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. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1034x964, 174 KB)World of Warcraft Orc Male Hunter. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1034x964, 174 KB)World of Warcraft Orc Male Hunter. ... World of Warcraft (commonly abbreviated as WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment. ...

Overview

A Female Night Elf Hunter in WoW

The hunter class has two unique features that separate it from the other classes in the game. The first is the ability to train world mobs as pets for use in combat. The pet acts as a tank, mitigating damage from the hunter and holding attacking mobs at range as well as doing a significant portion of the hunter's damage output. Another unique factor about hunters is that they have an auto-shoot ability with guns, bows and crossbows. The only other auto-shoot ability in the game resides with pure casters and their wands. Image File history File links A well equipped female Nightelf Hunter from the game World of Warcraft, sporting full Beaststalker armor and a Core Marksman Rifle. ... Image File history File links A well equipped female Nightelf Hunter from the game World of Warcraft, sporting full Beaststalker armor and a Core Marksman Rifle. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

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. There are a few Aspects that do affect an entire party (the Aspect of the Pack, for example.) 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. For other uses, see Monkey (disambiguation). ... It has been suggested that King Cheetah be merged into this article or section. ...

Hunters also have the unique ability to track nearly every mob in the game by type (eg, humanoid, beast, demon, undead, and elemental) with their 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 enabling him to avoid surprise attacks by mobs and players alike.

Talent Trees

Like all other classes in World of Warcraft, there are three talent trees that a hunter can specialize in. These trees are Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival.

Beast Mastery Tree

This tree is considered by most to be a Solo PvE (Player versus Environment) tree in that it improves the abilities of the hunter's pet. Talents in this tree include skills to improve a hunter's Aspects and his pet's abilities. Hunters that invest heavily in this tree typically see their pet do significantly more damage than pets of non-Beast Mastery specced hunters. The 31 point end of tier skill is Bestial Wrath which sends the hunter's pet into a rage, causing 50% additional damage for 18 sec and during which time it cannot be feared, slowed, dazed or stopped unless it is killed.

In the past, few hunters invested many talent points in this tree because of the 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.

Despite the commonly held belief of this tree being exclusively PvE oriented, four of the talents in this tree can be highly useful in group PvP environments such as the Battlegrounds.

• The Pathfinding talent, which adds a total of 6% movement speed to the Aspect of the Cheetah skill, can be of value for either capturing the flag or pursuing an enemy flag carrier. Bestial Swiftness, which adds 30% to the pet's movement speed, is likewise useful for sending a pet to pursue enemy players.
• Improved Aspect of the Hawk adds a 30% increase to a Hunter's fire rate with ranged weapons, again useful for increasing damage output in Battlegrounds.
• Improved Aspect of the Monkey adds to the Hunter's chance to dodge melee attacks thus increasing their chances of survival in melee combat, both PvP and PvE alike.

Marksmanship Tree

This tree is the most popular tree amongst hunters with many PvP players specializing heavily in it. Most hunters choose this tree because it directly increases the hunter's ranged damage output thus making it attractive to both hunters that PvP and those that participate in PvE raids. Talents in this tree include Scatter Shot (confuses enemies for 4 seconds and can be used even at close range), Aimed Shot (adds significant damage to the hunter's shot), and Hawkeye (increases maximum range of attacks). The 31 point end of tier talent is the Trueshot Aura, a 45 yard aura that provides a maximum of 100 attack power to the hunter and all members of the hunters party. Other improvements to hunter specializing in marksmanship include reduced mana consumption with shots and also greater effects and damage output from stings.

This tree received minimal changes with Patch 1.7.

Survival Tree

The survival tree is a utility oriented tree. Many of the skills can increase damage, and survivability of the hunter. Talents in this tree include Trap Mastery (improves trap effects), Improved Wing Clip (can immobilize an opponent), and Improved Feign Death (reduces resist chance of Feign Death). The 31 point end of tier skill is Wyvern Sting which is a stinging shot that puts the target to sleep for 12 sec and deals 600 damage over 12 seconds to the target after it wakes up.

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

Because of the variety of roles that hunters can fill in the game, they are able to equip one of the widest varieties of equipment. With advanced training, hunters are able to equip all types of weapons and armor except maces, wands, wear plate armor, and use shields. Hunters initially start with proficiencies in leather armor, a ranged weapon, and a one handed melee weapon. In later levels, hunters may train to dual wield one–handed melee weapons. The type of the ranged and melee weapons a hunter begins with depend of the race of the hunter.

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. Undead Male Warrior with the legendary sword, Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker. ... Human Male Paladin as seen in the World of Warcraft. ...

