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Welcome to The War Within Marksmanship Hunter Guide! In this guide, we’ll dive into the class mechanics and overall changes. We aim to provide all the essential and relevant information to answer any questions you might have.
Table of Contents
Marksmanship Hunter is a relatively mobile ranged DPS spec that is focused on slow-casting, but hard-hitting cooldown-limited abilities like Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire. Marksmanship Hunters are damage-focused snipers with excellent burst damage, mobility, and flexibility.
Strengths
Weaknesses
Marksmanship Hunter is a spec about cooldown management, uptime, and flow.
You want to cast your hard-hitter abilities like Aimed Shot, Rapid Fire, and Kill Shot as often as possible. In-between these abilities, which all have independent cooldowns, you are managing your Focus by using Arcane Shot as a spender and Steady Shot as a filler and builder. When you cast Aimed Shot, your next 2 Arcane Shot/Multi-Shots do significantly increased damage, so you generally want to make sure to weave two Arcanes or Multis in-between your Aimed Shots.
During Trueshot, your exciting main cooldown, everything dramatically speeds up and you will be spamming a ton of Aimed Shots and Rapid Fires while only weaving in Arcane Shot sparingly when you have no Aimed or Rapid Fire available.
On AoE, you want to activate the Trick Shots buff for all of your Aimed and Rapid Fire casts. This is done by simply weaving at least one Multi-Shot in-between every single cast of Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire, even during Trueshot.
The best Marksmanship Hunters are excellent at doing these things on the fly and during hectic movement (which prevents Aimed Shot casting) and mechanics. They always know what to cast next and they have a great awareness of their Focus levels and the status of their cooldowns at all times.
Patch 11.2 introduces the Reshii Wraps Artifact Cloak from the K'aresh campaign, featuring a high-damage proc and customizable secondary stats. Updated Season 3 BiS lists are available on the Gear page.
Tier set bonuses now vary by Hero Talent, with 2-piece and 4-piece bonuses differing between Dark Ranger and Sentinel. These bonuses influence build choices and rotations.
Overall, Patch 11.2 brings a full update to the Marksmanship Hunter guide to accommodate these changes and the new season.
Marksmanship Hunter delivers high burst damage and solid AoE, making it particularly strong in dungeons. It can also be an effective questing spec, focusing on eliminating enemies before they reach you, typically with a powerful Aimed Shot followed by Rapid Fire and Kill Shot.
For leveling, use a Ferocity pet, preferably a Scalehide, and activate Misdirection along with Scale Shield before pulling multiple enemies. Tag as many mobs as possible using Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot, allowing them to be drawn to your pet. Take advantage of the damage reduction from Scale Shield while using Marksmanship's powerful burst to take down enemies before they overwhelm your pet.
Copy the Marksmanship Hunter talents, paste them into the game.
Other options come down to personal preference.
Dark Ranger offers the strongest single-target DPS and defensive toolkit among the two Hero Talents, making it the optimal choice for nearly all raid encounters. While it falls short in AoE compared to Sentinel, the difference isn't significant enough to justify choosing it over single-target performance in this raid.
Sentinel excels as the top Hero Talent for AoE DPS but falls behind in single-target damage, making it a less common choice for Raiding.
Dark Ranger delivers much stronger single-target DPS compared to Sentinel, but at the expense of AoE damage. In certain dungeons, like Workshop and Theater of Pain, this trade-off can be worthwhile.
Sentinel is typically the best Hero Talent for Mythic+ content, offering exceptional AoE damage alongside a solid defensive profile.
Marksmanship heavily favors Crit, making it the top stat in nearly all situations. After that, Sentinel prioritizes Mastery, while Dark Ranger leans toward Haste. Versatility remains the weakest stat for DPS. The ranking of the other three stats may vary based on your character's specifics, but Crit consistently holds the top spot.
Our Single-Target and AoE stat priorities align, as our AoE toolkit primarily enhances our single-target abilities to hit multiple enemies.
Our Single-Target and AoE stat priorities are identical, as our AoE toolkit essentially amplifies our single-target abilities to strike multiple enemies.
