Gearing the Hunter...

Ding! Level 100!

Now to find some gear.  Many gearing options are available but I had a plan! :-)
I do like to have a plan :-)

The planning started back at 91 with me building a Dwarven Bunker.  I wanted my questing in Nagrand to give me enough gear to hit the 610ilvl needed for heroics and bypass normal dungeons completely.

This worked (almost) perfectly!  I just needed a quick trip to Mr. Pinchy in northern Nagrand to pick up the trinket, plus the Skyreach normal dungeon for the 640ilvl ring and I was there.  611ilvl after around 30 mins of being 100.

First target... Proving Grounds Silver.
Laughably easy as hunter, by far the easiest time I have had on any class.

Second target... 615ilvl - Highmaul LFR
Easily reached as I needed to run heroic dungeons for the Legendary questline.  Even when I had completed those quests I was still running at least one heroic per day for the 175GR daily quest (where were those quests when I needed them on my main? :-P)

Third target... Use Heroics and LFR to set up my TMW (aka L2P Hunter)
Hmmm... where did all my focus go? 

Yeah, this one still needs some work but I have TMW set up to show me:
Explosive Shot
Black Arrow
Barrage/Glaive Toss/ A Murder of Crows (on one icon)
Explosive Trap
Warning when Focus <40

I don't think there is anything else I need to track at this stage and this basically gives me my whole 'rotation' nicely positioned near the middle of the screen.
I might need to make the Focus warning bigger though as I seem able to not see it somehow, or I need some better way to track focus.


Other gearing options...

Crafting... Under Way
Crafting is under way but it takes time.  I can shortcut to a certain extent with the Primal Spirits but that will probably come later when I am upgrading the crafted pieces.

Followers... Work in Progress
Doing so many heroics eventually gets you into groups willing to go for Croman and Leeroy so they joined the ranks.  Meatball from Brawler's Guild is another easy 100 epic follower.
Harrison Jones is great for bringing the others up to speed.
Unfortunately, the hard part is gearing them up.  It's a long grind of missions, salvage and the Dwarven Bunker.

Apexis Crystals... No Thanks!
Needing them for the first part of the legendary quest prevents you even getting on the ladder with these.  It would take horrendous luck with drops in lfr and heroic dungeons to still need the gear by the time you had the crystals to buy it.

I imagined myself doing the Apexis daily as I waited for queues to pop but it made more sense to go skinning/trapping instead.

Challenge Modes... Nope.
No confidence in my play as a noob hunter to pug them and no friends doing them.

Invasions... Nope.
Not doing Apexis dailies means not killing the mobs needed to trigger the invasion.

Poor luck in Highmaul LFR left me at 629ilvl at the end of the week.  Normally at this point I would have headed for the auction house and bought a BoE or crafted piece to boost ilvl to the next stage (at least).  Not on this char though so this is where I finished the week.

Next target... Blackrock Foundry LFR - 635ilvl