Hunter Talents and Equipment Guide for PvE

[Gaetano]

Part I: Introduction and Disclaimer

With the revamped talent trees coming up for hunters, I thought I'd take this chance to write a revamped hunter guide to replace the sort of spur-of-the-moment effort I wrote earlier in the Silvermoon forums.

This will be a multi-part post, the first one being the introduction which you are currently reading. Following parts will deal with equipment and talents respectively.

Also notice the "for PvE" at the end of the title. While the equipment setup should work more or less as well for PvP, the talent builds are designed mostly for PvE (and raiding) in mind. They might work for team PvP passingly well but I suppose that many PvP hunters will invest a lot more in the Beast Mastery talents.

And as always, comments and suggestions are welcome. In case you have either, please wait for me to finish posting all the parts first though.

[Gaetano]

Part IIa: Equipment

Foreword: This guide assumes you're at level 60 and at least able to do instances like Dire Maul, Stratholme, Scholomance and LBRS. What I won't discuss here is what Uncommon, ie. green items to get before level 60. The epics included are either Molten Core or Onyxia drops.

Quick note on Beaststalker's Armor set. It's rubbish; don't bother with it. You might impress some newbies with the full set (unless they're too busy laughing at your helmet and look-mom-I'm-a-walking-harvesting-machine shoulders) but even the more or less nice set bonuses don't make it worth it. Especially since the +critical chance set bonus for 6 pieces is bugged and has been for so long that I'm starting to think that it's Blizzard's way of acknowledging that Beaststalker is in fact "BS" and hunters shouldn't wear it. So there.

Also the about the epic sets' set bonuses, I don't know whether they're some inside joke at Blizzard but basically they're not among the most useful bonuses that would come to mind, except maybe for the 8 part bonuses. So you shouldn't really concern yourself too much with the epic set bonuses either.

Lastly, PvP reward items from either honor rank or Battleground faction reputation are not included.

Notice: Regarding the equipment with +chance to hit modifiers; as pointed out by Shinigami, there's a saturation point after which additional +change to hit becomes useless, and for most situations you don't need more than 6-7% chance to hit. If you get +6% from equipment, you should definitely opt for +crit equipment instead of more +chance to hit.

Now that we got that out of the way, let's move on to What's Hot and What's Not by Gaetano:

Head:

Rare choice: Backwood Helm. Easily the best rare quality helmet for hunters. Also comparably easy to get as it is a quest reward from Dire Maul instead of a boss drop. Just get it.

Epic choice: Giantstalker's Helmet & Dragonstalker's Helm both pretty much go without saying, get whichever drops first. DS has a slight advantage in stats but GS's fire resistance is more useful earlier on. Funnily enough DS is almost easier to get.

Novelty item:Crown of Destruction: For those who want to show off that they've killed Ragnaros. Minor damage upgrade over Giant/Dragonstalker, worse base stats.

Don't Get: Crown of Tyranny, Beaststalker's Cap. Unless they happen to fall in your lap before you get Backwood Helm.


Neck:

Rare choice: Mark of Fordring. Simply the best neckwear for damage. Also a reward, though a from a rather long line of quests but still better than waiting for some boss to drop something better. Which won't happen, since there aren't any.

Epic choice: Onyxia Tooth Pendant. No explanation needed.

Novelty item: Drakefire Amulet: Don't leave Ironforge without it. Use around Ragnaros and other hot objects.

Don't Get: Emberfury Talisman: If/when you need fire res and stamina, just equip your Drakefire Amulet. Will of the Martyr: Because it just sucks. Eskhandar's Collar: because Onyxia Tooth Pendant owns this. Unless you want to piss off some rogues, which of course is a noble cause.


Shoulders:

Rare choice: Spaulders of the Unseen, Wyrmtongue Shoulders, Bone Golem Shoulders. Whichever happens to come your way first.

Epic choice: Giantstalker's Epaulets. Self-evident. Bonus feature: confers a ridiculous yet tough appearance to the wearer; as if you've had a tower fall over you and you haven't noticed/don't care.

Novelty item: Stratholme Militia Shoulderguard: Bet you haven't seen many of these around. One look at the drop rates at Thottbot will tell you why. Acceptable stats though.

