This classic era stuff is all new to me and trying to wrap my head around how different this is. Im seeing two builds on WoW
Hope im not locked in to one build incase I need to switch?
Beastmaster is the advised leveling.
Marksman can have the issue you are out damaging pet so you get the aggro. And then you are popping your slows to use the bow or getting really good at using a dagger. Which never really gets…good lol.
Be advised you will put points in both trees. Its jsut in BM you will put more there.
Survival…is not spoken of highly. At least for leveling. Never done classic leveling you may not want to do this for the path of least resistance lol. or not…your time your dime.
WOwhead and icy veins have decent guides here for a start. as with all guides see why they do something, decide if you agree and make picks as needed.
edit: my BE hunter for example is the way of the beastmaster. No complaints so far. IN retail I favor MM but in classic as I see it you want the bestest pet out there to get more bow fire off.
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BM is the clear choice. Not only is it by far the highest damage but it has more pet damage and therefore more pet threat. You will have the easiest time levelling as BM. That’s true for every expansion, in fact.
That said, you can level as SV, but since in BC there is little to no playstyle difference between SV and BM I really don’t see any reason to do that. It just makes it harder. When WotLK comes out, though, SV plays quite differently (it gets Explosive Shot and Black Arrow) and while that isn’t as good as BM for solo content it’s a hell of a lot of fun so that’s what I’ll be doing. As for Marksmanship; it exists, I guess, but you’ll pretty much get nothing out of it for either levelling or dungeons. It’s both less DPS and less survivability. Again, there’s very little playstyle difference between the 3 specs so I don’t see a compelling argument to go with a spec other than BM.
As for levelling build: honestly, the raiding cookie-cutter build is good enough. WoWhead has a guide on this:
Just spec 41/10 and take the remaining Marksmanship talents as you level up. You can sacrifice DPS for pet survivability but personally I just don’t think there’s any situation where those talents will be the difference between being able to solo something and not being able to solo it so I’d rather save the money on respeccing.
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So im confused as you can learn all 3 spec skills at class trainer. Do I just never put MM / SV talents on my hotbar. Or you just referring to not spending talent points into sv mm?
Yeah I mean talents. When I say “Go BM” or “Go SV” I mean taking a talent build that primarily spends points in that tree. 41/10 is a BM build because most of its points are in BM. Before Cataclysm you don’t choose a specialisation like you do in modern WoW; you just have talent points and talent trees.
Most of the class abilities are baseline regardless of spec. For example, you will be using Multi-Shot all the time regardless of spec even though it’s classified as Marksmanship. You should keep them up to date but if you’re really struggling for gold you might hold on ranking up certain abilities (only if you’re really sure you won’t be using them much). For Hunters, all pet/aspect abilities are BM, all ranged attacks are MM, and everything else (e.g. tracking, melee, traps) are SV.
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Also in case it wasn’t clear: 41/10 is the build to start at if you’re level 60. You get 1 talent point every level. At level 70 you will be 41/20. Generally you’ll want to get all your good choices from 1 tree before starting to spend in the next tree.
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Oh yeah in case you missed it…feed the pet. Bite the bullet financially and buy a stack or 2 of its food. If you can farm the meat even better. Sometimes the meat gods hate me it seems.
My first pet bailed on me. And I thought I was feeding it enough. BUt I guess I wasn’t. I saw no visible sign of discontent. the pet just left lol.
Even at highest BFF level now…I go its been a few minutes, have a scooby snack pet.
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Im lvl 16. Should I still go 41/20?
You’ll only have 7 talent points at that level so just spend them like this for now:
Basically as you level up fill in the talents as you go according to what’s on the WoWhead guide so by the time you get to level 60 you end up with the 41/10 build it has there. That way you will not have to spend gold on a talent reset.
P.S. As the other poster mentioned pets work a lot differently in classic. They have their own XP bar as well as happiness, loyalty levels, and training points. Levelling a pet from scratch if you’re a high level is a huge ordeal since you have to grind mobs at your level for the pet to get XP (imagine being 50 levels above your pet). Get a cat pet ASAP and once BC releases you can pick up a Ravager from Hellfire Citadel; that will do for all content.
Make sure to read plenty of guides because while Hunters are pretty simplistic in dungeons and raids there’s a hell of a lot of busywork to be prepared for them. It’s really, really different from modern WoW Hunters.
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Beast Master is the leveling and raiding build in TBC.
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When you get to 42ish SV can outpace BM in leveling speed through using instance aoe farming but it requires more advanced knowledge of the class and how to instance farm things like ZF and stuff. Then move to ZG farming, then your in outlands. And there is some thought of strategies for that as well, but this is advanced play. For easy levels BM is the way to go.
This but survival is good for pvp
Survival could also be good for heroic dungeons in TBC where CC is needed. Better traps etc.
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