Hunter

Pros

• Can use a pet to distract enemies while dealing damage from a distance.
• The only class with Auto-Shoot, which lets them shoot continuously without having to continually tap a button.

Cons

• One of the weakest classes health-wise, and can’t use their weapons at point-blank range. Almost useless while meleeing.

Ah, the Hunter. When you choose to be a member of this mighty clan, you’re setting yourself up for a play experience quite unlike that of any other class in World of Warcraft. The Hunter combines the strengths of melee classes and those of ranged classes into one powerful package. It isn’t the easiest class to play, but being a Hunter will allow you to use ranged weapons more effectively than another class, and will let you tame monsters that you encounter in the game world to use as a pet. In essence, you get to be both a tank and a DPS character, but you’ll pay for this by having to manage two characters in battle.

The proper place for a hunter: well outside the combat, dishing out hurt with his or her bow or gun from a distance.

As you start your adventuring career, you’ll have to venture out into the world with naught but a bow or a gun as your weapon of choice. For the first ten levels, you’ll need to be backed up by a powerful melee weapon; bows and guns can’t be fired at enemies after they close to point-blank range, which means that you’ll only have time to get off two or three shots at most enemies before they manage to get into melee range.

At level ten, though, you’ll gain the ability to summon pets, which will be a major part of your arsenal from then on. When you do manage to train a pet, you’ll be able to command it in battle by telling it to attack your targeted enemy, stay in one spot, stop attacking, or even use its special abilities. Since your pet will help keep enemies at a distance from you, you’ll be far more capable of soloing if you pick a powerful pet and bring it along. They won’t do a huge amount of damage to your enemies, but they will be able to hold aggro and keep it, thanks to their Growl command.

Pet Basics
Hunter pets are a fantastic help while soloing, but they also come with a lot of little bars and readouts that can sometimes make them confusing when you first obtain one. Here’s a few definitions that will hopefully make things a bit more easy for you.

Loyalty Level: This varies from level one to level seven; higher ranks mean that the pet is more loyal to you. This doesn’t seem to affect any kind of gameplay mechanics, but each time a pet levels up his or her loyalty, it’ll gain more training points. You can increase a pet’s loyalty by keeping it well fed and at its maximum happiness level (where a green smiley face icon shows next to its health readout). If it’s a happy pet, it will increase its loyalty automatically, even while you’re sitting around doing nothing, so try to keep your pets well fed.

Training Points: Your pet will need training points in order to learn abilities, such as the various Growls. A new pet will start out with zero training points, but will quickly earn more as you level up its loyalty by keeping it fed.

Pets used to be really big (and we mean really big), but Blizzard eventually started shrinking them after their capture. This was done so that they didn’t interfere with targeting in group play.

Happiness: Your pet’s happiness indicates how much loyalty it’s gaining and how much damage it’ll deal in combat. A Happy pet will quickly earn loyalty and will deal 125% of its normal damage in combat; if you can, keep your pet at this level. A Content pet will do 100% of damage in combat, and earn loyalty at a normal rate. An Unhappy pet will do 75% of damage in combat, and will actually lose loyalty over time, so be sure to feed it if you spot this level! A pet will lose happiness naturally over time, when it’s Dismissed, or when it dies.

Energy: Pets use a rogue-like system of energy for their combat abilities. Growl, the most basic ability, doesn’t require much energy, but Bite and Claw will both drop your pet’s energy fairly quickly, so you may not want to keep these abilities on auto-cast mode during long fights.

Experience: Your pet will earn experience, just as you do. It can reach a level equivalent to yours, but will then stop earning experience until you gain another level, meaning that it will often be a level below you. Pets seem to be subject to the same decreased accuracy as you are when fighting mobs several levels higher than they are, and their Growls are similarly more likely to be resisted, so be careful when using a low-level pet!

Stabling: You can stable a pet at any time you wish, by purchasing a stable slot from the Stable Master outside any inn, save those in the capital cities. When you have a slot, you can place your current pet in it, then go out and tame another one, usually for the purpose of learning new pet skills, then switch back later on.

Renaming and Abandoning: If you right-click on your pet’s health bar portrait while it’s by your side, you will be able to either rename it or abandon it. Renaming can be performed once per pet, after which you won’t be able to change it again, so pick something good! Abandoning a pet will permanently dismiss it; you can’t get a pet back after you abandon it, although you can tame another pet of the same sort and start all over again.

Pet Abilities: Thus far, there are four pet combat abilities in the game. The easiest one to obtain is Growl; this is purchasable from Pet Trainers, which are often found near Hunter Trainers. When used in combat, the mob your pet is focusing on will continue to attack it, even if you start dishing out a lot of damage. You should always have the highest rank of Growl available to your pet, and should always have it on autocast. (You can toggle autocast by right-clicking on it on your pet’s ability bar.)

The other three pet abilities are Claw, Bite, and Cower. These come in various ranks, with lower ranks being less effective than the higher ranks. You can’t purchase these abilities; you have to find them by taming beasts in the wilderness. Bear enemies will usually have some rank of Claw, spider enemies will usually have some rank of Bite, and striders or big cats (panthers, tigers, lions, etc.) will generally have Cower. Bite and Claw are straightforward; they let your pet deal extra damage by burning extra energy. Cower is the opposite of Growl, in that it will actually reduce the amount of threat your pet is earning in combat, and as such is pretty much worthless in almost any conceivable situation.

After you find a pet with one of these abilities, take it into combat and kill a few mobs with it; eventually you’ll learn the ability yourself and will be able to train your original pet with it. If you switch back to your older pet, you can hit P to bring up your abilities menu, find the Pet Training ability, and use that to train the new ability to your pet. Then you can flip over to the Pet tab and drag the ability down to your pet’s combat menu.