Hunter class mentor is Yellowtail.

Shots:

Aimed Shot
Multi Shot
Serpent Sting

Arcane shot is a waste of mana in PVE. You also do much less overall damage by using arcane shot. Don't believe me? Ask me about raiding with better equipped hunters, and how I do on the dmg chart.

Spec:

My Spec


Marks or Survival, depending on your gear.

The Trueshot Aura talent in the Marksmanship tree is awesome if you have less than 400 base agility. If you have 400 or more, you're going to gain more attack power from the 15% agility talent, but all the DPS warriors and rogues will whine and bitch at you.

Make them happy by taming a worg in LBRS and using furious howl.

Other:

Use FD every time it's up in a boss fight. If you do this, you won't ever pull aggro off the tank. Use your rapid fire ability when you're low on mana (especially if wisdom is judged on the target). Have your Disengage ability on your action bar for when your FD gets resisted, it's worked many many times for me.

Use explosive traps to aid in AOE damage. Stay out of combat or FD to be able to set an explosive trap in a group of mobs that have been taunted by the tank/imobilized by a frost nova/etc.

Raptor strike is a powerful hit if you have a super slow weapon. I can crit a warrior for 1200 with one raptor strike.

Wing clip is your friend! It helps you and your fellow raiders get away from mobs that want to eat their faces. Improved wing clip and counterattack are golden for this kind of thing.

31 marks is generally the way to go.

Ranged weapon spec, barrage, and TSA are very nice additions to damage.

Along with this, go with 5 points in imp AotH and 15 in survival, i took 3 beast slaying, 2 humanoid slaying, 5 imp Wing Clip, 5 survivalist

For a more pvp viable spec, 30Surv/21Marks is good, but you miss out on the nice Imp Hawk speed boost. Like Velan said, your agi must be very high also to overcome the damage boost from marks. The agi cap is arguably in the range of 400-450 base+gear.

Also,

8/8 GS >>>>>> anthing pre 8/8DS or possibly 3/8DS + 5/8 strikers

set bonus FTW

Sooo, beast spec sucks?

Aritana is 31 Beast/ 20 Marks, and while its good for farming, and as much as I love Nanuk, shes pretty useless in a raid =/

<takes notes> What do you suggest, Velan? Know I have <crappy> gear.

For PVE, hunters are generally extremely easy to play. There are some things that are much more involved, like pulling, marking targets if you're the MA, and controlling your pet - but in general, about 90% or so of your damage will come from knowing just a few simple things:

The 10 second shot rotation

The most important thing for any hunter to know in PVE is the 10 second shot rotation. I wish I had saved the old posts on the Hunter forums by Hodap, if you ever read those, all of this was explained in great detail. The basic idea behind the shot rotation is:

00 Multi shot
00 Auto shot
01 Begin casting Aimed Shot
04 Aimed shot fired
04 Auto shot
07 Auto shot
10 Repeat from 00

*if your weapon is fast enough, you may have 4 autoshots - if I recall correctly then using 4 autoshots is optimal for weapons with 2.9 or faster speed, assuming a 15% haste quiver*

Notice that the ideal shot rotation has 3-4 auto shots, 1 aimed shot, 1 multi shot, and ZERO arcane shots. Extensive calculations have been posted on the Hunter forums to show that aimed shot is far superior to arcane shot (although really it's not even remotely close, so calculations shouldn't really be necessary).

So:

Lesson #1 - Arcane shot sucks. The only reasons to ever use arcane shot are (a) if you'll be interrupted or in the deadzone before 3 seconds goes off (like lava surgers), ( you need to shoot while moving (happens alot in pvp, should never happen in pve), © the mob/player is about to die and you want to steal the killing blow from Matron. Arcane shot will still suck if you spec for improved arcane shot. Arcane shot will still suck if you get all the +damage hunter gear in the game. Arcane shot will still suck no matter what you do, always use aimed shot.

Lesson #2 - Aimed shot takes 3 seconds, but does not affect the autoshot timer. This is a very important concept to understand. Basically this means that if you fire an autoshot and immediately start to cast aimed shot, you will autoshoot immediately after your aimed shot goes off. So for a very slow weapon, if you normally have 3 seconds between your autoshots, then you can cast aimed shot without missing any autoshots at all (assuming you time them right). With a faster weapon like Rhok'delar, you end up wasting about 0.5 seconds worth of autoshot time if you time it just right. This is why aimed shot (even rank 1) will always be superior to arcane shot. Even without the +600 damage (which is freaking huge), aimed shot also gives you 1 extra autoshot even 10 seconds, and that alone is far more damage than an arcane shot.

Lesson #3 - Multishot is "instant", and does not affect the autoshot timer. I say "instant" in quotes, because it takes a fraction of a second just like autoshot (whereas arcane shot is a truely instant spell, and can be cast while running). I think the tooltip calls this "weapon speed", which can be misleading. Some people (including me, for a while) assume that this means that the multishot won't fire until your next autoshot, but this is not the case. If you autoshoot, and then cast multishot, it will fire almost immediately, and your next autoshot will occur at the same time it would have if you didn't cast multi. So just like aimed shot, multishot adds an extra autoshot (or sometimes 2-3 if there are multiple mobs) every 10 seconds. So always use it even if there is only 1 mob (unless there is crowd control or Buru's eggs nearby that you don't want to hit).