Don't Get: Beaststalker's Mantle: I did over 20 LBRS runs for these. Don't make the same mistake. Black Dragonscale Shoulders: hardly worth farming the materials and even less paying good gold for.


Back:

Rare choice: Cape of the Black Baron. Hands down the best rare cloak for hunters.

Epic choice: Eskhandar's Pelt. Only +crit cloak in game. Bonus points for pissing off rogues who will no doubt claim this as theirs. Puissant Cape & Cloak of Shrouded Mists: Azuregos & Ragnaros loot of quite questionable upgrade value over Cape of the Black Baron.

Novelty item: Onyxia Scale Cloak: For all your stamina + fire res needs.

Don't Get: Shifting Cloak: Just don't. Can't even piss off rogues with it because it's not a drop.


Chest:

Rare choice: Ogre Forged Hauberk. It has +crit, decent amount of agility and some stamina and intellect to boot. What's not to like? Well, the strength but Blizzard loves the shamen and there's not much we can do about that.

Epic choice: Giantstalker's Breastplate. Not exactly the biggest of huge upgrades over Ogre Forged Hauberk but nice enough.

Novelty item: Savage Gladiator Chain: +2% crit chance and... stuff.

Don't Get: Beaststalker's Tunic: Yep, I'd take +5 strength over +1% critical chance any day. No, wait... Deathdealer Breastplate: You should be doing Tribute runs, not BRD. Well, if it falls on you when doing Emperor or Attunement run and you haven't had luck in dire Dire Maul, grab it. Black Dragonscale Breastplate: see Black Dragonscale Shoulders.


Wrist:

Rare choice: Beaststalker's Bindings. Not exactly wet dream come true but neither as misdesigned as most of the Beaststalker set. Extremely easy to acquire.

Epic choice: Giantstalker's Bracers & Wristguards of True Flight. Whichever you can get first.

Novelty item: Bracers of the Eclipse: Bonus points for pissing off... well you know who by now. Actually they're quite good stat-wise as well. If they happen to drop when getting Backwood Helm, grab em.

Don't Get: lacking the obvious Beaststalker piece, nothing much to add here. Basically, everything else.


Hands:

Rare choice: Devilsaur Gauntlets. Very overlooked piece of equipment. They have the ranged attack power equivalent of Beaststalker's Gloves' 14 agility, they give one full percent of crit chance and they even have same amount of stamina. Extremely easy to acquire as well.

Epic choice: Giantstalker's Gloves. While they might lack teh crit, the chance to hit actually makes up for it quite nicely in case you're already hitting 100% (which you probably aren't).

Novelty item: Gauntlets of Accuracy: Get these for Magmadar (unless you can come up with better use for your time, which you should).

Don't Get: Enter Beaststalker: Beaststalker's Gloves. Okay so the base stats are pretty nice but that's all they have going for them. Also notoriously low drop rate for these.


Waist:

Rare choice: Warpwood Binding. Simply the best rare belt. Also much easier to get than any of its peers; takes about 15 minutes of farming by average.

Epic choice: Giantstalker's Belt. Mostly just stamina + fire res upgrade from Warpwood Binding. Did I already say Warpwood Binding rocks?

Novelty item: Feralsurge Girdle: Well we all love our mana but mana regen is what Judgement of Wisdom is for. Lava Belt: If you're really serious about showing Ragnaros who's the boss.

Don't Get: Tired of seeing Beaststalker here yet? Beaststalker's Belt. It has 9 strength of all things, one less than it has agility. And comes with the no-crit-chance Beaststalker Warranty.


Legs:

Rare choice: This is tough one. I'd like to call it a tie between Leggings of Destruction and Devilsaur Leggings. The Leggings of Destruction suffer from a mild lack of agility but the other base stats are quite nice where as the Devilsaur Leggings lack most things except damage. With Devilsaur Gauntlets you get +2% chance to hit set bonus though which is nothing to be scoffed at.

Epic choice: Giantstalker's Leggings and Dragonstalker's Legguards. The resistances favor Dragonstalker this time, damagewise it's pretty much a tie.

Novelty item: Not much here really. Tuxedo Pants, maybe Onyxia will be impressed by your fashion sense?

Don't Get:Beaststalker's Pants. I'm starting to like this cause I can just copy&paste the earlier Don't Get and change the latter part of the name after Beaststalker (and thott id). Dude, where's my crit?


