DISCLAIMER: This is primarily going to be a PvE Hunter guide, as I have been much too long out of the PvP game as a Hunter. If you came in here looking how to pew pew better against players, you're in the wrong place. Sorry.
I have come to a point in my Huntress career that it now causes me to experience physical pain to inspect a Hunter and see them with 500 hit, gemming AP as a Marksman or Survivalist, or wearing fucking leather gear with expertise on it.
Often times, I am embarrassed to be raiding with a Hunter that is mentally incapable of moving from void zones or utilizing their threat reduction/wiping abilities in raids.
Marksmanship
As a Marksman, you've really got only two choices. The first is to be an agility based Marksman, or an ArP based Marksman. I'm only going to cover the agility version, because I lack the gear, and experience, to cover everything properly.
Talents
This is what a typical Marksman talent build looks like: 7/57/7. However, because Go for the Throat is currently broken, I've taken a point from that and put it into Improved Steady Shot. So what we have now is this, new and improved, 7/57/7 build! (It's also what I'm using right now.)
Talents not to take
Efficiency: Sure, saving 15% mana on each shot sounds fucking great, but it does not provide enough DPS return to justify dumping five points in this talent. Furthermore, with higher gear levels and raid buffs, we shouldn't be having any mana problems anyway. Or you could just use Viper Sting.
Improved Concussive Shot and Concussive Barrage: These do absolutely fuck all for your DPS, so don't take these.
Shot Priority
*Since Silencing Shot is off the global cooldown, we can use this whenever as a DPS boost, since we don't really care about the silence, so just macro that shit in with Chimera or Steady Shot.
Rapid Fire and Readiness
In general, you're going to want to time Rapid Fire with all your other cooldowns, mostly Call of the Wild , Furious Howl and your trinket procs. It's best to burn it at the beginning of a boss, since that's when everything is up. You'll want to do something like this:
Survival
This spec is probably the easiest to learn, and much more forgiving in terms of being able to churn out DPS in raids. Its priority is not the hardest to grasp, but it is extremely reactive. By that, I mean you can be stuck mashing Steady Shot, waiting for your shots to get off cooldown, and sometimes all your shots will go off cooldown at the same time, and you'll have to do some calculations or some shit on the fly and make sure the right shots go off in the right order.
Talents
This is your basic Survival build: 0/14/51. Notice that you have 6 points left. You have total freedom in where you can place these points, but how much a talent benefits you depends a lot on your gear, play style and content.
Aimed Shot vs Multi Shot: Aimed Shot has a lower mana cost, is instant and shares a cooldown with Multi Shot. Take it.
Improved Aspect of the Hawk: This talent is pretty awesome at boosting SV DPS, but you really need to be on top of managing your movement or be in a Patchwerk fight.
Improved Stings: This talent is really only viable if you have the 2 piece Tier 9 bonus, which lets your Serpent Sting ticks crit. Big DPS booster, since Serpent Sting pretty much has 100% uptime.
Expose Weakness: If you have below 40%-ish crit, take another point (2/3) in this talent.
Sniper Training: Situational talent, since you need to be standing still to gain the damage boost. I take it anyway.
Hunting Party: Excellent talent, gives Replenishment to the raid and increases your agility, to boot!
Anyway, I rolled around with a 0/14/57 before I got my 2p T9 bonus, then I went with 2/18/51.
Shot Priority
Survivalists have an extremely fun priority (in my opinion). It's essentially a game of whack-a-mole. Hit whatever shot is higher on the priority, and use Steady Shot to fill in the gaps.
*If you have the 2p T9 bonus, then it goes:
Lock and Load
This will be the biggest obstacle you face a Survivalist. When this baby procs, you're given two free Explosive Shots. The problem is, you can't just fire them all off, three in a row, because Explosive Shot has a DoT after the initial hit. If you fire another before your previous has worn off your target, you end up clipping the last tick and lose DPS.
What you can do is wait the ~2 seconds before taking another shot, OR, weave other shots in during the Explosive Shot ticks. For example:
I highly recommend getting a debuff tracker addon (like Power Auras) so you know what shots you can use when.
Pets
You're going to want to use a Wolf (for both Survival and Marksmanship), since it provides Call of the Wild and Furious Howl. Plus, you look fucking badass. Why wouldn't you want to look badass?
Gems
Gemming a Hunter is pretty simple, really.
Red: Delicate Cardinal Ruby
Yellow: Delicate Cardinal Ruby
Blue: Nightmare Tear (in a slot that gives you the best bonus) / Delicate Cardinal Ruby
Meta: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond
Glyphs
Marksmanship
Survival
That's it! All we can really do as Hunters is to stick with it, and practice, practice, practice! Calling yourself a Hunter takes dedication and discipline, and it's not really helping that fucking squares play the class and give us a bad name.
Further reading:
Scattered Shots: Marksman 101
Scattered Shots: Survival 101
P.S. I pretty much copied what I thought was important from these articles, because it's where I learned how to play as a Hunter. Yeah.
I have come to a point in my Huntress career that it now causes me to experience physical pain to inspect a Hunter and see them with 500 hit, gemming AP as a Marksman or Survivalist, or wearing fucking leather gear with expertise on it.
Often times, I am embarrassed to be raiding with a Hunter that is mentally incapable of moving from void zones or utilizing their threat reduction/wiping abilities in raids.
