Recent changes Random page
GAMING
Gaming
 
StarCraft Wiki
Super Smash Wiki
Halopedia
 Diablo Wiki
FFXIclopedia
Grand Theft Wiki
See more...

User:Sharlin/HunterBuilds

From WoWWiki

Jump to: navigation, search
Image:Icon-warning-48x48.png This article is nominated for deletion!
  • Please vote and discuss on this article's discussion page. For more info on the deletion process, see the WoWWiki deletion policy.
Classes: Death knight Druid Hunter Mage Paladin Priest Rogue Shaman Warlock Warrior
Class races: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr
Quests: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr
Abilities: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr
Trainers: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr
Talents: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr
Talent builds: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr
Tactics: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr
Armor sets: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr
Starting a: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr
PvE guide: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr
PvP guide: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr
Useful macros: Dk Dr Hu Ma Pa Pr Ro Sh Wl Wr

Contents

Overview

The Hunter is known for their pets, their long-range, sustained DPS, and their traps.

The three trees of a Hunter are all viable for a hunter to choose for leveling, player versus player combat, or end game raids or instances, but since only two of the three trees allows for the complete use of talent points the player is forced to cross trees, hybridizing into other talent trees. The three trees all have options to offer for utility, open DPS, and survivability.

Beast Mastery

The Beast Mastery tree centers around the Hunter's pet, providing talents and skills that enhance various aspects of the pet and the Hunter's Beast Mastery abilities, such as Improved Aspect of the Hawk and Improved Aspect of the Monkey. Its deeper points also strengthen the integration of Hunter and Pet with abilities such as Intimidation, Bestial Wrath, and Ferocious Inspiration.

The Beast Mastery tree is popular for grinding and leveling because of its high damage for mana ratio, which is attainable with virtually no gear investment. In addition, it also boasts the ability to kill mobs while under the effects of Resurrection Sickness. However, the primary strength of the tree is in the reduction of downtime through placing much the damage generation on pets, who DPS for free, while the hunter's damage is augmented by a faster autoshot with none of the damage penalties related to weapon speed.

The tree can be versatile in PVP because The Beast Within offers a hunter one of the few innate crowd control breakers in the game. For solo and freestyle PvP, this is a valuable skill since it gives the hunter the window for a quick kill when used with a carefully timed Intimidation. However, in arena, the spec's utilities are limited as opponents with higher HP are able to break the stun, if not outlast the duration of immunity. In addition, spending 41 points for The Beast Within sacrifices a vast plenum of abilities from the Marksmanship and Survival tree that would might better serve an arena group. The value of TBW as a CC-breaker has eroded greatly with the revision of PvP trinkets and increasing amounts of health and damage mitigation that players can obtain. This has returned Beast Mastery largely to the domain of PvE.

In high-end raiding, deep Beast Mastery builds offer some of the strongest DPS in the game. This is derived largely from Serpent's Swiftness, which effectively removes the downtime of Steady Shot/Auto-shot threading. Meanwhile much of the damage is focused on the pet, who like mentioned before, does free DPS and also displaces the Hunter's threat, serving as a pseudo threat reduction. Kill Command also adds significant damage to the arsenal and it can be used without disrupting shot rotations. The Hunter's increased mana efficiency is compounded by The Beast Within, which temporarily reduces the mana cost of abilities and increases the DPS of the Hunter and moreso the pet. Ferocious Inspiration procs benefit the entire group and their effect is scaled to each individual player rather than relying on the Hunter's gear, making the BM hunter a viable in any mix of gear levels. While the BM hunter is capable of relatively high outputs, they are also challenged with having to play both a ranged and melee class as they manage their pet.

Nevertheless, a large part of the Hunter's damage is imbued in the pet, who must be alive in order to use Bestial Wrath/Beast Within. This is frequently seen as a fatal flaw to the build. However, in PvP situations the pet is often ignored or exceptionally tough to kill with a skilled healer. In raids, the hunter alone should have no trouble keeping their pet alive with Improved Mend Pet and careful control of the pet's actions. Should the pet die, the Beast Master can recover quickly and cheaply with Improved Revive Pet. Nevertheless, Beast Mastery playstyle requires a significant amount of diligence in managing the pet on top of managing the threats to the hunter.

Notable Talents

  • Endurance Training - Increase pet and hunter's total health
  • Unleashed Fury - Increases pet's damage, thereby increasing its threat
  • Ferocity - Increase pet's chance to crit, thereby increasing its damage and threat
  • Intimidation - Three second stun plus 15 seconds of increased threat generation
  • Frenzy - Another increase to pet damage and threat by increase its attack speed
  • Bestial Wrath - Breaks Snare for pet for duration, increases damage and threat as well.
  • Serpent's Swiftness - Increase both Hunter's and Pet's attack speed by up to 20%. Large DPS increase.
  • The Beast Within - Grants the Hunter the equivalent of Bestial Wrath, cannot be feared, reduced mana cost.

