part 1 (equipment, profession, pets)
Okay. As of right now, I have a 54 dwarf hunter on thunderhorn that is almost pure marksman spec. This is pretty much a summary of how it?s been treating me, and a guide on the aspects of a marksman hunter based on my experiences.
First of all. The weapon. Since the hunter is a ranged fighter, your ranged weapon is going to be one of the most important things. Generally, whether or not the weapon is a bow, an crossbow, or a gun doesn?t matter. The exception to this is if you?re a dwarf, in which case guns might treat you better since you hit more often. Don?t go near thrown weapons. That?s all I can say. It should be noted that if you use guns, finding an engineer to make one for you can be very worthwhile. The ones made by engineers are usually much better than field drops and store bought, even up to level 60. Very few field drops can beat the flawless arcanite rifle and Core marksman rife, and the ones that do aren?t very easy to find. As far as weapon stats go, there are two main types. Those with a relatively low damage per shot value but a high firing rate, and those with a high damage per shot value and a lower firing rate. As to which one you go with is up to your preferences. The pros and cons of each are as follows.
Weapons with a low damage per shot and high firing rate are nice for several reasons. Since marksman spec generally increases your chance of getting critical hits, probability says that the more you fire, the more likely over time you are to get a critical hit. These are also nice because when attacking casters, there is a better chance of delaying their cast, since each hit will set back their casting bar a little. A higher firing rate means that you can crank out stings and special shots faster, since their cool down is usually the same as your weapon, and can also sometimes deal just a little bit more damage before an approaching enemy gets inside your minimum range, meaning you might actually be able to take them down with your hand weapons.
Now, weapons of this style have 2 distinct disadvantages. The first is that if we?re talking increased damage abilities such as aimed shot and multi-shot, they don?t do anywhere near as much damage as the high damage per shot weapons. This is amplified if we?re talking about critical hits, where the damage difference is at least doubled. The second disadvantage is perhaps the biggest. A weapon of this style tends to have a firing rate almost double of its high damage per shot counterparts. This also means you chew through ammo a lot faster. A hunter without ammo is a dead hunter. On one particular occasion, I was going through Mauradon in a group with another hunter. At the time, I had a dark iron rifle, and he had the hurricane bow. Now, it is true that since the hurricane has a better dps than the dark iron rifle, he probably did way more damage than I did in the majority of the instance. However, right before our group reached the princess, he?d run out of ammo, while I still had half of a shot pouch full. While it is true he probably should have brought more arrows with him, at that point my group didn?t care about what should have happened as much as what was happening right now. That?s the first time I?ve seen a hunter try to tank, and it wasn?t very pretty.
The other type of ranged weapon, the ones with high damage per shot and low rate, have their own pros and cons as well. The most obvious advantage is that damage shots like aimed shot and multi-shot hurt like no other, especially when they crit. At level 49, I was sometimes getting 1200 damage crits with aimed shot, something the horde in warsong gulch was not very happy about when I targeted their casters. Another major advantage is that you don?t run out of ammo very often. Counter to the above section, these weapons go through ammo half as fast as the fast rate low damage weapons, so they have a better chance of lasting you through a long instance. It?s for these reasons that I actually prefer these weapons to faster ones.
Now their cons are pretty much the opposite of the pros of the other type. Being slower, it means that if you have someone coming right for you, you won?t be able to do as much damage in a short amount of time. They also mean that while your critical hits hurt like nothing else, they don?t occur as often. Finally, if you need to get a number of stings and shots out that aren?t dependent on damage, a faster weapon will get the job done sooner.
The second part of the ranged weapon is the ammo you use. The biggest question hunters have is ?Should I cough up the money and resources to have an engineer make crafted, or are the store bought ones good enough?? The answer is yes and no. For enemies that are common and have relatively low hp, the store bought ones are probably going to be enough, since you only use about 10 shots on each. However, things like bosses and plate armored players are a different story. Since these can take many shots and a very long time to take down (dragons can take several minutes), that extra damage conferred by the crafted ammo will stack up after time. Of course, if you?re an engineer yourself, this isn?t much of an issue, since you can just make it yourself when you need to.
