So, there i was, looking my own business (surfing the forums from work, with the strange sensation that time is standing still) when i stumbled upon this great guide. And when i find something good, be it a song i like, a good read that makes me giggle (be warned, explicit language!), or a guide like this, i like to share it. Good things are meant to be shared anyway. (sharing is caring )

Autor of this very well written guide is Jecht of Tarren Mill, EU. IMHO, he did a great job (made me want to level my hunter). Hopefully it will be helpful to hunters that are looking for ways to improve their characters.

Jecht’s “How to Hunter” Guide

by Jecht of Tarren Mill, EU, posted on wow-europe forums

Hey there hunters. I’ve never really done anything like this before but I thought i’d give it a try. I made this hunter guide for my own guildies to use, but after receiving a positive response from it, I thought i’d share it with you guys too.

I’ve always been a bit nervous with posting because of the sheer amount of flamers I see on here whenever I read a post, but what the hey! Feel free to use this guide if you would like to better your alts also.

The first thing you need to think about is spec. The obvious two specs which come to mind are Marksmanship and Survival. I’ll try to cover both as in-depth as I possibly can, so here we go!

• Marksmanship

+ Itemization

Firstly, your primary concern with itemizing your gear should be maintaining your hit cap. As a hunter, the cap is 8% completely buffless and talentless. The first tier of the marksmanship tree offers a talent (Focused Aim) which you can gain an additional 3% from (using 3 talent points).

Many people see this as the Beginners’ talent as they feel that once they have achieved the hit cap without this talent (263, 230 with a draenei), they should spec for other damage increasing talents, but in reality the alternative talents (from speccing correctly) provide very little increase in comparison to the extra stats you could gain from having to itemize for much less hit. But yeah, keep your hit cap in whichever way you can! For future reference, the hit rating -> % look something like this:

1% Hit -> 32.875~ Hit Rating
+0% Increased Hit – 263 Hit Rating
+1% Increased Hit – 230 Hit Rating
+2% Increased Hit – 198 Hit Rating
+3% Increased Hit – 165 Hit Rating
+4% Increased Hit (Draenei + 3/3 Focused Aim) – 132 Hit Rating

Bare in mind that pet hit is slightly different. While the pet hit cap is still 8% and your hit stats are converted to your pet, Focused Aim will not affect your pet, and the hit rating rounds down. Meaning if you are at, say 7.99% hit, your pet will only be at 7%. Knowing this shouldn’t really change the way you itemize your gear, but it’s nice to be aware of it.

Obviously, as Marksmanship, the majority of your damage is going to be physical. I’m not entirely sure on the exact % of physical:magical damage output, but it’s enough to warrant you choosing Armour Penetration as your primary stat.

If you’re starting off as a marksmanship hunter, the chances are you won’t have a decent amount of armor pen on your gear alone. I’d suggest attempting to get 350~ from gear alone (+ an armour pen proc trinket) before you even consider thinking about gemming full out armor pen. Until this point, there are a few things you can do to make your damage look decent for your gear standards, such as changing your priority/rotation (Which I will get to later on).

Armor Pen, like other stats, gets more effective for the more you have. The goal for Armor Penetration is, essentially, to reach 100%.  Some trinkets in game, such as Grim Toll, Mjolnir Runestone and Needle-Encrusted Scorpion have armor pen procs which take you to 100%. Many people mistake this as reaching the cap, but this is only partial truth. If you are reaching 100% with the use/proc of one of these trinkets, this is known as ’soft capping’. For hunters at least, I’d recommend gemming past the soft cap, but not too much that your armor pen will be wasted.

Once you reach around 75%-80%~ unbuffed, I’d recommend either changing your trinket, or to start gemming for a secondary stat, such as Agility.

Obviously, you can’t JUST choose to itemize for Armor Pen, you need a secondary stat aswell (All of your gear, by default will have Agi, Stam, Int, Attack Power and 2 variable stats). Providing your steady shot remains < your Global Cool Down (GCD), you should not worry about haste at all, and itemize completely for Crit. In extreme cases, there may be too much of a lack of agility or intellect on a piece of gear (as agility is both straight crit & AP, and Intellect is, with the use Careful Aim, a straight AP bonus) for it to be an upgrade, so always look out for this.

