WOTLK Hunter Guide: Leveling Up and Talent Builds

Blizzard Entertainment is close to releasing once more the Wrath Of The Lich King Expansion. This time, for the WoW Classic. This means that you’ll get to relive the best moments of one of the best seasons of this game.

One of the classes that had an incredible performance during WOTLK was the Hunter. In comparison to other classes, this had an incredible rework. Developers buffed it until it became the best bet for those pro players that wanted to have a good DPS.

In summary, Hunters enjoy a variety of skills, including disease effects, an immolation trap, crit chance, the possibility to reduce casting time, strong pets, and great development during the end-game.

This makes it a powerful character for this patch.

So, if you want to know more about the Hunter and learn how to build a great character with higher-base agility, this guide is for you.

Don’t miss out!

WOTLK Hunter Overview

In World of Warcraft, there are different races and professions that you can choose from your character. One of them is the Hunter.

This is a DPS role that is considered the marksman. It uses animals as companions to boost his skills and enhance his comprehension of the battlefield.

Hunters use range fighting skills. This means that you probably will get knocked down before you realize what happened.

Players that use these skills can:

• Track enemies.

• Make the best AoE damage.

• Use a wide range of utility spells.

• Place traps.

• Use different animals.

• Use stances that boost your physical and magical stats.

Since it’s such a complete character, you can use it for solo leveling and parties. However, you will have to make sure that you have the right set of skills to build rapport with your team.

In Classic Wrath of the Lich King, Hunter has gotten a small buff and debuff in certain skills compared to the Burning Crusade. But still, it’s a strong option for all those that want to deal lots of damage in both PvP and PvE events.

For more helpful information about WOTLK Classic, please bookmark Mmopixel's news page.

You can Buy Cheap WOTLK Classic Gold from here.

WoW Hunter Stats

If you want to be a great Hunter – at least in Wrath Classic – you must consider the stat priority.

In the beginning, you should increase the following stats:

• Agility.

• Intellect.

• Stamina.

This will be increasing ranged attacks, mana regeneration, and overall health. Since your first 10 levels will cost you badly, having health reserves is a good option.

After level 10, you can focus on damage. Here’s what you should be leveling up if you want to have a great DPS:

1. Hit Rating.

2. Agility.

3. Armor Penetration.

4. Critical Strike.

5. Attack Power.

6. Haste.

7. Resilience.

8. Spell Penetration.

When you use skill points on these stats, you are making sure you’re adding range damage, pet endurance, pet damage, and facility to deal damage over magical and physical defense, among others.

WOTLK Hunter Skills

If you’re going all-in with the Hunter in Classic Wrath, you need to know what skills you will have at your disposal.

Below, we give you a table with some of the abilities – passive and active – that you’ll get to use as you level up.

There are more skills, but the ones mentioned above give you a slight hint of how a Hunter should play.

Hunter Glyphs

Glyphs are items you add to weapons or other gear to enhance your class’s stats. They are great for improving your DPS and overall resistance against mobs.

Some of the glyphs you can add to your Hunter build are:

• Glyph of Mend Pet: Your Men Pet spell increases your companion’s happiness. 

• Glyph of Steady Shot: When affected by the Serpent sting, your Steady shot deals 10% more damage.

• Glyph of Explosive Shot: Increases your chance of critical strike of Explosive Shot.

• Glyph of Kill Shot: Reduces Kill Shot cooldown by 6 seconds.

• Glyph of Rapid Fire: You get more haste for Rapid Fire.

There are plenty more options that will adapt to your playstyle. For example, you can find glyphs that improve your explosive trap or your melee attacks.

Just remember that to get a glyph, you need to have the Inscription profession in your character.

Best Hunter Races in WOTLK

The best thing about WoW Classic guides is when you reach the races section. Here you are!

If you have already played WOTLK, you know that races can’t use all classes. So, here you have the best races usable for all the Hunter Builds.

Alliance

• Draenei: With Heroic Presence, they can increase their stats to have leverage during fights. These extra points can help you avoid death at low levels while you still don’t have a Build set.

• Dwarf: Dwarfs have Gun Specialization. This makes them the best hunters in the Alliance. This racial passive gives you an increase of 1% to your critical strikes.

• Night Elf: Night Elves are known for their superior ability in combat. You can reduce your travel time while tracking an enemy and avoid more hits.

