Classic hunters were/are very different from Retail. I wanted to make a brief, introductory guide to help ease you into the simplest, but most complex class in WoW.
1-10: This period can be a struggle. You won’t have a pet, just a few skills, and a dead zone. Yes, in Classic, you can’t use your ranged weapon when a mob gets too close, and you’re unable to use your melee weapon, if it’s too far away: This is the dead zone.
You can deal with this in a few ways. Learn to kite. This is a life-long skill, and you might as well begin immediately: Fire your weapon, strafe (don’t run backwards, as that’s too slow), and practice your jump/spin attack. Turn around with your mouse, after firing, run, then, with your mouse, jump, spin, fire another attack, then spin and strafe/run away some more.
At level 5, you can learn professions. You could go leatherworking/skinning, and make quivers, ammo pouches, and leather armor. This is nice if you like grinding mobs, which you’ll need to do in Classic. Engineering/mining is great for guns, ammo, bombs, and other gadgets. Alchemy/herbalism will probably get you the most money later in game, and is the cheapest to level. Or you could just pick two gathering skills, keeping in mind that you can only track one thing at a time: hunter tracking or profession resources.
At level 10 you get your pet quests. Do ALL of these, as the final part will teach you to train your pet. After finishing this, visit the pet trainer, and learn your pet skills. From now on, always check with the pet trainer, when you train your hunter skills, for new levels of pet stamina and armor.
There are three types of pets: dps, tank, and in-between. Most will use bite or claw, and some will have other special abilities. You can find all of these on Petopia (and click the Classic link at the top).
By level 12, your pet will probably be ready to learn a new rank of bite, claw, or its special ability. Petopia lists all of these, where to find them in the world, and which ranks can be learned at certain levels. Petopia is your friend.
Your pet will earn loyalty points by the following: leveling up, and keeping it well fed, which will show as a green smiley icon. Feed it whenever that green “well fed” changes to yellow “content.” The pet does more damage, and earns more points (which are used for its training), the more you keep it well fed.
To feed your pet: Click the “feed pet” icon, then click the food in your bags. If you click the combat damage tab on your chat window, you can see the food taking effect, and know when the “feeding” stops ticking. Petopia lists the kinds of foods that different pets eat. You can also see this by targeting an animal, and using Beast Lore, and on your pet’s status page.
Make sure you have a full stack of food when you first tame your pet. It will be very hungry. The icon will often go from green to yellow. If it goes red, “angry,” and stays red for too long, your pet will run away.
When you want to learn a new rank of bite, claw, or special ability, you’ll need to look up where to learn it on Petopia, and put your pet in a Stable; these can be found in major cities, and in many quest hubs. Then you go and find the animal, tame it, feed it, and use it in combat, until your chat window tells you that you learned the new skill. Then abandon that animal (right-click its portrait), return to your pet, get it out of the stable, and use your Pet Training skill; this will open a window, telling you how many points your pet needs to learn it.
The other main thing to keep in mind about hunters is ammo. As you level, new ranks of ammo will become available to use. Every time you fire your weapon, you will use 1 arrow or shot. You can run out faster than you think. So always check, when you visit a city or hub, and make sure you’re good on ammunition.
Couple more pieces of advice: Turn off your pet’s growl, and put it on passive, while in a dungeon group. While on defensive, your pet can behave as if you’ve been attacked, and run off to the other end of the dungeon, or who knows where, pulling a bunch of mobs back with them. Also, while in a dungeon, dismiss your pet BEFORE jumping off, or jumping over a cliff. Otherwise, your pet will take the long way, and pull every mob it passes.
It’s good to practice, even when on your own, micro-managing your pet. Keep it on passive, tell it to attack, preferably before you fire your weapon. Let it get aggro first, before you attack. Sometimes mobs resist its growl.
Also, try to keep your melee weapon and defense skills reasonably up-to-date. It’s easy to forget these.
I hope this helps. Happy hunting!
