World of Warcraft Hunter Leveling

So, you want to separate yourself from the ranks of the huntards, bring your leveling to new heights utilizing the hunter classes massive damage capabilities and find the right pet and talent build to be as efficient as possible - Well you've come to the right place.

Let's start with talent builds for the time being. Unlike many classes, hunters are actually quite capable of excelling with a number of talent builds, however this is likely due to their innate high-damage output and thusly we'll assume you picked up beast mastery.

Beast mastery is my personal favorite for leveling due to how useful the increased damage and durability of a pet-tank is for leveling - At level 60 and beyond this requirement increasingly fades up until 70.

Your primary pet for a beast mastery build, not considering looks but rather simply ease of use, is the boar. It has a charge ability which is it's primary beneficial attack, this allows you to engage monsters at a continually high-speed rate as your pet will almost instantly reach the target when set to attack, a small aid but still noticable.

Combat in and of itself will be relatively simple. It should be immediately obvious if you've played a hunter over level 10, average grinding/questing is fairly easy-mode, it's extremely fast experience rates that truly test the hunter, as no class aside from rogues contest your supremacy when it comes to speed leveling, no matter how well played.

Now, before we move on to the real meat of th e guide, let's cover a common problem that I see many a hunter having trouble with.

Melee is for losers
You're not a rogue, nor a warrior, or even a paladin. What you are is a hunter, ranged extraordinaire, sniper, death from very long distances, you get the point. Now, why would I bring this up? because I see way too many hunters finding themselves seemingly stuck in melee combat.

Avoid it at all costs, melee combat easily reduces your damage output by as much as half if not even more, perhaps slightly less for a survival hunter, but that style of talent build gimps leveling enough as it is.

Perhaps you need some advice on avoiding this issue, well heres a quick rundown of methods: The pet, either stop attacking for a few seconds and allow it to gain aggro or simply use feign death if you're 30+ Yet another common sense tip yet I still see so very many hunters lacking in it.

Traps, traps, and more traps, they solve so very many issues, chiefly the being in melee range one. Before every pull set up a frost trap, send the pet in, and if the enemy ever attacks you let him run right in the trap and freeze himself while you gain maximum distance once more - Just make certain to turn off pet attack when they come charging, else the trap will break nigh immediately.

If all else fails, wingclip the enemy and run for it. Even if your pet fails to draw aggro and the target continues to pursue you instead, at least this method of kiting reduces your damage taken and allows you to take pot-shots as they charge you. As they enter melee just re-apply wingclip and run straight forward until reaching a resonable distance, proceed to shoot them again, etc.

That about sums it up for huntard mistakes, lets move on to some real leveling advice.

Lets start examining some of the more basic yet nonetheless helpful tactics used to speed up your hunters leveling in general.

Number one would be, avoid the auction house, as in, skip any trips to town unless absolutely necessary. Why? because as a hunter, you alone have the ability to go up as many as ten levels without a single stop in Orgrimmar, Stormwind, or any of the major cities that allow training. Abuse it wisely.

Due to your massive soloing capabilities and pet-tank your hunter will only need to stop when running low on either food or ammo, and the food problem can be solved by killing monsters that drop an applicable foot-type for your pet of choice.

Stack your inventory with ammo and food. The more you kill, the more slots open up as you use the food/ammo, the more items you pick up from whatever you happen to be killing - end result? lots of killing and lots of looting.

Let's get more in-depth talent wise, what exactly are you looking for in the beast mastery tree? Well, quite a bit actually. A biggie would obviously be bestial wrath/the beast within, but those round out the tree's utility, the real core lies elsewhere.

Unleashed fury, ferocity, frenzy, bestial discipline, emphasis on those last two in particular. Almost any of the passive damage and armor increasing talents will help out considerably in the long run, but the real boosters are the focus regeneration, bestial discipline, and frenzy combined with an increased critical rate due to ferocity.

Beast mastery doesn't simply improve your pets tanking and aggro holding abilities, it makes the pet into a war machine entirely on it's own, allowing it to solo additional enemies with ease if need be.

These talent choices also give us multiple panic buttons such as the above mentioned bestial wrath and the beast within, both allowing the hunter to put his pet into a brief period of unbeatable aggro and damage.

All in all, the hunter is a well-rounded, tough, killing machine, the fastest of all levelers in game and a top notch class in general for those willing to learn the real tools of the trade.

Finally we reach the numbers game, or more accurately the statistics game, what stats you need as a hunter and what takes priority over all others.

Agility, it's great, this single stat adds to everything required to make your hunters damage increase. Each point of agility equals increased dodge, always helpful, critical rating, also helpful, and attack power, obviously useful.

The more agility the better, given good hunter equipment you'll likely have agility on every piece to some degree or another - It also functions as a great enchantment for melee weapons, 1-handers/2handers and such.

Secondly would be straight up +critical rating or attack power boosts, this is also a fairly prevalent stat to see on items post-60, almost any piece of Outland gear has at least one or two of these stats.

Balance of these stats is actually fairly easy, in most cases, aside from stamina, any actual upgrade piece of armor will result in a net-damage increase overall, once you've hit a decent critical rating level you can pretty much attempt to increase any of the stats as much as possible.

If you really want to check out an entirely comprehensive source detailing hunters, try out the Killer Guides Hunter Class Guide, although quite lengthy it's well worth checking out as each page actually contains worthwhile info.

In summation, stack as much agility, crit rating, and attack power as possible, stay at a range at all times, use your pet's abilities to the fullest, and proceed to snooze your way through the entire ride from 1- 70.