Hunter Class Overview

Hunters are absolute powerhouses in The Burning Crusade, improving exponentially from Classic. Hunters now have pets that scale far better, some actual cooldowns to utilize, and perhaps most importantly a new rotational ability that removes any downtime in their rotation. The major weaknesses that Hunters faced in Classic are behind them, and while there are still some issues to watch out for, Hunters will be a dominant force throughout the expansion for both PvE and PvP content. Beast Mastery Hunters specifically will be the one of the strongest DPS for most of the expansion, capable of topping meters on any single target raid encounter.

• Massive quality of life buffs: Hunters have two massive quality of life changes in The Burning Crusade. First, the dead zone has been removed; your minimum range distance for ranged attacks is now 5-yards, meaning you can transition from melee to range immediately. Second, traps can now be placed in combat.
• Beast Mastery Spec: In The Burning Crusade, Beast Mastery transitions from being a leveling-focused specialization to being one of the best damage dealers in the game. This is due to better pet scaling, the improved power of Bestial Wrath, and the introduction of a new core rotational ability Steady Shot that drastically reduces the opportunity cost of not having the shots from other specializations.
• Marksmanship in PvP: Marksmanship is now one of the more dominant ranged specializations in PvP, specifically thanks to Viper Sting.

Hunter are able to choose from three specializations: Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival.

Beast Mastery is the strongest Hunter spec in PvE by far. Beast Mastery focuses on boosting your pet damage in addition to yours, giving you access to a powerful new cooldown and some excellent stat talents that help you to top meters. Most raids will covet Beast Mastery Hunters, looking to stack them whenever possible, as they are considered top-tier DPS at every stage of the game. In PvP, Beast Mastery is still strong, but nowhere near as meta as in PvE. Beast Mastery is particularly strong in 3v3 arena, as they can suffer with pet issues in 2v2 where people will target and kill their pets. In PvP, Beast Mastery plays like a glass cannon - you do tons of damage, but have little survivability and CC compared to other Hunter specs and other classes.

Marksmanship is the least viable Hunter spec in PvE. While Beast Mastery tops meters, Marksmanship is a bit lacking. Most of the MM talents focus on making you do slightly more damage yourself, while several talents only focus on Multi-Shot damage. Unfortunately the talent tree just does not synergize well with your damage profile. MM Hunters do bring Trueshot Aura however, which gives them a nice buff for melee groups. PvP is where Marksmanship truly shines though. Marksmanship is a high-tier spec in 2v2 arena, as Viper Sting is extremely good at draining Mana and running teams down. MM Hunters are still strong in other types of PvP as well, but 2v2 arena is where they shine. MM Hunters offer significantly better small-window burst, control, and sustain than other specs.

Survival is the second most-viable Hunter specialization, and centers around scaling from Agility to provide a specific debuff for the raid group. Survival does less damage at a personal level than Beast Mastery, but brings the talent Expose Weakness to raids. This talent lowers the armor of the target they crit, which is incredibly valuable to any raid group, meaning every raid will always want at least one Survival Hunter. Thanks to Lightning Reflexes and other scaling talents, Survival also scales extremely well, getting progressively stronger throughout the tiers. They will never out-DPS Beast Mastery Hunters, but they get higher and higher tier on their own. In PvP, Survival Hunters take a more control-based approach, and are quite strong. Thanks to the power of Wyvern Sting and their other trap enhancing talents, Survival has some excellent control options available. They do less damage than the other 2 specs in PvP, but bring more control.

While Hunters may have been quite weak in Classic relative to the top-tier DPS, Hunters are absolute powerhouses in TBC. Thanks to some incredible class changes, most notably with pets scaling from your AP now, Hunters are S-tier DPS for the entirety of TBC. They are incredibly strong all at every stage of the game.

Beast Mastery is far and away the best Hunter spec. Raids will want one Survival Hunter for their debuff that they bring, but Beast Mastery is the strongest Hunter spec.

Hunters are one of the S-tier DPS classes, and most raids will take as many as they can get. It is not uncommon to see at least 3, and often even more in a 25-man raid.

Orcs are the best for Horde, and Alliance is more up to you. All three Alliance races have their pros and cons, but they're all relatively minor so it mostly is up to what you value.

The more important change is what was mentioned above, that pets no gain a portion of some of your stats. Additionally, Hunters received several more nice quality of life changes in TBC. The two biggest changes are that traps can now be placed in combat, and that the deadzone has been removed. Our minimum ranged attack range is now 5 yards instead of 8, meaning we can seamlessly transition between melee and ranged attacks.

If you are still deciding if the Hunter class is the proper choice for you, feel free to check out the video below from WillE, an avid player and long time content creator for World of Warcraft! This video will give you a solid overview of what Hunter is like to play in The Burning Crusade.

Hunters are relatively easy to gear due to a lack of competition for most pieces, along with several of your important pieces coming from crafting professions. Some trinkets and jewelry pieces will fave lots of competition however from other melee classes.

Hunters are able to wear Cloth and Leather, and can also learn how to use Mail armor at the class trainer after reaching Level 40.

Hunters are one of the most versatile classes and are able to use a huge variety of weapons, including Axes, Bows, Crossbows, Daggers, Fist Weapons, Guns, Polearms, Staves, Swords, Thrown, Two-Handed Axes, and Two-Handed Swords.

Addons and macros are beneficial to Hunters in The Burning Crusade, because they enhance gameplay efficiency by automating complex sequences of actions and providing crucial real-time information, such as cooldown timers and enemy debuffs. This allows Hunters to maximize their damage output and responsiveness in both PvE and PvP scenarios.