WotLK Classic Marksmanship Hunter Spec, Builds, Talents, and Glyphs
On this page, you will find out the best PvE talent choices and builds for your Marksmanship Hunter in WotLK Classic, as well as advised glyphs.
Talent Builds for Marksmanship Hunter
For Hunters, Marksmanship is the best PvE spec once you have raid gear. Marksmanship specifically takes some Armor Penetration and other stats to really scale well, but will eventually outpace Survival for the top spot. At the start of Wrath however, Survival will be a strictly better spec in terms of personal DPS.
This is the standard talent build that you should take for raiding and dungeons as a Marksmanship Hunter. Unlike some other trees, there are no free points as a Marksmanship Hunter. For optimal DPS, this is the tree you take.
The first thing you might notice is only 1/2 points in Go for the Throat, but
1 point is all you need to essentially give you pet limitless focus.
Every single talent taken is a DPS increase. There are almost no DPS talents skipped
except for talents like Improved Arcane Shot, which is a poor
choice as MM given that you will drop
Arcane Shot from your rotation shortly anyway
once you have enough ArP.
The only potential choice to make is if you have enough Hit or not. In later raids,
you will have so much hit on your gear that Focused Aim
is no longer necessary. In the case, you should replace it with the points from
Improved Steady Shot.
Leveling Builds
If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Hunters.
Notable Marksmanship Hunter Talents
Marksmanship Tree
Go for the Throat is a 1-point wonder. A single point in this talent gives
your pet unlimited focus, which is a huge increase in the number of abilities it can cast.
Do not miss this talent.
Aimed Shot and
Chimera Shot are both exceptional
rotation abilities that you talent into and press on cooldown. They do a majority of your
damage.
Readiness is a unique Hunter cooldown that has incredible offensive
and defensive potential. This talent gives Marksmanship options in encounters that
other Hunter specs do not.
Trueshot Aura is likely already being brought to your raid by another
class, but if it is not, you absolutely need to have this. However, if it is being brought elsewhere,
this is a free point to spend.
Silencing Shot is a free rotational ability that you can bind to your
other button presses for free damage on cooldown since this is shot off the GCD. However,
this also gives you an interrupt, which can be invaluable on several encounters.
Survival Tree
Improved Tracking is a simple damage increase that gives you 5%
more damage against anything you are tracking. Use the macro in our macro guide to
automatically track anything you use
Hunter's Mark on for the best
ease-of-use so you will never forget to have this active.
Trap Mastery is a 30% damage increase to one of your best buttons,
Explosive Trap.
Glyphs
Major Glyphs
Glyph of Steady Shot increases the damage of your
Steady Shot
by 10% while
Serpent Sting is active. Steady Shot is your main filler
spell, and this is a solid DPS increase for all Hunter specs over other glyphs.
Glyph of Serpent Sting increases the duration of your
Serpent Sting
by 6 seconds. Since you need to maintain a 100% uptime, this will save you multiple
casts over an encounter.
Glyph of Explosive Trap enables the ticking damage from your
Explosive Trap to crit. Now that we have
Trap Launcher,
you will always take this glyph in all situations.
Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Mend Pet slightly increases your pet's happiness, which
means you should not need to feed it anymore. It is a nice quality of life glyph.
Glyph of Feign Death reduces the cooldown of
Feign Death
by 5 seconds.
Glyph of Revive Pet makes it so you no longer get spell push-back
when taking damage while casting
Revive Pet.
Changelog
- 27 Sep. 2023: Updated for Phase 4.
- 11 Jul. 2023: Updated for Phase 3 with new format.
- 18 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Phase 2 release ahead of Ulduar raid release.
- 01 Sep. 2022: Page added.
This guide has been written by Impakt, an Officer in BDGG, the #2 North American guild on retail. In addition to live WoW, he has also been a classic theorycrafter and enthusiast for many years. You can watch him stream on Twitch, or follow him on Twitter.
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