hunter-ing ~ the basics cont.

    Ranged fighting requires a choice between a gun, bow, or a crossbow. When starting, this will depend on your race. Dwarves, Worgens and Goblins are given guns, Draenei, Humans and Forsaken start with crossbows, and the other races get bows. However, all hunters can still use the ranged weapons that aren't inherent to their race. 

     In general, crossbows are relatively slow, but hit harder and are favored for increasing burst damage, while guns are relatively fast and good for steady grinding at the cost of using more ammunition than other weapons.

     Bows have moderate attack speed and are favored for sustained DPS.

Initially, weapon speed will be inconsequential since the only available abilities consist of Auto-Shot and various instant casts. Guns can be crafted by engineers, but there are no craftable bows or crossbows, so most ranged upgrades will come from mob drops and quest rewards.

Shots

      Hunters also make heavy use of special shots to supplement their DPS and provide utility to their groups. The bulk of a hunter's damage and utility will come from the use of these shots. The shots the hunter uses depend on his spec. Survival hunters use Explosive Shot, while beast masters and marksmen use Arcane Shot, while Aimed Shot is used if available. Steady Shot is used to build focus for Marksman, Cobra Shot for Survival and Beastmaster.

Stings

     Hunters have stings, which are specialized debuffs they can apply to targets to help them address specific situations. Only one sting per hunter can be active on any one target. Serpent Sting is by far the most useful utility in PvE, dealing damage over time. Serpent Sting is common for high DPS shot rotations along with Steady Shot, especially when used in conjunction with Glyph of Steady Shot. Viper Sting was removed in 4.0.1.

Combat pets

      Pets are the most important tools in the hands of a hunter. They serve as aggro-management, additional DPS, and as tanks. The pet is essential to all specs, dealing anywhere from 10% of total damage for a Marksman and a Survival, to 50% for a Beast Master. Formerly, pets had anemic damage potential and weak AI that often made them more of a danger to a raid than an asset. But improved AI - pets now always attack from the back of a monster - and an innate 90% damage avoidance has made this no longer a concern.

Traps

      Hunters have five different types of traps available for use. Some traps are a type of Crowd Control; others are a source of damage, although they do not scale well to the hunters level. Traps exist for 30 seconds, and have separate 30 second cooldown categores: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature Snake Trap and a 2 second arming timer once placed. A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time. Traps are within the domain of the survival sub-school, and although the basic traps are trainable by hunters of any spec, the survival tree contains numerous talents to enhance their use.

Aspects Edit

      Hunters have eight aspects at their disposal. Only one aspect may be active at a time. Aspects will only affect the hunter, unless stated otherwise. The aspects are part of the beast mastery school, and while the base aspects are trainable by hunters of any specialization, the beast mastery tree contains talents which enhance their use.

Some information from Wikia.