Ayms Comprehensive All-In-One Hunter Guide v. 1.0

Introduction
Welcome to Ayms Comprehensive All-In-One Hunter Guide. The purpose of this guide is to give you the basic knowledge to succeed as a hunter, teaching you how to best decide on the course of your life, aswell as providing you with tips and tricks to stand out amungst other players.

For too long, hunters have been shunned by the community, shouted at with vile names, and looked down on for our wierd, often too close relationships, with our pets. Many hunters lack the basic knowledge of the class, simply because leveling up as a hunter is insanely easy, and doesn't provide the challenging learning courve that other classes get.

If you're here, then that means that you're one of the few, that wants to make a difference!

Table of contents:

* * * Basics * * *
Pets
-Taming a pet
-Training a pet
-Pet control

* * * Talents * * *
Picking your spec
Beast mastery
-Talents
-Shot rotation
-Gear
Marksmanship
-Talents
-Shot rotation
-Gear
Survival
-Talents
-Shot rotation
-Gear

* * * Advanced huntering * * *
Player Versus Environment
Player Versus Player
Shot rotations
Pulling and kiting
Trapping
-Advanced pulling and trapping technique
Macros
Links and refrences
Changelog
Todo
About me, feedback and requests

^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^ P R E T T Y L I N E S ^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^

* * * Basics * * *

PETS
Pets are an invaluable resource to hunters. They keep you company on long, boring grinds, they offer love and warmth at night, and adds a nice bit of damage to yours. Learn to control your pet, and you never have to be without it.

-Taming a pet
Once you reach level 10, you will get your hunter quest. This is a pretty straight forward quest, sending you out to tame a few animals. You don't get to keep these animals though, and once you're done with your quest, it's time to go find our companion. To tame a pet, simply select it, and press "Tame beast". You'll notice that for the next 20 seconds, the animal isn't really that loving, and you're suddenly squishy with your lack of armor. Eventually, the taming will finish, and you will have your very own pet.

If you're having problems taming a pet, try dropping a Freezing Trap between you and it. You can still tame a mob while it's trapped, and it can save you quite a lot of damage.

Keep in mind that the animal must focus on you constantly. Tame Beast doesn't add any threat, so if a friendly healer comes by, thinking to keep you topped off while you're apparently making love to an animal, the beast will run for the healer instead, thus stopping your taming.

For leveling up, i suggest you get a nice little cat, raptor or ravager for damage, or a boar for the extra threat from charge. High armor/low DPS pets aren't really that usefull - your pet will have no problems keeping aggro anyways.

If you're having problems deciding which pet to choose, be sure to check out Petopia - the best hunter pet site in the world: http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/

-Training a pet
Your pet has been living a peacefull life in a forrest somewhere, and has never had to kill anything except rabbits and deer. Thus, you need to teach it a bit. As your pet levels and gains loyalty, you'll notice you get training points. These can be used to train your pet various skills.

Your Pet Trainer will hang around your hunter trainer, and offers you a few hunter skills. Growl is your basic threat building pet skill, which costs no training points to teach. You get a new rank of that every 10 levels. The trainer also offers a variaty of stamina, armor, and magical resistance attributes for your pet. Of these, you should only really go for stamina, as armor only mitigates physical damage done. Pet resistances are rarely needed. You will also find two skills as you level up: Cobra Reflexes (which makes your pet attack faster) and Avoidence (which reduces your pets damage from AoE effects) - both of them are very nice skills, and every pet should have them.

Every other skill comes from beasts in the wild, and in order to teach your pet new ranks of skills, you have to learn it yourself first. You can't actually use the skills yourself, but imagine that you have to show Mr. Cat how to bite something... better. Check Petopia to see which pets can learn what, and at which levels.

Once you have decided on a skill to learn, you need to stable your current pet. Go out into the wild, and find the animal that has the skill you need, and double check with Beast Lore if you wish. Tame the beast, feed it a bit of meat, and start grinding mobs in the vicinity. When you see the message "You have learned <skill> rank x", you can dismiss the pet, go back to get your own out, and then teach it to your pet.

Since the dawn of time, there's been a bug with the amount of training points required to teach a pet new ranks of a skill.

Lets say your pet knows Claw rank 3, which cost 15 training points.
Lets assume claw rank 4 costs 20 training points. If you only have 19, it will show as red, and you would think that you cant teach it to your pet, but you actually only need 5 points to "upgrade" from rank 3 to 4.