Feet:

Rare choice: Beaststalker's Boots: the other piece of Beaststalker's Armor set that doesn't suck horribly compared to other, more readily available equipment. Just pray the good lord Nerub'enkan not to bestow you with his blessed loot of nature resistance quite as much as he did me before finally dropping these.

Epic choice: Giantstalker's Boots, base stats upgrade from Beaststalker's mostly :/

Novelty item: Mongoose Boots, if you don't feel like bothering with Stratholme. Likely to cost a pretty penny though if you don't feel like bothering with Essence farming either. Black Dragonscale Boots, the boots that walk all over Ragnaros.

Don't Get: Well, anything else.


Finger:

Just a short overview of some nice rings to look out for:

Tarnished Elven Ring: No crit here but plenty of agility and the chance to hit is more or less interchangeable with crit so quite nice ring overall.

Painweaver Band: Just about the only good reason to do UBRS.

Magni's Will: Well, it has stamina and teh crit. Tarnished Elven Rings should serve better in most cases, though.

Quick Strike Ring: Doesn't really have "hunter" written all over it but epic enough.

Band of Accuria: Besides his day-job as the Fire Lord, Ragnaros is said to be a connoisseur of fine jewellery. This beauty certainly supports that claim.

Don Julio's Band: As to who Don Julio is, your guess is as good as mine. I know I want his ring though and so should you. (Oh right, this is actually a BG faction reward. Oh well, a man can dream.)


Trinkets:

Blackhand's Breadth: As strangely named item is any, this is a real no-brainer. Not only is it terribly easy to get, you just can't find any better either.

Royal Seal of Eldre'Thalas: The other trinket in game that's any good for hunters (and quite decent, at that). Pain in the ass to farm; better to farm money and snatch the book from AH if you ask me.

Blizzard loves us hunters so well that they only made two trinkets worth getting so we wouldn't have to make any tough decisions between several options.

[Gaetano]

Part IIb: Weapons of choice

Melee:

Since the introduction of the +15 agility enchant, the best method of boosting ranged damage became dual wielding +crit boosting weapons and enchanting them with the agility enchant.

Dawn's Edge: Two Dawn's Edges are perhaps the most sensible choice. They are quite easy to purchace; every axesmith in the game can make them since learning it is a part of their quest. Furthermore the materials for one can be purchased for 30-40g per average.

Assassination Blade: If you don't like axes, Assassination Blades are also quite serviceable. Their speed is also a bit better suited for the occasional Raptor Strike, but prepare to pay at least twice as much for one as for a Dawn's Edge.

If you're willing to spend considerable amount of time and/or money to maximize your melee damage as well, you might consider following set of arms:

Main hand:
Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge: requires considerable amount of UBRS farming.

Krol Blade: requires considerable amount of gold farming.

Off hand:
Heartseeker for the best off-hand dps along with the crit chance. The materials alone are worth 350-400 gold in most cases.

Dal'Rend's Tribal Guardian: only if you have the Sacred Charge as well. It doesn't have teh crit but gives +50 attack power along with the Sacred Charge for a total of 110 ranged attack power with +15 agility on both.

And if nothing except the best of the best of the best is enough,

Brutality Blade + Core Hound Tooth.

Might have to get them over the cold dead bodies of several rogues, though.


Ranged:

Rare bows and weapons are really too numerous to mention and put into order; however I would go as far as to say that none of them are considerably better then your standard issue Gorewood Bow.

Instead you should set your sights to the epics. Since they are for the most part quite similar, the dps value is a pretty good indicator of their relative power:

Dwarven Hand Cannon

Core Marksman Rifle

Striker's Mark

Blastershot Launcher

and lastly,

Rhok'delar, Epic Pimp Cane of the Ancient Keepers.

You'll notice that Hurricane is not included. This is because it is hardly recommendable over Gorewood Bow.

[Gaetano]

Part III: Talent Builds

Since Blizzard actually saw fit to address the deficiencies of our current talent trees, I'll discuss the possible talents builds for the new trees introduced in the next content patch (1.7) instead of the current trees.

As they are not currently in game it's hard to make any guarantees as to which build will eventually turn out good, decent or downright bad but after playing with the talent calculator at http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/hunter/talents.html, I've come up with a couple of builds that I think should work out pretty well.

