Season 9 : Hunter Analysis and Guide

[EcHoEs]

Greetings!
I'm here with some analysis about hunter in Season 9. These are my own findings, amongst many others from multiple forums.

Most people say the hunters are awfully underpowered in PvP at the moment. And yes, we are underpowered, but that does not mean we can't kill anyone. Our crowd control is awesome for pvp (some may argue on this, in my opinion it's awesome.) Wyvern Sting, traps, scatter shot. Our snares, Concussive Shot and Wing clip are very useful in PvP aswell.

Survival spec is the best Hunter PvP spec as of now. Beast Mastery and Marksman just don't have the damage or control to be viable specs. Beast mastery has the stun and enrage, marksman has silencing shot, but it's not nearly enough.

Blizzard is trying to fix this in the upcoming patches. The 4.0.6 which is now in PTR, includes some fixes, such as increased damage for Chimera shot, kill shot and kill command. I'm personally hoping that Marksman will become viable PvP spec, but the fixes from 4.0.6 don't sound too awesome for that to happen. Survival WILL be nerfed in upcoming patches.

I've been reading the forums, and have noticed that most people complain about our 1v1 combat. I've been trying some 1v1 against most of the classes in Battlegrounds, and have noticed that some classes seriously outpower us. Frost mages, druids and warlocks have been giving me alot of trouble. Warriors, paladins, rogues on the other hand are really easy for me to defeat. Scatter shotting, concussive shotting and disengaging is really useful against almost all the classes. Pala popped Hand of Freedom? No probs, Tranquilizing Shot and Concussive shot will slow him down again

I've been doing some 2v2 arena with my destruction warlock buddy, and we have been doing averagely. We can't beat Healer + DPS combos unless they are complete idiots.
Most of the DPS + DPS combos are beatable with Hunter+Warlock, some are pretty annoying though. With the amount of snares and CC, I can almost always keep the either one in CC or slowed enough for us to kill the other one.

I haven't really tried 3v3 or 5v5 yet, so I don't know about balance on those. I have high hopes for 3v3 team with healer and other DPS, but haven't had any luck with a healer yet. If anyone has any insight on either one of the arena sizes, please post!

That should be enough of intro for the guide.


You should always spec Survival for PvP (atm..). If you are more comfortable with MM or BM, I won't stop you from using them, but I won't cover them on this guide.

Spec : WoWHead

Glyphs :
The absolute must glyphs are following :
Prime - Arcane Shot, Explosive shot and Kill Shot
Major - Raptor Strike, Trap Launcher(or Master's Call), Disengage
Minor - Feign Death, others are for you to choose.

You might ask why Raptor Strike glyph? The glyphed Raptor Strike gives you 20% damage reduction FROM ALL sources for 5 seconds after using it. I will later on in the guide share with you the macro for Raptor Striking the nearest target. You should use it always when possible.


Gemming and enchants :
Always gem for agility. There are some exceptions though. You need 2 Spell Penetration gems. They are called Stormy Ocean Sapphire.
The enchants are pretty much the same as the PvE enchants for survi, exception is cloak.
Here's the list for you :
Head : Arcanum of Ramkahen (requires Ramkahen Revered)
Shoulder : Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal (requires Therazane exalted)
Cloak : Spell Penetration
Chest : Peerless Stats
Bracers: Greater Assault or Draconic Embossment if you are Leatherworker.
Gloves: Major Agility
Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
Legs: Dragonscale Leg Armor
Feet: Assassin's Step
Ranged: Gnomish X-Ray Scope

Reforging :
You should always forge Haste >> Hit, if hit capped then Haste >> Crit. Never reforge away crit.

Stat priority :
Always be hit capped. The hit cap for pvp is 5%. Priority after hit cap is Agility>Crit>Mastery>Haste.

Resilience and you : How it works
95 Resilience equals 1% Damage Reduction from all sources with no diminishing returns at all. At the moment, you can get up to 3800 resilience which means 40% damage reduction. The usual from full honor set (Bloodthirsty) is 3100 resilience.
Let's say that you have zero resilience, and you take 10k hits, and you have 100k hp. It would take 10 hits to take you down. Now let's say you have 3800 resilience. The 10k hits become 6k hits, and it would take 17 hits to take you down. Without any sort of healing. So yes, resilience is a MUST HAVE for PvP. And you better have alot of it.


On gearing :
Leatherworkers can make mail gear with resilience. If you have gold, buy them at first and upgrade them with honor (Bloodthirsty) and Conquest points (Vicious). You can buy Bloodthirsty and Vicious from vendors in Orgrimmar (Horde) and Stormwind (Alliance).


On pets :
Currently best pet is the baby monkey with his 4 second stun. This will be nerfed in 4.0.6, so be quick if you want to use the stun! Other suitable pets for pvp are spiders with their web ability and crabs because of their 4 second root.

On macros :
You can find all the macros for pvp HERE
Only macro you can't find there is the Raptor Strike macro I told you about earlier. So here it is!
#showtooltip Raptor Strike
/targetenemy [nodead, harm]
/cast Raptor Strike
/targetlasttarget
/cleartarget
/targetlasttarget

If you have any questions, please, go ahead and ask!
I hope you enjoy this guide, and that you learn something from this. I hope to update this later on once I progress more into pvp. Especially 3v3 and 5v5 arena.

[Snowee]

Dont forget the babymonkey. His 4sec stun is the best.
Petlink: http://www.wow-petopia.com/family/monkey.html
P.S. Good Guide

[EcHoEs]

The monkey stun is going to be nerfed in 4.0.6. All damage will break the stun after patch

Updated the thread with some pet info and the macros I forgot :P

[Reflection]

Great job EcHoEs, I don't play a hunter nor do I intend to in the near future but I recognize good posts when I see them. All I can ask for is some pictures, it's often a great separator from the text. +8