Beginner Guide to Hunters - Chapter 3: Understanding Stats

We have so far discussed the basic backgrounds of hunters and their talent trees and have mentioned stats on a number of occasions. Stats is a term given to the character attributes. If you open your character panel (C) and click the arrow on the bottom right to see your stat side panel, you'll see what basically makes your character tick. These numeric values is what we are talking about when we talk about stats. The ones that interest us from a hunter's perspective are base stats and ranged stats.

Base stats are the primary stats of all characters. These define our health pool (stamina), mana regeneration (Spirit), and basic damage/healing output (Agility, strength, intellect depending on the class). All base stats except Spirit cannot be reforged. The only primary stat of interest for a hunter is Agility. Agility not only influences our Attack power, but also our critical strike rating.

1 Agility = 2 Attack Power + 0.552 critical strike rating (0.0031%)

It is by far the most useful stat for us, and we should strive to attain as much of it as possible.

If you scroll down to our ranged stats, you will be greeted by what we term our secondary stats. These would be Hit Rating, Critical Strike rating, Haste and Mastery. These stats also directly influence our DPS output, but not to the degree that Agility does. Secondary stats all have different effects on hunters and their effectiveness can differ from spec to spec.

The importance of Critical Strike Rating, Haste and mastery differ depending on the hunter spec chosen. 

FunFact: Why don't Warriors enchant their weapons with Intellect? Well, because they don't want their weapons to be smarter than they are, of course....

Progression Raiding with Ultima Ratio

As recently posted I have left Khaz'goroth with 4 of my toons and transferred to Icecrown US. I immediately began scouting for guilds, but guilds that needed hunters were hard to come by. I had almost given up hope when a person I met in a PUG suggested I should apply to Ultima Ratio. Ultima Ratio is one of the server's top Alliance guild with 6/13 heroic completed which was well ahead of where I was hoping to land. I had spent the last few weeks farming ZA and ZG to turn my last remaining blues into epics. To be honest I didn't hold much hope when I applied, but nonetheless in the faint chance that my lack of heroic raiding experience and gear level may be overlooked, I put effort into my application. It literally took hours to prepare. I didn't want to leave anything to chance. I wanted to make sure that Ultima Ratio understood that I understood my class and had great raid etiquette, and most importantly that my lack of Cataclysm heroic raiding experience came from a combination of things outside of my control.

Beginner Guide to Hunters - Chapter 2: Talent Tree Basics

Chapter 2 - Azeroth has Talent(trees)

In this chapter we will discuss the basics of talent trees, the different talents contained within them, and their effects on the hunter. We will discuss end-game (raiding) talent trees in the spec specific chapters later on in this guide.

Talent trees are the back bone of all classes. Here is where the magic happens, where the decision is made of what kind of player you want to be. A hunter has it a little easier than other classes, in the fact that no matter which specialization of the talent tree a hunter chooses, his primary role within the game usually stays the same. The only thing that changes is how the hunter goes about doing his business.

At level 10 a new player will receive a talent point. During the leveling process you will obtain more talent points until you reach a total of 41 at level 85. These talent points can then be spent in your talent tree to unlock new abilities or statistical bonuses. Be aware that once you choose a specialization you will be forced to spend at least 31 points in that particular tree before being allowed to branch out into another tree. So for the majority of the leveling process you will be stuck within one and the same talent tree.

At this point in time a new hunter may decide to simply just go online and look up the best leveling spec around, and if you are a veteran player who knows all about talent trees from other specs then sure go ahead. But if you are new to the game I suggest to spend a little time learning about talent trees yourself and let the game decide for you.

Beginner Guide to Hunters - Chapter 1: Factions and Races

Factions and Races

We now understand enough about the role of hunters to dive into creating one. When rolling (term given to the process of character creation) a new hunter, the first choice we must make is which side to choose: Will you choose the Alliance, or will you fight for the Horde. If you have never played any Warcraft games then this choice becomes trivial as there is no good or evil side from a gameplay point of view, although anyone who has played will probably argue that point.

Once we've decided on a faction we must choose a race. All but the gnomes of the Alliance can be hunters. The choice of race can be based on two factors: The look of the character and the racial bonuses the race provides. THis is to say that if you don't care about which race gives which bonus then go ahead and pick the one that looks the coolest to you. But if you are interested in racial bonuses and which race may statistically do more damage than the other in a given situation, then read on as we go through each race one by one and look at the racials that really benefit a hunters' DPS. I will not discuss racials that improve professions or give defensive bonuses (such as resistances). Note that the list of racials posted below the discussion was directly taken from WoWwiki.com, so please if any info is wrong let me know and I shall correct it.

Beginner Guide to Hunters - Introduction

Introduction

About this guide

Hunters are arguably the most represented and loved class in not just World of Warcraft, but also the blog-o-sphere. So I have decided to write this guide to give a complete overview of the class, with hints and tips useful for newbies and experts alike.

This guide has been written with all kinds of players in mind. We will start at the beginning of a hunter's lifecycle and finish at the end. If you are looking for boss strategy or questing guides this is not the guide for you. In this guide we will talk about creating a new hunter, hunter attributes,the different talent trees, pets, leveling and raiding builds and so much more. We will look in-depth at the different statistics and their effects on hunters.

This guide will also contain humorous snippets and opinions. Please consider that these are for amusement, and that 95% of the opinions contained within are mine, and not necessarily of other bloggers. So without further adieu, lets dive right in and start at the beginning.

Bye Bye Khaz'goroth, Hello Icecrown

It is done. Serebihm has transferred to Icecrown. This comes on the back of one of my previous posts about looking for a new guild. Well, I've had some feedback and decided to make the move, regardless of  what happens. I can only raid at US times so it makes sense to move to a US server. Now comes the hard part: Deciding on the guild I've had interest from Horde guilds to but, Faction changing 5 toons (well at least 3 to support Serebihm) can be costly when combined with Server transfer fees. At this point there's no reason to rush. I am still 2 weeks away from starting my new job, plus a visit from my mother for a week so I have 2 options. Find a guild now and have 2 weeks to get to know them before taking a week break, or wait 3-4 weeks and then get stuck in. So at least I've narrowed it down to a server. Any Icecrown guilds interest in getting a dedicated raider, Horde or Alliance, drop me a line at thehuntersarsenal@gmail.com.

Keep on hunting, and maybe seeing you soon,

Serebihm

The kind of hunters I hate

I am angry right now. Really angry I probably shouldn't be writing in this state, but to hell with it, I need to vent. I've just come out of a Zul'Aman pug. It was a run in progress as per usual, the pull right before the bear boss. So the rogue sets out sap one target, and good hunter that I am proceed to trap a second mob, leaving us the two trolls on the bear to kill. Then as the mobs charge toward us, realisation sets in: the tank is afk at the entrance. I feign death the druid healer shadowmelds, the rogue vanishes and the shadowpriest takes a death. I apologise to all saying I should have made sure to check that tank was there. We run back and I jokingly say that maybe I should pet tank this pull. The rogue laughs and the druid tells me that since I am Survival he would refuse to heal my pet. I tell him that there is a thing called offspec. He tells me that Survival hunters suck (plus expletives). Now remember that this is prior to any damage having been dealt. This guy has no idea how I play or what my dps is.