Home » Itemization » Hunter Gear to Get You Started
Posted by Lassirra on September 28, 2009 // 12 Comments
Filed Under: Itemization // Tags: Armor, Weapons
Filed Under: Itemization // Tags: Armor, Weapons
Whether you’re a fresh Level 80 or just someone who took a break for a bit and wants to get back into the swing of things, it can feel a bit overwhelming to try to catch up to the gear curve so you can jump into the newest raid content. You may be sporting quest blues or greens or you may have some gear from Naxxramas that’s been rotting on your neglected character’s carcass for the past few months. Either way, none of these are going to cut it in Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader and you’re looking for some guidance to get you up to snuff. With the (somewhat) recent changes to emblems, getting caught up to the cool kids won’t take you as long as you might think.
For fresh 80s, or those that took a break without ever setting foot inside a raid, even Heroics may seem a bit daunting. Most groups doing Heroics already have some pimpin’ gear and exacting expectations for performance, and you’re worried your quest gear just won’t cut it. During the initial push into Heroics months ago, when Naxx, OS and EoE were the only raids available, 1500 DPS was considered the “starting point” for getting into Heroics. The Heroics themselves haven’t changed, even though the gear most people are sporting has, and so that benchmark still holds true. You may not top the meters in your PuGs, but 1500 will still get the job done. Get yourself a few nice blues from regular instances and perhaps a couple crafted pieces to round out your set, and you’re ready to rock and roll.
Emblems of Conquest
Emblems of Conquest can be used to purchase a number of great epic pieces to get you started before ever setting foot in a raid instance. These emblems drop off all bosses in Heroic 5-man instances, as well as raid bosses that used to drop Emblems of Heroism or Emblems of Valor and bosses in Ulduar. In other words: these things are everywhere. Here are some pieces of Hunter loot you can purchase with Emblems of Conquest:
- Belt of the Ardent Marksman — 28 Emblems
- Gloves of Unerring Aim — 28 Emblems
- Leggings of the Tireless Sentry — 39 Emblems
- Broach of the Wailing Night — 19 Emblems
- Conqueror’s Scourgestalker Tunic — 58 Emblems
- Conqueror’s Scourgestalker Headpiece — 58 Emblems
Total, that’s 230 emblems for all six pieces. Now, that may seem like a lot of emblems, but if you run even just a couple of Heroics per day, that’s about 10 emblems per day, giving you a new piece of epic gear every three to five days. Of course, if you can manage to run more Heroics per day, you’ll find the loot piling up even quicker.
Heroic Drops
While you’re running Heroics for emblems, you may also want to keep an eye out for these pieces from bosses to help round out your gear:
- Drake-Mounted Crossbow — Ingvar the Plunderer, Heroic Utgarde Keep
- Handgrips of the Savage Emissary — Cyanigosa, Heroic Violet Hold
- Interwoven Scale Bracers — Keristrasza, Heroic Nexus
- Leggings of the Stone Halls — Sjonnir the Ironshaper, Heroic Halls of Stone
- Ancient Pendant of Arathor — Zone Drop, Heroic Trial of the Champion
- Chestguard of the Ravenous Fiend — Champion’s Cache, Heroic Trial of the Champion
- Gloves of the Dark Exile — The Black Knight, Heroic Trial of the Champion
- Marrowstrike — Confessor’s Cache, Heroic Trial of the Champion
- Pauldrons of Concealed Loathing — Confessor’s Cache, Heroic Trial of the Champion
One thing I would point out before I go any further: typically, items purchased with Emblems of Conquest will be better than items from the original Heroics. Also, items from Trial of the Champion will also typically be of higher quality than items from the original Heroics. The fundamental reason why this is the case is because the item levels (or iLvl) of the items from Trial of the Champion and the Emblem of Conquest vendor are sometimes higher than those from the original Heroics, and therefore the items have a bigger item “budget”, meaning the stats will generally be higher or there will be more stats in on the item.
Item Priority
Because you’ve got a lot of slots to fill in what you hope will be a short amount of time, it’s important to prioritize your item purchases or farming efforts. There are a couple ways you can go about this.
First, you can choose to purchase upgrades based on how big an upgrade each item will be. For example, if you have a really crappy necklace equipped, you may decide you want to replace that first. This approach can easily become very involved, and you may find it necessary to get out your calculator or visit the WoWHead Profiler or Item Comparison tools. It can also be as simple as “Well, I have green gloves and blue everything else, so I’ll get the gloves first.” The choice is up to you.
Second, you can choose to purchase upgrades based on the price of the items. You may want to purchase the cheaper items first so you can get a greater quantity of items, or you may want to save up and purchase the most expensive items first so you can have a solid core of pieces to build the rest of your set around. Another benefit to saving up and buying the big-ticket items is that those pieces are tier armor pieces. Chances are you won’t replace them with other upgrades soon, so you won’t feel like you’ve wasted emblems.
Any of these approaches will work fine, the end result will largely be the same.
What Your Work Will Get You
One thing I would like to make clear before we wrap things up here is: just getting a bunch of epics will not get you into Ulduar or Trial of the Crusader right away. What these upgrades will get you, however, is an opportunity to get into content that will give you better items that will eventually get you into the higher-end raids.
You need to keep in mind that these items are really just “hold-over” epics. These will get you into the introductory raids so you can start picking up Emblems of Triumph and have access to new bosses for better pieces that you can then use to leverage your way into the more challenging raids. I know that seems like a lot of work for items you’re just going to replace anyway, but unfortunately, that’s what it takes and there’s no way around it.