+Enchants

Enchanting can be pretty situational. In general it’s quite easy to understand which enchants you should be using, but often, it can be difficult to do the math specifically for your gear, without proper analysis. You can use this as a guideline:

Head – Arcanum of Torment, Knights of the Ebon Blade Rep
Shoulder – Greater Inscription, Sons of Hodir Rep
Cloak – 22 Agility
Chest – 10 Stats
Bracers – 50 Attack Power
Weapon(s) – 110 Attack Power, if you’re dual-weilding then I’d still go for the double 65 AP.

Scope – In black and white, you should be using a Heartseeker Scope (40 Crit Rating), although there is such a thing in the game as a Hit scope, back from the days of Molten Core. I can’t garuntee that finding a crafter will be easy, but if you REALLY want one i’m sure you see find one around, but don’t expect it to be cheap.

Gloves – Again, black and white you should be using 20 Agi. It is important that if you are under hit you should use this enchant slot to gem for 20 hit rating, as if you gemmed instead, you would lose the oppertunity of 20 armor pen, instead of the 20 agility from the enchant slot.

Belt – MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BELT BUCKLE!

Legs – Icescale Leg Armor (75 Attack Power, 22 Crit Rating).

Boots – Tough one, very situational. For pure damage, you should be using 16 Agility. If you lack hit, use Icewalker (10 Hit, 10 Crit). The third option is Cat’s Swiftness (Agility and minor run speed). Argueably, movement = downtime, downtime = DPS loss, so movement speed = DPS increase, but as I said, it’s pretty situational. Personally, I’d use Cat’s Swiftness.

+ Spec and Notes

Ideally, your spec should look something very similar to THIS

The 5/5 in Improved Aspect of the Hawk allows you to not worry about Haste to reach a <1.5 second (GCD) Steady Shot.

The 3/3 Focused Aim is to allow you reach the Hit Cap easily, so you can itemize for other stats on your gear.

1/2 Go for the Throat. In high-end gear, you should have enough Crit to allow your GFTT to continiously supply your pet with enough focus to continiously Claw/Bite without having to wait for regen. If you have lesser gear, and can afford to, you should take out 1 point in Focused Aim and put it in this talent to reach 2/2. This applies until you reach around 40-42% fully UB crit.

0/5 Efficiency – Some hunters decide to max out this talent, although I find the points are better suited elsewhere, as if you are supplied with every raid buff possible, you should not have to worry about mana unless the fight is particuarly long, or particuarly strenuous on mana, and you can always just use Aspect of the Viper to regen.

0/1 True Shot Aura – If your raid lacks the 10% Ap buff, you can quite happily spec out of Rapid Recuperation and spec into this. Many hunters have two specs, with just this one talent point difference.

1/1 Silencing Shot – Although Silencing Shot does not deal a great amount of damage, it is not actually on the Global CoolDown, meaning you can use it while you’re casting other shots (except Steady Shot), this makes it a pure damage increase with no comprimises.

Glyphs
There are a few variations for hunter glyphs and in the end it essentially comes down to personal preference as there are very little difference between them, but the 3 glyphs which I have chosen are:

Glyph of Serpent Sting – Your chimera shot deals damage according to a few variables, but one of the more affecting variables is the damage of a full duration Serpent Sting. In glyphing for an additional 6 seconds worth, your chimera shot will deal roughly 1.5k extra damage every time you use it.

Glyph of Steady Shot – Although steady shot is your least damaging offensive ability in rotation, it is also your most used. As you will always have a serpent sting ticking on a mob, it is a great idea to gem for an additional 10% damage worth on your steady shots.

Glyph of Kill Shot – Alot of hunters think that the third hunter glyph in use should be Chimera Shot, or that it atleast deserves one of the 3 glyph spots. I deduced that with the scaling of gear, Kill Shot increases in base damage % increases far more than Chimera Shot does, but the obvious flaw with Glyph of Kill Shot is that it will not be in use for the first 80% of an average fight (not including adds), although the last 20% is generally the push for a boss kill. Spreadsheets show that with high-end gear, Kill Shot glyph & Chimera Shot glyph are generally on par with each other, so really it boils down to personal preference and the duration of the bossfight in question.

