DPS Hunter 1.12 (Classic)

[Valks 2,373]

This thread is for feedback concerning our Hunter guide for World of Warcraft: Classic.

[Guest Adder007USA]

 You claim there's no viable 1h weapon enchant. Wow classic is being released as it was in 1.12

In patch 1.6.0, the enchants for 25 agility and 15 agility to 2h and 1h weapons respectively were added.

Furthermore, hunters get 2 ranged attack power per point of agility.  I don't know if it was best in slot, but consider the following: dual bone-slicing hatchets (13 agi each, drops from maleki in strath), each enchanted with 15 agi.  That's a total of 56 agi-112 ranged attack power and a little over 1%crit.  

 

 

[Impakt 25]

9 hours ago, Guest Adder007USA said:

 You claim there's no viable 1h weapon enchant. Wow classic is being released as it was in 1.12

In patch 1.6.0, the enchants for 25 agility and 15 agility to 2h and 1h weapons respectively were added.

Furthermore, hunters get 2 ranged attack power per point of agility.  I don't know if it was best in slot, but consider the following: dual bone-slicing hatchets (13 agi each, drops from maleki in strath), each enchanted with 15 agi.  That's a total of 56 agi-112 ranged attack power and a little over 1%crit.  

 

 

Hi Adder, thanks for the feedback. You are correct, those enchants exist but were added later in the classic cycle, specifically in patch 1.6. Since they were added in patch 1.6, that means they will most likely not be available during phase 1 and 2 of WoW Classic. They will probably be released with Blackwing Lair in phase 3, meaning they will be unavailable for the first few months. Those enchants will be added to the pre-raid BiS list when phase 3 begins.

[SidonisAntares 288]

I like the caveat about Improved Hunters Mark, but the same can apply to Trueshot Aura depending on your raid composition, and most importantly faction. On Horde Hunters don't get dropped in melee groups since they don't benefit from Windfury Totem, at best you have one in the MT group for making pulling a bit more coordinated, but usually they're lumped in a group 4:1 resto shaman who can drop Grace of Air for them. This allowed 1 hunter, maybe 2 (whelp pit duty for Onyxia causing a split) at most needed to carry TSA.

[SidonisAntares 288]

On 8/12/2019 at 3:48 AM, Impakt said:

Hi Adder, thanks for the feedback. You are correct, those enchants exist but were added later in the classic cycle, specifically in patch 1.6. Since they were added in patch 1.6, that means they will most likely not be available during phase 1 and 2 of WoW Classic. They will probably be released with Blackwing Lair in phase 3, meaning they will be unavailable for the first few months. Those enchants will be added to the pre-raid BiS list when phase 3 begins.

The enchant came from Timbermaw Hold rep, so its possible it won't be tied to BWL. A lot of the game mechanics and items are launching in place from 1.13 independent of when they originally released. I'll take a look next weekend and try to remember to come back to this.

[Impakt 25]

On 8/22/2019 at 10:58 AM, SidonisAntares said:

I like the caveat about Improved Hunters Mark, but the same can apply to Trueshot Aura depending on your raid composition, and most importantly faction. On Horde Hunters don't get dropped in melee groups since they don't benefit from Windfury Totem, at best you have one in the MT group for making pulling a bit more coordinated, but usually they're lumped in a group 4:1 resto shaman who can drop Grace of Air for them. This allowed 1 hunter, maybe 2 (whelp pit duty for Onyxia causing a split) at most needed to carry TSA.

Hi Sidonis,

 

While you are correct that Horde hunters generally don't get put into melee groups that benefit from Trueshot aura as often, I don't think it quite falls into the same disctinction. MM is almost universally the highest damage spec for hunters at every stage of classic, and if you're already investing the 30 points into MM, trueshot aura is worth taking even purely for your own personal DPS. Thus, it is worth every hunter taking regardless of group. It also would generally be impractical to pick up a spec that uses it for raids and then not have it for anything you do outside of raids, where it is very likely to be useful.

[SidonisAntares 288]

23 hours ago, Impakt said:

Thus, it is worth every hunter taking regardless of group. It also would generally be impractical to pick up a spec that uses it for raids and then not have it for anything you do outside of raids, where it is very likely to be useful.