So really more important than sticking to the ideal 10 second rotation is just understanding those 3 things there, and timing your aimed shots right. I actually use a modified rotation of

00 Auto shot
01 Begin casting Aimed shot
04 Aimed shot fired
04 Auto shot
04 Multi shot
07 Auto shot
10 Auto shot
10 Repeat from 01

...which is actually a 9 second rotation if you look carefully. So that means that the multishot will be at 04 seconds on the first rotation, then 05, then 06, etc. For extremely long fights I'll end up missing a multishot on one rotation assuming I keep mana up long enough (which isn't likely).

Feign Death like Crazy

The only other major thing for hunters to know is to feign death, every time it is up. One reason I like the modified 9 second rotation is that this gives me one autoshot, then an aimed/multi/auto all landing within 1 second, during which I'll be using FD before the arrows even land. That FD removes 2-3k worth of aggro, and gives the MT a huge headstart on keeping ahead of me. Then if the fight lasts long enough, I use FD again in 30 seconds.

The point of feign death is to avoid ever getting aggro - NOT to wait until you get aggro and then lose it. If you do steal aggro, feigning is better than dying, but it can cause problems with mobs going after healers/nukers - so use FD proactively, not reactively. If you use feign death properly, then there not really any risk to going all out with multi and aimed shot. Just be careful if your FD gets resisted, maybe skip aimed shot once or twice in your rotation just to be safe.

That's about it

There are alot of other things you can do to boost your DPS slightly, but that's about it for the basics. Use multishot and aimed shot constantly. Time your aimed shots so you don't lose autoshots. Feign death like your Vlade Divac and someone tried to post you up. And roll on warrior/rogue weapons, they don't really need them anyways.

I lol'ed

That was excellent stuff.

We don't have any BM hunters who raid with us currently - but from what I've read on the forums, BM can in fact be a viable spec in endgame raids, contrary to what alot of people claim. If you still put 20 points into MM (or at the very least, enough to get aimed shot), then you're only missing a few of the spectacular dps buffs (TSA, RWS, barrage), but your pet also has several buffs to dps.

Pets are fine in MC, they can contribute on any fight except Shazzrah. But it will take a LOT of attention and skill to keep up your DPS while micromanaging your pet. It's something I'm still working on learning, so I wouldn't recommend going BM spec for endgame PVE - but I also wouldn't try to talk someone out of it who really wanted to try it. To me it seems like alot more work just to (maybe, if you're very very good) achieve similar DPS. But there's a very good guide to using pets in MC which was recently stickied on the WoW Hunter forums, I'd recommend checking it out no matter what your spec is.

Hmm, thanks for the input, Yellowtail!

Ive always used Arcane shot every time its up for the last 60+ levels and never did the math to see if it was doing me any good or not... Oh well I can adapt

To be honest, I am finding that I only use Intimidate and Beastial Wrath in emergency situations, but the thing Aritana kills most are the deamons in Felwood for the felcloth so she rarely uses it. I was 34 Marksman, leftovers in both beast and survival before and loved it but curiosity made me check out what everyone was raving about with Beastial Wrath. I do miss my trueshot aura =/

Any recommended specs on what to try? Im <horrible> with numbers =/

Well arcane shot actually has its uses while leveling, since beastmaster spec makes soloing up to 60 sooooooo much easier (but you won't have aimed shot), and also your pet isn't going to hold aggro if you use aimed/multi in succession and either one crits (and FD is bad while leveling, since you lose your exp). But as far as endgame PVE goes, where you'll have a badass tank holding aggro and you can FD all day since you don't need exp, then aimed will always be the way to go.

As far as talents, beastial wrath is an absolutely awesome pvp talent. Get a cat with 1.0 attack speed, have him attack clothies and use BW to make him immune to all crowd control, and watch the HKs roll in. In PVE (either solo or raiding), it's ok but not all that great. I love intimidation for PVP and solo PVE, it causes a ton of aggro and is our only 100% stun - but in places like MC, it's totally useless since nothing can be stunned.

For marksman talents, the must haves are efficiency, lethal shots, hawk eye, aimed shot, mortal shots, barrage, ranged weapon specialization, trueshot aura. Scattershot is also must have if you ever want to pvp. That adds up to 29, so you need 2 more points somewhere. I also love imp. concussion shot, I'm probably going to put 5 in that (for 34 MM total) when I respec. Imp. hunters mark sounds good until you realize that you're spending 5 talent points for a measley 15 attack power. Imp. arcane shot is worthless, as discussed earlier. Imp. serpent sting is worth looking at too, although I like concussive better. And imp. scorpid sting is kind of meh, I never use scorpid sting anyways.