In the end, at level 70 with max loyalty, your pet will have 350 training points, and you will have to decide what to use them on. Don't worry if you mess up - a pet trainer can reset your pets skills for a mere 10 silver. You should prioritise your pet skills as such:

Avoidence
Cobra Reflexes
Pet skills (claw, bite, gore, charge, dash, whateveryouhave)
Stamina

-Pet control
Controlling your pet is important above all. For simplicity, my "Pet Attack" (Default is Shift+T, and ctrl+1 also works) is bound to Q. This allows me to quicky send in my pet. I haven't bound anything to make my pet stop attacking. I simply use ctrl+2 to call it back, but you can also click your pet to passive, to have it return to your side.

It's important that you always know where your pet is, and where it shouldn't be. If your pet is attacking a target that gets crowd controlled, it will stop attacking the target, but it has no worries about breaking a crowd control if you order it to attack the target after it has been incapasitated. If you're running with scorpids, which leaves a dot on the target, you should be very carefull to not put it on anything someone might want to crowd control soon.

For information about raiding with your pet, please consult my guide made just for this: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=612614593 - yes, i know, it's under a different name. I switched server since i posted that guide, and I am no longer Zoa.

* * * TALENTS * * *

Picking your spec
These next categories will cover each spec, it's ups and downs, how to benefit most of them, and an explanation of all talents in the trees. This is, ofcourse, party biased by my own oppinion, but should provide a general idea about each spec and talent.

Beast mastery
The beast master hunter are closely bonded with his pet. Without it, he is not whole. He works in complete union with his pet, never far from it. Beast masters are highly favoured for DPS in PvE, and quite dangerous in PvP aswell. It's a good all-round spec that offers high damage, good utility and a big, red cat.

-Talents
A general rundown of Beastmastery talents.

- Tier 1

• Improved Aspect of the hawk:
  A great talent for BM hunters, since you're mainly using steady shot and auto shot to deal damage. If you are heavy in the other trees though, you shouldn't aim for this talent, as it can mess up your shot rotation, which is more complicated for a Marksman or Survival hunter.


• Endurance training:
  A great talent for boosting the health for both you and your pet, but not something you should prioritise for PvE.

- Tier 2

• Focused fire:
  This is cheap damage boost, both for your own damage, and the damage from your kill command. I can clealy recommend it.


• This talent falls short, as you would rarely want to use Aspect of the Monkey. However, if you often find yourself battling melee classes in PvP, and actually switch to this aspect, you may find it usefull. I feel, however, that the points are better spent elsewhere.


• Thick Hide:
  If you like to use your pet for tanking, be it soloing, or as a somewhat decent offtank in normal 5-mans, this can help boost your pets chance for surviving a bit. It does offer a bit more armor to yourself, but it's not really a noticable difference.


• Improved Revive Pet:
  A great talent for PvE, since a beastmaster hunter is dependent on his pet to do damage. If you are mainly just soloing or running 5-mans however, you can usually live with the 10 second cast time, and should your pet be killed in PvP, it will ress up with you if you die.

- Tier 3

• Pathfinding:
  A cute little talent early in the game, but as you reach level 70 you will find that you're rarely using AotC/pack and that the 2 talent points are spent better elsewhere.


• Beastial Swiftness:
  Another cute talent for leveling up, as it allows your pet to keep up with you when you're using cheetah, and can help your pet reach a target mob faster. However, it becomes more or less useless once you start focusing on instances.


• Unleashed Fury:
  One of the nicer talents in the beast mastery tree. A clear, static DPS increase for your pet, and quite noticable aswell.

- Tier 4

• Improved Mend Pet:
  One of my personal favourites. Not only does it make your mend pet even cheaper, it's also a fast way to clear any bad effects from your pet.


• Ferocity:
  Just like Unleashed Fury, this is a big increase in your pet's DPS, and needed for Frenzy.

- Tier 5

• Spirit Bond:
  A nice talent while leveling up, but sadly it falls short when you often recieves damage (such as raids and PvP). My general idea is, if you're getting hit, you're probably taking more than what it heals you for, and then you'll need healing anyways. Some might find it nice for PvP still, though.


• Intimidation:
  A very usefull talents in all aspects of the game. The stun is nice to stop spellcasters, runners or just to get a bit of distance on a target running towards you, and it also adds a nice bit of aggro to your pet. It can also be a lifesaver together with growl, if a healer gets aggro. Never the less, you need this anyways for your beastial wrath.


• Beastial Discipline:
  A good choice for a BM hunter, as this will increase your pets focus, and thus the amount of skills it can use. This, together with other focus talents, will ensure that your pet always have enough focus to dish out as much damage as possible.

