The New Hunter FAQ (3.0 ish)Follow

(Lets start it)

As for anything lvl 50 and under contact the old fact

Pets
1. Does it love me?
2. Do I love it?
3. Pet skills on auto cast
4. Dang you cower
5. Pet talent trees
....a: Ferocity
....b: Cunning
....c: Tenacity
6. Exotics- are they my friend?
7. The best pet


Talents
1. Beast Mastery
2. Marksmen
3. Survival
4. "I went survival, why is everyone laughing at me?"

Gear
1. Whats is it good for?

PETS
1. Does it love me?
The loyalty system is gone, good riddens to it!!! The only thing now binding you to your pet is it's level. The only thing that stops you from taming-dismissing-taming-dismissing is the pain of leveling the pet 5 level to your level. Unless what you are trying to tame is the same level, then go for it. You still need to feed your pet though to increase it's damage. You want to keep your pet's happieness in the green. (Once you get lvl 70 most of the time feeding your pet won't be required as much)

2. Do I love it?
What pet is right for me? if you're going to be a twink you can never really go wrong but it depends on your play style. Tenacity and ferocity are good for solo play, while cunning is great for PVP and groups. When in doubt, tame a green pet :D

3. Pet skills on auto cast
i only have 4 slot for pet skills but i have sooooo many to use what do I do? DON'T WORRY!!! Anything glowing yellow in your pet's skill book he/she will use. Pets are way smarter now. I will give you 3 examples
- ex1) A lvl 70 tenactiy gorilla, when fighting one mob he will just use growl. If multiple mobvs attack him he will automatically start using thunderstomp. If a the hunter's hp drops into the red he will instantly intervene or use roar of sacrifice as long as the skills are highlighted.
-ex2) lvl 70 cunning chimera, if roar of recovery is on autocast as soon as the hunter's mana goes into the red it will trigger the skill.
-ex3) lvl 70 ferocity core hound, he has bite, lava breath, roar of the wild, rapid, and frenzy. Rapid and frenzy are not on his skills bar. However once he goes into combat he instantly activates them.

4. DANG YOU COWER!!!!
I turned off cower and prowl but they keep coming back on? As of now whatever skills you switch on or off will only be saved for the skills on the pets skill bar. Any other skill will be switched to defualt settings upon logging out or switching zones.

5. Pet talent trees
I've heard about them but what do i do? Pets are once again customizable. Each pet will have 1 of the three trees, ferocity (DPS/Grinding); cunning (PVP/Raid); tenacity (Tanking/Solo). Your pet will get one talent point every 4 lvls starting at lvl 20. At lvl 70 your pet will have 15 talent points and 19 if you go beast mastery.

-a: Ferocity pets: These pets are king DPS if you spend you talent points right. A poorly geared lvl 70 hunter with a lvl 70 core hound, the pet can reach well over 500 DPS and a well geared hunter can get their ferocity pets to well over 700 DPS. The alledged King of DPS is the devilsaur but this has yet to be proven. Ferocity pets excel in DPS and are perfect for grinding, they heal themselves and tear through mobs quickly, however they tend to have lower HP or stamina. These pets will make alright tanks in the fact that they can keep themselves alive while holding aggro through damage.

-b: Cunning Pets: These pets are very usefful in many ways, also carrion feeder helps save money on food. Frenzy feeding makes them viable DPS pets also. These pets are useful in PVP because they have various moves and skills to somehow hinder or debuff the enemy while helping the raid/party. They are poor tanks but with the talents they'll do fine and after the fight they'll heal up quick.

-c: Tenacity pets: These pets excel in hp or defense. While they may not have high DPS they can hold the threat and take quite a beating. Unlike ferocity pets who keep themselves alive tenacity pets keep you alive. Most are made to be multi mob tanks such as the gorilla, crocolisk, and rhino. These pets are the best tanks and have possibilities to be main tanks in on quest like durn the hungerer, or world elites like den mother in darkshore.

6. Exotics are they my friend?
They can or can't be. If you play for yourself they will not be your friend and you're better off getting aimed shot. However if get lots ap and stamina and do everything you can to strengthen your pet exotic pets can be your best weapon. The extra 4 points are the difference between you pet being a minion or a tool of destruction. If you solo PVE alot get an exotic pet, if you do alot of raids spend the 1 point on aimed shot or else where

7. The Best Pet
There is no "Best Pet" yet, everyone has their preferences but I can send you in the right direction by saying, listen to your heart... That's what I do.

TALENTS

1. Beast Mastery
The purpose of beast mastery is to turn your pet from just an instrument for keeping mobs away from you into an actual weapon. This spec will increase everything about your pet (except it's spirit and int :P ). And give you the talents to help keep everything away from you. Basically it makes your pet 4 times better at what it's suppose to do and allowing it to do a decent amount of DPS. There is a bit of raid functionality in this spec (ferocious inpiration) But it's extremely helpful for solo play and PVP. This spec does damage by alot of quick hits that add up to a large amount.

2. Marksmen
This is the "I want to hit hard!" spec. Markmens don't have the attack speed of BM hunters nor the survivability of SV hunter but they can hit hard and crit. This spec is helpful in raids. (not done)

3. Survival
This class is meant for having more options and being able to live once someone does get past your pet and begins to attack you. This has to be one of the most helpful raid specs because of the great CC and ability to increase everyone's attack power. Also SS is now in survival so it's do-able in PVP now. WIth the addition of Explosive shot, if you get a nice tenacity pet, you can AOE grind your way from 60-70 if really wanted to. So it's helpful all around but more recommended if ur often in CC positions and back up DPS in raids.


4. I went survival why is everyone laughing?
Survival use to be a horrible hunter spec. However blizzard has did some major revamping to this spec so now it is completely viable, but old habits die hard so when you say ur SV just and they laugh stand up and be proud of ur spec u are a useful CC/DPs spec.

(i will finish this soon.)


Edited, Oct 27th 2008 12:09pm by potsoriginal

There's no need to do work that has already been done. When things are a bit more stable we'll take the old faq and update it. It already has a lot of the important issues organized, so it's a good approach to take and will save time. Thanks for the post though. I'm still expecting fairly big changes, so I'd hold off on doing too much work at the moment.

As soon as WotLK releases and you update your FAQ, I'll add the changes to the wiki Xsarus.

For heroics and just messing around, i found SV to be the most fun of the talent trees. From a raid stand point it was useful. But it really shines in 5 mans.

Haha true story, we have a hunter in our guild who chain trapped a mob in Bot from the 3rd pull all the way through a few bosses till we finally had to kill it. He would trap it along with his regular trap target for pulls. Was very funny to watch. But, no other CC class can do anything like that.