World of Warcraft Hunter Specialization and Skills

World of Warcraft Hunter Specialization and Skills
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The Hunter Unwrapped

Of all of the possible player characters in World of Warcraft, there is none more fit to soloing than the Hunter. The Hunter combines distance DPS with defensive aggression holding to make a rich combination that covers all the necessary roles of a party. With certain skills and an adherence to the World of Warcraft Hunter guide, a single Hunter can accomplish jobs and quests that could usually only be completed with a small party. Using the World of Warcraft hunter guide, you can utilize the special talents of your hunter to be the best it can possibly be. In this way, you can reach the level of World of Warcraft Hunter specialization.

Hunter Trees

Hunter Skill Tree

The Hunter has three distinct talent trees, Beast Mastery, marksmanship and survival. These three skill sets each provide the Hunter with the talents that he needs to succeed in the wilds by himself.

  • Beast Mastery- this is the skill that allows you to tame and keep pets, which can evolve to monumental power, able to take the role of the typical party tank. With the right pet, you can inflict damage from a safe distance while your pet hammers away with fists of melee power.
  • Marksmanship- The skill of the bow is a deadly one indeed in the hands of a talented hunter. Skills in the marksmanship tree will enhance and bolster your bow shot to inflict damage otherwise not possible.
  • Survival- a hunter relies on survival to live on his own. Skills in this tree help the hunter plot ambushes, ensnare your enemies and enhance your ability to strike at close range.

Though it is always wise to master one of these abilities, you will have enough skill points to increase your ability with at least one other. This allows you to compliment your mastered ability with a lesser ability. If you spend your skill points without considering specialization, you will be unable to be truly effective in battle by yourself. A hunter needs a World of Warcraft hunter specialization in order to best utilize solo fighting.

Combinations

  1. Dark Elf Hunter

    Beast mastery and Marksmanship: Beast mastery best works with the marksmanship skill. This allows you to send your pet into the fray and hold their aggression while you use your bow to hammer at them from afar.

  2. Beast mastery and Survival: You can also use beast mastery with survival to keep your foes occupied while you stab them from behind with survival skills.

  3. Marksmanship and Survival can be used well with survival by attacking your enemies from afar until they reach you at close range, you can use survival skills to blast them back.

Pets and Talents

A Fan Favorite of WoW hunters, the bear.

Though Beast Mastery is a specialization, any hunter, no matter what their specialization is must have a pet of some kind. Pets come in four major sub-types:

  • Generic
  • Cunning
  • Tenacity
  • Ferocity

Each one of these sub-types complements a particular style of hunter play. With the World of Warcraft hunter specializations, a pet should be able to fulfill a role that the hunter is unable to fulfill using his current skill set.

  • Generic: Generic skills are just that, generic in nature. This is the only sub-type of pet skills that does not have a specialization that it complements better than others. It neither compliments nor hinders any of the World of Warcraft hunter specializations.
  • Cunning: Cunning pets are not fighters, they are distracters. They excel at crowd-control and stunning monsters to give you an edge. This makes a cunning pet a great choice for Hunters using the survival specialization. A pet can control the crowd while the Hunter lashes out with deadly force.
  • Tenacity: Tenacity assists in full-frontal DPS. They are damagers, born and bred. This makes Tenacity particularly useful for the beast mastery talent tree. The hunter can rush into battle along with his pet, causing damage from far away or up close while the pet does the same.
  • Ferocity: This is the pure tank-version of the hunter’s pets. These pets excel at holding enemy aggression while the hunter does the real work. This makes Ferocious pets more akin to the marksmanship specialization. The pet can hold the attention of the enemies while the hunter rains death from afar.

Though any hunter can be utilized in many ways on the field, when it comes down to it, all hunters must adhere to this guide if they truly want to be successful in their game play.

References

All references and images from World of Warcraft

This post is part of the series: WoW Hunter Talent Builds for 3.3

WoW’s 3.3 build brought some new focus to the Hunter class, and with tweaks to all three specs you can find a great build for your Hunter however you like to play.

  1. WoW Hunter Talent Builds for 3.3 - Beast Mastery
  2. WoW Hunter Talent Builds for 3.3 - Marksmanship
  3. WoW Hunter Talent Builds for 3.3 - Survival
  4. The Role of the Hunter in World of Warcraft
  5. World of Warcraft Hunter: The Most Effective Solo Player