Marksmanship Hunter DPS Guide

As an MM Hunter your skill with the bow is the #1 thing and your pet is mainly added damage. You don’t have the synergy with your pet that a BM Hunter does, but you do more direct damage. MM Hunters are also the PvP spec of choice, but that’s another guide. This one covers raid DPS.

Marksmanship Hunter Raid DPS Talent Build, Updated for 4.3

Raiding Build 1
Raiding Build 2

Best Race

All Hunter races are pretty close in damage, but to squeeze every last bit of DPS…

Troll with Bow (Berserking, Crit with bows, and the best Hunter weapon in-game is currently a bow: regular, heroic version)
Orc – Better than a Troll w/o that bow.
Worgen
See here for a lot more detail on race choice.

Pets

All things being equal, a ferocity pet will do the best overall DPS for you. Keep in mind that some pets bring a buff that your raid may need and others might provide specific abilities that are useful in particular fights.

Glyphs:

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:

Arcane Shot
Steady Shot
Kill Shot
Chimera Shot
Aimed Shot

Major Glyphs:

Disengage
Silencing Shot
Trap Launcher
Mending
Raptor Strike
Ice Trap

Rotation:

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
Aimed Shot – When Master Marksman procs
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

Multi-Shot
Explosive Trap

Cooldowns

Readiness
Call of the Wild
Rapid Fire

Stat Priorities:

Weapon (Ranged) DPS >> Agility > 8% Ranged Hit > Critical > Haste > Mastery

Agility increases your attack power and critical chance, and is your primary damage dealing stat.
(8%) Ranged Hit reduces your 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 rating increases your chance to critically hit with attacks. Critical hits multiply the damage of an attack.
Haste reduces cast time for abilities, makes you shoot faster, and increases focus regeneration speed.
Marksmanship Hunter Mastery grants a chance for ranged attacks to proc an additional instant ranged attack. If you do a lot of A of E fights then Mastery is more valuable, it’s fairly weak on single target fights (Bosses.)

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. Mastery should always be reforged into better stats.