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. This has given rise to the "Hunter Weapon!" internet meme (commonly found on the item comments on Allakhazam.com and Thottbot) . 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 one-handed axe that would increase the Hunter's 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 two for every point, melee attack power by one, and increased crit chance and dodge (1% crit per 53 agility). Also important at endgame (especially PvP) is stamina.

Pets

Some hunters' pets have very high armor class or health (like Bears and Turtles). Some pets do a great deal of damage at the expense of armor (like Cats). Some pets are good in all respects (like Wolves). Most pets can learn new abilities (like Dash and Dive) that the hunter must find by taming other beasts with the skill and then teaching it to their pets. Hunters have to feed their pets food to keep the pet happy. Every time the pet is killed or dismissed, the hunter must feed the pet to restore its happiness. Some pets will eat just about all foods (like bears and boars) and other pets will only eat certain unusual foods (such as cats and wolves.) Keeping your pet in a "Happy" state will keep the pet's damage output at 150%. Unhappy pets will do less damage and may even attack the hunter if not fed. For this reason, it is recommended that all hunters learn the Cooking profession but it is not a requirement as all pets will eat food whether it is cooked or not. Feeding a pet is also a good way to heal it but feeding cannot be done during combat. Pet management is a complex issue for hunters and many hunters enjoy traveling the world to seek out and tame certain special animals which have unique abilities or stats. Hunters are the only class in the game with the ability to name their pets. Genera Ailuropoda Ailurus Helarctos Melursus Ursus Tremarctos Arctodus (extinct) A bear is a large mammal in the family Ursidae of the order Carnivora. ... Suborders Cryptodira Pleurodira See text for families. ... Trinomial name Felis silvestris catus (Linnaeus, 1758) The cat (or domestic cat,house cat) is a small carnivorous mammal of the subspecies Felis silvestris catus. ... Wolf Wolf Man Mount Wolf Wolf Prizes Wolf Spider Wolf 424 Wolf 359 Wolf Point Wolf-herring Frank Wolf Friedrich Wolf Friedrich August Wolf Hugo Wolf Johannes Wolf Julius Wolf Max Franz Joseph Cornelius Wolf Maximilian Wolf Rudolf Wolf Thomas Wolf As Name Wolf Breidenbach Wolf Hirshorn Other The call...

With the release of patch 1.7.0, Blizzard added new pet customizations to make pets customizable with different abilities. They are abilities that any pet can learn and 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 and hunters have to find and learn from the beasts to pass on to their own pets. Later patches have added even more pet specific abilities available in four level increments. So far, these include:

• Furious Howl for wolves. The ability increases the amount of damage the hunter and his party inflicts for a short period of time.
• Scorpid Poison for scorpids. This poison has a damage over time (DoT) effect. Anti-venom dispells Scorpid Poison normally.
• Screech for flying beasts. Screech adds a silence effect preventing spells and spell-like effects (such as the Warrior's shouts or Paladin's buffs) from being cast during the time period. This is a magic effect that can be resisted.
• Prowl for cats. This allows a cat to enter stealth mode and sneak up on enemies and increase their damage output on their first attack. Stealth detection spells and effects work normally on stealthed pets.
• Thunderstomp for gorillas. This functions the same as the Tauren's Warstomp ability, placing a stun effect on surrounding enemies for the duration. Thunderstomp can be resisted.
• Shell Shield for Turtles. This ability increases armor levels for the duration.
• Boar Charge for boars. This is similar to the Warrior's Charge ability giving the boar a chance to stun it's target.
• Lightning Breath for Wind Serpents. This ability works like the Shaman's Chain Lightning spell.

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 they want on their pets. Blizzard also released a way for pets to unlearn all their talents at the pet trainer so that the players can reassigne their pets skill points.

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

Raiding

The hunter's role in a raid is to pull difficult mobs and bring sustained damage-per-second (DPS). They can do this because they have good aggro management skills. If they aggro a creature, they have two methods to lose aggro. One being a melee skill called Disengage, which lowers threat and stops the hunter from melee attacking. The other, which is much more useful, is Feign Death (play dead.) If successful, Feign Death causes all threat the hunter has to be lost, and with the proper timing, allows the tank to establish aggro on a fresh hate meter. The second advantage of Feign Death is in the case of a bad pull, the hunter can Feign Death and the mobs will return to their original positions or patrol routes thereby saving the raid from a potential wipe. The Autoshoot ability allows the hunter to keep up his DPS even when drained of mana. Aggro ag·gro Colloquial spelling: Agro English Noun Definition 1. ...