The main difference between the builds is trading the Improved Aspect of the Hawk, Improved Hunter's Mark and Trueshot Aura for the new Survivalist (+10% health), Surefooted (+3% chance to hit) and Killer Instinct (+3% crit chance) talents. In my view the Killer Instinct build might be slightly better for simple damage dealing and surviving thanks to the health and feign death buffs while the Trueshot Aura build is more of a "team player" build with the aura and improved mark. Quite possibly the best situation would be to have both types in a raid group.

[Gaetano]

The "Trueshot Aura" Build:

This build is similar to the current 5/46/0 build, offering a however a decent damage upgrade. The main difference is in dumping the less-used Marksmanship Talents for some of the new Survival talents.

Beast Mastery talents, 5 points:

- Improved Aspect of the Hawk, 5/5.
While Aspect of the Hawk is active, all normal ranged attacks have a 5% chance of increasing ranged attack speed by 30% for 8 sec.

Marksmanship talents, 39 points:

- Efficiency, 5/5.
Reduces the Mana cost of your Shots and Stings by 10%.

- Improved Hunter's Mark, 5/5.
Increases the Ranged Attack Power bonus of your Hunter's Mark spell by 15%.

- Lethal Shots, 5/5.
Increases your critical strike chance with ranged weapons by 5%.

- Aimed Shot, 1/1.
An aimed shot that increases ranged damage by 70 (600 with maximum skill ups).

- Improved Arcane Shot, 5/5.
Reduces the cooldown of your Arcane Shot by 1.0 sec.

- Hawk Eye, 3/3.
Increases the range of your ranged weapons by 6 yards.

- Mortal Shots, 5/5.
Increases your ranged weapon critical strike damage bonus by 50%.

- Scatter Shot, 1/1.
A short-range shot that deals 50% weapon damage and confuses the target for 4 sec. Any damage caused will remove the effect.

- Barrage, 3/3.
Increases the damage done by your Multi-Shot and Volley spells by 15%.

- Ranged Weapon Specialization, 5/5.
Increases the damage you deal with ranged weapons by 5%.

- Trueshot Aura, 1/1.
Increases the Ranged and Melee Attack Power of party members within 45 yards by 50. Lasts 30 min.

Survival talents, 6 points:

- Monster Slaying, 3/3.
Increases all damage caused against Beast, Giants and Dragonkin targets by 3% and increases critical damage caused against Beast Giants and Dragonkin targets by an additional 3%.

- Humanoid Slaying, 3/3.
Increases all damage caused against Humanoid targets by 3% and increases critical damage caused against Humanoid targets by an additional 3%.

- One leftover point, use on what you want (Savage Strike, Thick Hide, Improved Eyes of the Beast etc).

Commentary:

Improved Aspect of the Hawk: this revamped talent seems quite nice indeed but only experience will tell how often it actually procs. The description claims 5% chance for any "normal" ranged attack, but as to what is considered a "normal" ranged attack (only Auto Shot?) and whether the percentage is adjusted according to weapons speed (if not, it would make super fast pea-shooters vastly superior) remains to be seen.

Trueshot Aura: the range and damage bonus has been boosted nicely, but how much the damage bonus goes up with skill bonuses is as of yet unknown. The increase in range is definitely welcome as it might even reach the melee fighters from now on.

[Gaetano]

The "Killer Instinct" Build:

This build takes a bigger advantage of the new Survival Talents, while getting as many of the ranged damage talents from Marksmanship as possible.

Marksmanship talents, 28 points:

- Efficiency, 5/5.
Reduces the Mana cost of your Shots and Stings by 10%.

- Lethal Shots, 5/5.
Increases your critical strike chance with ranged weapons by 5%.

- Improved Arcane Shot, 4/5.
Reduces the cooldown of your Arcane Shot by 1.0 sec.

- Hawk Eye, 3/3.
Increases the range of your ranged weapons by 6 yards.

- Mortal Shots, 5/5.
Increases your ranged weapon critical strike damage bonus by 50%.

- Barrage, 3/3.
Increases the damage done by your Multi-Shot and Volley spells by 15%.

- Ranged Weapon Specialization, 3/5.
Increases the damage you deal with ranged weapons by 3%.