The second aspect of a hunter is his pet. While not quite as important as to a beastmaster hunter, this is still an essential part of a hunters fighting style. For marksman hunters, you typically want to find a pet with high damage giving ability. While this may seem contrary to the point that you are doing most of the damage, here?s why. A marksman hunter causes some of the worst threat in WoW, since they often do at least 1000 damage in the first few seconds of combat. You need a pet that can keep threat and do damage as well as possible, to keep the enemy focused on them and not on you. Now, you also need to make sure your pet lasts longer as well. When it came to paying for my pets abilities in training points, I spent all in increased stamina and armor before taking type resistances. The most common type of damage your pet will take is straight melee damage. After you have done this, put points into resistance for the most common types of spell damage that you run into. Since casters usually don?t target pets with their spells that damage only one target, this is usually fire, frost, or arcane, as there aren?t many shadow and nature area of effect spells.
Additional items you take, namely your armor and hand weapons, are also very important. This is because just about any green quality or above armor increase your stats. The most important statistic for a marksman hunter is agility. It affects your chance to hit, chance to critical, chance to dodge, and most importantly, your ranged damage. Any armor/weapon item that adds to your agility and that is appropriate for your level (ie. Leather for 1-39, mail for 40+) is a good item. It should be noted that you want to replace your leather with mail as soon as possible, since it?s just so much better at resisting damage. Now, there are several items that have an animal name attached. Example would be travelers cape of the falcon. The animal names indicate which stats the item increases. The most important ones for a hunter are items of the wolf, falcon, tiger, and monkey. These increase agility and one other stat. As to which ones you chose, I leave that up to you, since all can be beneficial in different ways. Wolf increases spirit, which is good for long battles and instances, since you?ll recover faster and be able to use shots sooner when you run out of mana. Tiger increases strength. I don?t see this being used often, since if you?re close enough for strength to matter, it?s typically a bad situation. Of course, it does increase your chance of survival if your pet up and dies, so I wouldn?t say ignore it completely. Monkey items increase stamina, which is always great, since no matter how good you are, you?re going to take damage. This lets you live longer, which is good news for you, and bad news for your target. Items of the falcon are one of my favorites, since they increase intelligence. This means more mana, and that means you can use your damaging shots and stings a lot more before running out.
Hand weapons can vary. If at all possible, once you get to a level where you aren?t going to replace them rapidly, work on getting a +15 agility enchant. Obviously if you?re fighting with dual-wield, having this enchant on each weapon gives a whopping +30 agility bonus. However, good single handed weapons with agility bonuses aren?t all that common, so it may be best to go with a two-hander that gives a high agility bonus to start with. If you do the math, Lord alexanders battle axe (+17 agility) with the agility enchant will give a better bonus than two one handers with no bonus and 2 agility enchants.
As for professions, the two I see most often are engineering and leatherworking. Being an engineer is a very good thing. If you use guns, you can often make better than ones you find, you can make crafted ammo (useful even for bows, since thorium shells can be converted to thorium arrows), and the big bonus is that you can put scopes on your weapons, increasing their damage. While it is true engineering isn?t a very big money maker, it does give you some very nice toys to play with as well. I specialized in gnomish, and it?s a very nasty surprise to someone when they get inside my minimum fire range and then get nailed by the death ray. The explosives are also a nice touch, because some of them cause stun, which can allow you to get outside your minimum range if you?ve been charged and pop off a few shots before they come to. As for leather working?it?s okay. While it is great in the beginning, I find that later on, the mail pieces that you can make are more designed for shamans than hunters, and few confer agility. It is more of a money maker than engineering, but for personal benefit, it?s not quite as useful as engineering.
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