Horde

• Orc: Orcs have an innate ability to be Hunters. Their nature is beneficial to improve hunting skills. With Command, you can increase the damage dealt by your pets, whereas Blood Fury increases your melee attacks and healing.

• Troll: For the Horde, Trolls are the best Hunters so far as their passive abilities blend completely with those of the Hunter. With Berserking, you can increase your attack and reduce the cast time speed by 20%. Bow Specialization increases your chance of dealing criticals.

• Blood Elf: They are proudest of the Horde races. Standing above all races, Blood Elves have Arcane Torrent. This allows you to silence enemies and recover 6% of your mana.

Best Professions for Hunters in WOTLK

There are professions in WOTLK that benefit your Hunter. When you study and master them, they eventually give you items or attachments to increase your overall duration in combat.

The professions you should look for as a Hunter are:

1. Engineering: This is the best profession for Hunters. It provides you with improvements that increase your pet’s damage, ranged attacks, agility, and critical strike probabilities. These items attach to your gear. For example, your legs.

2. Jewelcrafting: It’s the second-best profession. It has gems that increase your hit cap and critical rates.

3. Blacksmithing: Phase 3 of this profession is what matters for Hunters. There are sockets you can get, such as the Socket Bracer.

4. Skinning: Skinning has a passive skill called Master of Anatomy that grants you 40 points of critical strike rate.

5. Leatherworking: Leatherworking has Fur Lining. This grants 130 points of attack power to your Hunter.

Hunter Builds

There are three Hunters builds that you can rely on in Wrath Of The Lich King, the Beast Mastery Hunter, the Marksmanship Hunter, and the Survival Hunter.

Each one of them focuses on different aspects.

Beast Mastery Hunter

Beast Mastery Hunters have a close relationship with all the beasts, especially their pets. As a BM Hunter, your focus is placed on making your companions strong and resistant.

As such, you will spend your skill points in the Beast Mastery skill tree to allow your animals to deal more damage and have more endurance. They will be able to hold mobs easily while you hit them with precise and critical shots.

You’ll also use skills from the Marksmanship skill tree. Both trees combined will give you speed, low cooldowns, and burst damage.

Here’s an example of Jamielolx PvE talent builds you can follow:

Early Game Build

Mid to Late Game Build

Marksmanship Hunter

Marksmanship Hunters are fierce DPS. However, since all the skill points are going to damage, tracking, and critical damage, your resistance and tanky abilities will hinder.

This means you will have difficulty leveling up without a strong companion that tanks all the damage. And taking into consideration that your pet will make most of the damage while you are leveling up to complete your stats, it will be harder than other builds.

However, once you reach level 80, you’ll be unstoppable.

The Marksmanship spec relies on the Marksmanship skill tree to increase the damage of all your abilities but also uses a couple of abilities from the other two.

Here’s an example of standard Marksmanship Hunter talent build by Nevermore.

Survival Hunter

Survival Hunters are based on survivability. They have the best stats and abilities in Wrath and use them to deal incredible damage. This build is focused on AoE damage for crowd control, trap mastery and it’s a great option for advanced players.

A hunter with this set of abilities can be part of a party and enter raids, dungeons, and have more probabilities of survival than the other builds. It’s hard to level up and usually requires you to team up to reach level 80.

Survival Hunters rely on the Survival skill tree to unlock traps, trick shots, and deadly damage. It also uses a few skills from the other trees such as Aspect of the Hawk.

Here are examples of single target DPS builds and AOE talent builds by Jamielolx:

Single Target DPS Build

AOE-Focused Build

Wrath Of The Lich King Classic Hunter Solo Leveling Strategy

If you’re about to go into a solo journey with a Hunter in Word of Warcraft, it’s because you want to develop a Beast Mastery Hunter – even when you can use the other builds – or you want to experience the full WoW difficulty. 

Hunters are one of the best professions in WOTLK. So, this leveling guide will help you understand how you can play solo and still make it to level 80.

Playability

The thing to do after you have chosen your race and class – a Horde Orc, an Alliance Night Elf, etc. You will need to struggle in your first 10 levels.

You won’t have a freezing trap, silencing shot, distracting shot, a raptor strike, or anything like that. You’ll only have the Auto Shot available.

