Example Hunter PvP Gear and How To Get It

I'm not a hard-core PvPer. You can tell with wowarmory.com. You see, I don't have a talent build specially for PvP. If I was a hardcore arena competitor, I'd have a special PvP talent build as one of my dual talents. I don't do arenas. I do PvP as a non-scheduled mostly-solo event. I do BGs. I've done them a lot. I've reaped their rewards and felt their pain. I did them at level 60 when you had to visit the battleground entrances out in the world. I did them at level 70 when you had to visit a battlemaster. And I do them at level 80 with the 'H' key.

My 'H' key shows it all this quite starkly. It also shows a frequent situation I fall into. I get honor-capped a fair amount.

BTW, the 'H' key has one stat that doesn't seem to be available through wowarmory's stats page, Lifetime Kills. I also kinda wish it showed Lifetime Honor. ;-)

In any case, let's talk about hunter PvP gear.

The best route IMHO for a hunter to get some fine PvP gear is to play all forms of PvP. Do what you like of course. For me, I haven't found a good arena team mostly due to scheduling and my current in-ability to commit to a time for arenas. I did a little arena stuff in the first and second seasons. I haven't since. If you can find a couple partners and schedule time for them, do it. You'll want to pull a 1600 rating at least. Hunters do have to work a bit harder in arenas than others. And you don't want to walk into an arena without some decent gear already.

Why would you want to go into arenas? You can buy outstanding PvP gear with honor as long as you meet the minimum arena ranking.

But first you should have some PvP gear. You can get honor gear pretty easily by doing battlegrounds (BGs). I find that Strand of The Ancients generates the biggest bang for the buck. That's followed up by Alterac Valley (AV) and Eye of the Storm (EotS). Arathi Basin (AB) and Warsong Gulch (previously WG) tend to yield less honor per hour. This all shifts a little bit to the "Holiday BG" if you're playing Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. You may also want to speak with the battlemaster for a daily pvp (win) quest. It's worth honor and gold. And if you do a mix of BGs you can turn in a token of each for extra honor as a repeatable quest from the battlemasters.

World PvP zones like those in EPL, various parts of Outlands and Icecrown are not worth doing on a PvE server.

Wintergrasp (WG) on the other hand isn't too bad for honor, especially with the weekly quests. Beyond that, you should do WG every time it is up. You don't necessarilly do it for the honor. You're doing it for the wintergrasp tokens. They can purchase excellent PvP trinkets and a nice four piece suit.

Here is your complete list of honor mail armor items that do not require an arena rating to purchase. They cost a variety of currencies. Some are from heroism emblems, some are from wintergrasp marks, some are from honor and nothing else, and some are from emblems of valor and emblems of conquest.

If you aren't like Kheldul and have managed to get a nice arena team and rating, then you have access to a large array of items for purchase. Thankfully, you can also get some of these (sans arena rating) through the the VoA raid and emblems.

Now the list doesn't end with just mail armor. The rings, neck pieces, trinkets, cloaks, and weapons are all quite nice too. Trinkets should come from Wintergrasp. Skip the honor-based ones. Rings should come from honor. Also grab a decent neck and cloak.

The first and last items you need are weapons. You'll need to use something from PvE to start. You probably will do better with something from PvE anyway. Why do I say this? Well. There are only two classes of PvP ranged weapons available. One requires an arena rating of 1850 and the other 2350. You can get a bow, crossbow or gun. (Dwarves, go gun. Trolls go bow.) 1850 is realistically achievable. But you'll need a good ranged weapon to get there. And it will probably be better than the 1850 rated weapon!