The hunter has always been one of the most versatile classes in Warcraft. Up until late 2008 they could, at a push, perform just about every role in the game. This lead to a lot of arguments when it came to rolling for loot in instances. Hunter’s could – with some degree of honesty – roll “need” for just about every item that dropped
The talent trees for hunters allow for very diverse gameplay. Levelling in particular can be done in a number of ways. Survival is about crowd control. Trapping certain foes and rooting them or damaging them with ice, fire etc. A skilled hunter might keep several foes occupied at once with good use of skills and a suitable pet.
Beast Mastery is the pet talent tree. In the past it was just about possible to use the pet to “off tank” in the easier instances. Some hunters claim they can still do this, but for the past eighteen months this has become harder. For leveling, a pet will tank very efficiently for one hunter, but for end game, even off tanking is no longer really a role for hunters pets.
Marksmanship is a DPS (damage per second) talent tree. Survival and Marksmanship both dish out the damage, Marksmanship does it best against one foe, whereas survival is better against several at once – but is slower.
Decide what kind of pet you are having. Have the sort that compliments your play style. Tank pets such as turtles will keep the enemy occupied better and absorb damage while you provide the killing power from range. Damage dealing pets e.g. cats are less adept at tanking but will provide excellent DPS themselves. Finally cunning pets like spiders are capable of trapping foes themselves.
As usual, endgame is very different. Everything you learn from levelling will need to be forgotten and new roles learned. “Nuke” is about the most popular spec for hunters end-game. Standing back and dealing large amounts of focussed damage
So Hunters are a great class to level up quickly, and very versatile during the levelling process. There is a downside though. Because many people choose hunter to level, you will always be competing at end game with others for spots in raiding parties. The more sought after roles of dedicated tank or healer will be the ones most people shout for.
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