The Warcraft Hunter

I have been asked by a few players “what is the best food for Hunters?” As with so many other questions in both WoW and life, the answer is “it depends.”

It depends on what level you are, what you are doing, what resources you have, what your stats are and what your skills are. However, it does not need to be complicated. Also, the difference between “good food” and “best food” is a lot smaller than the difference between “good food” and no food at all.

Basic food is food that heals you and does nothing else. You can buy basic food at most inn keepers as well as other vendors, so I will skip over this part. Just bear in mind that it makes sense to have the highest level basic food on you because it will regenerate health faster, thus reducing your down time.

The food I want to talk about is the kind that gives a boost to one or more of your stats. The stats that we Hunters want to see buffed are generally Attack Power, Stamina, Crit Rating, Haste, Armor Penetration, Agility, and to a lesser degree Intellect. Less important, but not useless, are Spirit and Mana per 5 seconds (or Mp5). Strength and Spell Power can be completely ignored, but in some cases they will be part of a package deal with other stats. Which stats you choose to buff will be dependent on what you are doing.

At lower levels most of the food that you will be able to use will only buff your Stamina and Spirit. There are a few Mp5 foods available, but they require both Fishing and Cooking skills or must be bought at the Auction House. Also, Mp5 is not that important at lower levels, and Spirit will help regenerate Mana during downtime anyway. In fact, the Stamina buff is quite useful when questing at low levels, and come sometimes mean the difference between dying and surviving large pulls. Since dying results in huge downtime, Stamina is a good thing.

At Level 35 you can use Grilled Squid, which increases Agility by 10 for 10 minutes. Of course, Agility is the main base stat for Hunters, so this is a nice one to have. Remember that Agility not only affects Attack Power; it also increases your Armor, Dodge %, and Crit % as well, so it has both offensive and defensive benefits.

At Level 45 Charred Bear Kabob becomes available, and its boost of 24 Attack Power is nothing to sneeze at. You lose the extra benefits that Agility gives you, but the effect lasts for 15 minutes instead of ten, and the pure power is worth the switch. This should help you power through the next 10 levels!

At Level 55 things begin to get interesting. Some of the food from the Outlands can be purchased and used, and this is where you start to make some choices as to which stats you want to boost. Ravager Dogs give you 40 Attack Power and 20 Spirit for 30 minutes; Broiled Bloodfin gives 8 resistance to all schools of Magic; Grilled Mudfish and Warp Burgers each give 20 Agility and 20 Spirit for 30 minutes. Since Hunters are built to dole out damage I am not a big fan of defensive stats like resistances, but there are times and places where it might come in handy. As to Agility vs Attack Power, because of the extra benefits that Agility brings I would want at least twice the amount of Attack Power as Agility for me to switch to the Attack Power. Since Ravager Dogs give 40 Attack Power, I would pick them over the Agility food. The difference would not be massive, though.

At Level 65 we get even more choice as the extra stats come into play. The food available at this level is intended for end game play, at least as it existed pre-WotLK. Skullfish Soup adds 20 Crit Rating and Spirit for 30 minutes, and Spicy Hot Talbuk gives 20 Hit Rating and Spirit for 30 minutes. Adding Crit % will always be a benefit (albeit a diminishing one eventually), whereas Hit bonus will only be useful if you are below the Hit Cap for the mobs or bosses you are fighting. This is one time where there really is a clear choice, and you need to understand Hit Rating and Hit Caps to decide which applies under which circumstances. I won’t go into it at this time, but I plan to write a post shortly that helps explain it.

When WotLK came out, there were all sorts of new recipes, beasts and foods added to the game. Some of them are fun, like Small Feast; others are more useful. All of them are usable at Level 70 and last for 1 hour (some fun ones last 2 hours, if I recall). All add Stamina and at least one other “main” stat, whereas some add two stats. The choice of food will be dictated by which stat makes the most sense to boost, which again is dependent on what you are doing and what you are fighting.

Also, it is important to note that Northrend food comes in two “levels”, and they can be quickly differentiated by the amount of Stamina that they add: the lower level food gives 30 Stamina, the higher adds 40 Stamina. The choice between the higher and lower version of the same stat comes down to availability and price only; it may not be worth spending the extra time, money or mats to use the higher level food for simple farming, but in a raid it might well be worth it.

Choosing between the stats is more difficult, so you need some way to compare the results of the various bonuses. The best way to do that is to translate as best you can into damage increase. I know there is a lot of theory-craft out there that gives lots of details on how to calculate this, but frankly I don’t have the time to do that. I have decided to take a tip from pro Poker players and use some approximation short-cuts. We will lose out on accuracy but gain on the ability to make good (not perfect) decisions quickly. Since circumstances and stats change frequently, I think this is a better approach.

