WoW Classic Hunter Leveling Guide 1-60 (2024)

While leveling, your time spent can be put into three categories: combat,downtime, and travel. Hunters are widely considered to be thestrongest solo leveling class in Classic WoW because they excel at all threein unique ways. Once you get your pet at Level 10, you will notice your kill speedincrease and your downtime drop drastically. By using your pet to tank, you cankill enemies with Serpent Sting and Auto Shot. This allows youto kill enemies without spending much Mana and only your pet losing health. Ifyou keep your pet fed and use Mend Pet frequently, your pet will stayhealthy and loyal, allowing you to keep fighting with little to no downtimebetween enemies. Additionally, you will get Aspect of the Cheetah at Level20, which will cut down your travel time until you get your first mount.

While we propose leveling builds for all 3 Hunter specialization,Beast Mastery clearly is the best leveling spec for Hunter. As Beast Mastery,your pet will take less damage and deal more damage, allowing it to hold threat moreeasily.

Marksmanship is viable, but you will be more vulnerable to doing too muchdamage compared to your pet, making it harder to let your pet tank enemies.Beast Mastery also has important movement speed talents, along with Bestial Wrath, an extremely powerful damage cooldown.

Survival is the worst of the choices and will be outperformed by both otherspecs in all areas. We do not recommend it for leveling, but if you are up for a challenge, wehave a guide for it.

Contrary to popular belief, leveling with a partner or as part of a group isnot a terrible thing. In fact, for most classes, leveling with a partner is actuallybetter than leveling solo. Hunter is the exception; your leveling speed in agroup as a Hunter will not be better than by yourself, if you have experienceleveling. Hunter is the best solo class in the game, so leveling with one ormore people will be neutral at best. That being said, grouping withfriends could help them level faster while not slowing you down much, whichcould be worth doing if you want to help them out.

Hunters have lots of different abilities to learn, some more useful thanothers. Gold is going to be scarce while leveling and it isincredibly important to be saving gold for your first mount at level 40. Thus,you should not train every rank of every skill. It is important to have an ideaof what skills are worth having and what you can live without.

• Track Beasts
• Raptor Strike
• Aspect of the Monkey
• Serpent Sting
• Arcane Shot
• Hunter's Mark
• Concussive Shot
• Revive Pet
• Aspect of the Hawk
• Track Humanoids
• Mend Pet
• Wing Clip
• Scare Beast
• Mongoose Bite
• Multi-Shot
• Aspect of the Cheetah
• Disengage
• Freezing Trap
• Rapid Fire
• Frost Trap
• Feign Death
• Explosive Trap
• Aspect of the Pack
• Volley

If you are playing on a PvP server and are concerned about fighting otherplayers, you can also choose to get Viper Sting for fighting casters or Flare for fighting Rogues and Druids.

Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot make up the bulk of yourranged damage, combined with your Auto Shot. For AoE, Multi-Shot, Explosive Trap, and Volley can all begreat tools for killing multiple targets, but you always have to be careful tomake sure you are not the one picking up threat; either your pet or a partymember should be holding threat if you are trying to AoE.

Concussive Shot, Wing Clip, Freezing Trap, Freezing Trap, and Scare Beast are all valuable disengage andcrowd control tools for both PvP and PvE.

Feign Death is one of the single most important buttons in yourtoolkit and is a unique mechanic to Hunters. Use this any time you need to getout of a bad situation and need to leave combat or drop threat.

Auto Shot is your most basic attack and your primary source ofdamage. Auto Shot in Classic is very different from modern WoW, however,and is more like a spell that needs casting. If your bow has a 3.0 secondattack speed on it (shown in the tooltip), then you will shoot an arrow every3.0 seconds while attacking your target. However, Auto Shot does not take afull 3.0 seconds to shoot; it only requires that you stand still and do nothingelse for the first 0.5 seconds of that 3.0 second window. For the remaining 2.5seconds, you can move, use other abilities, or do whatever you want withoutcosting you any potential attacks. This 0.5 second “cast time” for Auto Shotis consistent for whatever weapon or weapon speed you end up using. Part ofmaximizing your damage on a Hunter is never “clipping” your auto shots, whichmeans ensuring that you are always shooting as soon as it is back up. It isalso worth noting that Auto Shot is affected by Haste. So, if your weapon speedis 3.0 seconds, but you have 40% increased ranged attack speed from Rapid Fire, then the time between Auto Shots will be reduced by40%.

As stated above, time spent leveling can be broken into three distinct parts:travel time, down time, and combat.

Travel time is when you have to move between quests, towns, or zones. Youwill spend a significant amount of time traveling in your journey from Level 1-60,which is why movement speed increases like your mount are very important.Getting your first mount at or close to Level 40 can reduce travel timesignificantly, which will greatly improve your leveling speed. Aspect of the Cheetah is a great ability to help with this, allowing youto run 30% faster whenever it is active. Once you learn it at Level 20, it isimportant to remember to activate Aspect of the Cheetah whenever you have tomove more than a few steps.

Downtime is the time that you are forced to wait to regenerate healthand Mana in between killing mobs. If your goal is to level quickly, minimizingdowntime is just as important as maximizing your damage. This is why using yourhighest damage rotation is not always the best idea. Most of the time, you willwant to use your most efficient damage rotation, with the goal being to maximizedamage while minimizing your Mana spent. For a Hunter, this means opening with Hunter's Mark, then keeping up Serpent Sting while letting your Auto Shot do most of the damage. Arcane Shot is an expensiveability and should be used sparingly to deal more burst damage when you have theMana for it.

