by Oreo
The Hunter is known for their pets, their long-range, sustained DPS, and their traps.The three trees of a Hunter are all viable for a hunter to choose for leveling, player versus player combat, or end game raids or instances, but since only two of the three trees allows for the complete use of talent points the player is forced to cross trees, hybridising into other talent trees. The three trees all have options to offer for utility, open DPS, and survivability.
Beast Mastery
Beast Mastery offers the highest potential personal DPS in the game for hunters in the raiding environment. This statement is only true if said hunter can use his pet effectively and understands the importance of ranged attack speed in rotation. BM is also the fastest leveling build, as uptime is limited only by the health of your high-armor pet.
BM Raid DPS
This build offers the generic template for all raiding BM hunters. The two points in Improved Revive Pet can be moved into Improved Mend Pet, but in emergency situations (and remember, Improved Mend Pet does NOT increase the healing you do) the Faster Rez will do you more of a favor.The points in Efficiency can also be moved to Improved Hunter’s Mark to see an increase DPS (provided you have the mana to do so). In the interest of pure DPS, no other talent points should be moved. For instance, Animal Handler is an essential raiding talent, and the loss of ONE POINT from Frenzy is not even noticeable, as your pet will still be under the affects of Frenzy most-to-all of the time. Finally, it is important to note that Serpent’s Swiftness is the primary reason this build creates the highest Sustained DPS for Raiding Hunters. If this talent were removed, the spec would no longer be viable.
BM Grinding/Farming Build
This build, while not altogether very different from the Raid DPS build, is focused more on your ability to tag the target, and your pet’s ability to kill it. Improved Aspect of the Hawk is not included because Viper is more commonly used for grinding. The points here are very flexible based on your grinding style and location (less competitive areas will not require the increased range).
BM PVP
While similar to the Farming BM Build, this spec is more survival oriented, and provides you with a more powerful Concussive Shot. Intimidate is also there, and is pretty awesome if you can time itcorrectly. Again, this spec is VERY flexible, but in arena, the BM’s utilities are limited as opponents with higher HP are able to break stuns, if not outlast the duration of The Beast Within. In addition, spending 41 points for The Beast Within sacrifices a vast plenum of abilities from the Marksmanship and Survival tree that might better serve an arena group. The value of TBW as a CC-breaker has eroded greatly with the revision of PvP trinkets and increasing amounts of health and damage mitigation that players can obtain. This has returned Beast Mastery largely to the domain of PvE.
Flaws of Beast Mastery
A large part of the Hunter’s damage is imbued in the pet, who must be alive in order to use Bestial Wrath/ Beast Within. This is frequently seen as a fatal flaw to the build. However, in PvP situations the pet is often ignored or exceptionally tough to kill with a skilled healer. In raids, the hunter alone should have no trouble keeping their pet alive with Mend Pet and careful control of the pet’s actions (treat your pet as a player, do YOU stand in Cave-ins?). Should the pet die,the Beast Master can recover quickly and cheaply with Improved Revive Pet. Nevertheless, Beast Mastery play-style requires a significant amount of diligence in managing the pet’s actions and threats on top of managing threats to the hunter.
Marksmanship
This strength of this tree lies in burst damage. Your shots are farslower than that of the BM hunter, but you hit quite a bit harder.This tree is also the land of PVP talents.
Marks/Surv Raid DPS Build
This build focuses on the talents that increase your attack power the most. You also happen to get some of the nicest PVP talents that come with the tree, like Scatter Shot. At the very bottom of the Mark’s tree, Silencing shot is an option fir 5 mans (not much raid use) that can be switched for Deterrence in Survival to add more PVP goodness. The waste points in Concussive Barrage and Improved Wing Clip are also movable, as are the 5 points in Efficiency (to Imp HM, but you willmost likely need the mana).
Marks/BM Raid DPS Build 2
This build is similar to the previous, but it assumes you have enough hit to not require Surefooted. As a Hunter gears up into Tier 6 and see their hit disappear, this will not be a favorable spec. It combines the burst damage of Marks with some added pet damage capabilities.
Marks/BM Farming
Very similar to the above build, bundled with increased range and more Intellect.