- Tier 6

• Animal Handler:
  A very nice talent for PvE, but rather useless for PvP. In raids, your pet will miss about 20% of its attacks, and this talent is a nice 5% damage increase for your pet. You wouldn't take this for your mount speed increase, as a Riding Crop will buff your riding speed with 10% instead of 8% from the talents, and these two does not stack. Well, i guess you could take it if you're really cheap...


• Frenzy:
  Frenzy will put your pet around a 1 second attack speed, and adding special attacks, your pet will hit its target every 0,5 seconds. However, in many cases it's not needed to have this talent maxed out, as 4/5 is enough to keep Frenzy up.

- Tier 7

• Ferocious Inspiration:
  Yet another damage increase. 3% to you, 3% to your pet, and 3% to anybody else in your party. It's a nice damage boost, abeit not a very large one, but it still adds up in the long run.


• Beastial Wrath:
  It's pretty straight forward - an awesome talent. Your beast will turn into a big, red and very angry animal, and become very, very deadly. I don't have to explain this any further, do i?


• Catlike Reflexes:
  I wouldn't spend points in this talent if i can help it. I suppose it's usefull if you want to save mana and not use mend pet often, or if you do a lot of PvP against melee players. However, i think these points could be spent better elsewhere.

- Tier 8

• Serpent's Swiftness:
  The creme de la creme of the Beast Mastery tree. This is your main damage booster, allowing you to stick to a steady/auto rotation, and get rid of a lot of arrows really fast.

- Tier 9

• The Beast Within:
  This is both great for PvP and PvE. 18 seconds of immunity, and adding a nice red teint to you together with your pet, will turn you into a deadly unstoppable duo. If you're this far into Beast Mastery, you would be a fool not to take The Beast Within.

-Shot rotation
With Serpent's Swiftness, you will have a very fast auto shot speed, usually around 2,0 or 2,1 with a 15% quiver. That means that you only really have room to use steady shot in between auto shots. You should only use your arcane shot if you are moving, or if you want to dispel a buff off your target, but you can consider pushing your auto shot if you can damage 3 targets with multishot. Whenever you crit, you will use your kill command, but that doesn't trigger the global cooldown, so it can be used at will.

-Gear
A Beast Mastery hunter should focus on agility, stamina and attack power gear, and secondary on crit rating. The reason for this is that your pet scales with your agility, stamina and attack power, but not with your crit rating. Agility also adds both AP and crit to you and your pet, so it's a good increase in all areas.

* * * TALENTS CONTINUED* * *

Marksmanship
Marksmanship is very neat for PvP, as it offers high damage and high crits. It falls a bit behind in PvP, as beastmaster hunters will mostly outdamage marksmen, and the group buff they provide is medicore at best.

-Talents
A general rundown of Marksmanship talents.

- Tier 1

• Improved Concussive Shot:
  I'm not too fond of this talent, since 20% is not really a very high procrate. It does, however, give you a chance to stun your target, making you able to both interrupt casting and gain more distance, but because of the low proc, its more a talent you can hope for, and not count on.


• Lethal Shots:
  A nice, straightforward talent that should be in every single spec. 5% more crits means a lot more damage. Simple as that.

- Tier 2

• Improved Hunter's Mark:
  In my book, this talent is a must for every Beast Mastery hunter. Not only does it buff your group, but it also gives your pet a nice bit of attack power aswell, and really adds a noticable difference. If you're raiding, at least one hunter in the raid should have this talent, and be sure to keep his hunter's mark up all the time.


• Efficiency:
  A good talent for specs with mana issues, such as marksman and surival. Beast Mastery hunters rarely has mana problems, as they are only using mana on steady shot, kill command and the occasional mend pet.

- Tier 3

• Go For The Throat:
  A neat talent for Beast Mastery hunters, along with other focus regen talents, but also a good choice for survival hunters, because of their high critrate. It can be a neat buff for Marksman hunters, but not a very markable one.


• Improved Arcane Shot:
  This talent can be usefull for both PvP and PvE. In PvP, it's obviously because you're on the move more often, and the sooner you can shoot out an instant attack, the better. Especially with the neat little dispell mechanic. In PvE, 5/5 with a 2,9 second attack speed bow will allow you to do "steady, arcane, auto, steady, auto, steady, arcane, auto" rotations, in times where a multishot would be too dangerous. If you have a 3 second attack speed bow, 4/5 is sufficiant for this.


• Aimed Shot:
  A musthave talent. It's a nice skill if you get a chance to use it n PvP, or if you are making a pull with misdirection, but you would only really take it for it's follow up: Mortal Shots.


