Marksmen Fun D Mental?

Sambosoul

Sambosoul

Active Member
Since Sandric made such an informative post about taking, I thought I'd follow suit by making a short MM hunter guide. I've had a few people ask me about specing Marksmen as a Hunter so I'm just going to take some time to give some info on what I've learned based on what I've read and my own experiences. What I am posting is by no means set in stone. There's always something new to try and something new to learn.

I'll try to follow the old K.I.S.S. Philosophy. (Keep It Simple Stupid!)

The Marksmen Spec

For the most part MM hunters start with this basic build and use the extra points how they see fit.

Samboe's Spec is a modified version of that.


Glyphs

The Glyphs I'm currently using are

Major Glyphs:
Glyph of Serpent Sting
Glyph of Chimera Shot
Glyph of Steady Shot

Minor Glyphs:
Glyph of Feign Death(This is the only minor of any real consequence)
Glyph of Revive Pet
Glyph of Mend Pet

Many hunters prefer Glyph of Kill Shot over Chimera


Rotation

Kill shot will always be priority 1 when it's up that being said typically this is what the rotation I use.

Regular Rotation: After your opening use Chimera and Aimed when ever they're up and fill with Steady Shot.Chimera has priority over Aimed.


Opening Boss Rotation: Serpent Sting-Chimera Shot-Aimed Shot-Arcane Shot(Macro'd to Rapid Fire)-Steady Shot(use until Chimera is up)

Go Back to Chimera and go until Rapid Fire buff goes away. Make sure your instant shots are on CD use Readiness and start back at Chimera in the opening rotation and resume your regular rotation.

But what about Arcane Shot and Silencing Shot in the rotation?

Arcane Shot - As a ranged dps you're gonna be moving a lot. I use mostly Arcane shot when I'm moving and my other instants are on CD.

Silencing shot - I use as utility more than anything. Silencing shot has been pulled off the global cool down for a while now so using it as an interrupt is a great way to contribute utility to the raid as well as doing some damage at the same time. Some Hunters use it in their regular rotation, I do not.


Gemming:

As a marksmen hunter you want to stack Agility. That means you stick red agility gems in to everything MOST of the time. I use a Nightmare Tear to take care of my meta gem requirements and put an orange +agi/+crit gem to get gem bonuses when the gem slot is yellow and the bonus is +4agi or more.



Quick note on Armor Penetration

Armor Penetration can bump up your dps big time, but you need to get close to the hard cap. That being 100%. A lot of the new gear has a bunch of armor pen on it, but for the most part, you're going to want to still stack Agi unless you have a crazy amount of armor pen on your gear before gemming.


Macros:

Hunters have ALOT of buttons, I use macros to eliminate them from your main action bar. These are macros I use.


Macro 1: Left Click = Aspect of the Dragonhawk / Right Click = Aspect of the Viper

/cast [button:2] Aspect of the Viper; Aspect of the Dragonhawk



Macro 2:Left Click = Aspect of the Pack / Right Click = Aspect of the Cheetah

/cast [button:2] Aspect of the Cheetah; Aspect of the Pack


Macro 3: Rapid Fire link to Arcane Shot

#showtooltip Arcane Shot
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Arcane Shot
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()


Macro 4: Kill command linked to Steady Shot

#showtooltop Steady Shot
/Cast Kill command
/cast Steady Shot
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()


Addons/Mods:

I use a whole bunch of addons, but the only addons I would call necessary are as follows:

Omen - Keeps track of your threat. Hunters produce a lot of threat and if not managed properly, you'll be dead or kicked from the raid quickly.

Deadly Boss Mods - Gives you a heads up of what's to come/happening during a boss fight.

Auto Track - Changes what type of mob you are tracking for you.


Other helpful mods:

Power Auras: Gives a visual indication in your field of vision of buffs/procs/cd's. Very customizable. I use it to make a blue aura appear over my toon when I'm in Aspect of the Viper.

Recount: I use recount to show me how well I'm doing on damage. This is NOT necessary and can easily become a distraction during a raid. BUT if you don't know if you're not doing poorly how can you improve. If you get easily distracted by the meters, practice with it on the training dummy and turn it off during raids.

MetaHUD(or any other HUD you like): This puts nice little health and mana/energy/rage/RP bars in your field of vision(right where the action is happening.


Pets

Coming soon...