At certain points, some stats will begin to provide diminishing returns. After reaching these thresholds, their benefits will decrease progressively. This doesn't mean that a stat becomes useless beyond these points, but if you surpass them, it's important to review your sims and determine if you should consider other stats.
We highly recommend using Raidbots to sim your character's ideal gems and enchants, as they may differ from our general recommendations.
You should use Culminating Blasphemite in one socket. Then, ensure you have one gem of each type in other sockets to maximize the Crit effect, ideally Deadly Emerald/Deadly Onyx/Deadly Sapphire/Masterful Ruby. Fill in remaining sockets with Masterful Ruby.
You should use Culminating Blasphemite in one socket. Then, ensure you have one gem of each type in other sockets to maximize the Crit effect, ideally Deadly Emerald/Deadly Onyx/Deadly Sapphire/Quick Ruby. Fill in remaining sockets with Quick Ruby.
You can also choose to take a 0.4% DPS hit to use the Elusive Blasphemite with the gems above for an 8-10% movement speed boost. Given that we are somewhat mobility-limited, this can actually result in more DPS overall, and is worth considering if you're participating in high-level, dangerous content.
You should be drinking the Flask of Alchemical Chaos at all times.
Your stat potion should be Tempered Potion. Use these when you will do the most damage with your abilities, likely during your cooldowns and/or Bloodlust/Heroism. You can also obtain Fleeting Tempered Potion from Cauldrons that can be spawned by Alchemists.
You should keep a stock of Invigorating Healing Potion to use when at low health, and if you have a Warlock in the group, grab their Healthstone and use them as well. Do not macro these together, as they are best used separately! You can also obtain Fleeting Invigorating Healing Potion from Cauldrons that can be spawned by Alchemists.
Since our secondary stats are stronger per-point than our primary stat, you should be eating secondary stat food at all times, either Beledar's Bounty, Outsider's Provisions, Jester's Board, Empress' Farewell personal food, or the The Sushi Special Feast. They are all identical.
In addition, if you can afford it, you should use Crystallized Augment Rune to increase your primary stat. Augment Runes are expensive and disappear on death, so use them wisely!
| Slot | Enchantment |
| Necklace | Magnificent Jeweler's Setting (adds up to 2 sockets to a Ring or Neck) |
| Weapon | |
| Chest | Enchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance |
| Bracers | |
| Legs | Stormbound Armor Kit |
| Boots | Enchant Boots - Scout's March |
| Rings | Enchant Ring - Radiant Critical Strike |
| Cloak | Enchant Cloak - Chant of Leeching Fangs |
Enchant Weapon - Authority of the Depths is a single-target proc that will always do the same damage regardless of your character's strength or your strength as a player. This makes it ideal for beginners, and for lower-geared characters. Since it only procs on a single-target, it quickly falls behind when you are doing Mythic+ or AoE, so this enchant is exclusively used for Raiding.
Enchant Weapon - Authority of Radiant Power is a great all-rounder, and will scale with your character's general power, and your skill. It is a very safe bet to run this for all content, but note that Depths can be a tiny bit better in some pure single-target scenarios, particularly if you are poorly geared or maybe not playing at a tip-top level.
This section will cover everything you need to know about equipping your character correctly.