• Rapid Killing:
  A very handy talent. The damage bonus after a kill is neat, but not as much as the reduction on rapid fire. It sligtly less usefull in PvP, as you don't get to stand around in the same spot too often, but a good alternative never the less.

- Tier 4

• Improved Stings:
  This talent still falls behind a bit. It's a decent choice for some arena matches (apparently) for draining your opponents faster. I don't like it very much though.


• Mortal Shots:
  One of the best talents in all of the trees. This gives you a massive damage boost, and should be in every spec on any decent hunter. Couped with mortal shots, relentless earthstorm diamond and possibly monster/humanoid slaying, you'll be looking at massive crits.

- Tier 5

• Cuncussive Barrage:
  A 6% chance on a shot we use 50% of the time, to daze a target for mere 4 seconds seems like a complete waste of 3 talent points. It's completely useless in PvE aswell, as bosses are immune, and mobs generally aren't supposed to run towards you in instances.


• Scatter Shot:
  Scatter Shot is a neat ability for PvP, as it is the only safe skill to get some distance on your attacker. It can be helpfull in PvE aswell, for kiting mobs that gets too close, or to get a few more seconds before a mob hits your trap.


• Barrage:
  A good talent, but be mindfull that you can't always use multishot, and that multishot itself costs quite a bit of mana. The Volley component is pitifull.

- Tier 6

• Combat Experience:
  A nice little boost to your agility and mana, but not a *huge* one.


• Ranged Weapon Specialization:
  Awesome damage increase for Marksman Hunters. Not much to say about it, really.

- Tier 7

• Carefull Aim:
  Yet more attack power, and a nice talent to have. The buff obviously grows stonger in raids, as you'll get more intellect from mages and druids.


• Trueshot Aura:
  Trueshot Aura has been neglected a bit ever since Burning Crusade came out, but it is a free 125 attack power. Might aswell take it.


• Improved Barrage:
  3 critting multishots is a massive amount of damage, if you can use it, and with this, you will crit more - obviously. The volley component is... pitifull. Oh yeah, its just super that you can channel volley while being hit, but you don't use volley often enough to make you take this talent just for that.

- Tier 8

• Master Marksman:
  I am not going to explain this talent. Just take it, alright?

- Tier 9

• Silencing Shot:
  A somewhat disappointing talent. 41 points spent, and all you get is a 3 second silence doing half your weapon damage. At least it's instant, so you can use it if a mage is... i don't know, trying to sheep you while you run away from him.

-Shot rotation
As a marksman, you have enough time between auto attacks to weave in a second ability. To make the perfect shot rotation, you would do something like this:

Steady shot, arcane shot, auto shot, steady shot, auto shot, steady shot, multi shot, auto shot - repeat.

More on shot rotations later.

-Gear
A marksman hunter leans heavely towards attack power for high damage, along with a bit of agility for some crit. You should be on the lookout for some intellect aswell, as this is a very mana intensive spec.

* * * TALENTS CONTINUED* * *

Survival
Survival is an awesome raid tree. And i say raid, because I wouldn't suggest people using this tree unless they really are raiding. You will need at least 600 agility unbuffed (before speccing survival) to make this spec decent, and you must know that you'll be sacrificing some of your own damage to boost your raid. For this aswell, I don't propose that you try this out unless you raid 25-man content often. It's rather wasted in 5-and 10-man instances, as the amount of players benefitting from your buff is only a few.

-Talents
A general rundown of Survival talents.

- Tier 1

• Monster Slaying:
  A neat talent for more damage and higher crits.


• Humanoid Slaying:
  Well, see above.


• Hawk Eye:
  6 more yards means a lot, both in PvP and PvE. More leeway to kite on, more distance for your enemies to travel, and with a 41 yard range, you are often far enough away from bosses to be hit by most of the special AoE attacks.


• Savage Strikes:
  A very neat talent for PvP, as it helps you land those nice, big crits on any opponent that comes in close to you. Also a very decent filler.

- Tier 2

• Entrapment:
  This talent is no good if you plan on raiding. A mob that is chasing someone and then suddenly trapped, might just turn around and slap a healer in the face. It can help a bit in PvP though, as 4 seconds might give you the time you need to get away or prepare a big attack.


• Deflection:
  It might be good, if you find yourself sparring with others in melee often, but it does seem like a weak talent to me.


• Improved Wing Clip:
  This talent has a high enough proc chance to make it usefull, especially for PvP and for kiting mobs in PvE that gets a bit too close. Still, it's not really spec defining.

- Tier 3

• Clever Traps:
  The damage increase is somewhat nice, but one would often take this for the longer duration of traps. That is useless in PvP, as traps can only hold a target for up to 10 seconds, and it seems a waste to me in PvE, as it's just a matter of practice before you can chain trap a target without even thinking about it. More on that later.


