World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

If you haven't done much raiding by level 80 you're going to need to start amping up your hunter's gear before you start running those Naxx raids. The good news is you have a wide assortment of places you can start gathering gear from to aid you in those long nights out with the guild. Reputation grinding, dungeon crawling and even crafting can play a big part in converting your hunter from solo/group ready to raid ready.

One of the first things you need to do as a hunter before embarking on those raids is to boost up your stats. Your hit rating is one of the most important things you can increase at this stage. Some people put more emphasis on boosting haste and while that is important, firing all the shots in the world at light speed is pretty useless if they all miss. So work on getting your hit rating capped. There are a number of ways to do this. You can get gear with hit increasing stats, use gems that add to hit rating, or you can even buy food that will offer you a temporary hit rating boost if you need it. Although I recommend getting a more permanent hit rating solution as food of this sort can come at an expensive price if you can't make it yourself.

Reputation Gear
You may or may not have read my recent guide on Northrend reputation gear, but if you didn't give it a look over as some of this next section will involve some of the items acquired through these reputation vendors.

Reputation vendors can provide some useful stuff to help get you started in the raid department. Once you get into those raid dungeons you'll find a lot better stuff than most things you'll find elsewhere, but for now the goal is to get you geared up to a decent level to help out your fellow guild mates by being a valuable source of damage. Much like dungeon crawling, earning reputation gear is a time consuming process. You'll need to get your faction up high enough to actually be able to buy and use the items you want and that can take a good amount of time devotion since there are things you can use from several different factions.

The Argent Crusade has three pieces that can be used as intro raid gear. The Zombie Sweeper Shotgun provides a nice dps weapon with the added bonus of boosting your hit rating by 14 points. The Polished Regimental Hauberk is one of the better non-raid chest pieces you can find for the hunter and will probably last you through more than a few raids before you find something to replace it with. Lastly, you have the Cloak of Holy Extermination. While not the best cloak you can get at this point, it does provide some useful stats and can be useful in filling the slot until you find something better. You'll need to get your reputation up to exalted in order to purchase the hauberk as it has the highest requirement on the list, but it's well worth it.

The Knights of the Ebon Blade will give you a few more options to use for raiding. The Reaper of the Dark Souls sword is useful to keep in your melee weapon slot as it adds 33 to your hit rating. The damage and speed really doesn't matter as you're never going to swing this thing even once if you're raiding. If you do the whole raid is probably going to come to a complete stop. Your guildees, your guildees pets, and the mobs are all going to stop and just look at you, and you are going to suddenly feel really stupid. Don't be that guy! The Spaulders of the Black Arrow works well as a shoulder piece until a more permanent piece is acquired, but you can find a few better options in some of the heroic dungeons. The Arcanum of Torment enchantment can be useful for boosting critical strike and attack power on a head slot item and is a useful enchantment for the hunter.

The Sons of Hodir can provide a few more items to consider. The Broken Stalactite dagger can be used to fill one of your melee slots for additional hit rating points. Just don't hit anything with it on a raid or your friends and guildees will point and laugh at you.The Giant Ring Belt can be a useful tool until you find better as it provides a fair boost in stats and the Greater Inscription of the Axe enchantment can be a nice boost for the hunter on a shoulder item.

The Frenzyheart tribe can offer one useful item in the form of a trinket. The stats may not sound like a lot, but it can be useful in some situations where you face a raid boss with adds. Drop one of those and gain yourself a momentary increase in damage. There are certainly better things out there, but we're just worried about getting you ready to tackle the stuff that gives it.

Dungeon Crawling Gear
You can find a great assortment of items running heroic dungeons. However, these do take time and you may have to run the dungeons a lot of times to get what you're looking for. This is probably going to be one of your best bets for getting up some decent gear to prime yourself for raiding. I have listed several items below and where you can find them. Some are better than others and the reason I included more was to give you a variety to choose from. There's nothing worse than getting pigeon holed looking for one piece of gear that doesn't drop after a month of running heroics. It does tend to happen at times and having an alternate piece can sometimes help out until you get what you want or need.