Sample Beast Mastery Builds

Regular PvE

PvP

Raiding


Marksmanship

The Marksmanship tree focuses on the Hunter's ranged attacked as well as improving synergy of their ranged abilities with the immediate group and their pet. Its first four tiers are seen as essential to any Hunter build. Lethal Shots increases crit chance at tier one, while the second tier gives hunters Improved Hunter's Mark and Efficiency. Virtually every hunter build dips at least 20 points into the Marksmanship tree for Mortal Shots, which increases critical strike damage by 30%. The third tier contains Rapid Killing and Go for the Throat, which are typically taken along with Aimed Shot to enhance pet synergy and setup burst damage opportunities. Improved Arcane Shot is generally considered unfavorable, although it does make it possible to tweak the cooldown to fall more in line with attack speed.

Deep Marksmanship is somewhat limited in raiding. Trueshot Aura's static AP makes its uses limited around players with high gear levels, and most of the talents affect only attack power, which does not encompass the full damage equation. Beast Mastery and Survival builds are both able to outscale Marksmanship's net damage output as their core raiding talents are scalable and affect a wider range of players. Although Marksmanship is still an effective build for pulling due to having the highest frontend damage, the majority of the Hunter's actions in raid still fall outside of this task. The ultimate talent, Silencing Shot, typically does nothing in this situation and there are generally plenty of interrupt classes around that can take care of it more efficiently. In 5-mans, however, it might be useful for pulling roaming casters. This contrasts greatly with PvP.

For Arena, Marksmanship offers the Hunter the potential for a ranged stun through Improved Concussive Shot, as well as an spell interrupts with Silencing Shot. Scatter Shot is also vital as it is the only ranged ability the Hunter can use at point blank. Improved Stings makes the Hunter's various debuffs more effective and also creates a potential for healers to waste mana if their cure fails. This on top of a Scorpid pet, along with the interrupts from Scatter Shot and Silencing Shot, make the hunter a powerful counter to strong healers and teams that rely on them to outlast opponents. Typically, Marksmanship PvP builds are integrated with Survival talents to increase their health pool provide anti-melee support through Survivalist, Improved Wing Clip, and Entrapment. Barrage and Improved Barrage significantly boosts Multi-Shot, which can be used to hit players out of line of sight.

While the tree's depths do not serve grinding specifically, Go for the Throat and Improved Hunter's Mark do lend the hunter some pet synergy, while Rapid Killing and Aimed Shot allows the hunter to open with a relatively strong attack that can drastically shorten the fight if it crits. The high frontend damage offered by Marksmanship is well served in PvP since the pet is not always on the principal target of damage, but rather tying up enemy casters either by keeping them from leaving combat or simply pushing back their spells.

Notable Talents

Sample Marksmanship

Examples

Regular PvE

PvP

Raiding

Survivalist

Most of the talents deal with specifically increasing the melee survivability such as Deterrence. Some of the other talent points improve your traps (Trap Mastery) and burst damage (Killer Instinct). The level 20, 30 and 40 learnable talents are Deterrence, Counterattack and Wyvern Sting, respectively. At level 50 the Survivalist Hunter can learn Readiness

Also, the Survival tree is the most complete of any hunter tree with what many hunters consider to be fewer useless talents (although some argue over things like Improved Feign Death).

The Survival tree is excellent for PvPing. With such important talents like Improved Wing Clip and Counterattack hunters no longer have a dead zone. A hunter can choose to focus on improving his traps, his melee fighting skill or his ability to get back to ranged.

This tree can also be quite good for raiding. Although there are not many talents that increase your damage, Lightning Reflexes gets better with higher level gear. It is possible for a hunter to obtain over 700 agility with Naxxramas gear and Lightning Reflexes. Also, many hunters like the utility their characters have outside of the raid.

Some hunters have found success with being Survival and grinding. The trap talents make kiting a much easier task, and skills like Clever Traps and Wyvern Sting allow a hunter to crowd control multiple targets at a time.

Notable Talents

Sample Survivalist Builds

Examples

Regular PvE

PvP

Raiding

Hybrid Builds

Hybrid hunter's are all about all round stability. A hybrid hunter will almost never be highest on DPS but will be the guy who is most able to be in control of every situation, "The Ultimate Crowd Control Hunter". Putting enough talents in Beast Mastery so that your pet can hold aggro and give some decent damage, in Marksman enough talents so you do some decent damage and buff the group & putting enough talents in Survival to be able to trap well. A hybrid hunter can easily chain trap one target, while off tanking another with his pet, all while helping DPS the main target, although using this spec doesn't guarantee that you will be top in DPS!

Notable Talents

Examples

This build should get decent DPS, but what it really focuses on is being a support class. It has Expose Weakness, and Master Tactician so that Expose Weakness procs more. It has Improved Hunter's Mark, again upgrading all attack power, and it has Trueshot Aura, which once more raises Attack Power. Any melee class and other Hunters will love you for this spec the same way warlocks love shadow priests.

Summary

The most important thing to realize about hunters is that you can choose any build and find success with it. Even the seemingly useless builds like a Survival/Beast Mastery spec can be very good for people who solely want to PvP. The idea is to find the build that you like and which best fits your playing style.

Retrieved from "http://www.wowwiki.com/User:Sharlin/HunterBuilds"