• Survivalist:
  You're a survival hunter for a reason - this will help you survive. Get it? Anyways, it's a nice talent, but it can also just be used as a cute filler for the later talents.


• Deterrence:
  I've always enjoyed this talent. If somebody goes in close to melee you, and you pop this baby, you're gonna be very hard to hit. If you're not dodging, then you're parrying, and it can save your behind in quite a few ways. Also a neat talent if you feel like tanking a boss for a few seconds if the tank gets incapitated. Neat trick: Slap on Aspect of the Monkey and Deterrence and go tank Reliquary of Souls in BT for some 15-20 seconds.

- Tier 4

• Trap Mastery:
  I rarely find that mobs resist my traps anyways, and should they do, i tend to kite a mob for a bit, feign death to have them run away, and then drop another trap to pull them too. Not a talent i would waste talents on.


• Surefooted:
  A very neat PvE talent. With this, you will only need another 6% +chance to hit to never, ever miss a boss, as opposed to the 9% everybody else needs. It's nice in PvP aswell, but it's generally not that hard to get the 5% +hit you need for equal level players.


• Improved Feign Death:
  No. Just.. no. Your feign death hardly ever resists anyways. Live with it if it does, and spend these points on anything else in the tree, as anything else i better.

- Tier 5

• Survival Instincts:
  Both a PvP and a PvE skill aswell. A nice little damage boost, and a "survival" talent aswell for your liking.


• Killer Instinct:
  By now you should realise that Survival is all about crits, and this will help you even more. A near must-have.


• Counter Attack:
  Neat for PvP, but not that awesome for PvE. It's nice to get distance from those pesky melee classes, or casters that would rather want to stay inside your melee range.

- Tier 6

• Resourcefulness:
  This talent isn't really worth the points, especially not at its place in the tree. Melee abilities are rarely used, compared to ranged attacks, and your traps are cheap enough as they are.


• Lightning Reflexes:
  You must definately, absolutely, always have this talent. 15% more agility is godlike for any survival hunter, and it is a huge increase in your damage and crit chance.

- Tier 7

• Thrill of the Hunt:
  A very neat talent to save some mana, especially since survival hunters tend to eat through their mana just as fast as marksmen. If you have points to spare, take it.


• Wyvern Sting:
  A fun skill, but mostly a PvP skill. Many raid mobs are immune to this, but this instant stopper is neat in PvP, to gain some distance. Be mindfull though that you can't really crowdcontrol a mob or player after you use this sting, as the damage will break any crowd control on it. This can be worked, though, as a viper/scorpid sting will replace the wyvern sting, and make the mob crowd controllable again, but you will obviously lose the damage it would otherwise give the target.


• Expose weakness:
  Such a lovely skill. Couped with Imp. Hunters Mark, you'll buff your group with over 300 AP, which far outweights the damage you lose from being survival hunter. Some argue that "2/3 is enough to keep it up if you have a high crit chance", but sadly, it rarely isn't. Go the full distance - it's a wonderfull talent.

- Tier 8

• Master Tactician:
  Some like this talent, some doesn't. Overall, the increase in crit is about 4,5%. Personally, I'm quite fond of it, although the procrate could be a tad higher.

- Tier 9

• Readiness:
  Many people look upon this skill with disgust, but i say it's just a matter of using it in a clever way. Use this to get out 30 seconds of rapid fire-ness, or if your trap or Feign Death gets resisted. It's fun to have, and offers quite a few ways to control people in PvP aswell. Double trap a target, use a wyvern sting twice if your target breaks lose, or cheat people by feighning twice in a row - they'll be fooled the second time for sure!

-Shot rotation
As a survival hunter, just like marksmen and women, you have enough time between auto attacks to weave in a second ability. To make the perfect shot rotation, you would do something like this:

Steady shot, arcane shot, auto shot, steady shot, auto shot, steady shot, multi shot, auto shot - repeat.

More on shot rotations later.

-Gear
Survival is all about agility. Get as much as you can, and then some more. Agility is increased by your spec, and does not only increase your own damage, but also the damage of every physical DPS around you. Secondary you could look at some stamina, intellect or maybe a flat crit rating bonus for some personal DPS, but you would never, ever take attack power over agility. Why would you anyways, silly marksman? ;-)

* * * Advanced huntering * * *

Player Versus Environment
You should focus on keeping your shot rotations up. It's important that you feign death as often as you can to keep your aggro down, since you have no aggro reducing talents, but lots and lots of talents that gives you a high damage output. Even if you are well below a tank in threat, you should still use it as often as you can - you won't want to be just about to pull aggro and have a feign death resisted, only to have you hold back on your damage.

