! Marksman Hunter Guide
!! How to dps
Hunters use a priority system not a rotation to dps. What this means is your shot's will not always be in the same order, but you will use your highest priority shot first. Note you will want to macro Kill Command and Silencing Shot into all your shots as they aren't on the gcd.









The MM priority:
* Kill Shot - Your highest damage shot.
* Serpent Sting - Chimera refreshes Serpent so you only have to use this shot once at the start of a fight, or if it drops off.
* Chimera Shot
* Aimed Shot
* Arcane Shot - Drop this when you reach around 400 arp. You do this because Steady Shot will be higher dps.
* Steady Shot



!! Stats
* Hit - You need 8% hit (263 rating) to be at the cap.
* Agility - Very strong stat for us. Agility will be the main stat you gem until very high gear levels.
* Armor pen - When you have 700-800 Arp. from your gear it will be more valuable to gem Arp in place of agility.
* Crit - A good stat, in higher gear levels it increases the proc rate of Piercing Shots more.
* Attack power - Good stat but still below agility in value.
* Intellect - You get AP from Intellect and the mana, so you will still want to wear Mail over Leather (some leather does have better stats).
* Haste - Haste is a weak stat for hunters because it only affects Auto Shot and Steady Shot. As MM with Imp. Aspect of the Hawk your steady shot will already be capped when it procs.













Stat Priorities: Hit cap>Arp*>Agility>Crit>Attack Power>Int>Haste
*Armor Pen becomes more valueable over agility only in very high gear levels, when you have about 700-800 Arp from gear alone.
!! Glyphs






*Major*
Glyphs of Serpent Sting and Steady Shot are both required for the most dps.
** Glyph of Kill Shot - Very good glyph where you need to put out more dps towards the end of a fight.
** Glyph of Chimera Shot -
** Glyph of Aimed Shot -
** Glyph of Hawk -
** Glyph of Trueshot Aura -
** Glyph of Hunter's Mark - You usually wont want to glyph for this. An exception would be if there are multiple hunters in the group, and your the one that is talented for Imp. Hunter's Mark.
*Minor*
There are only 3 Minor glyphs I would suggest.
** Glyph of Feign Death - Reduces the cooldown by 5 sec, required.
** Glyph of Mend Pet - Your mend pet ability slightly increases pet happiness. Good for your pet to gain happiness during a fight.
** Glyph of Revive Pet - Reduces the pushback suffered from damage during Revive Pet by 100%.

!! Talent Build
[url:No Arcane Shot|http://www.wowhead.com/talent#cxbZzeVoRhzGIRguAox00b:fia] - Use this build if you have dropped Arcane Shot from your rotation (should be around 400 armor pen)
























!! Gems, Enchants, Consumables
Gems
Your going to want to gem for Agility until higher levels of gear, or until you have 700-800 armor pen from gear alone then you can make the switch to Arp gemming.

Note this assumes hit cap, if you aren't then go for hit hybrid gems.
** Meta - Relentless Earthsiege Diamond (+21 agility and 3% increases crit. damage)
** Red - Delicate Cardinal Ruby or Fractured Cardinal Ruby
** Yellow - Deadly Cardinal Ruby
** Blue - Nightmare Tear
Enchants
** Weapon
*** 1h - Superior Potency
*** 2h - Massacre
*** Ranged - Heartseeker Scope
** Head - Arcanum of Torment
** Shoulders - Greater Inscription of the Axe
** Back - Major Agility
** Chest - Powerful Stats
** Gloves - Major Agility
** Wrists - Greater Assault
** Legs - Icescale Leg Armor
** Feet - Icewalker or Superior Agility
Consumables
* Flask of Endless Rage
* Potion of Speed
!! Addons

!! Macros











Use this macro for all your shots, it has kill command+silencing shot (off the gcd). Just replace chimera shot with the name of the shot you are making the macro for.

#showtooltip chimera shot
#show chimera shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/cast chimera shot
/cast silencing shot

! Marksman Hunter Guide

As of 4.3.2 Survival is the top DPS spec with Marksman being a close second, but note that all three hunter specs are certainly viable in raiding and you should raid with what ever spec you prefer.

Marksman hunters are the sharpshooters of the hunter class. Although our pets and traps add to our DPS abilities, we really shine with our ranged abilities that hit like a truck doing 110mph.

!! How to DPS

Marksman hunters don’t have an exact rotation like most other classes, we have a priority list. Although you will probably find yourself falling into a routine pattern/rotation, once you’re comfortable with your abilities.

