Hunter Roles and Tactics

The following is the real meat of our Hunter guide. If you haen't, be sure to go over the basics to get a better understanding of the basic things with the class. This part of our Hunter guide goes over tactics you can use in combat to be more efficent, roles you will play in groups, great U.I. tips, and helpful macros!

Ranged Combat

Use Hunter's Mark
Lay a trap, if possible, between you and the enemy. Stand behind the trap.
Send in your pet!
Lead in with either Aimed Shot or Multishot (if no other enemies are around) which will draw the enemy towards you and over the trap (unless you want that for emergencies).
Apply the proper sting.

From here you decide if you want to melee it to death, kite it around, or let your pet use "Growl" to steal aggro and pluck away with arrows. All options are fine, it really depends on what works best for your character.

As a ranged class though you should probably feign death to pass aggro back to your pet and then back away and DPS the target down while your pet takes the hits. Remember to heal your pet every once in a while so that it does not die while you are fighting the enemy.

Melee Combat

Assuming you aren't at the point where you are raiding, you should probably have Raptor Strike. Raptor Strike is a very cheap skill (Talent wise) and is great for melee combat. You will see lots of mention about you not worrying about making the best out of your melee abilities, and that's right! However, when a mob is in melee rang and around 25% health why should you put forth the effort to chase it off and go back to ranged combat? Just whip out your weapons and melee. This should be done in moderation though and only when you know you can win. In general you should back out and try to re-establish range.

You can use any of the methods listed in ranged combat or PvP combat to try to get range back. Also remember that scare beast can be a great range tool against animal targets. Be careful though as in a packed area it could bring in more opponents.

PvP Combat

While in PvP combat your goal as always is to stay at as much range as possible. To do this you use traps, wing clip, concussion shot, and any other talent based abilities you have. You will get caught at times though, and this is when it is critical to remember that you have aspect of the monkey and can switch over to it quickly. As soon as you get some space you can either switch back to another aura or leave it on for the next time they close.

Traps are critical at high levels and you have many choices. Sometimes frost trap or ice trap is a great option, while against cloth wearers snake trap can be even better since it does damage as well. If your ever in doubt though, an ice trap is great as it takes one person out of the fight for a while.

If you get stuck fighting a Druid, you can break out your handy scare beast ability to sent them running for a while, to give you time to recover.

Lastly, you can only shoot at opponents in front of you, so you need to learn the jump shot ability. A jump shot is usually done with an arcane shot, and is basically a fast mouse flick and key press. What you do is run from the enemy (using mouse movement) and then jump in the air. While in the air you flick the mouse to the side so that you are facing backwards, then press the button on your keyboard you have mapped for your arcane shot. Once you shot you flick the mouse back so you are still running away from your opponent when you land. It can be difficult to learn but is a critical PvP ability. Whenever concussive shot is off cooldown, it is also a great shot to use for a jump shot.

Choosing a Weapon

There is a good debate between various players on what is the best weapon to use. Many will argue that a high DPS two-handed weapon with a good proc will be best while others argue that dual wielding will provide the most DPS. Well, to tell you the truth both of them are wrong.

With the Hunter class you rarely want to maximize your melee DPS. Your only use for melee damage is to finish off something without spending ammunition or to wing clip something. With that in mind, it doesn’t really matter what you have equipped. Well it does, in a way.

You want to maximize your Agility and Attack Power. Therefore, you want to use the best combination of weapons to produce as much bonus to your Agility and Attack Rating (Attack Power before the expansion). This can be a very nice spear with tons of Agility and an Agility enchantment or two very nice axes both enchanted with Agility.

If you really want to see what's best for melee damage, check out this link (our forums). It goes over the numbers involved in picking out what set of weapons produces the best DPS.

Aspects

Aspects are very similar to the blessings or auras of the paladin class. They have many beneficial effects such as increasing your dodge, range attack or run speed. They do not have a time limit and will remain on until you activate another aspect or until you turn them off.

Aspect of the Monkey: Increases chance to dodge by 8%.
Aspect of the Hawk: Increases ranged attack power.
Aspect of the Cheetah: Increases run speed by 30%, dazed when you take damage.
Aspect of the Beast: Become untrackable.
Aspect of the Pack: Same as Cheetah, but for your entire group.
Aspect of the Wild: Adds nature resistance to all nearby party members.
Aspect of the Vyper: Restores mana to you over time.

The majority of the time you should be using Aspect of the Hawk to increase your ranged damage. Whenever you are in melee you should, of course, be using Aspect of the Monkey. Aspect of the Cheetah/Pack are best used for traveling on safe roads or for when you need to escape and you can risk the dazed.

Aspect of the Wild is for when you're raiding or facing enemies with a lot of poison damage. Aspect of the Beast is for general PvP use when you can't think of anything else to run at that time.

For Raiding at least on boss fights you will tend to use Aspect of the Vyper to restore mana. For trash Mobs this usually isn't an issue, but switching over to in on longer fights raises your overall DPS as it allows you to continue to use special shots for a longer period of time.

Roles

Hunters are a valuable asset to any group. They provide amazing damage, great utility, and fill multiple group roles. They can act as the group’s puller, off-tank, constant source of DPS, or one of the many other roles Hunters can fill! Hunters aren’t just group friendly, with their pet they are unstoppable in PvE by themselves or in a duo!

Group - In groups the Hunter will generally act as the puller, pulling the enemies to the group with their long range. Their use of feign death can make the enemy leave the Hunter alone and be easily picked up by their pet or the tank. After the pull (or if someone else pulls) then the Hunter simply buffs their group with aspects/aura as needed and does sustainted DPS on the main target. There are times when a Hunter will be needed to kite enemies, but that's not until later levels.

It should be noted that while grouping, it's best to avoid Multishot and Aimed Shot. Both of these skills can do a lot of damage and draw aggro to the Hunter. The various stings and Arcane Shot will be good enough for DPS while keeping the Hunter from stealing aggro of the enemy!
Solo - Using their pet to tank, Hunters are extremly versatile while soloing. Their high powered ranged attacks combined with the pets ability to keep an enemy at range guarentees them a good ability to slay enemies solo!
PvP - Multishot is great for doing wide spread massive damage (but don't break Crowd Control!) along with Concussive Shot for stopping people in their tracks make Hunters very powerful in PvP.

Basic Macros

Hunters more than almost any other class, really need to use macros. There are a huge number of things that they can be used for, but the most common is shot rotation, misdirection and pet control. Here are just a few examples, more can be found in the specific build guides that we have.

Steady Shot Rotation

This macro can be used with or without the second line, which is there for beast mastery hunters. If you do not have kill command simply remove the line. The macro ensures that you can not interupt your autoshot with a steady shot and lower your damage. Simply replace your steady shot on your toolbar with this macro.

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/castsequence reset=2/target !Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();

Misdirection

This macro with misdirect to your focus target (which should be set to your tank with /focus "tanks name") or if the tank is dead or not set, to your pet.

#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus,help][help][target=pet,exists,nodead] Misdirection