| Slot | Item | Source |
| Helm | Midnight Herald's Cowl (TIER SET) | Forgeweaver Araz/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
| Neck | Ornately Engraved Amplifier | Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder (710), or in Great Vault |
| Shoulder | Midnight Herald's Shadowguards (TIER SET) | The Soul Hunters/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
| Cloak | Reshii Wraps | Season 3 Questline |
| Chest | Midnight Herald's Hauberk (TIER SET) | Fractillus/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
| Bracers | Glyph-Etched Vambraces with Dawnthread Lining | Crafted by Leatherworking |
| Gloves | Glyph-Etched Gauntlets with Dawnthread Lining | Crafted by Leatherworking |
| Belt | Durable Information Securing Container with Static Charge | Patch 11.1.7 Questline |
| Legs | Midnight Herald's Petticoat (TIER SET) | Loom’ithar/Matrix Catalyst/Great Vault |
| Boots | Interloper's Chain Boots | The Soul Hunters in Manaforge Omega |
| Ring #1 | Logic Gate: Alpha | Plexus Sentinel in Manaforge Omega |
| Ring #2 | Devout Zealot's Ring | The Dawnbreaker (710), or in Great Vault |
| Trinket #1 | Unyielding Netherprism | Fractillus in Manaforge Omega |
| Trinket #2 | Astral Antenna | Loom’ithar in Manaforge Omega |
| Weapon | Yasahm the Riftbreaker | Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder (710), or in Great Vault |
This Trinket Tier List is based on an average of Single-Target Raid and Mythic+ AoE Performance, weighted 65/35 (Mythic+ has single-target too!).
Note that the Trinkets are compared at their highest possible Item Level, which is only 710 for Delve Trinkets. Not only that, but 723 Mythic+ Trinkets are only obtainable via the Great Vault. At equal iLvls, the picture may be very different and that is why you should sim yourself.
A "Tier" as defined by this list is around 0.5%-1% DPS.
The Tier Set is comprised of 5 items, all carrying the Midnight Herald's moniker.
In Season 3, there are two Set Bonuses per spec, one for each Hero Talent.
Hunter Dark Ranger 11.2 Class Set 2pc: Black Arrow damage increased by 10%, Bleak Powder damage increased by 20%, and the cooldown of Trueshot is reduced by 30 seconds.
Hunter Dark Ranger 11.2 Class Set 4pc: Withering Fire damage increased by 50%, and whenever you consume Deathblow, you have a 50% chance to cause all Withering Fire Black Arrow barrages in your next Trueshot to fire 1 additional Black Arrow.
Hunter Sentinel 11.2 Class Set 2pc: Rapid Fire damage increased by 25%. When Lunar Storm fades, gain Boon of Elune, causing your next 2 Aimed Shots to deal Arcane damage and have their damage increased by 20%.
Hunter Sentinel 11.2 Class Set 4pc: Sentinel's damage is increased by 25%. Boon of Elune is now active for the duration of Lunar Storm at 100% effectiveness.
The Tier Set Bonus is absolutely mandatory for competitive play, and you should prioritize obtaining it. You can use the Matrix Catalyst to convert regular items (from Mythic+, for example) into Tier Items.
WeakAuras is an essential tool for Marksmanship Hunter and DPS players, offering unparalleled customization to enhance your gameplay. Rather than focusing on specific examples, we recommend exploring Wago.io, where you’ll find an extensive library of WeakAuras to suit your needs.
If you are unfamiliar with WeakAuras, it is an incredibly powerful and widely-used AddOn that allows you to create custom displays for nearly everything in the game. This includes tracking buffs, debuffs, cooldowns, Focus, resources, and much more.
To import a WeakAura, visit Wago.io and select one that fits your preferences. Click the "Copy WeakAura Import String" button to copy it to your clipboard. Next, log into the game and type /wa in the chat box to open the WeakAuras interface. Navigate to the "Import" section, press Ctrl+V to paste the copied string, and click "Import". You’re ready to go!
Mastering WeakAuras and customizing it to your playstyle is highly recommended for any serious raider. With countless options available on Wago.io, you can tailor your interface to optimize your performance and focus on what truly matters in combat.
As a Marksmanship Hunter, the Lone Wolf talent encourages you to play without a pet for maximum damage.
If you need to use a pet, know that all pets deal the same amount of damage. However, their utility varies significantly, so choose one based on the situation. For detailed information, refer to a dedicated guide on pets.
No, Marksmanship Hunters do not have any specific Haste breakpoints. While Haste starts to provide diminishing returns at 30% from rating, it can still remain your best stat beyond this point depending on your gear and build.
The difference between the best and worst races is minimal, around 1-2% at most. If you'd like to maximize your performance, use a tool like Raidbots to simulate your character. In general, Dwarf and Tauren are strong choices.
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