The Warcraft Hunter

I checked my traffic today, and found that someone had arrived at my blog with the search “what is faster to lvl for Hunter”. Of course, they most certainly meant “what spec is best for leveling Hunter”, but we get the picture.

Your Talent Tree Spec will be radically different when leveling as compared to when you start instances and raiding. When you get to 80, it will be all about the damage, but prior to that speed and survivability are more important. Even when Dual Spec comes out, it won’t be a simple matter of adding a new spec: both should be entirely replaced.

Broadly speaking, Beast Master is hands-down the leveling spec. It is designed to make the pet a significant source of damage, and if you pick a Tenacity pet it will have lots of threat generating talents available to it. This keeps mobs on your pet rather than on you, and that helps in two ways. The first, of course, is that you survive more fights. The second is that you can take on more mobs at a time, and thereby finish quests more quickly. There is a third benefit, which is that you can send your pet to attack mobs while you loot the mobs you just killed, which can speed things up even more if done right.

Which exact talents you pick will make a difference, and which level you pick them at will also be important. The exact spec that I use to level is given at Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide, but if you are not using a leveling guide then I will give a few pointers on what to grab.

First, you want to buff your pet before yourself under most situations. Don’t completely avoid buffs on yourself, but remember that you want your pet to survive and to do a large share of the damage. Second, choose Talents that will cause your pet to crit, as the extra damage from your pet will create that much more threat. Remember that buffs to you will often also buff your pet, so try for those kinds of Talents as well. And pay attention to Talents that add Stamina, Armor and resistance to AoE effects (the last is mostly in the Pet Talent Tree).

My current raiding spec is not far off from my Leveling spec, although a few Talents have been moved from Thick Hide and other “defensive” Talents to more damage creating ones, so this exact spec would probably overpower some pets, but it is close.

Erik Basics, Leveling, Talents Basics, Hunter, Leveling, Talents, Warcraft