The Burning Crusade Hunter's PvP Introduction
This guide serves as an introduction for how to PvP effectively as a hunter. It contains comprehensive information about tactics, gear, PvP strategies, and basically anything that might be remotely useful for PvP. This is not a PvE guide nor is it a general PvP guide, although some of the information in here may still be relevant towards those.
Do NOT ask me questions about specs or any subject outside of this guide. Start a new thread and you'll get a fast answer.
0.1 Author Background
I am a Rank13 Justicar hunter on a PvP server, and I captain a gladiator rated 5v5 ranked arena team. Perhaps my most noble accomplishment was grinding to rank13 in the old honor system without ever AFKing. As such, I have considerable experience with PvP in a variety of settings. I am not by a long shot the best or even one of the better hunters, but I am writing this as a hope that it is beneficial to you despite my limitations.
I am also the MVP poster of the Starcraft Strategy & Tactics forum (shockwave[xpow]), for which I also wrote the fundamentals guide to Starcraft.
0.2 Why PvP?
Your choice of PvP, PvE, RP, etc., is simply that -- your own personal choice. I am not going to try to convince you to PvP and will not insult you if you prefer PvE, but I will try to fairly list some of the more important tradeoffs to consider.
Some people prefer to play in an environment where they don't have to worry about being ganked or corpse camped or what not (PvE); others enjoy the additional excitement and unpredictability of having to deal with players as well as mobs (PvP), and perhaps want the opportunity to be the ones doing the ganging and corpse camping occasionally. Of course, whether you are on a PvP or PvE server does not affect your ability to participate in BG, which will often be the bulk of your PvP experience. One thing to note is that you can switch from a PvP server to a PvE server, but not the other way around, although server transfers do cost real money. If you have no strong leanings, pick a PvP server so that you have more flexibility in case you need to transfer realms in the future.
In all honesty, some of whether you enjoy PvP and BGs will depend on how good you are. If you are getting consistently killed by random enemies who are significantly lower level than you, chances are you will not enjoy PvP. I did not intend to actively PvP at all on my server; but as an experiment, I joined a 10-19 WSG, and I have loved PvP ever since my first game. Your experiences may differ; nobody will blame you if they do. I would say that if you have reservations about PvP, just get to lvl18-ish quickly, then try out some 10-19BGs to see if you are able to do well or at least think you have a reasonable chance of getting as good as you think you need to be.
0.3 Why PvP as a Hunter?
This guide intends to cover basics so that you have the best chance of maximizing your PvP potential as a hunter. Hunters are a popular class because they have excellent DPS, good survivability, and many important support abilities that help our team directly in the various PvP settings.
- In world PvP, we have tracking to alert us of nearby hostile players, and the ability to start combat at long range and kite. We can feign death or use our pet to take care of mobs if an opponent engages us while we are in combat. We have good survivability in world PvP and are not an easy class to gank.
- In battlegrounds, we tend to easily top DPS charts and have a large amount of survivability. Due to our effectiveness at extreme range, we can stand in the back and snipe opponents. Our traps are tremendously helpful in BGs for slowing down flag runners or crowd controlling individual opponents.
- In arenas, we are abusively powerful in 2v2/3v3's given the proper PvP spec. In 5v5 arenas, we provide a lot of different and valuable support although our DPS is somewhat secondary to that.