There are several dungeons you can go treasure hunting in. Some are more hunter friendly than others, but make yourself a loot table of things you want to get that go along with your spec and try to start gathering. Having a backup wish list is always useful in the event some item just refuses to drop.

Emblems of Heroism and Valor
While you're tearing your way through heroic dungeons make sure you pick up any emblems lying around on the bosses you take out. These can be used to purchase another form of gear from merchants in Dalaran. These merchants carry some decent quality gear than can be a good substitute for some of the other stuff I have mentioned in this guide. They will take a large number of emblems to get, but if you have luck with gear dropping like I do you'll probably get the emblems quicker.

Crafting Items
Crafting has some useful items to get your raiding endeavors started. The Nessingwary 4000 is a great ranged weapon if you haven't had a lot of luck in the dungeons. It also comes with a yellow socket to stuff some sort of dps enhancing goody into. There are various assortments of crafted goods you can take on that will serve as good place holders until you start getting that raid loot you always wanted.

Gems
Gems can help add a little extra kick to your hunter, but there are a few different options you can roll with. One thing that remains constant, regardless of your spec, is to get the hit cap to max. If you need to use gems to make that happen then do it. If you already have peaked your hit cap then use these slots to add in some additional damage enhancing goodies.

Glyphs
Glyphs offer a nice perk to the hunters abilities. The three hunter trees can put pretty much the same glyphs with only a minor difference or two between them. Each one can utilize most of the same all be it with slightly different results.

Beast Mastery hunters will want to focus on bringing down the Bestial Wrath cooldown timer and increasing the damage of Steady Shot. For that, there are two valuable glyphs to choose.

Marksman will focus on glyphs that will support their ranged attacks. Ironically these are largely the same as the Beast Mastery ones.

Survival hunters will use pretty much the same thing as Marksman hunter. I know the trap glyphs may sount tempting but they won't help as much as you might think.

Minor Glyphs can provide you with a few small perks in battle. In most cases the same will be useful all around.

Enchantments
As a hunter, you will want to make sure you get some useful enchantments to go with all your gear. They add some nice perks and can give you a good boost in dps. Here is a list of some of the enchantments you should consider as a hunter.

All these enchantments can get pretty expensive if you keep switching gear often so if you have a really good friend who happens to be capable of enchanting or creating the enchantment you can come out a great deal cheaper. Chances are if your guild is about to start raiding you have one.

Consumables
When it comes to raiding you'll find that you need to have a hefty supply of consumables on hand to give yourself a little extra edge when going into those more difficult encounters. Luckily, there is an assortment of goods available for just such a purpose.

Food/Drink
You have a few options for food and drink to choose from and the best way to pick what you need to buy is to see what you need the most. If you are a little short on hit rating for example, you can buy the Snapper Extreme food to give yourself a +40 hit rating and +40 Stamina boost for an hour. Choose carefully though as this food is quite expensive if you can't make it yourself. Below I have included a short list of food and drink you might find useful when you start raiding.

Flask and Elixir
There are several flasks and elixirs that can add a little extra pain to your attacks. Again, the thing you need to keep in mind when buying these is what will benefit you or your raid the most. Perhaps you need a bit more hit to cap out in which case you can use the Elixir of Accuracy. If your hit rating is ok then you might choose to go with the Flask of Endless Rage for an attack power boost. Keep these things in mind when making your decision. There's no need to be redundant and use a hit rating elixir when you're already capped.

Ideal Stats
As a rule of thumb one of the first things you want to do before you start raiding is to get your hit rating to the cap or as close as you possibly can. This is the main thing to work on before you start raiding. As for Agility, most people try to have at least 700-800 to begin preferably more. You can work up from there. The more your agility the better your damage. Once you're hit is capped you can work on boosting your armor penetration or critical strike rating. Just make sure hit gets capped first. I say again, you can fire volley after volley, but it does no good if all you get is air.

You'll find that there are more items out there that can help make you better prepared for raids, but what I have given you here should get you started on gearing yourself up to tackle some of the harder encounters to come. Enjoy the higher end dungeons once you get there and remember to keep that dagger sheathed. They will laugh at you I promise.