Use your traps if you can, especially Freezing Trap. It takes a while to become a good trapper, but once you get it down, you can almost keep doing damage as much as you do without trapping, and hardly give it a second thought. You have crowd control abilities, so be sure to use them.

Make sure your pet is always active, whenever it can, and learn how to make the most out of it. Pets are explained a bit later in the guide.

Do not take your skills for granted, and only use auto shot mixed in with some random attacks. Try and push your damage as much as you can, as your output can be a lot higher than other classes.

Player Versus Player
PvP is all about tactics, and as a hunter you have quite a few little quirks. Try and stay as far behind and out of harms way as you can. Don't be afraid to stay back for a few seconds while others engage your enemies, so you can stand alone and nuke down a target.

Should you get into melee combat, try and wing clip or counter attack your target to get some distance, and kite your enemy until he dies or help arrives.

Try and go for the soft classes if possible - mages, warlocks, priests and rogues. A target with low armor with be ripped to shreds by your attacks, while you can leave the damage against high armor targets to casters.

One of the most powerfull skills you have in PvP is actually Feign Death. Not for the aggro, but rather for what it does to enemy players: Whenever you feign death they lose you as a target, provided that it doesn't resist. This means that you can effectively use this to stop spellcasters from firing off their attack, and even moreso you can trick players into thinking you dead and move on to somebody else - only to find you live up again and start shooting at their back. It also makes pets run away from you, and also forces other people to retarget you before they can do damage to you again. Use it often and with cleverness.

Speaking of targeting, most people will target the first thing that attacks them if they have nothing targeted, all automaticly. If you have the element of suprise on your target, send your pet in first, until you see that they have targeted it. That gives you time to nuke your enemy before he finds you and targets you, at which point you feign death and do it all over again.

Traps are somewhat nice in PvP, but it's difficult to make people step on them. Most players will notice them though, so you can only hope that it will work. A freezing trap at the right time can save your life, especially against melee classes - just be carefull not to break your own trap.

Remember that in PvP it's not just about knowing your own class, but also knowing what all other classes are capable of. It's important to when a priest is healing, or when a mage is sheeping. If you only know that warlocks shadow bolts, then their fear will smack you hard in the face.

-Tips against other classes
Hereby follows a few tips and tricks to help you against other classes in PvP.

• Warriors:
  Warriors have high health, high armor, and an annoying wish to be really close to you. Most will charge you and hamstring you whenever they decide you have to die, so a quick removal of that with your PvP trinket, followed by a wing clip and a concussive shot once you get some range, can help you get out of harms way. Snake trap or immolation trap works nicely if you're running away from somebody aswell, and if you're feeling lucky, try with a Freezing Trap to get some distance.


• Rogues:
  Again with the melee attacks. If you spot a rogue before he stealths, be sure to have your Flare ready at hand. If you see him before he gets close, you have a huge advantage. Also, and im ashamed to admit it, pets will often follow rogues if they vanish, letting you know excactly where he is. Should he get close to you, he will probably try and keep you stunned - either hope that you get time to run, or trinket out of it.


• Druids:
  Druids are really nasty. Charge and high armor/stamina in bear, stuns and bleeds in cat form, and just as you think you've got him beaten, he goes out of his skin (hee hee) and heals himself. Use anything you have to stop him, try and nuke him down, and be far, far away.


• Paladins:
  Much like the druids, these have high armor, great heals but thankfully not that great damage. Killing a paladin is a long effort though if you're on your own. Viper sting can drain his mana, if he lets it stay on. His bubbles will save him several times, and his heals are fast and strong. If you can get him into heal mode, try and get an aimed shot off, to reduce his healing, and if he's standing still, consider popping rapid fire aswell for some fast damage.


• Shamans:
  Shamans will usually frost shock you, or plop down a grounding totem to stop you from running away. Viper sting is useless, as he will just remove it, and somewhat high armor, together with heals, makes him difficult to take down. Consider using a snake trap to give him more poisons to worry about, and try and keep clear. If he's elemental, then that means he will stand still, giving you time to do the same.


• Mages:
  A lot of makes hasn't seem to realise that we don't have a deadzone anymore. More often than not, i see mages running towards me, using a frost nova (in my melee range - one hit), and then jumping out of melee range to find that sweet spot that isn't there anymore. Suprise him with an arrow in the face. With his long casts, you can often stop his damage by feighning, which is particular well if he's casting polymorph or pyroblast.


