Hunters are true survivalists: they make use of ranged weapons (bows, crossbows, and guns), their pets, and special abilities. Hunters lack the versatility of some other classes (eg. druids). Most hunter builds emphasize their powerful role as ranged damage dealers, and some selectively emphasize the potency of their traps and their pets, giving them some effectiveness at crowd control.

The only races that cannot be hunters are Humans, Gnomes, and Undead.

Customizing your hunter

No matter how you customize your hunter, you'll be using a ranged weapon as your primary mode of attack. Hunters are limited to wearing mail armor at the higher levels, so try to avoid melee combat when possible. Though hunters can use polearms eventually, their traps, pets, and ranged attacks will likely prove more useful.

• Beast Mastery increases the power of your pet. This tree has several skills that aid in grinding and rapid leveling, making it an attractive option for lower- to mid-level hunters.
• Marksmanship improves your hunter's effectiveness with a ranged weapon. Some of the earlier skills should be invested in for most hunter builds; this is a good tree to mix with one of the other two.
• Survival is useful for hunters that want a crowd-control edge to their abilities. This tree, when used in conjunction with Beast Mastery, gives the hunter a very limited ability to tank (via their pet). Some hunter builds place all their talent points in this tree.

Hunters excel at strategy

Most all classes and specs have strategy at their core for attacking. Hunters take this to another level by their use of their pet, their traps, and their ranged weapons. Hunters themselves make poor melee fighters, so most builds—despite how powerful their melee weapon may be—emphasize keeping distance between the hunter and the enemy.

Before initiating combat, hunters can lay traps which trigger different effects when enemies are in range. Laying a trap before initiating battle gives the hunter a strong advantage, especially when multiple enemies are present (making the hunter a modest crowd-control unit, and especially useful in groups).

The hunter's pet deals the melee damage while the hunter sits back, firing arrows or bullets in rapid succession. Hunters are to ranged combat what warriors are to melee combat.

Enemies can't hide

Hunters can also track most enemy units on their minimap, making questing and farming much easier!

More hunter resources

To learn more about various aspects of hunter characters, check out the following links.

• WoW Wiki Hunter Guide
• The Artisan Hunter Guide
• Big Red Kitty (a hunter blog)