I used the word caveat for this very reason, nor did I disagree that the MM build is the highest DPS build in Classic. As far as respeccing for raid vs outside of raid, that was just a part of your raiding costs the same as consumables were. Please do not issue such a banal response when many of us in Classic who raided regularly also respecced regularly, its just the way things were and you learned to plan for it as an expense because it was another control mechanism that Blizzard would later ultimately abandon.

Point is, respecs are just another raiding cost, and it isn't realistic to be that dismissive. It was just something you did, and I did it for almost four and a half years until they added dual talent spec (at the lovely cost of 1k gold) when Ulduar launched in WotLK (and then dropped to 10g in the Cata prep patch), and even then your two talent specializations shared the rate of decay on talent respec costs.

[CaperfinWoW 21]

So I've been playing a hunter for +3years on pservers and I (and others) have a completed different way of playing a hunter. As crazy as it might seem, we got the most dps by going melee and staying in melee. Naturally, this is later in the game (post AQ). Also, this demands optimal play. 

Have you experienced something similar?

Edited September 12, 2019 by CaperfinWoW

[Impakt 25]

On 9/12/2019 at 1:27 PM, CaperfinWoW said:

So I've been playing a hunter for +3years on pservers and I (and others) have a completed different way of playing a hunter. As crazy as it might seem, we got the most dps by going melee and staying in melee. Naturally, this is later in the game (post AQ). Also, this demands optimal play. 

Have you experienced something similar?

Honestly I've never tried it. What sort of setup were you using, and when you say optimal play what exactly do you mean? Raptor strike on CD? It's interesting for sure, but I struggle to see how this becomes better other than melee weapons just scaling better past AQ40...

[Impakt 25]

I read over your guide in your bio, it's interesting for sure. I can only assume it'll perform even better on Classic since lifesteal spellpower ratios on weapon procs went from 50->100%. I'll definitely try it out once AQ40 rolls around.

[Guest Emutt]

Dal'rend's set is said to be BIS for hunter , but i got a polarme named peacemaker it got 1% crit and 56 AP , wich is more AP then dal set offers , so how is dal set better?

[CaperfinWoW 21]

Although, not mentioned. It's possible to start melee'ing as a Hunter for personal dps much earlier with x2 Deathbringer. Funnily enough, its has the potential to compete with the glorious dps of Corrupted Ashbringer. But it demands to get x2 Deathbringer which is one of the reason it's not talk about very much. 

P.S. If you ever want to talk in Discord more thoroughly about not just hunters but any other class, let me know.

Edited September 16, 2019 by CaperfinWoW

[Guest Rex Hunt]

Corpsemaker is better than Dal'Rends as it has 6 extra more AP and is far easier to get and since there's no 1h enchants, there's no real reason to run UBRS over and over again and irritate the rogues/warriors.

[Guest Rex Hunt]

Peacemaker*

[Jabrones 0]

Where can I find the classic stat weights? I'm trying to set up Pawn in classic.

[Guest Meepo]

Why and how is hand of justice a hunter's trinket? It proc off melee attack? Just curious. 

[Chronova 0]

I haven't been playing Classic but I was a raiding hunter during Vanilla with a top guild. Been looking through the guide to compare what my findings were back then to what is consensus on here now.

20/31/0 with Wind Serpent/Go For The Throat was the best DPS spec back in the day, however many sources I believe wrongfully give the impression that hunters did lackluster DPS during raids.

Our guild had anywhere from 6-8 hunters during progression raiding that all used 8-piece Dragonstalker even late into Naxxramas. 8-piece Dragonstalker set from Blackwing Lair allows your attacks to apply Expose Weakness, which is a disgustingly strong debuff that is applied to the target, gives +450 RAP for all attackers for 7 seconds and benefits each hunter in the group. It's so strong that we rarely if ever took class set pieces from AQ40 or Naxx unless we were absolutely forced to (Zero sum DKP meant no one taking items means no one gets paid). Utilizing the Dragonstalker set our Hunter core would regularly out-dps other classes barring the exception of whichever Fire Mage had the Ignite stack rolling (Only one Ignite was permitted on a target at any time and it was controlled by a single mage for damage purposes even though multiple mages contributed to it) and a few notable mentions of Fury Warriors/Combat Daggers Rogues popping off.