Below is your priority list of shots, the only time you want to ignore this is during the Careful Aim period of the fight, meaning the period where the bosses health is between 100%-90%. During this phase you want to pop Rapid Fire and any trinks and potions. Your casts should go Aimed Shot x2, Steady Shot x3,4,5(to get focus back to 100), Aimed Shot x2, Readiness, Rapid Fire, Aimed Shot x2…etc. Reasons being that during the first 10% of the fight, MM hunters have an extra 60% chance to crit with Aimed Shot and Steady Shot (which also triggers Piercing Shots). This is a massive DPS opening, you should see A LOT of crits during this phase. Once the boss is below 90% resume normal priority.

The MM priority:
*Serpent Sting* - Chimera refreshes Serpent so you only have to use this shot once at the start of a fight, or if it drops off.
*Chimera Shot* - This shot hits like a truck, refreshes Serpent Sting and heals you for 5% of your maximum health.
*Kill Shot *
*Rapid Fire*
*Readiness*- Resets all CD’s. Very nice pairing with Rapid Fire.
*Aimed Shot*- Marksman signature ability, use this in the beginning of fight as often as possible due to Careful Aim talent.
*Arcane Shot*- Primary focus dump, especially with 4piece T13.
*Steady Shot*- Filler shot, ALWAYS fire in pairs.

!! Stats
*Ranged Weapon DPS:* Our ranged weapon is the highest contributor to our DPS as hunters, the reasoning is because of the DPS done by the weapon.

*Agility:* Agility affects both how hard each shot hits and how often it crits, this is our primary stat that we want to stack.

*Hit:* If you don’t hit your target, you don’t do any damage, and this is no bueno. Our hit cap is 8% or 961 rating for everyone except dranaei (841 rating).

*Crit:* 179.28 = 1% crit. Crit is important to us because it makes our shots crit more often, which in turn means more damage, but also more focus for our pets. Our pets also inherit our crit, which also means more dps.

*Haste:* The basis of this stat is that it makes our Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Auto Shot, and GCD faster. There is a lot of crazy, psycho math that can be done behind this, but if you are casting Aimed Shot as your focus dump, you want to stack haste.

*Mastery:* This increases our chance to fire an extra Auto Shot and it can be triggered from any of our shots, note that abilities like Kill Command will not proc Wild Quiver.

*Stat Priorities:*

If you use Arcane Shot as your Focus Dump:

: Ranged Weapon DPS>Agility>Hit cap>Crit>Haste>Mastery

If you use Aimed Shot as your Focus Dump:

: Ranged Weapon DPS>Agility>Hit Cap>Haste>Crit>Mastery

!! Glyphs
*Prime*
** Glyph of Steady Shot- You will be casting this A LOT, so this is a no-brainer. More damage for your most used shot.
** Glyph of Arcane Shot- This is also highly suggested, as Arcane Shot is generally our Focus Dump.
** Glyph of Chimera Shot – Reduces the cooldown by one second, it essentially works out to 4 or 5 extra Chimera Shots during a 5 minute fight.
** Glyph of Aimed Shot - This is good if you’re using Aimed Shot as your Focus Dump.
** Glyph of Kill Shot- Gives you an extra kill shot during final 20% of the fight.
*Major*
There aren’t really any DPS enchancers here, most of them are utility only, so I chose the ones that I think work best.
** Glyph of Raptor Strike- Yes that’s right, Raptor Strike, forgot you even had that didn’t you? This is great for healing intensive phases, and really helps the healers keep the rest of the raid alive. The only drawback is you need to be in melee range to use it, so it has situational use only.
** Glyph of Misdirection – Endless misdirects to your pet, this is great when FD is on CD and you’re getting threat happy.
** Glyph of Disengage – Reduced cooldown, can be useful when having to chase down slimes, or to GTFO.
** Glyph of Silencing Shot – It’s rare that you will be interrupting anything as a hunter, but its possible. This glyph is great for 5-mans and leveling/grinding though.


*Minor*
There are only 2 Minor glyphs I would suggest, pretty much your choice here.
** Glyph of Feign Death - Reduces the cooldown by 5 sec. Yes you want this… anything that can help to drop threat we want.

** Glyph of Revive Pet - Reduces the pushback suffered from damage during Revive Pet by 100%.

!! Talent Build

!! Pets!

!!! Hunter Pet DPS in Cataclysm

Hunter pets in Cataclysm all do the same base damage, their basic attacks all do the same damage (bite, claw, smack) and they all inherit the same amount of attack power from the hunter. The only difference between pet damage is their special ability and what talents they have access to. And in Cataclysm, hunter pet special abilities are almost all raid buffs and special like stuns & roots, and not abilities that cause extra damage.

