WOW Hunter Leveling Guide

Hunters are the only pure dps class with a mana pool, yet they still perform as good as their counterparts. Hunters have a lot of unique abilities and assets that make them perfect for leveling solo. They can also be very useful to groups. All this can make leveling very easy for hunters.

If you’re searching for a Hunter leveling guide, one thing you have to realize is that when it comes to Hunter levelling, all three styles of Hunter builds are viable for leveling, catering to those who prefer to snipe from a long range, sick enraged cats on people, and the smaller, yet equally capable crowd, that likes the tactical challenge of survival from 1-80.

Hunters bring the ability, like Warriors/Rogues, to absolutely decimate casters especially when they are accompanied by their pet. Hunters also have a nice ability called Viper Sting, a mana drain, which when coupled with mana burn is very nice.

Hunters also have the ability to drop various traps; the most common one used in Arena is a frost trap. The frost trap can be used to slow units multiple times since you can always lead the mob over the ice slick to easily reapply the snare. This makes kiting mobs, especially multiple mobs, in circles much easier.

A new change to Hunters mana buff allows them to regain mana faster when it's lower, meaning Hunters do not become useless when nearing 0 mana. Hunters have two speccs that are proven to be effective in 5v5 arena.

Bestial Wrath is an ability that turns the pet and Hunter into a 20 second "god mode" where they do 25% more damage and cannot be stunned/crowd controlled/anything. Beast Mastery Hunters can also shut down a healer or a caster very effectively. The speed of their pet coupled with the speed of the Hunters attacks makes Casting almost impossible.

Hunters can choose from three talent trees namely Marksmanship, Survival and Beast Mastery. It is well known by most that the Beast Mastery talent tree is great for leveling purposes. The Pet gets a lot of nice boosts in this tree which makes the job a lot easier and the player doesn’t even have to do anything in most cases. As a Beast Mastery Hunter you will also be able to run faster which can also speed up the leveling a bit.

Beast Mastery Talents

Endurance Training - 5/5
Focused Fire - 2/2
Thick Hide - 3/3
Aspect Mastery - 1/1
Unleashed Fury - 5/5
Improved Mend Pet - 1/2
Ferocity - 5/5
Spirit Bond - 2/2
Intimidation - 1/1
Bestial Discipline - 2/2
Frenzy - 3/5
Ferocious Inspiration - 3/3
Bestial Wrath - 1/1
Catlike Reflexes - 3/3
Serpent’s Swiftness - 5/5
Longevity - 3/3
The Beast Within - 1/1
Cobra Strikes - 2/3
Kindred Spirits - 5/5
Beast Mastery - 1/1

Marksmanship Talents

Lethal Shots - 5/5
Careful Aim - 3/3
Mortal Shots - 2/5
Go For The Throat - 2/2

Survival Talents

Improved Tracking 5/5

Hunters are a hybrid class. As such, it can be difficult for them to choose gear at times. Hunters have at least some need of almost all of them.

• Agility - Your #1 stat over all else. Items with high agility are the staple of your equipment.
• Stamina - Your pet is taking the mob's attack, so you don't need a lot of Stam. It is, however, more valuable if you're on a PvP server
• Intellect - Increases your mana pool, which is good, but is always #2 to Agility
• Strength - Your least useful stat. You can be sure that an item which provides little other than strength is a bad Hunter item.
• Spirit - simply put, raises your mana and health regeneration rate. Unless you're a troll, spirit won't help you regenerate health when you're in combat.
• Crit rating - the more the merrier. Increasing your chance to crit by 1% requires about 53 agility. As such, items which flatly increase your chance to crit are very valuable to you.
• Attack Power - You can never have enough.
• Hit rating - Focused Aim will provide all you need until you start to raid or PvP.

Now that you know how the most common stats benefit you, you can start selecting gear for various purposes.

PvP: In PvP, you're going to take a beating no matter what you do. Your gear should provide a lot of Stamina, followed by Agility and then focus effects like +Crit, +Parry, and +Dodge. Extra mana helps you sustain battles longer, so go for +22 Intellect enchants on your weapons if you can afford them.

Solo PvE: Focus on a balance of agility and stamina as normal. Marksmen, and especially Survivalists with Lightning Reflexes, should focus heavily on agility to boost their damage output.

As such, you should choose weapons which have stats that benefit your ranged attack power and crit chance, or else they are useless when you're doing what you do best: Shooting things!

This guide is only an overview of hunter leveling, If you need a step-by-step guide to go from 1 to 80 (or any level to 80) then check out our recommended leveling guide - Zygor's guide. This guide appears as an in-game window (small and moveable) which tracks the quest you're on, and the objectives. It automatically updates as you complete tasks and quests and provides all of the "where to go and what to do" info that you will need to level quickly.