On starting a Hunter...

I've been asked a few times for advice on Hunter stuff from friends with Hunter alts. When I started playing Wulf, I basically didn't know what I was doing for the longest time, until I stumbled onto the Hunter forums at WoW-Europe.com and Worldofwar.net. Here's some of the collated facts I'd wished I'd known when starting.

1. Professions: Unless you're just gonna use your Hunter for cash grinding, there are three useful options for your profession choices:

• Herbalism/Alchemy: Potions are useful for any class, and excess herbs usually sell exceptionally well at the Auction House. The downside is that having Find Herbs active prevents a Hunter from using his various Tracking abilities.
• Mining/Engineering: Once again, useful for any class, but especially Hunters with a PVP mindset. Engineering will give you bombs, guns, scopes and a free source of better ammo than you can buy at any given level. Mining shares the downside of Herbalism for a Hunter, in that tracking Mineral nodes prevents you from using tracking.
• Skinning/Leatherworking: This is useful for Hunters until the late 40s, and then you won't find another useful recipie until your late 50s. There are usually plenty of other leatherworkers around, so it's not particularly worthwhile. Still Wulf's been a Leatherworker for most of his career, and I have to say, I find it a worthwhile experience.
• Secondary professions: Get em all! First Aid's invaluable in raids to save healer mana, and Fishing and Cooking provide a good source of free/cheap petfood.
  

2. Pets: Your optimal choice of pet depends largely on your playing style. Petopia has a lot of information on this subject, but here are my own thoughts:

• If you want to do solo PVE only, then you really can't go wrong with a Bear. They're tough and they eat anything, which means you can save money on petfood and feed it off drops.
  
• If you're more interested in PVP, then I'd suggest a Cat. They have the best DPS of any pet in the game, and their Prowl skill makes them great for sneaking up on cloth-wearers in Battlegrounds. Since they can eat fish, you can fish for them and once again save yourself a bundle of cash.
• If instancing's your thing, then I'd suggest a Wolf. They're average in stats, so they can fit into a variety of roles from off-tanking to DPS. Their Furious Howl ability can be used to boost other physical damage dealers in your group, so either send it into the melee to buff the Warriors and Rogues, or keep it by your side and let it add some extra damage to your shots.

3. Stats: There is a definate order of preference for stats:

1. Agility/Attack Power: This should be your primary concern, since you're a damage dealer first and foremost. Each point of agility adds two ranged attack power, one melee attack power, two points of armour and a small bonus to your chances to dodge and attack and make a critical strike. On the other hand, Attack Power just adds a flat value to your melee and ranged attack power.
2. Critical Strike Chance: For many Hunters (particularly PVP-centric ones), Crit chance is the holy grail. With the right talents and a decent slow ranged weapon, a Hunter can lay down devastating damage in a short period of time with a few lucky crits. Personally, whilst I do like crit chance, I've always been careful to never sacrifice much attack power or agility for them. Simply put, there's no point in having a massive crit chance if those crits don't hurt in the first place.
3. Stamina/Intellect: These two are tied in my estimation. For PVP, Stamina is most important, but for PVE, you can get away with more Intellect and less Stamina, since you'll normally have either a Pet or another player tanking for you. I personally try and go for a balance of both, favouring intellect slightly where possible.
4. The rest: Spirit can be useful to aid with mana regen in long fights, but it's not worth sacrificing anything else for. Unless you're spending a lot of time in Melee, then don't bother with any Strength.

4. Preparation: Before you go out in the wild/on a raid, always check you have the following:

• A full quiver/pouch of ammo. You can't do damage without this! Also, if you think it's going to be an especially long run, then get some more arrows and put them in your normal bagspace. You can always swap these in later.
• Two stacks of Petfood & One stack of Mana Drinks. If you're going to be working with a mage, this might be less nessesary, but it's always useful to have never the less

This may seem like common sense, but I've been caught out in the past, and I've known others who've done the same.

Well, that's the basic tricks of the trade as I see 'em. Next time I'm bored enough, I'll probably write something about talents.