The hunter is a combat class, like the rogue and warrior, but whereas those classes rely on melee attacks, the hunter relies on ranged power. It does have spellcasting ability, but the hunter's spells are supportive ones, used to enhance the hunters natural abilities.


The hunter can also have a combat pet, with the ability to tame a beast at level 10. The pet must be kept happy, to do this you have to feed the pet. Most pets eat meat. As the pet fights, however, it's happiness will decrease so you always want to keep meat on hand. Nearly any monster with the beast type can be tamed and turned into a pet. You have to train your pet and usually where there is a hunter trainer, there is a pet trainer nearby. If you find a new pet, you can also stable your current pet so that you don't have to get rid of him/her.

Pretty much, almost everything I learned about the class came from either WoW Hunter forums, or http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/

I cannot begin to tell you haw great petopia is for helping you sort out hunter stuff when you are getting started!

(I have a 35 huntress on Hordeside, and she is a lot of fun to play. If it wasn't for the guild, I'd spend a lot more time with her).

~Darq~

A few additions to what Keri has said:

Keriwen wrote:

The hunter is a combat class, like the rogue and warrior, but whereas those classes rely on melee attacks, the hunter relies on ranged power.

There is a tree in the Hunter talents - Survival - where the Hunter can specialize in hand to hand. Not sure why a Hunter would do that but they do. To me the reason to be a hunter is to have that nice beefy pet making monsters really angry at them while I stand back and pummel them with ranged shots.

Keriwen wrote:

The hunter can also have a combat pet, with the ability to tame a beast at level 10. The pet must be kept happy, to do this you have to feed the pet. Most pets eat meat.

While many pets do eat meat, if you are going off to tame a new pet and have not done the reasearch to find out what they eat I would suggest taking some fungus, and fruits along too just incase the one you pick has exotic tastes.

Keriwen wrote:

As the pet fights, however, it's happiness will decrease so you always want to keep meat on hand.

Pet hapiness decreases with time as well. Combat is not the only thing that reduces hapiness. Having food is important but more importanrt is having food that gives the pet maximum hapiness per bite (35 points I believe is the max that I have seen). I do not know which level food is right for which level pet but as I level and gett better food I keep a similarly leveld stack of food for the pet. You want to keep the little "froggy" (I call it) icon next to the pet smiling and green as anything less and the pet is not hitting as hard as they can.

Keriwen wrote:

You have to train your pet and usually where there is a hunter trainer, there is a pet trainer nearby.

Do not overlook keeping your pet training and skills up to date. Several abilitires, growl, greater stamina, an armor boost whose name I forget and a host of resist increases; are buyable at the pet trainers near the hunter trainers as you level up. Growl helps keep the monster's attention on the pet while the stamina and armor boosts give him much more armor and health. I have yet to train any pets with resist increases but that may change as I get more into the levels where instance runs become more important.

There are a whole host of other abilities that you can get depending on which pet you have and there is where sites like Petopia are invaluable.

Keriwen wrote:

If you find a new pet, you can also stable your current pet . . .

Do not forget to stable the current pet before you try and tame another as you can not tame one if you have one active and with you.

Just a quick reminder that HUNTERS RULE!!!!!!!!!

As much as people say 'huntards = EZmode' that is soooooooo not true. Training your pet is hard, because you need to know what your pet can learn, at what levels, and whether it comes from trainer or from mobs.

Managing your pet is hard, too - a mismanaged pet isn't helping w/ DPS, or - worse - drawing extra mobs/aggro.

And sadly, a pet can be put on def for you, but not for a party member, object, or place

petopia is a really, REALLY great source for pets & pet info, as is hunter forums @ wow official site.

I want to roll a survival hunter I will do next x-pack.

Survival? /shudder

Not that survival is not a good choice more that I personally love pets and to choose a talent tree in a pet class that does not use them just makes me shudder

As to petopia - that is the number one best site I have found to date for hunter information. They even have calculators for training your pet . . .

Remember that the drawbacks that Darq is talking about are primarily centered around instance runs and such where pet control is needed badly. At all other times my pet is on defense never aggressive as the mechanics for that seem really wierd. The pet runs back to you after each kill then runs back out to the next baddie. Plus he can run to monsters you do not even see yet and pull even more action your way. I find that just targeting the next monster as the previous one gets killed and immediately semding the pet to that one after the kill works just fine for ma.