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.

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 howl 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. Common tactics also 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. Instead of dismissing the pet when dropping through an area, an even more effective technique is to use Eyes of the Beast, jump down with the pet, and then have it Stay. Then jump down after it to join the party. 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

Unlike other classes, a hunter will find Player vs. Player combat very different when compared mob (creature) combat. In typical mob combat, the hunter's pet keeps the creature's attention (aggro) using the pet's "Growl" ability and the hunter is free to manage the pet's health while using a ranged attack to wear down the mob. This play style leaves the hunter with no combat damage at the end of the fight. For this reason, hunters can move from mob to mob very quickly and consequently level very quickly with little risk. Aggro ag·gro Colloquial spelling: Agro English Noun Definition 1. ...

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" ability (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 or Hammer of 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 forward 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 specialized classes and allow the hunter to reengage the enemy at range.

Hunters are especially valued in the Battlegrounds (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

• High damage output at range using ranged weapons (bows, crossbows, and guns) while still being able to survive in melee battle.
• Have the Autoshot ability, which continuously fires a ranged weapon until canceled. Spell casters with wands are the only other classes with this ability.
• Can obtain a pet to help them in battle, which holds enemies at range to allow the Hunter to use their ranged attacks. When done correctly, the hunter can kill a typical enemy without ever engaging in melee combat.
• Excellent soloing ability due to the fact that their pets take a great deal of Hunter's incoming damage and can passively regenerate their health much faster than players can.
• Can use "Feign Death" to avoid dying or to make enemies switch to another target.
• The widest range of tracking abilities.
• Traps for damage and crowd control.
• Trueshot Aura and Furious Howl (with wolf as pet) add dps to everyone in the party.

Weaknesses

• Few melee abilities, severely limiting the Hunter's damage at melee range.
• A "dead zone" between their ranged weapons' minimum range and their melee weapons' maximum range. While it is very difficult for enemies to sit in precisely this spot, if they manage to, the hunter has few ways of dealing with them.
• Dependent upon large quantities of ammunition for their ranged weapons. While this can be compensated for with a quiver or ammo pouch, which also increases attack speed, this item replaces a normal bag slot, reducing the amount of items the Hunter can carry by as much as 20%.
• Must feed pets to keep them "happy" (though this offsets their decreased repair bills because of Feign Death and their pet's lack of repair costs)
• Limited to cloth or leather armor until level 40.
• Although not as common as the Rogue or Warrior, they are still fairly popular, making it harder to find groups/parties.
• The hunter's crowd control abilities work on any mob who is not immune to crowd control, however they are not repeatable such as a Mage's polymorph spell or a Warlock's Banish. However, they can be with skilled combinations of feign death to exit combat, and then re applying a trap.

This is an alphabetical list with the major and minor races in the Warcraft universe — a fictional universe in which a series of games and books are set. ... World of Warcraft (commonly abbreviated as WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment. ... Humans as seen in the World of Warcraft. ... Two Night Elves as seen in the World of Warcraft. ... Gnomes as seen in World of Warcraft. ... Dwarves as seen in the World of Warcraft. ... Draenei as seen in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. ... Two Jungle Trolls, as seen in World of Warcraft. ... Tauren crest. ... Male and Female Orcs as seen in the World of Warcraft. ... Forsaken crest. ... Two Blood Elves as seen in World of Warcraft The Burning Crusade. ... Female Night Elf Druid wearing Cenarion Raiment item set Druids in World of Warcraft are a hybrid class, able to transform into various forms to suit a variety of tasks. ... This article or section may need to be cleaned up and rewritten because it describes a work of fiction in a primarily in-universe style. ... Human Male Paladin as seen in the World of Warcraft. ... An Undead Forsaken Female Priest Undead Priest in shadowform. ... The Rogue in World of Warcraft is a character class focused on dealing damage quickly and stealthily. ... Tauren Male Shaman Shamans in World of Warcraft are a secondary healer and support class [1]. They are designed to supplement all parts of a party, while not being particularly focused on any one aspect of the game. ... Human Female Warlock with summoned Felhunter In World of Warcraft, the Warlock is a magic-using class that wields some of their power by summoning demon servants (called minions). Warlocks can also harm enemies by cursing them as well as by casting spells that cause a certain amount of damage... Undead Male Warrior with the legendary sword, Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker. ...

See also

• Class Skills (World of Warcraft)

This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ...

External links

• Hunter at WoWWiki, a World of Warcraft wiki
• Hunter at WorldofWarcraft.com
• Hunter at Thottbot.com
• Pictorial Guide to Hunter Pets