+ Shot Rotation/Priority
As hunters are generally a priority based class, it is relatively easy to monitor whether something is worth doing in your rotation. Assuming you have enough haste, either from Gear, or an Improved Aspect of the Hawk proc, your steady shot will be on par with your GCD. This allows you to compare any of your shots’ damage to that of a steady shot.

Your priority of shots should look something like this, although it can sometimes alternate:

Silencing Shot -> As Silencing Shot is not part of the GCD, you want to ensure this ability is ALWAYS on cooldown.
Kill Shot -> Your most damaging ability, by far. You can achieve some amazing crits with this shot.
Serpent Sting -> Not only does Serpent Sting provide a tasty DoT, the real damage comparison comes with Chimera Shot – Serpent vs Steady Shot.
Chimera Shot -> Assuming you have an active Serpent Sting running on a target, you are essentially comparing the damage done to the alternative shot, Aimed Shot.

Aimed Shot -> By no means a bad damaging spell, Aimed Shot does not deal as much damage as Chimera Shot, but significantly more damage than Steady Shot.

Steady Shot -> Steady Shot is used as a “filler” for when you have no other shots to use, as it deals a poor amount of damage.

In short,  Silencing Shot > Kill Shot > Serpent Sting > Chimera Shot > Aimed Shot > Steady Shot.

Note: If you have poor gear, your priority is basically the same although Arcane Shot is thrown into the priority between Aimed Shot and Steady Shot. This is because Arcane Shot does not scale with Armor Pen, and scales very poorly with Attack Power, thus making it deal more damage than an average steady shot at low level (which scales with both ArP and AP). You should spec into Improved Arcane Shot if this is the case. Aswell as this, arcane shot is a VERY good shot for movement fights, so don’t disregard it completely

This then makes the priority:
Silencing Shot > Kill Shot > Serpent Sting > Chimera Shot > Aimed Shot > Arcane Shot > Steady Shot

+ Gear Selection
Where I can teach you the basics of selecting gear for raiding, choosing your stats is very often situational, as you want some stats to compliment other stats, etc. and work together in a synergistic fashion.
Other than the stats I have told you to go for, there are other things you can look out for too. Such as set bonuses.

+Tier 9 Set bonuses

The two piece tier 9 is nothing short of amazing. Dealing SO much more damage than you can achieve without actually upgrading to a straight 4 piece tier 10 with a few pieces of iLevel 264, you should not replace this until this time comes, or ATLEAST until you achieve the 4 set tier 10 on it’s own (regardless of upgrading to sanctified). The point is, this is a GREAT set bonus.

The four piece tier 9 – not so impressive. Don’t get me wrong, worth having if you are at this gear level but just by itemizing properly with off-set pieces, you can achieve higher damage than this 4 set generates.

+Tier 10 Set Bonuses
The two piece tier 10 is an amazing set bonus. Having no Internal Cooldown, you can get a 15% damage proc, theoretically lasting for a whole bossfight (although it wouldn’t, but theoretically! ) Something big to note about this set bouns. The damage a DoT spell will do is defined by the amount of the base damage, aswell as any modified damage (Buffs/Debuffs). This statement is also true for pure % damage modifications, such as the 2 set tier 10, Arcane Empowerment, Ferocious Inspiration, Tricks of the Trade, Culling the Herd any any other straight % that you can think of.

These same rules also apply to Serpent Sting. So what does it all mean? Well, basically, once you gain one of these 15% damage procs from your 2 set tier 10, you can manually reapply a Serpent Sting to the target. This will increase the damage done by your Chimera Shot – Serpent, and not only this, but it will also refresh the empowered Serpent Sting once you use the Chimera Shot. Meaning, if you follow this trick, your Serpent Sting and Chimera Shot -Serpent will do 15% additional damage, given that you refresh the sting with Chimera Shot before it expires (even without an Exploit Weakness (2 piece tier 10) proc).
The four piece tier 10 is also great. Definately worth going for and keeping, atleast until the end of this expansion. You should not drop your 2 set tier 9 until you achieve this set bonus!

