage mitigation.
8.3 Mages

Mages are amongst the more attractive targets for hunters to target, since they have little damage mitigation. Mages also do very powerful DPS, however, so a mage in our dead zone can kill us pretty quickly if we slip up.

In battlegrounds, the best strategy I have found for killing mages is to just snipe them. Follow behind your crowd including tanks to distract enemies, and target any mages you see with aimed shot, particularly ones that in the process of casting spells since in that case they have less chance of moving out of range.

Mages aware of us will generally blink into our dead zone, frost nova us, then reither spam us with instants or wind up a nuke (a spell that does a lot of damage but has a long casting time). In event of a nuke, wait a bit and then scattershot. You can also FD to break the cast although you will want to save FD to freeze the mage, so use this as a last resort only.

A few other short notes:
Mages can use blink to break stun and root effects.
Beast Mastery spec is very effective against mages since their CC cannot stop the pet from chewing them up.
Mages will ice block to interrupt our casts, such as if we manage to freeze trap them and start an aimed shot. Use any standard timer to see when the block will expire, and time an aimed shot to cream the mage right as he comes out of it.
Mages will often start by polymorphing you or your pet.

8.4 Paladins

Fights against paladins are typically very long and drawn out, since paladins do not have high DPS but have amazing survivability given their armor and heals. This is tough matchup for us because paladins can typically outlast us until we are out of mana, given their damage mitigation and healing. It is usually a better idea to run from a paladin and have some other class handle it.

As with other melee classes, you'll want to kite paladins as much as possible. They have no normal ranged attack and only one unrestricted ranged ability (the other requires you to be below 20% health), which has fairly short range and a long cooldown other than ranged abillities from talents.

You may elect to use viper sting, but be aware that paladins can cleanse this for much less mana. If they cleanse your sting, try applying rank1 viper sting to see if they can be fooled into cleansing that. Having a scorpion pet is also helpful here because the paladin's cleanse may remove the scorpion poison instead. Definitely apply viper sting during stuns such as improved concussive shot.

The paladin's shield will protect against both damage and effects, so don't blow your concussive shot or freeze trap against a paladin that charges at you while shielded. They can also use Blessing of Freedom to render themselves immune to your moment impairing effects.

Outlasting paladins often ends up involving tricks such as freezing the paladin and then dropping from combat to eat/drink.


8.5 Priests

Priests "melt faces", and both shadow priests and holy priests can be enormously painful to deal with, and these battles are not typically easy for hunters if the priest is well geared and competent. Shadow priests have amazing DPS and good damage mitigation. Holy priests will heal to make up for their DPS. Both can use fear to keep you and your pet running.

A typical tactic for a priest is to put up a PW:S, apply SW:P to you, then run towards you to fear you and your pet. As against other classes, you'll want to try to get the priest to trigger your freezing trap so you can setup your massive combo. You can also continuously apply viper sting to drain the priest's mana, since he has no means of cleansing it. If you can somehow survive until the priest is out of mana, then you can simply out-DPS him afterward. Be aware that even after the priest is out of mana, it's prudent to keep viper sting on as long as your own mana allows it (i.e. don't blow your entire mana pool just for this), since priests with even a minimal amount of mana can still be effective.

Priests can theoretically be kited, but this is rather difficult since their shadow spells have a chance of proccing a stun. If you are hit by blackout, it's often GG since the priest can use that to get comfortably into range.

8.6 Rogues

Hunters give rogues an incredible amount of headache and it is possible for a hunter to kill a rogue many levels higher simply through kiting. Rogues are the chief source of "nerf hunters" complaints because it is almost as if we were exclusively designed to kill them.

Typically if you know a rogue is nearby, you will want to flare and stand within it, put on detect stealth, and put your pet on aggressive. Aggressive pet means that the pet will attack the rogue as soon as he sees the rogue, even if that is before you react. You may also want to use a macro that selects nearest target, marks it, and sends your pet after him; if you have such a macro, just spam it repeatedly while turning in circles to look for the rogue.

