Hunters now wear heavy armor? (And other questions)

Guides Returning Player Help & Discussions
1

The last time I actively played the game was during Wrath of the Lich King, and in the years since I had dabbled a little bit in the Starter Edition. However, now I have bought the full game after all those years and am starting from scratch…and the first thing that hits me is that my Hunter now can wear…mail? Weren’t Hunters a leather-only class? Why did this change? Is there no point in me learning Skinning and Leatherworking, then?

Another thing that’s tripping me up is that Specializations effectively split up all of the skills I was able to use at any time, and now I can only use, say, Arcane Shot if I activate Marksmanship, and I can’t use a melee-range weapon unless I activate Survival. For a player who always mained a Hunter, this feels extremely limiting. I can see other classes as not being too much of an issue (since, if I played a Mage, I would want to focus on fire spells for RP purposes). But, yeah, not quite sure how I feel about this change, and am curious if anyone can give me advice on that.

Besides those two stark changes to my favorite class, I am not having too much issue returning to WoW in the post-WotLK world. Durotar and Barrens so far still have their key questlines, music, and landmarks, and it really is the exploration and reliving the beautiful world that is my key driver in returning to the game. I’m glad to be back, I just need to get used to these changes.

2

Hunters used to wear leather armor up to level 40 at which point they switched over to mail. Now they just start out wearing mail right away, and don’t wear leather gear at all.

The LW recipes at lower levels never got reworked to craft mail armor for characters below level 40, so LW doesn’t really make much gear useful for hunters until you get your skill level up into the 200’s.(edited: see below) But, in the long run, LW is still the profession to have if you want to make hunter armor.

3

Thanks for the clarification. I guess mail still counts as the “medium armor” of WoW, huh? I haven’t had many opportunities to even rank my LW up much, it’s still only at 50 and I’m level 26 at the moment. :sweat_smile:

4

Aactually, there were a lot of mail recipes added to leather working to create < level 40 mail for Hunter’s and Shamans.

Black smithing, however, didn’t get low level plate recipes added for warrior and pallys.

5

Nok is right, I was getting LW mixed up with Blacksmithing. There are mail armor recipes in the 1-200 LW range. Look for recipes with “scale” or “chain” in the name.