Howdy! I’m none too good with words but there are a ton of veterans here who could maybe help me out. I know gold is always going to be very short for me in most cases and was wondering what skills I should be looking to upgrade and which I should be ignoring! I’m certain the game is going to kick my butt pretty hard so any sort of gold saving tips from Veteran Classic Hunters would be greatly appreciated!
I’m planning to skip all the tracking skills, except beasts and humanoids. Skip Scorpid sting. I’ll skip both multi-shot and volley, and distracting shot.
Keep in mind, all that is just while leveling. If you’re going marksman, definitely get multi-shot and volley. And get them later, anyway, once you’ve built up your savings.
Skip mongoose bite, unless you’re survival. Don’t need Aspect of the wild until raiding. Can skip Eyes of the beast, and Eagle eye, and Aspect of the Beast. That’s about it. You’ll need most all of them by level 60, and for pvp.
Everything else is absolutely necessary. Get the traps, and learn to use them. All in all, hunter is pretty cheap in training, although you do have pet training: Absolutely do that.
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B-b-but… Track Dragonkin is how I first found Chromie in Andorhal, way back in the day! (Explanation: when I wanted to clear my mini-map completely, I didn’t realize you could turn off the current tracking so I would choose a tracking option of something I thought definitely wouldn’t be in the current zone. But there she was…)
Anyway, I think all in all your advice is good. I’ll add too that if a player is strapped for gold at a level, skip training ranks until ready, you can do that at any time.
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Train all skills to max or you’re a hobo. No mounts for hobos.
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Yes, I should specify a little more on when to get some skipped skills. Post-level 40, ALL the tracking skills will start to come in handy. After your mount training, definitely save up for all of them.
Same goes for the other skills. Hunter has a very large tool kit. Post-40, it will be nice to have it all.
Unless you’re trying to speedrun to 60, skipping training is a huge meme, especially as hunter. Just don’t blow gold on BoEs unless you’re really hurting for a new gun/bow. Even if you choose gold sink professions, you’ll probably be able to afford your mount at 40. It’s not a big deal if you don’t though. Remember that the mount cast time is quite long in vanilla. Staying on foot with improved cheetah + minor speed boot enchant is only overtaken by mounting up after about 20 seconds of travel.
If you really find pinching pennies fun, then skip the higher ranks of wing clip, arcane shot, multi-shot, and scorpid shot. People who tell you that you can skip anything else aren’t very creative with their toolset. Going without a spell just because it’s situational is madness.
Only time money really gets tight is around level 10, when you’re learning all the weapon skills.
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don’t skip multi shot its a huge source of damage incase pvp happens or you run a dungeon
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From what I remember (and it has been a while), multi-shot is pretty weak, until you get the marksman talent. And, yes, in pvp most everything is very useful. But if you’re trying to save money, as the OP said, multi-shot, and a lot of that other stuff, is situational.
Necessary, when after level 40, or in pvp, but easily skipped otherwise. A beast master doesn’t need much. Marksman, get multi-shot for sure. OP said he wanted to save gold. Each hunter is different, though.
It bounces around depending on the latest upgrade. Sometimes it’s arcane, sometimes multi. There are certainly a bunch of other things I’d skip first.
nah multi shot is your strongest damaging shot. arcane shot hits for nothing and is only good for quick mob tagging.
its worth the gold for this ability, otherwise your killing power is greatly diminished.
Hehe.
Atulkaj, you also have to train and upgrade your pet’s skills and ranks by taming various wild animals, “learning” the skill yourself, and then teaching the skills and ranks to your pet!
You can only have one pet with you at a time, so when you go off in search of these pet skills it’s just YOU. Your pet has no choice but to remain back in a Stable.
And whatever level a pet is when you tame it, so it remains. Being a level 60 hunter and deciding on a whim you want a level 7 spotted cat from that Tauren starting zone is going to be very, very slow and painful…
Oh, you have SO much joy to discover yet! 
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Original 2004 wow player here, Tauren hunter was my main. This is what worked for me:
- Unless you have a high-level alt or benefactor, you are correct in assuming that you will likely not have enough gold to buy all your skills as you level. So don’t try. Good news is, you don’t have to buy every skill.
- Do not buy any skill unless you are 100% certain that you need it. If you’re thinking “I might need that skill” or “that looks like it will be useful”, then DON’T spend the gold on it. When a new skill becomes available, it’s very tempting to buy it, but try to resist that urge. Skip it and play a few hours or through a few levels. After a few hundred kills you’ll be in a much better position to determine if buying that skill is 100% necessary.
