Hunter Leveling Guide (Level 1-30) - Talents, Rotations, Races & More

Playable Races

Alliance - Dwarf, Human, Night Elf & Skyborne

Horde - Orc, Tauren, Troll & Skyborne

Recommended Races

Dwarf provides 3 useful abilities and is probably the best race for leveling to 30 as Alliance. Mace Specialization gives you 1% crit when using a mace. Stoneform grants you immunities and Physical Damage Reduction and Big Game Hunter increases you damage to beasts (which you'll see a lot of while leveling up)

Night Elf provides you their new ability Elune's Light which provides 10% increased Critical Strike Chance for 15 seconds. They come with passive movement speed and dodge chance as well, making them great for moving through the world a bit faster and providing a bit more survivability when enemies start hitting you. Wisp Spirit grants you 75% movement speed which hopefully you don’t need often, but is great for getting back to your body and back into the action.

Troll is great since you’ll be fighting a lot of beasts in the early game and they have 5% increased damage to beasts. Their Berserking buff grants you 10% attack speed for 10 seconds and they also have Rapid Regeneration which allows you to restore 50% of your health every 3 minutes. Add in Regeneration which allows 10% of health regen to continue in combat and they’re the only race in the game that has 4 directly beneficial buffs for the leveling journey 1-30.

For every race's full racial kit side-by-side, see our WoW Forever racial abilities breakdown.

The primary Skills you’ll use are Auto Shot, Multi-Shot, Arcane Shot, Summon Hawk, Raptor Strike and Intimidation. Tame a Boar early on, it's charge ability is great for engaging with enemies quickly and building threat. Boars aren't picky eaters either which makes it easy to keep them happy. Once you can, tame a Strider. Tallstriders get Dust Cloud providing Armor Penetration which synergizes with the Hunter very well.

1. Put up Hunter's Mark and send your beast into battle, once he engages open up with an Auto Shot and Serpent Sting.
2. Once you have acquired Summon Hawk you'll want to them into battle next as you continue to Auto Shot.
3. Follow up your next Auto Shot with Aimed Shot or Multi-Shot.
4. If the enemy is going to survive for quite a bit longer at this point consider using Summon Hawk again to get 2 of them on the target. If they're about to perish simply finish them off with Auto Shot to conserve mana.
5. If you pull threat during the fight just finish off the incoming enemy with melee swings and Raptor Strike or Mongoose Bite if they have qiute a bit of health left.
6. Once you acquire Intimidation at level 30 you can have your Pet open up with this attack to generate even more threat. This will make it much more difficult to pull the enemy off then with your attacks.

Summon Hawk shares a cooldown with Arcane Shot. This is the primary reason we aren't using it in the rotation at all. However, if Summon Hawk ends up being underwhelming or if a fight is going to be over in a few seconds it may be better to just use Arcane Shot instead.

Make sure to visit your Hunter Trainer often and especially at levels 10, 18 & 26 to acquire key skills like Tame Beast, Multi-Shot & Rapid Fire!

You can use Rapid Fire on harder encounters, but keep in mind It’s going to generate a lot of threat for you quickly, and might pull enemies off your pet. These skills are better used in group play or Dungeons since a tank is much harder to pull threat from.

You can “kite” enemies that you aggro off your pet by moving away after you take a shot. Shoot, move a little, repeat. You can use Concussive Shot or Wing Clip slow them down to allow yourself to get enough rang to use your bow/gun again. Freezing Trap can also be useful if you have multipl enemies on top of you. Just drop it while they're attacking you and one of them will be frozen in place while you kill the other. Then get far away and start shooting them again.

Hunters want Agility, followed by Strength and Intellect. Agility increases your Attack Power and Critical Hit Chance, Strength increases Attack Power and Intellect increases your mana pool. Always look for items with Agility on them as the priority and take the other stats when they show up.

You'll have someone tanking when in a party or doing dungeons so it'll be much hard to pul threat off them compared to your pet. This allows you to use skills like Rapid Fire with less concern for doing too much damage quickly.

Make sure to keep Hunter's Mark up on the main target and allow your tank to get threat on a few mobs before you start using Multi-Shot. Don't be that hunter that open up on every pack with a Multi-Shot and has them all running towards you instantly, it'll drive everyone insane.

Traps are great to use in group play especially Explosive Trap and Frost Trap. Use them to deal big AOE damage or to slow down a group of enemies. The slow can be very nice for a tank that wants to kite the enemies a bit to take less damage, or to prevent them from getting to ranged party memebers who are pulling threat.

See how Beast Mastery compares to Marksmanship and Survival on our WoW Forever tier list.

Auto Shot Macro

This macro allows you to spam a button as you change targets to keep shooting with no interruption.

#showtooltip Auto Shot
/cleartarget [dead]
/targetenemy [noharm]
/cast !Auto Shot

Melee Macro

This one button macro will go through you melee abilities to do maximum damage when being attacked.

/startattack
/cast Raptor Strike
/cast Mongoose Bite

Pet Attack

I love putting this on mouse wheel forward to send in my pet. You can also macro this into your auto shot macro, but I prefer to have more control of my pet at all times.

/petattack
/cast Charge
/cast Dash

Pet Passive/Follow

Great for mousewheel backwards. This will make your pet passive and come to you to get out of danger.

/petpassive
/petfollow