The only other talents in BM or SV (that you can get with 31 in MM) that really help with MC raiding are imp. aspect of the hawk in BM (which is getting buffed in the 1.10 patch, I'm going to respec to grab it), and the monster/humanoid slaying talents in SV. Surefooted is really great too when you don't have enough +hit gear yet to be at the cap (1-2% miss chance may seem insignificant, but on certain bosses, a missed tranq shot can mean a wipe - luckily those bosses are in BWL though) - but you have to choose between surefooted and imp AotH. Survivalist is of course nice, 10% hp is awesome for any class. The rest of the survival talents are mostly for PVP (although really nice in pvp), so just pick whichever seems like it'll help your playstyle the most (I want to respec to lose the trap talents since I tend to only use freezing traps, and I think I won't get imp. wing clip since I'll get 5 in imp. concussive - but those are just based on how I play, they're still great pvp talents)

Actually for the talents, one I thing I totally forgot to mention was the choice between the survival build 0/21/30 or the marksman builds 5/31/15 or 0/31/20. The advice I gave above was assuming a marksman build.

These builds are actually very similar, the only differences are that 31 MM will have:

barrage (+15% damage to multishot), ranged weapon specialization (+5% to all ranged damage), trueshot aura (100 AP to all members of your party), and maybe imp. aspect of the hawk (5% chance of gaining quickshots buff)

while the 30 point survival build will have:

killer instinct (+3% crit), lightning reflexes (+15% agility)

What you often see asked on the forums, is "how much agility do I need so that LR provides the 100 RAP that I lose from not taking TSA?" It's a really simple calculation, the answer is 334. It's also a really silly question, because there are several other factors (namely, barrage, RWS, imp. AotH, and KI).

When you consider all the talents, it gets really complicated to determine how much agility you need for the survival build to outdps the marksman build (which is probably why no one asks that question, it's too damn hard to answer). I think you could probably approximate KI and RWS as canceling each other (although this depends on your RAP) - so in that case you are asking when does the LR bonus outweigh TSA + barrage + imp. AotH. My guess would be never. EXCEPT... when you're mooching TSA off a marksman hunter in your group, because then you're only missing barrage + imp. AotH. In that case, the survival build would likely win out if you have mostly epic gear with high agility.

So in conclusion, I have no idea but I like marksmanship. Either build is good, although the survival build depends more on having epic GS/DS gear than the MM build.

Here's My (almost) exact build:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...200050500000000

Imp wing clip and scatter are useful in both PVP and PVE and i deem "essential" but that is of course arguable. Also, +10% health is nice from survivalist and i would also say its "necessary". (it helps me stay out of icky FR gear, but shhhh, dont tell the healers)

If you like to PVP too, you can switch 5 points into imp Concussive and 2 points into efficiency. I personally have 5 points in concussive and 2 points in efficiency, but if raiding is your goal, efficiency is where its at.

comments appreciated,

-Van

Gear is a big determiner of what your spec should be. Also, if you PVP with any regularity, putting points into survival stuff (which is what I did) will help a lot as well. My PVE dmg is the same if not better (I was #1 in BWL with DH the other day) and I still have some nice PVP talents (Wyvern Sting and Counterattack).

If you didn't know:

Agility = 1 Melee AP and 2 Ranged AP
1% Crit = 52 Agility

How about something like?

Beast Mastery Talents - 5 point(s)

Improved Aspect of the Hawk - rank 5/5

Marksmanship Talents - 32 point(s)

Improved Concussive Shot - rank 1/5
Efficiency - rank 5/5
Lethal Shots - rank 5/5
Aimed Shot - rank 1/1
Hawk Eye - rank 3/3
Improved Serpent Sting - rank 5/5
Mortal Shots - rank 5/5
Barrage - rank 3/3
Ranged Weapon Specialization - rank 3/5
Trueshot Aura - rank 1/1

Survival Talents - 14 point(s)

Monster Slaying - rank 3/3
Humanoid Slaying - rank 3/3
Entrapment - rank 5/5
Trap Efficiency - rank 2/2
Deterrence - rank 1/1

Sure, I dont get the nice pet, but my bow damage should dramatically increase.. I only use the pet in farming anyway.. I'm unsure about the traps, but I use them a LOT in instances like UBRS or Dire Maul..

IMHO, taking two points out of imp serpent and putting them into ranged spec might be a good choice.
Without crunching numbers, it would seem that
increasing 2% overall ranged damage >> increasing 4% serpent sting damage

Someone with more free time than I can either support this or refute it with some numbers *wink wink*

Traps are VERY good in 5 man instances, and its really personal pref if you take imp traps or wing clip, so i say knock yourself out.

(not so) Minor note on entrapment:
When the trap gets hit, theres a proc percent to see if things get cc'd. Then every ~2sec theres another entrapment proc in the vicinity of THE HUNTER and not the trap. So, for example, frost trap in ZG spider area, then run around like crazy CCing spiders around you. It can be pretty fun because we have no AoE to contribute anyway. I used it for awhile myself. Helps protect the mages and locks, always a good thing.

Overall, thats a pretty solid build. I like it

EDIT: only 30k/1.3million damage in my last MC run was due to serpent sting, so yeah, probably wanna go RWS