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.

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

At Level 12 you get three new spells. In decreasing order of importance they are Mend Pet, Wing Clip and Distracting Shot.

The first, Mend Pet, was mentioned in my previous post. It does exactly what you would think, which is to mend your pet; in other words, heal it. Since your pet basically acts as your tank, you want to make sure he stays healthy and survives the fight. Normally, when your pet dies, so do you.

What I like to do in fights that I know are going to be close, is to start the mend before the pet even gets to the mob. That way if there is a lot of damage, the heals will hopefully prevent the pet from dying, or at least too quickly.

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Basics, Leveling Basics, Hunter, Leveling, Warcraft

Level 10 is when Huntering gets fun! Not only do you get a couple of new spells, you also get your pet! I won’t describe much of the pet stuff here, as that generally comes out in most of the other posts as part of whatever their topic is, so I concentrate on the two new spells first.

Track Humanoids goes along nicely with Track Beasts, and now you will get to switch back and forth between the two depending on what sort of questing you are doing. These two will cover the majority of mobs you will encounter early on, but you will normally see a new type of mob before you get the Tracking spell for it. In these situations just track whichever mob you might otherwise see around the perimeter of where you are playing.

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Basics, Leveling Basics, Hunter, Leveling, Warcraft

There is only one new spell learned at Level 8, and that is Concussive Shot. This shot is marginally useful, and should only be used situationally. It does no damage, but instead dazes the target, and slows their movement by 50% for 4 seconds.

The first situation in which this is useful is when you are targeting a particularly difficult mob and you want it to take as long as possible to get within melee range. By hitting the target with Concussive right after a Serpent Sting (always put your DoTs up first!), you will increase the amount of time it will take by 2 seconds. This may be enough extra time to allow you to drop the mob before it can do you any serious damage.

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Basics, Leveling Basics, Hunter, Leveling, Warcraft

When a Hunter reaches Level 6, two more spells become available. The first is Hunter’s Mark, which is a “debuff” you place on a mob. This debuff does some interesting things.

The first and most important is that it increases the Ranged Attack Power of everyone attacking that mob. Not just yours; not just your Party’s; everyone’s. This includes players from other factions, apparently. This should be used every time you attack a mob, at least when you have time to set up your attack ahead of time. In fact, I always make this part of a macro that sends my pet in to attack so I never miss a chance to Mark a mob, but at Level 6 you don’t have a pet, so you probably won’t set this up in a macro just yet.

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Basics, Leveling Basics, Hunter, Leveling, Warcraft

the first time I played a Hunter, I really had no idea what I was doing. I had no one to teach me how to play, and I did not know which sites to go to in order to learn. I had no clue about training, repairing, gear, ammo, you name it. For several kills I was even unaware that I had a gun, for crying out loud! I only found it by accident by hitting the “3″ key!

My point is, that you don’t know what you don’t know. And this applies at all levels of the game, and all levels of Hunter. So, I am going to make a level-by-level series of posts about the things that change at each level, as seen from the perspective of a Beast Master Hunter who is trying to level to 80. Why Beast Master? Because it has long been the best Talent Spec for leveling, and should remain so through the 3.1 patch.

My hope is to make players of Hunters aware of the things that can add to their character at various levels, and new strategies to use to level faster.

At Level 1 you have very few things you can do, so play style is really simple. All the mobs in the area where you character is “born” are neutral, so you have no fears about being attacked by mobs. This makes it easy to set up your attack and finish off one mob at a time. The simplest method of attack is to get to the max distance of whichever mob you want to attack, and then let loose with the Auto Shot, which should be “3″ on your main Action Bar. This will start the Auto Shot, which will keep firing automatically until the mob dies, goes out of range, goes into melee range, or you run out of ammo.

Of course, the mob will be coming after you after you shoot it, so you have two choices on how to react. Presuming the mob does not die on the way (and it will sometimes), you can either get ready to do a Raptor Strike on the mob to finish it off, or you can try to back up and get more shots in. I recommend the Raptor Strike method for a couple of reasons: 1) you will get skill-ups on your hand weapon; 2) Auto Shot does not work on the run, so you won’t get many more shots in, if you get any at all. I will introduce a new variant on the second method in an upcoming post, one that will prevent you from having to melee much at all.

