We’ve all been there, right? Most hunters start at level one, and have to get to 80 the long way. On that vein, I am going to answer a very simple question today. “What should I spend my next talent point on?”
All the guides I’ve read (and certainly most of what I’ve written) seem to be about what to do when you hit 80- how to spec for raiding or PvP. This post will go through the steps involved in building a hunter spec on the way up to level 80.
First off, I’m going to go over a BM build because it’s the most questing friendly build. Every step taken will increase one of the following things:
- Pet survivability
- Pet or hunter DPS
- Questing speed
Let’s start from the top, shall we?
Tier one
- Endurance training to 5, as pet survivability outweighs personal DPS in most situations.
Tier two
- Focused fire to 2 because it increases pet and hunter DPS
- Split the last 3 points between thick hide and improved revive pet however you see fit. Thick hide allows for less incoming damage, but on those harder quests, improved revive pet can save corpse runs if you can get one off after losing a pet.
Tier three
- Pathfinding to 2 allows you to move faster.
- Unleashed fury to 3 is more pet DPS, and we’ll want to come back and dump points here whenever we run out of DPS talents in lower tiers.
Tier four
- Improved mend pet to 2 reduces downtime, increases pet survivability.
- Ferocity to 5 to increase pet DPS, and allow for us to get another talent down the tree.
Tier five
- Intimidation to 1, which increases pet threat (thus your DPS), pet survivability (can’t take damage from a stunned mob), and allows for more must-have talents down the tree.
- Bestial discipline to 2, because more focus is more pet DPS. Watch your pet- if he’s not focus starved (waiting for focus to do his next move) then skip the second point here for something else.
- Spirit bond to 2 for larger pet heals and less downtime.
Tier six
- Frenzy to between 2 and 3. Watch the frenzy buff uptime- if it’s under 80%, then use more points. This buff scales exponentially and then caps. The more uptime, the more likely your pet is to crit and get another proc of frenzy, but the benefit of going from 80% uptime to 99% is less than a point in, say, animal handler. I find 3 to be a nice number for leveling.
Tier seven
- Bestial wrath to 1 so your pet can insta-gib elites every two minutes, and so we can get another must-have talent in a later tier.
- Ferocious inspiration to 3 for 3% personal DPS pretty much all the time and harder hitting arcane shots.
- This may leave you with one point to spend somewhere before you can get to the next tier. If you need to, feel free to go down and fill something up (like unleashed fury in tier three).
Tier eight
- Serpent’s swiftness to 5. This will increase overall DPS quite nicely.
Tier nine
- The beast within to 1 so you enrage with your pet for more DPS.
- Longevity to 3 to have more frequent cooldowns.
- Cobra strikes to 1 for more pet crits which makes everything a bit better. We’ll come back here if we ever need somewhere to dump more points into DPS.
Tier ten
- Kindred spirits to 5 for more DPS and faster pet movement.
Tier eleven
- Beast mastery to 1 for extra pet talent points, and maybe an exotic pet if that’s how you roll.
Now, we have plenty of points to go, and we have to make a decision. Do we finish up the beast master talents we didn’t have the points to fill, or do we go over to marksmanship and work there? Well, I prefer to get some key talents in the marks tree first and then maybe come back to fill up BM.
Marks tier one
- Lethal shots to 5 for more crits.
Marks tier two
- Mortal shots to 5 for bigger crits
Marks tier three
- Go for the throat to 1.
This is the reason we go into the marks tree. Combine this with our newly found crit-happy ways, our pet will become a focus regeneration machine. Normally, this is when I jump back to the BM tree and fill in the talents I didn’t finish up getting here. I’d suggest you choose between animal handler, unleashed fury, invigoration, cobra strikes, and maybe frenzy.
If you need more places for points, look at improved arcane shot to make your arcane shots hit a little harder, and careful aim to unlock the DPS potential of your gear’s intellect.
There is a very nice amount of synergy here- all the talents provide nice feedback loops. Crits from you or your pet proc all kinds of wonderful buffs- the one thing I remember from when I was leveling BM was the constant and slightly ridiculous amount of buffs I would have randomly proccing.
I agree with everything except for “Pathfinding to 2 allows you to move faster.” At that level, you get something called a “mount” which lets you move a lot faster ;) Otherwise, great post!
Note that this talent increases mounted speed.
Ben Fraley, consider yourself owned.
I will not consider myself owned! :) I should have added, “Is it really worth putting talent points into? Why not just got 5 in Unleashed Fury and 1 in Aspect Mastery and move on? Is the 10% increased movement really worth it?”
Heh, I was considering removing that last comment… nobody can get owned when building a leveling tree. It’s more of an art than a science- both ways are valid, but I found that the amount of moving around one does outweighs the amount of fighting one does.
True. I mean, if it really bothers you that you’re not getting around fast enough, take path-finding by all means. But if you want to do more damage, you probably want to skip it. You’re not going to be BM anyways after you hit 80, right? :)
Since I spent so much more time getting around than actually fighting when I was getting to 80, I found this to be one of the best talents in terms of levels per hour. But no, it didn’t help me top meters in instances.
Nice guide. Having leveled a hunter recently, I can say that BM was great, but once I hit level 77 I switched to SV.
Yes I had some pet aggro issues, but most quest mobs were dead before it became a problem.
Also, for the majority of my leveling I used a turtle for a pet. Thunderstomp and Shell Shield made soloing much easier, even on some of those Northrend elites.
I levelled my hunter with BM. When I hit 80, I toyed with MM for a bit but have ultimately found that SV suits my style of play. Just hope they don’t nerf it! :-/
Thank you for this guide, it was very helpful for me
:( i hate ppl recommending BM build for leveling, and me using it, when starting to level my hunter.
If you got heirloom stuff.. never start leveling as BM
MM is the way… check the talents and use brains.
What is better? to watch how you pet tanks mobs or kill the mobs with 2 shots before your pet even reaches to them.
blizz has nerfed the content so much that there is no need to tank much, some elites maybe… you have to kill as fast as you can
BM gets good later, level 40+ (survivability is useless at lower levels..)
MM has good talents early on (like +hit, what i really good)
I didn’t title this post “how to spec a leveling hunter if you have access to heirloom items” though. Heirloom assumes that you already know the game, and can figure out a leveling spec without much of my help :)
Nice spec, I borrowed it for my site without consent. And I will ask for consent this way. Am I allowed to post this build on my site http://www.hunterlevelingx.com ?
I have been levelling a Hunter through the new LFG tool, almost exclusively.
Is BM the best spec for doing instances or does this change as you level (I’m currently L41)?
At the moment I can easily top the damage meters most of the time with quite modest gear (GS 350ish). I’m using a Raptor as my pet.
If you plan on leveling your hunter through LFD only and have access to heirloom items I must say go MM. Also make sure you get the explosive trap glyph. Most of these dungeons require aoe power and that glyph is just plain overpowered. Voley + glyph at later levels will basically put you over anything out there. My 2c.
[...] extra crit or a 3min cooldown). If you’re going to outline each tier individually, as shown here, make sure to include what the end result will look like. I would suggest only including one spec [...]