- Only buy skills that directly improve your normal attack rotational dps skills. In other words, if your normal attack rotation is simply a quickshot, followed by a dot and autoshoot, then only buy upgrades to those skills. Sure, your explosive trap has dps too, but it’s an expensive gimmick you don’t need it. Stick to buying/upgrading only the absolute basic essentials.
- Assuming you go down the Beastmaster skill tree, buy skills that enhance your pet’s survivability (armor, growl aggro, and dps too). Beastmaster pets soak up aggro and damage so you can deal out dps at range. Pet skills are farily cheap and a good bang for the buck. Be good to your pet!
- Limit spending money on professions. If you’re a leathworker for example, it’s tempting to burn through all those stacks of leather to make those shoulder pads with 4 extra points of agi. If you’re super low on gold, better to sell that leather in the AH or just bank it. Most of the time, armor you get from world drops is enough to keep you going. Only exception to this is buying an upgrade to your bow/gun, to keep your dps high. Even just sticking to the vendor bows is enough.
- Don’t buy upgraded arrows. Yes it’s more dps, but the cost/benefit isn’t worth it when the upgrades first become available. Level up a few times. Only buy upgraded arrows when doing so feels like you’re spending pennies.
- Sell your greens, don’t vendor them! Green items, even seemingly worthless ones with useless stats are actually useful to someone, and they’ll pay you for it. Much more than you could get if you just sold them to a vendor. This is especially true for enchanters. They need to disenchant every green they can find. You can make a pile of gold by selling greens on the AH, even if it’s only 2x more gold than what a vendor would give you. It doesn’t seem like it’s worth the effort, but do it anyway. The gold adds up.
- As long as we’re talking about the AH, don’t buy anything from it, with 2 exceptions: a) Buying an upgrade to your bow, where spending a few gold pieces would increase your dps significantly, or b) buying an item you know you can sell for more.
- After you’ve gained many levels, go back and review those skills you didn’t buy. Now you’ll find they’re fairly cheap and the cost/benefit makes more sense. But again, only buy them if you need them. Even at level 60, there are several skills you’ll never need to buy. Like someone else said, no need to detect giants when you can see them a mile away. And detect hidden. Does that even work?
If you follow these steps, you’ll be on a tight budget until about level 20, after which you’ll gain enough gold to buy a mount before you ding 40, with some spare change left over.
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I appreciate all the advice! I played back during Vanilla but I was far too young, impatient and immature to do much of the content. This is like a second chance to experience that wonder again but without the nastiness of my youth.
I’m hoping I can be a helpful member of the community but this was one of my big concerns because I’m not very good with gold.
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Take it slow if you’re looking at it that way. Speedrunners are doing it because they’re already burned out from pservers.
there are good leveling guides on wowhead for each class. they talk about which skills you should buy as well as which talents are more useful
you don’t have to follow everything they say, but it’s worth checking out to have an idea
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It was said already but yeah multi-shot is your hardest hitting attack aside from Aimed shot.
I’ll note that it doesn’t receive a bonus to damage until Rank 2 and if anything I’d only get Arcane Shot rank 1 as it’s only real use is for tagging
Take all that advice with a grain of salt,
You’ll NEED/WANT all your skills sooner than you think, those aren’t the place to save money.
Get at least one gathering profession, and learn how the auction house works, even late game people will buy low level mats to level up their own skills.
Also take every decent drop you get that you don’t immediately need and sell it at auction, keep your prices low as you’ll need to put up a small deposit, but try to understand the value of your items, don’t rip yourself off but low prices sell fast and are usually easy money.
Learn how that auction house works and you’ll have enough gold to not have to scrimp on skills!
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I vaguely remembering my pet disappearing, some say it was because I wasn’t feeding them. I also remember pets not leveling the same rate and if you put them away they stay at that level until you level them. For this reason my first hunter always went fishing and killed stuff on the beach. However, some of my pets ate different things. My white bear I found near Iron forge ate everything. Sometimes I did spend money buying food from vendors for some of my pets. I also spent way too much money on skills and arrows/bullets. I don’t think I want to relive that experience and I would advise anyone leveling a hunter to not give up right away. Give it time because it really is a huge difference from the current expansion.
I know this is a bit of an unrelated question but a lot of folks suggested getting an autoshot timer for hunter. Does anyone know any good mods for this?
Jesus, do not listen to this; train both scorpid sting and multi-shot…