Raid progression is precisely that: progression. You work your way through levels of content and tiers of items so that you can move on to bigger and better things. The good news is, this process has gotten much quicker than it has ever been, and between Emblems, farming Heroics, and getting some pieces crafted as necessary, you’ll be playing with the big kids in no time. Most servers have plenty of PuGs for Vault of Archavon, Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum by now, so working your way through the introductory raids shouldn’t take you long at all, even if the guild you’re in may not be running them anymore.
If you’ve recently returned to playing your Hunter after a hiatus, share your triumphant (or not so triumphant) return stories in the comments! What aspects of returning to the class (or the game) were the most challenging for you?
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I plan to roll a Hunter to 80 before Cataclysm is released, so I’ll definitely be referencing this blog post once I get toward endgame content on him. Great post!
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Fantastic! I’m a casual player and my guild is too small to run raids, so I’ve never managed to get very good gear. The emblem of conquest change and HToC have helped a bit, and this list prodded me into spending some of those emblems I had lying around. Now only one of my items is blue quality. I’m going to keep this list bookmarked for a while!
Have you got any suggestions for starting raiders? My gear is getting close, and I have some free time, but I don’t want to leave my guild, which makes getting into raiding difficult, especially since people expect others to be experienced with the non-ulduar raid content. I can understand that, as most raiders ran those until they were ready to scream, but I’ve only set foot in Naxx…twice! Building up my gear is step one, and I can read about the fights, but I still feel unprepared and don’t want to join a PUG just to be a drain.
I still hover around 2000 DPS unless I’m well-buffed and fighting a single mob; when people ask me how much DPS I do, I’m not sure what to say! I get up to 3,200 or more on occasion. Everyone seems to want 4k dps, and I have no idea how to get there.
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If you’re in a guild that doesn’t raid, you have a couple options. One, you can go it “alone” and just try to find PuGs where you can. Two, you can check with people in your guild to see if they know of any groups or co-ops that raid and see if you can get in on some runs.
To get familiar with the fights, reading will only get you so far. What you really want are videos of the fights, so you really get a look at what you’re walking into. We’re planning on doing videos at some point specifically for Hunters, but until we do, TankSpot has some great videos in their Project Marmut section that can tide you over. As you might imagine, the videos are made with tanks in mind, but they do explain the overall strategies very well, and you can at least get a look at how the fights go.
As for your DPS, you can go one of two ways. You can tell people your solo DPS on target dummies, or if you’re looking for in-raid data, you can try loading your info into the online DPS spreadsheet to see what kind of DPS you’d do in a raid environment. To allow for inaccuracy, take off anywhere from 200-500 DPS off the figure that spreadsheet gives you raid-buffed (that way you can account for snags in your shot rotation or latency spikes) and that should give you a rough idea of how you’d do in a raid environment. Just load your character from the Armory, and let the spreadsheet use it’s default settings for raid buffs and shot priorities, and you’re good to go.
4k DPS just takes time. If most of your gear is epics, you should be able to hit that number unless you’re getting high latency or low frame rates. If you’re still not hitting 4k, it’s time to go back and evaluate your shot rotation or gem and enchant choices.
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Thanks! Very helpful! I’m going to check out all those links.
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It’s an interesting read from the perspective of a fresh 80! However, I have to wonder whether really brand new 80’s would also benefit from a look at starting the gear climb via faction rep grinding/buying BoE epics from the AH/earning BoP epics via Champion’s Seals at the Argent Tournament. I’m getting the impression that not too many people tend to go this route, I assume because it requires a significant investment of money and seal grinding and/or dailies, and the rewards are sub-par compared to what you can pick up with emblems – although, if I’m reading the numbers right, I’m just now cracking 2K (non-raid-buffed) DPS with my own motley assortment of gear, so I’m guessing it may be viable if you put the time in whenever you can, and make sure to enchant/gem everything as you go.
Most gear guides assume everybody manages to run with PUGs or guildies, which can literally be impossible for the time-crunched player who can’t commit to “just a couple of Heroics per day” (but may have a lesser amount of time available for dailies and rep grinding) or the solo player who doesn’t have the guild/friend connections to get into anything but PUGs.
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The problem with rep gear is that it’s not any better than items you can have crafted or that you would get just in the course of running regular dungeons as you level.
I haven’t taken a very close look at the items available from the Tournament dailies, but from what I remember, it seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to get items, and they weren’t particularly hot to begin with.
I’ve actually transferred servers, so I don’t have any friends to speak of on my current server. Also, most of my guildies are not in the same time zone I’m in, so I don’t typically make it into guild runs. PuGging has worked out fairly well for me. It doesn’t take long to find groups for Heroics (since even hardcore raiders are farming emblems now) most days. So, as an essentially “solo” player, Heroics are still extremely viable and often more efficient. The rewards are better, and seem to come a lot quicker.
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Regardless your stance on rep gear, it’s impossible to doubt the importance of Ebon Blade and Sons of Hodir reputation. The enchants that they give are invaluable.
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Enchants are one thing. There aren’t any better replacements for those to be obtained elsewhere. Actual gear is quite another.
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It’s great to see that you’re keeping things “fresh” on your blog for the new 80’s. A lot of raid-focused resources out there forget about those folks that are still climbing the ranks. Keep up your great work Lassirra =)
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Glad folks are enjoying it.
It’s easy to forget when you’re in the thick of raiding that not everyone is. New players are joining the game all the time, and even veteran players are rolling alts and would like help.
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Just arrived at this site. Great blog & this article perfect for me arriving at 80 a couple of weeks back. Soooooooo much good information, thank you.
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Great stuff!!!!
i will be hitting 80 today as soon as realm maint is finished and have been quite confussed on the best way to start gearing up to raid.
thanks again for the info
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