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

If you have never played WoW before, you may not know about training. It took me several levels to figure out that on every even-numbered level I would be able to go to the Hunter Trainer and learn some new stuff! The spells you learn are not only useful, but necessary as you progress. If you were to simply use the same thing over and over again (Auto Shot and Raptor Strike), as you rose in levels you would find yourself unable to cope with mobs the same level as you.

So it is important — nay, essential –  that you learn these spells at your first opportunity whenever you make it to the next even level. Actually, after level 60 you can learn new spells every level. Sometimes the spells you learn are merely higher “ranked” versions of spells you already know, but they are more powerful and should definitely be learned.

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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

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