The Burning Crusade Hunter Equipment Tactics

Gear is of course very important in PvP. Teamwork, strategy, and skills are all vital, but those will never completely overcome discrepancies in gear. If you think that by skill alone you can dominate other players, consider that eventually you'll meet someone who has just as much skill as you but far better gear, or even someone who's significantly worse than you but can kill you because of superior gear.

3.1 Weapons

3.1.1 Melee Weapons
Dual-wielding versus using two-handed weapons is one of those questions that pops up constantly. In general, dual wield in PvE and use a two-hander in PvP. The rationale for choosing 2H weapons is that 1) the overall stats from a 2H-er are typically better than two 1H-ers, 2) raptor strike is based on weapons damage and thus the higher the max damage of the weapon, the harder hitting the raptor strike, 3) you will not be spending much time in melee so melee DPS is not as important. If you take my advice, you will choose the highest damage 2H you can find with the best stats. A typical "poor" hunter will have a slow green "of the monkey/bandit" 2Her. Disregard this advice if you are in a bracket where you can get 2 1Hers that give better overall stats than 1 2Her, or if you constantly find yourself in prolonged melee situations (where the DPS of dual wielding will be superior to 1H). In that case, choose the 1Hers as long as you don't mind weaker raptor strikes.

A final issue to note is that dual wielding allows for an enchant on each weapon. This difference is particularly important to twink hunters in lower brackets such as when considering between +25agi to 2H or two +15agi to 1H.

3.1.2 Ranged Weapons
Similar to with melee weapons, generally you will want to pick whatever ranged weapon has the highest max damage, particularly since aimed shot, scattershot, and multishot are based on max damage. This will mean the weapon has a relatively slow speed, since comparable weapons in a level bracket will have the same overall DPS (the higher the max damage, the slower the weapon must be).

Note that weapons damage is normalized such that faster bows will still hit hard, but the normalization does not completely negate the difference since it only affects RAP, not the base damage of the weapon. I won't go into all the math; but suffice to say, a slower bow with high max damage will hit significantly harder with aimed and multishot. This becomes even more important with critical hits, once you factor in the various talents that increase critical damage.

An additional minor consideration is that slower bows use less ammo, and incur less repair cost since there is a chance of the weapon suffering damage each time it is *used*, meaning that everytime you actually shoot the weapon, that is when there is a chance of damage. If you're using something the Hurricane ( http://thottbot.com/?i=13869 ) with Improved Aspect of the Hawk and Rapid Fire on frequently, your repair costs are going to be fairly high, not to mention the cost of ammo. There are at least mods out there that will automatically use junk ammo for those shots and stings that don't rely on weapon damage, but it's a pain to have to manage this.

One advantage must be mentioned about faster bows, which is that they are better for caster interrupts. A fast bow with Improved Aspect of the Hawk and Rapid Fire along with a pet can lock casters down. Also, +dmg scopes on bows affect each shot, they do not add DPS (i.e. unlike ammunition), and thus a faster weapon will benefit more from scopes.

Another dilemma is whether it is worth paying much more money for a blue ranged weapon that has slightly higher DPS than a green one. The answer is that a small amount of additional DPS is not *that* important for PvP. DPS really becomes noticeable over very long PvE boss fights where you can shoot uninterrupted for quite a while. Apart from that, doing one more DPS at lvl19 isn't going to make or break your game. It is far more important to look at weapon stats and max damage, and much of your DPS will come from your attack power versus the bow's damage itself.

Finally, sometimes the question is asked of whether to use a gun or bow. Aesthetic differences aside and racial bonuses aside, a reason to use a gun is if engineered bullets are available at that level. At lvl70, blue arrows are much cheaper than blue bullets. Some people prefer bows because they are less noisy, and thus less likely to attract attention.

3.2 Armor

3.2.1 Stats
As explained in the stats section, focus on armor that gives +crit, +agi, +sta, and +ATK.

3.2.2 Mail
At lvl40, hunters begin wearing mail. Mail armor mitigate physical damage by a significant amount over leather armor, and thus can be thought of somewhat as giving extra health against physical attacks. Hunters after 40 should transition primarily to mail, since there is no drawback to using it. If you're on alliance side, you will find plenty of mail in the AH since we are the only class that primarily uses it (versus on horde side, where you'll be competing against shamans, although fortunately shamans tend to prefer different stats).

