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Scattered Shots Resource Guide

Brian Wood
Updated ·7 min read

Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week, Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim.

Here at Scattered Shots, we spend a lot of time talking about how to optimize your hunter -- whether for DPS or for leveling or for soloing things we were never meant to solo. We also spend some time talking about the impact of the latest hunter news, what things were like back in the good 'ol days, and making fun of lesser classes and non-dwarves.

If you read Scattered Shots regularly, we like to think that you get access to a lot of information that's often useful and hopefully always interesting and entertaining. However, if you're looking for that tidbit of information from some column from a couple months back ... I'll be the first to admit that it can be hard to find. If you don't remember certain key words, the search function will probably not be your friend and you'll be reduced to scrolling through page after page of columns. Well, that's something that I can do for you!

This resource guide will provide you links to all of the relevant Scattered Shots guides, with a brief description of the information you can find in each. This is not an index of every column -- this is specifically currently accurate guides with information you probably want to know. So news on the patch 1.5 changes will not be here, but how to level will.

This guide will be updated regularly, adding new relevant guides and removing ones that become obsolete.



Last Updated: 6/23/2010

Leveling guides

101 guides

  • What Spec Should I Use? An overview of the different hunter specs, their play style, strengths, and weaknesses

  • Beast Mastery 101 The basics of the BM spec, from talents to glyphs to pets to rotations. Everything a new hunter needs to know to get started.

  • Marksman 101 The basics of the MM spec, from talents to glyphs to pets to rotations. Everything a new hunter needs to know to get started.

  • Marksman 102 The MM armor penetration path, with talent builds and discussion on when to consider removing Arcane Shot from your rotation and when to start gemming for ArP.

  • Survival 101 The basics of the SV spec, from talents to glyphs to pets to rotations. Everything a new hunter needs to know to get started.

  • Traps 101 A basic guide to hunter traps and how to use 'em.

  • Basics of Pet Control Or, "How to keep your pet from pulling that group of mobs. And also those over there. And everything else."

  • 5 Secrets to Not Being a Terrible Hunter The very, very basics of dungeon running as a hunter. Avoid these all too common mistakes.

Gear and loot guides

General hunter guides

  • Skill vs. gear A discussion of exactly what impact skill, gear and buffs have on our DPS, as well as what we mean by a "skilled" hunter as opposed to a "competent" one.

  • Secrets and myths of the world's best hunters The advice that the hunters in number one guilds have to give.

  • Hunting heroics and PUGs A guide on how to maximize your heroic DPS and how to be a good and responsible group member. After all, your job is more than just DPSing.

  • The right pet for the right situation A discussion of when you might want to use pets other than the wolf, taking advantage of some of the many raid buffs and debuffs that pets can provide.

  • Hunter stat caps Explanation of "soft cap" vs "hard cap," with details on exactly what the hunter caps are for hit, haste, armor penetration and crit.

  • The misunderstood hunter abilities An explanation of exactly how the commonly misunderstood Chimera Shot, Noxious Stings and Aimed Shot work.

  • Jump-Disengage Tutorial How to make the most of this key hunter movement ability to maximize your DPS time and minimize your time wasted in movement.

  • Extreme soloing How you solo content never meant to be done alone. Defeat all of Molten Core! Solo your way to rare mounts from ZG or Karazhan! Win friends and influence people!

  • Stacking cooldowns and procs How to maximize the dps advantage of your cooldowns and get a multiplicative increase by combining the right cooldowns at the right time.

Pure hunter enjoyment guides

  • The hunters of lore A look into notable hunters in Warcraft lore as an inspiration for roleplaying your hunter.

  • Finding a unique pet How and where to find those rare pets to stand out from the crowd and make other hunters envious.

  • On roleplaying a hunter Some thoughts and discussion about how to RP the greatest class in the game.

Raid boss strategy guides

PvP guides

  • PvP Stats & Specs An overview of the three hunter tree with PVP specs for each, and a discussion of how your stat weights change in a PvP environment.

Just plain, good reading

  • Rhok out with your 'lok out A guide for the level 60 epic hunter quest to get what was once the greatest ranged weapon in the game. Every hunter should experience this, even if it is trivially easy these days.

  • Grandpappy Frostheim on death knights A reminiscence of days gone by, where the term "huntard" first came from, what being a hunter was like at the start of WoW and why hunters should love death knights.

  • Wrath beta wrap party BRK crashes the wrap party for Wrath beta and has a conversation with Arthas.

  • Rhino bowling Originally the rhino pet didn't just apply a bleed buff with poor uptime -- it knocked back everything near it!

  • Ghostcrawler Interview A entirely fabricated interview with Ghostcrawler that captures exactly what he would have said had he actually done an interview.

You want to be a Hunter, eh? Well then you came to the right place. You start with science, then you add some Dwarven Stout, and round it off some elf bashing. The end result is massive dps. Scattered Shots is the WoW.com column dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a Hunter. Each week Scattered Shots will cover topics to help you improve your Heroic DPS, understand the impact of Skill vs. Gear, get started with Beast Mastery 101 and Marksman 101, and even solo bosses with some Extreme Soloing.