We will use the higher level Northrend foods and their stats to compare to one another. First, 80 Attack power, as given by Mega Mammoth Meal and Fish Feast. We can use the ratio of 14 AP = 1 dps, but this does not take into account the damage done by the pet. Since different Hunter specs affect pets differently it is hard to assign a ratio to adjust this, so the easy thing to do is to look at your current unbuffed Attack Power. If your Attack Power is 4000, then 80 extra AP is a 2% increase. If you only have 3000 AP, then 80 is a 2.67% increase. This should result in a reasonably similar increase in damage. I know this is not completely accurate, but we will be using the same approximation for the other stats, so we will be comparing apples to apples for the most part.

Spiced Wyrm Burger and Spicy Blue Nettlefish both add 40 Crit Rating. So how does this translate to increased damage? 40 Crit rating at Level 80 translates to about 0.87 % increase chance to crit. If your critical hits only do double damage then that means you get about a 0.87% increase to damage. In fact it is less than that because your existing Crit % increases your damage already, but remember that we are approximating. If you have 5/5 in Mortal Shots (MM tree) your critical hit damage is 130% rather than 100%, so this should also be factored in. Finally, the value of procs that occur on Crits needs to be taken into account. If you have Cobra Strikes the you will be causing your pet to have extra damage as well, not to mention Ferocious Inspiration and its effect on the entire group. The value of procs can just about double the extra damage (give or take), which makes the damage increase somewhere between 2 and 3%.

Hmmm…that looks pretty similar to the amount from 80 Attack Power. Coincidence? I doubt it. The mathematical gymnastics above were really only to demonstrate a point: the approximate value of each stat bonus is going to be pretty close to the values given by other foods of the same level. If we can simply resign ourselves to this, then we can just look at the various situations that would make Crit % buff less effective for us. First, if your Crit % is fairly high already, your extra damage benefit would be reduced; you can only have Ferocious Inspiration up once at a time, and Cobra Strikes will only dole out pet crits one at a time. Also, if there is another BM Hunter in your group your Ferocious Inspiration will not stack with theirs (it used to, but no longer, alas), further reducing the benefit of the + Crit.

On the other hand, if your Crit % is low, you might stand to gain a lot from it.

Worg Tartare and Snapper Extreme give + 40 Hit, which can be a huge benefit as well but only under certain circumstances. Again, if we assume that on average it will be the equal of +80 AP food, then we simply need to look at whether you will get better than average benefit from it. The factors that make + Hit beneficial are: High-end Boss, low Hit Rating, and High Attack Power. In other words, you are missing lots of shots, but your shots do a lot of damage. In this situation, the extra Hit Rating would “recover” a lot of large, missed hits, including some that would crit.

On the other hand, if you have a high Hit Rating (or are fighting a lower level boss or mobs), and your Attack Power is lower than average, you won’t gain very much from + Hit Rating. Also, + Hit will have much less effect on trash mobs, so you need to take that into account when deciding.

Blackened Dragonfin buffs Agility by 40, but I have already stated that 2 AP > 1 Agi, so I would only take this if the 80 Attack Power food was not available. Also, the 16 Mp5 foods (Mighty Rhino Dogs and Spicy Fried Herring) are nearly pointless in light of all the Mana regeneration options. We are damage dealers, not Mana batteries.

Haste is another stat that I don’t think is worth boosting, especially for BM Hunters. If your Speed is at or under 2, then only your Auto Shot will be improved by Haste. I am hoping to get some input from other players on how Haste affects other Talent trees, as I have little experience in adjusting my Haste outside of BM.

Armor Penetration is a conditional benefit, obviously. There are many mobs who have no armor at all, so any + ArP would be completely useless. So leave the Hearty Rhino at home unless you expect to run into lots of mobs with armor. ArP becomes more valuable as the amount of armor on the enemy increases, and becomes less valuable with the number of Sunders that can be placed on the target (Warriors and Rogues).

Here is my way of approaching the question of which food to bring: I start with a default of + 80 Attack Power. Everything else is the considered based on what it is that I am going to do. If I am going into a raid with a high-level boss and my Hit Rating indicates that I might miss a lot, I would consider + Hit food instead. If I nerfed my Crit rating with some new gear, I might switch to + Crit food until I got things back in balance. Mobs with lots of armor? Maybe it’s time to switch to + ArP food (honestly, I have never checked this, but perhaps I ought to). If I am going to a raid where there is little down time, I might even consider some Mp5 food (Culling of Stratholme comes to mind).

And if you simply are not sure…remember that Attack Power is never a bad choice, even if it is not the perfect choice. The difference between “good” and “best” is far less than the difference between “good” and “none”. Also, the variability in DPS due to randomness can even outweigh the expected differences due to buffs — sometimes you get procs, sometimes you don’t.

Food for pets is important too: Kibler’s Bits and Spiced Mammoth Treats will increase your pet’s Strength and Stamina by 30, so make sure to bring enough. Feel free to share with your Warlock friends too, as their pets will also benefit from these.

And one last word about food: never show up to a raid with nothing, unless you are told to do so. You should not expect to be fed, so be prepared with the “best” food you can rustle up, even if it is only +60 AP.

Erik Uncategorized