Of course, put down a freezing trap. The rogue has little chance of getting the jump on you if you stand within your flare and have a trap on. Once he hits your trap, put your pet on passive and run to your max distance. Mark him, lay down another trap (use FD if you can't get out of combat), and do your aimed/multi/auto/concussive combo. The rogue has little choice but to run towards you. He'll hit your next trap, you can then repeat the same aimed shot combo. After the second trap, there is serious diminishing returns to trap duration, so be aware of that if the fight goes on much longer.

Normally fights aren't this clean, and you'll have to use other tactics to kill the rogue. Kiting is of course integral, since the rogue has no real way of catching up other than sprint. If he blows his sprint, scattershot him (you can follow up immediately with your aimed shot combo as he's scattered) or FD+FT to make him completely waste it. You can even put on aspect of cheetah, just watch your spell alert mod so that you can switch out of the aspect if he tries to shoot you.

Stings: If you're expecting him to run into your freezing trap, keep scorpid sting on him so there is no DoT to break the trap, otherwise keep serpent sting on so that he can't easily restealth (you will still be able to see him through hunter's mark, at least until 1.12; but serpent sting will take him out of stealth so your pet and teammates will too).

Traps: [60]You will normally want to save your freezing trap for when the rogue blows his sprint or activates other buffs (adrenaline rush, blade flurry). If the rogue gets into melee range and has crippling poison, you can freeze him to get out of range, but alternatively you can just scatter shot him, use your trinket to remove the poison, and run to start kiting.[/60] If your trinket is not available, you may also consider using anti-poison. Once you've gotten distance, this forces the rogue to blow his sprint to catch you, in which case you can now FD/FT to ruin his sprint.

Rogues are my primary target after priests and warlocks. They have little damage mitigation, their dodge does nothing to help against arrows, and thus they are easily killed. In particular, if a rogue is attacking another target, it's easy to pick him off before he knows what hit him. If he wants to leave his current target to retaliate against me, he'll have to give up all his combo points.

Rogues can detect traps as a passive ability. If you stand on a trap, it is still possible for a rogue to stay within melee range but avoid the range of your trap (called "trap dancing"). In this case you will probably have to blow your scatter shot, then feign death and place a trap, in order to freeze the rogue. Or just maneuver in such a way that it becomes more difficult for the rogue to stay within melee range without getting frozen.

Rogues can use vanish to get rid of hunter's mark. You should still mark a rogue when you see him because it prevents him from using stealth to turn invisible; he'll have to blow his vanish. Also, you will want to keep him DOT-ed with serpent sting so that it destealths him after he vanishes.

8.7 Shamans

Shamans can do a little of everything, and they wear mail on top of that so they have decent survivability. Shamans are difficult to take down because they can slow us like rogues/warriors so that we can't kite, then can hit us with fairly amazing DPS, they wear mail so they do not die quickly, *and* on top of that they can heal. I find that usually I can only beat shamans if I can interrupt their heal with scatter shot and finish them off with an aimed shot combo. Otherwise I have to get fairly lucky.

Consider using a macro or plugin to automatically have your pet attack totems that the shaman puts down. Stay at range so that you are not earthbound or frost shocked.

One key weakness of shamans is that they do not typically have large reserves of mana, so you can whittle that down with repeated application of viper sting, in the case that the shaman is not quick about cleansing it through cure poison. Another weakness is that they have no intercept abilities, so they can be kited to some degree assuming you see them from far enough away.

Note that you can fear shamans while they're in ghost wolf form. Shamans are particularly effective in ghost wolf form pre-40's as flag carriers since they can outrun most other classes -- once they are in the open, they are extremely difficult to catch up to without a mount. Assuming you catch up to a shaman in ghost wolf form and are not confident in being able to take him down quickly before he runs away, consider slowing him in some way and then fearing him. This can give your allies time to catch up (assuming he runs in an appropriate direction).


