Hunter (World of Warcraft)
The Hunter is one of 9 classes available to players in the game World of Warcraft. The hunter class is based on the beast master and ranger classes seen in traditional RPGs. The hunter is considered by Blizzard to be an efficient ranged damage dealing class, since much of its ranged damage does not require the use of mana (though there are ranged abilities that require mana that a hunter typically uses to increase ranged damage dealt). The hunter is also able to provide melee combat support via its pet, and its own melee talents, although in both cases a class dedicated to melee combat is often superior.
Overview
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, and also as 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.
Hunters also have various Aspects that they can learn, which allow them to passively improve various talents, and skills. These are similar to Paladin auras, but most hunter aspects only affect the hunter, and not party members. Aspects are made to mimic beast traits and abilities, further reinforcing the hunter's melding of beastmaster and ranger. For example, Aspect of the Monkey, the first Aspect a hunter can learn, increases his chance to dodge an attack by 8%. Aspect of the Cheetah increases his running speed by 30% while it is active, at the price of a slowing effect if attacked. A hunter can only have one Aspect active at a time unless grouped with another hunter that has a group aspect such as aspect of the wild which increases resistance to nature damage.
Hunters also have the unique ability to track nearly every mob in the game by type (eg, humanoid, beast, demon) through various tracking skills. Other classes may feature one or two tracking skills, but hunters are the only class that can track nearly all the various types of mobs. (Notable exceptions being bug-like mobs that are found in places such as Tanaris or Silithus, and the various slimes and oozes found throughout the world.) This ability often allows hunters to easily find mobs required for quests, thus completing the quest faster than other classes can. The hunter's tracking abilities also allow the hunter to be aware of his surroundings at all times, thus enabling him to avoid surprise attacks by mobs and players alike.
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 common belief that pets do not scale well with high-level monsters, which discourages many hunters from using their pets extensively. Since the changes of Patch 1.7, however, the Beast Mastery tree has become more popular, with the addition of the Bestial Wrath talent, as well as the new pet stun, Intimidation.
Marksmanship Tree
This tree is the most popular tree amongst hunters, with many 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), Aimed Shot (adds significant damage to the hunter's shot), and Hawkeye (increases maximum range of attacks). The 30 point end of tier talent is 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 30 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 tallent (Lightning Reflexes) that increases Agility by 15%.
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, plate armor and 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.
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. Some say that hunters should only use weapons that directly improve their ranged damage. Others say that hunters can, and should, use any equipment that they want. This debate is not limited to just hunters, for example, a Paladin that rolls on a 1 handed axe that would increase the Hunters ranged damage output. However hunters are often singled out as a class not to receive melee weapons because their main attacks are ranged and the common misconception that hunters do not melee.
The hunter's main stat is Agility, which increased ranged attack power by 2 per 1 agility, melee attack power by 1 and increases crit chance and dodge (1% crit per 52 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). Some pets can learn new abilities (like Dash and Dive) that the hunter must find by taming other beasts. Hunters have to feed their pets food to keep the pet happy. Every time the pet is killed, the hunter must feed the pet to restore its happiness. Some pets will eat just about all foods (like bears) and other pets will only eat certain unusual foods. Pet management is a complex issue for hunters and many hunters enjoy traveling the world to seek out and tame certain special animals.
Currently the cat and the bear are the two most common hunter pets seen among players.
With the release of patch 1.7.0, Blizzard added new pet customizations, to make customizable with different abilities. The first of which are abilities that any pet can learn, they include improved Stamina, armor, and resistances. Blizzard also made these talents easier to get, instead of having to search out specific pets and learning them, they are purchasable from the pet trainer.
Also released with the patch are talents which are specific to certain types of pets, these unique abilities are out in the world mobs, that hunters have to find and train. Later patches have added even more pet specific abilities. So far, these include Furious Howl for wolves, Scorpid Poison for scorpids, Screech for flying beasts, Prowl for cats, Thunderstomp for gorillas, Shell Shield for Turtles, Spider bite for spiders, Boar Charge for boars and Lightning Breath for Wind Serpents. Along with the these new talents Blizzard added a limit of four combat abilities for any pet, which means that hunters have to now pick and choose what talents that want on their pets. Blizzard also released a way for pets to unlearn all their talents at the pet trainer, so that the user can reuse their skill points.
Shortly after Blizzard added these abilities they normalized all of the pets to have the same run speed, resistances, and statistics.
Raiding
The hunter's role in a raid is to have the highest survivability and very high 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 them from melee attacking. The other, which is much more useful, is Feign Death, which if successful, causes all threat the hunter has to be lost, and the hunter can generaly stand back up and continue where they left off, but out of combat entirely. This leads them to often have the highest overall damage in raiding zones like Molten Core.
Unfortunatly the hunter's pet does not scale with the hunter in survivability and damage output and is often not used in raids. They can not tank anything for more than a second or two and are not worth healing to keep alive in battle consisting of up to 40 players. One thing pets are sometimes used for is pulling bosses that are hard to pull as a player. The hunter can take control of their pet and have the pet aggro the boss from a large distance away, if they pull more creatures than desired the hunter can safely feign death, and let the pet take one for the team.
PvP
Player vs Player for a hunter is skill that can only be obtained through practice. Unlike other classes hunter PvP combat is very different then mob (creature) combat. In mob combat your pet keeps the creatures attention (aggro) and your hunter simply has to manage your pets heal and using ranged or melee attack help attack the mob. This style leaves the player with no combat damage at the end of the fight which means you can simply move onto the next mob, and level very quickly. In PvP this changes, players will generay ignore your pet all together and try to attack you (after you die you pet will disappear). Knowing this many combinations of things can be used to try and win a pvp match. For example when fighting a melee class like warrioror Rogue hunter's can use snaring attacks, traps, and shots to slow the enemy's movement. They can also use “Aspect of the Cheetah” to improve their own runing speed and run far enough away to range attack the other player with guns/bows, all the time their opponent is getting attacked by the hunter's pet. Another good PvP tactic the hunter can use is "Feign Death" spell its allows the hunter to fall down and appear dead, they will drop out of combat after a few seconds, and are then able to drop a trap. Feign Death will somtimes trick their PvP opponent, but not often becuse the hunter's pet is still alive and the player is still attackable. Some people have issues using hunter in PvP, however a hunter with good training and good use of they're skills can easily win a PvP battle against another player the same or even a 3-4 lvls above their own.
See also
Template:World of Warcraft classes