Hunter Leveling Guide 1-60 - Talents, Gear, Stats and More

Beast Mastery Hunter is by far the strongest leveling specialization for the Hunter class, and one of the top leveling classes overall. In Forever this is no different, and you will be stronger than ever due to a streamlined talent tree. Both Marksmanship and Survival specializations are perfectly viable and by no means are they unplayable while leveling, but Beast Mastery is simply the strongest and most recommended specialization while leveling.

New talents such as Focused Fire, and Summon Hawk give Beast Mastery an additional boost in damage compared to Classic, and allow you to sustain yourself for longer before needing to stop to recover health and mana.

As a Hunter your first 10 levels prior to taming a pet will be slightly slower, but still relatively easy as you can kite targets with ease with Auto Shot while casting Arcane Shot and Serpent Sting. After you reach level 10 and learn Tame Beast to acquire a pet, your journey becomes incredibly simple as your pet will act as a tank for you, and deal a significant portion of your overall damage.

While leveling you can further increase your overall damage output by learning how to melee weave, which includes adding in auto attacks, and Raptor Strike whenever available.

While leveling your stat priority will look a little different than it will at level 60 one you start gearing up for raids.

Priority:

1. Weapon Damage - The most important stat will be your weapon damage as the vast majority of your damage will come from ranged attacks. Slower bows/guns will always be more favorable due to the way damage per hit is calculated and some of your main damage abilities like Aimed Shot are calculated off of weapon damage.
2. Agility - Increases your attack power, and critical strike chance. This will be your primary stat and your main priority above all else in terms of gear while leveling up. The secondary bonus is that in Forever, your pet will now have scaling. Your pet will gain 10% of either your melee or ranged attack power, whichever is higher.
3. Critical Strike Chance - Critical strike hits deal 200% damage, and in Forever your pet will inherit 100% of your critical strike chance. Another reason this stat is so important, is due to Frenzy. Whenever your pet lands a critical strike it will gain 30% attack speed for 8 seconds. With enough critical strike chance you can Frenzy at 100% uptime and even drop down to 4/5 talents.
4. Intellect - Each point of intellect increases your mana pool by 15. Hunter for the most part has a rather mana intensive rotation and you can quickly find yourself out of mana with proper rotation and ability management. More is always better, and with the new talent Careful Aim you will also benefit from the additional attack power.
5. Hit Chance - Not a major priority while leveling as you will will typically be fighting targets the same level as you and gear while leveling typically does not have a lot of hit rating.

With all of the new racial changes with Forever, all races are more or less viable and within 1% of each other. Play the race you ultimately want to play. From a min-max perspective, the list below will lay out your best choices for both Alliance and Horde. Night Elf is the absolute best choice between both factions with Elune's Light being an incredibly powerful racial for Hunter.

On the Horde side Orc is still your best choice even after all of the new racial changes, but it is now very close to both Troll and Windshaper Skyborne.

Alliance

Night Elf

• Elune's Light Increases critical strike chance by 10% for 15 seconds.
• Shadowmeld: Grants stealth while stationary.
• Quickness(Passive): Increases dodge chance by 1% and run speed by 2%.
• Wisp Spirit (Passive): Increases run speed by 75% while dead.

Skyborne

• Walk on Air: Allows you to glide downward through the air for 10 seconds.
• Read Ley Line: Activates a ley line, increasing health and mana regeneration by 100%.
• Wind Blessed (Passive): Increases melee, ranged and spellcasting haste by 3%.
• Elemental Insight (Passive): Increases damage dealt to elementals by 5%.

Human

• Will to Survive Removes stuns.
• Perception Detects stealthed enemies for 20 seconds.
• Ruthless (Passive): Increases spell and ability critical strike chance by 2%.
• The Human Spirit (Passive): Increases Spirit by 5%

Horde

Orc

• Blood Fury: Increases attack power and spell power by 10% for 15 seconds.
• Shatter Curse: Grants immunity to curses and banes, and reduces magical damage taken by 5% for 8 seconds.
• Savage (Passive): Increases your critical strike chance with all spells and abilities by 1%.
• Hardiness (Passive): Reduces the duration of stuns affecting you by 20%.

Troll

• Berserking: Increases casting and attack speed by 10% for 10 seconds.
• Rapid Regeneration: Regenerates 50% of maximum health over time.
• Beast Slaying (Passive): Increases damage dealt to beasts by 5%.
• Regeneration(Passive): Health regeneration rate increased by 20% and allows 20% of your health regeneration to continue during combat.

Skyborne

• Walk on Air: Allows you to glide downward through the air for 10 seconds.
• Skysight: Grants an Elemental Blessing that increases run speed by 10%.
• Wind Blessed (Passive): Increases melee, ranged and spellcasting haste by 3%.
• Elemental Insight (Passive): Increases damage dealt to elementals by 5%.