Survival talents, 23 points:

- Monster Slaying, 3/3.
Increases all damage caused against Beast, Giants and Dragonkin targets by 3% and increases critical damage caused against Beast Giants and Dragonkin targets by an additional 3%.

- Humanoid Slaying, 3/3.
Increases all damage caused against Humanoid targets by 3% and increases critical damage caused against Humanoid targets by an additional 3%.

- Deflection, 2/5.
Increases your Parry chance by 2%.

- Savage Strikes, 2/2.
Increases the critical strike chance of Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite by 20%.

- Survivalist, 5/5.
Increases total health by 10%.

- Surefooted, 3/3.
Increases hit chance by 3% and increases the chance movement impairing effects will be resisted by 15%.

- Improved Feign Death, 2/2.
Reduces the chance your Feign Death ability will be resisted by 4%.

- Killer Instinct, 3/3.
Increases your critical strike chance with all attacks by 3%.


Commentary:

The idea behind this build is to get the Killer Instincts from Survival tree and then get as much from Marksmanship as possible. The Survivalist and Surefooted talents give some very nice bonuses as well and less chance of getting FD resisted with Improved Feign Death.

[Gaetano]

Bumbety bump, since this thread apparently isn't visible if you use the default thread cutoff setting...

Also edited the Talent builds to accommodate for the Hawkeye/Barrage change.

[Gromagrim]

Nice work, makes good reading

[Fusion]

It's certainly food for thought. I'm interested to know if Wyvern Sting is effective in MC/BWL -- if it does work against the regular trash mob, then it could be quite a boon for the raid. Personally. I'm not completely satisfied with any of the trees yet, but I'm gonna have to live with it once the patch goes live.

Since I'm tired of the Egometers "whose dick damage is bigger" competition, I'm planning on just going for a talent build that suits me :)

I have to admit it though, I can't decide whether I need scattershot and aimed shot or not :p

[Dragones]

Eskhandar's Collar: because Onyxia Tooth Pendant owns this. Unless you want to piss off some rogues, which of course is a noble cause. <----- ????

/shooo :p

Go talk to youre Pet :D

[Shinigami]

Another hunter talent build to consider: The Lightning Reflexes build.

You spend 30 points in Survival to get the +15% agility bonus, but only 21 points in marksmanship, so you get Mortal shots and Scatter shot, but not Barrage or RWS. In order for this to be better than full marks, you need to have high agility already, probably around 400.

You have to choose between +3 crit and +15% agi on one side or +15% damage on multishot (Total damage, not just the bonus), +5% damage and +100 AP to your whole group on the other.

I'm pretty sure I'll go with the Trueshot build, especially since the aura now covers a larger area, making a hunter a nice boost to a rogue group or to other hunters who specced more in survival.

[Fusion]

Yeah the new TS aura would be a worthy buff for melee dps groups now I think...

The Lightning Reflexes build is an interesting one, does apply to base agility (before armor/weapons) or total agi before buffs?

[Shinigami]

It applies to your total agility, so it's quite a big boost.

[Gaetano]

At 400 agility Lightning Reflexes give 60 agility = 120 RAP and barely 1% crit. To get it, you have to give up any points in Ranged Weapon Specialization (not to mention Trueshot Aura), gimping your ranged damage by 5% because of that alone. Not exactly worth it in my book...

[chuwy]

Currently my agility is 390. Lightning Reflexes would give me those ~60 extra agi, in total more than TSA would give me. However, getting LR means not spending points in Ranged Weapon Specialization. My ranged damage is ~400 per shot ATM. That means RWS gives me ~20 damage per shot. On a 2.9 AS bow that is ~7 damage per second. 7 DPS. However, I only have 20 RAP to make up for the loss of RWS after counting TSA into the calculation. That is 1.5 DPS.

But Killer Instinct is another 3% crit, and 60 agi (LR) is 1% on top of that, coming to a 4% crit increase. Would the extra crit plus the extra 20 RAP not make up for the loss of RWS in the end?

[chuwy]

Bump, because I am asking a serious question and I will have to decide by tomorrow.

[Fusion]

RWS improves damage for all of our ranged attacks so it's definately a hard decision. Blizzard wanted talents to be a method for people to stamp some individuality onto their characters so whichever route you go doesn't matter that much. IMHO it's time to forget about the damage metres and go for a build that suits you, not some stupid ego competition.

[Gaetano]

bump by request