Introduction
Welcome to the Method Hunter Leveling Guide for World of Warcraft Forever! I’m Celz, a ranged multi-classer for top 20 retail hardcore raiding guild Honolulu.
I’ve played WoW casually since I was 5 years old back in 2009, playing various ranged DPS as group composition requires. I also stream Retail progress/keys and Forever Levelling/Dungeons.
- Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/celzuk
- Twitter: https://x.com/celzwow
Guide Contents:
- Strengths & Weaknesses
- Recommended Leveling Talents
- Best Races for Hunter
- Playstyle and Core Abilities
- Key Spells & Levelling Milestones
- Best / Suggested Professions
- Hunter Leveling Tips & Tricks
Strengths & Weaknesses of Hunter in WoW Forever
Strengths
- Incredible survivability after level 10 due to our pet, improved even further with CC and Utility (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap, Feign Death)
- Consistent high damage profile both in ST and AoE
- Great out-of-combat mobility pre-mount with Aspect Of The Cheetah
Weaknesses
- Weak before level 10 when we get our first pet, reliant on kiting
- No party/raid buff - dependent on DPS to get into groups
- Requires pet management, especially in dungeons/raids, to avoid pulling additional enemies
Best Specialization For Leveling A Hunter
Hunters are one of the easiest and most efficient classes to level in WoW Forever. We have great damage both in ST and AoE, and good utility with our traps. Overall, Beast Mastery is our preferred option for leveling.
Beast Mastery is an amazing choice for any player, but especially solo levelers. The spec revolves around keeping your pet alive as it does incredible damage and tanks enemies, all while you fire off abilities from afar without ever taking damage - this reduces the risk of death significantly compared to other DPS specs, especially when talented into survivability.
Recommended Leveling Talents for Hunter
The following is my recommended Talent Build for leveling in WoW Forever:
If you prefer slightly more DPS in exchange for survivability, you can put your 2nd point of Improved Revive Pet into Ferocity instead, along with your Intimidation and Bestial Swiftness for a total of 5/5 Ferocity. However, we recommend taking these talents for the additional survivability and utility, as Ferocity is a relatively small DPS buff.
Level 60: This section will be updated to show the suggested Talents to level 60 in due course!
Best Races for Hunter in WoW Forever
Alliance: Human or Night Elf
For Alliance, we recommend playing a Human or Night Elf Hunter. The new Human Hunter is a great choice, as Sword Specialization increases crit chance by 2% with ALL attacks while you have a sword equipped - this includes ranged attacks, so long as your melee weapon is a sword.
Additionally, The Human Spirit provides a helpful 5% Spirit (albeit not incredibly important for Hunters), and Will To Survive immediately removes all stuns, acting as a very useful defensive. Perception can also be helpful against some enemies, or for PvP against classes with stealth i.e. Rogues.
Night Elves are also a very powerful race for Hunters. The new racial Elune's Light gives 10% crit chance for 15 seconds, which is a significant damage increase on use and Quickness provides some extra survivability and movement speed passively, which is always helpful.
Shadowmeld is incredibly useful when questing. When used out of combat it allows you to remain stealthed as long as you are stationary so you can use this stealth to eat/drink without risk. When used outside of combat it has a 10 second cooldown. Inside combat, it drops you to the bottom of the threat table against anything you're fighting, meaning your party members or pet are guaranteed to take aggro over you on use. When used during combat it has a 2 minute cooldown. If things go wrong, Wisp Spirit will help you return to your body fast!
Horde: Orc or Tauren
For Horde, we recommend playing an Orc or Tauren Hunter. Orc Hunters provide a very strong on-use button with Blood Fury, giving 10% Attack Power for 15 seconds, which greatly scales damage both for you and your pet(s). On top of this they feature Axe Specialization, which increases crit chance by 1% with ALL attacks while you have an axe equipped - this includes ranged attacks, so long as your melee weapon is an axe.
Their remaining two racials are strong defensives in Hardiness, reducing the duration of all stuns by 20%, and Shatter Curse, which both immediately removes and grants immunity to all Curses and Banes, and reduces incoming magic damage by 15% for 8 seconds.
Tauren Hunters are an interesting choice in WoW Forever, as a large portion of the benefit of their Racials is micromanagement and skill-based. First off, War Stomp - a 2 second AoE stun around the player with a 0.5 second cast time, which is great for getting out of tight situations by reviving your pet or creating some distance between you and enemies. Endurance provides 5% more health and 1% more hit chance, which is a great passive DPS and survivability boost. Cultivation lets you grow and harvest a duplicate herb once per hour without needing Herbalism.