There are a few important things to mention that are not Hunter-specific, and that will apply for most or all of your leveling, so I will mention them here:

• Check your loot for upgrades to your armor and weapons. At this level it happens frequently, and you may as well take advantage of it.
• Sell your gray items (except for upgrades, of course). Use the AutoProfit add-on or some other variant to do this quickly.
• Get more bags as soon as you can afford them. When you are questing, you don’t want to have to start dumping items that might sell for a bit of cash at the vendor.
• When questing, try to pick the lower level mobs if they have different levels. This applies only if the mobs are neutral to you, or if they can be picked off one at a time without fear of getting “adds”. You want to do this because you have a greater chance of killing the mob before it gets into melee range. You will kill faster, and take less damage.
• Make sure to finish the quests in the area before moving on. Many players will race to the next zone as soon as they can, but I think this is a mistake. “Wasting” quests means that you will have fewer quests done, leaving you to have to grind to get levels later on. Use one of the leveling guides listed to the right to help you plan your questing; they really help you get to 80 much, much faster than by trying to find them by yourself.
• Use the QuestHelper add-on, or some other reasonable substitute, to help you complete quests faster. It will show you exactly on the map where to go, and will tell you your next objective and how to get there faster. If used in conjunction with the leveling guide mentioned above, you will blaze through levels faster than you would believe.

That’s it for Level 1. My next several posts will be on even-numbered Levels, as that is when you get new spells (at least until the later levels).

Basics, Leveling Basics, Leveling, Warcraft

One of the coolest pieces of software I have ever seen in a long time is a program called Wow Matrix. It helps you manage your Warcraft add-ons, removing the necessity of searching the Internet for the various add-ons that you might want to use, get updates for, or even search for. Not only that, it will install them for you as well as update regularly.

When you open the program, you have two tabs that you can look at. One shows you the add-ons that you currently have installed and whether they are up to date. The second tab shows a long list of add-ons that are available to be installed. On both tabs they give a short description of what the add-on does. This makes it really easy to pick which add-ons that you want to add.

I would be careful about adding too many add-ons at once though. All add-ons affect the user interface in some way, and too many changes at once could be quite confusing. Until you get used to using an add-on, you don’t always know how to manage the configuration. If you have more than one new add-on, it might be confusing as to which of them is affecting your user interface in a negative way. I currently limit myself to one new add-on per day, so I can get used to what ever an add-on is doing for me. Then once I have the configuration exactly the way I want, I can add a new one without fear of getting too confused. And at my age that’s an important thing!

Wow Matrix is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux… but I have only used it for Windows, so I cannot speak to how it works on the other operating systems.

Add Ons, Basics Add Ons, Basics, Hunter, Resources, software, Warcraft

How do you get to Level 80 fast in Warcraft?

This is the question that most beginning players want to know. For that matter, most intermediate players don’t know very much about this either. That’s not surprising, given that there is so much in this game to know. So I have come up with a list of things that every player who is leveling a character should try to do:

1. Get bags. If you only have one bag, then you will quickly fill up and find yourself running back to town in order to sell things to the vendor or turning quests, rather than staying out and finishing more quests the same area. Besides, the money that is spent on bags is easily made up with the extra vendor trash or other items that you will pick up while farming, grinding, or questing.

2. Get plenty of rest. And by rest, I mean that when you logout you should do so in a major city or an inn. When you do this, your rest bonus doubles. When your character is rested, it earns twice the XP that it normally would when killing mobs. Every time you kill something it eats away at this rest bonus, so the more rest bonus you have the faster you will gain XP.

3. Use good add-ons. There are many add-ons that help with questing, either directly or indirectly. Some will simply show you your current coordinates, and others will pinpoint exactly where you need to go in order to finish certain quests. I will be making more posts about add-ons in the future.

4. Use potions and scrolls. Potions and scrolls that increase your stats temporarily can help speed up the process of killing mobs, as well as preventing you from dying. Dying unnecessarily is one of the biggest wastes of time when leveling, so it makes a lot of sense to prevent this. If you have gathering professions, they will more than pay for the potions and scrolls.

5. Use a guide. There are many good guides available to help you choose which quests to do in which order. This saves a massive amount of time in leveling, for so many reasons. First, they help you save time by chaining quests together. This means you are picking up quests at the same place as you are dropping off others, and picking up items and quests in the same place that you were killing mobs for others. This increase in efficiency can easily triple the speed at which you level. Check the list of guides available on the right side of this page. My current favorite is Joana’s Horde Guide, but there are many others that work well. They are usually constantly updated so they stay accurate.

6. Don’t get hung up on finishing every single quest. In many areas there are group quests at the end of chains that are pretty much impossible to solo. While hunters have a much easier time soloing group quests, not all of them are possible to do by yourself. Remember that you can always come back and finish these later, especially if you see people advertising for others to help them with this quest. This is a lot more efficient than spending a bunch of time looking for people to join you. You may as well spend that time doing other quests instead of hanging around waiting for someone.