While leveling consumables are not necessarily required, but they can make a noticeable difference in your journey. The biggest change in Forever is that there is now a 5% experience buff provided with several sources of food.

It is highly recommended that you learn and level your cooking as you progress through leveling as it will always keep you stocked up on experience bonus food as well as provide a small amount of stats.

Experience + Agility buff food:

• Longjaw Mud Snapper
• Spiced Wolf Meat
• Coyote Steak
• Crocolisk Steak
• Seasoned Wolf Kabob
• Hot Lion Chops
• Crocolisk Gumbo
• Lean Wolf Steak
• Hot Wolf Ribs
• Heavy Crocolisk Stew
• Jungle Stew
• Tender Wolf Steak
• Swiftstrike Steak
• Flank au Poivre

Health Potions:

As you level up, you will come across healing potions that increase in amount of health restored. It is always beneficial to keep at least 1 stack of healing potions for situations that go sideways.

Mana Potions:

Similar to health potions, as you level up you will come across increasingly better mana potions that increase the amount of mana restored. As a Hunter your rotation and abilities will drain your mana rather quickly so having one or two stacks of mana potions will be handy to keep your mana pool going and reduce the amount of downtime needed between pulls.

Alchemy Consumables:

While not required, or recommended to go Alchemy as a Hunter you can purchase the following consumables to increase your stats if you have additional gold to spend, or have a friend willing to craft you some consumables.

Elixir of Minor Agility

Elixir of Lesser Agility

Elixir of Agility

Elixir of Greater Agility

Minor Mageblood Elixir

Lesser Mageblood Elixir

Mageblood Elixir

Greater Mageblood Elixir

Campfires:

Campfires are new for Forever, and they can provide several important stat buffs as well as rested experience boosts. The most important buffs for Hunter are as follows:

• Camp Tent - Provides rested experience up to 5% of a level.
• Camp Chair - Increases critical strike chance by 2%.
• Fish Bowl - Increases stats by 8% (Does not stack with Blessing of Kings)
• Enchanted Lute - Increases all stats, armor, and resistances (Does not stack with Mark of the Wild)
• Mana Well - Regenerate mana every 5 seconds.
• Lodestone - Increases melee attack power.
• Sharpening Wheel - Increases strength (Useful if melee weaving)
• Incense Candle - Increases intellect

While leveling you can go several routes, however Skinning and Leatherworking are the two recommended professions as you can skin beasts for hide to craft several powerful items such as Brawler's Leather Hood, Dark Leather Shoulders, Brawler's Leather Boots, and Skulker's Leather Belt to name a few, as well as a new quiver or ammo bag as you reach higher levels to ensure you always have the highest quantity bag.

Mining and Engineering are another good combination while leveling. Engineering provides several useful items such as Flying Tiger Goggles early on, and Gnomish Goggles later on. You will also be able to craft a wide variety of explosives and grenades like Iron Grenade that will cause a decent amount of damage as well as stun your target for 3 seconds which is very useful in both PvE and PvP situations.

First Aid and Cooking should also be picked up as soon as possible and maintained as you level up in your journey. As mentioned earlier Cooking will provide you with several food options to maintain 5% bonus experience as you level as well as boosts to agility.

First Aid is straightforward as you will create bandages to quickly heal up and reduce downtime between pulls as needed.

The following tips will make you a better Hunter overall and making your leveling experience much better and prepare you for when you reach level 60.

1. Strafe Kiting: Learn to strafe nearly at all times and never backpedal. Keeping yourself positioned and moving in such a way that you are always to move at full speed, while also being able to still cast abilities and stop briefly to let Auto Shot go off with make a significant difference and in most cases let you cast an additional 2-3 Auto Shot before your target reaches you.
2. Melee Weave: Right from the beginning of your leveling journey is the best time to learn how and when to melee weave in your rotation. Believe it or not Raptor Strike is one of our hardest hitting abilities as a Hunter and with a slow two-handed weapon you will increase your overall damage significantly. The only downside while leveling is that you will almost always pull threat from your pet if you land a critical strike with your ranged abilities such as Arcane Shot into a Raptor Strike.
3. Use your Racial Abilities: If you play a race such as Night Elf, Orc, Troll. Do not forget to use your racial abilities on cooldown as the damage increase will speed up your kill times and leveling a small amount.
4. Chain Pull Targets: While it may seem counter intuitive, as a Hunter, especially as Beast Mastery you can pull nearly endlessly as long as your pet health remains healthy, even if you are completely out of mana. Your pet will do a lot of the heavy lifting and even just casting Auto Shot will be enough to kill your target rather quickly.

28 Oct 2026, Initial leveling guide for Hunters