You want to bring the pain as a hunter, you need the best ranged weapon you can get. What are they, where do they come from, which should you get /grabby-hands over? Let’s breakout it down by guns, bows, and crossbows. Epics only, natch, ’cause we want to dream and dream big.

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Starting at the bottom of the DPS-chain is the Veteran’s Musket. Solid piece of hardware, there. Get exalted with your Hellfire Peninsula faction and this baby will be yours. Yes, you’ll hate Shattered Halls with a passion that burns with the heat of a thousand suns, but it’s worth it. Great weapon, especially if you’re not in a guild running Karazhan. This gun is lovely for all three talent trees and is totally worthy of a +12 damage scope.

Next is the renowned Don Santos’ Famous Hunting Rifle. Why renowned? Check out that proc. Do you need to blow 1500 gold on this baby? Nah, not really. If you’re a Beastmaster and have Serpent’s Swiftness, you’ll make the gun proc more than any other spec, so you are allowed to drool over it a little more than our MM and SV brethren.

If you can’t stomach going into pugs for the Veteran’s Musket and aren’t running Kara, you could do a lot worse than grabbing one of these out of the Auction House, we won’t deny it. But the first boss in Kara drops a nifty crossbow; don’t blow your epic flying mount fund for this if you’ve got the resources to get into Kara.

Now we get to The Tanking Gun, the Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer. Hunter-engineers, go ahead and make one for yourself and don’t feel shame. The rest of you, please look at the stats on the thing: Stamina. This is a tanking gun, it’s really not for us hunters. If you want to spend 1000 gold on mats for this thing, just go buy a Don Santos. Can you use a GBKD in PvP? Abso-pively. Just don’t sacrifice too much DPS for stamina.

Out of “easily” accessible guns, we now start playing with raiding-loot. The Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle is a marvel. It’s gorgeous. It’s pure-DPS. It’s one of the two big rewards for clearing the first third of Karazhan. Anything less than a crit-scope is demeaning to this weapon, capice? Shell out some cash and look like you know what you’re doing.

Here’s an interesting switcheroo. The Barrel-Blade Longrifle drops from Doomwalker, a world-boss outside the gates of The Black Temple. Doomwalker is a 25 to 40-person raid boss, but the gun really isn’t that much of an upgrade from Kara. At least not, “Finished Kara, finished Gruul’s, possibly Magtherdon, and a world boss,” better. It doesn’t look better than the WSR, no it does not. It’s a little higher DPS, you can gem-it up to make the agility-comparison better, but the WSR has built-on RAP already. Frankly, we’re disappointed with the work-reward ratio required to get this thing.

For you Beastmaster macro-mashers, however, this weapon might be your dream desire. With Serpent’s Swiftness and a 15% ammo pouch, its attack speed is increased to 1.96 1.88 seconds per shot. This number what many consider the ultimate ratio to enable the auto shot/kill command/steady shot macro to make the most DPS of any ranged weapon in the game. Our opinion of macro-life is like that of Gordon Ramsay and his opinion of food; simplicity is best. We use macros to make our life better, but we don’t rely on them to do our work for us.

Now we said the BBL is a little confusing when one considers difficulty-to-obtain versus upgrade-over-Kara-loot. And to compound our head-shaking when looking at the BBL, there’s Tuskbreaker. This drops in Zul’Aman, a 10-man instance. Now this is the upgrade we expected from the BBL! Too f-ing bad it’s hideous-looking, right? ZOMG it’s grotesque. But the stats, oh sweet aunt-tilley, that’s one incredible gun. “It’s too fast for meh macros, BRK!” you might protest. You don’t like? Give it to us; we’ll give it a happy home. At least it’s not called the Gurubashi Dwarf Destroyer. /gulp

Twenty-five person raiding and we finally get that weapon we’ve been waiting for. You can clear SSC and get a spiffy bow, but for us gun-lovers, it’s The Eye and the Arcanite Steam-Pistol. Pistol? Dual-wield! Yes!

No, no can dual-wield. Sorry, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. This should be a dual-wield weapon, for Elune’s sake.

It’s not “pretty” in the traditional sense of the WSR, but has more of an engineering twang to it, like the Core Marksman Rifle of ages past. But it has moving part-thingies, yes it does! And it’s on our list of Lootage We Needz.

Can your guild get into Black Temple? We’re not there yet, but we know what awaits us, the Rifle of the Stoic Guardian. That’s right, take a good look at those stats. Stamina is never eschewed, but DODGE? Great Elune’s ghost, this is a tanking weapon again! There’s no gun in Black Temple or Mount Hyjal for us DPS-epeening hunters? Nope. Nada. Enjoy your pistol, ’cause that’s the end of the PvE line. Phooey.The end of the PvE line, perhaps, but there is one left.

For you arena-junkies, there’s the Vengeful Gladiator’s Rifle. For a ridiculous 3750 arena points, you can have the highest base-DPS gun in the game. It’s not pretty, it’s not hideous, it’s kinda “interesting”. We think it looks very Orcish.The resilience is OK, but we’d much rather it have Ignore Armor to make it more useful in PvE and raiding. That 3.0 attack speed makes the 11/41/9 Marksmen-spec’d arena hunters drool, that’s for sure. A MM-spec Aimed Shot from this piece of bling is gonna hurt for a long, long time.

Alright, that’s the Nine Epic BC Guns review. Next we’ll do Bows and finish with Crossbows!