7. Make sure to repair and restock whenever you get the chance. When you are near a vendor check to see what they sell and whether you need it. This can be food or ammo or healing potions or anything that you need while questing. The last thing you want to do is spend a bunch of time getting to a remote area to finish a quest only to find that you need to go back for something that you could have gotten while you were in town.

8. Get a bank alt. This is a character that does nothing but hang around an Auction House and bank. You can mail items to and from this bank alt to your main character. This is another massive savings in time, because you don’t need to spend time flying back and forth to major cities. Later on, you can switch roles between your main character and bank alt should you want to.

As you can see, all of these tips are intended to help you prevent yourself from wasting time. Wasted time is the enemy of fast leveling. More than anything else, time is the most valuable resource in the World of Warcraft.

Basics, Leveling Basics, Hunter, Leveling, Warcraft

Pets in the Cunning Tree are a sort of hybrid between tenacity and ferocity. In addition to this they have a couple of effects that might actually come in handy during some prolonged fights. Most of these pets are of the winged type such as bats and birds of prey, but also include serpents and ravagers.

I have not used any of these types of pets, so my comments must be taken with a grain of salt. I am only going to give you my impression of what these talents would be useful for, but it is possible that I may be way off base. In addition, since so many of the talents on this tree are the same as on Ferocity and Tenacity, I will only list the talents that are unique to this tree.

I welcome any comments from anyone who has used these pets, or has any insight on how well they operate under various conditions.

Tier 2

Mobility, 2 ranks. This talent simply reduces the cooldown on Dash or Dive by 8 seconds and 16 seconds. Not a huge bonus in my opinion, but might make grinding or farming a little faster.

Owl’s Focus, 2 ranks. There is a 15 and 30% chance that there will be no focus cost the next time your pet uses an ability within 8 seconds of the previous one. Maintaining focus for your pet is a lot like maintaining Mana for yourself. This could come in handy.

Tier 3

Carrion Feeder, 1 rank. Your pet can feed on corpses in order to generate health and happiness. This will save on the necessity to carry food for your pet, or at least reduce it. This seems pretty minor to me, especially as there are options in that beast master tree for hunters that pretty much reduce the necessity to feed your pet to zero.

Tier 4

Cornered, 2 ranks. Your pet does 25% and 50% more damage and is 25% and 50% less likely to be critically hit when it is at less than 35% health itself. This sounds like an excellent talent, but I would expect it to be ineffective in PVP or raid. In PVP, other players are less likely to focus on your pet then on you, and he made you want to be careful how much threat you generate. I may be wrong about this though, and I would be glad to hear about anyone’s experience with this.

Feeding Frenzy, 2 ranks. Your pet does 6% and 12% more damage to targets when they are below 35% health. I like this a little more than the previous talent, especially since it helps bring down mobs faster. If I were to get a pet in this tree, I am pretty sure I would grab this talent.

Tier 5

Bullheaded, 1 rank. This talent helps keep control of your pet by removing all movement impairing effects, such as freezing or rooting. I can imagine this being quite useful, but I don’t know how important this is compared to other talents. There are times when I wish that my pet was not stunned, but it is relatively rare and does not last for very long.

Roar of Recovery, 1 rank. When your pet rulers it restores 30% of your Mana over 9 seconds. Since there is a cooldown of six minutes on this I am not sure how useful it turns out to be. Since aspect of the Viper pretty much restores mana over a few seconds anyway, this might be less useful than it appears.

Wolverine Bite, 1 rank. A special attack that does extra damage and cannot be dodged block or parried.

None of these talents is a standout for me. Even as a group they do not impress me that much, but it may be that I am underestimating their combined effectiveness. I might try out one of these pets as a mere curiosity, but as I don’t expect it would be that effective I cannot imagine that I will spend a lot of time leveling it to the point where I can give it a fair comparison. Therefore, I am asking for anyone who has experience with these to please comment.

Basics, Pets Basics, Hunter, Pets, Warcraft

The role of a Hunter in any group situation is to do as much damage as possible. It makes sense, therefore, that in this situation you would want to have a pet that can do as much damage as possible as well. Pets in the Ferocity tree are exactly what you need for this situation.

Cats, Wolves, and Raptors are the most common beasts picked for their Ferocity. Core Hounds and Devilsaurs are examples of exotic Ferocity pets.

Not only do Ferocity pets have the ability to do extra damage, but they also have some interesting talents that help them stay alive. This is important; after all, how can your pet do extra DPS when it is dead? However, it is vital that you do not pick too many talents that focus on defensive aspects for your pet. Remember that your job is to do damage, and all the talents that you choose for your Ferocity pet should aim towards that goal.

