Marksmanship Hunter DPS Guide

Raiding Build 1
Raiding Build 2

Note: Some aspects of this guide may not apply to your character until higher level. If are interested in getting your character to max level quickly, take a look at this leveling guide.

Glyphs come in three varieties, Prime, Major and Minor. Prime glyphs enhance core aspects of your class and generally provide the greatest benefit of the three types.

Major Glyphs, while not quite as powerful as Prime Glyphs, are still useful and continue to provide a myriad of benefits.

Minor Glyphs often times provide small quality of life improvements or visual changes, such as the Glyph of Shadow Form for priests which makes the character more visible through Shadow Form. However, a few are known to provide more significant benefits such as the warrior glyph of Berserker Rage.

Prime Glyphs:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Major Glyphs:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

Here are your highest priority abilities.

Hunter’s Mark – Keep active on target unless Marked for Death is already applied
Serpent Sting – Keep active on target
Chimera Shot – On Cooldown
Steady Shot – Twice to keep Improved Steady Shot active
Arcane Shot – With extra focus
Kill Shot – When the target reaches 20%
Steady Shot – To regain Focus

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Keep serpent sting and hunter’s mark applied at all times throughout the fight. Use Chimera Shot on Cooldown and cast aimed shot whenever master marksman procs. Arcane Shot is used to burn excess focus, but shouldn’t be used to completely drain focus. Always keep a pool of 50 Focus around for when Chimera Shot is available to be used again.

AoE Rotation

 
 
 
 

Cooldowns

 
 
 
 

The most important aspect of managing your cooldowns as a damage dealer is making certain to use them whenever they’re avaliable. Don’t be afraid to use them during any fight, even against trash mobs, as the higher the uptime you have with them, the greater your overall damage will be so long as you aren’t using them when a fight is about to end.

The only time to hold off on using your cooldowns is when you’ll be unable to attack the boss due to fight mechanics, such as during Morchok’s Black Blood of the Earth ability or when Hagara is about to cast Water Shield and become immune to all damage.

Melee DPS will have to watch out for this more than ranged, as they are far more vulnerable to situations where an encounter requires constant movement or the boss is utilizing some form of AoE attack that makes fighting in melee range impossible.

Agility > 8% Ranged Hit > Critical > Haste > Mastery

Agility:

Agility increases your attack power and critical chance, and is your primary damage dealing stat.

(8%) Ranged Hit:

Hit rating reduces you chance to miss with attacks. A hit rating of 8% makes it so that your special abilities will no longer miss on bosses, thereby avoiding loss of DPS.

Critical:

Critical rating increases your chance to critically hit with attacks. Critical hits multiply the damage of an attack.

Haste:

Haste reduces cast time for abilities, makes you shoot faster, and increases focus regeneration speed.

Mastery – Wild Quiver:

Marksmanship Hunter Mastery grants a chance for ranged attacks to proc an additional instant ranged attack.

Reforging

When reforging gear, it’s important that you look to reforge from your least effective stat into the most effective for whatever gear goal you are currently aiming for. See our stat priority list for more information.

8% Ranged Hit > Critical

When reforging look first for 8% hit rating before maximizing your critical strike chance. On any gear without critical already present reforge the weakest stat into critical rating.

 
 
 
 
 

Gems

Unless a socket bonus offers agility, it’s more effective to gem for pure agility.

Enchantments

 

Our class guides for whichever class you’re playing:

Death KnightsDruidHunterMagePaladin
PriestRogueShamanWarlockWarrior

The GotWarcraft Gold Guide

Cataclysm Heroic Guides

 

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