WoW Hunter Talent Builds for 3.3 - Marksmanship

WoW Hunter Talent Builds for 3.3 - Marksmanship
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The Spec

The spec detailed at https://www.wowhead.com/talent#cZ0eAsRhzGI0xhVo snaps up the most important MM talents and leaves 19 points to allocate as you choose. Improved Arcane Shot at 3/3 and Aimed Shot 1/1 ensure that your rotation provides plenty of diversity while keeping you from relying on Autoshot or pet damage. You’ll be taking Improved Stings in the fourth tier solely for Serpent Sting, while Barrage in the fifth tier supplements several of your abilities.

Piercing Shots in the seventh tier adds a bleed effect to Aimed, Steady, and Chimera Shots, stacking DoT damage onto the the initial pain inflicted. The 51-point talent in the MM tree, Chimera Shot, is definitely one of the most interesting talents in the game as of 3.3. This spell adds one additional effect based on which sting you applied to your target. It contributes dps and versatility, and the 50 points before it are well worth finally arriving at this tier.

The Pet

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For raiding, you will probably want to choose a Ferocity pet from the Wolf family. Wolves can be red, white, black, tank, brown, or one of a few different shades of grey. Additionally, the red demon dog found in the Zul’drak zone also fits into this category, if normal-looking wolves don’t satisfy your need to stand out from the crowd.

Because your pet contributes a lesser percentage of your combined dps, you can choose a few talents for their support or utility features. Sinking a couple of points into Bloodthirsty and Heart of the Phoenix can lessen your downtime while soloing, or you could just go ahead and head out with a Tenacity pet for tanking.

The Rotation

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Marksmanship Hunters use a priority system to decide which shot to use instead of relying upon a set rotation of skills. Chimera Shot will refresh the sting, so that will only need to be applied once at the beginning of the fight. Kill Shot, Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot and Steady Shot are prioritized in that order, and it will probably take a newly talented MM Hunter a little while to become proficient at choosing his abilities.

Making good use of your cooldowns is also of high importance in the Hunter talent build for Marksmanship. Kill Command, Rapid Fire, and Call of the Wild should be used at each opportunity for maximum dps. Additionally, Readiness can be used to reset your cooldowns, essentially allowing you to use each of those abilities twice in one cooldown period.

The Glyphs

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Glyph of Chimera Shot reduces the cooldown on that ability by 1 second, and while that isn’t much, it does contribute a surprising amount of dps in a raiding environment. Glyph of Steady Shot increases damage for those targets already affected by Serpent Sting. The third and final major glyph can be chosen to supplement your individual playstyle.

This post is part of the series: WoW Hunter Talent Builds for 3.3

WoW’s 3.3 build brought some new focus to the Hunter class, and with tweaks to all three specs you can find a great build for your Hunter however you like to play.

  1. WoW Hunter Talent Builds for 3.3 - Beast Mastery
  2. WoW Hunter Talent Builds for 3.3 - Marksmanship
  3. WoW Hunter Talent Builds for 3.3 - Survival
  4. The Role of the Hunter in World of Warcraft
  5. World of Warcraft Hunter: The Most Effective Solo Player