The last portion of your time will be spent in combat. Again, it is importantto figure out your most optimal rotation based on your Mana pool and what skillsyou have. The goal is to kill mobs quickly while spending little Mana and notlosing health. If you spend too much Mana too quickly while killing mobs, youwill end up having to drink too much, which adds significant amounts of downtime,slowing down your overall leveling speed. If you let your pet tank and let Auto Shot be the bulk of your damage, you will not have any issues.

From Level 1-10, you will have to kill enemies without your pet to tank them.This is where Hunters can struggle the most, due to their low melee damage. Thekey to leveling before you get your pet is proper kiting while using Auto Shot.

Kiting is when you move between attacks to put more distance between you andyour target. For Hunters, this means moving during the down time between Auto Shot hits. You start by casting an Auto Shot on your target, whichtakes 0.5 seconds (the animation time). After getting the shot off, you are freeto move backwards or use other abilities until your Auto Shot comes back up. Onceit is back up, you will want to stand still for another 0.5 seconds to getanother Auto Shot off. At low levels, this usually looks like Auto Shot -> Move-> Auto Shot -> Move, and so forth. You can also cast other shots like Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot while moving in between AutoShots for extra damage.

Kiting before Level 10 is extremely important because it allows you to do asmuch damage as possible before the target enters the “dead zone.” Hunters havea minimum range of 8 yards on our ranged abilities and Auto Shot.Inside that 8 yard zone, you cannot use your ranged weapon to attack or castabilities on a target. Most of the damage Hunters deal is with a ranged weapon,with their melee damage being significantly weaker. Killing targets quickly isall about getting as many Auto Shots off before they make it into your deadzone, and you are forced to use melee attacks and Raptor Strike tofinish them off.

If you are looking to push your leveling speed to the limit, then meleeweaving is the skill to master. Hunters are unique in that they are the onlyclass that has two separate basic attacks, both of which have a short “animationtime” with down time in between each attack. The most important thing is thatthese attacks, your melee auto attack and your ranged Auto Shot, do notshare downtime. This means that you can attack a target with your bow, immediatelyturn and attack a different target with your melee weapon, and then turn backto use your bow once the Auto Shot's downtime is finished. While this can bedifficult to do due to the quick target swapping required, it allows you toeffectively kill multiple enemies at once.

In practice, this translates to a slightly different goal, which is to alwaysbe using your Auto Shot. As you kite around an area with enemies, youshould always be using your Auto Shot on a target from the moment you firstattack to the moment it enters your dead zone and you can no longer shoot it.Once the target is within the minimum range you can finish it off with meleeattacks. Melee weaving means that you weave those melee attacks on the closertargets in between Auto Shots on new targets that are farther away.

As an example, say that there are multiple boars that you would like to kill.You start by shooting boar 1 while kiting backwards, using Auto Shot asmuch as possible until it enters your minimum range. Once inside that range, youwould immediately use a Raptor Strike to melee it. Once you get themelee attack off, you would switch your target to boar 2 and use an Auto Shot.Immediately after the Auto Shot, you switch back to boar 1 and melee it again.This process repeats back and forth exactly like that until boar 2 enters yourdead zone and you can no longer shoot it. At this point, boar 1 should be dead orclose to dead, so you can finish it off with more melee attacks as you start touse Auto Shot on boar 3. You can repeat this process over and over, effectivelykilling 2 to 3 enemies at the same time. It is also worth noting that thistactic can be dangerous, and you can easily pull too many enemies and die if youare not being careful.

If your goal is to hit Level 60 as fast as possible, it is not recommendedto pick up professions while leveling. However, some professions are veryuseful for either leveling or at Level 60, and can be worth the time investmentwhile leveling. First Aid is a must have profession at max level due toHunter's lack of self healing, and learning it early on can be useful whileleveling. Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning all are great choices for making goldtowards your first mount, and can also be useful for helping to level otherimportant professions later on, such as taking Mining to help levelEngineering.

Getting upgrades on any piece of gear will help the leveling process, butthe single most important upgrades to look for are weapons. Bow or Gun upgradescan greatly improve your leveling speed. You should always be on the lookout forpotential ranged weapon upgrades which have a higher DPS than your current weapon.Read our full guide on weapons by clicking the link below.

Every class in WoW Classic has important class-specific quests that allow themto gear up and learn new active abilities, which are often critical to the class. HuntersSee our guide below for more details.

Well done on hitting maximum level in WoW Classic! Now that leveling isover, you can learn more about level 60 gameplay by reading our DPS Hunter Guide, which covers everyfacet of gameplay at 60 in detail.

The best individual pages to read through are as follows.

• The DPS Hunter Talent builds guidehas the best builds for Level 60 covered. We propose builds forall specializations, with a focus on Beast Mastery for solo play andMarskmanship for raiding.
• Our PvP Hunter guide is where youcan find PvP builds for all 3 specializations, as well as various tricks and tips for PvPcombat.
• Goldmaking Guide for Huntersis a page with details on where / how to farm gold quickly as a Hunter when youare Level 60.
• The DPS Hunter Rotation guideis where you can read on how to optimize your PvE damage and how to prioritize your abilities.
• DPS Hunter Stats guide containsdetailed information on all Hunter stats, including a list of their priority fordamage dealing.
• Our Gear guide for DPS Hunterslists all the optimal pieces of gear that you will want to farm at Level 60, inorder to optimize your damage.