Finally, Plainsrunning is where it gets interesting. Taurens receive 1% movement speed for every 5 seconds they spend in motion, up to a maximum of 30%. This movement speed decays when the player takes damage or stands still for too long. We can use this to our advantage by only breaking our movement to cast or use auto-attacks with our ranged weapon, as our pet is tanking for us; this means the majority of the time we only lose Plainsrunning stacks by standing still for too long.
Plainsrunning movement speed does not stack with Aspect Of The Cheetah, but it does mean with perfect play we can have 30% movement speed the majority of the time while keeping Aspect Of The Hawk up, letting us much more efficiently kite enemies or make progress in a direction while fighting.
Hunter Playstyle and Core Abilities for Leveling
Your goal as a Beast Mastery Hunter while leveling is to keep your distance and burn enemies down before they can hit you. Prior to level 10, you achieve this via kiting, and using Concussive Shot from level 8 onwards to slow enemies, all while getting as many Auto Shots off as possible and the occasional Arcane Shot.
After level 10, our pet begins to tank for us, and we can simply keep our distance and burn enemies down, eventually using Aimed Shot/Multi-Shot for optimal DPS, all while our pet hits them in melee.
Once we reach level 25, we have to juggle our Summon Hawk casts along with our normal pet management, ideally keeping 2 hawks and our normal pet out at all times for optimal DPS. This is very important, and we should try not to recast Summon Hawk before the last second the hawk is active so as to conserve mana and spend our GCDs on useful abilities.
We can also use our traps to help us keep our distance in sticky situations, and Feign Death to escape bad situations where we're in combat.
Key Spells & Leveling Milestones for Hunter
Our most important Level during leveling is easily 10, unlocking our pet, along with Aspect Of The Hawk. Aside from this we have a good spread of important spells across the leveling process, with solid spikes at levels 18, 20, and 25 via Multi-Shot, Aimed Shot, and Summon Hawk respectively.
You should upgrade spells mentioned below whenever you get the opportunity to as higher ranks are almost always a better choice - the levels listed are for the first rank. The exceptions to this are Raptor Strike, which loses almost all value after level 10, and Arcane Shot, which becomes near redundant after level 25 unless fighting an enemy in ST for 12 seconds or more.
| Spell | Level | Impact |
| Raptor Strike | 1 | A buffed melee. This is still worth less than an Auto Shot, but before level 10 is useful when in unavoidable melee encounters. Kiting is always better. |
| Serpent Sting | 4 | Our first ranged spell is a DoT we use all the way to max level. Not worth using if the target will die fast as it has no upfront damage. |
| Arcane Shot | 6 | A powerful ranged shot, useful for a long time. At level 25 it becomes largely redundant in leveling as it shares a 6 second cooldown with Summon Hawk, a very powerful spell. However, in long encounters, it's worth using Arcane Shot every 3 casts, as Summon Hawk lasts 18 seconds. |
| Hunter's Mark | 6 | Grants all Hunters a large attack power buff against the target. Also affects all Hunter pets as they scale with our ranged attack power. |
| Concussive Shot | 8 | A good ranged slow, especially useful before level 10 when kiting enemies without a pet to tank them. |
| Aspect Of The Hawk | 10 | A massive DPS boost for our attacks. This should always be on when fighting. |
| Call Pet | 10 | At level 10 we get our pet, which is easily the most important thing in the game for us. Our pets do the majority of our damage and tank for us, making this very important. |
| Pet Abilities - Growl, Great Stamina, Natural Armor | 10 | Our first pet abilities are available immediately upon taming our first pet. Make sure these are learned + trained, and that your pet is using Growl, either automatically or manually casted by you. Great Stamina and Natural Armor are passive survivability increases for our pet. |
| Mend Pet | 12 | Heals our pet. Very good, especially when fighting higher level elites that might kill our pet before we kill them. |
| Multi-Shot | 18 | One of our primary DPS abilities for AoE, sharing a cooldown with Aimed Shot. Does great cleave damage in exchange for a high mana cost. |
| Aimed Shot | 20 | One of our primary DPS abilities for ST, sharing a cooldown with Multi-Shot. Does incredible ST damage in exchange for a long 2 second cast. |
| Aspect Of The Cheetah | 20 | 30% movement speed. This should be used at all times when traversing without a mount and not fighting enemies. |