8.8 Warlocks

Warlocks are one of the best PvP classes in the game currently. They have large amounts of health, [70]some ability to mitigate damage (through healthstones and demonology spec)[/70], do good damage, have a variety of useful pets, can chain fear, and have ability to create various stones for healing or resurrection. They are particularly effective at 40+ since they have access to death coil, which both fears you and heals them.

Start off by freezing his pet, as usual against any pet-using class. Maintain your distance so he can't easily fear you, send your pet after him, and hope your DPS is better than his. Note that a good warlock, like a good priest, will try to close the distance against you, including chasing after you while you're feared, so it is not always trivial to maintain distance.

Sometimes if I see a warlock coming in from afar, I will send in my pet to see if I can get him to waste his mana fearing it first before I engage. Your fast attack pet may not work so well anyway against the warlock as compared to other classes because many warlock spells are instant-cast.

If you are BM spec, send the pet after the warlock with bestial wrath and watch the warlock get torn to shreds. Or send it after the warlock's pet and then the warlock.

[82]After killing the warlock, you may want to put a freezing trap on his corpse immediately in case he has soulstoned, since in that case he will be resurrecting there. Alternatively, you could loot the corpse, but that is not instantaneous.[/82]

8.8.1 Warlock Pets
Imp:
If a warlock has an imp, take out the imp first or send your pet after it. Imps do a lot of damage and have an aura that increases the warlock and party's stamina, and they are not melee so they won't charge blindly into your trap. However, they have relatively poor health and thus are easy to take out.

Succubus:
A succubus does a reasonable amount of damage so it may be worth taking it out if it's already on low health. The true danger of a succubus is its seduction ability. The succubus will seduce you, the warlock will fear or CoW your pet, and then the warlock will wind up for a huge shadow bolt and DOT you to death. For this reason, it's particularly important to keep the succubus frozen. If you see a warlock without a pet, assume it's using a invisible succubus. Flare and trap and stand in the middle. If the succubus is revealed, try to kill it first; or even if you are seduced, you can still send your pet after it.

Voidwalker:
Voidwalkers are tank pets and can largely be ignored. Note that the warlock can sacrifice the voidwalker for a shield, so don't be surprised if that happens. If a warlock is using a voidwalker, I will try to freeze the warlock himself so I can get off a good aimed shot combo. Remember warlocks are in cloth so even though they have good health, they take massive damage from your shots.

Felhunter:
Felhunters are generally an anti-caster pet so they are not as debilitating against you as with primary spellcasters. Don't attack the felhunter or you will be debuffed. [70]Note that felhunters can dispel targets frozen by freezing trap, so you may want to use frost trap with entrapment instead.[/70]

8.9 Warriors

The strategy against warriors is similar to rogues, with the additional caution that warriors get a 30 second intercept that allows them to close distance but *requires* rage. The other ability warriors have is charge, which only works out of combat and *generates* rage. It is critical to hit warriors with something to put them into combat so that they can't charge. If a warrior is for example running you do with his horse, hit him with any instant such as a sting to put him into combat. This not only saves you from being charged, but takes away the rage that the warrior would have gotten for it. Another factor of charge and intercept to learn is that both have a minimum and maximum range (8-25).

As with rogues, you obviously don't want to go toe-to-toe melee range against warriors. Use wing clip to get out of range, although hamstring has longer duration so you may still have issues if your insignia trinket is on cooldown. Still, the tactics are the same -- use scatter and FD/FT to gain range, kite, and punish him with aimed shot combo whenever you have him CC'd.

[82]Note that if you are charged (not intercepted) by a warrior, there will be a brief moment where you will drop from combat. If you resist his charge, you can put down a freezing trap.[/82]

Be careful about using your pet against a hunter because if the pet does not do much damage, it may be counterproductive since it risks triggering the warrior's enrage.

In later brackets, don't expect to win easily against warriors without use of your trinket, SS, and FD cooldowns. If those are blown, you're likely dead against a good warrior. Epic'd warriors are a tough fight for hunters since they have extraordinary damage mitigation. You'll do everything correctly, and get all your aimed shots off, but they'll still have a comfortable amount of health left such that they can destroy you afterward. This is just life -- hunters are not meant to do well against warriors so you may want to just freeze them and let someone else (such as a mage) deal with them.