So, during your first levels, you must use the Kiting technique. This means moving forwards and backward between Auto Shots, so you don’t get injured. The damage dealt to you is considerable, so it can be difficult when you start.

Now, as you increase your level, you’ll unlock abilities such as Piercing Shots, Multi Shot, Silencing Shot, or Ferocious Inspiration – which is also granted by Retribution Paladins. These will help you quickly defeat your enemies by increasing your critical strike rating.

Once you reach this point, you can solo most enemies with your pet.

Assigning Skills

After you reach level 10, you will unlock the skill trees.

Here’s the moment when you will decide what type of Hunter you want to be. For this example, we will use the Beast Mastery build. So, here’s how you’re going to assign your skill points to unlock other abilities and have all pet talents.

• At level 10: you will have a significant amount of talent points to use 5 points in your Aspect of the Hawk, 2 points in Revive Pet, 2 points in Focused Fire, and 1 in Endurance Training.

• From levels 10 to 20: Use 1 point in Aspect Mastery, 5 in Unleashed Fury, and 4 in Ferocity.

• From levels 20 to 30: You’ll unlock more skills, so you must use your talent points wisely. We recommend you use 1 in Intimidation, 2 in Bestial Discipline, 1 in Ferocity, 1 in Spirit Bond, 4 in Frenzy, and 1 in Animal Handler.

• From levels 30 to 40: Add 1 point to Bestial Wrath, 1 to Animal Handler, 3 to Ferocious Inspiration, and 5 to Serpent's Swiftness.

At this point, your pet can withstand most of the damage while you use your weapon to deal damage. In the Beast Mastery specialization – just as in the rest of the builds – your top priority is to create distance between you and your enemies so you can make crit attacks.

Make sure you make your pet stronger as you level up to control the battlefield.

Wrath Of The Lich King Classic Hunter Group Leveling Strategy

Now, There’s also a Group leveling strategy that you can follow. And this works great for the other Hunter builds that don’t have a strong pet to watch over you.

If you get used to playing with a party, it will be easier to complete an entire raid after you level up.

Playability

In this case, you won’t have to apply Kiting. Since you’ll play with a party from the start, you’ll probably have a tank that will also deal melee range damage.

So, the only thing you need to take care of is using the right skills and stances to make the most damage possible, hence the name DPS.

Spam Auto Shots until you kill your targets. Fight over and over until you level up and reach level 10 and forward.

The goal here is to make as much viable damage as possible.

Now, since you don't have endurance, you need to have spec skills that allow you to escape quickly from any threat in an encounter. For example, the Aspect of the Cheetah. If you can’t escape, try to drive mobs to your companions so they can tank.

Assigning Skills

Previously, we assigned skills based on solo gameplay. This time, it’s all about teamwork. Since your job is making the enemy bleed, you must use abilities that deal lots of damage and are fast to cast.

As such, here is what you must do:

• Up to level 10: You must play safe and use as many Auto Shots as possible. Reach level 10 and wait until you unlock Improved Tracking before assigning points.

• From levels 10 to 20: Add 5 points to Improved Tracking, 2 to Survival Instincts, and 3 to Trap Mastery.

• From levels 20 to 30: Add 3 points to Hawk Eye, 2 to Entrapment, 3 to Lock and Load, and 2 to T.N.T.

• From levels 30 to 40: Add 1 point to T.N.T, 3 to Killer Instinct, 1 to Entrapment and 5 to Lighting Reflexes.

As you can see, these skills are made to boost your physical and your range overall damage compared to the strategy mentioned above.

You can rely on your teammates so they do the heavy lifting against mobs so you can concentrate on the damage output.

WOTLK Hunter Guide - Summary

World of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King gives you a new approach to how you can use hunter. With all its attributes and the different builds you can create, this DPS class will give you tons of hours of gameplay until you become the greatest damage dealer in Azeroth.

Hunter is a complex character that requires you to use strategy and agility to level it up. You may struggle in the beginning, but after you pass level 10, you’ll notice a huge difference and improvement.

Its core abilities make him a great raid buff partner. And with the bosses from the Burning Crusade and WOTLK Classic available, you have a lot of PvP and PvE content where you can test your ability.

So, create your hunter, find your pet, increase your talents, level up your professions, and keep fighting your realm.