Don't discount leather completely, however. Some pieces of leather armor such as from easy quests give noticeably superior stats than green mail, so it may be worth sacrificing some armor in order to get better stats. Also, due to poor hunter itemization at the time of the writing of this guide, it is sometimes difficult to find good hunter items that focus on our primary stats. A lot of mail is hybrid shaman gear which contains properties that are not as useful in PvP such as mana regen. Sometimes, regretably, hunters resort to wearing leather to improve their DPS.

3.3 Enchants
Most enchants have no level requirement so they are particularly useful in lower brackets. +7sta means a lot more at lvl10 than at lvl60. Some feel that using such enchants particularly in lower brackets is unethical for various reasons. I am not going to comment on that here; it is up to you to decide whether that is an issue. Suffice to say, there are many enchants available to us and they can significant improve our performance.

Even if you do not "twink" your character with all the best enchants, it is worthwhile to research which enchants are relatively cheap and thus worth getting anyway. Also, learn about enchant component prices, since those tend to fluctuate in the AH. If you're patient, you can get enchant components at very cheap prices. Adding to this, often farmers sell enchants on trade chat for very cheap, because they are not able to use the AH (this is particularly an issue amongst farmers who illegally share an account). Finally, once in a blue moon, an enchanter will sell enchants for free. All in all, if you're patient and somewhat researched, you can keep up to date on enchants without blowing a huge amount of money on them.

Similar to enchants, you can also buy armor kits and scopes to be applied to your items, although unlike enchants these have level requirements. Note that the level requirement for these is based on your item level, not your own level or the item's minimum level requirement. You can often through questing get items that you can still use at your level even though they are high level items. One noted example is the Master Hunter's Rifle ( http://thottbot.com/?i=38532 ), which is a lvl43 item that is available for completing a lvl29 quest. At level 29, you could buy a sniper scope ( http://thottbot.com/?i=5253 ) but you can't apply it yourself because you are not level 40. However, you can get someone to apply it for you through trading as with any other enchant.

3.5 PvP rewards

The primary reason for playing battlegrounds is of course for the rewards. Battlegrounds offer a variety of good rewards, some of which are better than comparable loot from of the same level bracket. In general, PvP rewards are suited for PvP and not as useful for PvE, and vice versa. This is perhaps an obvious point, but it was not always true prior to the PvP rewards undergoing a revamp. In general, PvP rewards emphasize survivability (resilience, sta) whereas PvE rewards focus on DPS and sustainability, such as with mana regen.

3.6 Buying Armor

Be patient checking the AH for items. Item prices fluctuate tremendously, particularly on epics, and you can sometimes get epics for really cheap through trade chat via farmers (who need to sell their items immediately because they can't use the AH). I've seen purples in my 40-49 bracket fluctuate between 20g and 200g.

You can check thottbot (http://www.thottbot.com) for the items usable in your bracket. Note however that this is not always so obvious because unlike in the case of weapons, you can currently only search by armor level, not level requirement, so you may miss high level armor that are still usable at your level. I usually search for a few levels above (e.g. lvl 45-55) and then manually see what's available at lvl49 for me. Also, you may miss BoE or quest items entirely since those items themselves may have no level requirement.

3.7 Instance Loot

Even if you're rich, you won't necessarily be able to get the best loot for your bracket unless you plan accordingly. The best loot tends to be bind-on-pickup, and often you can get loot that is overpowered for your bracket by running higher-level instances. Kaliban's Class Loot Lists ( http://69.41.171.43/hunter.htm ) is one of the best resources out there for figuring out what instances for each class.

Other than looking at Kaliban's master hunter loot list, you can also compare your equipment against players who advertise their profiles in your bracket. Allazkhazam ( http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/psearch.html ) and thottbot ( http://www.thottbot.com ) both allow you to search on profiles. You can search by some relevant term such as ordering by HK for all level49 hunters. Looking at these profiles won't necessarily give you the very best equipped hunters, however, since there are comparatively few players who actually advertise themselves on those sites. Still, it is better than nothing.

Speaking of which, one important note worth mentioning is that if you plan carefully ahead for 20-29 bracket, you can get the coveted Master Hunter's Rifle/Bow ( http://thottbot.com/?i=38532 ), which is a lvl43 item! I will later post the gory details of how to acquire this weapon, but if you get it, you will have a sizeable advantage over all but the best twinked characters in your bracket. The MHR/B not only is significantly better than anything else you can buy or get in 20-29, but it also can be equipped with a +7 scope since it is a high level item. Other weapons in this bracket are stuck with an inferior scope.