Marksmanship Hunter PvP Guide for Cataclysm Classic

While a bit weak in PvE, Marksmanship Hunters are absolutely dominant in PvP throughout the expansion. Marksmanship has access to brutal burst windows thanks to several powerful shots on very short cooldowns, allowing you to deal devastating damage in just a few globals. The true strength of Hunters however comes from their unparalleled crowd control, all of which requires no casting. Hunters have the strongest crowd control potential in the game, with very little counter play.

Strengths

• Incredible burst damage potential.
• Top tier crowd control.
• Excellent mobility.

Weaknesses

• Pet management can be challenging.
• Very few defensive cooldowns.
• High skill floor.

This is going to be your default build in PvP as a Marksmanship Hunter. The majority of the points in Marksmanship are set in stone, where you're taking all of the damage nodes that make sense along with the strong utility that the tree offers. The few damage nodes that are skipped are ones that just don't offer much benefit in a PvP scenario, such as Termination, where it offers focus for Steady Shot casts below 25% health. Outside of the Marksmanship tree, you have a few points to play around with, but ultimately the trap resistance from Survival Tactics is too valuable to skip.

Prime glyphs are new to Cataclysm, giving you a third "row" of glyphs you can use on your character. For Marksmanship, there are only three options that make sense, which are the three gylphs that will buff your standard rotational abilities.

• Glyph of Steady Shot — increases the damage of Steady Shot by 10%. This is your most used ability, making this an obvious choice.
• Glyph of Aimed Shot — gives you 5 focus back when you crit with Aimed Shot!. Thanks to Careful Aim in PvP, you'll be critting frequently on burst windows, giving you lots of value from this glyph.
• Glyph of Kill Shot — basically gives you a second instant use of Kill Shot every time you use it if the target does not die. This is an absolutely amazing option as Kill Shot is an incredibly powerful shot.

Major glyphs typically offer utility-based options and can be highly situational. For Marksmanship there are a wide variety of Glyphs but we have highlighted what are typically the most useful. None of these are actually required; this is all personal preference.

• Glyph of Disengage — reduces the cooldown of Disengage by 5 seconds. This is our most important movement ability, so having it on a lower cooldown is generally a good idea.
• Glyph of Master's Call — increases the duration of Master's Call by 4 seconds. This is essentially a freedom for us, which is incredibly powerful and required for any PvP.
• Glyph of Deterrence — reduces the cooldown of our only defensive ability by 10 seconds.

Minor glyphs typically provide very minor benefits. Your choices will typically depend on what quality of life increase is the most meaningful for you.

• Glyph of Feign Death — reduces the cooldown of Feign Death by 5 seconds.
• Glyph of Revive Pet — removes any pushback from damage while casting Revive Pet, which can be important if you ever need to revive a pet during a fight.
• Glyph of Aspect of the Pack — increases the range of your Aspect of the Pack by 15 yards. If you ever do need to use Aspect of the Pack, this is an incredibly strong bonus to ensure your whole raid is covered.

Stats are an important part of PvP to balance out your durability with your damage output. Here is the stat priority that you should be going for as a Marksmanship Hunter.

Agility is your primary source of Attack Power which all of your damaging abilities scale off of. This is your Primary stat and should be on every piece of gear. There are other sources of scaling for Agility as well, but ultimately, more Agility is the best and most important way to scale your damage.

Resilience is one of the most important stat for every class in the game in PvP. The durability offered by Resilience usually outweighs the damage increase offered by other offensive stats in most situations. Having a high baseline resilience is critical for any form of competitive PvP.

Hit Rating is another great way to deal damage and more importantly land our abilities. In Cataclysm it is especially important to hit your Steady Shot and Cobra Shot abilities, as missed shots will not generate focus. Additionally, missed Cobra Shots will not extend your Serpent Sting, which could lead to it falling off and needing to be re-cast. In short, hit cap is extremely important both numerically and for easier game play. As a Marksmanship Hunter we are aiming to achieve 5% Hit rating to be hit capped against other players at level 85.

Against other players, you have a default chance to have your spells resisted. If a Freezing Trap ends up being resisted at an inopportune time, this can easily cost you an arena match. To ensure this does not happen, you want 195 spell penetration. The easiest way to get this is through gems.

Marksmanship Hunters have several additional bonuses when attacks crit from either you or your pet, such as with Piercing Shots and Go for the Throat. Piercing Shots specifically is a massive damage increase and is what makes Crit your best secondary stat by a large margin. Crit provides you with a better rotation in terms of focus generation and just more damage. Overall, Crit is going to be your best secondary stat for damage output.

Haste rating is our next best DPS secondary stat after Crit, but is still quite weak. It will increase both you and your pet's attack speeds as well as reducing the cast time of shots such as Cobra Shot, and Marksmanship Hunters have the added benefit of a higher than normal auto shot damage thanks to Artisan Quiver.

Mastery is the new stat added in during Cataclysm and provides a different, unique benefit for every single specialization in the game. For Marksmanship Hunters, Mastery gives all of your ranged attacks a chance to fire an additional ranged shot. This additional ranged shot is basically just another auto shot and is quite weak. Unfortunately, Marksmanship Hunters have one of the weakest Masteries out of any class. Mastery should be avoided on gear wherever possible, and it is highly recommended to Reforge this stat into a higher priority stat like Critical Strike Rating or Haste.

1. Engineering — Engineering is still by far the best profession in the game, made even stronger in Cataclysm with the new on-use glove tinker Synapse Springs. This new tinker is far stronger than the Wrath version, giving Agility instead of Haste. This will be far and away the best option as a DPS player, even in PvP. The added utility is also just fun to have in the open world and battle grounds.
2. Blacksmithing — Lets you add an extra socket to both your Gloves and Bracers thanks to Socket Gloves and Socket Bracer. To be frank, as long as you have any non-gathering profession as your second profession, you are fine. The differences in combat bonuses between all other non-engineering professions are mostly negligible, so take your pick as to which you would prefer. Blacksmithing is generally a very strong choice as it gives you the most control over what stats to add due to the extra sockets, but that will always be Agility as a Hunter anyways.

Marksmanship's rotation is about maintaining a priority system, with the big difference being managing your focus. Keep in mind that winning in PvP is not about doing the most damage, but doing the right damage at the right time. This means coordinating crowd control chains and setting up burst windows. In general though, here is how you want to prioritize damage.

1. Cast and maintain Serpent Sting;
2. 2x Steady Shot to maintain Improved Steady Shot;
3. Kill Shot below 20%;
4. Chimera Shot;
5. Aimed Shot! when instant with Master Marksman;
6. Aimed Shot! above 65 focus when standing still;
7. Arcane Shot above 65 focus if you need to move;
8. Steady Shot as your filler to generate focus;

The list linked below includes the best possible gear setup for an Marksmanship Hunter in PvP.

When it comes to evaluating Marksmanship Hunter's place within the Arena, we have created a number of guides devoted to listing a variety of popular team compositions which you can find below.