World of Wacraft Hunters are the wild beast tamers in the game. They are excellent in all aspects of outdoor survival. Their skills in wow include ranged weapons specialization, using pets in combat, melee fighting ability, ability to set traps, assuming beast “aspects” to enhance agility and speed and and tracking ability.

1. Ranged weapon specialization is their best talent, even more so than their pet taming. The projectiles include 4 different types of stings that cause a debuff effect on targets causing great damage. They also have shots like Arcane Shot, Auto Shot and later in levels Steady Shot.

2. Melee combat: Hunters can melee fight but not as well as other tanking classes. But it comes in handy when the target is too close too shoot at, or if the pet is otherwise engaged or stunned.

3. Combat pets the most important tool in their arsenal giving the hunter additional damage per second and tanking support as well as maintaining aggro received to a minimum.

4. Traps: At their disposal hunters have up to 5 traps used for crowd control, and to cause damage . Traps have a cool down period of 30 seconds. Once a trap is set another can be set up immediately afterwards. Here are the kind of traps available to hunters:

Freezing Trap - freezes approaching enemies.

Frost Trap - Slows enemies up to 60% in area where trap is set.

Immolation Trap - Burns enemies over 15 sec period.

Explosive Trap - Explodes as enemy approaches causing fire damage.

5. Aspects Hunters assume up to seven aspects gained as part of the “beast mastery” tree that grant special abilities, such as increased dodge, improved running speed, or even additional nature resistance. The seven available hunter aspects are:

Aspect of the Monkey: This can increase the chance to dodge by 8%.

Aspect of the Hawk: Increases “ranged” attack by “x” amount depending on level

Aspect of the Cheetah: Can speed up the hunter speed by 30% but can also daze him for 4 seconds if suffering damage.

Aspect of the Beast: Allows hunters to become undetectable.

Aspect of the Pack: The hunter and his/her group assume the characteristics of a pack of cheetahs, increasing all their movement speeds by 30%. When a pack member takes damage, it will daze them for a 4 second period.

Aspect of the Wild: The Hunter and group assume the aspect of the wilderness, gaining +X resistance to nature damage.

- Aspect of the Viper: Regenerates mana equal to 55% of his intellect every 5 seconds

6. Tracking Can track 8 types of creatures or items in the game. Only one can be acive at a time. Type of beings they can track are: Beasts, Humanoids, Undead, Hidden, Elementals, Demons, Giants, and Dragonkin.

All the above abilities in this short WoW hunter guide point to the hunter being the best class to sole when you level up. Warlocks are equally as good but play different. Looking at forums, most who have used both classes tend to prefer hunters but this is subjective. The only weakness they have is when they are unable to use ranged weapons though they have limited melee abilities. All in all this is one of the most popular classes in wow due to its variety, versatility and power.