+Consumables
For the absoloute upmost damage output, you should be using Elixir of Armor Piercing and Elixir of Mighty Thoughts, with Hearty Rhino as your choice of food, providing you Armor Pen and Intellect (AP).

Spiced Mammoth Treats (30 strength for your pet) make a great straight damage increase, although Kibler’s Bits can be a cheaper, and slightly less effective alternative.

Assuming you are specced into Improved Aspect of the Hawk, you probably have enough haste to allow you to use a Potion of Wild Magic. Where a potion of speed still effects and benefits your auto shot timer, the 200 crit rating you gain from a potion of wild magic simply adds up to more damage.

Try to farm the mats for the Iceblade Arrow/Shatter Round ammunition from Icecrown Citadel. Not only are they much higher in DPS, they are also a lot cheaper, assuming you’ve farmed the mats yourself, costing a measly 2 Crystallized Earth or 2 Crystallized Shadow.

Now onto…

• Survival:- Just note that a little of the same information from Marksmanship applies here too, so I may copy and re-use information if it’s relevant.

+Itemization

Firstly, your primary concern with itemizing your gear should be maintaining your hit cap.  As a hunter, the cap is 8% completely buffless and talentless. The first tier of the marksmanship tree offers a talent (Focused Aim) which you can gain an additional 3% from (using 3 talent points). The hit rating -> % look something like this:
1% Hit -> 32.875~ Hit Rating
0% Increased Hit – 263 Hit Rating
1% Increased Hit – 230 Hit Rating
2% Increased Hit – 198 Hit Rating
3% Increased Hit – 165 Hit Rating
4% Increased Hit (Draenei + 3/3 Focused Aim) – 132 Hit Rating
Bare in mind that pet hit is slightly different. While the pet hit cap is still 8% and your hit stats are converted to your pet, Focused Aim will not affect your pet, and the hit rating rounds down. Meaning if you are at, say 7.99% hit, your pet will only be at 7%. Knowing this shouldn’t really change the way you itemize your gear, but it’s nice to be aware of it.

Different to Marksmanship, as survival, you do not deal enough physical damage to warrant gemming for it, so your primary stat is going to be Agility (AP & Crit). You will need to focus a lot more on the amount of base stats on your gear, to choose gear accordingly, because it’s essentially about stacking agility, resulting in more attack power and more crit. Aswell as Agility and Intellect, you should also be aware that 30% of your total stamina is converted into Attack Power, so try not to disregard it completely.
As I said on the topic of Marksmanship itemization, every piece of gear will have Stam, Int, Agi and Attack Power (in varying amounts). Gearing for Survival is a little more complex than it is for Marksmanship, in that you have an extra element of haste to worry about. Your primary variable stat is going to be Crit. The second stat you should be looking at should be haste, but once you gain a certain amount of haste (without being capped, even), it is overtaken by Armour Penetration, as it is still a rather significant stat.

In short, stack up as much agility as possible, gemming for it where possible, enchanting for it when you can. Stack up crit primarily as much as you can get, (there is a crit soft cap to think about on your explosive shot, as you gain additional crit with it from talents, although I’m not sure what the exact number is, because it’s only theoretically possible to achieve). Secondly stack up haste until you have around 250~ (to be safe), and then begin itemizing for Armour Pen, as you still put out a decent amount of physical damage.

+Enchants
Enchanting can be pretty situational. In general it’s quite easy to understand which enchants you should be using, but it can be hard in certain circumstances. You can use this as a guideline:

Head – Arcanum of Torment, Ebon Blade Rep

Shoulder – Greater Inscription, Sons of Hodir Rep

Cloak – 22 Agility

Chest – 10 Stats

Bracers – 50 Attack Power

Weapon(s) – 110 Attack Power, if you’re dual-weilding then I’d still go for the double 65 AP.

Scope – In black and white, you should be using a Heartseeker Scope (40 Crit Rating), although there is such a thing in the game as a Hit scope, back from the days of Molten Core. I can’t garuntee that finding a crafter will be easy, but if you REALLY want one i’m sure you can find one around, but don’t expect it to be cheap.

