Being a Hunter is alot more than having a pair of sunglasses and a sweet mullet.  It’s about using your pet, using your gun/bow/bolt thrower, and using your head.  Each tree brings something different and awesome to the table.  Let us look further into what gifts Patch 4.0.1 has given the Hunter class, shall we?

Too bad.  We’re doing it anyway.

The Beast Master Hunter got some serious love in Patch 4.0.1, and not a moment too soon.  With the expanded stable slot, BM Hunters are more like Pokemon players than ever before.

Once upon a time, if you slapped all your points in one tree, you were thought to have something wrong with your brain.  Oddly enough, the 36/0/0 talent tree seems to be very popular with all the cool kids out there.  Does that mean there’s something wrong with their brain?  Probably.  However, over at Warcraft Hunters Union, Frostheim proposes a 31/2/3 talent tree.

While there’s no real shot rotation anymore, Frostheim suggests the following, uh, suggestions.  Don’t look at me like that.

• Start fight with Hunter’s Mark, and by applying Serpent Sting
• Always hit Kill Command when available (and your pet is within range) — you’ll want to save up your focus to always have enough ready.
• Hit Focus Fire when your pet is full up on Frenzy Stacks.
• Refresh Serpent Sting when it drops.
• Use Arcane Shot to bleed of excess focus. This will be very often.
• Use Steady Shot to regen focus.

Ah, the Marksman Hunter.  The long distance dealer of death and other unpleasant things.  The cool kids opt for a 3/31/2 tree, while Frostheim bucks the trend and offers up a 2/31/3 tree.  What’s right?  What’s wrong?  Try ’em both, Dual Spec is cheap like dirt (also, Your Mom – zing!) these days.

Rotation-wise, Frostheim suggests the following:

• Start fight with Hunter’s Mark, and by applying Serpent Sting
• Always hit Chimera Shot when it’s available — you always want to have enough focus saved up to hit Chimera as soon as it’s available.
• Hit your free Aimed Shot proc (“Fire!”) whenever it’s available.
• Use Arcane Shot to bleed off excess focus.
• Use Steady Shot to regen focus. Note that you want to fire Steady Shots in pairs to maintain the Improved Steady Shot buff as much as possible.

Last, but certainly not least, is Survival Hunters.

For this one, Frostheim suggests a 0/5/31 tree.  However, the current most popular Survival tree is 3/2/31.  It seems to come down to where you want to put your remaining five points after you fill out the 31 points in the Survival tree.

Once again, Frostheim fires off some wisdom (see what I did there?  Clever, right?)

• Start fight with Hunter’s Mark, and by applying Serpent Sting
• Refresh Serpent Sting when needed.
• Always hit Explosive Shot when it’s available if you can — this means you’ll need to try to have the focus saved up for it.
• Fire Black Arrow when it’s available.
• Use Arcane Shot to bleed of excess focus. This probably won’t happen often.
• Use Steady Shot to regen focus.

Frost knows his stuff.  Check out his glyph suggestions, as well as other theorycrafting brainy stuff at the WHU site.