Hunter Hero Talents — The War Within (11.1.0)

This page is specifically about Hero Talents in The War Within. If you want to learn more about the best regular talents for Marksmanship Hunter, check out our Talents page:

Dark Ranger has by far the best single-target DPS and defensive kit of our two Hero Talents, and should be used for practically all raid encounters. It lacks the top-end AoE of Sentinel, but this is not relevant enough to pursue over single-target in this raid.

Sentinel is our strongest Hero Talent for AoE DPS, but lags behind in single-target, and is generally not picked for Raiding.

Sentinel is generally our strongest Hero Talent for Mythic+ scenarios, providing the most AoE damage by far, and a decent defensive profile.

Dark Ranger provides significantly more single-target DPS than Sentinel, but at a significant cost to AoE damage. In some dungeons, such as Workshop and Theater of Pain, this can be better than Sentinel.

2.

Best Hero Talent Builds for Marksmanship Hunter

Sentinel Build — Single-Target Sentinel Build — Mythic+, Delves, Open-World Dark Ranger Build

3.

Best Single-Target Sentinel Build for Marksmanship Hunter

Sentinel is very straightforward to build. For single-target, we prefer Crescent Steel for the reliable execute damage boost.

3.

Best Mythic+ Sentinel Build for Marksmanship Hunter

Sentinel is very straightforward to build. For AoE/Mythic+/Delves and open-world content, we prefer Overwatch as it helps ensure that we get as many Sentinel ticks off as possible, particularly when mobs die in a staggered fashion.

3.

Best Dark Ranger Build for Marksmanship Hunter

Dark Ranger is straightforward to build, and nearly always uses the same nodes. If you do not find yourself taking active and deliberate use of the very powerful Smoke Screen defensive node, then swapping it out for Embrace the Shadows for a more passive defense is a viable choice.

Sentinel has no appreciable impact on your rotational priorities. There is one minmax pertaining to Lunar Storm, which is also laid out in the Rotation section. Essentially, we want to ensure that we refresh Lunar Storm, which has a 30-second trigger cooldown, on cooldown. Sometimes, this means delaying Rapid Fire for up to 1/3rd of its cooldown (~7 seconds normally, and about 1 GCD during Trueshot) to catch that refresh immediately, since otherwise we might have to wait 20 seconds ( Rapid Fire's base cooldown) for the next Rapid Fire to roll around if we do not get lucky with Surging Shots resets.

But, other than that minmax, Sentinel is completely passive.

Dark Rangers replace Kill Shot with Black Arrow. For the most part, it occupies the same role in the rotation where you use the procs as they come. On AoE, however, it is also crucial that you use Black Arrows only while Trick Shots is active, just like you are doing with Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire. During Trueshot, Black Arrow can be fired on cooldown thanks to Withering Fire, and your first cast after activating Trueshot should always be a Black Arrow for this reason. On AoE, this means ensuring that Trick Shots is up when you activate Trueshot.