Molten Core taught me a lot as a hunter. It really was the place where I really began to figure out how to play my class at an intricate level. Oh yeah, PVP helps a great deal too (and not just with your own class knowledge). When the Ancient Petrified Lead dropped the first time we cleared past Majordomo Executus, second last boss of the instance I was stoked. I knew what the item was and sadly many hunters today miss out on what made vanilla special (this very quest).
The Ancient Petrified Leaf was an item that started a hunter quest. This quest was designed as a challenging quest where the hunter had to use all resources available minus your pet and assisting players. Your mates could buff you, but you had to do the rest. This quest consisted of killing 4 separate, strong elites with varying abilities. All of demon type they tested the skill of hunters in various ways but _mainly_ kiting. You had 15 minutes to kill the boss when you activated it and you had 15 minutes to wait if it despawned for reasons such as taking too long to kill it, someone healing you, someone using an ability or dealing damage to the demon or buffing you mid fight and attacking a mob associated with the fight.
I killed the mobs in this order: Un'Goro Crater Demon, Winterspring Demon, Burning Steppes Demon then Silithus Demon (the order that I felt was easiest to hardest). I was also lucky enough to be given the scale that provided an epic quiver, which has now been converted to a 24 slot bag thanks to blizzard (since hunters no longer need arrows).
The UGC demon had a large felhunter with her, after clearing enough space to do my thing the fight commenced. I did it flawlessly but the fight was easily the simplest. Trap the felhunter, melee the boss to death (-1500 RAP meant I had less than 0 RAP (1500 was a lot back then!)). Use of a health potion ensured my victory.
The Winterspring demon was all about kiting, get too far and he'll despawn, get to close and you can no longer kite as you get turned into a demon and killed via AoE damage aura that you simply could not escape. Most guides suggested that you clear a path of mobs to kill this demon when kiting or use a bunch of guildies to run ahead on mounts, aggroing/killing mobs as you go. I used neither of these methods with clever use of concussive shot and simply running around the mobs in my way. A few (read a number of) attempts passed when I finally killed this demon and looted the head. Oh yeah, these two demons so far were fought without any buffs at all except for my own.
The Burning Steppes demon was all about consistency and mana conservation. You needed enough mana to use wing clip and scorpid sting. This boss would enrage and when enraged would hit for about a third of your health (Health pools were like 3k HP those days), hitting the boss with scorpid sting when enraged applied a debuff that would cause him to only hit for 1 damage (troll regen ftw by the way). To fight this boss you could do it multiple ways, a simple kiting method could be employed and was easiest but clearly not intended to be used in the fight. So I did it the right way. Auto Shot till close, scorpid and wing clip before enrage and run at right angle from him. I also used scatter shot and had improved wing clip to help me deal more damage to the boss. This boss took a few goes but after I killed him I did it every time for other hunters that I did the quest for.
The Silithus boss, easily the hardest of the 4. A strong death coil meant that your potion cooldowns were used on shadow protection potions (which absorb shadow damage). He spawned lots of little scarabs that would pwn you. Wing Clip stunned the boss and rooted him in place, proc or not. His melee hit hard so you were bound to take a few hits whilst running to range. Use of bandages at the right time and using shadow protection potions were an absolute must in this fight (not to mention luck). Resisting the death coil was a lucky encounter but exactly what happened to me the fight I killed this boss. You would still be feared (which was a good thing because it got you away from the scarabs quickly) so that was a good time to bandage, but not taking any shadow damage on the one death coil saved me (as I was low HP) and I managed to kill the demon after a LOT of atttempts.
Acquiring the Bow, Staff and Quiver felt like the biggest achievement in my WoW experiences. I feel sorry for all hunter that miss out on such an epic quest.
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