• Warlocks:
  First of all, try and see if you can trap his pet. If you can't, just feign death and watch it run away again. Once he has dotted you up, he will usualyl stand still to channel drain life or to nuke you with shadow bolts, which gives you time to kill a bit of him aswell.


• Priests:
  This is just a battle of damage. Priests doesn't have any long casttime spells that you can distrupt, and half his damage comes from dots and instant damage. Thank god he's usually a squishie that goes down fast - just beware of his fear.


• Hunters:
  Expect a pet to be ripping your back, and as many arrows against you as you fire at him. Use the same tricks as against other casters though. Suprisingly, quite a lot of hunters doesn't use feign death in pvp and are thus ignorant to the fact that when you die, you might not be dead. Just be ready to retarget the other hunter, in case he actually does feign death. Feign Death is also great to get that pesky little pet off you again.

Shot rotations
Shot rotations are a complicated manner, and one that many players - and hunters alike - take for granted. Without these, you will just use your skills at random, and lose a lot of potential damage.

It can be difficult to uphold a good shot rotation, but with some practice it wil be like second nature to you. Go to Netherstorm and find Dr. Boom. He's what we call a paperdoll mob, with no armor or resistances, but lots and lots of health. He never moves, and is a wonderfull target to use for optimizing your DPS.

I am not going to go all too much into rotations, as others have done it before, and probably much better than i. However, here are the rotations you should use:

• Beast Mastery rotation:
  Steady, auto, steady, auto, steady, auto. Use kill command whenever its ready, and save your arcane shots for when you have to move.



• Marksman/Survival:
  Steady, arcane, auto, steady, auto, steady, multi, auto, steady, auto. Again, kill command whenever you can, and consider using a scorpid sting once in a while in raids, to help the healers a bit.

Pulling and kiting
You will often find yourself pulling in raids, and for that your misdirection is an awesome tool. If you have just one target to pull, an aimed shot followed by steady and auto is a lot of initial threat, and if you have several targets, a multishot will keep at least 3 of them going towards the tank for a bit.

If you don't have misdirection, or if it is on cooldown, you can use a low threat skill such as scorpid sting (because it causes no threat), and then start running. Be sure to run far behind the tank, so he has enough time to pick them up from you. I prefer to not use any damaging abilities, as this will make it harder for the tank to gain aggro again, and will often force you to use your feign death early in the fight, before you even start doing any real damage.

If you're trapping, you shouldn't be pulling. You can pull mobs to the tank with misdirection, but you might end up fighting against your own threat to pull your trap target towards yourself if it gets hit by the misdirection. More on trapping.. now!

* * * Advanced huntering continued * * *

Trapping
There comes a time in every hunters life, where he must learn to master the arts of trapping. That time has come. Keeping a mob trapped for a long time can be difficult to master, but with some training it will become second nature to you.

Before the pull, put down your freezing trap. Try and guess where your party will be standing, and make sure your trap is not near where the rest of the mobs are being tanked. If you can communicate with your party, try and let them know that you need a few seconds to get rid of your cooldown on your trap. As soon as the tank has pulled, try and build as much aggro on your target as you possibly can, but be sure to stop before the mob reaches your trap so you don't break it. Once you have made a lot of threat on your target, and it is trapped, you can begin doing damage to the main target, while edging away from your trap. Place a new one well ahead of time, still keeping it clear of the other mobs. When your trap breaks, use your conc shot so the mob doesn't reach your next trap before your cooldown is off. Rince and repeat.

It's very important that you do not feign death during this, and thus that you take care not to overaggro the other mobs. If you Feign, the mob will run lose when it breaks out of the trap, and usually go for the healer. If you must, be sure to shoot a distracting shot on your trap, but only that as any damage shot will break it. A few distracting shots should be enough to keep the mob running towards you when it breaks up. Always try and build aggro on your target as it runs between your traps.

-Advanced pulling and trapping technique
I once was in a party for Shadow Labyrinth, where the tank wasn't really too comfortable pulling the last few packs. But since we we're also low on crowd control, i had to trap yet. I didn't have any misdirections up however, and had to find another way to pull the mobs. This is what i came up with:

Place your pet behind your tank. Make it attack the main target, but as soon as it gets in range for aggro, press "Passive". This will cause your pet to run back to the spot before, effectively dragging the mobs after it towards the tank. As you order your pet to passive, start nuking your trap target, and let the tank pick the mobs off your pet.

It's a fun little trick to pull off - it's seldom needed, but nice to do anyways.