As I said, this debuff applies individually for each hunter and does not interfere with other Expose Weakness debuffs on the target. Meaning, with multiple applications from different hunters the scaling continues to climb. Consequently this made later DPS checks like Patchwerk, Thaddius, and Loatheb quite trivial for us when we did these fights. Especially Loatheb (50% extra crit + Expose Weakness + constant GFTT procs for Wind Serpent breath attacks = massive DPS). I hope this is taken into account on your guide when the BWL phase is released.

Rotation guide goes into a pretty good amount of detail regarding small intricacies like Auto Shot timing and Aimed Shot/Multi-Shot. Notably Multi-Shot downranking. Extra care needs to be placed with Multi-Shot use due to the fact that if you don't time it correctly it can actually be a net DPS loss. Mistiming a Multi-Shot is much worse than mistiming anything else as the ability felt like it was coded directly in opposition with the auto-attack timer and has a delayed effect. To me one of the hardest things to learn over my WoW vanilla career was learning to habitually cast Multi-Shot consistently just before my Auto Shot so that I would clip off as little as possible before the next Auto Shot would fire. Ability is ungodly clunky. 

If a Hunter knows how long their mana will last through a fight, buffs and consumables considered, it's very manageable to weave in Arcane Shots and Serpent Stings to increase DPS. The guide seems to completely forego the concept due to sheer scaling/mana management issues and the reality is that you dont need your mana supply to last an eternity the entire fight sometimes.

Melee weaving with Raptor Strike is something I personally experimented with back in the day and I felt did not justify the loss of an auto attack cycle from range. You risk too much in the attempt and if the guide discourages mana expenditure from using Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot then why would it bother recommending this? If periods of melee range are unavoidable I don't see a reason not to but I don't believe this is optimal. Raptor Strike, Wing Clip, Mongoose Bite, whether dual wield or 2-hand: These are typically last resorts. They're very much designed that way and Hunters simply dont have the same scaling on melee range abilities that other classes do.

Should also mention that when using a Wind Serpent pet you should macro its Lightning Breath attack to your abilities, as if memory serves pet AI was lackluster and oftentimes would not use it immediately. Wind Serpent's AP scaling with the hunter is large and being nature damage is a huge boost. Also I believe its focus cost is the same as Go For The Throat's focus refund amount. So the quicker this is cast should be better so you dont risk capping your Wind Serpent's focus. If any of this has changed since I originally played the game feel free to correct me.

As for random boss tips, MC and BWL are fairly straightforward but make sure you grab a Hurricane random drop Epic bow for Viscidus in AQ40. I spent 3 months wiping on pre-nerf C'Thun and we quickly figured out you can Feign Death + Freezing Trap his chaining eyeballs to lessen the overall tension on healers during that fight as well. I'd say overall the most immediately useful skills to have are to master your auto shot timer and the relation between multi-shot and auto shot. Movement should always happen between auto shot timers when you can get away with it for max dps.

Fights I would overall consider Hunter to be at a major disadvantage on would include Gothik, Four Horsemen, and to an extent Heigan the Unclean. Any fight with rapid movement, lots of AoE(There's explosive trap but that is a huge investment to make mid-fight unless you know it will be worth it, hunter AoE in vanilla is not stellar), rapid target switching and low health creatures doesn't typically favor the class.

You can abuse certain fights with inevitable downtime to Feign Death + drink to restore mana as well. This allows you to be a little more ballsy with your mana expenditure. Firemaw and Chromaggus come to mind. All in all, vanilla hunter is brutal and clunky but it is more than capable of getting the job done in most circumstances when played right.

Edited September 28, 2019 by Chronova
Added exact stats for Expose Weakness debuff. Apologies for the long post but I played this class religiously during vanilla WoW and racked up 150+ days /played by the time TBC dropped. Figured if I could chime in on anything it would be here.

[Impakt 25]

On 9/25/2019 at 6:06 AM, Guest Rex Hunt said:

Peacemaker*

You are correct. We weren't expected Peakmaker to be in since it is a 1.4 item, but it was in the game. The list has been updated now.

[Impakt 25]

On 9/27/2019 at 4:59 AM, Guest Meepo said:

Why and how is hand of justice a hunter's trinket? It proc off melee attack? Just curious. 

