Hunter Shadowlands Leveling Guide From 1 to 60

Table of Contents

• 1. Leveling in Shadowlands
• 2. Best Leveling Spec for Hunter in Shadowlands
• 3. Ability Unlocks for Hunter Leveling in Shadowlands
• 4. Best Heirloom Items for Hunter Leveling in Shadowlands
• 5. Changelog

Welcome to our Hunter leveling guide. Here you will find all you need to know to level up your Hunter efficiently. Leveling received a lot of changes in Shadowlands, which we have documented in our Shadowlands Leveling Changes page. In addition, we now have a revamped Leveling guide, complete with detailed information on XP, mounts, addons, consumables, tips, and more. We encourage to read it to increase your leveling speed even more.

Hunters have always been one of the strongest leveling classes, and one of the strongest specs for soloing difficult content. Their pets can be their own personal tanks, and they have many tools that make combat easier and more fun, on top of being one of the more mobile classes in the game.

We recommend Beast Mastery for most of your Hunter Leveling needs. This is because its pet does a lot more damage, allowing it to sustain itself via the Leech it brings, and therefore letting you make larger pulls and fight more dangerous enemies with no trouble. Just make sure that you keep Growl enabled when out in the world, and disabled in dungeons!

Both Marksmanship and Survival are decent leveling specs as well, but Marksmanship suffers in particular from being rather slow to play, on top of having the weakest pet of all the specs, meaning you will have to do a lot of the tanking yourself.

You unlock your first ability of interest at Level 3.

• At Level 3, you unlock Wing Clip which is a 50% slow that lasts for 15 seconds. It is useful for kiting mobs, but it must be used at melee range.
• At Level 4, you unlock Disengage lets you jump backwards when used. You can use it to move more quickly on foot by quickly turning 180 degrees and using Disengage to jump you in the direction you're traveling.
• At Level 5, you unlock Aspect of the Cheetah increases your movement speed by 90% for 3 seconds, and then 30% for another 9 seconds. It has a 3-minute cooldown.
• At Level 6, you unlock Feign Death lets you pretend to be dead for up to 6 minutes, dropping aggro from all NPCs to stop them from attacking you.
• At Level 8, you unlock Aspect of the Turtle, which is a powerful defensive ability. It puts up a shield around you that deflects all attacks and reduces your damage taken by 30% for 8 seconds. It has a 3-minute cooldown. You cannot cast while it is active.
• At Level 9, you unlock Exhilaration which heals you for 30% of your maximum health, and your pet for 100% of its health on a 2-minute cooldown.
• At Level 19, you unlock Flare. It allows you to put down a flare that covers a small area on the ground. It reveals any stealthed or hidden mobs within that area. It is also useful for dealing with stealthed enemy players.
• At Level 21, you unlock Tar Trap. It places a trap on the ground. When triggered by an enemy, it becomes a large pool of tar that slows all enemies inside of it by 50%. The trap will exist for 1 minute after placing it, and 30 seconds after being triggered.
• At Level 29, you unlock Eyes of the Beast. It allows you to temporarily see through the eyes of your pet and control it rather than your own character.
• At Level 37, you unlock Tranquilizing Shot, which is a shot that can dispel one Enrage and Magic effect from an enemy target, letting you remove buffs that are beneficial to your enemies.
• At Level 39, you unlock Scare Beast lets you fear a Beast-type mob for up to 25 seconds, effectively removing it from the fight. Attacking the Beast will break this effect.
• At Level 43, you unlock Eagle Eye. This lets you place a targeting reticule on the ground up to thousands of yards away, which will let you see what is happening at that point. You can use the ability again to move around the zone with the ability, allowing you to see all around the zone without actually moving.

When purchasing Heirloom Items for Leveling in general, we recommend picking the Heirloom items that have the highest amount of Haste possible. Haste speeds up the spec in almost every way, allowing you to quickly breeze through your rotation, and move on to the next mob more quickly.

Haste is also useful for being a little bit quicker to tag mobs around you. A split second can make the difference between you getting a tag, or losing it to another player.

• 28 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
• 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
• 05 Dec. 2020: Updated the unlock levels of some abilities.
• 12 Oct. 2020: Revamped page for Shadowlands, with subpages for each spec.
• 03 Jun. 2020: Added preliminary information about Shadowlands leveling.
• 14 Jan. 2020: Added note about Black Empire BoA Gear.
• 13 Jan. 2020: Added information about the new heirloom items in Patch 8.3.
• 05 Jul. 2019: This page has been reviewed for the release of Patch 8.2 and no changes are necessary.
• 14 Apr. 2019: This page has been reviewed for Crucible of Storms and no changes are necessary.
• 10 Dec. 2018: Updated the Sniper Shot PvP Talent Description for Patch 8.1. No other changes are necessary.
• 22 Aug. 2018: Recommend Sticky Tar for Survival instead of Survival Tactics.
• 12 Aug. 2018: Consistency updates to give all leveling guides a similar feel.
• 11 Aug. 2018: Changed the recommended level 100 talent for Survival. Added Chakrams and Steel Trap to the Survival rotation.
• 10 Aug. 2018: Changed the Level-By-Level unlocks to disappear at Level 110, to reduce clutter for people starting at Level 110.
• 07 Aug. 2018: Added Survival part.
• 04 Aug. 2018: Updated Leveling guide for BfA.