I recently came across the Unofficial World of Warcraft Hunter Guide and decided I should check it out. My main toon on WoW is a Hunter so I figured I would review the guide and let you all know what I think of it.
First off, the physical characteristics. The guide is available for instant download in PDF format. The guide checks in at 173 pages. The pages are very attractive and with bookmarks available, getting around in the guide is quite easy. So far, so good!
The writing style of the guide is easy to read and follow. There are a few misspellings and typographical errors, but overall it is well written. Most importantly the information is well organized.
The first section of the WoW Hunter Guide is Character creation. I'd already created my hunter, but I read this section anyhow. Server selection is pretty basic for most of us, but it goes into short detail about the differences between the PVE, PVP, and RP servers. The heart of the character creation section is the race selection. The guide covers each of the different races that can be hunters along with each of the racial abilities and then breaks down the pros and cons of each race. Again, this information is of more use to a person new to playing a hunter. If you've already rolled your hunter it's too late to make any changes here. That said, the info is very good.
The next section is Stats and Formulas. The stats is a good refresher for those of us that have been playing for a while, but I learned some new stuff in the formula area. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on how the different formulas worked, but I had a few things wrong. The guide also tells how important each stat, attribute and formula is for the hunter. Very handy little section.
Fighting as a hunter is the next section. This is a pretty small section, but goes over some strategy that every hunter should know if they want to play their toon effectively. This section's usability will depend on how long you've been playing your hunter. I learned a bit and had a refresher on a lot.
When I first started my hunter I had some trouble understanding how to train my pet, release my pet, basically how to use my pet effectively. I sincerely wish I had this guide when I was low to mid levels just for the information on pets. A very handy portion of this guide deals with how to determine which pets are best at tanking, DPSing, and a balance of the two.
If you PvP with your Hunter, this next section will be of interest to you as it covers the hunter in PvP. There are general tips, tips to use one-on-one against each class, and group PvP tips including the Battlegrounds and Arena. I have very little experience in PvP because I didn't know where to start. Now I've got a lot of strategies and understand much better what to do in PvP. Excellent portion of the guide!
OK, now we get to the meat and potatoes of this WoW Hunter Guide - the talents. The talents are broken down by to three sections - Beast Mastery, Marksman, and Survival. There is one page devoted to each talent and there is a lot to like about this section. Each talent has a description that tells what the talent does, followed by a ranks section that tells how the number of ranks invested will affect your toon. But you can get that anywhere you say? You're right, but the next two parts are great. The next area covered is usefulness. Usefulness details how helpful the talent will be in Group vs solo play and Raid vs PvP. Very, very good stuff. The final section is commentary in which the author expresses his views on the talent. I agree with almost all of what he has to say. I LOVE this section.
OK, I'm pretty sure you can guess what's next. Builds! This guide includes three builds each for Beast Mastery, Marksman, and Survival - that's nine builds overall. The builds show what talents you should have at level 70. I'm thinking seriously of re-speccing my hunter after reading this section.
The next section probably isn't overly useful if you've been playing your hunter for any time since it covers Hunter Quests. For the most part it provides a walk-through for how to complete your pet taming quests for each race. It's very useful it you haven't done this yet, but that would mean you are under level 10. The only other quest is the Green Drake Quest, your level 52 quest. It's a very good spoiler for the quest so use it if you are at ready for this quest.
I'm least inclined to use the following section of any in the guide. Not that it's bad, but I've got much, much better information from two other sources. I'm referring to the Leveling Section of the guide. In very general terms, this guide shows you were to go to level from 1-70 for Alliance and Horde. I much prefer Joana's 1-70 Horde Leveling Guide and Brian Kopps 1-70 Alliance Leveling Guide since both go into very specific details of exactly what you need to do to level the quickest.
Next, the guide takes a look at some of the equipment you should be looking for as you level. The guide takes a look at what weapons and armor are best at 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, then every two or three levels after that. Each piece of equipment is linked to wowhead.com so you can easily take a look at what each piece gives you.
If good equipment makes life easier for your toon, then add-ons and macros make your life easier. This chapter looks at add-ons that are good for the hunter as well as some commonly used macros. There are links to the add-ons too. Another outstanding feature of this guide!
The final section is one of my least favorite. It deals with making money with your hunter. Much like the leveling section, the reason I'm not so fond of this guide is because I've got one that does it better, World of Warcraft Gold Secrets. Don't get me wrong, there's good stuff in here, but if you are serious about making gold, there are better options.
Overall, this guide is very good. It's well written, very well organized and covers everything you could want to know about your hunter. The Unofficial World of Warcraft Hunter Guide sells for $29.99 and is a great value for people that want to have a deeper understanding of the hunter class. One thing to keep in mind is that the folks that publish this guide, Killer Guides, offer all 17 of their guides at a special package price of $79.99. I've got the package, but this is the first product I've reviewed. I can tell you though that if the rest of the guides are as well done as this one, the package is the way to go as you will save over $450 over buying them individually. Finally, each guide will be updated as Blizzard releases new content. If you are interested in playing a hunter or if you have one and want to know how to play him or her more effectively, check out this WoW Hunter Guide.
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