Hunter (World of Warcraft)

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Orc Male Hunter

The Hunter is one of 9 classes available to players in the game World of Warcraft. The hunter class is based on the beast master and ranger classes seen in traditional RPGs. The hunter is considered by Blizzard to be an efficient ranged damage dealing class, since much of its ranged damage does not require the use of mana (though there are ranged abilities that require mana that a hunter typically uses to increase ranged damage dealt). The hunter is also able to provide melee combat support via its pet, and its own melee talents, although in both cases a class dedicated to melee combat is often superior.

Overview

Hunters also have various Aspects that they can learn, which allow them to passively improve various talents, and skills. These are similar to Paladin auras, but most hunter aspects only affect the hunter, and not party members. Aspects are made to mimic beast traits and abilities, further reinforcing the hunter's melding of beastmaster and ranger. For example, Aspect of the Monkey, the first Aspect a hunter can learn, increases his chance to dodge an attack by 8%. Aspect of the Cheetah increases his running speed by 30% while it is active, at the price of a slowing effect if attacked. A hunter can only have one Aspect active at a time unless grouped with another hunter that has a group aspect such as Aspect of the Wild which increases resistance to nature damage.

Hunters also have the unique ability to track nearly every mob in the game by type (eg, humanoid, beast, demon, undead, and elemental.) through various tracking skills. Other classes may feature one or two tracking skills, but hunters are the only class that can track nearly all the various types of mobs. (Notable exceptions being bug-like mobs that are found in places such as Tanaris or Silithus, and the various slimes and oozes found throughout the world.) This ability often allows hunters to easily find mobs required for quests, thus completing the quest faster than other classes can. The hunter's tracking abilities also allow the hunter to be aware of his surroundings at all times, thus enabling him to avoid surprise attacks by mobs and players alike.

A Female Night Elf Hunter in WoW

Talent Trees

Beast Mastery Tree

In the past, few hunters invested many talent points in this tree because of the common belief that pets do not scale well with high-level monsters, which discourages many hunters from using their pets extensively. Since the changes of Patch 1.7, however, the Beast Mastery tree has become more popular, with the addition of the Bestial Wrath talent, as well as the new pet stun, Intimidation.

Marksmanship Tree

This tree received minimal changes with Patch 1.7.

Survival Tree

This tree was almost completely redone with Patch 1.7. Most hunters choose this tree as a secondary tree with Marksmanship as their primary tree; however, some hunters prefer the opposite, with Survival as the primary tree and Marksmanship secondary as some believe it to scale better with improved equipment. This is mainly due to a 25 point talent (Lightning Reflexes) that increases Agility by 15%.

However, only recently has a mixture of the Survival and Marksmanship trees emerged, combining the best characteristics of each to make a truly unique yet strong build. Thirty talent points go into Survival while twenty-one go into marksmanship. The points in Marksmanship allow the hunter to retain the scatter shot ability while also leaving them with the +15% agility and +3% critical hit chance of the survival tree.

Equipment

When a hunter reaches level 40, he is able to train to equip mail armor, which before level 40 was only available to warriors and paladins.

Because of the wide variety of weapons that the hunter is able to equip, this has started debates in the community as to what melee weapons hunters should be able to roll on during groupings with other players, and given rise to the "Hunter Weapon!" internet meme. Some say that hunters should only use weapons that directly improve their ranged damage. Others say that hunters can, and should, use any equipment that they want. This debate is not limited to just hunters, for example, a Paladin that rolls on a 1 handed axe that would increase the Hunters ranged damage output. However hunters are often singled out as a class not to receive melee weapons because their main attacks are ranged and the common misconception that hunters do not melee.

The hunter's main stat is Agility, which increased ranged attack power by 2 per 1 agility, melee attack power by 1 and increases crit chance and dodge (1% crit per 53 agility). Also important at endgame (especially PvP) is stamina.

Pets

Currently the cat and the bear are the two most common hunter pets seen among players.

With the release of patch 1.7.0, Blizzard added new pet customizations, to make customizable with different abilities. The first of which are abilities that any pet can learn, they include improved Stamina, armor, and resistances. Blizzard also made these talents easier to get, instead of having to search out specific pets and learning them, they are purchasable from the pet trainer.

Also released with the patch are talents which are specific to certain types of pets, these unique abilities are out in the world mobs, that hunters have to find and train. Later patches have added even more pet specific abilities. So far, these include Furious Howl for wolves, Scorpid Poison for scorpids, Screech for flying beasts, Prowl for cats, Thunderstomp for gorillas, Shell Shield for Turtles, Boar Charge for boars and Lightning Breath for Wind Serpents. Along with the these new talents Blizzard added a limit of four combat abilities for any pet, which means that hunters have to now pick and choose what talents that want on their pets. Blizzard also released a way for pets to unlearn all their talents at the pet trainer, so that the user can reuse their skill points.

Shortly after Blizzard added these abilities they normalized all of the pets to have the same run speed and resistances.

Raiding

Unfortunately the hunter's pet does not scale with the hunter in survivability and damage output and is often not used in raids. They cannot tank, die very quickly if sent to DPS and are not worth healing to keep alive in a battle consisting of up to 40 players. Pets are sometimes used to pull bosses which are difficult for a player to pull. The hunter can take control of his pet and have the pet aggro the boss from a large distance away. If the pet pulls more creatures than desired the hunter can safely feign death, sacrificing the pet for the good of the group.

