Need a Hunter Guide?

Killer Guilds- Has a good guide for how to play a hunter.

Need WOW Gold?

EpicToon - Very good place to purchase WOW gold. IGE is a large supplier of online game currency and currently has very good prices on gold.

*Please note buying guides or gold at the above sites helps support this site.

Hunter Builds, Updated for Patch 4.3

HunterBuilds.com is a site that lists different talent builds for hunters of World of Warcraft and their pets. Many of these hunter builds come from whereever I can find them on the net(for instance the elitistjerks site has a great guide as to how to play your hunter and has a lot of useful information). I hope you find the following hunter builds and information useful.

If you are looking for previous level 80 builds you can find them at: Hunter Builds 4.0.1 - 4.0.3

News:

Patch 4.3 has been released! All classes have seen some changes with this patch and Hunters have had a few changes as well.and with this patch come a few changes to hunters:

Spell Changes:

Monstrous Bite - reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.

Animal Handler - increased Attack Power from 25% to 30%.

Widow Venom - reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.

Burrow Attack - does 20% more damage and has a larger area of effect.

Froststorm Breath - does 20% more damage and has a larger area of effect.

Explosive Shot - damage has been increased by 15%.

Tier 13 Gear Bonus For Hunters:

Hunter Tier 13 - 2 Piece Bonus: Steady Shot and Cobra Shot generate double the amount of focus.

Hunter Tier 13 - 4 Piece Bonus: Your Arcane Shot ability has a chance to grant 30% haste to you and your pet for 15 seconds.

Beast Mastery Builds updated for Cataclysm Patch 4.3

Hunter beast master builds have the best burst DPS of all of the trees and is often preferred for PVP, leveling and solo'n. Beast Mastery builds are also good for raids as all 3 of the trees are doing good dps now.

Beast Master Hunter Builds:

31/7/3 - Best Beast Master Raid Spec For 4.3

31/9/1 - Beast Mastery Raid Spec

31/5/5 - Beast Mastery Raid Spec #2

Beast Mastery Hunter Shot Rotation Priority:

Hunter's Mark (try to have this up before combat starts and keep it up)

Kill Command (if your pet is on the mob)

Serpent Sting (if the mob will live threw the tics of this shot otherwise is wasted)

Focus Fire
Kill Shot(if mob goes below 20% health)
Arcane Shot
Cobra Shot

Also don't forget to use your major cooldowns:

Bestial Wrath - your pet goes into a rage causing 20% additional damage for 10 sec and cannot be feared or stopped until killed. You also go into a rage causing 10% additional damage and reduce focus costs of all your shots and abilities by 50% for 10 sec. Cooldown depends on glyphs and talents.

Rapid Fire - ranged attack speed increased by 40% for 15 secs, 5 min cooldown

Fervor - restore 50 focus to you and your pet, 2 min cooldown

Stay in Aspect of the Hawk when in PVE fights.

Hunter Beast Master Stat Priority(keep this in mind when reforging or gemming your gear):

Agility
To Hit (till hit cap) 8% or 961 hit rating
Attack Power
Crit
Mastery
Haste

Marksmanship Builds updated for Cataclysm patch 4.3

Hunter Marksmanship builds focus on talents that increase hunters ranged damage.

Any marksmanship PVE spec should include the following talents to max your dps:

• Go for the Throat,

• Efficiency

• Sic’Em

• Improved Steady Shot

• Careful Aim

• Piercing Shots

• Rapid Recuperation

• Master Marksman

• Readiness

• Posthaste

• Chimera Shot

Marksmanship Builds:

8/31/2 - Best Hunter Marksman Build for Raid DPS - This is the best raid dps build for raid dps for marksmanship hunters as of patch 4.3. Remember you can remove non-critical talents to best fit your play style or what your roll maybe in the raid. For instance if you are going to be interrupting you may want to drop Termination and take Silencing Shot.

9/31/1 - Marksmanship Raid Spec

8/31/2 - High Raid DPS Hunter Marksman Build

7/31/3 - Hunter Instance Solo Build - This is a marksmanship instance solo build, for maximum pet survivability you will want to use 2 pieces of tier so your pet is healed for 15% of the damage you do. You can use armor with better stats but it will effect your pets survivability. The key to soloing is survivability of your pet not your dps. You want to be able to keep your pet up for as long as possible so you can keep doing damage.

Marksmanship (level 80 - 85) Leveling Build - Level 80 start of spec looks like this , you then take Spirit Bond and Hunter vs. Wild to fill out your spec. Your leveling rotation is just cast Misdirection on your pet, then use Chimera Shot or Arcane Shot until your target is dead.

Marksmanship Rotation Shot Priority:

Hunter's Mark (keep up buff)

Serpent Sting (keep up debuff, you can also put this on multiple targets that will be up for more than 12 seconds to maximize dps)

Chimera Shot (try to keep enough focus to cast this whenever it is available, also make sure to use this to refresh your Serpent Sting)

Use free Aimed Shot proc when available or use Aimed Shot to bleed off excess focus when target is >90% health.

If target health is below 20% use Kill Shot.

Use Arcane Shot to bleed off excess focus (when target is <90% health)

Use Steady Shot to regen focus - Use Steady Shot in pairs to maintain max Improved Steady Shot buff.

So basically you want to keep up your spells on the target, manage your cd's/procs and use aimed/arcane shots as your focus dump (depending on the stage of the fight) and use steady shot to regain focus. Use kill shot if your target is below 20% health. Always have Aspect of the Hawk up when in battle.

Marksmanship Hunter Stat Priority(keep this in mind when reforging or gemming your gear):

Agility

To Hit (till hit cap) 8% or 961 hit rating

Attack Power

Crit

Haste

Mastery

Survival Builds updated for Cataclysm patch 4.3

Survival Hunters are currently the highest AoE spec by quite a bit and they are actually do well now in raids in Cataclysm.

Hunter Survival Builds:

3/7/31 4.3 Hunter Survival Build, Max Raid DPS - This is the max dps raid build for survival hunters as of patch 4.2

7/3/31 Raid Hunter Survival Build - This is also a high dps hunter build for survival.

1/9/31 - Hunter Survival Raid Spec

0/9/32 - Raid Hunter Survival Build #2

Survival Single Target Rotation Priority:

Hunter's Mark - Try to have this up before the fight starts.

Serpent Sting - Try to initially cast this DoT at the start of the fight if the mob will live more than 12 seconds and try to cast Cobra Shot before it drops off as this adds 6 seconds to this DoT.

Explosive Shot - This is the main damage attack and should be used whenever possible. You should always try to have enough focus to do this when this shot comes off of cooldown. Also note Lock and Load proc will reset CD as well so make sure you cast it when it is available.

Black Arrow - This is a DoT with a 30 second cooldown, cast it when it is available.

Kill Shot - Use this whenever possible when target is below 20% health, 10 second cooldown, not focus cost.

Arcane Shot - till ~40 focus

Cobra Shot - Used regain focus and add time to Serpent Sting.

Survival Multi Target Rotation Priority:

Serpent Sting - on multiple targets if they will live more than 12 seconds

Multi-Shot - Whenever you have the focus for it.

Explosive Trap - When off cooldown.

Explosive Shot - if Lock and Load procs.

Cobra Shot - Used regain focus

Kill Shot - if all but one or two mobs are now dead and they are under 20% health use kill shot and switch to single target rotation.

Stat Priority: