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Waist

Here's something a little freaky: The Giant Ring Belt from the Sons of Hodir's faction vendor at honored and the Waistband of the Thuzadin from Salramm the Fleshcrafter in The Culling of Stratholme are completely identical in every way except the name. That means they're both excellent Hunter belts, and you can take your choice which one to get. Do you want to hope for a dungeon drop, or grind one of the non-tabarded Wrath factions for a bit?

Wrist

For the Wrist slot, I'll have to recommend that you track down a Leatherworker again. The Eaglebane Bracers take 40 Icy Dragonscales to craft, which are skinned off high level blue dragons, most of them of the dungeon elite variety. But it's well worth, as the stats on the Eaglebane Bracers blow away pretty much any other bracer you can get before heroics or naxxaramas. You could probably wear these straight into Naxxaramas, in fact.

If you have trouble with the dragonscales, though, you can also get the Tornado Cuffs off of Ionar in the Halls of Lightning. They don't have the stats of Eaglebane, but they're a fine stopgap piece.

Cloak

For pure attack power and a nice bit of hit rating, you may want to pick up the Embrace of Sorrow off the Maiden of Grief in Halls of Stone. However, if you prefer a bit more agility, you can grab either the Cloak of Holy Extermination from Honored Argent Crusade faction if you need Armor Penetration, or the Centrifuge Core Cloak from Varos Cloudstrider in the Oculus if you like haste.

Out of these three, I lean toward the Cloak of Holy Extermination myself. While armor penetration isn't as drool worthy as it once was, the cloak has a bit more Agility than the Embrace of Sorrow, adding more of that nice critical strike rating. Of course, if you're not quite hit-capped yet, the Embrace of Sorrow may still be better.

Neck

If you don't want to pay through the nose for a Jewelcrafter to make you a Titanium Impact Choker, your best bet for a pre-heroic necklace may actually be questing in Icecrown. The Severed Noose of Westwind is a quest reward from The Admiral Revealed, a group quest from the Knights of the Ebon Blade. It has agility, critical strike rating, and attack power in comparable amounts to the choker, although with no armor penetration and less stamina, and it has a yellow gem socket.

Rings

For Rings, you'll want to head up to Ulduar. In the Halls of Lightning, General Bjarngrim will drop the Bjarngrim Family Signet, which comes with lots of agility and attack power. Even if you can't use the haste rating on it, the agility and the AP alone blow away most other pre-heroic possibilities aside from uber-expensive crafted rings.

Speaking of expensive crafted rings, you may want to see if you can get your hands on a Ring of Scarlet Shadows. This jewelcrafted ring has a good outlay of critical strike rating, attack power, and hit rating, plus a socket, and will make a fine pair with the Bjarngrim. If Halls of Stone trash drops or the AH treat you well, you could also pick up a Palladium Ring, which sports attack power and critical strike rating that make it a very viable alternative to either of the other two rings.

Trinket

For Trinkets, I'm once again going to recommend you go after a faction reward, in particular the Oracle Talisman of Ablution from the Oracles of Sholozar Basin. The proc helps keep you out of Aspect of the Viper, and we just love that critical strike rating.

As far as other trinkets go, You may want to consider gathering the Darkmoon Noble's Deck and getting the agility version of the Darkmoon Card: Greatness. It'll take some money and work -- The Inscription recipe Darkmoon Card of the North randomly generates the cards you need -- but 90 agility and a 300 agility proc is nothing to sneeze at.

Since both of the above are a lot of grinding, you may want some easier to get trinkets to help you out. In that case, you're going to want to dig pretty far back, since it seems like Trinkets that are optimal for Hunters are hard to come by. Alliance can dig back to the Borean Tundra for the Death Knight's Anguish from the Lost Rites questline, while both sides might like the First Mate's Pocketwatch from The Jig is Up in Borean Tundra. Yes, it's true it's not amazing for Beastmasters because of the Haste on use, but the 88 attack power is nothing to sneeze at. Horde can also grab the Scarab of Isanoth from a quest in Dragonblight. if you don't mind haste you might also want to grab the fire-proccing Vestige of Haldor from King Ymiron in Utgarde Pinnacle. You can also grab its Holy cousin, the Horn of Argent Fury, from the quest That's What Friends Are For... in Zul'drak.

Filed under: Hunter, Wrath of the Lich King, Guides, Bosses, Quests, Instances, Tips, Analysis / Opinion, Items, (Hunter) Scattered Shots