It's literally only for the 20 AP. There are really no good trinket options, so even just the 20 AP makes it BiS for Alliance. Horde have access to the rune, which is quest trinket.

[Impakt 25]

13 hours ago, Chronova said:

I haven't been playing Classic but I was a raiding hunter during Vanilla with a top guild. Been looking through the guide to compare what my findings were back then to what is consensus on here now.

20/31/0 with Wind Serpent/Go For The Throat was the best DPS spec back in the day, however many sources I believe wrongfully give the impression that hunters did lackluster DPS during raids.

Our guild had anywhere from 6-8 hunters during progression raiding that all used 8-piece Dragonstalker even late into Naxxramas. 8-piece Dragonstalker set from Blackwing Lair allows your attacks to apply Expose Weakness, which is a disgustingly strong debuff that is applied to the target, gives +450 RAP for all attackers for 7 seconds and benefits each hunter in the group. It's so strong that we rarely if ever took class set pieces from AQ40 or Naxx unless we were absolutely forced to (Zero sum DKP meant no one taking items means no one gets paid). Utilizing the Dragonstalker set our Hunter core would regularly out-dps other classes barring the exception of whichever Fire Mage had the Ignite stack rolling (Only one Ignite was permitted on a target at any time and it was controlled by a single mage for damage purposes even though multiple mages contributed to it) and a few notable mentions of Fury Warriors/Combat Daggers Rogues popping off.

As I said, this debuff applies individually for each hunter and does not interfere with other Expose Weakness debuffs on the target. Meaning, with multiple applications from different hunters the scaling continues to climb. Consequently this made later DPS checks like Patchwerk, Thaddius, and Loatheb quite trivial for us when we did these fights. Especially Loatheb (50% extra crit + Expose Weakness + constant GFTT procs for Wind Serpent breath attacks = massive DPS). I hope this is taken into account on your guide when the BWL phase is released.

Rotation guide goes into a pretty good amount of detail regarding small intricacies like Auto Shot timing and Aimed Shot/Multi-Shot. Notably Multi-Shot downranking. Extra care needs to be placed with Multi-Shot use due to the fact that if you don't time it correctly it can actually be a net DPS loss. Mistiming a Multi-Shot is much worse than mistiming anything else as the ability felt like it was coded directly in opposition with the auto-attack timer and has a delayed effect. To me one of the hardest things to learn over my WoW vanilla career was learning to habitually cast Multi-Shot consistently just before my Auto Shot so that I would clip off as little as possible before the next Auto Shot would fire. Ability is ungodly clunky. 

If a Hunter knows how long their mana will last through a fight, buffs and consumables considered, it's very manageable to weave in Arcane Shots and Serpent Stings to increase DPS. The guide seems to completely forego the concept due to sheer scaling/mana management issues and the reality is that you dont need your mana supply to last an eternity the entire fight sometimes.

Melee weaving with Raptor Strike is something I personally experimented with back in the day and I felt did not justify the loss of an auto attack cycle from range. You risk too much in the attempt and if the guide discourages mana expenditure from using Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot then why would it bother recommending this? If periods of melee range are unavoidable I don't see a reason not to but I don't believe this is optimal. Raptor Strike, Wing Clip, Mongoose Bite, whether dual wield or 2-hand: These are typically last resorts. They're very much designed that way and Hunters simply dont have the same scaling on melee range abilities that other classes do.

Should also mention that when using a Wind Serpent pet you should macro its Lightning Breath attack to your abilities, as if memory serves pet AI was lackluster and oftentimes would not use it immediately. Wind Serpent's AP scaling with the hunter is large and being nature damage is a huge boost. Also I believe its focus cost is the same as Go For The Throat's focus refund amount. So the quicker this is cast should be better so you dont risk capping your Wind Serpent's focus. If any of this has changed since I originally played the game feel free to correct me.

As for random boss tips, MC and BWL are fairly straightforward but make sure you grab a Hurricane random drop Epic bow for Viscidus in AQ40. I spent 3 months wiping on pre-nerf C'Thun and we quickly figured out you can Feign Death + Freezing Trap his chaining eyeballs to lessen the overall tension on healers during that fight as well. I'd say overall the most immediately useful skills to have are to master your auto shot timer and the relation between multi-shot and auto shot. Movement should always happen between auto shot timers when you can get away with it for max dps.