However another school of thought is that the hunter's pet is extremely useful when combined with the Beastmaster talent tree. In higher end instances the pet is used to either offtank, (i.e. turtle (high armor) or bear (high hit points) are normally considered best)provide additional DPS, and have a large range of additional abilities. (i.e. furious growl for wolves which adds attack power to all within range) With the correct choices of pet abilities the pet can be both formidable and useful, but it comes down to the individual style of gameplay. Also common tactics include turning the pets agro ability off inside of raid groups and dismissing your pet when moving by dropping through area's so that it will not cause things to train your group. The best advice is to find what works for you in this regard and to pay attention to tactics. The difference between a good hunter and poor hunter normally comes down to your tactics and listening to what is needed at that time. Find what works for you and have at it.

PvP

In PvP, the hunter no longer deals with the mob AI, but with human opponents -- most of whom are familiar with hunters' single-player tactics. Smart players generally ignore the hunter's pet and attack the hunter directly, because pets disappear when their owners die. In PvP, an intelligent hunter deactivates his pet's "growl" skill (which draws PvE mobs to the pet) because it has no effect on human players. This increases the rate at which the pet can use other damage skills, giving other players even more reason to avoid engaging the pet. The hunter's PvP strategy must be focused on keeping enemies from closing on him and/or forcing them to deal with his pet. For example, when fighting a melee class like a warrior or a rogue, hunters can use snaring attacks, traps, and shots to slow the enemy's movement. Hunters can use “Aspect of the Cheetah” to improve their own speed and run far enough away to attack the other player with guns/bows; however, this tactic is useless when applied to seasoned PvPers, as every single class in the game can attack a hunter using a ranged weapon and daze him (with the exception of Paladins, who compensate with Hammer of Justice (Wrath if the Hunter is on less than 20% HP). Warriors and Rogues often forget they can wield ranged weapons of their own. Pets are relegated as a type of controllable DoT, who attack the hunter's opponent during the times the hunter is running to "kite" his enemy. Nearly all PvP hunters make great use of the Feign Death tactic, which allows them to leave combat and thus lay down traps, which can only be done out of combat. It is rarely used as a form of trickery, since veteran PvPers can easily tell a hunter is still alive by either the pet still being present or the unbelievability of a hunter going from half health to sudden death. In terms of group PvP, playing the hunter is not as easy as one would assume, especially when snare attacks from other classes outclass the usefulness of Wing Clip. Although Wing Clip has no cooldown rather than the Global Cooldown, Hunters are still a ranged attack class with a dead zone, and Hunters must stand still to fire most of their most effective ranged DPS attacks, which are Aimed Shot and Multishot. While other classes can snare the Hunter down to their own snared speed (If the Hunter presumably Wing Clipped his opponent as well, which happens in almost every fight against a hunter), the difference lies in that classes like Warriors and Rogues can move and jump while performing all their DPS attacks at the same time. At this point Hunters are stuck using their largely secondary-use melee skills while trying to return to kiting distance, making group PvP a challenging and interesting proposition for the class. Hunters must constantly gauge distance and timing when fighting an opponent, because their opponents are closing in on them while they are standing still to fire off their DPS attacks, and this becomes considerably more difficult when more than one player is charging foward to attack the Hunter.

Because of this, hunters often do well to make use of items such as the PvP reward trinket as well as potions such as Living Action or Free Action which removes (or prevents) many of the most common slowing moves. It is also helpful for Hunters to stay close to certain classes in Battlegrounds such as Paladins, Shamans, Priests and Druids which can remove many slowing moves from Hunters. These allow hunters to escape away from many melee specialised classes and allow the hunter to reengage the enemy at range.

Hunters are especially valued in the Battlegrounds, and Instances (where each team has the same number of players) for their ranged attack power, traps, flares, "chasing" and their ability to detect enemy through use of their tracking abilities. Hunters are the best pursuit class in the game, and it is very difficult to escape a hunter following your tail. Hunters in PvP also have the ability to fear other hunter's pets, Shamans in Ghost Wolf form, and Druids in their animal forms for up to 15 seconds using their Scare Beast ability.

Strengths

• Extremly good at firing ranged weapons.
• Have the Autoshot ability (continually fire ranged weapons until stopped.) Spell casters with wands are the only other classes with this ability.
• Can obtain a pet to help them in battle. High level pets can sometimes have higher stamina and spell resistance levels then their masters.
• Excellent soloing ability given their pet's rapid health regeneration which take most of the damage.
• Can use "Feign Death" to avoid dying and to make enemies switch to another target.
• Good Damage over Time (DoT) and movement impeding abilities with traps and certain ranged attacks.

Weaknesses

• Not many melee attacks. Not as much as a warrior but enough to go it alone if they choose to.
• Needs lots of ammo for their ranged weapons. Using ammo pouches and arrow quivers to store ammo always adds an increase to ranged attacks which offsets this weakness somewhat.
• Must feed pets to keep them happy (though this offsets their decreased repair bills because of Feign Death and their pets taking most of their damage while soloing)
• Limited to leather armor until level 40.
• Very common, making it hard to find groups.
• Cannot use shields.

Gallery

See also

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External links

• at WoWWiki, a World of Warcraft wiki
• http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/hunter.html
• http://www.thottbot.com/?c=Hunter
• [Pictorial Guide to Hunter Pets]

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