Stings: I typically use serpent sting on a warrior, unless he's also being attacked by other players. In that case, scorpid sting is useful for the armor mitigation.

Traps: Warriors' charge and intercept move them instantaneously to the target and thus they will go right through traps. Don't lay a trap between yourself and the warrior and expect him to be stopped midway through his intercept by the trap.


9.1 Mods

There is some controversy surrounding over-use of mods. Purists believe that mods automate the game excessively or do all the thinking for the player. Whether you choose to embrace or abstain from mods based on this is up to your own philosophy. Regardless, I will say that mods can make your life a lot easier because they give definite advantages. Being able to tell what your opponents are casting at all times, having information on your mini-map about all tracked targets' lvl and faction information, and having a display in WSG of the name of the person carrying each flag, all give you an edge over those who choose not to use these mods.

The premiere source of mods is curse-gaming ( http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons.html ). You can find all sorts of mods by different categories, as well as information and feedback on each individual one. If you're lazy, you can just grab a compilation of hunter mods such as Anathema's ( http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-3056-1-anathema-hunter-mod-pack.html ), and then selectively turn on or off each mod. You can also check out Avlar's post on hunter mods (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-hunter&T=1251909&P=1 ).

One caution about mods is that when new patches arrive, some mods become broken, and this may drastically handicap your ability to PvP until new versions come out. If you are dependent upon a mod and it's nonfunctional, you can be left with having a tough time. However, on the bright side, most of the major mods are generally updated very soon (within days) of when a new patch is released. Another important note is that when new patches come out, typically all your mods will become disabled by default. You will need to go to your addons and choose the "load outdated addons" option.

9.2 Macros

Macros often make life easier at the expense of flexibility. For example, some hunters use a melee spam macro that tries to cast each of our melee abilities in some order, and also get our pet to attack the target. Many hunters use a feign death + freezing trap macro in any of its various forms. I've mentioned several macros here and there is a wealth of macro information in another stickied FAQ ( http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12733804&sid=1 ).

Experimenting with macros can be fun although sometimes frustrating. The macro debugging tools are not very helpful, so if you make a mistake then you may get spammed with error dialogs. An easy way to test new macros is to just duel a friend, or try them during a particularly lopsided BG where you are clearly winning. Learning macros also has long-term benefit because once you're comfortable with the language (which is quite simplistic), you can apply it to your future characters or whatever situations you need.

One very useful application of macros is to tie abilities that you would ordinarily *forget* to use into macro. For example, I usually forget to use deterrance and rapid fire during my games, so I'll play a whole 60 minute game without ever popping either! To get used to activating them, I've put them into macros. My aimed shot will automatically start rapid fire if it's available. My melee spam will automatically cast deterrance if available. In addition, I notice that I do not use either my PvP or AV standard as often as possible. I've also hooked them into my aimed shot macro. Basically whenever I try to aimed shot, my macro will attempt to do the following:
1. Cast Furious Howl on my wolf (to buff the damage from aimed shot).
2. Lay down a standard.
3. Start rapid fire (to shorten the aimed shot casting time).

9.3 Keyboard Management

In general, the mouse is best for movement and rotation, and the keyboard is best for actions. This means you should be using your mouse as much as possible for manipulating your character, and you should be using your mouse minimally to select actions. Thus, one of the main reasons I use macros and key bindings is to minimize the times when I need to explicitly click on an action bar button. Hitting a keyboard button or using a macro that contains several actions is much faster than having to locate an action bar button, and you are less likely to make mistakes. If you are constantly having to click on an action bar button manually, chances are that you are much slower than a hunter who has his actions mapped out on the keyboard and tied to macros.

I often find that I have so many abilities to keep track of that it's difficult to manage them with my action bars. Get the Flexbar mod, which allows you to map any key to any ability or script. I use my numbers for most-used abilities such as multi and concussive, and put lesser used abilities as shift-number. For example, concussive could be number 2, and scatter could be shift-2.