Tier 1

Cobra Reflexes (2 Ranks). this talent will increase your pet attacks feet by 15% and 30%. However, each attack will do less damage. The important effect here is that your pet attacks more frequently, and thus has more chance to proc certain skills. Ferocious Inspiration is one such proc that can help your group do a lot more damage. A must-have.

Dash or Dive (1 Rank). Increases your pet’s speed by 80% for 16 seconds. the faster your pet can get to an enemy, the faster it can do damage. This is a must have talent.

Great Stamina (3 Ranks). Increases your pet’s total stamina by 4%, 8%, and 12%. This is not what I would focus on for a ferocity pet. However, you may find that you need to put one or two talent points here, eventually.

Natural armor (2 Ranks). Increases your pet’s armor by 5% and 10%. Again, this is not the best talent for a ferocity pet to health, but if your pet is dying frequently, you may need to pick one talent in this or in Great Stamina.

Tier 2

Bloodthirsty (2 Ranks). Your pet’s attacks have a 10% and a 20% chance to increase its happiness by 5% and heal its total health by 5%. Obviously the healing is important, because your pet will stay alive longer; but the happiness is important too, as it will do 25% more damage than normal when it is happy.

Boar’s speed (1 Rank). Your pet’s movement speed is increased by 30%. This is a permanent increase, as opposed to the temporary increase in Dash or Dive. Once again, moving faster means it can get to the enemy faster, and thus do more damage.

Improved Cower (2 Ranks). When your pet cowers, it will also decrease the damage against it by 10% and 20%. If you find that your pet is getting aggro frequently, you may want to take one or two points in this talent. This would be applicable only in a group situation, where the tank is supposed to hold aggro. It is not a good talent to have when you are playing solo, because you want your pet to keep aggro as much as possible.

Spiked collar (3 Ranks). Your pet’s damage is increased by 3%, 6%, and 9%. Anything that increases damage is good, so you should grab as many points as you can here.

Tier 3

Avoidance (3 Ranks). The amount of damage that your pet takes from area of effect spells is decreased by 25%, 50%, and 75%. This is not especially useful for Ferocity pets, unless this is a specialty pet being used just for mobs that specialize in AoE damage.

Charge or Swoop (1 Rank). When your pet charges an enemy or swoops at it, it will increase its attack power by 25% on its next attack, as well as immobilize the enemy. This is a good one to have.

Lionhearted (2 ranks). Stun and fear effects are reduced by 15% and 30%. Again, this talent is a little bit questionable for ferocity pets. Unless you are fighting mobs that fear or stun frequently, this will be of little use to you. (However, if your pet is feared or stunned, it cannot do any damage.) Also, this talent does not lead to any Tier 4 or Tier 5 talents, so I never bother to get this talent.

Tier 4

Great Resistance (3 ranks). Damage to your pet by Arcane, Fire, Frost, Shadow, and Nature are reduced by 3%, 6%, and 9%. Since this does not focus on doing damage, and does not lead to any other talents, this is not worth having.

Heart of the Phoenix (1 rank). Allows you to instantly rez your pet after it dies in battle, with full health and focus. This is an absolute must-have talent for a Ferocity pet. Grab this as soon as you can. It has saved my life more time than I can count.

Spiders Bite (3 ranks). Your pet’s attacks have a 3%, 6%, and 9% extra critical strike chance. Since so many other skills and spells are invoked by critical strikes, it makes sense to get all three ranks of this talent.

Tier 5

Call of the Wild (1 rank). Your pet roars, thereby increasing both ranged attack and melee attack power for all members of your party that are within 40 yards by 10% for 20 seconds. This sounds like a lot of extra damage, but there is a five minute cool down, and it does not affect spell damage. That being said, extra damage is extra damage. You may want this one.

Lick your Wounds (1 rank). Your pet is healed for 100% of its health, channeled over 5 seconds. Again, this sounds useful. But in a group situation, it is the healer’s responsibility under normal circumstances to keep everyone healed. And since you would already have Heart of the Phoenix, you should not need this extra healing as well.

Rabid (1 rank). Your pet increases its attack power by 5%, with a 50% chance of increasing attack power by an additional 5%, stacking up to five times. This lasts for 20 seconds and has a 45 second cooldown. It is difficult to stack this five times and thereby get 25% extra damage, and it requires three points in the avoidance talent. But again, extra damage is extra damage, and this may well be worth having. It usually comes down to either this or Call of the Wild.

Basics, Pets Basics, Hunter, Pets, Warcraft