What is a WoW Hunter? If you were not familiar with the World of Warcraft Hunter you might visualize some guy tracking down animals and speaking with an Australian accent. However, the WoW Hunter is actually an expert tracker capable setting traps and using bows and guns in battle. But one of the biggest benefits to being a Hunter is their ability to tame beasts and make them their pets. Hunters are great utility players in a group and can offer many benefits such as crowd control, tracking, and a nice boost in damage output. Their pets can serve as off-tanks to prevent adds from overwhelming a group, making them a valued class for any team.

The Hunter is best used as a ranged fighter. They are most effective from a distance where they can safely utilize their ranged attacks and WoW Hunter’s Mark to aid in dealing damage and enhancing the ranged attacks of allies. The Hunter can also serve as the group’s tracker. With their tracking abilities they can locate nearby enemies and help detect any stealth foes before they can sneak up on their allies. Then by using their Hunter’s Mark, they can expose any hidden enemies for their allies to see.

Hunters can also aid a group with crowd control abilities. They have a number of skills that can hinder an enemy’s movement speed or freeze them in place for a few seconds, temporarily removing them from the battle. A Hunter’s pet can also be used to assist in crowd control by becoming an off-tank to deal with any extra enemies. Through certain talents and skills the Hunter can help out his group by enhancing the group’s damage output, making them a useful ally in many situations.

While you can spec your talents to build up your melee skills with the Survivability School, it’s really a waste of good talent points. Even if you spec for full melee you will find that the WOW Hunter Class doesn’t take a beating well and getting up close and personal with a class like the warrior is just plain suicide. Going this route is kind of like watching a Paris Hilton home movie, it might last a while but eventually it’s going to end with you going down. See what I did there?

That being said, WoW Hunters are not totally weak in melee and with certain talent builds you can make your Hunter more adept at surviving a melee encounter without surrendering the benefits of your ranged combat talents. This by no means makes the Hunter the guy you want in the enemy’s face, but it can improve your chances of coming out of a close encounter alive.