| Freezing Trap | 20 | A 10 second hard CC which is broken by damage. Great for creating distance from enemies or escaping bad situations. Shares a cooldown with Frost Trap. |
| Track Hidden | 24 | While all of our tracking spells are decent, this one is incredible. Bonus stealth detection is great generally, and being able to track stealthed enemies is very useful for some quests. |
| Summon Hawk | 25 | A new ability in Forever, Summon Hawk effectively gives us 2 more pets to manage. Having both of these hawks out as much as possible without refreshing too early is core for our DPS, and as they last 18 seconds, this should often be easy to manage. This ability is learned as a talent. Shares a 6 second cooldown with Arcane Shot. |
| Rapid Fire | 26 | Our first "real" cooldown ability. Great burst damage on a 5 minute cooldown. |
| Frost Trap | 28 | Slows all enemies in its area of effect by a whopping 60%. Incredibly useful, especially for AoE pulls where our pet may not be able to maintain aggro on all targets. Shares a cooldown with Freezing Trap. |
| Intimidation | 30 | A 3 second stun with some bonus damage from our pet as a cherry on top. Also useful as an alternative taunt from our pet to pull enemies off of us due to the high threat generation. This ability is learned as a talent. |
| Feign Death | 30 | Removes us from combat with anything currently attacking us. One of the most useful abilities in the game, but bear in mind this can miss/be dodged like any other attack, so be careful! |
| Pet Ability - Dash | 30 | Grants our pet 40% movement speed for 15 seconds. A solid DPS increase by letting our pet move to targets significantly faster. This ability is learned via Wild Taming. Tame a pet that knows Dash and use it in combat until you see the "You have learned a new spell" system message in chat. At this point, you can now teach it to any pet you'd like! |
Best / Suggested Professions for Hunter
Profession 1: Leatherworking
We recommend Leatherworking as your first profession. With the new BoP profession items in Forever, the ability to make your own leather gear is even more valuable than ever. Starting from level 10 you can make your own blue leveling gear with large amounts of Agility that directly buffs our DPS greatly.
For example, Brawler's Leather Helm is an incredibly strong piece with a huge amount of Agility on it, and is BiS for us during the beta. Also, Leatherworking is fully mobile unlike other crafting professions that need anvils or similar, meaning you can make your own gear on the go without having to return to town provided you have the materials.
Profession 2: Skinning
For a second profession, we suggest Skinning. Skinning feeds directly into our Leatherworking profession, and saves us from having to spend large amounts repetitively on the Auction House to train Leatherworking and eventually craft our BoP items. Additionally, any spare hides can be sold for a tidy profit, whether to vendors or other players.
Because the majority of our damage also comes from our pet, Skinning synergises well with Hunter DPS, as we can send our pet to begin attacking our next target while we skin, minimizing downtime that other classes often would see as a downside from Skinning.
Secondary Professions
Don't neglect your secondary professions either! With the profession changes in Forever, Cooking is providing some of the best food in the game, even giving XP buffs!
First Aid is great to get you out of a pinch, especially as a class with Freezing Trap giving you a chance to get a full-length bandage off if needed.
Fishing can make decent money selling what you catch, or can be used to train your Cooking up even further.
Hunter Leveling Tips & Tricks
Maximising Auto Shots
Auto Shot is a significant portion of our damage across all levels, but especially early. Maximising the amount of Auto Shots you can get on an enemy is one of the easiest and most impactful ways to improve your DPS while leveling as a Hunter, and utilising kiting, slows, and pet taunts cannot be overstated as an incredibly important thing to focus on while playing your Hunter.
Managins Pet Threat
At certain points during the leveling process, you might find yourself pulling aggro from your pet if you begin attacking enemies immediately. To solve this, it's better to let your pet get a few attacks in before you begin your ranged DPS. This feels like an error, but you'll do more damage staying in ranged, even while missing a few attacks, compared to if enemies are allowed to enter melee range of you.
Train as often as possible, and good luck!
We hope our Hunter Leveling guide for WoW Forever was useful to help you know where to spend your talent points and how to get the most out of the class whilst leveling. This guide will be updated to cover 1-60 when the full game releases and as more information becomes available, so keep checking back in!