Leveling as a Hunter and other thoughts.

I admit I am not leveling as quickly as I would have liked to. I left for work this morning with 3 bubbles to go until I hit 75. I will also admit I spent about 45 minutes in Orgrimmar last night buying up some cooking supplies to help me complete The Outland Gourmet. I am still set on becoming Chef Drotara. Now if only the Rokk would hurry up and give me the daily quest for Super Hot Stew I could finish Kickin’ it up a Notch. My biggest issue for getting these cooking achievements is that I hate fishing. I don’t do it. I never level it. It just bores the crap out of me. But that hardly has to do with leveling.

Matticus wrote a great post entitled “10 Tips for Extreme Leveling to 80 (without denting your wallet).” I figure there were a few things I could add on for Hunters, or expand upon. Not all of his suggestions will make everyone happy, which he also fully admits.

My wife would never ignore reading each quest she gets. And while I happily hit the Accept button as fast as possible and review it later, she will take the time to read the story. I probably would take a bit more time to do that as well, but many of the quests I read in beta. Each person has their own individual desire on whether or not reading each quest is important to them.

But I am in the same thought process as Matticus when he talks about chunking quests together. Grabbing as many quests from a hub as you can and trying to complete them all before heading back and turning them in. This reduces the amount of time you spend traveling, making each trip back to town more valuable. Exceptions would include quest chains that you know will give you a follow-up to a location where you have other quests to do.

Carrying multiple types of food is a duplication of efforts.

I, personally, have been downing Elixirs like they are going out of style. And some of them are. I had stacks of Major Agility lying around so I make no reservations chugging them every time I need them. One thing any Hunter can do to save bag space and be more efficient is to buy food both you and your pet can eat. Carrying multiple types of food is a duplication of efforts. I’ve been carrying around Crusty Flatbread for myself and GenghisKong. This is in addition to any buff food I have cooked along the way of course, which I am also taking advantage of as I level.

I am also using cheap arrows for a couple of reasons. Sure, I started out with a quiver full of Timeless Arrows. But that initial stock has long since expired. I am now using the much cheaper Blackflight Arrows. Sure, it’s a hit in DPS, but saving over 1.5 gold a stack adds up as I burn through this quiver. Besides, skimping on ammunition isn’t drastically slowing down my leveling and it’s not affecting my DPS in a raid setting right now. Cutting corners where necessary. And with the new Terrorshaft Arrows just 3 bubbles away, I can hold on on Timeless for a bit longer.

I think a mistake a lot of inexperienced Hunters make his their methods in killing mobs. I see too many run up to a mob and Aimed Shot or Multi-Shot followed by Arcane Shot, or really just completely ignoring shot rotations. It is largely mana inefficient and you will find you can kill things just as fast by using a regular shot rotation and you will experience a lot less down time as well. I have been going into fights using nothing but Steady Shot. Almost exclusively actually. With my gorilla, we have soloed most group quests with the exception of certain ones where the mobs hit too hard for Mend Pet to keep him alive. For example, the Mighty Magnataur was easily solo-able with my pet being specced into Blood of the Rhino.

Another suggestion Matticus makes is to use cool downs. And this is a solid suggestion even if I don’t follow it. I save Bestial Wrath for group quests and with the anticipation of a PvP encounter. There have been a couple frisky Alliance morons along my travels so far who felt the need to pick fights. And being in an open-world scenario, Bestial Wrath  is awesome with all the kiting room and fear immunity it provides. I was able to pick up a Bestial Wrath glyph last night for 50 gold, bringing my cool down to 1.17 minutes when combined with Longevity. Toss in Readiness and it is good times. Still trying to find a Steady Shot glyph that isn’t 150 gold. :(

Use Misdirection too. On most mobs it won’t be needed if you are using a tanking pet. But with a 30 second cool down, if you think the fight warrants it or you have multiple mobs, a simple Misdirect to your pet should keep them stuck on him long enough to finish them off.

As we get closer to 80, I am going to be curious to see some actual numbers when it comes to exotic pet DPS and what can be acquired when skipping it. I know there are other Hunters who wouldn’t dream of skipping out on exotic pets. But here, we are looking for the best DPS we can provide. Unless of course we end up being a Hunter used for Replenishment. As it stands though, if it ends up being exotic pets are better DPS than picking up Readiness and other talents, so be it. But given how well cats are still performing, it lends a strong argument to skipping that 51-pointer.

In the way of other blog stuff, I haven’t heard back from Intense Debate yet regarding getting my comments fixed. We are going to start exploring some other options because I don’t think I can go back to the standard Blogger comments. But as it stands, all the recent comments have been split across both commenting systems which kind of sucks.

Well, I will wrap this up for now. What tips or tricks have you found to be the most beneficial to you while leveling? Share what you have done to make the process as smooth as possible. Post ‘em here! Using either comment system. > >