Gloves – Again, black and white you should be using 20 Agi. People who lack hit, as survival, sometimes choose to make up for it here, but I’d have to discourage against that. The reason for this is that 20 hit gems come in the form of a yellow gem. There are often socket bonuses in gear which require 1 extra yellow gem to activate, which you could easily gain simply by gemming your hit deficit there. It boils down to 20 agility & 20 hit vs 20 agility, 20 hit & a potential socket bonus.

Belt – MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BELT BUCKLE!!!

Legs – Icescale Leg Armor (75 Attack Power, 22 Crit Rating)

Boots - Tough one, very situational. For pure damage, you should be using 16 Agility. If you lack hit, use Icewalker (10 Hit, 10 Crit). The third option is Cat’s Swiftness (Agility and minor run speed). Argueably, movement = downtime, downtime = DPS loss, so movement speed = DPS increase, but as I said, it’s pretty situational. Personally, I’d use Cat’s Swiftness.

+Spec and Notes
Survival Hunters have a few points they can change around to compliment play style and gear choice, but you should have something like THIS

1/3 Focused Aim – In general, gemming for survival gives you one ’spare’ talent point. If you lower your hit rating by an additional 33 or so, you can itemize for another stat on your gear.

1/2 Go for the Throat – As survival you’re going to be critting on the majority of your shots, having only 1 point in this talent will ensure your pet has enough Focus to spam it’s Bite/Claw.

1/1 Aimed Shot – Although Aimed Shot and Multi-Shot share a cooldown and they have basically the same buff-scaling, the talent ‘Sniper Training’ (9th tier in Survival) only applies to Aimed Shot, meaning Aimed Shot is a clear 6% better than Multi-Shot, assuming you aren’t moving. If you are moving, you cannot cast Multi-Shot anyway, as it was given a 0.5 second cast time

1/3 Expose Weakness – This is also more of a gear-related talent. If you are just starting out as a survival hunter, you may need to take 2 talets in this to ensure your Expose stays up at all times, but providing you’re itemizing correctly and in some okay-ish gear, one point should keep the Expose up.

3/3 Improved Stings – If you aren’t that well geared after only recently hitting 80, the points from this talent would be better suited in Noxious Stings, for a clear 3% increased damage. The 2 piece tier 9 buffs Serpent Sting enough to allow speccing into this.

+ Rotation/Priority
Kill Shot -> Your most damaging ability, by far. You can achieve some amazing crits with this shot.

Explosive Shot -> Your second most damaging ability. Make sure you seperate this by another shot on ‘Lock and Load’ procs. For example, Explosive Shot -> Black Arrow -> Explosive Shot -> Aimed Shot -> Explosive Shot (Rather than Explosive Shot, Explosive Shot, Explosive Shot).

Black Arrow -> Not necessarily the next most damaging ability, but this ability increases the damage done by all of your other abilities, so get it up early!

Serpent Sting -> With the 2 piece tier 9, Serpent Sting can even be used ahead of Black Arrow, as it now deals a pretty significant amount of damage, although I chose to let Black Arrow amplify it.

Aimed Shot -> Not necessarily a bad shot, but it is last in your priority. Deals a decent amount of damage and can be used on the move. Use Multi-Shot instead, if there is more than 1 target.

Steady Shot -> Use when you have nothing else. Your weakest shot.

In short – Kill Shot > Explosive Shot > Black Arrow > Serpent Sting > Aimed Shot > Steady Shot

+ Gear Selection

Where I can teach you the basics of selecting gear for raiding, choosing your stats is very often situational, as you want some stats to compliment other stats, etc. and work together in a synergistic fashion.

+ Tier 9
The two piece tier 9, is nothing short of amazing. Dealing SO much more damage than you can achieve without actually upgrading to a straight 4 piece tier 10 with a few pieces of iLevel 264, you should not replace this until this time comes, or ATLEAST until you achieve the 4 set tier 10 on it’s own (regardless of upgrading to sanctified). The point is, this is a GREAT set bonus.