Thus every ferocity pet is going to do the same damage as every other ferocity pet. This is an important concept that Cataclysm hunters need to understand when deciding what the best hunter pet to use is.

!!!! Ferocity vs. Cunning Pets

Ferocity pets have access to the Spider’s Bite pet talent to give them an extra 9% crit chance, and Call of the Wild, but cunning pets have a handful of abilities to boost dps and focus regen as well. All pet types inherit the same amount of attack power from the hunter.

The end result is that the dps difference between ferocity and cunning pets is very minimal. Technically right now it’s looking like cunning is actually doing a tiny bit more dps for MM and SV hunters, and ferocity is a bit better for BM (since BM gets that 9% crit boost to their Kill Command).

!!!! Best Hunter Pet for Raids

In a raid you should bring the pet that provides the best missing raid buff for your raid. Your concern should be the overall benefit to the raid, rather than the benefit to you personally. If you’re running in a 25-man raid that has every raid buff, then you can choose whatever pet you prefer.

If you’re in a 10-man raid team, you have to choose between several possible raid buffs. There is no fixed order of best to worst buffs — which buffs are best depends on your raid make-up, and the performance of your raiders.

For example, if you have to choose between the 4% physical damage taken vs. the 8% spell damage debuffs you need to look at your raid composition. If you have mostly physical dps, then you probably want the physical buff. Of course this is complicated by the fact that many classes do both physical and magical damage — including hunter. All our magic damage is boosted by the 8% spell damage debuff, which for survival hunters is everything except auto-shot and Kill Shot.

So use your head and figure out what buff will benefit your raid the most, and that’s the pet you should bring.

!! Gems, Enchants, Consumables
Gems
You’re going to want to gem for Agility, period. If the socket bonus is worth it, use a hybrid Agi-Crit, Agi-Haste, Agi-Hit gem if needed.
** Meta – Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (+54 agility and 3% increases crit. damage)
** Red - Delicate Inferno Ruby or Delicate Queens Garnet
** Yellow – Deadly/Deft/Adept Ember Topaz or Lava Coral
** Blue - Glinting Demonseye or Shadow Spinel


Enchants
** Weapon – Mighty Agility (+130 Agility)
** Ranged – Flintlocke’s Woodchucker, or Gnomish X-ray Scope is a pretty close 2nd
** Head - Arcanum of Ramkahen
** Shoulders - Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal
** Back – Greater Crit or Major Agility
** Chest - Peerless Stats
** Gloves - Major Agility or Greater Mastery
** Wrists – Agility +50 Agility
** Legs - Dragonscale Leg Armor
** Feet – Major Agility or Assassin’s Step


Consumables
* Flask of the Winds
* Skewered Eel, Fortune Cookie, or Seafood Magnifique Feast
* Potion of The Tol’vir

!! Macros

** As a hunter, one of your jobs is to misdirect to the tank. We also sometimes use Misdirection at other times when our threat is getting a little scary. My preferred way to manage Misdirection is to set the tank as my focus target (just target the tank and type /focus) and then use this macro to handle my Misdirection so that I never have to switch targets. This macro will cast Misdirection on your focus target, but if you don’t have a focus target it’ll misdirect to your pet instead for seamless group/raid/solo misdirecting.
:: /cast [@focus,help][@pet,exists] Misdirection

** We hunters love our pets, but that doesn’t mean we have to have half an action bar cluttered with pet commands. This macro will do the following: if you don’t have a pet out, it will summon your pet. If your pet is out, it will cast Mend Pet. If your pet is dead, it will cast Revive Pet. If you right click on it, it will dismiss your pet. Note however that this macro will only call one of your pets, the one specified by which Call Pet you use (Call Pet 1, Call Pet 2, etc). So you have to have the right call pet command, alas.

:: /cast [nomod,nopet]Call Pet 1
:: /cast [nomod,target=pet,dead]Revive Pet
:: /cast [nomod,pet,nomod,button:1]Mend Pet
:: /cast [nomod,pet,nomod,button:2]Dismiss Pet

** This macro will let you easily swap between Aspect of the Hawk and Aspect of the Fox with the push of a button. If you’re in AotH, it will put you into AotF. If you're in fox, it will swap you over to hawk. If you’re in any other aspect, or no aspect at all, it will put you into Aspect of the Hawk. Simple and effective:

:: /cast Aspect of the Hawk
:: /cast Aspect of the Fox