Like I said at the beginning, this guide is based on what I've read and my experiences. I'm not the all knowing hunter by any means. I hope this is helpful for you MM hunters out there :D
 
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Silencing shot - I use as utility more than anything. Silencing shot has been pulled off the global cool down for a while now so using it as an interrupt is a great way to contribute utility to the raid as well as doing some damage at the same time. Some Hunters use it in their regular rotation, I do not.
Click to expand...

This is good to add in rotation for Lady Deathwhisper and the trash. But with Lady Deathwhisper it will stop her from casting some of the AE spells.
 
She can't be silenced but she can be interrupted during phase 2. So silencing shot should be used as utility in that situation.
 
I'm going to add some more info to this for hunters who are well geared and have some questions about ArPen. I hope you don't mind Samboe.

So Samboe linked a basic spec. Eventually when you're geared enough you can drop Arcane Shot from your rotation and from your talent tree. And the spec would look something like this. Now there's a lot of confusion about when to gem Armor Penetration. I know at least it was confusing to me since half of the hunters that are geared are stacking it and it seems so appealing. I want to make understanding ArPen so easy a caveman could do it. Here's a quick little explanation of when to gem ArP.

There are several plateaus of ArPen (arranged based on Arpen from gear ALONE, before gems).

0~400 - Spec MM + Imp Arcane Shot - Stack Agility Gems

~400- mid700s - Spec MM w/o Imp Arcane Shot and drop it from your rotation- Continue to Stack Agility Gems (This is where I'm at)

~720 - Soft Cap for NES
~730 - Soft Cap for Runestone
~780 - Soft Cap for Grim Toll

800+ Spec MM w/o Imp Arcane Shot - Stack ArPen Gems to the moon assuming you have the gear to do so w/o losing too much AP and Crit%.

Only on this last phase should you even begin contemplate gemming Arpen into you gear at all. There is a HIGH gear requirement on making gemming Arpen worthwhile and no offense but if you're asking yourself this question you aren't even close. You should be sticking with Agility gems until you fit the criteria listed above.

If you've met the requirement of 800+ ArPen from gear alone and you stack ArPen gems to the sky you should be able to get close to 100% ArPen.
 
Xaveor said:
I'm going to add some more info to this for hunters who are well geared and have some questions about ArPen. I hope you don't mind Samboe.

So Samboe linked a basic spec. Eventually when you're geared enough you can drop Arcane Shot from your rotation and from your talent tree. And the spec would look something like this. Now there's a lot of confusion about when to gem Armor Penetration. I know at least it was confusing to me since half of the hunters that are geared are stacking it and it seems so appealing. I want to make understanding ArPen so easy a caveman could do it. Here's a quick little explanation of when to gem ArP.

There are several plateaus of ArPen (arranged based on Arpen from gear ALONE, before gems).

0~400 - Spec MM + Imp Arcane Shot - Stack Agility Gems

~400- mid700s - Spec MM w/o Imp Arcane Shot and drop it from your rotation- Continue to Stack Agility Gems (This is where I'm at)

~720 - Soft Cap for NES
~730 - Soft Cap for Runestone
~780 - Soft Cap for Grim Toll

800+ Spec MM w/o Imp Arcane Shot - Stack ArPen Gems to the moon assuming you have the gear to do so w/o losing too much AP and Crit%.

Only on this last phase should you even begin contemplate gemming Arpen into you gear at all. There is a HIGH gear requirement on making gemming Arpen worthwhile and no offense but if you're asking yourself this question you aren't even close. You should be sticking with Agility gems until you fit the criteria listed above.

If you've met the requirement of 800+ ArPen from gear alone and you stack ArPen gems to the sky you should be able to get close to 100% ArPen.
Click to expand...
Thanks for posting this Xaveor. I actually recently switched out all my gems and aside from one Nightmare tear, I have all ArP Gems in my gear. I'm at just under 84% Armor pen. And during the 25man last night I was beating the rogues... barely... and they apparently didn't have BoM so... It would have been close. I also didn't have a flask on either... so... you decide.
 
Xaveor said:
I've looked at some of the higher geared hunters on the server and they get up to 95% or more. That's nuts man.

Prepared huh?
Click to expand...

Oh I had the flasks on me... I even bought them just before the raid. I usually just forget to use them... So when tots isn't in the raid to say, "Flask if you need to!" I don't...
 
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