Marksmanship
As a Marksman, you've really got only two choices. The first is to be an agility based Marksman, or an ArP based Marksman. I'm only going to cover the agility version, because I lack the gear, and experience, to cover everything properly.
Talents
This is what a typical Marksman talent build looks like: 7/57/7. However, because Go for the Throat is currently broken, I've taken a point from that and put it into Improved Steady Shot. So what we have now is this, new and improved, 7/57/7 build! (It's also what I'm using right now.)
Talents not to take
Efficiency: Sure, saving 15% mana on each shot sounds fucking great, but it does not provide enough DPS return to justify dumping five points in this talent. Furthermore, with higher gear levels and raid buffs, we shouldn't be having any mana problems anyway. Or you could just use Viper Sting.
Improved Concussive Shot and Concussive Barrage: These do absolutely fuck all for your DPS, so don't take these.
Shot Priority
- Hunter's Mark
- Serpent Sting
- Kill Shot
- Chimera Shot
- Silencing Shot*
- Aimed Shot
- Arcane Shot
- Steady Shot
*Since Silencing Shot is off the global cooldown, we can use this whenever as a DPS boost, since we don't really care about the silence, so just macro that shit in with Chimera or Steady Shot.
Rapid Fire and Readiness
In general, you're going to want to time Rapid Fire with all your other cooldowns, mostly Call of the Wild , Furious Howl and your trinket procs. It's best to burn it at the beginning of a boss, since that's when everything is up. You'll want to do something like this:
- Serpent Sting
- Rapid Fire
- Chimera Shot
- Aimed Shot
- Readiness
- Chimera Shot
- Aimed Shot
- ad infinitum
Survival
This spec is probably the easiest to learn, and much more forgiving in terms of being able to churn out DPS in raids. Its priority is not the hardest to grasp, but it is extremely reactive. By that, I mean you can be stuck mashing Steady Shot, waiting for your shots to get off cooldown, and sometimes all your shots will go off cooldown at the same time, and you'll have to do some calculations or some shit on the fly and make sure the right shots go off in the right order.
Talents
This is your basic Survival build: 0/14/51. Notice that you have 6 points left. You have total freedom in where you can place these points, but how much a talent benefits you depends a lot on your gear, play style and content.
Aimed Shot vs Multi Shot: Aimed Shot has a lower mana cost, is instant and shares a cooldown with Multi Shot. Take it.
Improved Aspect of the Hawk: This talent is pretty awesome at boosting SV DPS, but you really need to be on top of managing your movement or be in a Patchwerk fight.
Improved Stings: This talent is really only viable if you have the 2 piece Tier 9 bonus, which lets your Serpent Sting ticks crit. Big DPS booster, since Serpent Sting pretty much has 100% uptime.
Expose Weakness: If you have below 40%-ish crit, take another point (2/3) in this talent.
Sniper Training: Situational talent, since you need to be standing still to gain the damage boost. I take it anyway.
Hunting Party: Excellent talent, gives Replenishment to the raid and increases your agility, to boot!
Anyway, I rolled around with a 0/14/57 before I got my 2p T9 bonus, then I went with 2/18/51.
Shot Priority
Survivalists have an extremely fun priority (in my opinion). It's essentially a game of whack-a-mole. Hit whatever shot is higher on the priority, and use Steady Shot to fill in the gaps.
- Kill Shot
- Explosive Shot
- Aimed Shot
- Black Arrow*
- Serpent Sting
- Steady Shot
*If you have the 2p T9 bonus, then it goes:
- Serpent Sting
- Black Arrow
Lock and Load
This will be the biggest obstacle you face a Survivalist. When this baby procs, you're given two free Explosive Shots. The problem is, you can't just fire them all off, three in a row, because Explosive Shot has a DoT after the initial hit. If you fire another before your previous has worn off your target, you end up clipping the last tick and lose DPS.
What you can do is wait the ~2 seconds before taking another shot, OR, weave other shots in during the Explosive Shot ticks. For example:
- Explosive Shot
- Steady Shot
- Explosive Shot
- Aimed Shot
- Explosive Shot
I highly recommend getting a debuff tracker addon (like Power Auras) so you know what shots you can use when.
Pets
You're going to want to use a Wolf (for both Survival and Marksmanship), since it provides Call of the Wild and Furious Howl. Plus, you look fucking badass. Why wouldn't you want to look badass?
Gems
Gemming a Hunter is pretty simple, really.
Red: Delicate Cardinal Ruby
Yellow: Delicate Cardinal Ruby
Blue: Nightmare Tear (in a slot that gives you the best bonus) / Delicate Cardinal Ruby
Meta: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond
Glyphs
Marksmanship
- Glyph of the Hawk
- Glyph of Serpent Sting
- Glyph of Steady Shot
- Glyph of Trueshot Aura
- Glyph of Aimed Shot
- Glyph of Kill Shot
Survival
- Glyph of Explosive Shot
- Glyph of Serpent Sting
- Glyph of Kill Shot
- Glyph of the Hawk
- Glyph of Steady Shot
That's it! All we can really do as Hunters is to stick with it, and practice, practice, practice! Calling yourself a Hunter takes dedication and discipline, and it's not really helping that fucking squares play the class and give us a bad name.
Further reading:
Scattered Shots: Marksman 101
Scattered Shots: Survival 101
P.S. I pretty much copied what I thought was important from these articles, because it's where I learned how to play as a Hunter. Yeah.
Last edited by Keyes on Sun Apr 03, 2011 2:08 pm; edited 1 time in total