Marks PVP
For Arena, Marksmanship offers the Hunter the potential for a ranged stun through Improved Concussive Shot, as well as an spell interrupts with Silencing Shot. Scatter Shot is also vital as it is the only ranged ability the Hunter can use at point blank. Improved Stings makes the Hunter’s various debuffs more effective and also creates a potential for healers to waste mana if their cure fails. This on top of a Scorpid pet, along with the interrupts from Scatter Shot and Silencing Shot, make the hunter a powerful counter to strong healers and teams that rely on them to outlast opponents. Typically, Marksmanship PvP builds are integrated with Survival talents to increase their health pool provide anti-melee support through Survivalist, Improved Wing Clip, and Entrapment. Barrage and Improved Barrage significantly boosts Multi-Shot, which can be used to hitplayers out of line of sight.
Flaws of Marksmanship
This is a PvP Talent tree, yet the best Raid Specs all include at least 10 points from this tree. A design flaw yes, but as far as any actual flaws, the core Marks Builds have less sustained DPS and are less mana efficient than BM builds.
Survival
Due to the fact that Trueshot Aura does not scale with gear and Marks DPS seems to falter on longer fights, Survival is often toted as “The Alternative to BM.” This tree is about Agility, which always has been and always will be the PRIMARY Hunter Stat.
Survival Raid DPS
This tree focuses on the PVE elements of the poorly designed Survival Tree. The best parts of this spec are Lightning Reflexes, Expose Weakness and Surefooted. It skips Wyvern Sting, Readiness, and Master Tactician in favor of the DPS talents that the Marks tree has to offer. Thrill of the Hunt is a big option, and can be switched for points in Focused Fire. Wing Clip is a waste point and can be moved anywhere in that tier. If you decide that Readiness, a 5 minute cooldown used only to lessen time on a 3 Cooldown, is worth spending 1 point in Wyvern Sting and wasting 5 points in Master Tactician, sacrifice the BM talents and some Thrill of the Hunt.
Survival Maximum Agility
This build gets you 2% more agility than the previous if you think you really need it. The points to get that far down in Marks are definitely flexible.
Surv/BM Hybrid Grinding/Farm Build
Both the Raiding Build and this build are about equally viable for solo farming. This HYBRID spec just introduces some downtime-lessening talents, and shifts the focus away from you (and since Growl doesn’t generate much aggro, giving more damage dealing abilities to your pet over you help quite a bit).
Surv PVP Spec
This spec builds on the Hunter’s ability to be completely annoying. Made for spamming Frost Trap (praying for Entrapment) and Concussive Shot, while giving you Wyvern Sting, this build contains so much PVP usefulness in a VERY big package. However, it lacks the burst DPS provided by the Marks PVP spec, so most Arena hunters will stick with marks PVP. (Again, if you want Readiness, your choice. Using it on Deterrence could be valuable).
Flaws of Survival
Every raid only needs one. This spec is very useful, and has relatively high DPS (although BM hunters will put you to shame- MOST of the time), but the highlights disappear if you are the SECOND Surv Hunter in a raid. Expose Weakness does not stack, and the Surv Hunter with the Highest Agility in the raid is the ONLY one that needs to be there.
Which build is best for _____?
Heroics
In heroic instances a hunter is required to CC targets, forcing them to either excel at kiting, or spec into a build with clever traps and the reliance that those traps will work. Heroic CC This build leaves 42 points open for whichever route the hunter wishes to take, either Beast Mastery, Marksman, or continuing Survival. Note that having 2 points in Trap Mastery is an option, but most sources beleive it to be a waste.
Raiding
Beast Mastery is the first and foremost DPS raiding build. In fights where Pet Survivability is really difficult (and with higher gear levels), Survival becomes about equal. Survival scales well with the Agility your gear has on it, increasing your personal DPS very much through high Crit percentages and high Attack Power. If Surv Hunter with 800 Agility and a BM Hunter were in the same raid on Leotheras, but the BM Hunter’s pet dies, and sometimes more than once, the advantage of Surv on that fight becomes clear. While Marks is also viable at high gear levels, Survival is THE alternative to BM.
PvP
The Hardcore PVP Hunters are generally Marks/Surv and may or may not take the health talent from the BM tree. Marks was designed as the PVP tree for hunters, and the design holds true, as it offers more burst DPS, less crit-reliant DPS, and the very utile Silencing Shot and Scatter Shot. Improved Concussive Shot is also a must-have for PvP.
Solo DPS
Beast Mastery and Marksman builds are both very viable soloing specs. Survival not completely bad, but killing can be slower, since you miss out on the Improved Multishot damage. Scatter shot is also very useful in soloing.Overall Hunters are a fun class to play with but quite buggy on private servers. If you prefer to play on retail nothing bugs.
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