Building a Hunter From Lore: Melee Hunter

In the days long before my hands touched wow, when the level cap was 60, pets didn't despawn when you mounted, and spirit bond was ungodly powerful, the survival tree provided a unique opportunity for hunters it was a melee attack tree. Its talents focused on giving you bonuses to melee and traps and abilities like Deterrence, but most importantly it gave a fourth melee attack

However, this had one serious issue, Mongoose Bite, and Coun

terattack were not viable as endgame strikes because they require you to dodge or Parry, respectively. This was the same issue Wolverine's Bite had

with Cunning pets, because in any group particularly a raid, hunters as DPS should never have to Dodge or Parry. Still the idea of a melee Hunter did not seem so out of place. Sadly this went the way of the dinosaur and survival became more of a ranged damage spec and Lacerate was replace by Wyvern Sting as its final talent. However a num

ber of talents remained Counterattack, Savage Strikes, and Resourcefulness all still benefit your Melee attacks, so how do you build a melee hunter? Three things you need to remember, Ignored ranged bonuses, improve traps, improve pet.

Your Talent Build for a Melee hunter is going to be sort

of an inversion of the Beast Master Build, where as the Beast Master you focused on the pet, here you focus more on you.

Starting with SV your going to basically ignore anything that requires a ranged attack, Survival Instincts being the exception as it reduces damage you take from attacks. The bread and butter SV talent, Lock 'n' Load, gets ignored because we will not be using Arcane Shot, ever, and don't even take Explosive Shot. Instead Savage Strikes, Improved Tracking, Survivalist, and Deflection are going to be more important talents for you. Everything that improves your traps also goes into this build. Shifting over to BM you are going to grab Intimidation ignoring taking everything except Improved Aspect of the Hawk, Improved Mend Pet, , and Pathfinding. This will add to your damage and survivability and give your pet a bit more bang and the utility of Intimidation.

For glyphs the defense bonus of Glyph of Raptor Strike will be helpful. Since Aspect of the Monkey and Aspect of the Beast are going to be your primary aspects the damage bonus from Glyph of the Beast will be a definite benefit. Finally Glyph of Immolation Trap will improve one of your primary DPS abilities. Rotations wise your going to alternate between Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite

dropping Immolation Trap and Snake Trap whenever they're up.Scatter Shot and Counterattack should be hit whenever their ready as well. Fire a sting a sting as you charge the target and use Disengage or Wing Clip to gain some distance to refresh, or after a Scatter Shot. Utilize Frost Trap to gain the benefit of Point of No Escape if you're not trapping additional targets. Weaponry for melee hunters will in my opinion focus on dual wielding, with a good ranged weapon for a stat stick. Engineering makes for a good Profession as it adds additional abilities for you to use in combat. Grenades make a great filler in between Strikes and Bites, and the Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket is a great additional attack to boost anyones DPS. For the melee hunter you should fire it every time you use a sting or have some distance on your target. As your focusing on melee combat you'll probably prefer leather over mail in order to reach the expertise cap, and some armor pen might help as well. Enchants like Mongoose will do a lot for your DPS as you can now proc its effect and weapons with procs will also be better choices now. Any pet will work for the most part, but pets like Birds of Prey and Wasps or similar abilities will be helpful.