Hunter

Overview

This is the beginning of a Hunter 101 series, to welcome new hunters into the class and steer them in the right direction from the beginning of their hunter career.

So you’re thinking about playing a hunter? Good news — you are considering playing the greatest class in WoW: hunters have the greatest community, most versatility of any pure dps class, and are the best looking class to boot. This guide will give you a broad overview of the hunter class and how it fits into WoW as a whole, with a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the class.

We'll cover:

Hunter Specs (Marksman, Survival and Beast Mastery) Stats, Rotations, Pets and much more!

Specs, Stats, & Rotations

Marksmanship

Talents

There a few variations between the Marksmanship spec, but there is a main one for when we are standing still, and another when we may have to deal with adds.

Spec 1: (7/31/3)

Marksmanship Talents:

• 2/2 Go for the Throat: We trigger this a lot and increases pet dps.
• 3/3 Efficiency: Reduces focus costs of our shots .
• 2/2 Sic'Em!: We trigger this a lot and increases pet dps .
• 3/3 Improved Steady Shot: Increases our attack speed of all our shots .
• 2/2 Careful Aim: More crits mean more Sic'Em procs and damage .
• 1/1 Silencing Shot: Adds more utility for hunters.
• 3/3 Piercing Shots: Adds a bleed meaning more damage .
• 2/2 Bombardment: Greatly increases Marksmanship AOE .
• 1/1 Trueshot Aura: Adds more AP to you and your raid/party .
• 1/2 Termination: Gives us more focus when boss is <25% hp and means more shots go off.
• 2/2 Rapid Recuperation: Gives a lot of focus during Rapid Fire which means more shots off.
• 3/3 Master Marksman: Allows us to get a free, instant Aimed Shot once we get 5 stacks.
• 1/1 Readiness: Reset all of our cooldowns; allows us to do two Rapid Fires as well as adding utility.
• 2/2 Posthaste: Reduces cooldown of Rapid Fire and gives us movement speed, which theoretically increases dps.
• 2/2 Marked for Death: Saves us time since we don't have to use Hunter's Mark and helpful when switching to adds.
• 1/1 Chimera Shot: Adds the last shot to our rotation, and keeps up serpent sting.

Beast Mastery Talents:

• 3/3 One With Nature: Gives us 600 more attack power from Aspect of the Hawk.
• 2/3 Bestial Discipline: Increases focus regeneration of pets which means more pet dps.
• 2/3 Frenzy: Our pets get an increase to attack speed which means more pet dps.

Survival Talents:

• 3/3 Pathing: Increases our ranged haste by 3%.

Spec 2: (7/31/3)

We can switch points from Marked for Death into Concussive barrage if you have to deal with adds. I find it's also helpful to drop one point from Sic'Em into Rapid Killing so I get more focus when one add dies. This is particularly helpful for Beth'tilac's adds or Magmaw's adds. An important thing to note is that we keep Hunter's Mark on the boss and cast it before the fight so there's no need to get Marked for Death. Other than the two talent switches, there are no other changes from Spec 1.

Stats

The stat priority for Marksmanship is as follows: Ranged Weapon DPS > Agility > 8% Hit > Critical Strike > Haste > Mastery

Ranged Weapon DPS: Our ranged weapons increase our damage the most. The reason that ranged weapon damage means more to Marksmanship more so than Survival, is that our shots scale on weapon damage. This means that if you have a 333 agility weapon, a 359 strength gun will most likely put out more dps. Luckily, since patch 4.2, there are many agility ranged weapons available to us and we do not generally have to worry about using a strength ranged weapon.

Agility: Agility is our best stat by a wide margin since it increases attack power (1 agility = 2 attack power), as well as critical strike.

Hit: You need to get 8% hit first and foremost. It is the largest DPS increase over any of the other secondary stats. To get 8% hit, you need a Hit Rating of 961. The reason why we get “hit capped” is so all of our shots, traps, and pet hit 100% of the time against bosses.

Critical Strike: This is our next stat due to the talents Piercing Shots, Go For the Throat, and Sic'Em. Piercing Shots adds a bleed whenever we crit with our three most used shots (Aimed, Steady, and Chimera). Go for the Throat causes our pet to gain 10 focus whenever we get any auto-shot crit, and Sic'Em reduces are pet's attack by 100% focus whenever we get a critical strike with Arcane Shot or Aimed Shot.

Haste: Haste is a tricky stat for most beginning hunters. Mostly due to the fact that there is two haste plateaus which we must aim for depending on gear. The first haste plateau is set at 5.4%. Assuming you have Pathing (talent in the Survival tree), you will need a haste rating of 299. NOTE: Only get this haste plateau if you have the 4 piece T11 bonus. You will need to move to the second haste plateau if you do not have the 4 piece. The second haste cap is 12.93% or 1235 haste rating. This is the plateau that most current hunters will be going for since most will not use T11 anymore. Hunters need to get a particular amount of haste because we are trying to make our Steady Shot be as fast as possible during other haste effects (Blood Lust or Rapid Fire) without going under the GCD (1 second cast time). We also get these haste percentages so we can cast more Steady Shots in our rotation, which increases our overall DPS.

Mastery: Our mastery is called Wild Quiver and essentially, it has a percentage chance on any of our ranged attacks to fire an additional ranged shot. NOTE: The shot fires on it's own and we don't get to choose. Each point of mastery increases this chance by 2.1%. Mastery as Marksmanship is a good stat to have, but we really only get it when we reach haste plateaus and can't reforge into critical strike, or the static mastery on gear.