Macros
Below are a few nifty macros that i use myself:

Steady shot/auto shot macro with KC. Spam macro for BM hunters, but can also be used by MM/surv hunters, as long as you remember to weave in your shots:
# Show Steady shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=2 Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/cast [target=pet, dead]; [nopet];[target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Cl

Misdirection macro via focus. Target your pet/tank and write /focus, and simply press that macro to never miss a beat:
# show Misdirection
/cast [target=focus] Misdirection

If you have several tanks that you switch misdirections on, you can make several macros like such:
# show Misdirection
/focus NAME OF TANK
/cast [target=focus] Misdirection

Pet feed macro: (change the bread lines, if your pet only eat meat)
/cast Feed Pet
/use Conjured Croissant
/use Bladespire Bagel
This macro will feed your pet with Manna biscuts if you have any, and use Bladespire Bagels if you dont.

Usefull Addons
Hereby follows some nice addons, that you should definately look up. I'm not going to post links to these, to save space, but all should be around on www.curse.com.

ABinfo:
Tracks your cooldown in nice, readable red letters, and lets you see how many times you can shoot x ability before you run out of mana.

DispelReporter:
Track which buffs your Arcane Shot dispels.

MobInfo:
See health, mana and other usefull information on your target.

Natur Enemy Cast Bar:
Usefull for keeping track of your hunters mark, stings, traps and whatever you might have running on something.

Omen and KTM:
Invaluable threat meters (mostly Omen). Requires others to have the same addon, but most players with respect for themself has these.

Quartz:
A special cast bar with some niffy tracking devices.

Links and Refrences

The post where you will find Cheeky's Spreadsheet, a great source for fiddling with talent points, gear and shot rotations:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17999-hunter_best_possible_dps_cheeky_s_spreadsheet/

All about shot rotations:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13107-hunter_shot_rotation_illustrated/

My own guide to Raiding with your pet:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=612614593

Petopia - All about hunter pets:
http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/

Changelog
Nothing has been changed yet :-)

To-do
- Add some more under "Basics" - the current just looks stupid...
- Write something about arenas. Hah, like you know anything about that...
- Spellcheck... you're too sloppy, Aym...
- General stats, mechanics...
- You forgot the whole kiting thing.. c'mon..

About me, feedback and requests
As you may notice, my hunter is a blood elf, giving the clear indication that I have only played hunter since The Burning Crusade came out. And its true! However, i do belive i am one of the more competent hunters around, and as i strive to learn all i can about hunters, i hope i can pass some of my knowledge on to others.

I have mostly focused on PvE (where my guild is currently waiting for Sunwell), with a bit of PvP thrown in aswell. Soon, i might embark on the wonderfull journey of arena teams, and maybe ill know enough about that at some point to be able to write anything usefull here ;-)

If you have feedback, good or bad, please feel free to write it below. If you want me to cover an area of the game, have questions, want another section of something, or simply think that i am a retard, just post! I will read everything posted, and update this guide as often as possible :)

Sincerely
~ Aym <3

Reserved for future content

Reserved for kittens.

More kittens. You can never get enough kittens.

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Q u o t e:
Reserved for future content

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in before reserved! (tell me if you want me to delete)

Reserved for future content :-)

I swear, this is the last post. Enjoy the guide.

Dont believe anything he says hes a noob pulling loads of mobs packs at the same time!

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Q u o t e:
Dont believe anything he says hes a noob pulling loads of mobs packs at the same time!

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Protadin? :o

Very very nice, reported for sticky or add to "usefull threads" etc list.

BTW, olny shadow priests are squishies, I don't often die to hunters on my 340 resil priest unless I am in the middle of the field of strife :P

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Q u o t e:
Very very nice, reported for sticky or add to "usefull threads" etc list.

BTW, olny shadow priests are squishies, I don't often die to hunters on my 340 resil priest unless I am in the middle of the field of strife :P

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Notice how i nicely waltzed around high-end pvp such as arenas, where you might encounter high resilence targets? :P My knowledge of such isn't that great, and i want to be somewhat sure of a topic before i start being a smart guy about it ;)

Its fine, I'm no expert either and the guide is excelent :)

Having faced hunters on my priest though they usually play more of a draining/outlasting game with viperstings, frost traps, kiting, LoSing and bothering healers with pets (scorpid).

Really useful, now i have a good reason to lvl up my 32 hunter.
To become a Aym wannabe with his guide :D

Bump for bacon boy!

Very sweet :) Perhaps you could give suggestions for various talent builds as well since you evaluated all of the talents individually?

At any rate, this should be stickified!

I think you should add into the Kiting part about spin jumping. Great life saver in PvE and PvP.