There's a mod that switches your action bar to a different one when you get into melee range ( http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-1549-1-rangehelp.html ), similarly to how rogues have a different action bar during stealth. I suggest getting this because is will help reduce your clutter.


I. Intro
You're a 20-29 hunter wondering why that opposing hunter is destroying you with amazingly high DPS. You blow all your money on the best blue you can get at the AH, but you're still getting destroyed. The secret is that he has a gun that's even better than your blue. It takes a lot of planning, you have to start a quest when you're lvl28, and you need some high level help, but you can get one too. If you're going to stay in 20-29 for a while and want to utterly own, then this guide is for you. This guide is about how to acquire the Master Hunter's Rifle or Bow.

II. Disclaimer
I never used this weapon and have not decided whether its use is "fair" (I am anti-twink). But since people on our server do use it, I figure the knowledge of acquiring it should be readily available. I got most of my info from thottbot so feel free to give me corrections. Finally, just having this gun isn't going to make you untouchable in BGs, since enchants and twinks play heavily into DPS too... but it gets you pretty far towards that.

III. Stats
Master Hunter's Rifle or Bow (I'll call it "MHRifle")
http://thottbot.com/?i=38532
19.4 dps
+7 scope enchant

Compare with the best 20-29 blue gun you can get normally --
Ironweaver
http://thottbot.com/?i=7795
17.3 dps
+5 scope enchant

Note two significant advantages. First, the MHRifle is base 2.1dps higher! Second, you can put a +7 scope on it because it's a lvl40+ item. Compared to the Ironweaver, you're doing 15% more DPS, plus much better damage from aimed and multishot. Compared to the average green bow (i.e. what most hunters use in this bracket), you're doing 50% more base damage just from regular shots!

IV. How to acquire
This weapon is the reward from a chain that ends with a lvl43+ quest ( http://thottbot.com/?qu=208 ). You must be at least lvl28 to get this quest and for the prereqs.

The prereqs are three "Mastery" quests chains where you have to kill Panthers (http://www.thottbot.com/?q=766), Tigers (http://www.thottbot.com/?q=1902), and Raptors (http://www.thottbot.com/?q=1903). Each is a 4-chain ending with killing an elite boss. So you have to complete a total of 13 quests to get your MHRifle.

You get these quests from the Nesingwary Camp in STV, and the rewards for some of the chains are actually pretty good for hunters (i.e. after you're done with this, you'll have not only the MHRifle but also some good armor).

V. Tricks
There are three main issues:
1) The quests are much higher level than you, ranging from 30 to 43+.
2) STV is a heavily contested area where everyone will be higher level than you doing the same quests.
3) You don't want to accidentally hit lvl30 from the quests, and you want to minimize experience gained so that afterward you can turn in the maximum number of marks of honor from BGs.

Of course, the solution is to bring a high level friend who's patient enough to help you through these. Of particular concern is #3, since it takes approx 40,000 xp to level from 28 to 29, whereas just the xp quest rewards from this chain will grant ~30,000xp (i.e. that doesn't include the 124 high level mobs total you have to kill to complete the quests). My suggestions are:
1) Make sure you have no rest bonus going into lvl28.





2) Ungroup your high level friend and have him finish off the mobs after you just tag them (since if you're ungrouped, xp is from % damage dealt).
3) Get in a group of other lvl28 hunters to do this quest together with. Not only will you all get the bow/gun, but you can share the cost of hiring the lvl60 (if that's what you end up doing), and the mob xp will be split amongst you so you'll get less xp per kill.

Oh, and you may want to avoid going to STV on Wed nights ;-) (b/c of scheduled world PvP there).

VI. Conclusion

If you're able to succeed in this remarkable accomplishment, you'll terrorize your bracket and never want to level out. Just be sure to play innocent when people start talking about hunters being overpowered ;-).

Edited April 30, 2014 by фткyн

[Polims 2]

gaid po enchantmentu https://elysium-project.org/boards/index.php?showtopic=4143