Fights I would overall consider Hunter to be at a major disadvantage on would include Gothik, Four Horsemen, and to an extent Heigan the Unclean. Any fight with rapid movement, lots of AoE(There's explosive trap but that is a huge investment to make mid-fight unless you know it will be worth it, hunter AoE in vanilla is not stellar), rapid target switching and low health creatures doesn't typically favor the class.

You can abuse certain fights with inevitable downtime to Feign Death + drink to restore mana as well. This allows you to be a little more ballsy with your mana expenditure. Firemaw and Chromaggus come to mind. All in all, vanilla hunter is brutal and clunky but it is more than capable of getting the job done in most circumstances when played right.

Awesome post, I appreciate the effort. There are a couple of things that are different about Classic than original Vanilla. First off, the Multi-shot timing is surprisingly generous. It is actually quite hard to delay an Auto-Shot in classic just by Multi-Shotting too close to it. I regularly will Multi-Shot on cooldown, right when it comes up, which often will be the exact moment I'm about to start an Auto-Shot animation, and they will end up just casting at the same time. This is one of the few good bugs that Hunters have.

You are absolutely right, the Dragonstalker set is amazing. Once p3 roles around and getting 8 piece is possible, I'll include it in the BiS list and talk about it. It's important to note though that you shouldn't switch from Giantstalker to Dragonstalker until you have the full 8 set, since the full 8 set bonus of Gianstalker from MC is quite strong as well. As for the later fights, I'll definitely get more in depth and talk more about them as we get to those phases. It is worth noting though, some private servers have historically not let the vulnerability buff from Dragonstalkers stack, so only 1 Hunter can apply it for other Hunters. I pray this is not how it ends up working, but we'll have to wait and see.

For melee weaving, I agree, It's really hard to make it work. It takes a very specific boss, something with a large hitbox and is stationary. Thaddius would be a great example of a boss where I could regularly melee weave Raptor Strikes in. 90%+ of bosses it is just not worth it, especially with multiple Dragonstalker sets.

 

Thanks again for the post!

[Chronova 0]

If they don't allow Expose Weakness to stack that would be a damn shame. Of course it's not healthy from a sheer item design standpoint but it was the one thing that let us go over the top. Personally I blame the design team for making the AQ set and Cryptstalkers so meh. And if they fixed the multi-shot nonsense that's great because that was a hassle and a half. And yea, now that you mention it Thaddius was a fight I'd swipe by and melee. Took a while when switching to get back far enough to hit from range again. Though I don't know what everyone does for the fight now, we made it a little easier for the hunters by having each member go to the right if they stayed the same and to the left if they swapped. Still got time for one raptor but it helped.

Edited September 28, 2019 by Chronova

[Guest JDubWo]

Dark Phantom Cape, 15 agi, boe

[Impakt 25]

On 9/28/2019 at 12:45 PM, Chronova said:

If they don't allow Expose Weakness to stack that would be a damn shame. Of course it's not healthy from a sheer item design standpoint but it was the one thing that let us go over the top. Personally I blame the design team for making the AQ set and Cryptstalkers so meh. And if they fixed the multi-shot nonsense that's great because that was a hassle and a half. And yea, now that you mention it Thaddius was a fight I'd swipe by and melee. Took a while when switching to get back far enough to hit from range again. Though I don't know what everyone does for the fight now, we made it a little easier for the hunters by having each member go to the right if they stayed the same and to the left if they swapped. Still got time for one raptor but it helped.

Trust me, my fingers are crossed. I would love going into naxx with 6 hunters stacking expose weakness instead of just bringing 2 for trueshot in melee groups.

[Impakt 25]

13 hours ago, Guest JDubWo said:

Dark Phantom Cape, 15 agi, boe

There are tons of BoE green items that could be viable pre-raid pieces, so don't be afraid to use whatever you can get!

[CaperfinWoW 21]

1 hour ago, Impakt said:

Trust me, my fingers are crossed. I would love going into naxx with 6 hunters stacking expose weakness instead of just bringing 2 for trueshot in melee groups.

I highly doubt expose weakness will stack, I'd be funny though seeing hunters topping charts ?