The four piece tier 9 – not so impressive. Don’t get me wrong, worth having if you are at this gear level but just by itemizing properly with off-set pieces, you can achieve higher damage than this 4 set generates, although as Survival you need some of each stat, so if done correctly you can itemize right while you collect your tier, thus granting yourself a set bonus in the meantime.

+Tier 10
Having two piece tier 10 gives an amazing set bonus. Having no Internal Cooldown, you can get a 15% damage proc, theoretically lasting for a whole bossfight (although it wouldn’t but theoretically! ) Unfortunately, the set bonus isn’t as effective as it is for Marksmanship (read the Marksmanship discription for more info) but it’s still very good.

The four piece tier 10 is also great. Definately worth going for and keeping, atleast until the end of this expansion. You should not drop your 2 set tier 9 until you achieve this set bonus!

+Consumables
Generally stick to Flask of Endless Rage, as there is not a better combination of potions. For food, use Blackened Dragonfin which grants 40 agility, as you’ve already gemmed fully for it anyway.

Spiced Mammoth Treats (30 strength for your pet) make a great straight damage increase, although Kibler’s Bits can be a cheaper, and slightly less effective alternative.

Unlike Marksmanship, you will not be specced into Improved Aspect of the Hawk, so you don’t have enough haste to allow you to use Potion of Wild Magic. Unless you’ve gone overboard with haste, you should probably be using a potion of speed, as you are not following the same rules as Marksmanship, although I Wild Magic would still be a very close second.

Try to farm the mats for the Iceblade Arrow/Shatter Round ammunition from Icecrown Citadel. Not only are they much higher in DPS, they are also a lot cheaper, assuming you’ve farmed the mats yourself, costing a measly 2 crystallized Earth or 2 Crystallized Shadow.

+Macros
There are alot of damage enhancing and raid utility macros out there, I’ll post a few which I use.

#showtooltip Explosive Shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/cast Explosive Shot
This macro basically ensures your Kill Command will get used on every CD. You can macro your Kill Command to all of your other spells too.

#showtooltip
/castsequence Aspect of the Cheetah, Aspect of the Dragonhawk
This macro will switch between Cheetah and Dragonhawk at the press of a binding.

#showtooltip
/castsequence Aspect of the Dragonhawk, Aspect of the Viper
Similar to the macro above, this one will change between Viper and Dragonhawk.

/cancelaura Deterrence
/cancelaura Hand of Protection
Although very simple, this macro will cancel any Deterrences or Hand of Protections’ cast on you, as these spells = downtime.
You can play around with this macro a bit, and avoid random downtimes in bossfights just by deterrencing a spell, then cancelling immediately.

#showtooltip
/cast item: 36894
/cast item: 36893
/cast item: 36892
This macro is one of my favorites. Essentially it uses your Healthstone and gets rid of the need to either have 3 bindings, or to keep changing it around.

#showtooltip Chimera Shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/cast silencing shot
/cast chimera shot

A simple macro which uses Kill command and Silencing Shot along with a Chimera Shot. Marksmanship hunters should have a similar macro to this on all of their spells to ensure that SS & KC get used as soon as they are off cooldown.

#showtooltip Mongoose Bite
/cast Raptor Strike(Rank 9)
/cast Mongoose Bite(Rank 5)
Uses your melee abilities in one macro. Rarely used, although everything counts. If you’re running past a boss and you need to go close by, hit the macro.

#showtooltip Master’s Call
/cast [target=mouseover,exists][target=player] Master’s Call
Essentially uses Master’s Call on the player which you are hovering your mouse over. Very useful!

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast !autoshot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/cast Silencing Shot
/cast Steady Shot
Will fire an autoshot before your first steady shot, instead of waiting for the steady shot to cast, then firing the auto shot, aswell as using Kill Command and Silencing Shot.

A few things to say about the guide. Firstly I know it’s not the most professional hunter guide you will see out there, so try not to complain too much about that : P Secondly the information is both a mixture of research (a fair bit of it inspired by Calebv, Ensidia <3) and my own number crunching, so feel free to point out any mistakes and I will attempt to edit and fix/add to the post if I was wrong about something. Enjoy!