BM, the specc to level in ... Right?Follow

So I decided to get my hunter moving after a whole expansion doing nothing. Literally. He's been there since the day before WOTLK came out at 60, staring at me.

Anyhow, fast forward to yesterday, I decided I wanted to level him, and decided I didn't really like the idea of having a toon who doesn't max out professions, so I decided to do a lot of LFGs whilst I dumped skinning for Engineering and have been leveling/farming minning (which was stuck at 210) and engineering, from 0.

Thing is, even though a hunter was my first toon, and I was confortable with it back in TBC, my knowledge of hunter is more or less comparable to that of a drunken monkey at this stage. I used to have a nice macro with a kill command in it, but now of course I don't think it's at all the right macro. I've done a little research and have come with a few macros, but my dps in instances wasn't really up to par (even though hunter pew pew is quite "easy"), I'd come up 2nd or 3rd in damage meters.

I know, leveling balance stinks and swings, but anyhow, I'd like to squeeze all the dps I can, if only just for e-peen.

Soooooo, my question (that was a long introduction), to all you hunter pros. Is BM still the recommended specc to level you think? Could you also nicely post a few macros for me to use during my pew pew in instances?

Thanks a lot in advance.

For the record, I moved my hunter to level 63, minning to 278 and engineering to 130 (investing 70g in the process too, but what have you). So not at all bad for just two days after a whole expansion. I'm not even dreaming I'll get him to 80 before Cata, but at least he won't stare at me from 60 like he's done for two years.

Thanks for that heads up. I still find my dps low on thrash in Outlands instances, where I usually come in last in DPS terms, only to emerge 1st or 2nd on bosses. Thrash packs just die like nothing before I can get two shots out, and in the meantime the warlocks and mages out there just pop their AOE stuff out and see major damage dealt.

At level 66, I can crank up to 900dps on a boss fight, but I'll be damned if I can break 700 on average dps. I'll have to work harder I guess.

I would say 700-900DPS is fine at lv63. The Warlock and Mage may not be on their 1st toon, and so they may have better gear due o having a main that can fund them. When I took my warrior through the 60+ dungeons, I was happy to see people who were just able to do more DPS than me..the tank.

I did my BM hunter from 71 to 78 post 4.0.1 and I'd have to say I've been loving the whole trip.

I solo'd every single quest in Dragonblight except Sarathustra (tried, but couldn't... duo'd with a balance druid who did nothing but throw heals on my pet) and Abbendis (I was going to try to solo her, but a couple peeps jumped in after I started fighting her. I don't think I could have been able, seeing as how hard she was hitting my poor wolf before they jumped in). This includes the entire Magnataur quest line, the bird in the Emerald Dragonshrine, and the Wanted Poster quests from Agmar's Hammer. The only mob that gave me trouble was the elite magnataur in the wolvar village. I tried Sarathustra, but she simply did far too much damage, and my Mend Pet couldn't keep up with it. I did all of this with a DPS pet, not a tank pet.

Mob kills are fast (Serpent's Sting, Arcane Shot, Kill Command, Steady Shot.... mob is near death or dead outright), and there's not much trouble keeping Focus up as long as I Steady Shot at least once per battle (I can always pop my focus recharger, or do a 2nd steady shot instead of Kill Command).

I will admit, though, my hunter is an engineer and was wearing the i200 goggles at Lv70, and was using the crafted blue gun as soon as he dinged the level to use it (73, IIRC?). He was also a JC and was using the JC trinket along with the lightning rod trinket too.

Edited, Nov 12th 2010 10:11pm by Lyrailis

i200 goggles at Lv70 is sweet. So are the trinkets at Lv70 as well, I used a noise machine (until I was high enough to use the JC trinks) for the few times I get hit with melee attacks, and the lightning rod... that's fun! It can sometimes crit up to 3k! Even if you do get hit with the lightning, with the new HP recovery formulas, you'll be full again fairly quickly. I wound up having 11k+ health at Lv71-ish when I filled out my armor slots with Northrend gear, so even when the trinket backfired, it barely tickled me.

Edited, Nov 13th 2010 8:48pm by Lyrailis

I was going to ding 80 today but with the exp required to go from 71 to 80 decreasing tomorrow I decided to hold off the urge to finish off. I'm not even going to bother doing any HCs when I ding, with less than two weeks before Cata it's not like I'm going to gear him up for anything anyway.

Easiest toon I've leveled. By far. The only NPC that gave me a bit of grief was the Magnataur in Dragonblight, but then again I attempted him at level 71. Eventually I killed him at level 73 and I was even able to solo the 5 man quest in Dragonblight where you have to kill a frostwyrm.

Still undecided on when I'll take him to 85. Probably not for a few months I guess.